Labor day/birthday year two

Dear Mama,

Today is your birthday. You said you were born on Labor Day, which your parents rather enjoyed because ha. 

September 2 is always your birthday, but it is not always Labor Day. Like that expression all Singhs are Sikh but not all Sikhs are Singh. Or maybe it is the other way around?

I remember how you used to always ask people like cab drivers where they were from, and I would be all, oh my god, just let people drive.

But this one time we had a Sikh driving us and you said, "Are you from Jalandhar?"

And he was all, "Yes! I AM from Jalandhar!" Delighted.

You'd do random things like that and instead of people being like, just because I'm a person with an accent does not mean I want to talk to you about my homeland, they'd be delighted that you'd taught at a school in Kabul and could still speak Farsi. 

I saw our neighbor Marie the other day, and she said she was just thinking about how much she loved sitting on her porch chatting with you. She said you were so interesting, and had so many great stories.

I should've asked you for more stories. I should've recorded them when I had you.

This is your second birthday not here with me, and I miss you.

I've been sick, like flattened in bed sick, for an entire week. At some point last week I called Nick sobbing because everything hurt so much I couldn't get out of bed. I couldn't walk the dog.

Urgent care said that what I have is a terrible virus that is going around, and that I should begin to feel better on day 10-14. I'm at day 7 and it is taking its damn time.

It's been brutal. I cannot remember being this sick for this long. Not even with Covid. Which I do not have.

I used to have a lot of versions of the loneliest me imaginable.

This past week I realized that the loneliest I could be was sick, really sick, without my mama.

You would pour me a glass of ginger ale, mostly ice, and leave it on my bedside table. I was dying for ginger ale. I was too sick to go buy any. I kept forgetting to ask the kids.

You'd come in and put your cool hand on my hot forehead.

Even if that didn't do anything, in the same way that throwing your arm across me when you braked the car hard wouldn't have done anything in a crash, what it did was make me feel loved.

You'd be in and out of my room quietly, which was perfect, because all I was doing was sleeping anyway. But I would know you were there.

I know you are fine, wherever you are, and this idea comforts me. I know that what hurts is all the ways that you are not here for me.

Being motherless for me is somehow being less protected in this world. It didn't matter that I'd gotten bigger and stronger than you.

That's not the point.

I wouldn't hesitate to give my life for either of my kids, and I think Jordan would believe it if I told him so, but our girl India, she knows.

She knows she is my heart in the same way that I knew that I was yours. She is forehead to forehead emotion meld.

You know this. When I tell her I love her, she says, "I love you more." And she got that from you.

The other day I had a quick vision of you laughing and saying, "Oh, Lisa, how I do love you."

When people ask how old you were, and I say 85, I know what they are thinking, and so before they can say anything I tell them that I knew you had a big, big life. Because you did.

But that's not what I'm thinking. I'm thinking, but what about me?

When I first saw Nicole after you died, I hadn't seen her in years. She disappeared into a hole after her mom died. She hugged me and said that as it turns out, it doesn't even matter if you have a difficult  relationship with your mom. When she's gone, you're flattened, she said.

It's changed my relationship with the world in a way I cannot yet quite describe.

I know ahead of time these days will be difficult, and still, I'm never prepared for how sad I'll be. Birthdays and anniversaries, they really fuck with you.

Anyway, we're all still here, and you're somewhere not here, somewhere I hope is really, really good, with all of our beloveds who also aren't here.

I miss you with my whole heart.

Love,

Lisa

John, I'm only dancing

I don't know if you've ever thought of someone from your past and googled their name to find that they are no longer with us.

This happened yesterday.

I googled my friend Debbie, neighbor of Alyssa who had chicken for dinner, to find that she died in 2007.

Her parents are still alive. And so many years ago, they had to say goodbye to their daughter, who would never turn 40.

Her mom had been an actress in Poland before they came to the US. She had a strong accent. This was the era when we learned about ibuprofen as a pain reliever, and she called it "eeboopreen" and so that's what my mom thought it was called for the longest time. 

"Do you need an eeboopreen?" Now I find it cute, but back then it drove me crazy.

The truth is, I hadn't seen Debbie in decades. Something would remind me of her every once in a while, because for about three years, we had a very intense friendship.

I guess all my friendships have always been intense.

At some point her dad came into money, and bought a huge house in a fancier neighborhood, which was in a different school district, and they moved out of our modest neighborhood.

And she hated it. She hated the new school.

One night, she ran away. She walked miles over to the parkland behind our house. She was going to live down by the creek. 

Since this was the early 80s, the "It's 10:00. Do you know where your children are?" era, we'd spent entire days down by the creek, exploring the parkland. We played kick the can with neighborhood kids in the dark.

Our parents weren't actually looking for us until it was clear we weren't home for dinner or bedtime.

Basically, she was going to live down there and I was going to supply her with food.

The plan was not sophisticated. She just wanted out of the painful situation into which she'd been thrust.

We'd read books like My Side of the Mountain and From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. Running away for a time and living in nature or the Metropolitan Museum of Art seemed like an actual option.

In books like that, where the kids are very self-sufficient, you don't have the view of the parents freaking the fuck out wondering if their child has been kidnapped or killed.

In any case, I think it was my brother who spotted her down by the creek and told my parents.

I mean, the police were out looking for her. It was a crisis.

And in retrospect, I see us as kids, tweens, living in traumatic situations and not having the words. Not having been told that we could ask for help. Not trusting that someone would help us, except our friends.

We couldn't trust our parents to fix the situations when our parents were the cause of them.

Anyway, then her parents got divorced and her mom and the kids moved back to our neighborhood and her dad became a Zionist.

And then my family moved to India, and all we had was letter communication. Which I only succeeded at in starts and fits.

I'd see her in the summer, and they had cable, which meant we'd spent hours in her living room watching MTV. 

She was funny and smart and artistic. She was a year ahead of me, and at some point she was studying ancient Egyptians, and for a project she decided to make jewelry, like in a museum exhibit. So we rolled out clay into snake necklaces and such.

It was a really cool project. I was jealous.

At her house, we had Kraft macaroni and cheese, which we never had at my house. It was magical.

One summer after we moved to India, we came home and stayed with the neighbor next door to our house, which we rented out to another Foreign Service family. I met the son, who had coincidentally been in high school in Kenya with one of my New Delhi besties.

And he was so cute. We met, and then in the way of the teenager, all we wanted to do was make out to Tears for Fears.

We did a lot of that in a very short span of time. His mom wanted him to get a summer job and we wanted to sneak off and make out.

In a horrible coincidence, he was also the boy Debbie had had a crush on the entire previous year of high school. He had no idea.

I never told him, of course, because she'd have killed me. And I never told her about the making out. Why hurt her feelings? I'd be gone in a week.

Debbie is the one who introduced me to David Bowie. She bought the albums and made me tapes. 

We loved David Bowie. We loved him so much. We even loved his weird songs like "The Laughing Gnome," and "Come and Buy My Toys"—which, I learned as a mom reading Mother Goose, is a nursery rhyme. "Please Mr. Gravedigger," on the other hand, is probably not.

At one point, she gave me a special edition album of Diamond Dogs, and I wish I'd kept it, but it got let go somewhere in one of our many moves.

In any case, I hadn't seen her since the late 1980s.  

And I know that when we grieve, the pain we feel is for ourselves. 

I know that with each loss of someone dear from my past, it's a reminder that I don't have my mom to tell. Because I would definitely tell her about Debbie. 

But probably she already knows.

She wasn't mine to lose, and I think, who am I to be sad, when I hadn't tried to contact her for over 25 years?

But I also think, gosh, now I never can.

Year 1: How I wish, how I wish you were here

Dear Mama,

Yesterday last year I thought you would come home from the hospital.

Today last year, very early in the morning, you were admitted to the ICU.

And it became increasingly clear that you would not.

Yesterday last year was Mother's Day, and it was terrible.

Mother's Day this year was brutal. 

Sarah posted this poem for Candy, and it resonated so deeply.

Since you left, I've felt, I don't know, less in this world. And after I read this, I realized that what I felt was untethered. 

Not homeless exactly. Not quite lost.

But kind of.

When I was diagnosed with breast cancer, the calculations I started doing were about my kids.

I love my life, but the math was like this: if I have 10 more years, the kids will at least be in their 20s. 20 more, and that will get them to their 30s. And so forth, by 10s.

I was 53, and still, I wasn't ready to lose my mom. I needed you. I still need you.

I feel like so much of what made me me was connected to you. 

I'm not suggesting this is how it is for my kids. But I do know that people go on needing their moms, and I want to be here for them for as long as I can be.

You were gone, and suddenly, I wasn't a daughter. 

I wasn't your caretaker. Your advocate. Your protector.

I wasn't the fittest person you knew. Or the funniest person you knew. Your favorite writer.

Your anything.

I was just me. Without you.

My calendar was suddenly wide open, because I would no longer drive you to Sibley every other week, swearing at other drivers and making you laugh.

You were my first home. And because we moved so much, our family, rather than a specific location, was my home.

You were my first home, and our house was your last home. 

When I feel very sad, like today, I try to remind myself that you had a comfortable and loving home with us. And you were so, so loved.

One year ago on this date, while you were firmly physically affixed to your hospital bed, I saw you recede as the day wore on. You were just less and less there.

The only thing I feel good about is that you made the choice. When we asked you if you wanted further intervention, and you said no, and we asked you if you knew what your decision meant—and you so clearly did—you didn't hesitate.

The fact that it's the same day Dad left us, now 15 years ago, underlines for me that it was your choice.

Not a coincidence.

At some point too many of your systems were failing, and rather than fight the inevitable, you decided you were done with your tiny, frail earthly body. You were done with the pain. You were already more there than here, wherever there is.

You know, the doctors told us that it could be hours, or it could be days. They said once they stop intervention, you don't actually know what people are going to do, how long they will live.

But you'd made your decision, and you left.

By this time tonight, last year, you'd left us, and, after our allotted two hours, we left you. By this time Nick and I had come home, and India had met us at the back door, asking, why, WHY did we have Nana's things?

And then she knew. 

Recently she said she didn't know when she hugged you in the hospital, it was going to be for the last time. When she said goodbye to you, it was going to be the last one.

It's true that you know first times, but last times can sneak up on you. 

Leaving that hospital room was one of the hardest things I've ever done. Even though you weren't there anymore. I was holding your hand, and one moment you were there, and the next, you were gone.

Where'd you go?

This morning, I got my annual text from my friend Vik, saying *hugs*. May 15 has been a hard date for me for the last 15 years.

Losing Dad was devastating. For a long time, I think it was impossible to separate the loss of him from the trauma of the circumstances.

He'd disappeared so many times, but this time, it was somehow forever. How was that possible?

But of course I'd thought about a world without Dad in it, because I'd been confronted with the possibility. The likelihood.

Losing Dad was horrendously painful. But my world without you in it was unimaginable.

I loved you and Dad equally, but differently. You, you were always my safe harbor. The side of the bed I'd run to when I had a bad dream. The person I'd call heartbroken and sobbing, well into my 30s.

The person who loved me most in the whole entire world. 

I remember you saying you loved going home to Grandma Lillian's, because you were never judged. And it's everything to be loved unconditionally. 

How many people love us this way?

When you decided, it didn't feel like you were scared at all. You were relieved. You were tired, and you were ready.

Our friend Alexa, who was checking in on you energetically throughout the day, texted me to say your hospital room was full of loved ones. She didn't know you were leaving then, but she knew who was there waiting for you.

And then you were gone.

And I coudln't believe it. I mean, I was there. I saw it. But how did I suddenly not have my mom anymore?

I know this is all about me, because you're fine; it's the people left behind who hurt and hurt.

It's a terrible club to be in, this one. My motherless friends know. It's different, and it's awful.

I've survived a year that I couldn't actually imagine surviving.

I have to admit that I don't remember large chunks of last year. Kind of like how I don't remember much of college. I know facts, I made friends, but there are big blank spaces. I'm not searching for them.

Anyway, here we are. It's been a year.

I love you and I miss you and I miss you and I miss you.

Love,

Lisa

Do not go gentle into that Teams meeting

Every Christmas of my childhood and beyond, we listened to a record of Dylan Thomas reading "A Child's Christmas in Wales." 

It's a short and charming tale, if you're not familiar with it, and the way he reads it is marvelous.

But some Christmas Days, probably at the surly teenage ages and up, we just wanted to read our new books or play with our new toys or just retreat to our corners and not all sit in the living room together next to the record player hearing each other breathe.

Did we eventually have it on tape? CD? We must have. I just found it on YouTube.

Christmases were hard for my dad, and he was always melancholy, but because we weren't allowed to talk about it I don't know if it was family trauma, or abuse by Catholic priests when he was an altar boy, or Vietnam, or seasonal depression or regular depression or possibly bipolar disorder. 

I feel the weight of these less and less as I heal, but so often I have questions I'd like to ask...and there's nobody to ask.

My Uncle Jack passed away a few weeks ago. He was the last of that generation on both sides of the family, for me. 

I didn't know him growing up, but I'd gotten to know him a little as an adult. Donna, his partner after his wife passed away, was a dear childhood friend of my dad's, and they and my parents would get together.

A year or two before my dad died, he and Donna decided to go skydiving. Something he'd always wanted to do. He was delighted to have a partner with equal enthusiasm.

My mom and Uncle Jack stayed on the ground, while Dad and Donna soared.

But losing Jack felt like losing my mom all over again. She was the only person in my family who would keenly feel this loss.

Grief is endlessly surprising.

Anyway, from teen years to medicated years, for ol' Dylan Thomas, I was fully in the throes of seasonal affective disorder—except when we had Christmases south of the equator in heat and sunshine, which in my opinion is the way to go.

So surely I was rage raging against the dying of the light and it had nothing to do with my family or Thomas—who I adore as a poet and storyteller and as such, feel a little guilty for bastardizing his beautiful lines.

But clearly not guilty enough!

I don't know much of anything about the Welsh, except that Wales looks so beautiful and Fiona studied there and the Welsh were very fierce though unsuccessful in their uprisings. 

And also, after watching Doc Martin, I really want to go to Cornwall.

If you like the British murder villages but get tired of death, I highly recommend Doc Martin. 

I do realize they're not interchangeable. But apparently the Cornish were problematically fierce for the English as well.

Anyway, the main point of this story is that I had to be on a Teams meeting with Jordan's school.

Microsoft Teams hates me. The feeling is mutual.

If I try to attend on my phone, it says I have to download the app. But I deleted the app, because I never had the correct login information. So I thought I could get around it by getting rid of it.

No.

It knows that you're on a phone, and you can just go to the app store. So it's like, bitch, get the app and then come talk to me.

So now I make sure I'm on a laptop. But it has to be my mom's laptop, because the sound on mine is broken.

So I logged in 45 minutes ahead, just so that I knew I could. Like getting to your gate at the airport to make sure it's there, and then you can get a snack and use the bathroom.

Teams meetings derail my entire day up to the point where I successfully (or not) connect.

When we had meetings with India's teachers, I did everything right—right time, right laptop, right link—except it was a link for a teacher whose class she no longer has.

So then Nick called and I said, "I went to the fucking link they sent us but it's a link to the Chinese teacher and why do we fucking have to use fucking Teams I hate Teams so fucking much..."

And he said, "Dear, we've started the conference and I've got you on speaker, and two of India's teachers are on the line."

I apologized profusely for the profanity. They both laughed (I think) and said no children were present.

Apparently a couple minutes before they'd asked if they should wait for me to start the conference and Nick said the odds were I was struggling with Teams, and I'd be along shortly swearing about the platform. 

Which just confirms what I've long believed: people don't change as they age. 

They just become more so.

This was, you understand, prior to my Tabarnac Era. Also, my friend Brian recently reminded me of my interest in "What the Dickens?"

But Teams gets the full extent of my profane wrath.

Which is to say that on the whole I'm fine, and in this photo, I was in Puerto Rico with my children for spring break.

The day we got there, I was inhaling humid tropical air, and reveling in the foliage of my childhood. Bougainvillea always makes me happy.

Sometimes I think things but am not sure if I said them out loud, and so I ask if I said something out loud and people will tell me I did or didn't.

But in this case, I said, "When you guys are gone, I'm moving to the tropics." And my kids were all, WHAT? 

And I was all, oh did I say that out loud?

I said it out loud.

And so then I was like, OK, not really, haha I just love tropical weather. 

And now it's 90 in DC, thank goodness, because I was pretty sure it was going to be cold here for the rest of my born days.

All good. Carry on.

Just don't make me attend a Teams meeting.

A shark smile in a yellow van

Two days ago I got this sweet message: I do so hope you are alright.  I miss you. Please come back.

I owe the writer such thanks.

Because I couldn’t have said what I needed to start writing again—because I missed this place, but didn't know where to start—but it was exactly what I needed.

In the summer in DC, when our doors swell with humidity, we have to give them an extra push or pull to open them.

I’m so grateful for that kind and gentle check-in. The lovely sentiment. 

I just realized that I’ve been sad, like desperately, scraped-raw sad, for coming up on a year. I’ve been some level of scared for nearly that long.

I haven’t been alright, though I look like it from the outside.

I just needed some help recognizing it.

I've said before that I so badly wanted to be back to normal.

Normal. Ha. But you know what I mean.

I only started really processing the magnitude of all of the everything quite recently.

Somehow the time between the night of May 2, when my mom fell, and this February was just so, I don’t know, frenzied is maybe the word.

Betty left us on May 15. Her days in the hospital were brutal. And I'm dreading Mother's Day. I don't think I'll celebrate it again.

Weeks after her death, I had a high school reunion to host. I couldn't cancel. Friends had bought international plane tickets. And it would feel so good to see everyone.

Which it did, of course it did. We remembered Betty and cried together. And laughed. And danced.

I had a houseful of friends staying. (Those same friends would return in September to surround me with love.)

And then a couple weeks later I drove the kids to Maine. And drove home. And got on a plane.

And flew for 25 hours to Bali, where I spent all day in yoga teacher training and also went out and sobbed in the rice paddy at least once a day.

Sometimes people noticed me leaving class, and someone would escort me, or quietly come sit with me. Sometimes talking, sometimes just sitting.

One lovely, lovely woman told me on the last day that she’d avoided me for much of the course because I just had so much strong emotion.

She didn’t say it was overwhelming, but I imagine it was. 

I imagine I was.

I remember not knowing I was intense until I was in my 30s, and someone told me and I was surprised.

So whatever I am in the moment, I think I am very much of it.

I went to Bali to escape. 

Yes, I was already signed up to do yoga teacher training. But mainly in that time, I desperately wanted to be away from our house. Away from the place my mom fell. Away from home where, everywhere I turned, there she used to be.

Grief streamed from my eyes. My mouth. My pores. I sweated grief. 

Grief surely swirled and crackled around me like static electricity.

If grief had a smell, I think it would be lightening. Apparently the smell is ozone, which is way less poetic but probably easier to rhyme.

Even when I was laughing—and we laughed a lot—the base note was grief.

I’ve said before that uproarious laughter and hysterical sobbing are millimeters, instants apart.

Two sides of the same coin. Maybe closer, even. The warp and weft of fabric.

I learned on the last day of training, and was embarrassed to know, that my classmates heard me sobbing in the rice paddy.

I cried so hard it physically hurt. I was so desperately sad, it didn’t even occur to me.

And then I came home. And then we got the kids, and went to family camp.

And then I had my biopsy, surely nothing, let’s just check.

And then I had cancer.

Suddenly, I went from I just have to get through my mom’s memorial service before I can breathe—before I can make plans, before I can resume life—to getting through her service, and then my operation, and then my recovery.

And then I’d be able to breathe. Plan. Resume.

Nicole, my god what would I have done without Nicole, came for two weeks to take care of me, as you know.

Nicole is a force of nature. Nicole is an event.

Then suddenly it was Thanksgiving. Then our family went to England for Christmas, to avoid the memories we hang on the tree and the sticky buns Betty is no longer here to make. The perfectly wrapped packages she’ll never wrap again. The stockings she was always excited to fill.

It was better, but grief still found us in Hyde Park. India and I hugged and cried while Nick and Jordan looked at the ducks.

But nothing stops. And I kept moving. 

And then Nicole came back, so Nick and I could go to the fancy event in Oxford. I’d never been in my life, then twice in a month.

So fun! So extravagant! So lovely!

Nick asked, and Nicole said she’d come take care of the kids if she could stay two weeks. And then Maude said, well, if Nicole’s coming, then I want to as well.

It was as wonderful as one might think. We chatted and we laughed and we wept. Maude brought starter from Denver and taught me how to make sourdough.

And then.

Then they left. And the house was very quiet.

Valentine’s Day, I think, is when I really started falling apart. But inwardly.

Inwardly apart. Apartedly inward.

Imploding?

We once went to a carefully orchestrated demolition. All these explosions were placed and timed such that the building would cave in on itself. It didn’t even seem violent. 

Emotionally like that.

Not that I didn’t cry regularly before then, because I did. But like a shark, I kept moving, moving, moving.

Water over the gills to keep breathing.

Apparently, this isn't every type of shark. I looked it up. So, hashtag notallsharks. The ones that need to do this are called obligate ram ventilators.

ANYway.

You can’t outrun yourself. I guess this is one of those lessons I seem to have to learn over and over.

I wasn’t seeing my therapist, because though I love her, it just felt too hard.

One of my yoga friends noticed. She looked me in the eye after class one day and said, “How are you?”

I started to explain about the physical, and she said, “No. You. How are you?”

I started to cry, right there in the gym. I was not fine. I was not remotely OK. In fact, I was barely even breathing. 

On the outside, I look strong. Healthy. Healed.

I’d been cut open and sewn up by world-class experts. At this point I have delicate scars. I’ve got high grade silicon implants that are my personal forever science experiment.

I think about how the rest of my body seems to be degrading at an accelerated pace, but these are fairly static. 

Like, one day I'll die, and my body will hollow, which I know firsthand happens. And still, barring previous calamity, I'll have these two youthful silicone shapes, pretending to be part of me.

You know me. I’ve long had anxieties about a whole lot of things. Mainly like plane crashes and raccoons and rabies and sink holes.

Somehow breast cancer was not on my fear list.

Also: the more I learn about neurodivergence, the more it explains my life. Not ever human picks one topic to obsess about endlessly until the next topic catches their eye.

But I digress. Because when do I not?

Suddenly there it was, top of my fear list, its own circle in the Venn diagram of my life. The bold heading of one of the now-myriad clubs to which I never wanted to belong. 

I picture my Venn diagram more like a chrysanthemum, because I like them. I don't care about the factuality.

So, I just had my six-month oncology checkup. I have my surgery checkup next week.

I thought they’d take blood, analyze the results, and be like, yep, you’re good, see ya in three months.

But it doesn’t work like that. They don’t know.

You just have to keep living and hoping for the best. There are no for sure answers.

Although I guess that’s really all of life.

The day of my checkup, I also had an infusion for my bones, because the medication I’m on can cause osteoporosis.

A common (78%, I googled) side effect of the infusion is feeling like you have the flu.

I taught a yoga class the next morning and thought maybe I was in the lucky 22%.

By that afternoon, I could barely walk.

And for a day and a half, I felt like hell. I knew I wasn’t sick, but I also couldn’t get out of bed.

It was reminiscent of post-surgery, which I’ve kind of forgotten, but which wasn’t that long ago, after all.

It’s surreal, honestly. For two weeks I had tubes coming out of my body, attached to silicone bags I had to empty every day. I know this is true. But I don’t remember it.

I couldn’t take care of my family. I couldn’t fully take care of myself.

In bed with the not-flu, I read a Louise Penny book. I intend to start using “tabarnac” as a swear.

But then, I also intend to swear less, and I can’t say that’s going well.

Tabarnac!

At this juncture, it feels like it’s been cold and rainy my entire life, though I know that’s a factual impossibility.

I took the photo above about a month ago. My hair was clean. I was wearing makeup. I liked my outfit. 

Ever since Nicole visited, donning something fabulous daily, if only to hang out and walk to CVS, I’ve had the goal of wearing real, non-gym friendly clothes every day.

I probably accomplish this about 50% of the time. Or maybe 25%? I am, after all, a person who asked for something to be mixed 60-30.

Not most of the past week, but today I'm wearing jeans. Jeans count as real.

Anyway, I’m here.

I’m not very alright, but probably more so than not. 60-30. Anyway, I believe I will be.

Love and hugs,

Lisa

Goodbye to you

I don't, as a practice and a superstition, wish time away. I never cross a day off the calendar before it is over.

But I was happy to see the back end of 2023.

I was going to write an end of year post on January 1, but we all returned from travel with consumption or some non-Covid crud.

And so I lay around limply, not so much feeling like writing.

But I forced myself to exercise and bathe.

Start as you mean to go on, and all that.

I'd like to eat black-eyed peas for luck, but I just don't like them. Or maybe I never like how they're seasoned. Anyway, we would have that as a tradition, but we don't.

Kind of like how growing up, we had oyster stew for Christmas dinner every year because that's what my mom was raised with. And then one year we all voiced how none of us cared for oyster stew, and apparently my mom had disliked it since childhood.

So then we never had it again.

Anyway, as the end of 2023 approached, the song that kept playing in my head was Goodbye to You.

In the immortal words of Scandal, "And my heart can't stand the strain/And my love, and my love, and my love/Goodbye to you..."

I didn't make a 2023 photo book. I didn't make a calendar. I simply couldn't handle looking back at photos from January–May.

Our only nod to Christmas at home were door wreaths and a poinsettia, and honestly, we only got those because Jordan was on the hook for selling a quantity of them for a sports team fundraiser and did nothing about selling. Nick and I sold a few. 

Though we'd signed an agreement at the start of the school year agreeing to participate up to this amount, we were caught off guard. And honestly, after the year we'd had, I didn't have the wherewithal. So we bought a bunch of wreaths and poinsettias.

Next year, which turns out to now be this year, will be better.

That's what I kept saying last year. Next year will be better. 

I didn't want to tempt fate and say, "How could it be worse?" Because I think a worse year than last year would actually break me.

That said. I was kind of surprised to realize that on the whole, despite so many years of depression and its accompanying negativity, I might actually be a glass half full person rather than a glass half emptier.

Because yes, 2023 was my absolute worst, most heart-wrenchingly painful, devastating, brutal, scary year of my entire life. 

I always knew that losing Betty would absolutely wreck me. But it's one thing to intellectually know. And it's quite another to feel like your entire body, inside and out, has been abraded by grief.

To wake up every single day freshly scraped down to your core. 

And then, you know, to get cancer on top of it. That super sucked.

But oddly enough, on the whole, I feel like a very lucky person. 

Which maybe makes no sense. Because on the outside, I cannot imagine anyone else would be like, "Ooh, I'd love to have Lisa's luck!"

I get that. I do.

We started the new year with wretched chest colds. There's some kind of crud circling the globe, and we returned from the UK worn down and feeling low. As soon as we got home, Nick and I were felled by it.

It caught me off guard, because I hadn't been really sick since having Covid the first year of the pandemic.

I said this to Nick. I said, "I'd forgotten how it feels to be so sick. Because I've been so healthy for so long!"

And then I was like, "I mean, except for the cancer!" Ha.

Which I know is kind of all, "Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?"

But can I stick to a point?

Unclear. Because I think the ADHD meds I was so grateful for were exacerbating the effects of anastrozole. And since cutting my cancer recurrence risk is currently more important than quieting my brain, well, you get what you get.

But let me tell you how I'm lucky. You don't have to believe me. It's OK.

What 2023 showed me was how much love and kindness I have in my life. What extraordinary humans I have who love me.

My friends showed up, and they showed up huge for me. For me, for my family, for my mama.

You know I had my dear Nicole here for two weeks after my surgery taking care of me and making sure my family was OK. What kind of priceless gift is that?

On a side bar: I had to look up priceless, because I was like, un-pay-backable? Not enough money for? 

Becuase whether is is grief brain—which is a thing—or menopause, which I'm super duper in with the anastrozole working hard to make sure my body has no estrogen available, I keep lacking words.

Seriously. Yesterday I actually said, "You know, the wrists on your legs."

Ankles, my friends. The word for leg wrists is ANKLES.

But back to love. 

I had, I guess, three big traumatic events last year. My mom fell, spent 12 days and then passed away in GW Hospital, a place I will hate forever and absolutely refused to consider for my own treatment. Then we had her memorial service in September. And then, 10 days later, I had my surgery.

I haven't really talked or written at about my mom's memorial service. It was September 17.

That was the date I had to get past before I could start focusing on my future and how to be a yoga teacher. 

Until, of course, that all got derailed.

So maybe one day I'll write about that. But for now I'll say that my Leigh, who I asked to provide the floral arrangements (because she owns a wedding and florals company and has exquisite taste), created and installed the Betty-est flowers I could ever have hoped for. She made a beautiful chapel so much more so.

My mom would've loved them. Absolutely loved.

And through them, I had friends holding my hands. Physically, in some cases, and long-distance emotionally in others.

Maude and my high school friends came and stayed and rallied around me and cried with me and made me laugh and just offered their whole soulful selves in solidarity.

And I got flowers and gifts from friends I adore, but who I have barely spent time with in person because we live far apart. 

They're deep in my heart, and as it turns out, I am in theirs.

I cannot risk listing people, because I will leave some out. Grief/menopause brain. And then I would feel terrible. But my gosh, there are so many people.

I still owe a tremendous number of thank yous.

After my surgery, my community of moms here kept my whole family fed. Overfed, honestly.

My friend Andrea (sometimes lives near, sometimes far) set up a Meal Train, and we had so much food. People were incredibly generous.

Nicole had to cancel some lovely offers, as we were in the lucky position of having too much, and the freezer was full, and we couldn't bear to see good food go to waste.

One mom friend signed up multiple times before my surgery. I messaged her ahead and said please not to trouble herself like that.

And you know what she said?

She said we didn't know each other that well, and she was grateful to have a way to do something for me.

She was grateful for the opportunity.

This made me cry.

She's since messaged and said she was making a dish I particularly liked, and would I like a pan of it? Yes, oh yes, thank you.

A Cuban friend made me Cuban soup, the name of which I cannot remember. She told me to tell my surgeon, who is also Cuban. 

My Russian friend made me various soups, dropping one off every single week.

She started doing this after my diagnosis. She comes from a culture of food as medicine, and I needed the fortification.

Another mom friend, whose meal got canceled, asked if she could leave spiced tea made by her Kenyan husband and treats. (Ohhh, yes!!!) So her daughter picked out the cutest travel mug, and I had special tea and donuts.

I don't know if it sounds bad, listing all I received.

But I will tell you that my inclination—really, the way I was raised and trained—is always to tell people not to trouble themselves.

I love asking for advice and recommendations. I love knowing what books people are reading, or what kinds of skin care products they use.

I am always open to suggestions, and seriously love hearing. 

When I have to make choices, I get overwhelmed. So then I ask friends. It narrows things down and helps me a lot.

But those are things that cost people relatively little in terms of time and effort.

Prior to last year, it would've been unimaginable to me to ask someone outside of my family or absolute closest friends to make me a meal.

But the advice I got from a friend with cancer—which was just like the advice I got when traveling to Spain, but fortunately didn't result in eating fried pig ears—was say YES to everything.

Let people do things for you. Allow people to help you. Say yes to the kindness.

So I said yes. Yes, please. Yes, thank you.

I had so much soup. I love soup. I am a terrible soup maker, sadly, and I love soup.

You'd think it would be simple. But good soup is not simple. Anyway, not for me.

So at one point Nick was all, "WHY do we have so much soup?"

(Spoken like a non-soup lover.)

And I said, "It's for me. I love soup."

Also, I am not a quid pro quo person. I'm really not. I do things for people I care about because I want to. 

Kindnesses bring me joy.

And I pour a lot into people I care about. 

And it turns out there are lots and lots of people I love.

What I've learned is that there are lots of people far and wide who love me back.

When I was young, I'd get jealous if a good friend added another bestie. Because I thought of love as finite. But as I've aged, I realize it's infinite.

Time and energy, yes, finite. Love, so vast. I do think the more you feel, the more you give, the more you have available. Our hearts are immense.

So in the horribleness of the worst year of my life, I had so much love.

And love and kindness came from unexpected places.

The first time I cried in class in Bali, I was lying on my stomach on my yoga mat in an anatomy class. We had no chairs. We could sit, lie down, stand, squat, use bolsters. But no chairs.

So we were on our mats pretty much all the time.

And the anatomy teacher was talking about diaphragmatic breathing.

And all I could picture was how shallowly my mom breathed. And how, if I'd known what I was starting to learn, I could have helped her.

If she'd breathed properly, would she have been strong enough to survive?

So I was lying on my mat in class with huge tears rolling down my face.

I felt a hand on my shoulder, and a voice quietly asking me if I'd like to go outside.

Jessie, this extraordinarily beautiful young woman, had been on her mat a row ahead of me. I wasn't making any noise, but she somehow knew, and came over to offer kindness.

I came to learn she was so tuned in to the emotional world around her. She could feel the room.

We went out in the rice paddy, and I cried and cried. I apologized for taking her out of class and she waved a hand and said, "I just graduated pre-med. I already know what she's talking about."

She's so young, so smart, so beautiful. Like, so pretty she could be shallow or not that bright, or unkind and just go through the world on her looks and people would do things for her. But she's deep and thoughtful and funny. 

I'd be delighted if my girl grew up to be like her.

And you already know about Fiona, my Bali yoga bestie who has turned into a lifelong bestie. 

I just got to see her two weeks ago. It was amazing but too brief. An evening and a morning, where we hugged goodbye at the train station, smiling for a selfie, and then I walked away in tears.

While we were there, the whole of England was being barraged by a storm called Gareth or something equally English, and trains were canceled and roads were flooded. Roofs had been blown off houses. Crazy stuff like that.

Fiona was coming down from the north, and had two trains canceled, and then was on a standing-room only train so packed that people fainted and one kid threw up.

But she came down to Oxford for the night, and we had a glorious time!

This is a whole nother post, or series of posts, because I have vocabulary, new treats, and travel stories to share.

Which I will do soon.

I wasn't writing for a while because I was just so relentlessly sad. Not depressed. Just sad. 

And I figured that it was probably tedious for readers to face another slog through grief kind of post.

But then my friend Sarah called, and out of the blue she said, "I love your blog! My mom loved your blog!"

I told her my fear of the ponderous griefy sadness and she said no. Keep writing. Post.

So I am.

I got through my first birthday, Betty's birthday, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, and New Year's without my mom. I feel...relieved?

Goodbye to you, 2023. Hello to you, 2024.

Exercise, bathe. Eat a fucking vegetable. Feel lucky to be alive.

These are for me. I'm not telling you what to do, though you're welcome to join me. 

Oh! I also want to start sitting in cold plunges, and grinding my own grain. And learn to knit, crochet, quilt...But those are also for another day.

Start as you mean to go on.

Me here at last on the ground/You in mid-air

Dear Mama,

Six months ago tonight, I held your hand for the last time. I kissed your forehead. Smoothed your hair, touched the crease between your eyebrows. I frown in the exact same way. 

Because you were mine, even though your heart was no longer beating, it felt OK to touch you. To hold your hand. To feel your fine, smooth skin.

I knew that once we left, I'd never have this opportunity again. I could talk to you, of course, but not touch you warm and still looking and feeling like my mother.

I saw your body again, twice, but you were far away.

***

That night, six months ago, Nick and I agreed that if the kids were already asleep when we got home from the hospital, we wouldn't wake them. We'd tell them tomorrow.

And then India heard the car and ran to open the back door.

She saw the bags and said, "WHY ARE YOU CARRYING NANA'S THINGS?"

And then I crumpled. And she crumpled into me.

***

There's a box of stuff we brought home from the hospital that I've been almost unable to touch.

Your glasses, your weekly planner, medications, things like that. 

There's even a page from an old calendar I'd made for you, a huge photo from our trip to Toronto years ago. I taped it to your wall to cheer you. One of the nice nurses moved it with your stuff and hung it on the wall in the ICU.

I've diminished the pile a little over time, removing things like hospital toiletries. It's the everyday objects like your padded eyeglass case, which you used all the time, that wreck me.

When you went into crisis, the staff had packed everything from your regular room into big plastic hospital bags, and in the 12 or so hours you were in the ICU, there was no reason to unpack anything. There was no time to settle in and look forward.

It made it easier, physically, to collect your things when it was time to go.

***

When I told one of my yoga friends, who is in his 70s, that I had breast cancer, he said, "It's a blessing your mom isn't here to worry about this."

Which frankly hadn't occurred to me.

But yes. This is one trauma you didn't have to live through.

I can see how it's a blessing. 

It just selfishly doesn't feel like one.

***

India's taller than me now. 

If you were still here, the kids would do to you what they do to me. They walk up and stand very very close. So I can be reminded of how much taller they are than me.

Now I'm the shortest one in the house. Except Wanda.

***

Yesterday I went to get my physical. 

The first question the nurse asked as he was updating my chart was, "Is your mother still alive?"

It caught me so off guard, I started to cry. I said no, that you'd died in May.

And he said he was sorry. His mom had died when he was 18, and losing his mom was the worst pain he'd ever been in. She's been gone 24 years, he said, and it still hurts.

We agreed that it hurts so much more than everything else either of us have lived through.

And then, because I'm me, we talked about his country and depression and stigma and his husband. He looked at my birthday and noted that I'm a Leo. Being a Virgo, he always clicks with Leos.

I told him you were a Virgo, and agreed.

He and his husband will probably end up invited to a Christmas dinner, if we ever host one again.

You know this. 

When he was putting all the little sticky things on for my EKG he said, "Wow! You're in amazing shape!"

I didn't tell him that I was the fittest person you knew.

***

We're going to England for Christmas. I told Nick and the kids in May that I wasn't doing Christmas this year. We have to go away.

I remember you saying that you never needed to worry, because your mom did all your worrying for you.

And I've never had to make things beautiful, because you did all of that for me. 

All the mantles with candles and pine cones and sparkles. You put everything together exquisitely. It was fancy but homey.

I loved it.

You wrapped packages perfectly. Not just with the paper crisp and even and the ends nicely folded under. Also with bows and ribbons and lovely little details.

They were just sumptuous and pretty.

I know how time works, and I know the problem with time is that it just takes so long. 

But being so familiar with grief, I know that at some point I'll be willing to pull out the wreaths you made, and decorate the tree with all the ornaments from childhood.

I'll take out your ribbon bag and go through your collection of wrapping paper.

Maybe I'll even make sticky buns.

But not this year.

*** 

I've been wearing some of your clothes.

Not your sweaters. That drawer still smells like you. I don't want that to dissipate.

When Maude was here, we went through your shoes, and she took some. She's been wearing your San Miguel de Allende cocktail combat boots. This brings both of us tremendous joy. 

I found an old bottle of Arpege on your dresser. It smells like the you of my childhood. Or actually, the you of my life until Dad died.

I walk around your rooms, opening your closets and drawers, telling you I miss you. I miss you I miss you I miss you. 

I stay until it hurts. Sometimes this is a minute, sometimes it's half an hour.

I'm slowly removing and giving away unsentimental clothing and objects.

You know, I took your creativity and sense of humor for granted. There are reminders on every wall, every door, really, everywhere.

You taped the kids' art to your walls. You used closet doors as inspiration boards.

New Yorker poetry and cartoons are sprinkled in.They're beautiful and funny in turn.

I wish we'd had more time.

***

At some point on the afternoon of your last day, though we didn't yet know it was your last day, it became apparent that you were never coming home. Even before you and I had the conversation where you said enough.

My friend Alexa, who didn't know how extreme the situation was, texted me to say that you were surrounded by loved ones. It was very crowded in your room.

They were all waiting for you.

***

I made the card above for your service, which was truly lovely. I'll write about it.

The back of the card has the lyrics for You Are My Sunshine.

On the day of the service, India looked at the cards closely, and pointed into your hair and said, "Mama! Look!"

I'd put your photo on a template, and missed the words Sample Text because your hair was so dark.

I told her Nana would think it was funny. Which is true. You would.

It's been six months, and I miss you. I love you and I miss you all the time. I just miss you.

Love, 

Lisa

Run and tell all of the angels this could take all night

Early in the morning on the very last day of June, I headed to Dulles airport. 

Two flights and 25 hours later, I landed in a new day, and a new month, on a whole nother continent.

I've been in Bali for just over a week now.

I'd been planning to attend an intensive yoga teacher training in Costa Rica at the end of the year. A very solid three week training.

I chose the path of immersion because I could, and because it resonated more with me than a course divided into 20 hours over 10 weekends. I figured I'd be anxiously preparing my family leading up to each weekend, and then exhaustedly recovering and preparing myself and family for the next 20-hour weekend.

When I say that having these options at all is a tremendous privilege, I mean this absolutely. I had amazing options in the first place.

With my original plan, my mom, Nick, and my kids had all agreed that they could stay alive and well for those three weeks without me.

I figured if there were a crisis, I could get back in a reasonable amount of time. And the director had assured me that if something happened last minute with my mom, I could postpone for a later course without losing my deposit.

My kids and my mom could take care of each other and Wanda during the day. Nick would be home at night and on weekends. One of the weeks was Thanksgiving, so really, it was 2.5 weeks I'd be away during work and school. 

I'd return with a certification to teach yoga.

And then, as you know, my mom left us suddenly.

After she died, I spent a lot of time on the floor. I'd start crying and just sit down wherever I was, hugging myself in as tightly as I could. I cried so hard I couldn't breathe. I wailed deep, primal pain sounds I'd never before heard.

This happened over and over and over.

I'd open the cupboard to make tea and reach past a mug my mom preferred.

And there I'd be, slowly curling in on myself, lowering to the floor, wedged in the corner of the cabinets, sobbing.

Nothing has ever hurt as much as losing my mama. I thought losing my dad was brutal, and certainly it was. And as traumatic and painful as that was, nothing, nothing has been as profoundly gut-wrenching as this.

So a few weeks ago, I found myself home alone. The kids were at school. Nick was at work. 

And I was alone. 

With Wanda, but to be honest, she's scant company.

I looked at the wall calendar, and erased my mom's upcoming biweekly appointments.

I thought about my July, which originally was going to be all about Betty.

The kids were going to camp, and I'd told her I'd take her somewhere, anywhere she might like to go. I'd make it easy for her.

We could drive, we could fly. We'd bring the wheelchair for walking distances.

Anywhere, anything.

Then suddenly, in my mom's place was this enormous jaggedy chasm in my heart, my kitchen, my life.

The person who had loved me quietly and steadily and fiercely and gently since before I was born was gone. 

This tiny, kind, loving woman who sat in the red chair with my children, who plastered their artwork on her walls and told them how wonderful they were, who laughed at all my jokes, who thought I was the best writer and the fittest person she knew, who giggled when I swore at other drivers, left, and left me bereft.

Bereft. Be reft. I am being so reft.

And so, in a moment of profound sorrow, I messaged the director of the yoga training company and asked if there were any spots left in her July training. Which was in Bali (!!!).

Yes, she said, there were. 

Nick said he could care for Wanda. I bought a ticket. Packed my suitcase. Bought chocolate. Wound myself up super anxious. Got on the first flight.

And, 25 hours later, arrived in Bali to begin a three week, 200-hour, rest of my life journey.

Laws of thermodynamics

Dear Mama,

Today, or tonight really, it will be a month since you left us. 

I remember coming up the back stairs, and India meeting us at the door and asking us why we were carrying Nana's bags.

And then I started sobbing and we crumpled together.

That was only a month ago. That was one enormous month ago.

In some moments, I expect to see you in the other room. In others, I feel like I haven't seen you in years.

When I stop to consider it, it feels like forever.

Sometimes I forget and think I can't wait to tell you something. And then I remember.

Last night Jordan was eating gulab jamun for dessert.

We had some left over from the Delhi reunion. Which was wonderful. You'd have absolutely loved it.

There were so many grown-up kids you loved from high school. So many people with memories of time at our house or together at the school.

When Maude arrived, and our girls met, the first thing I thought was that I couldn't wait for you to see this third generation friendship. And then I remembered that you weren't here anymore.

I told Maude, and she said she had the exact same thought and realization.

She said, "Betty was my last mom."

And then we both hugged and cried.

I told Jordan that gulab jamun is better warm, so he put two of them in their syrup in the microwave, but then they came out too hot, and when I expressed surprise at how fast that happened he said something about the rate at which liquid heats and sciency things about it.

So then he cut it up and I said it would cool faster, and did he know why, and he said yes, because we've increased the surface area.

And then he mentioned that they'd been studying the laws of thermodynamics.

I only know one of them. So I said, "Energy can't be created or destroyed. That's why I think Nana is still here."

And I'll be honest: I had to google the definition of thermodynamics. Even though I know what the prefix "thermo" means. I also had to look up how to spell syphilis because I was making a text joke to Maude and my phone kept telling me I was wrong but had no spelling to suggest.

It's an old word and malady, for Pete's sake. Does Apple really not have syphilis in their dictionary? 

Anyway, my search history is pretty random is what I'm saying.

Nick, who admittedly knows significantly more about science than I do, insists the kind of energy I'm talking with you still being here about isn't the same. (But in this case, I know I'm right. But as we both know, it's easier to just out loud let him be right.)

 Jordan nodded and said, "I smell Nana sometimes. You know how she smelled kind of sweet?"

I know exactly what he's talking about. I haven't smelled you spontaneously since a couple nights after you died. I'm rationing opening your drawers--and anyway, that's not the same thing.

Jordan and I talked about how often the two of you played Old Maid. He said he didn't think anything about it then. Like, it wasn't special, because you were here. 

And that's how it is. It's not special because we're together all the time just doing the things we always do.

Until we can't ever do them together again.

He said he was trying to teach you to play chess, and that wasn't going so well, but it was fun.

I feel lucky that they had so much time together with you. That spending time with you was as easy as heading into the living room or up to your room to see if you wanted to play cards or walk to the store.

The kids are doing quite well, although I think they're extra tired. And India cries very easily if something goes wrong, really over anything. But I know it's about you.

Me, I cry so much. So much.

Yesterday morning on the way to yoga I ran into friends and they said they were sorry and gave me big hugs and I started crying.

So I arrived at yoga pre-cried.

I almost always cry in savasana now. I tell myself to breathe. I try to clear my mind, and focus on my breath. But as I settle my body, and stretch out my legs, I think about how soft and smooth the skin on your legs was when I'd rub your feet in that hospital bed. 

You had the smoothest skin. I think about how I'll never get to touch you again.

So I lie there and cry as quietly as I can. My throat hurts and my tears fill my ears, trickle down and make wet spots on my mat.

My body is full of all that missing my mama hurt. I think all that sad energy is there constantly, just waiting for quiet moments. And then it leaks out.

Like how you can fill a glass and it can be slightly overfull but the surface tension keeps it from spilling. But you add one more molecule or you shift it a bit, and it overflows.

I do have a couple science terms up my sleeve.

There are days where I'm doing OK--or anyway at the OKer end of the OK/Terrible scale, and then I'll get completely derailed by someone I hadn't seen since before you went into the hospital.

Like, I went to our pharmacy to get prescriptions. Nick had told them to stop any automatic refills you had, but I hadn't been in there.

And as I was at the counter, Manjula came over and asked me if what she'd heard was true. She couldn't believe it, she said. You'd just been in there a couple weeks ago. You were so vibrant.

So we had this whole big conversation about how lovely you were, and how afraid she is to lose her parents. We talked about all of it. 

I cried the whole way through. She gave me a big hug. I cried the whole way home.

I should start making a list of the unexpected people who have hugged me since you died. 

We boarded Wanda with our dog trainers last weekend because we were having so many people coming through.

The wife of the couple, who we hadn't yet met in person, dropped Wanda off. She told me her mom had died in 2013. We stood on the stoop and hugged and cried.

There are so many of us without moms. All three women who came to stay last week. They still have their dads, though. Which is statistically unlikely, I think?

Nick keeps asking if I'm tired, and then I say no, I just miss my mama. And then I start to cry.

But it's true that I'm also tired.

Being this sad is exhausting. I'm sure there's a scientific explanation. Maybe it's under another law of thermodynamics. Like, grief requires heat, which is why being upset makes me so cold.

Or maybe sadness is heavy to carry. Everything takes more effort.

Maybe I'm burning more calories (which are measures of heat? I think?) walking my sad body from place to place than I was back in April when I wasn't all sad.

Today is Jordan's last official day of 8th grade. School doesn't end until next week, but they're letting the 8th graders stop early. They have to go a couple mornings to practice for their "promotion" ceremony, which is next week.

Two things struck me. Today, the 15th, makes one month since you left us. And you won't see Jordan finish 8th grade. You won't see him start high school.

I know you were there for so many important moments. And I know we had lots and lots of time.

But I have no photos of you from May. My last photos that are really cute are of you and other friends. Not you and me. Why was I taking so many yoga photos and not getting people to take photos of us?

I want more. I don't care how much we had. I am greedy, and I want more.

I miss you so much.

Love,

Lisa

Memories seep from my veins

Last Wednesday, I was all, oh, goat rodeo, hahaha! 

People are multidimensional and grief is so weird and complicated, and it's true that you can cry and then laugh in successive breaths.

But I didn't cry at all on Wednesday, and so I wondered if I was done crying.

Which would be OK. Crying or laughing or just not crying doesn't mean you loved someone more or less than someone else who is or isn't crying. It doesn't really mean anything.

So maybe I was done?

Ha.

***

On Saturday, I woke up at 6:30 am sobbing. Bereft.

Nick folded me into his arms in a giant bear hug and I cried and cried. I snotted all over his shirt.

Fortunately, he's a morning person. 

***

A friend told me she's been dreaming of my mother and me. 

I haven't yet dreamt of her. I think I've only dreamt of my dad once, ever.

I long to see Betty in my dreams.

*** 

The picture above was our last photo together. 

Why didn't I get us all dressed up and do family photos this winter? I thought about it. Thought, we should do it while we're still all here.

And then I didn't.

Why did I spent so much time taking photos of flowers and weird little cracks in sidewalks?

***

I want to hug my mama. I want to make her laugh. I want to hear her tell someone that I'm the fittest person she knows.

She was very impressed with all the yoga. During Covid I did zoom yoga on her floor. Some of the classes were incredibly hard.

She liked to call it torture. How was torture today? Great! 

***

I want her to show me something weird and incomprehensible that she's done to her phone when she was fucking around with it at 2:00 am instead of sleeping. I want her to ask me to fix it.

Like this one time, or actually twice, although truly I have no idea how you do this once, she made it so the screen was so magnified you couldn't really see more than a couple letters at a time. And also, you had to double tap everything. And then the phone spoke the letters.

If you didn't double tap, you couldn't get anywhere. And it was too magnified to scroll.

Being that everything was so magnified, and it took a while for Nick to figure out that you had to double tap, it took quite a frustrating while to even navigate to settings to reverse it.

But when she did it the second time, oh, I knew.

***

I wish she were sitting in the kitchen listening to a random and stupid video commercial that she happeend to click on and had no idea how to stop or navigate away from, so I could ask her to please turn it off.

I wish she were upstairs listening to her television too loud.

I wish she were playing piano, which makes Wanda howl, which then made my mom pause to tell Wanda sincerely and sweetly to stop. And Wanda would stop as long as my mom paused, but as soon as she resumed, Wanda would commence howling.

And this situation could continue on a loop for longer than one might imagine.

I want her to tell me that her email has completely disappeared and can I please look at her computer. Because it was right there and now, suddenly, it's not.

I want to organize every week around taking her to her appointments, even though I felt inconvenienced by the amount of time this required.

I want to count out all her medications and put them in those little week by week boxes. Even though up to a month ago, I'd much rather have been spending the time doing something else.

I want to fill up water jars and put lids on and straws in them and hand them to her and cajole/harass her into drinking enough.

Even though I was often like, why do I have to do this? Why can't she just drink enough water?

Obviously, I didn't actually have to do it. But being me, I had to.

I want to bug her to eat vegetables, and ultimately chop up a whole bunch and make a good salad even though I hate making salad and often felt resentful, because it seemed like I was more invested in her eating well than she was.

I wish she'd open a second container of something that we already had one of open, just because she couldn't find the first one so she figured it was gone. 

I wish she'd insist we had no more maple syrup and then I'd go find another one in the pantry and open it only to later find a nearly full container in the fridge.

I wish for so many things that I'd never anticipated dealing with or taking on in the first place.

I just miss my mama.

***

I know I did a lot of things for her, but what I keep thinking of are all the things I didn't do to make her life happier. 

I know I had a lot of time with her, particularly as so many people live far from their parents.

But isn't this how it is with people we love? You always want more time.

***

On Saturday, I realized it had been a month since she fell and that marked a month since our last normal day. Whatever that means.

Anyway, the last day my family was all together.

We were five, and now we're four.

Jordan's been on a school trip, so this past week we've been three.

***

Today I took India to the pool, and I was chatting with strangers from Atlanta about the pandemic, and online schooling, and what a weird time it was. I mentioned my mom.

It's the first time I've talked about my mom living with us in past tense. I think I said she was living with us then.

So it was open to interpretation. 

Maybe she lived with us in Covid and then went back home to wherever she normally lived.

Or maybe she bought a flat in Paris. She now has pain au chocolat and cafe au lait every day, and shops at Galleries Lafayette.

Maybe she packed her bags and headed for Australia. 

Maybe in the multiverse, in versions where my dad is still alive, she's done all of these things and more.

I hope so.

If you'll be my bodyguard I can be your long lost pal

On Saturday morning, Nick took me to identify my mom's body.

Because I filled out the contract asking to be there for her cremation, they'd given me the option of identifying her at the same time.

We didn't know this was an option with my father, though I don't think I could've handled it then anyway.

With my mama, I want to be there.

But when they said I could do it the same day, I didn't know if I'd be able to manage. I didn't know if I'd want to see her that day, the day which turns out to be tomorrow.

And also, maybe this sounds morbid, but I wanted to check in on her. I hated leaving her alone in the hospital. I wanted to know she got to the funeral home OK.

On Saturday I dressed head to toe Betty. 

Clothing, shoes, chain and watch. I put on a cute jumpsuit that my mom had bought and tried on for us but not yet worn. It's a little big on me, so it would've been on her as well, as she was smaller than me.

Or maybe we're about the same size right now.

I pretty much stopped eating when she went into the hospital. I was either too busy or just felt sick most of the time. I'd start to eat, and then it would seem all ick.

My mom didn't want to eat, and I didn't want to eat. But I made her watermelon juice, which for a couple days she liked. I brought her masala dosa. The only time she called me from the hospital was to ask for another masala dosa.

The hospitalist, who was Indian, said my mom was on a low sodium, low potassium diet for her kidneys, but really, anything I could get her to eat was fine. Anything.

Masala dosa? Great. Anything, anything, just get her to eat.

The nurse the next day was also Indian, and said she had to take a photo of my mom eating the dosa for the doctor. So she did.

Anyway.

Currently, I'm really skinny.

I told a friend of mine with a similarly eating-disordered youth that my high school self would be so pleased with me right now.

If you find this funny, you really get it.

I had told Maude that I wasn't drinking, because the evening after Betty died I had wine with a friend, so then I couldn't take a Xanax that night when I got all wound up. 

I'd gone to an evening meeting at school and was about to walk by my friend's house and instead just showed up at her doorstep. Her partner answered the door and hugged me, and then she came to the door and we stood in the door frame and wailed. Like the kind of sobs that start low in your belly and come out as pure emotional pain. The kind that convulse your whole body.

She lost her mother during the pandemic, and she loved Betty. We hugged, door wide open, and cried and cried.

And then I asked for wine.

So that night I was awake and awake and awake and devastated. Fortunately/unfortunately I'm now way less cavalier than I used to be about medication.

Maude said, "Oh. Maybe try drinking in the morning?"

I filed this away.

Saturday morning I woke up crying, in an absolute panic. Should I bring clothing for my mom to wear? If so, what? They hadn't said anything about this.

What would she want for her last outfit?

Her last normal day outfit was a pink cashmere sweater and pink jeans. She looked so cute. I've washed both. 

(The fact that she has laundry in her hamper and laundry in the wash wrecks me.)

I settled on a printed cotton caftan. Simple, cool, elegant.

And then the man at the funeral home said it would be an extra charge to put her in clothing, because they'd have to wash and disinfect her.

I couldn't bear the idea of her little body being messed with like that.

And when we saw her, she was wrapped in white sheets. She looked asleep.

At the hospital, my brother closed her eyes, and a bit later we noticed that she peeked them open again. Then I closed her eyes, and we realized they wouldn't stay closed.

We joked that she really wanted to know what was going on.

I don't care what kind of actual chemical process might make this happen.

But here, her eyes were closed. And she looked very peaceful. We could only see her face and hair. Everything else was shrouded in sheets. 

I believe that now her body is, for her, an unnecessary vessel. But for me, that vessel is so familiar.

I thought the white sheets were perfect. Simple and serene.

We had to sign some paperwork, and pick a date for cremation.

Which is 11:00 am tomorrow.

And then I turned to Nick and said, "Please take me somewhere for a margarita."

And he was like, "Sure, we could get Bloody Marys."

Being morning-ish and all. And I was like, I said a margarita.

My mama was really, really not a drinker. She would suggest splitting a beer, and we'd pour one into two glasses, and she often didn't finish her half.

She liked the idea, though. She liked being included in the drinks.

But she loved margaritas. And mojitos. 

Maybe for the same reason I love them--they feel like little events in and of themselves.

Despite years living in South America, her Spanish was pretty tortured, but she said both margarita and mojito with an emphasis on the T that Americans do not place.

It was cute.

So Nick drove us directly to Cactus Cantina, and we had two frozen margaritas, and while we sat in the sun and sipped and watched the world, I decided that we should have margaritas at Betty's celebration of life in September.

Right now it's pretty grief-y around here, and as this is not my first grief rodeo, I do not imagine that I'll be that far along in my process by September. 

I also know that where I am or am not in my process doesn't matter. I don't need to be anywhere except where I am with this. She's my mom, and I have never been anywhere this painful in my entire life.

But September seems right, and I will have time to plan and friends who love us will have time to make travel arrangements, and we could have a fun little party.

My mom was an introvert, and like me, she liked a lot of alone time.

But she loved so huge, and she sparkled with friends.

And I'm certain she'd like the idea of being toasted with margaritas.

Tomorrow

Tomorrow, I am going to tell my beloved mama that if she is ready to let go of this small and pain-ridden body, that we love her enough to let her go.

I cannot stop crying. 

I've cried myself inside out. I've cried myself raw and dehydrated. And still I have more tears.

Today, I took the yellow no-slip hospital socks off her cold feet and massaged them with oil and lavender. I held them, to ground her.

Today, I said, "We love you, and we need you to stay. India, and Jordan and I, we need you here. India wants to drive you somewhere when she gets her driver's license. She asked if you would be here when she can drive. So you need to stay. At least another five years."

I told her over and over how much we need her to stay.

Because suddenly today, today she felt like she was leaving.

Not in a dramatic way.

In a small and gentle way. Which is very like her.

Like she's here, but also floating. Not upset or scared or in particular pain unless you move her. But mostly not here.

Not interested in talking or TV or looking at her phone. Very, very sweet. But mostly tired. Mostly just not...here.

But let me back up. Because I haven't checked in with LG for a long time.

On Wednesday evening, Jordan and I heard a big thump upstairs.

This turned out to be my mom missing a step, just one, the last step of the flight, and hitting the ground.

She hit the ground, and she broke her hip.

I knew falling was a risk for older people, but I just...didn't really think about it for my mom. Yes, she now has a cane. But she's spry!

Turns out you can be spry and still fall and still break your hip.

And then, though you had great hemoglobin numbers that very day, your kidneys can respond very badly to blood pressure fluctuations and anesthesia. 

Surgery is a trauma. Hospitalization is a trauma.

On Friday, she introduced me to the physical therapist as Generalissimo. She told her, when asked about her daily tasks in the household, that cooking was not among them because nobody in our family likes to cook.

True.

That was Friday. Friday!

This weekend she was still here. More tired, but still here.

And today...today she felt very far away.

Her kidneys have not recovered. She's not eating. Not even watermelon, cut in tiny pieces, brought from home.

She's very, very tired. But beyond tired, today she just felt, I don't know. Beyond is the best way I can describe it.

When I sat on the floor with her waiting for the 911 people to arrive she apologized to me. She said she was sorry for all the things she'd put me through. This was one more big hassle.

And my god, I said please, please don't worry about it. I'd do anything for you. 

And tomorrow, I'm going to do the biggest, most brutal kindness I can imagine doing for anyone.

I'm going to tell my little mama that it's OK to go. 

If you need to, you can let go.

If it's too hard, too painful to stay, if it feels better to let go, you can go.

Dad is there. Her parents and siblings are there. Her dearest girlfriends. In fact, just about everyone she has ever loved is already there.

Fortunately Mr. Mitroo did a great job teaching us on those manual typewriters in Delhi, because I'm crying so hard I can barely see. 

I am terrified of losing my mom. I want with all my heart for my kids to still have their Nana right upstairs. I want them to be able to crawl in bed with her when they want to.

I want her here to ask them to walk to the store with them and carry her bags.

I wish desperately that she hadn't taken the stairs on Wednesday.

The thing is, I can beg. I can beg her to stay. I can beg her to try, for me, for the kids, who I know she loves more than life.

But she's had a big life. 

She's had extraordinary experiences. On their whiteboard in the room they invite you to write something interesting about the person. So I wrote that she'd lived in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Ecuador, Egypt, India, Peru, Thailand...

And those are just places. That doesn't begin to scratch the surface of how interesting she is.

But also, she's had a tremendous amount of loss.

And is it fair, if someone is ready to slip gracefully to the other side to try to tether them, just because you personally cannot bear to consider life without them?

I don't think it's fair.

I think the only fair thing to do is to give her the choice. 

Even though I truly cannot bear the thought of living without my mama.

But in the end, I think Sting has it right: If you love someone, set them free.

And that's tomorrow.

October and the trees are stripped bare of all they wear

Dear Dad,

Today is your birthday.

This morning I said to Mama, "It's Dad's birthday today." 

To which she quietly replied, "I know."

Of course she knows. You were together over 50 years. That's a lot of birthdays together.

I guess I just said it to recognize it.

***

It's grey and chilly and pouring in DC, and really kind of wretched. I walked Wanda this morning and was rather shocked and insulted by how cold it was, in fact.

I thought hurricanes were all about warm air.

You used to pronounce it "hyuricane" and I never knew why.

***

Recently I learned that I walk like you.

I was walking with my yoga teacher  and his partner after class and he told me that the way I walk contributes to my issue with tightness in my lower back. 

And then he demonstrated my walk. It was an exact imitation. 

So then he also showed us how his partner walks, in contrast to me. Also spot on. She said, "I walk like my dad."

I said, "You know, I bet I walk like my dad."

And a couple days later I told a dear friend about Asrat imitating my walk and she said, "You walk just like your dad."

Which makes me think about how you and I would go out for walks together and you'd say, "Stand up straight! Shoulders back! Stomach in!" 

I'd do all those things and then you'd say, "Sphincter tight!" 

I laughed every time.

*** 

Sometimes these realizations make me think about my brother. I wonder if he notices things like this in himself once in a while. 

I wonder if his children have features or expressions or whatever that are just so exactly you or Mama or me.

Distance, after all, doesn't erase DNA. 

***

In August, when Nick, the kids and I went to camp, Phil came and stayed with Mom so she wasn't all alone. They had a great time.

During that week, one of your friends from when you were in Afghanistan called to say one of your Peace Corps friends had died. I asked how many were left from your group, and Mom said three.

I think of how lucky you were (and by extension how lucky I was and still am) to have met such extraordinary people and kept them in your lives for so long. 

Maude's daughter Iris and our India will be friends one day.  Geography is challenging, but let's be clear: Denver and DC are a lot closer than Bangladesh to Philippines or just about everywhere else Maude and I were growing up. 

We're all in the same country, and we will make this happen.

***

Jordan is well and away taller than me now, and India is getting there. She's outgrown my sneakers.

I realized this fall when India started 5th grade that she was the same age I was when we moved to the US for the first time.

I remember my first day of 5th grade. We were supposed to fill out an index card with our home phone number and the number of our bus and I didn't know either.

She walks to school, and it's a school she's attended since she was four.

Halloween is fast approaching, and our alley is doing trick-or-treating. I remember how, until we moved to the US, you'd drive us from American house to American house to trick-or-treat. 

I think Halloween is fairly popular globally now.

***

We're all doing OK. Pretty well, in fact. Maybe you know this.

I hope you know this. 

It's your birthday, and I miss you.

Love,

Lisa