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You Didn’t Want to Die

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IMG_2097.jpgNancy, after being diagnosed with Stage IV Cancer, leaning up against daughter Maia in 2013, less than a year before she died.

**This blog was written within a year of Nancy’s death, but I wasn’t ready to finish it until just now.

You didn’t want to die.  No one really wants to die, do they?  I’ve heard of 94 year olds who went out kicking and screaming, certain that it wasn’t yet their time, begging for one more chemo treatment, more time, more life.   You were 59, not quite young enough to be considered truly tragic, but not quite old enough to say: okay, she’s lived her life, fulfilled her mission.  You left behind two teenaged daughters and a widow whose despair at losing you would inhabit her days for months and years to come.  Not quite time for me to be a widow, I say, although at 61 it wasn’t exactly shocking to lose a spouse.  Two adolescents who looked around at all the friends they knew who had two living parents.  Even those with divorced parents who hate each other still have two living parents. And those with a parent who has vanished from the scene know that they inhabit the earth, somewhere, somehow.  Some day that missing parent might be found.  I’m not sure which is worse, the potential of a parent being found who has vanished, or one who has vanished permanently.   There is no hope of being found.

But, no, you really didn’t want to die—in part, because you knew how terribly we would miss you; in part, because you couldn’t bear to think that you would no longer be a part of our lives.  You couldn’t imagine not seeing the hallmarks of our daughter’s progress through adulthood: graduations, first jobs, maybe even weddings and grandchildren.  You couldn’t imagine not going to the garden shop with Linda first thing in the spring looking for something new to plant or watching for the lilacs to magically appear after a miserable Michigan winter.    Perhaps you wondered what it would feel like not to have me by your side, holding you and sharing the stories of our lives together. You suffered unbelievable agony thinking that you might not see the ocean of Cape Cod once more, where you spent every summer of your childhood and where your brother and his wife and children now reside.  You wondered at not only how you would bear to lose your closest family but your dearest friends, who surrounded your bedside with heartfelt vigilance during your last days.

You relished the beauty of this world: sunsets, moving water, grass, plants, and animals.  I brought you home from the hospital one summer afternoon, and—sick as you were—the first thing you did was to lie down in the grass, staring out at the blue sky and sun. Some days I would find you sitting in the winter in the outside yard, with your hat and coat on, just sitting, wanting to feel whatever dim glimmer of sun might be found on a winter day in Michigan.   You wanted to be in and of this world.

You lashed out at me at the end.  How could I be sitting in your hospital room with a Starbucks cup of coffee in my hand, fortunate enough to be able to leave the room, walk through the hospital, and even outside of its doors to fortify my need for expensive coffee?  When, finally, you asked me if you were really dying, about three days prior to your actual death and I said, “yes,” you said, “Thanks for sharing that with me!” with sarcasm unexpected from someone who was dying.    And, yet, you also listened to my cough as you lay there, and in your most urgent dying breath said, “Go to the doctor!”  And in between the grumbles and complaints, there were murmurs of “I love you,” as I moved in and out of caring for you in your last weeks of life.

When we got you home to hospice, I could finally lay by your side.  The morphine had ensured that no bones would hurt as I cuddled next to you.   We held hands, and I felt your grip, warm and firm.    Hey, I’ll take what I can get.   We had only a week in hospice at home, hardly time to come to grips with what was happening, at what we were losing, before you slipped into unconsciousness.

And there was the time—maybe a month before you died—when we confessed how happy we had been to have found each other; how each one of us had worried that we might live without love.   How fortunate we were to have made a home for ourselves and our children.  We had those moments.  But not enough of them.

I’ve come to terms with your anger after 3 ½ years.   You were given the short end of the stick, while I was given the gift of life, even when it didn’t feel like a gift at times.  But still, when I catch sight of a shimmer of peachy sun against the background of our luminescent Michigan winters, I can sense the longing that you must have felt as you said goodbye to the earthly world.

 

A Fire, a Loss, and Thanksgiving

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Gina and Maia on the road

I am sitting in my temporary rental shortly before Thanksgiving, having survived a fire that had left me and my two young adult daughters out of our home.  The rental is fine; a few flaws, like the lack of an oven for two weeks, seems a minor inconvenience compared to the devastating loss of my spouse three years ago.  And although it does not have the trappings of home, it is a big improvement on living in a hotel as we did for over a month.

Just two months ago, I was awakened at 1:30 a.m. by my 18 year-old daughter to a house being consumed by putrid mustard-colored smoke.  I rushed to rouse my deaf daughter, who could possibly have perished if left alone in the house.  The three of us, along with our animals, made it out of the house in time, and perched on the curb as we watched the fire people extinguish the flames.   Shamefully, the depth of the fire can be attributed to my own carelessness.  Always a bit of a muddle, my ability to manage a house had been compromised by the death of Nancy, my single-motherhood, and a demanding job.   I had bought new fire alarms to replace malfunctioning ones but succumbed to helplessness when I was unable to attach them to the existing brackets.  Now the worries that had been hovering on the surface of my mind as I put off contacting a handy person had come true.  Without the keen sense of smell that my Regina possessed, we could all have been goners.

With the house in shambles, we were first re-located to a hotel.  It was cushy compared to what many others experiencing disasters have been through.  We had access to breakfast every day, hot showers, and clean water.

Still, when my daughter camped out in the living room in our suite, I felt trapped in my bedroom.  Staring at the white walls surrounding me, I was jolted back into the abyss I fell into when Nancy died: no one seemed to have my back anymore. We had dear friends, but no family in town.  I had to face once again that there was no loved one lying beside me to whom I could confess my fears and anxieties.  Evenings were rough; without my everyday chores to accomplish and familiar belongings, I felt immobilized.  I found myself scrolling through online dating sites, while acknowledging my own ridiculousness. My current situation would be far from attractive to anyone, except for those looking for a damsel in distress, and I deliberately did not share my living situation with the women who contacted me.

But life did not stop for me or for my daughters.  Regina was finishing high school and Maia was in community college, and both were slated to apply for four-year colleges during this time.   They had each struggled in their own way to go on after Nancy died, as depression and attachment issues resurfaced.  One daughter had to leave school temporarily to manage her mental health and regain her sense of self.  My other daughter found a respite in the horse I bought to cushion her deep sense of loss.

We had all been moving forward when the fire disrupted our fragile sense of family.  Yet my daughter Regina pursued her college applications relentlessly; although it was early in the process, she planned to apply early to get the best shot. She badgered me about getting her applications out, and we pored over her essays in the local coffee shop.  All of her applications were in by the middle of October, shortly after the fire.

My daughter Maia was not so persistent or anxious about process, but she too managed to get her applications in order, including the portfolio that would win her a place at an Art and Design School.  Finally, the applications were in by the beginning of November.

As of today, the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, both girls have been accepted to college, and one has been accepted to her top-choice school. Nancy always believed in the afterlife, while I am very skeptical about existence after death.  Still, if she was right, I imagine that she is full of joy about her daughters’ resilience in the face of adversity.  And I, on Thanksgiving eve, am grateful.

 

 

Midwest Illumination

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winter-sunrise-landscape-23310-wallpapers-scenery

The day I left Iowa for Michigan did not begin auspiciously.   At five a.m., I was sitting in the hallway of the guesthouse at Scattergood School, swaddled in pajamas with a layer of sweats to protect me from the bitter cold, locked out of my room waiting until seven, when I could in good conscience find someone to unlock the door. At seven exactly, I found Thomas, the Dean of Students, who was just across the way in the kitchen of the main schoolhouse preparing breakfast potatoes. He came over quickly with keys, dressed grubbily for this wintery early morning occasion. I admired his purposeful life, which included not only directing a school but participating in all of its activities, from cooking to development. That’s the way at this rural Quaker boarding school, where community is a practice for both teachers and students and not merely a sound bite. I was anxious to get going, originally having planned for a 6 a.m. departure, but it looked like it would be closer to 8 before I got on the road.

On the way to Iowa to see my daughter Mia whose mourning for her other mother had prompted the visit, I had played sappy and upbeat jazz standards on my Ipad, songs that pierced me with both pain and sweetness, like Ella Fitzgerald singing the uplifting “Blue Sky,” and the seriously sad and beautiful “Unforgettable” by Natalie and Nat King Cole.  On the East and West coasts, the hills, valleys, and ocean provoke sighs of wonder at the spectacles. In the mid-west the flat lands allow you to project your own emotions onto the placid landscape.   In between jazz takes, I tried to pay attention to my surroundings, noticing that the blue sky I had been listening about was often overtaken by grey. I saw what I thought to be a white owl perched on a stick of a tree outlined against the wintery fields with straggly corn husks peeking up through the snow.  The trip seemed to go smoothly, punctuated only by a few pit stops where I could grab a bite, load up on gas, and move my stiff limbs. And I arrived safely at Scattergood’s rural campus with its organic farm and hearty-looking staff and young people, tucked away in the village of West Branch, tired, but not debilitated.

Whereas during the first leg of my trip, I had eagerly anticipated seeing my dear daughter, the trip home was more fraught by my anguish of leaving her once again, to return to a home still half empty. Still, I was anxious to see Regina, and I looked forward to getting back to the comforts of home, like good strong coffee, a well-heated house, and those well-worn objects and furnishings that helped me to be at ease with myself.

Despite my early morning debacle, leaving the guesthouse for the car, I caught a glimpse of a peachy patch of sun hovering against the luminous whiteness of the sky and the snow-covered hills and meadows, which seemed to augur well for the drive home.  As I made my way to a quiet stretch of highway, I called my mother. For some reason, the blank landscape had brought my lamentations to a crescendo. I loudly lamented my loss, personal inadequacies, and feelings of abandonment. She listened, only interrupting once in a while, which is a gift to a person who is mourning. Did I have the resources to walk through my life alone and help to steer my children as they muddled through their own grief?   The highway stretched ahead of me, the sun glinting off the snow and very little traffic save for a few truckers on this flat highway.  Every once in a while my mother would suggest that perhaps it wasn’t such a good idea for me to be driving in such a distraught condition.  Nevertheless, she did not stop me until I had emptied myself of the worst of my distress, and I was ready to release her to more cheerful pursuits than listening to her grief-stricken daughter.

As I put down the phone, I realized that it was time to get my morning coffee. I loved Scattergood, but their lack of coffee was a serious drawback.   On my smart phone, I found what seemed to be a cool coffee shop just off the highway. I love finding my way to hipster coffee shops, featuring the latest in coffee cuisine.   At thirty-thirty Coffee Co. in Peoria, Illinois, I was greeted by a friendly bearded guy with gaudy tattoos and a deep respect for the art of coffee making.  I brought my laptop computer in to catch up on some work emails, while drinking some strong Guatemalan brew.   When I got back to the car, I checked my Ipad for navigational advice and realized that while wallowing in my grief I had veered off in the wrong direction, losing up to two hours worth of driving, meaning that my trip would turn from seven hours to nine.

I eventually made my way home just in time to take Regina out to dinner, which I had promised to do. While I unpacked and tried to settle in for the evening, I noticed that my computer was missing. This was a serious computer that had been purchased for me by my workplace.   My previous computer had been ruined by a wine spill, as we prepared for Nancy’s memorial service, so this was bad indeed.   Typically, such an event would send me into a full-scale panic, but I tried to convince myself that far worse things had happened in my life and in the world, that if I had to cough up some extra dough to get a new computer, so be it.   I had most likely left the computer at thirty-thirty Coffee. I looked them up on my desktop computer, but since it was evening now, they were closed.   Later I checked my email to find the following message: “Ms. Grant, We at thirty-thirty Coffee Co. have potentially found a lost item of yours. If you have been to our place recently and are missing an item, please contact me at this email address, or one of the numbers listed below. Hope you are well.”  After the long day, I knew that I would rest easily that night, grateful for kind people who wish the forgetful strangers who visit their shop well.