House of Mourning

Two years ago

     For Christmas R'el gave me a long weekend in New York City, where she lives. I bought a roundtrip ticket on a double-decker Megabus, reserving the top front seat, for $26. I spent six days in Manhattan with R'el; my sister Maggie flew in from southern California.

     We got half-price tickets to the Off-Broadway show STOMP after we didn’t win the ticket lottery for Wicked and headed downtown. Before the show we had hot dogs and tropical-fruit drinks at the Papaya King. (Maggie is the Hot Dog Queen of the West; I’m the Hot Dog Queen of the East. We prefer hot dogs to steak.)

     I clocked over 18,000 steps (6 miles and more) on each of three different days. The morning of Maggie’s return flight, she and I walked to Randall’s Island and to the top of the pedestrian bridge alongside I-278 that Matt had told us about, enjoying great views of the NYC skyline to the southwest and Long Island to the northeast.

Solstice 2017

I drove to New Jersey and New York, a circuit I used to do monthly when my dad was alive and before David got sick. Saw my brother Mike, who’s severely intellectually and physically disabled, and spent time with Peter, Xiomara, and grandkids Andrew and Victoria. They live 4 blocks from a great playground that has a big concrete sprinkler area for running around and getting wet. So, Wednesday I played Oma (German for Gramma) and bought the kids squirt guns and water sandals. Then we took the bus to the Bronx Zoo. Walking home from the bus stop, a cheery bike bell rang: it was Peter, coming home from work. When he heard about the shopping expedition he remarked, “I guess it’s true what they say about grandparents.” Yes, I was never a big spender with my own children. One of the perks of being an Oma: I don’t have to worry about feeding eight people and sending six of them to college.

On the drive home, I listened to a Freakonomics podcast. When that ended, I told the phone to open a podcast, and it randomly selected a Moth Radio Hour piece I had listened to previously and saved. The House of Mourning , is a true story, experienced and told by Kate Braestrup, a game warden chaplain in Maine. It’s about family members wanting to see and touch the dead bodies of their loved ones recovered after drownings or fatal accidents in the wilds of Maine. It’s all about the desire we have to tend to the bodies of our loved ones, as a final physical act of love. I started to sob, right there on I-84 north of Hartford, blinking to keep my eyes clear enough to see the road. We live onward, but that memory of the perspiration slowly evaporating off the scalp remains, and will always remain, with us.