Dumb Thing with a Dumbbell

 Wednesday morning I did a dumb thing. I had just finished a bicep exercise with my 10-lb dumbbells and turned to look at my Nerd Fitness app to record my reps. I put the dumbbells on my straight-back chair and, you guessed it, one dumbbell came crashing down on my toe. It hurt! I squeezed the toe and after a few moments moved it gingerly, hoping no shooting pain would telegraph a report of broken bones. I was assured the damage was not great, but my workout was done for the day.

Replaying the event, I realized that my second thought (after the “This hurts a lot!”) was that I had put the dumbbell down carelessly (true) and that it had rolled off the chair. But that’s not possible: the dumbells have a hexagonal shape and can’t roll an inch. I had nearly missed the chair entirely in my thoughtless movement.

Rest assured the damage was minor. I cancelled my three-mile walk and didn’t even go out for a 5-minute one. I carefully arranged my feet as I got into bed.

The miracle occurred the next morning. Sleepy from the alarm interrupting my slumber, I walked into the bathroom and only later realized I hadn’t thought or needed to favor the foot. My body had started its natural healing process. I sport a lovely dusky bruise and the second joint is slightly swollen and tender. Yesterday I did a 3-mile walk.

The body’s healing doesn’t always prevail; David’s death is the most readily available example of that. But my dumb dumbbell incident highlights its wonder.

Nelly Elizabeth Fernandez Johnston (1955-2020)

 Nelly Elizabeth Fernandez Johnston died early in the morning on Friday, November 28. Her daughter, Carla, wrote a tender tribute on Facebook:

After a nearly two-year battle with lung cancer my mother, Nelly Fernandez Johnston, passed away early this morning. She was a vibrant, generous woman, always seeking to better not only her life, but the lives of all those she touched. She made so many courageous leaps throughout her life, including immigrating to Venezuela and later the US, joining the LDS Church, and living the fullest life she could with her friends and family these past two years. She peacefully leapt into Heaven, ready to meet her Savior and start her celestial work. I love you Mom.

The news was not unexpected; stage-four lung cancer is always fatal. But the finality still comes as a shock. She was sixty-five years old, the same age as Jim, a year and a half older than me.

    One day, when I was about fourteen, I lay sprawling on the blue-shag carpet in our living room, reading the local Westfield Leader. For some reason, an obituary caught my eye. How old was he? Mom asked. Old, I said, 62. That’s not old, stated Mom.

My mom was a wise woman, so I made a note, “62 is young to die,” although I didn’t believe it or understand her. As I’ve aged, however, ‘old’ has receeded. Now 62 is quite young to die. Not as young as 5, or 13, or 27, but young.

I think of David, of course. It’s been over five years since his death, August 12, 2015. He was buried exactly a month afterwards, since he had donated his body to the University of Massachusetts Medical School. They used his body to test a lung device. The head researcher told us that the team was very reverent and appreciative. Some of them were around David’s age and seeing his body was sobering.

At the cemetery on September 12, 2015, a small flock of wild turkeys ambled through the morning fog. A few of Jim’s business associates stood a little apart from our family and friends, reverently marking the event with us. An Army bugler played taps.

Incongruously, I was grateful for the large American flag covering the wooden coffin. We had picked the cheapest coffin the funeral home offered. It had always seemed a waste of good money and material to bury a fine piece of furniture in the ground. David didn’t care, did he?

But, suddenly I was intensely ashamed of my frugality. I’m sure no one at the service, all of whom loved us, judged us. But there it was, irrational and potent.

Peter and Xiomara and Andrew had driven up from the Bronx, one-month-old Victoria wrapped in a white blanket. I held her, just like my dad had held little four-month-old Andrew at Mom’s funeral two years before. Her warm little body comforted me, as did the basket of purple flowers our friends brought to the gravesite.

After the burial service, we piled into cars and headed for the Belmont Chapel. There we met the Massachusetts General Hospital bloodmobile for our first annual blood drive in David’s memory.

This year the blood drive attendance was the lowest ever. Because of the pandemic, MGH sent two bloodmobiles to maintain physical distancing. Everyone’s body temperature was taken and the standard covid questions were asked. Fortunately, it didn’t rain, so we were able to meet outside and chat with our friends.

Five years ago, Matt gifted us a photo of David, printed directly on glass. We lay it on the registration table. Our friend, Jen, touched it with her fingers and I realized that she was thinking of David, the little boy she watched grow up. Many young families in our ward come for schooling or first jobs and then move away. David hadn’t lived at home for a long time, before he got sick, so few church members knew him. It touched my heart to see Jen’s simple gesture.

Nelly will be sorely missed, by her husband, Jeff, and children, J.F., Carla, and Paul. She was outgoing, fun-loving, and compassionate and had more good friends than I have acquaintances.

She’s the second of our generation to die. My brother Mike, severely intellectually disabled, never married, so Jeff is the first widower. Is it morbid or just realistic to wonder who is next? That could come tomorrow or in twenty years. But it will come. Am I making the most of the time I’ve been given?

Veterans Day 2020

11 November 2020

 Since the mid-nineties, when R’el played flute in the Lexington High School band, Jim and I have attended the town Veterans’ Day celebrations: a parade with marching band, Minutemen, Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, and veterans waving from the front seats of cars. The program always includes a few high school students reading their winning essays about veteran grandfathers and patriotism. Even after Sam graduated, we kept the tradition, walking to the town center and waving to the LHS band director as he marched smartly down Mass. Ave.

I’m still not used to the covid world. This morning I asked Jim if he was going with me to the parade. I don’t think there’ll be one, he said. Right. Yet again I pictured life the way it’s always been.

The high school students read their winning essays online and in the afternoon a motor vehicle parade drove down Mass. Ave from East Lexington.

I walked to St. Brigid’s parking lot, the endpoint of the parade, about ¼ mile from our house, then continued up Mass. Ave to the Battlegreen. There I sat on the grass awaiting the first car. As its veteran passenger came into view, my eyes inexpectedly filled with tears. I hadn’t been thinking of David, but there he was.

David was a veteran for about a month. He was honorably discharged six weeks before he died. He got a lovely 11x14 Certificate of Retirement. Funny, I’ve never actually read it:

CERTIFICATE OF RETIREMENT

FROM THE ARMED FORCES OF THE UNITED STATE OF AMERICA

TO ALL WHO SHALL SEE THESE PRESENTS, GREETING:

THIS IS TO CERTIFY THAT

SPECIALIST DAVID H. JOHNSTON

HAVING SERVED FAITHFULLY AND HONORABLY

WAS RETIRED FROM THE

UNITED STATES ARMY

                        ON THE 29TH DAY OF JUNE 2015

GENERAL, UNITED STATE ARMY

CHIEF OF STAFF

David also received a Certificate of Appreciation, signed by Barack Obama, Commander in Chief.

I’m happy for all those veterans who have enjoyed lives full of children and grandchildren and even great-grandchildren. Happy to stand on the corner of the Battlegreen and wave as their motorcade passes by on a seventy-degree day in mid-November.

And grateful to have stood at Mass. Ave all those many years, including the four that saw an earnest boy in glasses playing the clarinet while marching in time to the “Armed Forces Medley.”

Happy Veterans’ Day.

A Diagon Alley, of sorts

I just spent 198 minutes (I’m tracking my time, have been for 4 years) ‘moving’ my desk.

It started with a Zoom problem. I’ve been spending a lot of time on Zoom: two weeks ago I realized I’d been on five Zoom calls that day. The last, a 2-hour DBSA-Boston support group for people with manic depression (bipolar), was too much. Thankfully, I wasn’t facilitating, so I gave my apologies and signed off for the night.

I usually join the Zoom meeting in my office, which is in the southwest corner of the second floor of our Queen Anne house. My desk had been sensibly placed facing the southern window, looking out towards a huge maple tree. To my right was the western window, looking out beyond the driveway to our ‘soccer field,’ the back part of the yard where we play soccer, frisbee, croquet, and badminton.

The problem is that the morning light from the southern window washes out my face during my weekday meditation session. The afternoon light from the western window does the same to the side of my face. I love the view of the outside, so I didn’t want to draw the blinds.

So, I moved the desk to be diagonally between the two windows. Yup, it took over three hours. The actual desk moving didn’t take that long. Moving all the stuff surrounding the desk, and ‘rewiring’ the phone, internet router, lamps, computer power supply, etc. did. And the sweeping and dusting and mopping that I can’t help but do when a heavy piece of furniture is dislodged after years of dust settling.

After I finished, and logged my time, I felt elated. (But not TOO elated. That’s a calculus I constantly have to make: am I feeling good (like a neuro-typical woman) or TOO good (like a woman in hypomania)).

And then the questions began: Did I spend too much time doing an optional activity? Will I finish the job and organize all the displaced stuff (which is currently on top of the regular clutter that has been accumulating on the guest bed in my office)? Will I follow FlyLady’s counsel and attack the clutter in 15-minute segments or will I try to clean it up all at once? Will I crash and burn then?

Those questions can wait till tomorrow. For today, I feel light and airy. I love the new view: I can see out both window better than before, with the laptop screen now covering the bare wall in front of me. I can look straight up and see David’s portrait. Maybe I’ll add a few more pictures, now that I’m facing that corner.

Jim once advised a business client to paint his office. The man was stressed with running a start-up company and stuck. By painting his office he could choose to do something within his control. He was being master of his fate.

That’s exactly how I feel.

Gardening after Dusk

It's after 8 p.m. when I go out, so I bring my high-powered headlamp, clippers, and trowel. I remove some more onion grass from among the sprouting irises, then move to the front stone wall and balustrade. I’ve always imagined David’s garden here. But why? To make something new and ambitious. With Jim’s help I realize that dream is self-destructive. It would require a backhoe, literally, to remove the quince roots and introduce gentler plants. I know, we tried several years ago. I hired two teen-aged boys and they dug at the roots for several hours. When their dad came to retrieve them, the hole was about two feet deep and they were standing on a thick snarl of roots. Their dad wisely pointed out, a backhoe would be needed.

This year, I will leave one quince bush, centered nicely in front of the stone wall. Our neighbor commented about it's lovely coral blossoms. I'll trim all the other starts down to the ground. Mulch and be at peace. Why does the simple way, the possible way, seem like defeat?

I’ll focus on this: David’s garden will become a reality this season.

Spring comes slowly to New England. It arrives here sooner than to central New Hampshire or Maine. But slower than to New Jersey, where I grew up. I like it that way. It gives me time to get used to it. It's nearly May, but still too early to plant tomatoes. I'm not behind yet. It’s not too late to prepare my raspberry beds. Plenty of time to improve a flower garden for our beloved son.

David's Perennial Garden

Our one-acre property has several gardens. The front lawn rolls down to the sidewalk from the 1895 Queen Anne. A stone banister leads away from the enclosed front porch towards the driveway; two azalea bushes stand as sentinels at the end of the walkway, glorious now with lavender blooms. With the cool spring weather this year, the early blossoms of azaleas, forsythias, daffodils and hyacinths are lingering.

Between the house and driveway is a large side garden of flowers and shrubs. Early in the spring of our first year, 1994, hundreds of crocuses bloomed, purple and white and yellow. One year I counted them: over 500 blossoms. In recent years, a lone crocus or two is all that appears. One fall some good friends and I planted several hundred bulbs: two plants emerged. Our local rodents, squirrels and chipmunks, had a feast that year.

The coach house stands behind the house. Beyond it is a vegetable garden with a storied past. Designed in the 1980s, its brick and stone walkways divide the ten raised vegetable beds. I had gardening dreams when we bought the house in 1993. But the reality of raising six children(ages 2 to 12 that first year) and running a busy household made large-garden management a low priority.

In 1995, we went on our famous Cross-Country trip: 48 states, three Canadian provinces, and a Mexican state. 15,900 miles. Six kids, a pop-up tent trailer, and me the sole adult for seven of the ten weeks of that summer. By fall, the garden had been taken over by weeds. We continued to garden, but year after year, uncultivated nature took over. After several years of neglect, there was a six-foot sapling with a two-inch diameter trunk in one of the beds and myriad weeds of all shapes and sizes.

All the kids had garden duty. Our David was a faithful, uncomplaining worker. He spent many hours trying to reclaim the brick pathways: their cracks were always filling with weeds.

Yesterday I planned to work in a garden. At 7 p.m., Jim told me to go, before it got dark. I donned my blue coveralls, found my gloves and trowel, and went to the side garden. I had been afraid that pulling weeds out near the sprouting irises would damage them, but it didn't.

As dusk settled, I didn’t want to stop. With the high-powered headlamp I recently bought, I could see in front of me nearly as well as in daylight. Around 9 p.m., I dumped the detritus onto our dead-weed pile, satisfied with the work of my hands.

When David died, nearly five years ago, I planned to create a memorial garden. I wanted it to be new, in front of the stone banister, and just for David. But this morning, as I surveyed the side garden, it felt right to dedicate it, which has been successful for many years, to him. There is space to plant new perennials.and everyone who visits our house will see it. I want David’s garden to bloom this summer.

Si hortum in bibliotheca habes, nihil deerit. (If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.) - Cicero 

Grief and Guilt

I’ll come clean. On the night David died, while he lay dying, I was engrossed in a Humphrey Bogart movie. It was gripping and intense.

At a crucial point in the movie, Matt said something about David. We stopped the movie and went over to his hospital bed. He wasn’t breathing.

Our family room, where the tv and couches are, adjoins the dining room, where David’s hospital bed and medical supplies had taken over. It has 1895-era pocket doors: fine doors of dark wood that slide into the walls and create a large doorway, six feet wide. A friend remarked, when I was admitting my guilty secret, “You were in the room when David died.”

In her March 30, 2020, Dear Therapist column for Atlantic.com, Lori Gottlieb tells of her father’s recent death. He died of complications after years of congestive heart disease, during the covid-19 outbreak. She states, “I was there to kiss his cheeks and massage his forehead, to hold his hand and say goodbye. I was at his bedside when he took his last breath.”. I’m attuned to such statements in all their nuance. She paints a vivid picture. Well, she doesn’t SAY she wasn’t watching Bogart, but at least she was holding her dad’s hand.

But Gottlieb continues her narrative. Five days before he died, she developed a cough and decided to stop visiting. They spoke every day, except Saturday, when she was busy gathering supplies for the lockdown. The next day he could barely talk and just said, “I love you,” before losing consciousness. The next day, he died.

Gottlieb was wracked with guilt. Had she been in denial, even though they had talked about his impending death? Had she failed him?

A few days ago, early in the morning. I read her column.. I lie in bed, scrolling down on my phone, tears streaming down my temples onto the pillow as I squeezed my eyes shut to clear my vision. Jim woke up and I handed him the phone to read. He observed that we all focus on what we regret, what we didn't do. She had spent every day with her dying father and was protecting him from the infection she had, even if it wasn’t covid-19. Had she donned a mask and gown and visited, and he’d gotten sick, she’d feel bad. Perhaps there was no way not to feel bad.

In her book, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, she asks, Is it ever enough? No, it’s not. Can we make it enough? I hope so.

I’m tired of keeping this secret. Perhaps someone out there also feels guilty for not orchestrating the perfect death scene. Death isn’t pretty, picturesque, or neat. It’s ugly; it’s brutal; it’s gut-wrenching.

That evening, I took a walk with R’el. Once a week, as she is leaving work (she’s a psychiatrist at Bellevue in Manhattan), she phones and we walk together, 210 miles apart. She remarked that David was a very private person. It might have comforted me to sit by his side and hold his hand as he breathed his last. It would not have pleased him.

Thanks, R’el.

St. Davids

I’ve always loved the name of St. Davids in Radnor Township, Pennsylvania (outside of Philly). When my parents and sister came for my graduation from Bryn Mawr, they stayed at St. Davids Inn. Many of the original European settlers were Welsh and they named their church for the patron saint of Wales.

I suppose that’s why the tears sprang to my eyes as I drove past the Battlegreen in Lexington a few hours ago listening to “Ar Hyd y Nos” (“All Through the Night”), the Welsh lullaby we’d just sung as a women’s chorus at church. It’s another Christmas season and my David won’t be visiting.

I find I’ve developed different approaches to talking about my children to newly-met friends. I remember flying west a few months after David’s death. I didn’t mention my children; I had no interest in the role of the mourning mother. Then there was the phase where I’d describe my kids in a way to obfuscate their numbers: “We’ve got a few in New York, one in Massachusetts, and the rest are out west.” But sometime in the last year, I’ve wanted to talk about David. I want to remember him and let new friends know about him, about his existence in our lives.

Sometimes I hesitate, concerned that the other person, hearing about David’s death for the first time, suffers more in hearing than I do in telling. I talk about David without anguish, but I don’t want to cause distress. Do I also worry that I seem heartless and unfeeling in my delivery?

I had lunch with my good friend, Christy, the other day, and I talked about David. She asked if it was painful, talking about him. No, it’s not. In fact, I want to talk about him, keep his memory alive.

Five days after David’s death, we all packed up and went to a rented house in the Catskills. We’d planned our reunion for the customary third week in August, but didn’t know whether or not we’d use the house, since David was so sick. But he died and we used the trip as a time to be together for a week in new surroundings.

As I sat at the kitchen table, looking out a large picture window towards a forested hill, I made a chart for meal planning. Jim, Mary, R’el, Peter, Matt… A bottomless chasm gaped before me, and I struggled to keep from plummeting. For nearly twenty-six years, David had always been between Matt and Annie. I skirted that chasm, with varying success for a long time. Then I discovered I could switch the order of Annie and Sam, but was always distracted from the conversation, nervously counting and re-counting in my head, feeling that I was missing someone. The other day I used my five fingers to count my kids and and wondered that it took over four years to discover the method. But my heart resists fitting my children on one hand. I rebel. I have six children. I always will.

Four Years On

A friend of mine, Cami, taught a Relief Society class (women’s group at church) a few weeks ago and sent out a quotation she found on the internet: an old-timer talking about grief. I was organizing my emails and wanted to copy the quotation to save it on my laptop. Where to save it? I searched for grief and found a spreadsheet with a series of questions that Jim, Annie, and I answered in February of 2016: six months after David died. I found no surprises, but one thing stuck out:

Ever since we came back to Lexington in May 2014 I have carried a BOX of tissue in my church bag. I'm always prepared for unplanned tears. David's death is another motivation to living my life more consciously. However, it's hard to get out of bed in the morning and hard to get things accomplished, so that's a frustration.

When did I stop carrying a box of tissue in my church bag every Sunday? Six months ago? Three? The box had gotten pretty banged up and I hardly used it, but for the first three years I felt comforted having it nearby.

And when did it become easier to get out of bed? I suppose it was gradual. I’m in a much ‘better’ place now. What does that mean? We Americans are so afraid of painful emotion. I’m grateful for the grief, even the intense grief. I want to feel; I want to miss David.

And I do miss him. Just an hour ago I looked up at the pencil drawing of him, smiling and ‘extremely presentable’. It’s becoming obvious that the picture isn’t aging and his siblings and cohorts are. I’m becoming one of those weird grieving mothers with the old photo of a long-dead child. He’s not long-dead yet, but it’s coming.

Doing further surveying of my computer files on grief, I found a document I made of bereavement support groups. During the last two weeks of his life, David received care from Good Shepherd Hospice. Part of their service is to provide grief counseling support to family members for 13 months after the death. Jaye was our counselor. At the time of his death, that seemed very generous and more than adequate. However:

18 Jul 2016. I’m in a panic that the Good Shepherd Hospice grief counselling will be over in another 7 weeks. I have only been to see Jaye twice, but both of those were so significant. I’m going again. I wanted to go on the 11th monthiversary, but she has conferences on Tuesdays, so I’m going this Friday. Can I tell her I’m panicked, that I’m afraid of what Kimberly told me, that the second year is the worst? I hope I can. I hope I can be honest with her and find healing in the honesty. I hope she can help me navigate this unknown territory. It will remain unknown for a long time, for my whole life, but I hear it will get less intense. Life will get better.

Called Mt. Auburn Social Work asking about a bereavement support group. Left a message, while breaking down into tears and a squeaky voice. Apologized in the voicemail for the tears. “She will think I’m a basket case: it’s already been a year.”

Found A Compassionate Friend website and a monthly support group in Concord, 16 minutes away. “Well, if it’s only once a month, they must not expect you to be over it in 13 months.”

It’s hard not to distract myself. Hard to know whether it’s healthy. Hard to know who I can share this with.

Two days later I wrote:

I am feeling much calmer today. Maybe reading these grief books has been too intense; maybe it’s healthy; I just don’t know.

I’m glad I wrote this down. It’s hard to imagine now how panicked I was, how distraught and overwrought. That isn’t happening anymore.

Another document I found was a transcription of a voice memo I made a year ago, on the third anniversary of David’s death. I was bothered that I couldn’t keep in mind whether it was three years or four. And how I felt that

as a grieving mother I should be crying and I should be watching the time, and I should be aware that this is the anniversary of the last time he did this, the last of that.”

I remembered arranging the words from “If You Could Hie to Kolob” to Ralph Vaughan Williams' Five Variants of Dives and Lazarus while washing dishes when David was sick. I had fantasized about singing it in public and wondered if I could ever sing without tears.

In early grief it feels like it’s never going to change, that it’s always going to be excruciatingly raw. Even though people tell you it won’t be, you can’t imagine it. That’s the cognitive distortion of strong emotion. It’s one that I wouldn’t try to talk anyone out of. I would say, “in my experience”, there has been healing of the raw wound and hope they find comfort in that. Who can predict the emotional life of another person?

So, as the fourth anniversary of David’s death approaches, I can say that there has been healing. I miss David and am terribly sad that he is missing out on the mortal experience of adulthood. But I’m not overwhelmed with grief and sadness.

Another entry I made in July 2016, 11 months after David’s death:

So, how will I breathe as Victoria lives her life forward while all there is of David’s life is to live it backward? Is this why I can’t go visit them? Is it the truth I guessed at earlier in this 11-month journey, that Victoria’s birthdays will surpass David’s death anniversaries? Part of me sees that as inevitable, as I did intellectually when I thought of it months ago, but a deep emotion wells up inside of me that it’s not fair, that there could have been both: Victoria and David growing older together.

Now, with three more years past, I can breathe, and freely. Seeing Victoria grow into a loving, curious, vivacious four-year-old doesn’t make me sad; it fills me with deep joy. Of course, I wish David could be alive and enjoy the niece he never met. But I'm not in debilitating agony. What I can do to honor David is to live my life fully and be fully present in the lives of his beloved nieces and nephew, our grandchildren.

Janet Haas 1960-2019

A musical memorial service was held at Lexington High School for Janet Haas, an exemplary music teacher and accomplished musician, who collapsed in school in early December and was rushed to the hospital. She died a month later of a brain tumor. She was born in 1960 and was planning to retire in June. As one colleague said, “This should have been her retirement celebration.”

The service included a short video and beautiful music, played by her music students, from fourth graders through high schoolers, alumni, and colleagues. It including “Nimrod,” from the Enigma Variations by Edward Elgar, “Over the Rainbow,” played by a string orchestra of elementary students, and Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings. The Adagio is a great favorite of mine. It accompanies the David Whyte poem, "Well of Grief" that I wrote about 17 months after David died.

I hardly knew Janet Haas. An avid garage sale customer, I once found a violin for $25. Senior year, our daughter R’el, who played the flute and sang, decided to take it up and joined Mrs. Haas’ intermediate orchestra. To me she seemed a stern taskmaster: at one concert she announced that they would not be playing one of the pieces: it wasn’t ready.

I was pleased to hear of her gentler side, the extra attention she gave students, her interest in early music, figure skating, and gardening. The video showed a home movie clip of her smiling and patiently teaching a little boy how to move on figure skates.

According to Lexington Wicked Local, when Mrs. Haas began teaching in Lexington the high school orchestra had 17 string students. Thirty-one years later there are nearly 200 string players in three orchestras.

The announcement in Lexington Wicked Local reads like the obituary of Doc Graham (Field of Dreams), full of love and admiration for a life well lived:

Haas is remembered not only as a brilliant musician, teacher and colleague but also as a woman of the highest professional, personal, and musical integrity. She deeply wanted her students to experience the fullest passion for music. When she saw a need among her students or in a program she quietly rose to address that need. If a student wanted to learn to play bass at a school that was not in her schedule she would find a way to fit them in. She was a living example to her students of commitment, honesty and perseverance. Praise from Ms. Haas was a precious gift that meant her students had done something special and important.

After the service, we spoke to some of the other music teachers. Mr. Leonard, the music director who worked with us when we donated some of David's insurance money to buy new choral risers, pointed out John, with a bushy red beard, clearing the stage. He said that John was very careful handling the risers and made sure the brass plaques with David's name on them always faced out. Jim and I went up on stage to thank John for his care. We shook hands. It was a sweet moment.

David played the clarinet. He sat near the back of the section, stage right. I can see him intently blowing into the clarinet, or chuckling with another student. He graduated in 2006, thirteen years ago.

It was a bittersweet afternoon.

Carved in Granite

Peter and Xiomara, with 6-year-old Andrew and nearly-4-year-old Victoria, visited last weekend. On Saturday we went to Bedford Farms, a local ice cream stand. Our congregation, the Arlington Ward, always frequents Kimball Farm in Carlisle, but I’ve heard good things about Bedford Farms and it is nearly 4 miles closer to our house. (The ice cream was delicious. I had a blueberry swirl. Jim had outstanding ginger.)

On the way to ice cream, we passed the cemetery, and Jim turned in. Andrew wanted to know what it was and I explained it in simple terms.

We drove to David's grave and I knelt at the stone with Victoria and Andrew. As I read aloud:

I suddenly realized that Victoria would recognize it as her birthday. Victoria was born at 11:40 p.m., 40 minutes after David died. She will always share that date with him. I wasn't prepared to face that fact with her on the way to ice cream. But for Victoria it was simply a curiosity, that her birthday was on a stone in the grassy ground. Death isn’t tinged with sadness, horror, and longing for her. It’s just a fact: two things happened on the same date, both of them theoretical and mysterious to my three-year-old granddaughter.

Two months after David died, I wrote:

I’m sitting on the soft brown couch in Riverdale (the Bronx), listening to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, little Victoria kicking her legs and waving her arms. Andrew is munching on Lucky Charms in between kissing his baby sister.

Victoria was born 40 minutes after David died. She’s now two months old. It will always be easy to remember the date. Will I remember it more for the death or the life? The life I think. Every year Victoria will change; she’ll have her first birthday, her fifth, her sixteenth. David’s date will be static, slowly fading into the past, but never forgotten.

And now, nearly four years on, I start having the answer to the question I posed. Both events will always be significant; any mention of that date will immediately bring to mind two events. And, yes, Victoria will change constantly and her birthday will have new meaning each year as she grows up. But we won't forget David. New experiences surround us every day, but the fact of his life will never fade. We continue to have six children.


October 12, 2019 will be the fifth year that we host the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) bloodmobile for a blood drive in memory of David, who received many transfusions from MGH in the 15 month course of his treatment there. That has become, by design, the focus of our remembrance of David: the month of his birthday. And on August 12, 2019, Jim and I will be in the Bronx, with a homemade strawberry birthday cake for Victoria.

Haverford College Class of 2014

Spoleto: chamber music, Shakespeare’s Pericles, a Cuban big band, and an all-male dance company of Algerian, Israeli, and Palestinian street dancers. We drove the nearly 1000 miles down to Charleston in one day, stopping only for gas and a short supper. We took a leisurely four days to drive home, stopping for lunch with good friends in Richmond, and supper and an overnight stay at my brother Steve’s in Bethesda. Friday and Saturday we were at Haverford College, Bryn Mawr College (a mile away), Philly, and then drove to Manhattan for a vegan meal with R'el. We spent Saturday evening and Sunday morning with Peter and his family, then headed home.

We stopped at Haverford College for David’s fifth college reunion. At 23, he was the oldest freshman at Haverford in 2010. We know this because he told us, with a chuckle, that the dean, at a meeting of the whole freshman class, had listed interesting facts about the incoming class (how many international students, etc.). The youngest student was 16, the oldest 23. He studied Chinese and Spanish and biology and chemistry. Then he joined the Army in 2011, became a medic, and got leukemia in 2014, a few months before his Haverford class graduated.

Last year, at my Bryn Mawr College 40th reunion, Jim conceived a plan of attending David’s 5th reunion and having a short memorial for him. Jon Schweitzer-Lamme, chair of the Haverford Class of 2014 reunion committee, knew David, it turned out, and was happy to organize it.

Stacie Giles, my dear friend in Richmond, and her husband, Frank, came too. She was going to her own 40th reunion at Bryn Mawr. Stacie's short-story murder mystery was recently published in an anthology, Deadly Southern Charm.

We arrived Friday evening and went out to dinner with Natalie, a good friend of David’s at Haverford. They studied Chinese and Spanish together and annoyed/amused their friends by speaking Chinspanglish. David was a very private person and I don’t recall him ever talking about his friends. We first knew of Natalie when she walked up our driveway to attend the visiting hours in our home before David’s funeral. She and David had emailed all through his illness and she followed my blog. It was a bold thing for her to come up from New York unannounced, but I was thrilled to learn of her friendship and connection to David and immediately invited her to sit with our family at the funeral.

We spent dinner talking about David and about her present life. Then we drove to Haverford and sat under a big reunion tent between Founders Hall and the old Ryan gym, where I used to practice fencing with the Haverford team. (Bryn Mawr didn’t offer fencing. I had learned it at the YMCA in high school. Since Haverford was all-men at the time, I couldn’t compete with the team  at meets, but occasionally got to compete unofficially with women from other colleges.)

The memorial was simple and intimate. Nine classmates stood in a circle near a young tree on Founders Green and talked about David. One woman remembered that David wouldn’t laugh at her jokes. They remembered being surprised that he was the famous 23-year-old: he didn't look that old.

After that sweet meeting, we took a short tour of Barclay first floor. David lived in room 102, the corner dorm room facing Founders Hall. Natalie lived on the same floor. I have fond memories of Barclay: some of my favorite Class of '78 Haverfordians lived in Barclay during our freshman year.

I wasn’t sure how the memorial would go, and how I’d feel about it. Would it be awkward, being the older, bereaved parents of a young man who had only attended Haverford one year? Would anyone but Natalie and Jon recognize David’s name? But it was a sweet experience. Bittersweet, to see these charming, promising young adults living interesting lives and returning to see college friends and roam the campus.

This week, all of eastern Massachusetts is resplendent with pink-lavender rhododendron shrubs. By far the most abundant color of rhododendrons right now, it blooms before the whites, reds, pinks, and oranges. The blessing of a cool (no, cold), rainy spring is that the flowering shrubs bloom for extended periods. The rhododendrons are a towering mass of bouquets of blossoms. Some are fifteen feet tall. It's a pleasure to drive around and enjoy them.

Memorial Day 2019

For the fourth year in a row, Jim and I are visiting his sister, Mary, and her husband, John, in Charleston, SC while attending Spoleto events. It’s a two-week-long arts festival: classical music and jazz, dance and drama.

I remember the first year we came. We arrived Friday night. On Monday we attended a concert in downtown Charleston. There were sporadic showers and as we dodged puddles and orange traffic barrels marking broken pavement, I saw an American flag and suddenly realized it was Memorial Day. I hadn’t thought to decorate David’s grave: I felt terrible. I emailed a good friend, Ellen. She not only placed a flag at his grave, but took a sweet picture.

I don’t remember what happened the next year, but I know I didn’t decorate his grave. In 2018, after my request, Ellen helped us out again:

This year, I put it in my calendar. The evening before we left, Jim and I went to David’s grave and placed two flags. We discovered the cemetery staff had placed flags on all the graves, so he had three.

 On Monday, another good friend, Amy, sent me a picture: she had placed white flowers and a flag on his grave, alongside ours.

Charleston has a bittersweet connection to David. During the Christmas holiday of 2013, we rented a van and drove with some of our kids to Charleston. David was stationed in Texas and flew to be with us. After our stay, Jim and I drove him to the airport. As he got out, Jim offered to sign the Family Letters book that Jim had written. Then David strode into the terminal. It was the last time we saw him healthy. Less than three months later we met him at Dulles Airport and drove him to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center (which I named WReNMiMiC.). Memorial Day weekend of 2014, David and I were flown to Hanscom Airport, then transported to Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). We had such high hopes that day. He was ‘in remission’ and Sam was a 10-of-10-match stem-cell donor. David would have a stem cell transplant in mid-June.

Memorial Day 2015 (from my blog):

David returned to Lunder Monday morning, Memorial Day. He hadn’t eaten anything for several days, was dehydrated and terribly nauseated. He had no appetite and severe pain in his throat. Dana, our favorite Lunder 10 nurse, who works weekends and holidays, started IV saline and some Ativan, which is very effective for nausea, (as well as anxiety and insomnia). The Ativan got rid of the nausea and knocked him out minutes after it started flowing into his vein.

Ours was an unscheduled visit, and the infusion room was full. Dana put us in the patient and visitor lounge and taped a sign on the door, ‘Lounge Closed’. Last May, late in our time at Walter Reed, there was a night when David couldn’t sleep. We walked down the hall to a lounge and he lay down on the couch. “This feels so good!” he said. The sweet nurse on duty let us stay, even though it was against procedure to have a patient sleep in the lounge. Such a simple pleasure, to get out of bed and nap on a couch.

In the Lunder lounge, David was quite comfortable. Dana said, as she worked, “I’m trying to keep him out of the emergency department.” She succeeded. He moved into room 1092 Monday afternoon.

David hadn’t taken his clinical trial drugs Monday morning. On Tuesday I arrived at Lunder 10 around 9 a.m., to deliver the refrigerated BYL719 study drug. That was unnecessary: Dr. Fathi stopped the MEK 162/BYL 719 clinical trial. The drugs were not lowering the white blood cell count and were probably causing the throat pain, nausea, and lack of appetite. It’s disappointing.

            Tuesday they took a chest x-ray to investigate his hoarse cough and discovered pneumonia. Later in the day they did a CT scan, which showed a large consolidation (not a good thing) in the upper right lung and little dots scattered throughout the lungs. Since a lung infection could be TB (tuberculosis), we all have to wear heavy-duty masks, which are hot and bothersome. But I certainly don’t want to either contract or pass along TB (or any infectious disease). It’s quite unlikely he has TB, but they must take precautions.

            At 5:30 p.m. this evening David was sleeping soundly. He was in good spirits yesterday, and sounded chipper on the phone this morning, but now he’s conked out. Yesterday afternoon he spiked a fever of 104°. When Jim arrived to visit, the nurses were busy applying ice packs in an effort to lower his temperature.

            R’el, Peter, Xiomara, and Andrew drove up from NYC Friday night for the holiday weekend. David enjoyed playing with Andrew and made some videos on his iPod. Happily, Andrew has decided to enjoy his Uncle David’s company, even when his mother isn’t in the room.

            Saturday night we watched a Captain America movie,Winter Soldier. R’el synchronized the start of the movie with Matt in Chicago. At our house R’el, Peter, and David sat at their laptops (as did Matt in Chicago) and messaged commentary as the movie progressed. I was content to just watch the movie. David did comment afterwards that he missed a bit of the action while typing and reading comments.

            The goal for now is to get David strong enough to come back home, one day at a time.

And now, in 2019, we’ve spent four Memorial Days without him.

Concerts and trips

Jim and I went to a concert of Haydn music a few days ago. Jim remarked that one of the violinist looked a lot like Andy H., the father of one of David’s elementary-school friends. I agreed. Later I looked at the program and found that it was indeed Andy. I was anxious to go up and talk to him after the concert. He didn’t recognize me at first, but remembered that David and his son were friends. I asked about his son and he then asked about David. “David died of leukemia four years ago.” He looked shocked and said, “I’m sorry. I didn't know.” I had wanted to let him know, but then it felt awkward, so I changed the subject.

The next morning I woke up feeling anxious. As I replayed the conversation, I worryied that Andy thought me callous for changing the subject so fast. But really, my unsettling feeling was from my grief. Seeing Andy brought out my loss and what more could I say to Andy?

I’m glad I went up to talk to him. I hunger for connections to David’s life: there are very few.

I took a long walk the next day and realized that compounding my grief was the fact that a few days before I had taken my first solo trip to New York since my brother Mike died. I had stressed about how I was going to schedule it now that it didn’t include a trip to the nursing home in New Jersey. It wasn’t complicated, but it seemed very complicated. Three days after I returned, I realized that Mike's death, the fact that he was dead, was affecting me, below my consciousness.

Last week the facilitator at Compassionate Friends, my bereaved parents support group, talked about why support is important as time goes on. Each stage is a new stage: one year after, four years after, ten years after. It’s always a new experience. When she said it, I didn’t think it applied to me, but after the experience with Andy and my New York trip, I see that it is true. My life is full of many wonderful things. But there’s a loss to recognize and deal with, a loss that doesn’t go away.

We heard that a friend of ours recently died of an inoperable brain tumor. She only lived about a month after her initial diagnosis. Another loss.

Dreaming of David

Last Thursday I dreamt of David. I don’t recall ever dreaming of him in the 3 ½ years since he died. In my dream, I was coming down the stairs. Our 1895 house has a charming feature: near the bottom of the stairwell is a landing in front of three windows. There the stairway splits into “Jack and Jill” stairs. Turn right and the Jill stairs take you to the kitchen, turn left and you go into the front room, our library. As I stood on the landing, facing the library, I saw a little boy, about six years old, in a pressed burgundy sports coat, sitting on the bottom step. I knew it was David. I stood silent, afraid that if I moved he would disappear. I kept looking at his back and wondering if he was about to disappear. From the kitchen, Jim called out: two of our adult children had entered the house. I wanted go see who had arrived: I wondered if it was the adult David, but I didn’t want to lose young David. I was frozen in place.

When I awoke, I wanted to cry out in pain. I hadn't experienced that intensity of pain for a long time: I'd forgotten what it  felt like. Pain like that doesn't disappear: it's just somewhere below the surface.

"A day late and a dollar short"

Happy New Year! I'm a day (or two) late and a dollar (or two weeks) short on blog posting, but here I am!

New Year’s Day, I awoke at 3:50 a.m. to drive Annie and Shawn to Logan Airport, then back to a quiet house, where I napped for a few hours. I spent the day quietly, doing laundry and cleaning up.

Everyone was at home for at least part of the holiday. A friend of mine recently remarked, "Grandchildren are such a delight!" Of course, our own little ones were a delight, but grandchildren come without the burdens of how to feed and cloth and educate them. I don’t fret when it’s past nap time or struggle through a transcontinental plane ride, trying desperately to entertain and quiet a rambunctious one year old.

Thoughts of David flitted through the holiday time, but no sudden spasms of grief, just bittersweet memory of Christmases past and an awareness that there will be no more memories to make with him.

We hosted about 34 people on each of the first three Sundays of Advent, sharing a meal, reading Christmas scriptures, and singing carols. On the last Advent Sunday, we were joined by several of our children and our grandchildren.

And now, the New Year. Jim has a colleague who stopped setting goals several years ago. He has ‘intentions’ now. I’m intrigued. In years past, I made a show of going to bed before midnight and ignoring the New Year's arrival. I pretended not to set goals, but really, I was always setting goals and feeling failure.

Yet, I feel a surge of excitement at the pure-as-the-driven-snow 2019. Can I move forward without saddling myself with unattainable goals?

I want to be realistic. Not commit to 'never again' and ‘from now on,' but be open to new habits and the possibility of being more consistent in the things that matter most to me.

On Being Mortal and Hallowe'en

Jim, Matt, Xiomara, and I attended the Good Shepherd Institute dinner, with Atul Gawande as the keynote speaker. His book, On Being Mortal, should be required reading for every American over the age of sixteen.

We heard about the dinner through the Good Shepherd Hospice newsletter. Our son, David, was a hospice patient with them for two weeks before he died. They took good care of him and of us. Their grief counselor helped us through the first year after his death: I still think about things she said.

When introductions were being made around the table, I mentioned David and our connection to Good Shepherd. I also said I had read On Being Mortal when David was sick. A woman remarked that I was very brave to read it in those conditions. But I was grateful for the insight Atul gave me. It strengthened my resolve to have David die at home.

Lori, a friend of mine, told me she hates Hallowe'en and the way it makes death terrifying. I agree to a point: I don't put up scary lawn decorations or dress like a ghoul. But I like the costumes and candy and the chance to meet young neighbor kids.

We live on a busy street at the edge of a commercial district and have rarely had more than two or three trick-or-treaters venture up our long driveway on Hallowe'en night. This year I got proactive: I created a living room in the front yard, setting up chairs and a table with a dark burgundy tablecloth and a stuffed fabric pumpkin and jack-o-lantern my mom made forty years ago. Jim brought out a floor lamp and I mulled 2 gallons of apple cider and dressed in the dirndl I just bought at a second-hand shop in Munich. We handed out full-sized candy: Snickers, Skittles, and Starbursts. (The latter two were MUCH more popular than the chocolate Snickers). About 40 kids visited: quite an increase over former years.

Jim just came home from church in Belmont. In the time it took to drive home he listened to WCRB play Albinoni's Adagio in G minor. A peaceful ending to a rainy autumnal evening.

Impressions and Portraits

Last month, Jim and I attended the annual barbeque at DBSA-Boston (Depression Bipolar Support Alliance).

As we sat eating (my) hot dog and (Jim’s) hamburger, we watched the open mike karaoke in the front of the cafeteria. The young husband of a friend of ours went up to sing to his wife. As I glanced up at the makeshift stage, I had the distinct impression that David was standing there. Not in a miraculous way; I know full-well that David is dead. But the impression of his presence was strong. I mentioned it to Jim. I don’t think he felt it as powerfully as I did, but he saw the striking resemblance as well.

I was greatly comforted, looking upon this young man with his short haircut and lanky physique. It was as if David were in the room, untouchable, unreachable, but present as a living being.

In the prologue of my mother's memoir, she quotes Elizabeth Bennett, speaking to Mr. Darcy, "Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure." This memory gives me pleasure.

David’s birth year is receding into the past. The photo we have in our kitchen: our rogues’ gallery (as my mother called her lineup of photos of her children) is getting dated. And I will be able to update the other photos. But for David no updates are possible.

When I was a young girl, the local newspaper ran little boxes of photos on the obituary page. They were remembrances of family members, with captions like, ‘We miss you!’ and ‘your loving parents’. The hair styles and clothes were dated: these weren’t pictures of living daughters. These were long-dead daughters, oddly memorialized in the newspaper.

The photos and captions gave me an uneasy, queasy feeling. And now I feel uneasy as I realize my young guests will perceive David’s picture that same way, as my other children’s pictures are replaced with photos of aging adults. David’s will remain the portrait of a young man.

Girls' Camp 2018

Last week, Jim and I spent two days at our Church Girls’ Camp. For the Tuesday evening devotional, Jim planned to speak. That afternoon, he asked me to speak as well. The request caught me off-guard; I couldn’t think of anything I would say. But, that evening, as I sat listening to a youth leader, Jennifer, give a sweet and honest talk about failing to pass the law bar and what spiritual lessons she learned, I suddenly had a brain storm (and, yes, I took my meds that morning, so I was mostly confident (can’t ever be 100%) that my thinking was sound): pick five things to talk about briefly. I have a thing about five fingers, I’ll tell you about that in a later post. Here’s what I said:

There are five things I want you to know about me. I hope there are more than five worthwhile things about me, but I just want to share five.

First: my parents were wonderful, loving people with strong faith. They raised me in the Catholic Church. As I get older, I am more and more grateful for them and appreciate their wisdom.

Second: when I was nineteen, I learned about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I love this Church.

Third: 39 years ago I married a wonderful man. Yes, it’s the same man that is sitting right there: he’s my first and only husband. And I’ll tell you something I wish someone had told me. Even after 39 years, it’s hard. There are many things that are fun, but it can be really hard, too. I don’t know how it is for others, but it’s hard for me.

Fourth: in 1995, I had a manic episode. I have manic depression, called bipolar these days. I was hospitalized. What that means is that I was taken by ambulance to a psychiatric unit and was locked in and couldn’t get out until a doctor said I could. It was shattering. I’ve only been hospitalized one other time, and that was because I stopped taking my medication. That was in 2003. I see a therapist, I have a psychiatric nurse, and I take my medication. I hate it. I hated taking it this morning and I’ll hate taking it tomorrow, but I’ll take it.

I can’t tell the future, but it is quite likely that some of you in this room will either have emotional problems, or have loved ones with emotional problems, or maybe someone you work with will.

Fifth: three years ago, on August 12, our 27-year-old son died of leukemia. It was hard and it’s still hard. We prayed that he would get better. In fact, our Cambridge Stake had a fast that he would get better. But he died. And is it okay? Depends what you mean; it’s complicated.

You will probably have hard things happen in your life. You will have leaders and friends, in the Church and out, who can help you. Reach out to them.

If any of you ever want to talk to me, I’d love to talk. I’m quite open about my life and if I can help you, I want to.

Reach out when you are in trouble. I’ve had hard times and I’ve received a lot of help.

I love the gospel and I love my Savior. And I say this in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.


A few girls thanked me afterwards. I was happy to talk to them. I had none of the negative feelings that followed the mental health panel last month. I felt in my element. I want girls to know about mental illness, to see it’s not a death sentence, to see it doesn’t have to be a shameful secret. Even if none of them ever asks me anything, I’m confident I’ve made a difference in someone’s life. Some girl (or adult leader), maybe years from now, will look back at that evening devotional and gain strength from the memory.

Third anniversary: August 12, 2018

On Sunday, August 12th, on my way to church, I made a voice memo about David’s death anniversary. For several months, I’ve noticed that I have to count to determine how long David’s been dead. It’s been exactly three years, but it feels like four years, or five. I calculate: it’s 2018 and he died in 2015; I’m sure of that. 18 minus 15 is three. I’ve gone through that arithmetic many times. I mentioned it to Jim. He suggested that it’s because so much has happened in our lives since then. Spoleto USA, three years in a row. The total eclipse in Idaho. A reunion in Maine last month, preparing for our own in a week. The lives of our three grandchildren: Andrew, age five, Victoria, who turned three on August 12, and Eliza. We spent Thanksgiving with my sister Maggie and her husband, and saw dear Eliza on the day of her birth.

Victoria was born 40 minutes after David died. Everything we’ve done with her has happened after David’s death. Sometime after David died, I restarted my frequent drives to the Bronx to see Andrew and Victoria. (Oh, yeah, and I see their parents, too…)

This week, I’ve had an email exchange with my friend Cort. A year ago, on August 6th, his wife, Corey, died unexpectedly in her sleep. She was exactly a month shy of 41. David had been dead just two years. Although I’ve been emailing about grief to Cort, I hadn’t made the connection that Corey died just six days before David’s anniversary. And it will always be so. Maybe I’ll remember Corey’s easier that way, knowing her death was 23 months after David’s.

Friday, we took a guided tour of Lexington’s Old Burying Ground. The earliest graves date from 1690. It’s a recurring guided tour; I chose the day that Jim was available. I didn’t realize that it would be so close to David’s death date. That’s the thing about the third anniversary: I keep being reminded that I’ve forgotten. If someone would ask me when David died, I would say, instantly, August 12th, 2015. It’s there, but somehow, emotionally, it hasn’t been in my consciousness as much, frankly, as I feel it “should be”.

Early grief feels like it’s never going to change, that gut-wrenching searing pain. Even though people told me it would change, it would be easier, I couldn’t really imagine it. That’s the cognitive distortion of powerful emotion. It’s one that I wouldn’t try to talk anyone out of. I would only say, in my experience, there has been healing of the raw wound and hope they can find comfort in that. Healing has happened, is still happening.