Moodswings

Last week I wrote a high-flying post, full of optimism and confidence. Since then I’ve spent some hours slogging through life. It's not really depression: it’s not the deep dark hole many describe. The self-loathing is absent: I feel a disappointment in my inability to accomplish what seems like reasonable goals on a reasonable timetable, but no self-hate.

 

This week, as my attitude towards my life has swung from optimism to, not pessimism exactly, but disappointment, I’m left wondering: is manic depression deep in my nature? Is it an essential part of my personality? Is it as immutable as my eye color and height?

 

I think it likely all of the above.

Yesterday morning I woke feeling discouraged. Monday is the day I have few outside obligations. When David was sick and I drove him to the Cox Clinic twice a week for leukemia treatments, I made no other commitments on Mondays and Thursdays. After he died, I promised myself I'd continue that schedule. Gradually obligations, freely entered into, crept back into my Thursdays, but I’ve kept Monday free, a ‘stay-at-home’ day. Each week it spreads before me like a field of freshly-fallen snow waiting for my imprint. And many Monday evenings I feel keenly a lack of accomplishment.

 

What if I accepted the ebb and flow of my moods as a part of me, just as the tides are part of the ocean? When I visit the shore, I don’t resist the tide, I carefully survey the beach for signs of the high tide mark, where the sand is completely dry and never drenched in saltwater. That’s where I place my blanket. If I've arrived at high tide, the surf is near the blanket, if low, I must walk a bit to enjoy the waves.

Walk along the Charles

Last week I had a psychiatric consultation in Downtown Crossing, Boston. I felt happy as I left. The consult had taken about 40 minutes. Although I had plenty of tasks to accomplish at home, I decided to walk to the Charles/MGH stop of the Red Line. As is my wont, my walking ambitions grew as I walked; on my way across the Common, I decided to walk along the Charles River and cross the Mass Ave Bridge, heading for MIT; there’s a Red Line stop there.

That morning, I would have said I didn’t have time to walk. But many years ago, Jim advised a stressed-out client to paint his office. Change of pace. Taking charge of a small thing (though painting an office sounds daunting). So, walking toward home through Boston and Cambridge was my painting job. I calculated that I would arrive home about 6:30 p.m.: a four-hour walk, roughly a half-marathon. It was getting dark by 4:30, at about the time I got to the bike path, so I headed towards Mass Ave on Lake St. in Arlington. When my phone battery was down to 6%, I emailed Jim and turned off Runkeeper, my GPS app. Jim called me (4% battery life) just as I passed the Blue Ribbon BBQ restaurant, nine and a half miles into my walk. He suggested we meet there. Perfect timing.

The walk reminded me of a bittersweet experience walking along the Charles River when David was inpatient at Mass General (MGH). It was a lovely spring day and again I was relieving stress by taking charge with a long walk. As I walked along the Charles, I looked across at a playground area that had adult exercise stations. A young man, shirtless in the cool spring weather, was working out. I was both happy for his health and sad for David’s physical deterioration. I savored the hug my Army guy gave me when I saw him at Christmas time before he got sick. We were at a Christmas concert of R’els in Manchester, Connecticut, and he surprised us: walking into the church when we weren’t expecting him. He had his fatigues and Army boots on and his crewcut was a prominent feature of his bare head. Those strong arms and chest and back. I didn't realize how soon they would be gone.

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.

Vortices

I listened to Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking a few weeks ago. It’s in the standard bibliography of grief books. I didn’t read it three years ago, because her experience seemed so different from mine: her husband had a massive heart attack. A husband of thirty-nine years, dying at the dinner table. A world apart from a 26-year-old son dying of leukemia. But, she’s an excellent writer, articulate, honest, and insightful, and her memoir of grief helps me process mine.

Without warning, memories suck her into a powerful vortex of grief. It happens in places with a connection to her husband. She tries to avoid the places, but there are too many memories in too many places.

My vortices are fewer and further between these days. The most constant is listing my children. The winter before David died, we rented a house in the Catskills for our annual family ‘Summer Retreat’ in August. Not knowing if we would even use the house, we had done no further planning. He died Wednesday, August 12th. On Sunday we had the visiting hours at our former-funeral-home house, followed by a service at church. Monday we packed quickly and left for the Catskills That afternoon, as I sat in front of a large picture window in the country kitchen, I started a menu plan and grocery list for the week: days across top of the page and people down the side. Jim, Mary, R’el, Peter, Matt... and I was plunged into an emotional chasm that took my breath away. For 26 years, there was no hesitation. It was always Matt, David, Annie. Now there was a gaping black hole after Matt’s name and before I could get to Annie’s.

That vortex remains. Early on, I’d name my children in random order, but that would confuse me and I’d desperately count, unsure if I was missing a living child. Without consciously thinking about it, I settled into naming the three oldest (David is the fourth), then the sixth and fifth. That still leaves me befuddled: it feels like way fewer the six minus one. But I just can’t go in age order; my heart rebels. Trying to avoid a vortex, I find myself teetering on the edge.

Thoughts in a waiting room

Eleven days ago, I was sitting in a large wooden armchair enjoying the sound of water burbling over the artifical rocks in the four-story atrium of St. Vincent Hospital in Worcester, waiting for my son, Matt, to get out of surgery. When my friend, Amy, heard that I was escorting Matt, she asked, “Are you OK with this, or will it give you flashbacks from the time you spent in hospitals with David?

I was surprised by her question. I hadn’t consciously connected the two. But, hadn’t I? When Matt offered to take a 6:30 a.m. Uber to St. Vincent, so I could do the hour drive to Worcester a few hours later, I knew I wanted to be with him from the start. That’s what moms do.

In Maxine Hong Kingston’s memoir, The Woman Warrior, she describes her Chinese grandmother going to the airport hours before a plane carrying her relatives would land, sitting, waiting, willing the plane to cross the Pacific from China to Los Angeles. Trusting in the power of concentration and attention.

I love that image, though I didn’t expect my presence to change any outcome, (the surgery went well, by the way), but I knew I wanted to be there. The father of a friend of Matt’s, years ago, stopped breathing during a minor surgery. His friend’s mother was at the hospital, alone, so I went and sat with her in the ICU waiting room. She recounted an amusing incident: when he woke up in the ICU, he asked how it went. "You stopped breathing," she told him, and his eyes widened in wonder. Five minutes later he asked, “How did it go?” She told him again: his eyes widened. Over and over this scenario played out, until his short-term memory returned.

Waiting for Matt, the memory of that day came into my mind. I was glad to be there.

I pondered Amy’s question; as I did, I was grateful Matt wasn’t at Walter Reed or Mass General. That might bring back ghosts. The restroom at St. Vincent uses the same automatic paper towel dispenser, from Georgia Pacific, as Mass General. How many times I washed and dried my hands, waiting for the results of David’s lab work, or for his blood transfusions to be completed. For fifteen months, I kept my Mondays and Thursdays open, never knowing how long the appointments would last, or if the day would end with an overnight stay.

All of that is fading into the past. It was so much of our lives, as we lived through it, and as treatments failed, and David lost weight, weakened, and died. Next month will be three years, it feels recent and in the distant past at the same time.

The longest day

All year long I wait for the longest day of the year. I love living in New England, but the price I pay are the dusks that fall at 4:30 p.m. in mid-December. But I feel like I missed it this year. I look back on last week. June 21: a morning appointment to help Marissa with family history research, early afternoon facilitating at DBSA-Boston, my manic-depression and depression support group. Supper with Jim, then a panel of entreprenuers speaking in Jim’s office in the evening. So, as the late dusk fell, I was in a small group, fully absorbed in a fascinating presentation.

Next morning, I was up at 5 a.m. to drive to Worcester and be with Matt for his surgery. Saturday was spent with our daughter and friends. Busy days, that’s wonderful. The last two days have been busy too. And suddenly it’s five days after the longest day and I can feel in my bones the days getting shorter.

Maybe I’m being morbid. Maybe it has to do with listening to The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion. In beautiful and insightful prose, she chronicles the year after her husband’s sudden death by massive heart attack. Of course, I thought about David, especially when she mentions, several times, dilated pupils: a physiological sign of death. More on all of that in a later post.

I just looked it up: yes, my imagination is running away with me. The longest day was June 21st, but today was a mere minute shorter. And the latest sunset, at 8:25 p.m., occurs June 24-29 this year. I was out in my garden at dusk tonight, watering my tomatoes and tying back my red raspberries. I’m glad to know I was enjoying one of the latest dusks of the year.

Another Death

The daughter of a friend died last week. I offered to visit and talk to her, experienced bereaved mother to newly one.We had a long, intimate conversation.

This morning came the reaction. Not the gut-wrenching, bend-over-in pain, can’t-catch-my-breath reaction, but a renewed awareness of our loss. I feel guilty: I find I go days not thinking about David. On the wall of my office, a little above my sightline, is a line drawing of him. An artist drew it from our favorite photo, taken on our daughter’s wedding day. He had pronounced himself “extremely presentable”. He never spent much time worrying about fashion. When he was on his mission, he described a haircut a member of the church gave him. It was in the backyard and the amateur barber finished the job with a leaf blower. Writing this, I look up at the grey drawing in its pewter-tone frame. I haven’t looked at it for months. Nearly three years on, it takes longer for the grief to settle in; it’s easier to ignore it and keep it at bay.

My heart goes out to my friend. That’s so cliché, but words are inadequate. Another cliché. The thing about clichés is: they can be true. My daughter objects to people on Facebook responding in reaction to a death: my thoughts and prayers are with you. “What does that even mean? How much time are they spending actually thinking and praying?”

She has a point, but being on the other side, watching a friend be thrown into grief, I don’t know what to say either. The cliché at least gives me something, allows an exchange of words and feelings.

I know I’ve quoted this post before: Annie Lamott speaks to my heart. It’s who I want to be.

Gravity yanks us down…We need a lot of help getting back up. And even with our battered banged up tool boxes and aching backs, we can help others get up, even when for them to do so seems impossible or at least beyond imagining. Or if it can't be done, we can sit with them on the ground, in the abyss, in solidarity.

My friend doesn’t live close, so it’s not practical to visit every day. But maybe I can text. I’m not an avid texter: with my hand tremor (another side effect of psych meds, just like the cognitive limitations) it’s slow and laborious to type out words with one finger. My thumbs are especially affected by the tremor, so the fast typing with two thumbs my friend Cami does, Googling with ease, is something I watch with awe.

Eradicating Poison Ivy (and other weeds)

Today I faced the poison ivy in my yard. As soon as I realized, three weeks ago, that I had a poison ivy rash, I started wondering how to get rid of the plants. I got the rash while weeding garlic mustard from my north yard. Today I learned, from careful observation, that there were three ‘leaves of three’ species in our yard. The one I identified that fateful day was tiny wild blackberry brambles. Another plant I noticed today was small, with serrated leaves. I’m pretty sure it isn’t poison ivy, but I was taking no chances: I pulled every last one. And of course, there was actual poison ivy, which initiated the allergic reaction that sent me to urgent care after a week of toughing it out.

It took me nearly three hours to actually get out and work in the yard. Constructive procrastination, Jim's dad used to call it. I was apprehensive that I’d break out again. As I procrastinated, I improved my strategy. I prepared some poison-ivy herbicide. Even Amy, a suburban homesteader who promotes natural remedies for gardening challenges, recommends chemical herbicides for tough cases of poison ivy. She does recommend leaving the plants where they don't disturb human activity: they protect against erosion, make good boundaries for forests, and produce berries that some birds eat.

Last week, I bought two disposable Tyvek suits, complete with attached booties. The supplied black gloves were as thin and short as exam gloves, and I couldn’t keep my wrists protected, so I added a pair of long purple rubber gloves.

I’m very frugal (ask my kids) and thought of reusing the $10 Tyvek suit and $5 purple gloves.  However, the suit was nearly worn out after six and a half hours of bending, kneeling, pulling weeds and cutting brush. It was fun to peel myself out of the suit, roll it up inside out, and trash it.

After 6 1/2 hours: 4 bags full of weeds

I used my best Red Cross First Aid glove-removal technique.Sweat came streaming out of them. My finger pads were prunes. Cheap spa treatment.

I’m pretty confident that I didn't touch any poison ivy, but I’ll only be certain in three days, if I don’t develop any rash. I’ll keep you posted.

Patriots' Day 2018

Yesterday, the third Monday in April, Massachusetts and Maine celebrated Patriots' Day. The Lexington Minutemen held their annual reenactment of the Battle of Lexington.

As has been our tradition since 2003, Jim and I invited people to park on our property. Our yard is the perfect place to park and walk to the Battle Green, where colonists gathered and awaited the arrival of the red-coated army early in the morning of April 19, 1775. Our Sunday night was very cold and full of sleet. By 4:00 a.m. it had changed to heavy rain and, as expected, we had a small  turnout: 30 cars. (We have the capacity to park 65.) 

At 3:30 a.m. I was in the kitchen, making 2 gallons of hot cocoa and preparing for our breakfast guests. The reenactment takes place at 5:30 a.m., as did the actual battle. However,as a concession to the modern American custom, we now celebrate Patriots’ Day as a Monday holiday.

Despite the rain, about 100 people came for breakfast. They carefully wiped their shoes, so the floors hardly got wet at all.

I’ve been thinking of our history with David. By Patriots’ Day in 2014, David had been at Walter Reed Military Medical Center for 27 days. He didn't tell us not to go, so we returned home for Patriots' Day. Jim posted a picture in the living room of David, smiling and sitting up in his hospital bed.

By 2015, David was living at home and very sick. The stem cell transplant had failed over 10 months before. We went ahead with the breakfast. In 2016, we had the first Patriots’ Day without him. Matt ran the Boston Marathon later that day, raising money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. Since 1897, the Boston Marathon has been held on Patriots' Day. (The first modern marathon was run in Greece just the year before.) Last year, R'el ran for LLS.

It's a relief to have the Patriots’ Day breakfast over. I enjoyed it, but the preparation and execution takes a lot of time and energy. It’s pleasant to be one of the ‘old-timers’, sharing a bit of town and national history with people who are interested enough to arrive at our yard between 4:00 and 5:00 a.m. It’s also pleasant to take a nap in the afternoon and then savor a full night’s sleep.

Easter Sunday 2018

I remember our first Easter after David had died. A sweet friend of mine remarked that the day must be especially wonderful and meaningful for me. She meant that the Easter message of hope and resurrection must be resonating deeply in me.

I was not feeling joyful; I was missing David painfully and feeling the loss to him of all the experiences mortality has to offer a young man in his late twenties. I smiled and thanked her: I would never want her to know she added to my misery. I didn’t have the self-possession to talk about my deep feelings.

This year is different. I still miss David and mourn the loss of him and to him. Random experiences bring tears to my eyes and emptiness to my heart. But they are fewer, further between, and shorter in duration. I sang “Christ, the Lord, Is Risen Today” with our ward choir with no pang of sorrow, no uncontrollable tears.

Last night, at bedtime, Jim really wanted to watch a movie. We are on a Fred Astaire kick (sorry, couldn’t resist. No, I could have, but I didn’t.) For Christmas, Jim gave me Fred Astaire’s autobiography, along with a book about his early career with his sister, Adele, and an over-sized, comprehensive book about each of his many films, with hundreds of screen shots from the dances. We’ve been working our way through the Astaire/Rogers movies (all of which we own), while dipping into this comprehensive tome.

Spoiler Alert!

Next in the chronological queue was The Vernon and Irene Castle Story. I remember vividly the first time we watched it, sometime after David died. As the final credits rolled we sat silently, stunned and frozen. We had trusted Fred Astaire to deliver a light-hearted confection. But suddenly, Vernon Castle is killed during a routine military plane exercise, hours before a long-anticipated reunion with his wife. I looked him up today: he was 31. David was 27.

We didn’t finish the movie last night, not out of sorrow but sleepiness. I probably will cry at the end: I usually do. But it won’t be devastating; I won’t feel abandoned by Fred Astaire.

To Give a Gift

On April 7^th and 8^th, our Cambridge Stake (the group of 12 congregations we belong to) is presenting Lamb of God by Rob Gardner. It’s a moving oratorio about Jesus Christ’s life, sacrifice, and resurrection.

I have the privilege of singing in the choir, conducted by Nicolas Giusti, a world-class musician from Rome, Italy, who now lives in Boston. He is great leader: he inspires the best in us. From the initial rehearsal, he focused on expression, not just hitting notes and beating out rhythm. Musical dynamics now has a new, deeper meaning. Before, dynamics had simply meant the volume of the music: soft or loud or some gradation. But, the origin of the word is Greek, dunamis, power, which derives from dunasthai: to be able. I’ve never thought of this, but that technical term, ‘dynamics’, expresses exactly what Nicolas is drawing out of us: the life, the movement, the soul of the music.

On Sunday evening, the choir rehearsed for the first time with the vocal soloists and narrators. I was overcome: I couldn't control my emotions while hearing and singing such powerful music.

At the end of the rehearsal, I caught up with one of the soloists. I choked up as I told her how close to the surface my emotions were. We sat on the couch in the foyer and she shared her wisdom with me.

In singing, you are giving a gift to the audience. They will be able to accept the gift and feel in themselves the emotion and beauty of the music. But if you lose your composure, the audience gets nervous. They’re not sure what is going to happen. This detracts from the gift.

As I listened to her, drying my tears and welling up again, I nodded, still uncertain how to proceed. She suggested praying about it: praying for the strength to give the gift with composure.

I have 18 days to practice. I dearly want to perform. What she was telling me is: it’s not about me: it’s about the audience and giving them a musical and emotional gift.

I had a sweet young mother over for lunch today. As I was describing my family, I said that Sam, our youngest was nearly 27. Just Sunday I heard Jim mention David: “Our 27-year-old son, David, died of leukemia.” And in a few weeks, our youngest will be that age. And in 11 months, David's younger siblings will both be older that David will ever become in this life.

Unfinished Business

Two weeks ago, Jim’s mom and I spent the day at Temple Square in Salt Lake City. In the Joseph Smith Memorial Building, originally the luxurious Hotel Utah, (built in 1911), we saw 'The Craftsman', a film about Danny Sorensen. A little older than me, Danny has loved flying all his life, is an accomplished show pilot, and has hand-built two planes. The opening shot of the nose of Danny’s bright red plane, “Unfinished Business,” brought sudden and unexpected tears: David has sixty years of unfinished business.

And then, one of Danny's and Alynn's daughters developed a brain tumor at age four.

I admire the faith, courage, and wisdom of the Sorensens. And the aeronautical cinematography is stunning on the big screen. (I love airshows!)

In my Compassionate Friends group (a support group for parents and siblings who have lost a child or sibling to death), one mother described how her deceased son energizes her to live life more fully and do significant, hard things: "for Nick". His unfinished business has become her inspiration.

What’s your inspiration this week?

Genealogy Heaven

Early last Tuesday morning, I joined about 40 other passengers to board a Southwest plane to Milwaukee. We each got an entire row to spread out in. Almost as good as first class!

In order to save the $400 premium for travelling on President’s Day weekend, I chose 11 hours of travel time to get from Boston to Salt Lake City, via Milwaukee and Los Angeles (yeah, California). Have Kindle, will travel! I remained on the same airplane all day and had a unique experience in Milwaukee. After refilling my water bottle in the terminal, the gate agent waved me through to re-board the plane before the waiting new passengers. I walked down the jetway alone and directly into my chosen seat: no line, no waiting. What a feeling of power and privilege, to board before anyone else, without showing a boarding pass. (I’m easily amused.)

That afternoon I rented a car and drove to see Savannah and dear little Eliza, who are visiting Utah from L.A. (I practically flew over their apartment building, but they weren’t there.) The eagles were gathering (Luke 17:37) for a double baby blessing for Eliza and her month-younger cousin, Leo.

Over the next two days, I spent over eight hours at the huge Family History Library (FHL) on Temple Square.

I had no idea what to expect: over the last nine years, millions of records have been digitized and are available, free of charge, from home through FamilySearch.org. What could the FHL have to offer?

What I found bowled me over: several floors, each with a huge corps of experienced volunteer genealogists, eager to guide me to the next level of research.

A seasoned genealogist helped me find an image of my great-grandfather’s handwritten baptismal record, dated October 27, 1860, from Poznan, Prussia, now part of Poland. There are records going back to 1558.

Another volunteer, experienced in Lithuanian and Polish research, introduced me to research tools for Polish locales. Amandus Gustav Bruesch and his parents, Gottlieb and Justine, spoke German, but his birthplace, Poznan, is now a Polish province, 100 miles from the current German border. I’ve daydreamed about visiting the Bruesch homeland: turns out I’ll have to travel to the middle of Poland.

With family activities, I won’t be able to return to the FHL this trip, but I’ll be back. Imagine an entire building of seasoned genealogists, united in their desire is to share their expertise.

Georgette Dione Boucher, 1921 - 2018

Around 3 a.m. on Thursday, January 25, Georgette Dione Boucher died at age 96. I never met ‘Georgie’, but my friend, Diane, was her next-door neighbor and took care of her for many years. Diane loves to say that she was on her trike the first time she met Georgie, when the Bouchers moved in. It was a close-knit neighborhood, where Georgie and Diane’s parents and the other adults kept an eye out for all the children as they played outside with a freedom that's a rarity today.

Georgie never had children and her husband died many years ago. Diane took care of her like a daughter. All of Georgie’s needs: the headaches of house and yard maintenance, the complications of home health care, the intricacies of financial planning and organization, fell on Diane, who willingly served her. Diane did more for Georgie than many daughters ever need do for their own mothers.

After Georgie died, I met Diane at the Keefe Funeral Home to help her make arrangements. Unfortunately, I know about funeral arrangements. I planned the Funeral Mass and my friend, Amy, and I interviewed Diane and one of Georgie’s Canadian nieces for the obituary. I organized a women’s a cappella quintet to sing the closing hymn at the Mass at St. Agnes Church in Arlington Center

For five days I worked on the myriad of details that seem to pop up between the death and the funeral. I was grateful for the chance to help my friend, but it was exhausting. I looked forward to January 31, when the funeral would be over and I could relax.

What I didn’t anticipate was the emotional reaction when it was all over. The funeral was on Wednesday, January 31. On Friday, I saw my friend, Jen, at a craft store. Jen asked me how it went. As I told her about my week, I was amazed, incredulous that the funeral had only been 50 hours previous. It felt like a month ago. More accurately, it felt like it had taken a month out of my life.

I’d gladly volunteer for the job in an instant; I'm grateful I had the expertise and time to help my friend.

The emotional exhaustion was due to the personal subtext: my mother's, my father's, and David’s deaths, funerals and burials, the grief for all of these losses, a grief I still feel, and most poignantly for David, who died so young.

As I move onward in my life, I now experience what I couldn’t imagine at all: what it’s like to have a son who’s been dead for nearly 30 months. There’s a symmetry in that: he would have been 30 in October, and now it’s been 30 months. A month dead for each year alive.

I suppose it will always be a strange thing. How can my son’s body, once strong, vibrant, and alive, now be lying in the cold frozen ground of New England?

Powerful Music

I heard Shankar Vedantam's Hidden Brain podcast last week, "Fresh Starts". In 2006, Derek Amato struck his head after diving into the shallow end of a swimming pool and woke up to discover that he could compose music at the piano. An acquired savant. He can’t pick out “Twinkle, Twinkle”, but he can spontaneously create intricate pieces and play them fluidly.

I don’t watch television, so maybe I’m the last person in America to hear about Derek. He’s teamed up with a jazz singer, Mandy Harvey, who totally lost her hearing in college. Derek wrote a song for her, "The Script".

As I listened to Derek play on the "Fresh Starts" podcast, I remembered a George Winston album: Winter (1980). Winston was creating beautiful albums at the same time Jim and I were creating of our marriage and family. I listened to that tape countless times in the 80s, in southern Indiana and New Hampshire. We chose to have no television, so radio and tapes were my window on the world.

I love classical music: Bach, Mozart, Brahms. But there is something in George Winston and Derek Amato that touches me deeply as well.

Snow covered the ground this morning, brilliant white and light as feathers. Massachusetts is in a George Winston mood.

Freezing Rain

I was first aware of the freezing rain on the top step of my kitchen porch. Balancing a black plastic bag of clothes to donate to Goodwill on top of a box bound for the same destination, I sensed the sole of my shoe slide, just a quarter inch, enough to wish I had a free hand to grab the bannister. Leaning on my elbow, I was able to balance the load and inch my way down to the sidewalk.

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen freezing rain. More often, in winter, it either snows, sleets, or just straight-out rains.

A layer of ice coated my blue car. As I scraped the windshield, it broke into large, ragged pieces the size of dessert-plates, like impossibly thin, delicate sugar candy.

On Mass. Ave. I had a sweet David moment. A pedestrian with a large blue umbrella crossed the street ahead of me. I stopped, as is Commonwealth law, and waited until he arrived safely at the opposite curb. I could hear David telling me, disparagingly, that the law said you had to stop until the walker’s foot touched the opposite curb. “I guess that’s in case he decides to turn around and go back across.”

As part of his end-of-year accounting, Jim wrote to each of our kids, reporting the balance in their ‘HeirBanks’, where we keep track of their loans and debts. His email to me was brief:
            "I’m missing David..."

The Little Green Guestroom

I woke up this morning in the small guest room in Riverdale (the Bronx). at Peter's and Xiomara's. The last time I slept in that room was March 18, 2014. How do I know with such certainty, without consulting a calendar? Because the following morning I was lying in bed, waking up luxuriously slowly, when my cell phone rang. It was David, calling from Korea, where his Army unit was stationed. Only, he wasn’t on base; he was in St. Mary’s Hospital in Seoul, where he had just been diagnosed with leukemia.

I must have driven home that day; but I don’t remember it. A week later we picked him up at Dulles Airport and drove to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, which I dubbed WReNMiMiC. (I wanted an acronym and Matt found one: a real word, wrenmimic, that fit perfectly.)

My thoughts last night weren’t morbid; there was just an awareness of the significance of the moment. I also had in mind an old friend of mine, who is suffering from a rare and very aggressive cancer. I had just read the latest CaringBridge post from her daughter. The highlight of the post was that she'd taken a shower after days of excruciating pain.

My friend Kimberly, whose husband died of pancreatic cancer much too young, remarked once that cancer steals a person’s dignity. That’s true. The autonomy we so cherish, or would cherish if we didn’t take it for granted, evaporates. We lose the ability to get dressed and go out to the grocery store, watch a movie without pain, enjoy the pleasure of taking a shower independently, cook a meal, and eat raw fish at a sushi restaurant (if you like that sort of thing. I do.).

The memories last night haven’t sent me down into the abyss of grief. I’m feeling quite calm.  Life goes on: there are meals to cook, sushi to eat, grandchildren to play with.

Although I returned to my near-monthly routine of driving down to New Jersey and New York City about a year ago, I hadn’t sleep in the guest room again until last night. Peter and Xiomara have been trying to close on an apartment for over a year, and had filled the little green room with furniture and appliances destined for the new apartment in North Riverdale. On earlier trips, I've slept on their couch.

But yesterday, the bed had returned to a horizontal position, with a lovely comforter on top. The extra furniture and appliances are in the new apartment, which is being painted.

I was worried about sleeping in that little room, haunted by the ghosts of the past, but I've developed a little stratagem. After lights out,  I count by threes. I’ve always had some dyscalculia, so its a challenge to  get past 39. The concept is to focus on the task of counting and let other thoughts and worries drift through my relaxed mind. I start playing with the numbers, noticing when familiar numbers come up: 54, 60, 81 and checking that the digits always add up to a multiple of three. I know, it’s elementary stuff, but it works. The concept is to keep enough focus to let go of agitation and let my mind drift in and out of consciousness. I don’t know if this will work long-term, but right now it’s a useful tool in my mental toolbox.

Carol of Joy Mixed with Sorrow

Christmas snuck up on me this year. The distraction started with the trip to Montana for Duane’s funeral, followed by two and a half weeks in Southern California, enjoying Thanksgiving with family, the birth of Eliza Joy Johnston 2 days later, and finally Oma duty, cooking for the new parents and cradling Eliza.

After Thanksgiving the holiday lights started appearing in Maggie’s California neighborhood. I found it unsettling to see Christmas lights and decorations with temperatures in the 70s.

Tonight, on my way home from my weekly temple visit, I stopped to enjoy some houses in Lexington.

  The first is my second favorite house in the world. From each window shines a candle. The first-floor windows are nearly room-length and I've always fantasized being able to walk through one into a front room.

The little girl in me seeks out the multi-colored lights of my childhood in Pennsylvania. They aren’t common in Lexington; home owners (including myself) tend to the New England tradition of white candles in each window or a spotlight on the wreath on the front door.

2017 started out as the year David wasn’t going to turn 30. On Sunday the choir  sang “Carol of Joy” by Eileen Berry. Every time I rehearsed it, I wept, and the performance was no different. Although the carol's ultimate message is profoundly hopeful, pointing to the redemption of the fallen world and the deep joy of the Savior’s birth, the lyrics' depiction of dry, withered leaves, cold, barren hillside, and death holding the lonely, fallen world fast, fills me with sorrow.

Yes, Christmas is a time of joy and my experience with death deepens my hope. But it's intermingled with  pain at the closing of the second full year since David died.

         On a brighter note, we are expecting Peter, Xiomara, and our other two grandchildren, Andrew and Victoria, for the Christmas weekend. They'll bring their stockings to hang over our fireplace mantel. I've got all the ingredients for homemade egg nog and my mom's traditional Christmas lasagna (She hated roasting turkeys. Miss you, Mom!).

Candle Lighting and New Life

For The Compassionate Friends’ Worldwide Candle Lighting, we lit our double-wick maple butter candle along with the first and second candle of Advent. We paused a few minutes to remember David during our Advent supper. Over half of our guests were kids, some too young to remember David at all, the rest having barely known him. Of course, these children don’t know any of our grown children: to them we are grey-haired denizens of a two-person nest. It was a bittersweet moment, realizing that David will make no more memories and that no one new will get to know him: his thoughtful gifts, his dedication to hard work, his funny laugh.

David with Santa Claus at the Arlington Ward 2009

After my trip to Montana to attend my cousin Duane Hazen’s funeral, I flew to southern California to spend Thanksgiving with my sister, her husband, and some of our kids. Two days later, Eliza Joy Johnston was born to Sam and Savannah (Savam!). As a full-time homemaker, I got to spend the next ten days with them. I love the fresh, soft-as-satin skin, the huge eyes, the arch-less feet and tiny toes. Sunday morning Savam went to church while I minded Eliza; Monday they took a lunch date. It was hard to leave.

While staying with my sister, we took several one and two-hour walks along the “Fullerton Loop” trail near her home. Weather in the 70s, sunny and bright. Four days after I returned to Lexington, it snowed several inches, a sudden shock to my system. But on Monday the sun shone into my office window, intensified by the reflective snow in the yard.

Cambridge, Boston, and Ashford, Connecticut

This week Annie’s mother-in-law, Jennifer, and her friend, Joanna, visited. They live in Tianjin, China, the river port of Beijing. I picked them up at the airport on Friday and we spent Saturday together. The highlight of the day was a Boston Duck Tour, narrated by “The Codfather”, very informative and funny.

Made me fall in love with Boston all over again. And quite a contrast to the last time Jim and I were in Harvard Square, two days after Corey Johnson died. We saw Columbus, a movie set in Columbus, Indiana, where we spent four formative years in our early marriage. After the movie, I had no desire to wander: I felt a sad nostalgia as well as grief over Corey's death (and by extension, David's) and just wanted to be home. I felt like I’d never want to be part of the vibrant street life again. But the feeling didn't last.

Sunday morning, I drove Jennifer and Joanna to Ashford, CT. Connecticut has this in common with New Jersey: many people only know the cities and highways, but there are rolling, forested hills and meadows, farmhouses and fields. I tried to see the drive through Jennifer’s and Joanna’s eyes and wanted them to see everything. We had a short English lesson on the difference between a house and a building. Then Jennifer wanted to know what a ‘home’ is. How would you explain that?