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.

The Zaandam

As I gazed down at the St. Lawrence River from the Greyhound bus, I saw a white and blue cruise ship moving slowly away from us. Painted on the stern, I could just make out the name: Zaandam. For the first time in my life, I longed to be on a cruise ship.

In 1989, my mom bought a neat one-bedroom condo on a beach in St. Croix while my dad was scuba diving from a boat offshore. She later bought the unit above and my parents frequently invited their children and relatives to share their piece of the Virgin Islands. When Sam was one and R’el ten, they invited our whole family. The kids and I spent three weeks in paradise; Jim joined us for the final week. Their backyard was a beach and reef. We snorkeled and had hermit crab races, visited Whim Plantation and enjoyed freshly-fried johnnycakes.

After that trip, I went down every February. I loved mile-long swims along the shore, scuba diving among the coral reefs, and having dinner with my parents. A mile from the condo was Frederiksted and the pier where the cruise ships docked. We would see the tourists scurry off the boat for their shore time. Spending 17 hours each day on a boring ship for just a few hours on shore had no appeal. I was content with visiting the same reefs (and there were several) and loved staying on the same island all week.

An Alaska cruise appealed to me. My dad and grandpa, discerning world-travelers, went on one and thoroughly enjoyed it. About eight years ago Jim and I did the same. The glaciers were magnificent, Anchorage's dusk at 11 p.m. unworldly.

When Jim’s mom suggested a New England and Canada cruise for all her children and spouses, I looked forward to it: I’d never been to Nova Scotia and love Quebec City. The cruise ship would simply be the vessel to get me there: easier than driving. We boarded in Boston and headed north to Maine and eastern Canada: Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and Quebec. After a day in Montreal, Jim and I would return home by bus though Vermont and New Hampshire.

But as we rode over the Cartier Bridge in Montreal, I found myself wistfully watching the Zaandam as it glided back towards Quebec City, with a fresh load of passengers. It had been our home for seven days. Every evening at 5:15 p.m. Robert, our head waiter, had cheerfully greeted us and taken our orders; there was a different menu each night. George, the wine steward, gave up asking for our wine order and quietly removed the long-stemmed glasses the staff had set at our places. Jim and I soaked up the showtunes and sing-alongs with Jamm the piano man: he knows many hundreds of songs. We listened to a jazz quartet from Greece. I laughed at the ventriloquist, Mike Robinson, and was convinced there were two distinct personalities on stage, even though Terence arrived and left the stage in a suitcase. (My favorite joke from Mike Robinson (there are so many to choose from): Gaming, that’s the preferred term for gambling. Gambling suggests you might win.)

I grew attached to the ship in a way I never had to a hotel. Of course, I’ve never stayed in a first-rate hotel for a week: I usually choose a hotel for low price. The ship had rooms to explore. It took me days to go directly and confidently to the dining room, and a few more to understand where the Mix piano bar was. To the end, I was still guessing how to find the Hudson Room and the main stage and needing to check with the ‘you are here’ map to confirm which staircase I was at. Every evening after dinner, we'd find a creature folded from a large towel with googly eyes in our stateroom. One evening it was a monkey hanging from a skirt hanger; another it was a dear little mouse on our couch.

What was that wistful feeling? The feeling an only child might have on acquiring a younger sibling. I thought the Zaandam was mine. Who knew that two hours after I locked my stateroom and rolled my purple carry-on to the gangway there would be 1400 people waiting to board and take our place?

Pioneer Trek

Jim and I went on a Pioneer Trek with about 70 of the youth of our church. It was a reenactment of journeys nearly three thousand Latter-day Saints took across Iowa, Nebraska, and Wyoming to the Salt Lake Valley, from the years 1856 to 1860. They packed their belongings in a handcart and walked over a thousand miles. Our teenagers were organized into 7 ‘families,’ each with adult leaders as Ma and Pa. Over three days we trekked 15 miles through the woods of New Hampshire: not quite the Great Plains, but challenging.

I often walk 4-5 miles in a day, so I was actually disappointed that it was only 15 miles total: I had misunderstood it to be 15 miles a day. I did worry about sleeping on the ground: it’s been years. But we bought backpacking air mattresses, which are very lightweight and inflate in 15 breaths.

It was a fun date for Jim and me. As the company's grandma, I wasn't responsible for anything. Except for a slight rain Saturday morning, the weather was great and the rail-trail easy to follow.

Back home on Sunday, two of the teenagers reported to our congregation. One had been quite skeptical of the plan. He named it ‘cruel inefficiency’ to pull a loaded oaken handcart over dirt and rocky trails for three days. But in the end he was glad he’d done it.

For both of them, and for me, it heightened our appreciation of our pioneers. Everyone who has gone before is a pioneer, not only my great-grandfather James Farrell, who walked to western Nebraska and built a sod house, or my great-grandparents Bruesch, who came as children to Wisconsin from Prussia and homesteaded a wheat farm in Highwood, Montana, but my grandparents and my parents. Every generation has its own challenges and forges the way for the rising generation.

I’m grateful to have shared the trek experience with Jim and new-found friends. I’m grateful to live in beautiful New England. And I’m grateful for my parents, grandparents, and all pioneers, for the sacrifices they made to give me a better life.

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.