what it takes (i guess)

not the death of two (younger) siblings;
the first a 23 year old sister struck by a car on her nightly run,
the second a brother in his 50s,
who came home from work
to take a nap on the couch
and lose his battle with lung cancer,
leaving his wife with three growing sons and no means to pay the bills,
or the death of both parents:
the sudden diagnosis and the rapid way it took her mother,
the lengthy decline of her father who held on to the bitter end,
keeping his grandchildren awake in fits of giggles with his loud, middle-of-the-night singing
and other equally amusing side effects of senility.
nor 30-odd years of struggling to pay the bills,
while feeding and clothing and raising six (SIX!) daughters
on the income of an exhausted, overworked husband.

no, no
it was my sister,
23 and fickle,
breaking up with her Catholic boyfriend of four years without a care in the world
to drive across the country with a 20 year old redhead
some punk kid she met in a bar
that at last drove my stoic martyr -- i mean mother -- to tears
that she was not too ashamed to silently bury into her pillow
and then deny afterwards.

Love and Some Verses

   My last remaining grandparent- my father's mother- died Friday night. She was in the hospital for a week beforehand, drifting in and out of consciousness, shifting restlessly, occasionally crying out to ask where her husband was- my grandfather, who died two weeks before my ninth birthday-  and when he was going to arrive. I spent that final week with her exclusively through secondhand accounts, trying to limit my intake of updates, forcing out the impulse to live vicariously through my father, the oldest of her six children, who wandered through the house, quiet and misty-eyed, physically present, but mentally a million other places. I found myself wondering every time he entered a room: Where is he now? Is he three, and screaming, demanding her attention? Is he eleven, ice skating in the backyard, waiting for a cup of hot chocolate? Maybe he's sixteen and sliding out from underneath the body of a car, begrudgingly fulfilling her request that he clean himself up before dinner. Hoping he wasn't in the hospital with her, I silently begged his memory to stretch out beyond the immediate, to lull him back to the comfort of her now-absent maternity.
   I couldn't stomach the wake. I walked into the funeral home silently repeating my mantra of detachment and distance from reality. I looked through the pictures, noticing I wasn't in any. I shrugged it off, rolled my eyes at the exclusion; it meant nothing. Pulling my jacket closed, I entered the room full of family members. I noticed my father at the casket, and felt my throat begin to close. I made eye contact with a cousin, felt my eyes begin to fill and gasped "I just need...I'll..." and stumbled backwards out the door where I pressed myself against the wall and felt my composure crumble. I raced to the car and fell apart.
   The funeral was easier. I concentrated on keeping my composure, and managed to, aside from a few stray tears. Eagle's Wings gets me every time, you guys! I can't help myself.
   It was the first time I'd been to church in over two years. I examined the pews and the altar with a sense of nostalgia, infused with a mild amusement. Mass seemed kitsch in a way I had never noticed before.
   Religion is too big. My mind has no room for it. I have a distinct aversion to anything that could swallow me whole like that.
   My grandmother was lovely and sweet. I won't say a single prayer, but I'll keep her wrapped up tight in my heart forever. That's all I've got. It's the best I can do.

Love, Love, Love

   My niece is 18 months old. And she is perfection.
   Watching her with my mother is captivating. In The Poisonwood Bible (by Barbara Kingsolver,I recommend it!) there's a passage that struck me so much I reread it over and over again, unable to turn the page. Leah, the protagonist, is watching her mother with her baby sister and says: "..I could see the two of them in the mirror. Mother singing soft questions and kissing her answers into the tiny, outstretched palms. Adah and I were nine then, too old to be jealous of a baby, but still I had to wonder if she had ever loved me that much."
   Babies are magical. The moments I spend with her are pure bliss.
   We lie cuddling on my sister's bed, watching The Lion King before she goes to sleep. This is one of the rare moments she is still and willing to be (mostly) quiet; She is so like my sister: constantly in motion and never, ever silent. I play with her soft, curly hair and kiss her head. "You'll always be my little baby girl," I whisper in her ear.
   These moments fill up my entire heart. Infants and toddlers redefine your capacity to love, stretch out your heart to limits you never imagined it could reach, and then double it. It's unlike any relationship with a grown person; you want to memorize every inch, every giggle, every syllable, and ingrain it all into your mind. But you lose so much of it. I'm heartbroken for every detail I've already forgotten, and every detail I will soon forget. How could I bear to part with the vividness of the present, from the mischievous giggle right before she pours her cereal on the floor to the loud, repetitive song she maintains through entire car rides, the nonsensical chorus of DOPPA DOPPA DOPPA DOPPA she never gets sick of belting out? My current favorite is the way she repeats the word wow every time I say it; so incredulously, so sincerely: WOOOWW! She is genuinely thrilled by the tiniest, most insignificant things.
   Sometimes things are so goddamn beautiful it breaks my heart a little bit.

Keep the Car Running

  I yearn for the lost maternity. My mother's mother used to appear nightly the moment I drifted from consciousness, to remind me who I am. She's gone. Or have I just lost sight of her? I've lost sight of myself. I'm beside myself. I'm outside myself. I'm out of my mind. With grief. It's mind-blowing how easily I'm blindsided by the loss of you.

   My violently atheist beliefs deteriorate under the pressure of your ghost. I know you're out there. I know you're waiting and watching and loving us still. I can't bear to believe anything else. And where would you go? You'd stick around just to spite us; just to prove me wrong. I still can't wrap my head around the idea that you didn't conquer death; it seemed so inevitable that you would bulldoze it, through the sheer strength of your wicked, awe-inspiring will. I'll never feel complete without you.

   My mother promised me when I was little: "At my funeral, I'll be there. I'll tickle your arms and pull on your hair and kiss your nose." I knew she meant it but at the same time, I knew it wasn't true. This was the first time I was ever faced with the idea that truth might be relative. 

   I thought things were absolute then: truth, love, trust, wrong, right. I was well into childhood before I realized they are concepts that are all aqueous. And amorphous. I still grapple with relativity. And definitions.

  I'm rambling now, and none of this is cohesive. I'm sorry darlings. Perhaps I'll be more focused tomorrow.


   PS: WTF Blogger? What is this baby sized font? I keep setting it to "normal" and it's all "I do what I want. And I want this blog post to be all little letters!"

Little Trip to Heaven

   Stumbling in the house at 1:30am, I lean against the door frame for support as I remove my shoes. Quietly; I can't wake the sleeping sisters or the baby.
   Inhaling, the scent of the woodwork captivates me. It smells like my grandparents. 
   I pause here, alone, pressing against the wall with first my hips, then shoulders, then lastly my face; breathing in deeply the molecules that used to perfume the entire house, that scent I took completely for granted for seventeen years.
   I linger too long, trying to preserve the moment as long as possible. Memories come crashing down through my head, too quickly to separate or define.
   I miss you in my dreams. A couple times a month isn't enough. I need you more than that. I'll take the tearful, often hysterical, waking moments if it means I get to be with you again.

Shelter

   My Mom's parents died seven weeks and six days apart, my grandmother in early October and my grandfather late in November.
   "It's the end of an era," my uncles mumbled desolately, stumbling through the house after the second funeral. People filed through rooms embracing each other and clinging a little too long, feeling deeply the  endless loss of our matriarch and patriarch.
   I focused my energy on avoiding tears and thinking about something else, anything else.  There is nothing else.  Autumn was ending and I knew I couldn't handle such all-consuming grief in the winter.  Losing the leaves and the flowers and the taste of life in the air is hard enough every year.  To add to that, especially to add something of this magnitude... unbearable.  I'll grieve in the spring, when I can handle it.  I can't handle it now.  If I process any of this, I'll fall apart and I'll never be able to put myself back together again.  They deserve my strength.  I can't dissolve into desolation.  Any breaking down would immediately result in my being inconsolable.  So I daydreamed about the future, getting married and remembering them from a distance.  My children will grow up with stories of these two, these gorgeous forces of nature I've had the blessing to grow up with.  Will this ever go away, this gaping hole in my heart, in my life?  Will anything ever feel okay again?
   I have never been particularly close to my cousin Burning Man but I passed time during wakes and postfuneral gatherings on couches next to him, struggling to stay dry-eyed. While everyone else congregated in the centers of rooms for comfort, we isolated ourselves in the outskirts, shying away from the intimacy of our unapologetically Irish Catholic family, finding silent solidarity in our shared solitude.
   Nearing the close of the weekend, our parents sent us to a local grocery store to return the cans and bottles that had been piling up for days. Perhaps I should pause here to explain, for those of you who aren't Irish; we celebrate the lives of those we lose very traditionally.  We leave work, school and responsibility for as long as possible, retreating back to our roots to cry and reminisce and revel in the memories.  We repeat the same stories, embellishing a bit more each time, until we make legends of those we are lamentably without.  And we drink.  We drink a lot.  
   We agreed to go willingly, finding the idea of fighting the harsh, inexorable cold (he still in his stiff gray suit and I in the inappropriately short black dress I had worn guiltlessly, a tribute to Rita's advice;    "If you've got it, flaunt it.") so much easier than enduring the love, warmth, support and security of our heartbroken family.
   Eager to escape, we loaded the car and drove away.  The drive was largely a continuation of the silent rapport we'd developed as a sort of a break from the tragedy we were immersed in.  Occasionally, we spoke softly, dispassionately about music and potential plans for college.
   Getting out of the car in the parking lot, the night was numbingly cold.  "This is colder than her fucking pool." I gasped, painfully, under my breath to myself.  Out of the corner of my eye I saw him smirk, though I wasn't sure if he had heard me or was adrift in his own thoughts.
   We pulled carts from a nearby stand and loaded them with bottles and cans, overflowing them and still not having enough room.  We struggled to push them through the parking lot, fighting the heartless wind.  Halfway through the trip, shaking from the cold, we stopped abruptly and looked at each other.   Brimming with repressed emotions, we threw our heads back and laughed, loudly, manically, hysterically.  Hypothermic, miserable, terrified, we laughed in anguish at the absurdity of the situation, of ourselves.  We confronted the metaphor of ourselves as the carts and the overwhelmingly abundant alcoholic litter as the tormenting grief and laughed at it.  Hard.
   We laughed frenziedly during our multiple trips back and forth from the car to the bottle returns and to the cashier as we handed in slips for $20.00 worth of $0.05 cans and bottles.  Customers stepped away to avoid us, nervous about our hysteria.  We laughed until our eyes formed tears, which slipped out the sides of our eyes and down our faces, leaving icy trails behind them.  We clutched each other, falling over, unable to suppress our lunacy and not interested in trying to.  Not bothering to even wipe away the tears, we staggered back to the car and got inside.
   We stayed in the parking lot for several minutes until we regained control of ourselves.  The drive back was rife with bouts of laughter, both of us beginning again any time we made the mistake of looking at each other.
    Arriving back at the house, we discovered our family exactly as we had left them; drunk, distraught, delirious. Too-loudly retelling stories with tears and laughter in the same breath.
   And I finally understood.

Tangled up in Blue

   I've been swimming this year.  It started because I accepted an invitation to the pool from my Lithuanian friend and I've always liked swimming.  So I went.  I had no idea I would keep going, or what I would find in the water.  (I'm more likely to search for meaning in books or music.  I certainly wasn't looking for anything in a swimming pool.)
   I found Rita.  My grandmother, who died my senior year of high school.
  Death was no stranger to me and hers wasn't entirely a surprise.  She lost a short battle with a cruel disease.  But leukemia didn't just take Rita from me.  It took my heart.
   She was the most wonderful, wicked woman I have ever met.  Strength incarnate.  She lived to eighty seven and every year she cut her own Christmas tree, hauled it into the house and decorated it.  She always got the most pathetic looking tree.  That just made it better, somehow.
   And every summer she swam.
   Rita's pool was above ground and four feet deep.  It was secluded in her forest-y backyard completely surrounded by trees, which guaranteed it remain ice cold into August.  While we gasped and shivered, squealing and giggling as we dipped in our toes, Rita was in the water every day.
   Tonight the water is particularly cold, and I am taken back to those summers.  It takes my breath away, literally.  I make my way to the last empty lane, each step accompanied by a sharp intake of air, frequently emitting short squeals to express my discomfort.
   I submerge myself entirely under water and start the breast stroke.  Strong arms and legs and cupping the water, technique she stressed as I floundered in her cold little pool summer after summer after summer.  Careful, deliberate strokes.
   I frequently find myself under water smiling.
   It's so rare to think of her and smile.  Focusing on her for any significant period of time unfailingly results in tears.
   I reach through the clear, icy laps, while my head glues patches to the bottom of her pool lining.  There were so many holes.  It would have been more practical to buy a new liner.  She told everyone for months afterward how my hair shone in the sunlight, streaming out behind me as I struggled on the bottom of the pool.  I felt a twinge of pride every time I overheard her tell the story, and touched at the affection in her voice. It was rare to hear such softness from a woman so fierce.
   And I am twirling in her kitchen with its Fred Flinstone floors, showing her my dress, like I did every Sunday.  I'm enveloped in her strong, thin arms as she reaches around to spank me.
   That's Rita; no display of affection would be acceptable without just a hint of sass.
   Memories linger as I dry my hair in the locker room and I find myself stifling tears.  I force them away and focus on something else.
   But the closeness to her stays.  And tomorrow night, I'll be under water smiling at her again.
   Sometimes we find healing in the most unexpected places.