Today, technically, is the one-year anniversary of my dad's death. Despite today being the anniversary, yesterday for me was the day of remembrance. My dad died at 1am on the 12th, which, in my night owl's mind translates as the 11th.
Yesterday at the youth centre, I was sweeping sand, alone in the centre with my boss, my friend, Marie, and I began talking of fried okra, shopping at Willow, and being seemingly incapable of appeasing an automatic car wash. The 11th and 12th of last August are encoded in my brain in ways unexpected--like a movie I've seen a hundred times, or the keys to a piano. They exist in infinite space and have washed me in recollections for the past thirty-six hours.
This morning, Kwok woke me at 6am for our new routine of early morning yoga practice. Today, I went back to sleep--no yoga, too much dissertation work ahead for the day... but I didn't go back to sleep without thinking about the washing machine, hearing it when I awoke at 6 or so this same morning a year ago--the sound to me that signaled death, clean and finished.
Writing this, I keep rubbing my eyes, as if any moment they will betray me--blur the screen and the keys. Kwok is behind me on his own computer and I feel tense, as if having him, the dogs, any breathing being in the room with me at this moment is intrusive.
I've moved into the other room now. Elu is on the couch with me, but it somehow feels more tolerable. I'm playing Joe Purdy's "The City" on repeat. I hardly ever play music when I write anymore. Sometime after college, my mind became more "adult." Organized chaos became less acceptable and more distracting. Now it seems I am disallowing myself from fully engaging with the reality of the one-year mark--as if one year means the period of grief is over.
Today, I was reading a YA fiction book on HIV/AIDS for my dissertation (something about disease and children's literature...) and the heroine losses her mother to HIV/AIDS at thirteen. I was amazed how many of this character's thoughts were reflective of my own thoughts of losing my dad, someone with whom I had an awkward relationship at the best of times, at the age of twenty-six. The heroine, Emmy, talks of her marvel that life simply continues--that cars still pass, people still carry on with their lives while yours seemingly stops. I remember standing in line at the grocery store, looking around and thinking, "Not one of you knows that my dad just died. You're handling my food--passing it down to a bag boy who is putting that broccoli that I will eat later into a brown paper bag--but you don't know that my dad just died."
There are images indelibly printed on my mind. Alzheimer's and dementia terrify me possibly even more than plane crashes, and yet, I somehow struggle to think that diseases so powerful could remove these images from me. I see Mary, my friend of years--the one of whom I wrote, "nine years of friendship in our pockets" (see, I can even remember lines from 365-day-old blog posts)--putting pink sponges on sticks, lolly-looking objects, into my dad's mouth, trying to keep his mouth from drying out.
I still see that oval scar... his feet. Last week, as I was typing, working on the fifty-five (insane) grade reports, I realized that the shape of my arm and wrist typing were very similar to his--his which later in his life were ridden with carpal tunnel.
(I've posted last year's blog posts below for reference--things like the oval scar and car wash, etc.)
In 2005, I spent the one-year anniversary of a friend's mother's death in Ukraine with her and her family. The Ukrainians have a traditional feast on the one-year anniversary of a loved one's death. We went to her mother's grave. I never met Svita's mom, but Svita is one of the kindest, most intelligent, hardworking people I have ever met. I speak no Russian, no Ukrainian, but on that day it did not matter. There are times when we can be like dogs--my favorite creature (if the title of my blog didn't give that away)--when we do not need words, when the common language is blood and breath.
In no way have I been lost in the last year without my father--not in the way that Elisabeth was lost without her father--her loss that I said I would trade for her if I could... and I would have. Seeing her break, to lose any faith she may have had left at that time, is a pain that still jolts my heart--sends electric shocks to my system, shocks of love, of our incredible friendship.
My dad's death, if nothing else, serves as a constant reminder of my friendships. It is the writing of this, the thinking of these people... the moment when I grasped Troy, my brother, at the memorial service... and the relief I felt at his touch--that I am brought to my knees (brought to a cliche).
I am debating in my mind how much to reveal of the chronological memory. It is so clear--scarily clear. I suppose it is superfluous to this post though. You only need know of the okra, left from the farmer's market, that I cooked that night for my mom with chilies and olive oil... how I made roasted squash risotto and a roasted green bean dish... how I cried in the bathroom... because I desperately wanted to feed my mom a proper meal, but felt overwhelming guilt and grief, that my dad who had an attachment, an addiction, to food, was a room away, dying. Could he smell the food? Did he want any? I am again reduced to tears.
The one-year anniversary of his death feels a betrayal, because it is still too fresh to be one-year. I have not been demolished by his demise. I have not been defeated, and in many ways, I have been enlivened and freed... and he would be happy for me; he would want me to lose his baggage. Yet, what I often feel like saying, is that while I am amazing, strong, and free, and while our relationship was tumult, it does not translate as any other experience than my own. I am not lost in grief, nor is grief lost on me. I am not guilt-ridden or angst-filled, but I am also not without sadness and some convoluted feelings regarding his death. Simply, I am human... brilliant and complicated.
Yesterday, as I drove my car, I thought of my dad... how he will be forever 53, but he would actually be 55 in December. Again, this YA fiction book echoed the sentiment today--we go on, while the dead are forever the same. My dad only knew me at 26 for eight days, but he was sedated for most of those days... and when my mother told him it was my birthday on the 4th, he didn't know who I was anymore. So really, he last knew me at twenty-five. I am twenty-seven now.
I cannot avoid thinking of the W.S. Merwin poem, "Yesterday," a poem of which I so frequently think as I turn the key in the lock to our little cottage--a poem I think of as I see the green digits of the oven clock through the glass of the door. There is no reason for this; it is just fact.
"Yesterday"
W.S. Merwin
My friend says I was not a good son
you understand
I say yes I understand
he says I did not go
to see my parents very often you know
and I say yes I know
even when I was living in the same city he says
maybe I would go there once
a month or maybe even less
I say oh yes
he says the last time I went to see my father
I say the last time I saw my father
he says the last time I saw my father
he was asking me about my life
how I was making out and he
went into the next room
to get something to give me
oh I say
feeling again the cold
of my father's hand the last time
he says and my father turned
in the doorway and saw me
look at my wristwatch and he
said you know I would like you to stay
and talk with me
oh yes I say
but if you are busy he said
I don't want you to feel that you
have to
just because I'm here
I say nothing
he says my father
said maybe
you have important work you are doing
or maybe you should be seeing
somebody I don't want to keep you
I look out the window
my friend is older than I am
he says and I told my father it was so
and I got up and left him then
you know
though there was nowhere I had to go
and nothing I had to do
"Yesterday" by W.S. Merwin, from Migration. © Copper Canyon Press, 2005.
So, with that, I leave you for tonight--a year on.
Love, love, love.
POSTS FROM LAST AUGUST:
Home Again (post)
August 11, 2010
It is hard to even know what to write, where to begin.
There are small things to share--the one good film on the plane, Please Give, or just the simple fact that for the first time ever, I had no problems on a planned journey between London Heathrow and Traverse City via O'Hare.
Then there are the wordless things... vaguely described by language: my father's breathing, his hollow cheeks, his body that looks like its been through the Holocaust, the oval birthmark on his leg that once seemed so large, but now is shrunken with the rest of him. He is sedated--in a constant sleep, though an occasional cough escapes him. If he's moved by the nurses, he winces.
My mother, Mary and I seem to move about the house in orbit. My mother's energy is nervous, constant--always she must be doing something. I am tired, jetlagged, unable to properly vocalize the pain of these things, as if it would betray my former self, former experiences. Mary is here--nine years of friendship in our pockets--and she moves as she does, quietly, efficiently.
I sat on an old chair, one that belongs with my great-grandmother's sewing table, next to my father last night. I touched his arm, but eventually settled near that oval mark--something that has always been so distinct, so indicitive to me of "father." His feet are oddly pretty--feet that were always cold, a genetic trait he seemingly passed to me. I wonder now if his nose was constantly cold, bumping my mother's cheek the way mine does Kwok.
Petting his leg, tears came down my face and the cat, who had been next to the sewing table, jumped onto the bed. He lays behind me now as I write this. My mom says that the cat has been desperate to be near my father, but she kept shooing him out, because he would step on my dad's chest and cause him visible pain. Last night, the cat, Snuggles (or Mr. Snuggles to some), rubbed my face and eventually sat opposite my dad's legs. He stared at me and purred. Every five minutes or so, he would come to me and rub my face again and then lie back next to my father's legs. Eventually, he stretched his back paw over my father's foot. I smiled and went to get my mother.
This was all I could do last night.
This is probably all I can write now as well. My mother has just gone for a run and is now in the shower next to this room. Her singing has always been a bit of an inconvenience for my ears... so I believe I will leave this here.
Update (post)
August 11, 2010
Mary and I bought groceries in the early part of the afternoon today. I am still jetlagged. Conversations do not seem fluid. I cannot muster energy to put on makeup or do my hair despite knowing that every time I go out into Cadillac, I will see someone I know (Walt Whitmer and Lena Kane today). I bop my left hand into the door repeatedly, searching for the shifter--my instincts now British. We took my mom's car through the car wash... laughing about the "Move Forward," "STOP," and "Back Up" signs displayed through electronic, flashing lights (and the signs' seeming disapproval of me and my ability to move forward, stop and back up). When we arrive home, there is a visible change in my mother--her face, her movements. My dad is growing cold... despite having a fever of 104. We've called the relatives. His parents and sister are on their way.
We are still orbiting--moving in and out of his room. It is hard to reconcile the father I knew with the cancer-ridden body lying in a bed. "Surreal" is the word heard every hour.
We are near the end now. The curtains billow, the wind signing that this has always been the way--birth and death have always been done. This has always been the way; they have always been done.
After my Father's Death (post)
August 13, 2010
There have been so many kind messages. My mother and I have, in fact, been inundated with them. This is a blessing, not a burden.
For weeks, when I'd phone my mother, she would often tell me things she had already told me... or reference something she thought she had told me. I understand this now, although much more mildly as I was not looking after my sick father for all that time. Yesterday, the men from the funeral home came to collect the body. I was on the phone with Kwok, and hung up because of their arrival. Hours later, when I finally spoke to him again, I had entirely forgotten our morning conversation--the things I had told him, the reason I had hung up.
Our day yesterday was a busy blur. When I awoke at 6:30am, I heard the washing machine... and I knew this was unusual--wondered then if it was over, if he had gone. When I saw the dining table, laden with his medications, I knew it was over. The medications had previously been in the bedroom or on the kitchen counter.
I did not want to see him, but when my mother sat crying next to him as the men were preparing to take him away, I went into the bedroom to be with her and saw what she had already said: he looked peaceful, almost joyful. His face was no longer stressed and pained, his body no longer a home of hurt.
My grandparents and aunt and uncle (his parents and sister + husband) came the night before, the night he died. We sat around him, knowing that the time was coming: his fever, his mottled limbs, the changes to his breathing.
I struggle to write this not from tears, but from the seeming inability to escape cliches. Death has no words.
Yesterday morning, I phoned my grandfather at 7am to tell them his son had gone. My grandparents are eighty-two and have aged more in the last year than they had in the previous five. I still try not to cry in front of them, in front of any family. Yet, the moment I phone Jess in the late part of the morning, I breakdown, stand under the back porch crying to her as my family is in the house.
My mother and I stupidly have to go to the bank... and are there for over an hour... setting up a memorial fund that needs to be published with the obituary. The obituary is in the paper today.
I wondered if I would lack hunger through this period, but this has proved a false assumption. My mother and I form a chorus of rumbling stomachs while at the bank. We go to lunch with my family, and Mary who had been with us, helping my mother through all of it... Mary who had put cream on my father's bed sore and consistently sponged his mouth and applied chapstick to his lips. We sit at Lakeside Charlie's, on the patio, enjoying the beautiful day. Someone from high school walks in with his family--someone I didn't like, and I wonder why it is I had to see this person on this day. I avert my eyes, ignore him and there is thankfully no conversation, no acknowledgment.
We then return home and everyone leaves. My grandparents take Mary back to Mount Pleasant and my mom and I head to the funeral home to sign papers, hand over the obituary and photograph. My dad's old bandmate, Kenn Rickman, sobbed when my mother phoned him in the morning. He came the night before I arrived, brought my dad's old, beautiful, purple guitar and played for my father, who remained sedated in bed. He first played "Stairway to Heaven." My mother and Marie (Kenn's wife) sobbed.
Kenn asked if he could see the body one more time--before my father was cremated. While signing papers, Kenn and Marie arrive in their escalade, Kenn in his perfect clothing--having driven from Detroit. My mother, Kenn and Marie go to see my father once more. I oddly have such a sense of calm. I know he is not there, but he is everywhere in our house--just the energy of him still resides there. He is not in the funeral home.
I watch the director. He tears up as my mother cries. I wonder how it is he can do this job if after all these years of working, he still empathizes, sympathizes. I too wonder if there is ever an ethical knot in his gut... To me, it would seem impossible to perform a service (one so expensive) during families' grief.
We return home and I make a smoothie for Kenn and Marie, who both have developed an immense interest in nutrition as well. Kenn, who is sixty, looks no older than forty. I like to shock people by telling them his actual age.
We then have more stupid errands to run... but Kenn and Marie are there with us, and this helps. Eventually, we all descend upon the El Dorado. We tell them about my and Kwok's wedding reception, the lovely winter evening. The waiter is also beyond lovely. A few years ago, Kenn and Marie would not even come to Cadillac. Kenn is black. Marie is white. They had worries that were not unfounded. We talk of these things--"interracial marriages." This is what Kwok and I have too apparently.
My mother's principal also has one...he is white, his wife Latino... and he calls in the evening, after Kenn and Marie have gone. My mother is on the other phone, but I speak with him, tell him that we had just spoken of him. He then says, "You know, we had been married for two years, and we were driving in the car and I gasped. I said, 'Do you know what we are?'" His wife remained puzzled. He then said, "We're one of those interracial couples!" Bless him for never even realizing such a label existed for them before.
Finally, in the evening, my mother can rest. She sits trying to speak with me, her eyes drooping as she says, "No, I want to stay up and talk to you." We go to bed and again, I worry that strange feelings will encroach with darkness. I go to my room and turn on the television. Clean House appears... and I fall asleep to it, waking up in the night to an infomercial and turning the television off.
Again, I wake at 6:30... and my mother also wakes then. She slept in... and I am relieved that she has slept. Finally.
Two hours later, and it still feels like hours hold days. Elisabeth has phoned from Zambia. We have walked Paddington. Emails and messages have been received and loved.
I look at buying my mother new bedding, new lamps. There are many things to do, and it is hard to know which to do... or whether to do anything. I've stopped worrying entirely about my diet for Sardinia... my body is healthy... which trumps skinny in a bikini. Why we spend our time worrying about these things is upsetting in the face of life.
Thank you all for your love. I love you too.
I will try to keep writing here.
0 comments:
Post a Comment