Boats against the current

Yesterday morning, my phone pinged with a text I’ve received on May 15 for the last 16 years.

*hugs*

This is all it ever says, and it is perfect.

—

Last week, I caught up with a friend who’d read my post about the brutality of May. She said, “Your parents died on the same day? I read that over and over, to make sure I was reading it right.”

I cannot ever actually know about my dad, but I believe so. Partly because it makes me feel better, and partly because it’s actually what I think.

My dad disappeared on May 15, 2009. We know he was found the 16th. Nick and I located him at the morgue shortly before officials arrived at my parents’ house to notify us.

Time of death is recorded when an official sees the body.

—

I was bothered by the terminology “the body” until three years ago.

Three years ago, on May 15, I held my mom’s hand, and saw the moment she left her body. She couldn’t speak, and her eyes were open, and I saw her retreat further and further from us, from that ICU room, from, though it sounds woo-woo, this earthly plane. She was somewhere beyond our dimension.

She was hooked to machines, and my brother and I were each holding one of her hands. She was physically anchored. And yet. One instant she was still there, and the next, she was gone.

After my mama died, we closed her eyes, and she kept opening them. We joked that she didn’t want to miss anything. Which would make sense. We hadn’t been together and close for 15 years.

Nick, my brother, and I stayed as long as they allowed us, and in that time, her pain-wracked body shifted back to looking like her. She looked like she was asleep. When time was up, neither my brother nor I wanted to leave her.

How do you leave your little mama all alone for what you know is the very last time?

When I identified her body, it still looked like her, but I couldn’t feel her presence. The day she was cremated, I sprinkled rose petals on her forehead, but it really, really wasn’t her.

It was so clear at that point that what had been her was just a shell. If I were doing it over, I wouldn’t choose to go to the cremation, though it felt important at the time.

Now I believe what’s left behind is immediately just a body.

—

With my dad, it took a long time to get the official death certificate. We got interim certificates, but I was pissed. They had two options. Why couldn’t they just pick one?

I just wanted to know. I didn’t understand that I would never really know.

It wasn’t like on murder shows, where time of death is important, and they narrow it to a few hours. In reality, they just had to rule out foul play for insurance.

But back then, I thought they’d eventually tell us when.

At first, I hoped it was the 15th, so there was no chance we could have found him in time. Then I felt guilty wishing a last day away from him. We waited months for the report.

Finally, when we got it, the final death certificate said May 16.

So officially, his date of death is May 16.

But he didn’t wait. He’d barely survived the month prior. He was determined.

In Bali, I spoke about this with a therapist, a fellow yoga teacher trainee. She’d come out to check on me when I was sobbing in the rice paddy next to the yoga shala, which I did at some point every single day.

That particular day, I was beside myself. And she was a trained professional. She asked questions about my family.

She said a person in my dad’s position would not wait. He didn’t. Absolutely not.

So May 15.

—

Seventeen years ago this weekend, I couldn’t see a way forward out of grief.

Losing a parents is brutal, and suicide adds a level of guilt and anger and I don’t know what-all. Plus, back then, we still lied to some people. Obfuscation makes the weight much worse.

I was six months pregnant, and everything seemed insurmountably heavy. My mother slept all day and stayed up all night smoking Marlboro Reds and watering the lawn. Maude’s mom was afraid she was going to flood the basement.

I couldn’t drink, or take a Xanax and take the edge off.

In Huis Clos, by Jean Paul Sartre, the valet in hell has no eyelids. There is no respite, however brief a blink may be.

I was, by circumstance, so, so relentlessly present. I hated it.

—

Losing my mama three years ago was exponentially more painful.

Betty was my biggest fan. She though I was the best writer, the fittest person, the funniest person she knew. Having someone believe all those things about you feels pretty great.

She loved my kids so much. They’d crawl into her bed for comfort. When India was a baby in a crib and we traveled, Nick, India, and I would have a room, and Jordan and Nana would share. Jordan loved it. He’d say things like, “We wake up and chat, and then we go back to sleep. And then we wake up and chat.”

Betty was always, always there for them. In the early years, they needed her hand to walk. They needed her ability to read to them. They loved being read to.

In later years, she relied on their steadiness. They’d walk with her on errands, India wheeling the wheelchair to farther destinations. If Betty needed it, she’d sit. Otherwise they’d pile groceries into it.

The three of them would still, adorably, try to cram themselves into the red chair to read.

I didn’t anticipate how much this closeness would mean to me. Feeling this relationship ripped from my children still tightens my throat and hurts my heart.

And she and I, in some ways, we were closer than close. Sometimes, I now understand, unhealthily so. But she loved me before I was born. She needed a lot, but so did I.

She saw me and she knew me. More so than I sometimes understood.

In the hospital, I gave her permission to let go, only because not to do so would be cruel. But I desperately, desperately wanted her to stay.

She was me and I was her in so many ways. She was a huge part of my identity, and I was profoundly lost when she left.

In a way my father had never been, she was mine.

—

For the almost 20 years of writing this blog, I’ve been touched by the loving kindness of people who only know me virtually. I’ve become actual, true friends with readers and fellow bloggers, both in-person and virtually, over these nearly two decades.

I have many flaws, but I have spectacular taste in people. And somehow this blog has invited extraordinary people my way. I didn’t expect any of this when I started writing, and these connections continue to be a blessing.

If you know me—and you know me—I am all about connection. Nothing matters more to me than the people you love and who love you.

If I don’t feel it, I don’t care. And if I don’t care, there’s no point. This is why so many facts pass straight through my brain. I have to feel for things to stay.

A nice thing about being friends with fellow introverts is that not seeing each other does not diminish our connection.

My *hugs* friend became a real-life dear friend after I wrote this in 2007. The morning of my dad’s memorial service, he fixed my mom’s AC and drove a carful of our family friends to the church.

Another dear friend, who started as a DC blog community friend, and who I rarely see because of life, not lack of love, showed up early morning at my parents’ house on the day she was moving house with a massive quantity of treats for us to serve at my dad’s memorial reception.

I hoarded her marzipan bars. I was six months pregnant and grieving, and still feel that justified my barely sharing any.

—

In Bali, my fellow students had only just met me. And still. Someone would notice I was crying silently, and walk me outside. Or someone would join me as I sat in the rice paddy and sobbed. Someone always came out to sit with me.

In those weeks after my mama died, I was so deep in grief, really, turned inside-out with it, I hadn’t realized that everyone in the shala could hear me. When I learned this, I was embarrassed, and glad it was the last day.

Mr. Rogers said to look for the helpers, and when I get into a despair cycle about humanity, which I now do on a regular basis, I try to remind myself there’s so much love and kindness, too.

I’ve long been the recipient of a tremendous amount of generosity. I hope I’m able to repay at even a modicum of the kindness I’ve received from so, so many people.

—

And now I’ve lived through another May 15. This one was dramatically better than the last. India stayed home from school, and I spent most of the day with her, doing errands and taking her to a doctor’s appointment.

It was just very…normal.

I know how sneaky and non-linear grief is. Next year could be better, or could be more painful. But May 15 is over for the year, and I’m glad.

Thank you for being here with me.

Hugs.