Duetting: Memoir 36

Duetting: Memoir 36 Robin Botie of Ithaca, New York, photoshops a maze over an old photograph of her daughter, a cancert patient, to illustrate that there was nothing simple or atraightforward after cancer struck home.

Nothing was simple or straightforward ever again after cancer hit home.

“Let’s toast to summer,” said my friends, as we clinked glasses at our first outdoor dinner of 2010. I pictured berry picking, pond swims, barbecues, and all the feasts we would cook up the next three months. In between Marika’s weekly blood draws and my search for a new teaching job, I would allow myself some time off. Marika had secured her job as boating counselor and lifeguard at the Stewart Park Day Camp. She had her apartment and her car. We both had new bathing suits. Finally, after missing the last two summers, our Best Summer Ever was about to begin. But in our lives nothing could be presumed anymore. There was no straightforward movement towards any end. I should have known better than to celebrate.        

Marika’s friend Rachel, hanging out at Limbo before leaving for summer school at Long Island’s Hofstra University, was also anticipating summer. “I just have Anatomy-Physiology to finish up and then I’m done,” she told Marika, chewing a mouthful of Australian cookies.
“Did you just eat the whole box of TimTams?” Marika chided her. With chocolate crumbs dotting her face, Rachel shook her head, licked her lips and grinned, “You should visit me on Long Island this summer.” But Marika was preoccupied inspecting the countless unaccounted-for bruises on her arms and legs. She knew what that meant.

“What is it about cancer and summer?” I asked Laurie, that night, over the landline. “It’s exactly a year after her first relapse, and that was a year after her first diagnosis. Why always summertime?” We quickly resumed our old routine where I relayed to Laurie the medical terms doctors threw at us, so she could breathe meaning into them.
“It’s the same type of leukemia,” she said.
“Laur, they told us they ran out of drugs to treat her with,” I wailed.
“Well, there’s one mega-problem with the second relapse: there are no standard forms of treatment.” I squeezed the phone as Laurie continued. “The only option is to find an experimental drug in Phase Two of its clinical trial, meaning they are ready to try the drug on significant numbers of people—I guess the mice must have lived.”

“So what’s the good news, Laur?” I asked hoping to eliminate the scenes of squirming cancerous lab mice stuck in my mind.
“She might get to keep her hair?” Laurie said, questioning herself. “You get to travel,” she added, more sure of this possibility. The Roc Docs had been consulting with colleagues in Chicago about a drug being used in Japan. They wanted to send us to Chicago, but Laurie went online and discovered clinical trials for the same drug being conducted on Long Island. In order to get a new drug, we would have to show up regularly at a cancer center. We couldn’t simply have a new box of pills mailed to us and just continue with our lives. So we were on the phone making plans to go to North Shore Medical Center in Manhasset, one town over from where I grew up.

“I hate Long Island!” Marika stated. Emphatically. I shushed her, and hunched over the phone.
“Can you come down the day after tomorrow?” Pat Li, our contact nurse at North Shore, asked. The quick responses from the clinical trial people surprised me. Did they sense our desperation to do something—anything—to be rid of cancer? Or did they need us, need more human guinea pigs? We packed half-heartedly as Marika had not yet been accepted into the program. We wouldn’t find out if she qualified until our first appointment. If she did, we would remain on Long Island for three weeks. If not, we would turn around and go home. There were too many questions either way. Like where would we stay if she qualified? And what would we do if she did not? Whether or not her father’s health insurance would cover it, I didn’t dare consider yet.
“Wifey, it’s only seven minutes from my school,” Rachel said joyfully to Marika, “You’re definitely visiting. We’ll have a blast.” Oblivious to Marika’s sentiments about Long Island, Rachel was already making plans.

“I’m not going,” Marika said on the morning of the first appointment for the clinical trials. She had slept at the house to make for an easier early morning departure. It was time to go, and I was anxious about dealing with New York City rush hour traffic, finding the medical center, and maybe being told she didn’t qualify for the trial. “I’m not going,” she said again, banging the refrigerator shut. We had at least a five-hour drive ahead of us and she was already being difficult.
“Mareek, this is our best bet to get you into remission. Our only bet.” I was sweating, and my head was beginning to hurt. “What on earth is the problem?” I was losing it. My voice got higher. Louder. “I’ll meet you in the car in ten minutes,” I said, praying things would not explode into an outright war, or worse, in her disappearing on me. I’d made breakfast and delivered the tray to her room. I’d walked her dog and driven it to family friends who would take care of it. I made Marika’s special tea with lemon and honey in a thermos for the road. So she was supposed to cooperate now.

“I. Don’t. Want. To go.”
“Okay, what do you need to have happen so that we can get moving? Because I’m getting nervous. This is not my idea of fun. Who wants to be driving to Long Island? Of all places! I thought I was done with Long Island years ago.” I was ranting uncontrollably, “And they might just send us home with nothing. And then what? You would miss our last chance for a cure because you don’t like Long Island?”
“I don’t want to talk,” she said, her tone matching mine. “I’ll go, but don’t talk to me. If I hear your voice I’ll jump out of the car.”
I opened my mouth, then caught myself and nodded instead. But she had already thrown herself into the back of the car with earphones plugging her ears, her thermos of Get Gorgeous Tea and a thick invisible wall between us. We drove in silence and got caught in morning rush hour traffic, as I knew we would.

As far back as my mind can remember there was anger every place I called home. I was attracted to it and it followed me everywhere: my childhood ranch house on Long Island, the palace on Ithaca’s West Hill, the homes by the ponds. Anger lurked in the walls and ceilings, in the carpets and closets, in every corner. It seethed in the spaces between the inhabitants. It was inherited; it was contagious. It could boil for months, sometimes seeping through the cracks before erupting completely, violently. My own small blaze was mostly suffocated in passive-aggressive smoldering. I got away with that for most of my life. And when I should have been most angry, my little fire turned to ashes. It disappeared somewhere in the sad miles and years of shuffling my young children back and forth between two simmering households. I watched the anger grow in my kids. My son eventually found it useful for survival in combat. In Marika, it came out in fierce tantrums. By the time cancer crept into our lives, my own anger had mostly dissipated in the raging storms around me. Seeing it in the eyes of the ones I loved, chilled my heart.

“Let me know if you want me to stop at this rest area,” I said, breaking four hours of silence. “I think it’s our last opportunity.”
“Don’t talk to me!” She kicked the back of my seat. For the first time I wondered, if we were to go home that day, if she might possibly be able to ride back with her father and his wife. They were already in the waiting hall of the medical building on Long Island.

Finally, we were stuffed into a small office at the medical center. More chairs were crammed in to accommodate Marika’s father and his wife. And Rachel. We had not planned on including Rachel in this meeting but everyone was grateful to have her there. With her EMT training, she was savvy about medical proceedings, and the one thing we could count on was Rachel’s ability to calm Marika. Besides, somehow she always showed up, whether or not she was invited.

Pat Li and the new doctor introduced tamibarotene, our new drug. The TammyBear-o-Teen pills were parceled out like expensive French truffles. They were to be taken mindfully, at particular times twice a day. Each dose was to be checked off and recorded in three places on various forms. The drug was ten times more potent than the ATRA Marika had taken the first two summers, the ATRA that had given her seizures and landed her in the ICU with respiratory failure. The good news was there would be fewer and less severe side effects with TammyBear-o-Teen. And Marika would not lose her hair.

“It is not a cure,” they reminded us. “A transplant is the only cure, and for that she must be in remission. This drug will get her into remission, and then she can have a stem cell transplant. As soon as possible.” I finally understood the whole plan. We could all see where we were headed. It seemed straightforward. Simple.

 

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Duetting: Memoir 35

Duetting: Memoir 35 Robin Botie of Ithaca, New York, photoshops an old photo of her daughter, Marika Warden, singing at her concert, making beautiful trouble.

My daughter was living like she had only an hour left. Like the lights could go out at any moment. By the beginning of 2010, Marika was back on a chemo maintenance regimen, taking ATRA on alternate weeks, mornings and nights. The weeks on ATRA were riddled with headaches and nausea. She would come home from her apartment and stumble from bed to bathroom and back to bed again. But the weeks she was off she made music, went on road trips, and partied to make up for lost time. Laurie and I muttered that Marika was in denial, that she thought she was immortal. But since trouble was what she was given, she made trouble dance. She made it sing. She made it beautiful.

The day the doctors said Marika could go to Australia, it was like I was thrown into a storm cloud. Trapped in the midst of mighty updrafts, downdrafts, rising temperatures and intense atmospheric instability. Any decent lifeguard would have already cleared the waters and taken control by the time the magnificent but unpredictable cumulonimbus clouds gusted overhead. But I was stymied. The Australia idea was immovable. Like cancer. Once the seeds were planted in Marika’s head and she was okayed by the Roc Docs, there was nothing I could do about it. And since they said she could have two weeks in Australia, it seemed that life—hers, mine, ours—must be somewhat stable. Suddenly I had everyone’s blessings to take a respite from caregiving. So when friends invited me to hike for two weeks in Turkey, I went.  

Marika watched the house, and the cat and the dog, while I wandered in Turkey and stopped at every marketplace to buy earrings for her. At the sacred House of the Virgin Mary in Ephesus, I hung notes with Marika’s name on the prayer walls. At every mosque I whispered good wishes for her. My bags were loaded with gifts, mostly for Marika.

When I came home the house was just as I’d left it. There’d been no parties, no broken or lost furniture. And just as I got back, in mid May, Marika went to Australia for two weeks. For almost a month we were on opposite sides of the earth.

While she was away I kept busy rewriting my resume and applying for teaching jobs. I tried not to worry. I told myself she was seeing the same full moon I watched by the pond. Its reflection, a bright silver light, danced, waxing and waning nightly in the water.

Marika called me once from Australia. We talked briefly. She was having the time of her life without me.

But the best times fly. She returned home, to her apartment. I gave her back the dog. She gave me a postcard and chocolate TimTam cookies. She was in a hurry to see her friends, so we didn’t talk much about our trips. I retreated to memories of my time in Turkey, where songs of prayer were broadcast in the skies over cities and towns. Where I’d climbed a hill overlooking Istanbul, and watched the city wake up to welcome each new morning. The air was filled with echoes of voices that flew from every direction. They chanted and prayed for the good in this world, for the best the day had to offer. For the best times.

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Duetting: Memoir 34

Duetting: Memoir 34 Robin Botie of ithaca, New York, photoshops a party scene to illustrate her daughter's first apartment, and adds her daughter's poem about partying.

When I think of all the times I could have said No to my daughter, I am so grateful that someone reminded me to “pick my battles,” and that my intuition or just plain love got in the way of my saying No. And luckily, Marika’s will was stronger than mine.

She was moving out of the house. I was gnawing at my nails. Visions of dirt, lethal germs, and total abandonment of discipline clouded my appreciation of her excitement. But I knew how much she craved independence. Every single chance to be on her own had been foiled by leukemia. So now that she’d finally found a way to afford leaving home, I had to embrace her dream. The day after we learned there would be no transplant Marika began the move to her friend Julie’s apartment with her new dog and new hope.

She moved in slowly. Cautiously. First she moved her belongings. For weeks she hung out and partied at the apartment but did not stay overnight. Then, when she started to sleep there, she came back to the house for showers and meals. And she always returned home to do laundry. Whenever she arrived at the house, I stopped whatever I was doing. Something in me soared each time she showed up.

The apartment was a typical tumbledown Collegetown rental. As soon as I entered, I remembered my own best times in my first home away from my family. The sink and counters were filled with dirty dishes. Mountains of beer bottles and pizza boxes took up most of the kitchen floor. Doors were always open, heat on high, and lights left on no matter what the season or time of day. Dust. Mold. Mysterious odors and dark, dank narrow halls. A rust-stained bathroom sink with a constant drip and a shower that dared you to try to find a clean inch to put down your bare feet. A huge stained couch built to accommodate masses monopolized the living room. The place was begging for a party. Marika moved in and lit it up like Christmas. Plastic palm trees, blinking lights, posters. A psychedelic bedspread, magenta pillows and rugs. We shopped at Target for utensils and dishes to go with the lively décor. My housewarming gift.

The apartment had a high turnover and an ever-expanding cast of characters. One day two guys she’d never met moved in. Friends of friends would come and go, sometimes camping out on the couches, sometimes coupling, playing music, always coming back and partying. Rachel, escaping the stresses of relationships and school, hung at the apartment whenever she was home on breaks. When I visited, my eyes would focus past the people to the piles of beer bottles. Does Marika drink? Didn’t the doctors say, “no alcohol”?

I never knew who I’d run into. If I looked strange or out of place there, no one seemed to notice or care. Everyone and everything was in transition, on hold, waiting to see what was next. Hence, they called the place “Limbo.” And somehow community developed, which was just what Marika craved. I had to be happy for her. And she was a lot easier to live with now that we had separate homes. Was this what it’s like to have a grown adult daughter?

When Marika finally completed her move to Limbo, her puppy Suki became a regular resident too. Coming and going as much as anyone else, Suki was in and out of Facebook photo pages, another partygoer. If Suki could write a book it would be filled with parties, road trips, leftover pizza crusts, carloads of friends, couch-loads of friends, and her quiet adventures with me. Suki became my Sunday morning hiking partner when I discovered that Sunday morning didn’t exist for Marika and her apartment mates. Sunday mornings at Limbo were like the day after Doomsday. Bodies lay all over amidst decaying remains of Chinese take-outs. No signs of life anywhere. It soon became our regular arrangement, my rescuing Suki on Saturday afternoons before the festivities began.

“Mom, did you have dinner yet?” she would call just after I’d eaten. “Can you take Suki for the night? Do you have an extra set of measuring cups?”
“Sure, I’m in Wegmans. Do you need any— ”
“Sushi?”
“Okay, I’ll be right over.”

Her apartment was just a fifteen-minute drive from the house. I stopped by regularly to bring dinner or pick her up for our trips to Rochester. In the middle of the night I drove the empty streets across town to bring her home when she phoned she was sick. I kept my clothes out, ready for those calls at two in the morning. It was good to still be needed. There was always frozen fruit for smoothies, extra eggs, and bacon in my house for the mornings she woke up hungry at home. That was our deal: call when you need me. I never had to wait long.

 

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Duetting: Memoir 33

Duetting: Memoir 33 Robin Botie of Ithaca, New York, photoshops a duet about cancer deaths and losing a loved one.

“They’re flying in the wrong direction,” Marika said. “The geese. They’re going the wrong way.” She was living back at home after her year in college and second summer in the hospital. We were about to leave for the hospital in Rochester when we heard, overhead, the shrill commotion of geese in their winter migration south. Autumn departures of geese are head and heart-turning events in Upstate New York as the sky fills with their cries, long before one spots the approaching V-formation of their flight.

“Maybe they’re just circling before they leave Ithaca,” I said. She was right. Wrong direction.
“Stupid geese,” she muttered, still staring up at them, expressionless.
“Well, we always end up driving the wrong way, and we have GPS and road signs down here,” I blathered, watching the commotion disappear. She grimaced briefly in my direction and plopped into the passenger seat.

To accommodate the complex treatment in autumn 2009, Marika and I drove to Rochester three times a week with an occasional overnight stay. The Roc Docs were urging us to move up there for two months, for the rigorous schedule of dialysis, spinal chemo injections, and IV arsenic treatments. Social workers had researched places we could rent nearby that had no stairs. But we wanted to stay in Ithaca. Carpenters installed handrails in the house so Marika could reach her bedroom upstairs. None of this fit into Marika’s plans once she’d been sprung from Strong. She wanted to get on with her life, to be free of me and doctors and cancer. The social workers abandoned the idea to have us relocate, and were suddenly helping Marika apply for social services so she could afford her own apartment in Ithaca. There were conversations that didn’t include me now.

Life was gray and clouded, like the autumn sky over Ithaca, as we waited in a holding pattern: Marika hoping for funds to help pay for an apartment, and myself, anxious about locating a donor for a bone marrow or stem cell transplant. Greg was not a match. I was edgy because it was a risky procedure. Also, Marika had completed her chemotherapy, and the protocol demanded a pause in treatments before the transplant. Which meant there was nothing holding the cancer at bay.

On a dark afternoon in mid October, we sat in the Cardiology Center at Strong. Marika was intently studying her cell phone, her head at an exaggerated angle to accommodate viewing texted messages with her good eye. She looked up slowly from the phone, right through me, out across the empty waiting area’s loveseats and end tables.
“Jake died,” she said, more to herself than to me. Then she was silent.

I glanced at her still tearless face and didn’t know what to say. The other almost-adult child with cancer was gone. And in my head something was cracking. Something piercing and threatening that I needed to escape. Much later I would wonder about the mother with a broken heart somewhere in Pennsylvania or New Jersey, but at that moment I muted everything. Marika and I returned home from the hospital and retreated to our individual rooms.

In November, we drove to Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo for a second opinion about the transplant. The new Buffalo doctor examined Marika and read her history while I waited, crammed into a small conference room with her father and his wife.

Doctor Wetzler had riveting eyes. And a kind of compassion I didn’t understand. We’d never met before and would probably never see him again. We were summoned into the exam room and it felt like when I enter an expensive boutique shop knowing I will not be buying anything. Doctor Wetzler purposefully touched each of us with his deep warm eyes, and then began,
“Marika is not strong enough to survive a bone marrow transplant.” He said, “With her damaged heart, a transplant would be fatal at this time.” There was silence. The world froze still as we digested those words. She could die? The cure we’d been waiting for and counting on for so long could kill her?

“She should have her own stem cells harvested and frozen after several months of chemo,” he continued, looking at Marika, “when you’re free of leukemia cells. For a future transplant. Your heart needs time to heal.”

So. No transplant. No more risky procedure with bleak survival rates, possible organ damage, donor cells attacking normal tissue. Life-threatening complications. No more. Nothing. The lead blanket we’d been living under was suddenly lifted.

So Marika and I quickly headed for the car and drove the few blocks to the Anchor Bar and Grill, home of the original chicken wings. We ordered a feast. She took sips from my beer and waved a wing in the air. And then she told me her news, what I knew was coming sooner or later, the other issue I’d dreaded for months.

“Mom, there’s an apartment and I’m gonna get a monthly check now so I can afford it and Julie lives there and it’s in Collegetown,” she bubbled over in a long overdue spark of excitement. A storm grew in my gut. The wings on my plate grew cold.

 

 

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Duetting: Memoir 32

Duetting: Memoir 32 Robin Botie of Ithaca, New York, photoshops a photo of Marika Warden taken by Ray Possen that depicts the lifesaving dog that was bought as a cancer companion.

“Mom, why can’t I get a puppy?” Marika asked, as we made our way to Rochester for a routine bone marrow biopsy.
“Mareek, I don’t even want a houseplant right now. We still have a lot of time in the hospital and then you’ll be going off to college again. A dog just doesn’t fit into our lives.” She sighed heavily and put her earphones back on.

Laurie called that evening.
“Robin, I’m really worried about Marika. She is so depressed. I’m serious. She needs a puppy.” (I learned later that Aunt Laurie had already promised her a puppy).
“She has a cat. And guess who ends up feeding it all the time and having to find cat-care whenever we leave home?” I countered.
“Her life depends on this puppy,” she stated, in the same tone as the doctors who insisted her life depended on getting a bone marrow transplant. In our little triad, no one of us could fight the other two united. So I finally relented. We found Suki online, near Rochester, the only female in a small litter of jolly Havanese puppies. We visited her on the way home from a day at the hospital. She was round, fuzzy, and tough, with an attitude that rivaled Marika’s. Still too young to come home with us, she lit Marika’s eyes up and recharged her heart.

Marika’s spirits were lifted even more when she got her driver’s license back.
“Mareek, I need to be in the car with you when you drive the first time or two,” I told her. The Toyota Avalon my mother had given me years before had seen better days. I’d let Marika keep it at college for her second semester. CDs and musty clothes were scattered over the seats and floors, and a cotton-candy air freshener dangled in the windshield. Marika was one of the few women with wheels in her crowd, and the car was a gas-guzzler, so an old coffee can labeled “Donations for Marika” lay conspicuously on the passenger side floor.
“No, Mom. Get a life,” she hissed, horrified at the thought of my monitoring her driving.

Unprepared for this reaction, I yelled, “Mareek, I’m about to finally GIVE you the car but you haven’t driven in months and I’m not gonna GIVE you the car until I know you’re not gonna drive it into a tree.” I gulped, surprised at my own resolve, and even more by her sudden cooperation. Later that evening she came downstairs bubbly, wearing eye make-up and a beaded necklace, a short skirt and strappy little tanktop under her worn-out gray winter coat.
“I’m recording with Russ tonight,” she shared as we negotiated the logistics of the driving. It was still light out as we pulled up to a familiar house and she parked the car.

“Mareek, I know this place. We came here for a party when you were four.”
“It’s Russ’s house,” she said, like I should have known.
“Oh, THAT Russ.” I recalled a rambunctious four-year-old flying down the banister. “I remember him. I took flying lessons with his father at the East Hill Flying Club before you two were even born,” I said. Unimpressed, Marika shot out of the car. I took over her warmed driver’s seat.

“Call me when you want to be picked up,” I shouted out the window, adding something about practicing night driving. She was gone. But her perfume, a hint of lily-of-the-valley mixed with a tanginess reminiscent of mustard, lingered after her as I turned the car to go home. I would wait for her call while she sang for hours with Russ, a percussionist who recorded his music for her so she could uncover melodies and create lyrics. She was proud of her first efforts and shared them with me in the beginning. Making music became her passion. Then it became one more secret, another thing that didn’t include me.

On the day the puppy was finally old enough to come home, the breeder held it up to us. One of the puppy’s eyes drifted sideways. Its top hair was pulled up tightly in a pink barrette. Marika and Suki curiously examined each other face to face.

“This hairdo has to go,” Marika said, pulling the barrette out as soon as we got in the car. Settling Suki in her arms for the long ride home, she cuddled and cooed, and they both fell asleep. Driving, I remembered the first times bringing my babies home. And I wondered if someone with no immune system should be housebreaking a puppy.

“Let’s go potty, Suki. Where’s your potty, Suki?” I chanted in the driveway. For weeks, I took Suki on extra walks so she wouldn’t ‘go’ in the house. I thought we’d agreed to crate-train the puppy, but one morning I brought a breakfast tray up and discovered Suki in the bed, sound asleep, nestled between the pillow and Marika’s chin. The crate sat on the floor, door shut, under a pile of dirty clothes.

When Marika’s friends went back to their colleges after the holiday break, we went off to puppy training classes at PetSmart. We sneaked Suki into the physical therapy sessions and the local hospital for the Monday morning blood draws. The nurses in the Hematology Lab fussed over them both, bringing doggie treats and cans of soda. The undercover slinking about with Suki was nerve-wracking for me but such a thrill to Marika that I allowed it to continue for months. Until the day we got busted. Suki was too big to fit in her travel bag by the time some hospital staff reported us.

Suki seemed to be the lifesaver we needed. Back at the house, we couldn’t help but laugh as Suki climbed to the tops of couches, to the shoulders of anyone sitting on the couches, and to Marika’s bed where she rested happily among the stuffed animals. And one day while Marika slept, leaving me to dog-sit, Suki and the cat cornered a mouse. When the mouse darted toward her, Suki gave a surprised squeak, caught it, and threw it high into the air. The cat and I watched in awe as the mouse fell down in the middle of us, dead. I tried hard not to love this adorable dog that was to, one day, leave home for good with Marika.

 

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Duetting: Memoir 31

 

Duetting: Memoir 31 Robin Botie of Ithaca, New York, photoshops an old picture of her father and children to illustrate a story about fathers and daughters.

 

On our first night home after weeks in the hospital, Marika could hardly walk. So I settled her into the guestroom downstairs near my bedroom and left her with a commode, a walker, and a Harpo Marx-type bicycle horn.
“Mom, I’m not using that thing,” she said in her whisper of a voice, her throat still sore from the breathing tube.
“If you use the commode by the bed, you won’t have to call, but the horn’s there in case you want help getting to the bathroom,” I told her, not sure which of the three items she was referring to.

“Okay. You can go now,” she snarled, as I lingered in the doorway, knowing how desperately she wanted to be independent of me. Knowing she probably would not call. Then, in the early hours of the morning, I woke to a crash. Running from my room, I found her face down, flat on the floor, in a puddle of urine, unable to get up, tooth in lip, blood, tears. She had tried to walk unaided, and now she was on the floor. Bigger than I, and still bloated from all the IV hydration and steroids, I couldn’t lift her. There we were, stuck. Time to phone her father. I hated that I had to bother him again. I could just hear Laurie’s criticizing, “Robin, you have to stop calling him.” What did she know? Who else was going to help me get Marika off the floor at five in the morning? Marika would expect nothing else.

Her father had moved out of the house in 2002, when Marika was twelve. She adored him. But he could stir up even more of her anger than I did. He was clueless about her. Still, he loved her and tried to please her. He was clueless about me; but with me, he’d stopped trying long ago.

Story by Five-Year-Old Marika

Once there was a squirrel and a bunny that were friends.
They wanted to grow up and get married because they loved each other.
But how could they marry, they are both different animals?
But they loved each other so much that they grew up and got married anyways.
The End.

“Marika’s okay,” I blurted out to her father, first thing. “I’m sorry. She fell. I phoned the on-call doctors and they don’t think we need to go the hospital. I just can’t get her up off the floor,” I said. I wrapped blankets around her and we sat on the wet floor waiting for him.
“I lost my tooth,” she sobbed.
“It’s just chipped. The doc says we should call the dentist later this morning. I bet they can fix it easily. Maybe even today.” I tried to sound reassuring.

“Thanks for coming over. I’m so sorry,” I said, when her father arrived. I looked at him briefly to convince myself I’d once been married to him. For fifteen years. He was not happy about my summoning him so early but he gently picked Marika up and got her back into bed. I thought of my own father while he spent a few minutes with her. And then he let himself out of the house without a glance or word for me. I made another vow not to call or need anything from him ever again.                                      

In my father’s home, I was Daughter Number One. That just meant I’d been around the longest of the three sisters. Often, with no reference to my name at all, he introduced me as, “My Number One Daughter.” When I was with my father, I was a princess. I didn’t have to worry about anything. Money was his currency of love, and he was generous. He started college funds for both my kids when they were born, and happily managed the account during Marika’s one year of college. At almost ninety, he still gave us family vacations and plane tickets to visit him, and dinners out in fancy restaurants. Then, at the beginning of this nightmare summer of 2009, he was hospitalized. His disease, some mysterious ailment, took control of everything. If I hadn’t been in the hospital with Marika, I would have been in the hospital in Florida, with him.

In September, Laurie and I visited our father. In the middle of the night in Delray Beach Hospital’s Intensive Care Unit, we watched him sleep, hooked to machines and monitors, sensor pads pasted all over his worn sun-browned body. His glasses, dentures, and hearing aids lay on the bedside table. He was beyond fixing.

He woke up annoyed, tossing his head from side to side, No. It was not supposed to be like this. He had planned and prepaid for his trip out of this world. The bills had been paid and a large loose-leaf binder was filled with his living will, advance directives, insurance information, and paperwork on everything he owned, including a prepaid cremation. Squinting, he looked at Laurie, Daughter Number Two, The Doctor. The one he’d designated as his healthcare proxy.

“It’s time,” he said, from his hollow mouth half hidden under an oxygen mask, not blinking his black marble eyes that caught great glints of light from the humming overhead fixture. “You,” he said turning to me, in a voice with no life left in it, “go home and take care of Marika.”

Hours later, the nurses moved him downstairs to the Hospice Unit. They herded his trembling younger brother, his broken-hearted sister, his three very different daughters, and all the rest of his family down elevators and hallways, into an empty, sunny room. Where was he, what was taking so long? Was he scared, I wondered? After a while they wheeled him in, unconscious and finally freed from all the life-supporting paraphernalia. He lasted long enough for me to say, “Thank you for making my life so rich, Dad.” I wanted the last words he heard to be “thank you.” I watched him take his last breath. Then he was gone. Dad. My first soldier.

After his funeral I went home to take care of Marika. And I made a promise to be his devoted Number One Daughter forever.

 

 

 

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