I remembered that I never talked to my own mother about love either.
“It will get better, it’ll be okay,” my mother had told me one day when I was lovesick and couldn’t hide my reddened eyes. The words seemed so lame then. It took decades to finally find the truth and comfort in her simple response, “It’ll be okay.” Eventually I learned love could keep a person going, could stretch a person to her best. It could make anything beautiful, even winter. Love could keep you fighting for your life. Or it could rip your precious reserves to shreds.
At the end of November 2010, three days after Marika’s concert and still high on our victory, we were admitted to Strong for the stem cell transplant preparations. Punching at her cellphone with frantic thumbs, as I trudged under the weight of our bags, Marika trailed me to our room in the Oncology Unit. OUR room. This was the first time the nurses told me I could have the empty bed next to hers. No more trying to sleep in a reclining chair. No late night drives to Hope Lodge. I stowed away the last of our belongings and noticed Marika on her bed, transfixed on the computer. Crying.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, immobilized. “I haven’t heard from the schools in Australia yet,” she said in a squeaky pinched voice. She had applied to two Australian universities, hoping to enter a nursing program in January 2012. The Roc Docs had warned it would take a whole year to recover after the transplant. “Mareek, you just applied a few weeks ago,” I said, “It takes time.” “I didn’t even get to say goodbye,” she said, tears dribbling down her hot pink cheeks. She turned the computer around to show me a handsome young face with smiling blue eyes and long sandy-blond locks. “He’s going home. He has a girlfriend,” she sobbed.
Slowly, moving closer, in a high voice I asked, “Is this the Australian guy you’ve been hanging with the last few months?” She nodded, choking. Her whole body shuddered, and I remembered the pain of longing for lost love. I should have held her. Comforted her. But it was like I was wading into a cold lake. Tentatively. One frozen limb at a time. I kept my eyes focused on the face on the screen.
“He’s adorable,” I said, not knowing what else to say. She composed herself and added, “He was always good to me. No man ever treated me better.” “Then you’ll just have to go back to Australia. It’ll happen,” I said, touching the computer. “It’ll be okay.”
That was all she ever told me about the Australian. That was all I had to know. He made her happy. He made her sad. Somehow, it would all be okay.
“We have a donor for you,” the Roc Docs announced at our meeting, like they were giving Marika a birthday gift. “He is twenty-nine years old.” Age and gender was all the information the transplant team could share about our donor. “The transplant preparations take two weeks, and the donor is available in mid-November.” Because of her history of extreme reactions to treatments, Marika would have to stay in the hospital during the rigorous preparations. “So you’ll be admitted at the end of next week,” they said. Startled by the short notice, I must have gulped. Suddenly seven sets of eyes turned to me. Then a small voice popped up, not my own.
“I can’t,” Marika said, and the focus honed in on her. “My concert. I have to do my concert.” There was a stunned silence in the small, overstuffed room. “Your concert? But—um, when is your concert?” one of the team finally asked. “It’s either the 26th or 27th of November. We’re still working out the details.” “Uh, we can see if the donor can wait,” one of the team suggested uncertainly. Leftover smiles were frozen on the faces of the doctor, the social workers, and the nurses. They eyed each other in disbelief. Then they looked at me like I should do something. I heard myself swallow. No one said to us, “We’re worried about losing our small window of opportunity” or “We might lose our donor.” If this was a bad idea, it wasn’t being made clear. They simply nodded and said they would ask the donor if he could be available at another time. So everything was put on hold. My stomach was grinding bricks.
“Are you out of your mind?” Bewildered when I told her, Laurie yelled at me over the landline back home. “Remission doesn’t wait around for you to check everything off your to-do list.” She said nothing to Marika, didn’t yell at her. But a day later, she called back to ask me, “So, what’s the new game plan?” “The concert is on Friday, November 26th. We get admitted on Monday the 29th, and the transplant is on Monday, December 6th. Wanna come out for Thanksgiving?” “No, but I wouldn’t miss that concert for the world,” she promised.
Thanksgiving in Ithaca is a chaotic coming and going of thousands. Evacuating students, mostly. But also friends and neighbors. The people you count on to participate in putting on a concert, or to show up. All the movement over the course of a few days makes planning an event during this time period an exercise in patience, creativity, and faith. Marika and Russ scrambled about to get a back-up singer and other musicians from people who had not yet heard their music. By the day after Thanksgiving, the night of the concert, The Nines in Collegetown was packed. I knew almost everyone there, and their mothers. Saving a seat for Laurie, I nursed a beer at a table with friends as we ate pizzas and tried to hear ourselves talk over the clamor of The Nines, known for its crowds, Blue Monday jams, and deep-dish pizzas. Our excitement and anticipation were at a peak when simultaneously, the band appeared and Laurie arrived. My eyes immediately zoned into an examination of Marika. Cute dress. When did she get that? She’s wearing the boots I gave her. She looks happy. She looks tired, like she just woke up.
Pleased with the crowd, Marika started singing “Party Jam,” a short song she and Russ wrote. Her large earrings dangled wildly as she moved to the music. In the back, Russ beat away at his drums. I was mesmerized watching my daughter doing what she dreamed about. I ordered another beer. “Hello everyone. Welcome to the Nines,” Marika said cheerily, and went right into “Soldier,” a song she had written for her brother who was there in the crowd, recently honorably discharged from the army. She grimaced at her back-up singer who, unfamiliar with the tune, sang off key. The singer wore an old ridged washboard tied around her neck, which she struck with two drumsticks. I glanced across the room at her mother who smiled proudly at her healthy, spirited daughter.
“Don’t forget to tip those bartenders,” Marika ordered at the end of the song. “I wanna see more of you dancin’,” she yelled. The crowd cheered. The music got louder, and she danced. Then we all danced. We bumped into each other and laughed, waving our arms. It didn’t matter that we could hardly hear the songs over the percussion. This was what we’d waited for, what our lives had been put on hold for. The crowd at the Nines was crazy. The music boomed and Marika was in command. I wanted to freeze-frame the moment. She sang “Never After” and trailed off, “I am not going anywhere, I am not going anywhere, I am not going anywhere.”
Finally, with a victorious smile, finger pointing and fist punching the air, Marika shouted a song by Cake, “I want a girl with a short skirt and a lo-o-ong jacket.” A raucous finale. Just in case anyone was thinking this concert was to be her swan song. Sometimes I wonder if Marika knew it would be her last performance.
It was ending. Please don’t let it end, don’t let it be over yet, I pleaded in my head, sending a grateful prayer to whatever kind spirit might be watching my world. Cheers to Russ and all the musicians, to all the servers at The Nines, to everyone in the crowd. I shot blessings to the doctors who waited and the donor who waited.
Laurie and I walked back to the car, our Frye boots scuffing the sidewalks of late-night Collegetown. My ears still rang. In the dark streets, the dazzling streetlights were kaleidoscoped by my tears.
Remember how I warned you—my story bounces around a lot? This will be a bumpy ride. You will be jerked back and forth between times and places. Like now—before I continue with my journey in Australia, let me drag you back to the fall of 2010. Mainly because my heart is always being dragged back there, to the edge of a bottomless pit of regrets.
Autumn is one of my least favorite times. I don’t like to see summer die. Flowers shriveling up, leaves dropping, the woods turning colorless and cold … all followed by the long Upstate New York winter. Just thinking about the upcoming winter totally dims the richness of harvest time and the changing colors of the hills.
Marika, as always in September, was focused on what she would wear for Halloween. In remission, and on medical deferment from Ithaca College for a second year, Marika was taking two music courses at Tompkins Cortland Community College. She was singing again, writing and recording with her music partner, Russ. She and her friends had abandoned the old Limbo in Collegetown for a fresher, tidier apartment with a yard and parking area. Marika’s nights at the new Limbo with the old friends were livelier than ever. They could make Halloween last two whole months.
“On Wednesday, we have to leave for Rochester at seven-thirty in the morning. Do you want a wake-up call?” I asked as we drove back to her apartment after the Monday blood draw. “So early?” she complained. She resented these trips. But I was excited. At any time, the Roc Docs could announce that a transplant donor had been found.
Two days later, picking Marika up at Limbo, I knocked lightly on her bedroom door, “Mareek, are you ready?” There was a sudden scrambling on the other side. “I’ll be right down,” she said, flustered, as she stumbled past me to the bathroom. “I’ll be in the car in five minutes,” she yelled from the toilet, my cue to go wait in the car. Someone was still scuffling around in her room, so I went downstairs to the car, wondering if there was a new boyfriend. I would be the last to know; she rarely shared anything about her love life. What kind of time was this to have a boyfriend anyway? Now that she had cancer my own life was all but halted. How did she get to have … A sudden loud clunk outside the car, Marika was gesturing sharply to unlock the door.
“Next time, I’m going up with a friend,” Marika said, like it was my fault she’d overslept. She threw herself into the back seat, slammed the door, and plugged her ears with the iPod earbuds. The ride to Rochester was long and silent. Who was the guy? I wondered. Much later, Rachel told me about Marika’s Australian boyfriend. “Oh, the people, the parties, the bonfires, the laughing and drinking,” Rachel said, “all the time. Marika and Pat were so sweet together. She sang. He played the guitar. He told her stories.” Much later, I would find what Marika wrote about her first days with the Australian.
Marika on September 29, 2010:
It was a perfect autumn evening. A gray haze of clouds hung overhead and we just sat outside enjoying every breath, every minute of it. He strummed the guitar lazily while I sat in the grass humming to myself. Inside we go. Fiddling around with the computer proved futile, and out of “exhaustion” we collapse onto the bed. I cannot tell him. Not yet. My dream can’t be over yet. I begin to feel my eyes shut and hear a silent laugh escape his lips out of amusement at my drowsiness. When I open my eyes I pray he will be looking, but his eyes are closed. I sigh and drift off again a little. Bits of chatter season the moment. This is tag. Who will make the first move? I shy away from the opportunity. “What are you doing?” I ask myself. “You are leaving soon. He is leaving soon. None of this!” I fight the butterflies in my stomach every time he moves. Why do the best dreams always end so quickly? After neither of us can stall any longer we rise and leave. I will see him again. Night will come and I will dream again.
The next week goes by slowly. “Opportunity is not a lengthy visitor,” and I certainly missed my chance. I vow to myself that I will not forsake my next opportunity with him. My next opportunity comes quickly. We are sitting on my couch, surrounded by my friends. He is playing with my hair. How I miss my hair. We move upstairs. I know I should seize the moment, but he doesn’t know my secret. How could he know? He has not yet seen the scars that adorn my chest, or the surplus of medicine bottles in my dresser. He has not read the words in my journal, the doctors appointments on my calendar. Do I give myself to someone who knows not what baggage I carry? Do I tell him? I love that he doesn’t know. I love that he treats me as if I am healthy, normal. Before I know it, it is too late. Our clothes litter the floor as we dance underneath the sheets of my bed.
I wake early. His eyes are closed. My hand instinctively rubs the scar on my collarbone as I wonder if he knows I am not quite right. Once he awakens, we head downstairs. He is ready to leave when he asks. He asks the question that I dreaded the whole night. He inquires about my scars. My mind races. Do I lie? Do I risk him running away, or do I give him something else to mull over? I decide that honesty is the best route and I tell him about my scars. I tell him about my cancer. Suddenly, he doesn’t have to leave. He stays for three more hours. We talk. We lie out in the sun and I listen to his wonderful stories. I try to remember as many stories as I can, knowing that soon I will be alone in hospital with nothing but memories to keep me alive. I try to remember everything: his voice, his kiss, his eyes…
I turn to memories. I turn to happy days. I can’t rewind. Instead my mind replays.
“Opportunity is not a lengthy visitor,” Marika quoted from the musical, Into the Woods, by Stephen Sondheim. It was her mantra in the fall of 2010 as she partied, stocking up on memories. Laurie and I berated her for being in denial. We were supposed to have the transplant now that she was in remission. And who knew how long this remission would last? We were in a race against time, against the incorrigible demon, cancer. Laurie printed out the bleak statistics on survival rates for transplants, and I couldn’t eat or sleep. But Marika—she wouldn’t even look at the pages. Marika was in love.
Marika’s Australian scrapbook is filled with names and words. Excited scrawls strewn over the pages: “Suki wishing well” and “Wishing Tree.” “Flying foxes.” “Floating stage.” It becomes a game, a scavenger hunt. Her words are clues that set me loose fishing for what she saw. I canvass my way all over Sydney, and question people in the streets to find what Marika found.
Which of the countless statues of dogs was a wishing well that reminded her of Suki? She wrote “Hot Sake,” so I feast in Asian eateries, imagining her delight at being able to drink legally in Australia. She wrote “seagull and Big Mac.” Could she have seen the same seagulls and egret punching around the MacDonald’s bag that only the long-beaked egret could successfully reach into? “Weddings!” she’d written, and I could feel her joy. Words are no longer just words. They are stories. ‘Weddings!’ is a story. ‘Wishing’ is a story. And the word ‘ashes’ is now my tour guide who tells me, “Mom, you hafta go to the Queen Victoria Building,” and “Go to Darling Harbour.”
I pounce on this city like a young child attacking a pile of presents. At Taronga Zoo I follow koalas, quokkas, and rabbit-eared bandicoots. At the Aquarium, I stand in awe, surrounded up and down and on all sides by fish that swim serenely to classical music. Hanging out near the University of Technology, I find exotic Chinese Gardens and flocks of colorful parrots. I follow my nose through aromatic Asian and Italian neighborhoods, and pick out a live barramundi fish to feast on in Chinatown. I scarf down fish fries on the wharf and stuff myself with mashed pea-and-meat pies at the Harry’s Café de Wheels truck. Hot on Marika’s trail, I eat ice cream and crepes for breakfast at Pancakes on the Rocks.
The streets are lit up when I go to see The Marriage of Figarro at the famous Sydney Opera House. A huge chandelier is suspended over a floating stage on Sydney Harbour for the next evening’s performance of La Traviata. Loud funky music blasts out of shops along Elizabeth Street where everything is young and full of life and light, all day and long into the night. For four full days I ride the buses and walk endlessly in and out of markets, shops, museums and parks. I hop on a ferry and toss Marika’s jewels into the water at Darling Harbour and off the Harbour Bridge. Dropping her bracelets into deep water, it feels like I’m planting her here.
On the evening of my last day in Sydney, I am on a ferry I took out of the harbor in order to get free Internet access. I need to be in touch with my support squad. It is time to leave Sydney, the easy part of my trip, the first part of my four-part journey, where I’ve gotten comfortable and now feel safe. I send out a message to my friends: I’m emailing you from the middle of Sydney Harbour! We just passed the Opera House. Looks like we’re headed for the Pacific now … connection could quit any time … hope this ferry returns to the wharf eventually… more to follow.
I’m kicking myself for assuming the boat would return to the same place. Like home, I don’t expect I can really get back, not like the way it was. And what can one assume in a place where you don’t dare drive because people drive on the left and pass on the right? As it turns out, I can’t even walk properly in Australia. For four days I’d bumped into people and done a do-si-do dance with them in the street trying to figure out who was supposed to move over, and where, to let the other pass. Until some BIG guy coming from the opposite direction grumbled in his adorable Australian accent, “Yer in ‘Stralia now, yer not in America, darlin’. Stay lift!” I got it. Just in time to leave the crowded streets of Sydney, the city that whispers to me, “It’s okay, your story’s no sadder than anybody else’s here.”
And in Sydney Airport once more, headed for Melbourne, I’m coddled as if there’s a sign on my front saying ‘delicate.’ I’m told I don’t have to take my box of ashes out for inspection. I don’t have to remove my shoes. And in a state of disbelief, I completely forget to take out my plastic-ziplock bag of liquids. So forgiving is Sydney. She purrs, “We’ve seen it all before.” And at the airline counter, the agent offers, “Since you’re here two hours early for your flight, we can send you on the earlier flight, no extra charge.”
‘Sydneysiders’ they call themselves proudly. What a warm, sweet beginning to my journey. Doing Sydney first was like starting a meal with dessert.
Traveling from Ithaca, New York, is never easy. And to travel from Ithaca to Australia can take over thirty hours if all goes well and none of the three flights is delayed or cancelled. During those thirty hours I will be offered only two small meals and a snack. During those thirty hours, unless I check my luggage or make a fast friend, I will be anchored to my bags. It feels like they’re filled with bricks. Precious gold bricks, considering the irreplaceable contents. I mean, there was no way I was going to ‘check’ my daughter’s ashes so she could ride in the cargo pit of the plane. Nor her stuffed puppy. Nor her baseball cap, nor her polar tech fleece jacket that had already gone to Australia and back with Marika two years earlier. No, I stuffed the box of ashes and everything else into my carry-ons. And now I’ll have to have to squeeze myself, with my backpack and rolling bag, into tiny airport restroom cubicles all the way to Australia. And during those thirty hours, I will fly far enough away from Ithaca on the first day of spring that my whole concept of the year and seasons will be totally rattled upon arrival in Australia on the third day of autumn.
In the Ithaca Airport waiting area I look around at my fellow travelers who are mostly engaged in tablets or smartphones that light up travel-worn faces. No one else is hugging their luggage for dear life or seems close to tears. My first flight is cancelled due to thick fog in Newark. So I am stuck in the Ithaca Airport, talking to Marika’s ashes for almost four hours. And when the new flight is delayed, there is a complete revision of the plan I’d worked on for months. It is still unclear if the newest flight will ever take off.
I hold the bulging backpack on my lap, wrapping my arms around the bulk of it the way I held my belly in the last weeks of my last pregnancy. Back then, if I was safe, Marika was safe, and being good to myself meant being good to her. Worries of cancer then were even more foreign and far away than Australia.
Marika’s first airplane ride was when she was three months old, and weighed nineteen pounds. My father had given me three hundred dollars to “go buy Gregory a toy for his birthday.” Instead, I bought airplane tickets to visit my Dad for a weekend. It was the first time I was traveling by myself with two children. Marika, who weighed only four pounds less than her just-turned-two-year-old brother, was always attached to me then. So she was along for the ride. That was decades ago. Over time we had all become veteran travelers.
Marika-in-the-box and I finally take off from Ithaca.
Traveling is not easy these post-9/11 days, but traveling with ashes is just asking for trouble. The security guard in Newark regards the sealed black box with a frown and furrowed brows. He scans my face. I hold my breath and don’t know where to look, back into his eyes or at Marika’s box. He nods in the opposite direction, “Step over there, please.”
Immediately I take out the documentation: the previously requested confirmation from the Australian Consulate, raised-seal death certificate, crematorium papers, and letter from the funeral home. Some terrorist somewhere must have tried the old box-of-ashes trick because every airport over the course of our trip has a special procedure for handling sealed boxes. Sometimes there is a particular broiler-like rack for ash boxes to get x-rayed on. Agents also run tiny laser-like flashlights over every inch. And then there are tests where they don rubber gloves and rub the box with a colorless liquid on paper that turns blue. Or doesn’t. In the Los Angeles Airport, my heart pounds and I momentarily abandon my shoes at the end of the x-ray screener when Marika and I are separated into different sections as they sonogram her box from every side. I recall a family vacation years back, just months after 9/11, when a last-minute random sampling search had targeted eleven-year-old Marika, separating her from me and her brother who had already charged ahead to board the plane. Torn between the two, I had run after her.
“It’s okay, Mareek,” I tell her ashes after the sonogram. Traveling with ashes, I have someone to talk to who shouldn’t be interfering with the plans. But she does. “Mom, I’m starving. Pleeease. You promised,” I hear her every time we pass a Starbucks kiosk or airport sushi bar. “Her remains,” they’d informed me at Bang’s Funeral Home, when I went to pick up the letter affirming that the box was indeed filled with ashes, “are the last physical leftovers, the flakes and chunks and chips of her bones.” Even reduced to crumbs, she’s still bossing me around. And as chunks and chips, she is heavy.
After three flights and what feels like a year later, Marika and I arrive at Sydney International Airport. Getting off the plane, I sense her excitement, especially when the security dog from Sydney Customs comes by, wagging its tail. I was sure, after all the fuss at each airport’s security station, our arrival at customs in Sydney would be the killer. But the security dog does not stop at our carry-on, now laid by my toes along the yellow line on the floor with everyone else’s belongings. The dog goes straight for the punky fat guy with the earring. It trots right by us to his stuff, which really appeals to that dog. And I swear I can feel Marika’s ashes jump for joy as it passes, “Here pup! Awwww, come ‘ere pup.” The dog ignores my precious bundle on the floor. So Sydney is the first airport out of four where my box of Marika is not subjected to swabbings, dustings, x-rays, or severe scrutiny. It took a fraction of a second to pass that canine sniff test, and now Sydney is ours without a single question. And dog-tired as I am, I quickly replicate, in the hotel room, the tiny altar I’d set up at home with her box, photos, stuffed Puppy, and chocolates. Through the hotel window, the early evening light on the harbor calls to me. Any mother and daughter would need to take a break after traveling non-stop together for almost two days. So I scurry out of the room, and right away begin my exploration of Sydney.
My story bounces around a lot. Back and forth between times. That’s because I, myself, am always straddling time, living with one foot firmly planted in the past and the other limping in the here-and-now. Time is so squirrely. It’s always getting waylaid by something catastrophic or miraculous, or just plain draining.
What am I doing? I ask myself when almost everything I do is for Marika. In the spring of 2012, I’m going to Australia to carry out her last wishes. The trip is an extravagance I would never have allowed myself. But someone was going to have to go someday, unless we would have brazenly mailed her ashes off to that Australian she loved, who never answered my emails, and let him dispose of her ashes, easy and cheap. No. In April 2012, I am still standing guard over her. Her ashes. This is part of our journey together. And for me, a journey is never simply a distance covered in time or space. It’s an opportunity to change something. It can be open-ended, intuitive, or steeped in purpose, but a journey is dependent on attitude more than intentions. Where will I allow myself to go? Can I stay open to whatever comes my way? And if something goes wrong, if “broken tides collide” like Marika wrote, will I be able to smile—one day, if not immediately—and accept that it was simply what happened? Just part of where that journey would intercept another path?
Australia was Marika’s dream for another shot at life, a life without cancer. And when my journey is over I, too, will start a new life. My life without her.
I have to keep reminding myself I will not find Marika in Australia. Not a trace of her. She was there only two weeks. When she left home, I gave her tickets and a Triple-A Travelcard loaded with three hundred dollars. I told her not to spend money on anything for me. I just wanted to know about different foods she would find. And she gave me, on her return, cookies and a postcard with a cheeky four-year-old in a superhero costume on the front. It was a government-issued advertisement for product safety she’d gotten for free.
“Mom,” she had written on the back of the card, “Always Marika, Top 5 foods from Australia to try: 1. Vegimite!! – Very salty 2. TimTams – Especially dark 3. Rosy Apple Bits – ask me for some 4. Australian style bacon – probably can’t find in US 5. Lamington slice – I couldn’t find. I need to try too!” Right there was an unfinished mission, I noted.
Then there’s her scrapbook with clippings, postcards, and brochures. And photos. Photos Laurie and I googled to match the backgrounds with images of particular places. So I could have an idea of where Marika’s feet had taken her, “which way my feet are going,” like Marika said.
She had flown to Australia alone to meet up with her lifelong friend from Ithaca, Carla, who was at school in Sydney for the year. Marika had other friends there as well. I will have no one. She’d asked for extra money to rent a car and I’d said no. So I will not allow myself to have a car there either. I will not open the box to spread her ashes until after Sydney, after one last flight five days later to Melbourne. I’ll take four full days in Sydney to calm my apprehensions, fuel my courage. I’d planned as much as I could before the trip so I wouldn’t end up immobilized by fear in hotel rooms for the whole two week trip. Yes, I’m terrified. That is why, on my last night home, I emailed twenty-two women, my Australia-Alone Support Squad:
If you’re getting this email it is because I regard you as someone who has been strong and supportive, and I need your help now. I am on my way to Australia with Marika’s ashes. But I am not alone. I have her stuffed Puppy, my iPad, and you. It is scary but I can do this …
To Marika I wrote, in response to her poem: Marika, I am not “Flying to You.” There will be no one and nothing to greet me. I will arrive alone, tired and hungry, and scared because I will have to fend for myself as soon as the plane lands. I will not be rewarded with your smile or anyone’s open arms. Oh, to be flying to someone I love. And now, over this past year of grieving, I have found all your words, all over the house. There won’t be any more poems left to find when I get home. But while I was packing, I came across a framed drawing of a rabbit you’d made that said “Welcome Home Mom.” I put it on the mantle outside my bedroom, to be the first thing that greets me when I return from Australia.
Let the royal rumpus begin, I always say upon starting an adventure. Buckle up. We’re gonna bounce around a lot.
