When the mud ices over and rain turns into snow, I think about the Balloon Girl. Not the girl who stood with outstretched arms, looking up at the balloon she lost. No. My head is filled with the image of the Balloon Girl who held onto as many balloons as she could and wondered how many more she could gather in order to fly.
In the dead of winter, what pretty things do you think about to lift yourself up?
Please Share on your Social Media
“I’m still waiting to feel like a grown-up.”
If you Google this line you will find young adults, middle-agers, and old-timers alike, saying it.
“I feel like a kid,” thirty-year-olds with kids of their own and mortgages, are saying.
“I still feel like a kid,” says my eighty-something-year-old friend.
You say, “I don’t feel old. When did I become this old?” You insist, “I’m the same as I was at sixteen,” but on some days you will cede, “I’m not the person I was. I can’t do what I used to do.” When do you come to acknowledge those first inklings that you might be old?
At some point we all lose loved ones, friends, pets, opportunities. And sometimes we lose sharpness and memories, abilities, mobility, independence. Maybe the loss of what we believe defined us is what drives us to finally write our advance directives or begin to explore what really matters in our lives, as Atul Gawande discusses in his newest book, Being Mortal.
Are you old when you don’t want to ride ponies, or when eating spaghetti and chocolate ice cream with wild abandon is no longer appealing? When you give up driving are you old or are you cautious? If you’re twerking to Gangsta rap are you young or just trying to feel young? Are you still young if you dance in your Converse sneakers and smoke smuggled joints in your mother’s condo? Are you old if you no longer have a mother? When you become a grandparent do you become old?
I say age is simply a measure of your time since birth. Never mind wrinkles, gray hair, and arthritic joints. The hearing loss and senior moments just make us feel worn out. What matters most is attitude and activity. Life is short; enjoy it even as the body crumbles. You are both young and old. Even if you’ve been reformed and rehabilitated, even though every cell in your body has changed several times over, the YOU you were is the YOU you are and will be. Whether or not you look to the times ahead or notice the years creeping by.
So maybe it’s time to hug your inner child.
What are the ways you are old and young?
Please Share on your Social Media
A big fat raccoon stood peering into my dining room from the other side of the sliding glass door. My inherited dog scrabbled at the door, yelping. For a second I froze in fear. Big. Too close. Rabies. Sharp teeth. Claws that could scrape my flesh.
The dog raked her nails on the glass. I banged my palms and howled alongside her.
The raccoon hardly budged. The dog and I continued to shriek at it. But the coon just stood there with paws begging limply before her. She stayed, looking at us a little too long, looking more hurt than scared by all the carrying on.
It wasn’t until I got out my camera that the raccoon retreated to a corner of the deck. There she sat, watching us. Like she was expecting to be served brownies and wine.
It’s just too easy sometimes to wonder if the fox that trots by everyday, or the bird that flies multiple circles overhead, or the wind that drops a dollar bill by my feet isn’t my daughter who died, keeping watch over me.
Have you ever received a “sign” from your loved one who died? Do you believe it is possible?
Please Share on your Social Media
To get gutsy is to do something you never thought you could do, something positive and adventurous, that makes others wince in wonder that you dared to try.
In April 2012, I went alone to Australia to scatter my daughter’s ashes.
During the three years before, trailing Marika through the wilds of cancer, I was not afraid she would die. But I was afraid of almost everything else. Being alone, getting lost, falling, drowning. Losing control. Marika was fearless. To keep up with her I told myself I was too. I pretended we were on a road trip: there would be easy times and hard times but we were together and it wouldn’t last forever.
Then, shortly before she was to turn twenty-one, she died. The ground beneath me broke. I was alone, lost, and drowning.
I brought home the sealed black box of her ashes from the funeral home and built a small altar around it in the living room. I wished her goodnight and good morning each day. Her ashes were not just dust. The ashes were her, humming and dancing inside the box, watching me come and go.
In her final wishes she’d requested that her ashes be scattered in Australia.
It was not the trip I’d imagined. I’d thought to make it a family pilgrimage but my mother couldn’t go. None of Marika’s Australian friends answered my emails. And at the last minute my sister cancelled out. But taking Marika’s ashes to Australia was the last thing I could do for her. So a year after she died I stuffed the sealed box of her ashes in my carry-on bag and flew off.
I hugged the box through plane rides, airport security checks, customs, bus and train rides, and long walks to find lodgings. At dusk, in a small motel just off the Great Ocean Road, along the southeast coast of Australia, I met her ashes for the first time. With held breath and quivering hands, I pried gently at the box. It opened easily, like she was pushing the lid from inside.
She was a trillion tiny shards like pink-white sand on a beach at sunset. In a plastic bag. She was still beautiful.
The photograph on the altars I set up shows a smiling Marika on Bells Beach, holding her arms out like she’s hugging the world. The first morning on the Great Ocean Road, I held the photo as I turned from the winding street to follow the trail to that beach. Under a hot sun I lumbered over rocks and cliffs, along gravelly red footpaths, on deserted beaches and through heathlands, always close to the shore if not hanging right over it. Visions of falling from crumbling cliffs crashed in my head. I whispered nervously to the bag of ashes in my backpack each time the trail split. And hours later I climbed down huge sets of stairs and stared at Bells Beach, the exact spot in the photo. Only it was an empty haunted landscape that was supposed to have Marika centered in front of the jutting point, arms lifted skyward. Glued to that spot, sweating, I waited like I was expecting to be met by her ghost.
Finally I removed the bag of ashes from my pack and inched closer to the water. Fears of the incoming tide and the rogue waves I’d been warned about clashed with the realization that I had to wade into the water to release the ashes. I couldn’t just dump them into the sand. So I took off my sneakers and cautiously slipped into the seething surf. In knee-deep water the waves barreled into me drenching my pants. Bracing myself against the poundings, I tried to ignore the stirring in my head, “Never swim alone.”
I dipped into the bag. The ashes were gritty. They swirled and danced out of my chalky hand, away with the wind, making small smears on the water’s surface. I slogged through the water. Waves crashed at my thighs and washed back out to sea dragging the sand from my grasping toes. I watched Marika’s ashes disintegrate as they rocked and receded with the waves. Then BAM! I was hit with a rogue wave. It sprayed my face and soaked me to my armpits. Catching my breath, I looked around. No one was nearby. If I drowned or was swept away I would never be found. Hugging the diminished bag close to my pounding heart, I retreated to the dry sand.
For four days I spread my daughter’s ashes. Until at last I turned the bag upside down and shook it empty. It made flapping sounds like a bird taking off.
Seagulls squawked and whined. I sat frozen on a wharf. Small brown birds surrounding me stared and waited. And from someplace inside me faint tremors churned. I rocked. Back and forth over the water, hugging myself. The water’s rippled surface caught the sun and exploded in my face. I closed my eyes on tears. Inside it was bright red, like fire.
And maybe the gutsiest thing, the thing I never thought I could do that makes people wince, is what I began sometime after I returned home from Australia. It was a way to make all the colorless days, sleepless nights, and long years ahead into something positively adventurous. I decided to treat the rest of my life like I’m on another road trip: easy times, hard times, it won’t last forever. My daughter’s spirit, that I hold close, coaxes me to live boldly. And I tell others whose loved ones died, they don’t have to let go. That they can hold on forever to the memories, the love, the voices of the ones they thought they lost.
Now, when someone tells me, “It’s time to get over it,” with my gutsiest grin I say, “Never.”
Getting gutsy is all about stepping outside your comfort zone to reach your goals and live a life that makes you truly happy. This post is my entry for Jessica Lawlor’s Get Gutsy Essay Contest. To get involved and share your own gutsy story, check out this post for contest details and download a free copy of the inspiring Get Gutsy ebook.
Please Share on your Social Media
At the dinner party on the last night of our annual family reunion, I surveyed the dining room for a seat.
The Kids’ Table was bustling with parents settling their young children. I remembered years back, reluctantly leaving my babies at the Kids’ Table and watching from the Parents’ Table as they ate more and laughed more without me hovering over them. My 26-year-old son now sat with his 30-something year-old single cousins at the Kids’ Table, along with adorable almost-2-year-old Tovah.
Glancing over at the Big Table, I thought of my father and long gone white-haired grandparents. And my uncles, Henry and Martin, who sat there not so long ago. It was always the smallest table but it was where the big people sat so we called it the Big Table. It was the table that got served first and was closest to where the food was parked. My favorite cousin, Brigite, was sitting at the Big Table because she was the organizer of the event and both her parents sat at that table.
I was about to take a seat next to my sister and other cousins at the Parents’ Table when Brigite beckoned to me, “Robin, sit here.” Immediately, without a word to my sister, I flew to the empty seat next to Brigite, at the Big Table.
“Thank you so much for inviting me to sit here. I’m so thrilled,” I told her as we waited for our appetizers.
“Robin,” she said, raising an eyebrow and twisting her head to address me directly. “I need to give you a little perspective here.” One of her eyes was wincing. “There’s Number 1.” She pointed to her father, my Uncle Max, who sat across from us staring into space with a smile. “There’s Number 2,” she said, indicating her mother. “Number 3, Number 4.” Our Aunts Bope and Terri. She poked her head in the direction of her older brother, “He’s Number 5.” Then she looked squarely at me with somber eyes.
“I’m 6. And you’re Number 7.”
Three sleepless nights later, after I’d calculated that I was Number 5 on my mother’s much smaller side of the family, I knew it wasn’t a numbers game. It was more like musical chairs. If I could stay fast and strong enough, I might be able to bulldoze my way to the last empty chair whenever the music stopped. I intend to live long, for myself and for my daughter who died. Maybe I will be the one to live to a hundred.
But I will not be the first. Several times during the reunion I heard it said of my Uncle Max (Number 1) that he’s gonna outlive us all.
How do you survive the sad element of loss at family reunions?
Please Share on your Social Media“Is that to go priority or certified mail?” the clerk asked, eyeing the carefully wrapped package I clutched to my chest.
I would have been sending my daughter off to nursing school in Australia. Instead, I am sending the DVD of her singing “Over the Rainbow” made 8 ½ months before she died, to my web-master, at Ameriweb Hosting. For weeks I’d put this off, afraid to lose my only copy of Marika’s DVD. Then, sitting over dinner with friends who all had daughters coming and going, achieving and shining, I just wanted to talk about my daughter too.
“Way to kill the party, mom,” a small voice hummed from the back of my head.
Okay. She’s been dead over 3 ½ years so there’s nothing new to share.
“But I’m so proud of you,” I tell her life-sized portrait later. And inside me, she is still alive and singing. From not-so-deep within she tells me, “Go for it, mom,” when I pause to consider a red dress in a mail-order catalog. She says, “Sushi for dinner?” Now she’s saying, “Way to go, mom. You just showed all your readers how insane you are” and “Mom, TMI.” (Too Much Information)
Wait. I do not play the video over and over again. In fact, it took a long time before I could even watch this performance from the EAC Montessori School of Ithaca 30th Anniversary Musical/Reunion though I knew she always loved being seen and heard (please watch it). I am already filled with Marika. Her voice and starry eyes are the film through which I see the world.
Call me the crazy-lady. Maybe I deserve that title because for years, that’s how I labeled too many others. The ones who lost children and seemed to lose their own souls. The ones that looked liked they’d fallen to Earth from the edge of space, broken the sound barrier, their hearts, and every moving part of themselves in the fall. Is that what I look like now?
“Does it get better? Do you ever not think of your child?” I asked for months of everyone I found who’d lost a kid. And it turns out I’m doing nothing that eons of bereaved mothers haven’t done before. Only I’m coming out about it.
Please Share on your Social Media