Reclaiming Joy

In Ithaca, New York, Robin Botie and fiends make a campfire on her deck.“We’re comin’ over to your place with some wine,” the friends I’d just left phoned as I pulled into my dark driveway.
“But, uh … ” I sputtered.
“We’re almost there. Bye.” There was just enough time to pull out five wine glasses.

“Got any matches?” someone asked when the wine was poured. They gathered up their glasses and newspapers, found an old log, and made a campfire on the deck. The deck that once housed skunks; the deck that last year harbored a fox family and earlier this year was home to snakes. Squirrels and chipmunks scamper about daily on this deck, undaunted by the barking dog. The past week the dog, my son, and I watched woodchucks and raccoons dart underneath.

This year I’d only lingered outside my house briefly a few times to listen to coyotes and frogs or to photograph 2014’s super-moons reflected in the pond. In the three years since my daughter died, and the three summers in and out of hospitals before that, I had stopped reading and watching stars on the deck. So wild creatures found it a peaceful spot.

But on this night, between my son grilling his hamburgers, the prowling dog, and the friends stomping on the planks, raising flames and wildly whooping it up as they washed down the wine, on this first campfire of the year we took back the deck.

After, I went to bed with my hair smelling of smoke and slept through the night.The wildlife under the deck at the home of Robin Botie in Ithaca, New York.

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To Let Go

In Ithaca, New York, Robin Botie holds onto her daughter's stuffed puppy and old cowboy boots but she lets go of the pink boa and her manuscript.“Don’t give me any gifts. Unless it’s something I can eat,” I tell my friends. “I’m trying to unload, let go, recycle, send to the Salvation Army. I’ve been hanging on to too much for too long.” Like all the stuff I collected when my father died and everything I clung to after my daughter died. And like the manuscript I’ve been writing for three years. The manuscript that says, “You don’t have to let go of the one you love and thought you lost.”
So I’m wondering, what do I let go of and what do I keep, and why?

There’s my father’s gray bathrobe. It’s too big and totally not my color. I hang onto it because when I wear it I feel closer to him. Okay, this stays. But I don’t have to keep the hot-pink fake boa his girlfriend gave me.

My daughter’s stuffed puppy that she slept with every night of her life is a keeper. Until the day I cremate Puppy on a beach in Australia. Some things, like Marika’s poems and songs, I will never give up; her words encourage me. I wear her old cowboy boots to remind myself to be bold. But my closet is full of her tank tops and soccer socks. Someone else is going to love these.

As for the manuscript, the truth is I’ve kept it to myself because I’m afraid it’s not good enough. I’m scared of it being critically reviewed and rejected.

Fear is not a good reason to keep something. But fear is what I have and like grief, it isn’t simply let go of or gotten over. Like with grief, I need to face it, dive into it now and then, and explore it from the inside out. Isn’t this why I kept Marika’s cowboy boots?

In my mother’s house in Massachusetts, the sun splashed over the dining room table as I copied my query letter and the first ten pages of my manuscript into an email addressed to a carefully chosen literary agent. I paused to remember my daughter, her friend Jake, my father, and all the family and friends who watched me fumble, fall at times, and sometimes fly while I wrote my story. Sitting rigidly at the edge of the chair, I pressed cold fingertips into my chin.

“Go for it, mom,” I heard inside my head. Then I hit SEND.

 

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A Virtual Garden

Virtual Garden, In Ithaca, New York, Robin Botie, blogger and Photoshopper, photographsin multiples a friend in the garden room at Longview, an Ithacare Community.The yellow flowers quivered as I plopped the small plant into the hole I’d dug. I tamped the soil down around it. Done. Thankfully there had been no run-ins with earthworms. No bugs.
“I can water it myself,” my friend says.

“So what’s this virtual garden you keep talking about?” she asks.
“Well, it’s going to be a place online, on my website’s Home Page actually. Soon, people can go there and if they email me a picture of their loved one who died, I will Photoshop the face into a flower in the garden.”
“But why a garden?” my friend asks. “You say you don’t like gardening.”
“Because gardens are comforting places. Healing places. I like gardens. Being in them, seeing the colors, watching things grow. I just hate weeding and worms and getting dirt in my fingernails.”
“But that’s half the fun,” she says. And then my friend asks, “Can I give you a picture of (my husband) and have you put him in your garden?”

 

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Anger After Loss

Anger After Loss, Robin Botie in Ithaca, New York, letting go of inner angerAround the table bereaved friends spoke of anger. I listened as I scoured the closets of my mind for some story of my own anger. I found none. When my turn came to share I told them that, not wholly believing it myself.
“I need to get in touch with my inner anger,” I said, joking as the group disbanded shortly after. But it was not a joke. Across the clouded screen in my head subtitles flashed, “In Denial.” Because who was I to escape anger? Isn’t anger one of the stages of grief? I would be a rare case if I didn’t harbor some anger after loss. Most likely I had simply not faced it yet.

“This is very rare,” my doctor said, the next day. He put down my files and waited for my reaction. I sat in silence trying to picture the redundant crisscrossing, floppy colon he was describing. My colon.
“I’m a rare case?” I asked, like maybe I’d won a great prize. But really I was wondering, Why me? My stomach was rumbling. I already gave, I told myself, as in: I already gave up my daughter who died of cancer. As in: here I am trying to live my life bigger and better and how am I supposed to do that when I’m losing my health? And why is it that the more tests you doctors do, the more diagnoses I’m given? I’m still suffering from my original symptoms. And: I’m not angry; I’m just scared for my life.

Because maybe I’ve swallowed my anger for so long that it’s turned my insides floppy, upside down and backwards.

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Where’s the Joy in Life?

Where's the Joy in Life? Robin botie of Ithaca, New York, gets kissed by Suki the life-saving dog Botie inherited from her daughter who died of leukemia,Marika Warden.“Where’s your toy, Suki?” I ask every night as my dog and I make our bedtime tour of the house to collect Green Ball, her favorite toy. The dog I inherited from my daughter who died is my lifesaver now. When I think I’m drowning, Suki shows me the playground our world is. Our nightly routine is to find her toy and settle into bed, and then she rolls over so I can give her a belly-rub as I recount the best parts of the day. Before turning out the light, I tell her what we can look forward to when we wake.

The first ten days of August had been full. I performed my book reading, went to a hikers’ picnic and the theater, ate several dinners out, and spent a weekend away at Lake George. Suki and I hiked with friends almost every day. Each morning we saw a great blue heron take off from the pond. At night we watched the moon reflected in the pond as frogs sang. I tried to videotape the full moon and the frog-song but Suki whined wanting my attention and I laughed too hard to hold the camera.

Then came August 11th. There was little planned for that week other than medical tests. On the calendar was written: CT scan, mammogram, eat only clear liquids, call lab for test results. It rained, the driveway flooded. The credit card bill came due. I learned that since I had lyme disease I could no longer donate blood. The great blue heron disappeared along with the resident duck. Rodents noisily clawed their way through the house’s rafters. Robin Williams died. Lauren Bacall died. The days were spent waiting for doctors’ calls, not daring to make plans that would need to be cancelled. Another diagnosis, a rare disorder, my doctors couldn’t answer my questions, it wasn’t cancer but I couldn’t be grateful.

For seven nights I sank into bed scared.

“Where’s the joy, Suki?” I asked last night, sobbing to my sweet inherited dog as we settled into bed. Suki looked straight at me, picked up the Green Ball, and merrily squeaked it in my face.

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Mothers Healing Together

Mothers Healing Together Yoga on the dock of Wiawaka Holiday House on Lake George led by Kathleen Fisk. Attended by Robin Botie of Ithaca, New York, and other bereaved mothers from all over New York.In my dream I am in a van with several other people riding through the Ithaca Commons. Outside on the left, we pass my daughter, Marika, who is smiling brilliantly, blindly, walking with a friend guiding her.
“Hi Marika,” everyone in the van calls out to my daughter who died over three years ago. I’m happy she hears their greetings. I call out to her myself, “Marika, we love you.” Through the back window of the van I see her turn and hold her arms out. Her smile fades and she cries.

The alarm clock woke me then. It was time to get up and go off to the weekend retreat for bereaved mothers, Mothers Healing Together.

Hours later, at Wiawaka Holiday House in Lake George, there were women in all stages of grief. They were healing the holes in their lives as they held close the memories of their beloved children. They looked for ways to honor them and link them to the future. I talked with them like they were sisters. We shared our stories and cried together. We laughed together. We bathed in the vibrations of gongs and walked the winding path of the garden labyrinth following one another’s footsteps.

My own memories stirred from sounds echoed over the lake. I remembered  cookouts, camps, attending soccer games, … being so proud of my daughter at school musicals. For the first time in over three years I found myself at a time and place where I was Marika’s Mom again.

I cried when I came home. And I marked my calendar for next year’s retreat.

As for my dream: I tell myself Marika walks happily, peacefully, among new friends as I do. It cheers me to imagine her jamming with the other talented children of the mothers I spent time with who, like me, sing their daughter’s songs and live their children’s dreams.Retreat for bereaved mothers at Wiawaka Holiday House at Lake George, New York with gong bathing, gardens, and sculptures by Pam Golden.

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