Tag Archives: mother daughter relations

Duetting: Memoir 53

Duetting: Memoir 53 Robin Botie of Ithaca, New York, photoshops grottos along The Great Ocean Road in Australia on her grief journey to bury her daughte's ashes.

Eleanor from the Loch Ard Motor Inn gives me a ride to my first site of the day. She and Margaret take turns running the small motel. Not wanting to spread sadness, I haven’t told them my story. But I must seem lonely to them. They do everything they can to make me feel welcome. Driving me around Two Mile Bay, Eleanor points out landmarks for my return trip on foot. And suddenly, right in front of us, by the open back of his car, stands a completely naked man. A surfer. Very handsome. He chuckles calmly and waves at us. Eleanor and I giggle like giddy schoolgirls. Our faces turn shades of red. And I wonder how he can so gracefully accept this embarrassing collision of his path with ours. If it had been me caught in the nuddy, I’d be replaying the scene for months in my head, mortified.

Soon after, Eleanor drops me off by a trail through low scrubland. The atmosphere is murky and misting. I nervously note there are no tourists around. Determined to see more sculpted limestone features of this Southern Ocean Coast, I venture forward alone through thick fog, down stairs and long sand paths to find The Arch, the partially collapsed London Bridge, and the stunning sinkhole called The Grotto. I feel compelled to visit, like they are my ancient aunts who have known every joy and sadness in the world. These are not just hollowed-out rocks. These are places that make me want to sing, that make me cry. It’s a feeling of coming home. Some people have the Bible or Quran or some doctrine to follow. Some look to their ancestors for direction. I look to the sky, to the ground, to mountains and great masses of stone, to the paths people have trodden for ages. Where I feel very small and insignificant but very much a part of belonging. Where for a while I can stop searching because I am filled up with something. Something that resembles grace and gratitude. And awe. I feel blessed.

West of Port Campbell and Two Mile Bay, in the Grotto, I watch water seep into the cavities of the rocks at the ocean’s edge, and look past the cave walls and still pools to the sea beyond. Marika had not come this far on her trip. So many wonderful things she did not get to see or do. All the beautiful things she knew were out there somewhere. I’m going to find them. For her, I promise.

The sun comes out again. I imagine Marika riding piggyback on my shoulders once more as I climb back up the huge staircases to the Great Ocean Road. After a while on the long walk back to Port Campbell, I pass a yellow diamond-shaped sign with a kangaroo graphic. It is a warning to drivers to watch out for animals in the road. Just beyond, a huge heap of kanga-road-kill lies in my path. I stare dumbly at the carcass for a moment. And inch closer. It has long black nails on black hands that reach for the sky. It looks like it’s praying. In my mind, I make it rise up and shake itself out: My kangaroo-ghost stands much taller than I. I suddenly feel lighter as Marika steps down off my back and climbs onto the kangaroo, piggyback style. “Mom, really?” she asks, her eyes brightening like I’ve given her a new MINI Cooper convertible. “Yeah,” I reply, “Just keep her away from the roads.” In my mind I watch them ride off together, inland, to endless rolling hills of grasslands with windmills, farms, and scattered patches of dark trees. Far away from this Great Ocean Road where I have one day left to wonder what I’ll do once Marika’s ashes are gone.

There are too many questions. Like, how do I make Marika’s life count for something? And what should I do with my own life? How do I gather my own ragged remains, drag them back home, and breathe new life into my once intact world?

Back in the office at the Motor Inn, Margaret laughs her hearty laugh. She’s just agreed to keep a stray dog at her house where she already has six dogs, two cats, a wallaby, and too many birds to count. A motel guest who is in the middle of his family vacation really wants the stray dog. It had followed him on and off the beach all day, and he promises he’ll come back for it. If Marika were here we’d be smack in the middle of this drama around the dog. She’d beg to keep it herself, and I’d dance up and down in a fit, trying to make her see sense. It’s someone else’s scene now. I smile, listening to the eruptions of Margaret’s chortling. How does one laugh in the thick of such craziness? But laughing is so much more gracious a response to a stressful situation than seething in rage or howling. I vow to put more laughter into my own life. Because this whole thing of living, of loving, is really very laughable. Who learns to go through it right? Just when you think life is good, you get booted from behind and someone you love dies, and everything changes. Then you scream and wail with the pain. Not fair, I can’t go on, Why me? To laugh is to recognize that all of it is incredible, even so.

 

 

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Duetting: Memoir 51

Duetting: Memoir 51 Robin Botie of Ithaca, New York, photoshops the storm of dealing with her daughter dying of cancer.

The Shipwreck Coast. That’s the name of an eighty-mile section of rough coastline off Australia’s Great Ocean Road. At its midpoint, the town of Port Campbell hugs Two Mile Bay, a calm spot on this perilous coast with otherworldly names like Port Fairy, Moonlight Head, and Wreck Beach. It is off-season here in March 2012. That is why I am able to get a motel room facing the bay, and a table with a seaside-sunset view at 12Rocks Café Beach Bar. Eating beer-battered fish I study the cliffs, the stunning backdrops to the dramas of over 180 ships that sank off this coast. A lot of ghosts, I think over my glass of white wine. The only accessible spot to the stormy Southern Ocean, Port Campbell long ago became known for coastal rescues and shipwreck salvaging operations. It was from this stretch of beach that rescue teams were launched using rockets to fire rope lines out to sinking ships, to help bring in survivors. Sometimes the sea was so wild that those hanging onto the lifelines were washed away in the turmoil of being rescued.

On another rocky shore, on the third day of March 2011, Marika’s father called my friend Celia to come to the hospital in Rochester, so I wouldn’t be alone for the Letting Go of my daughter’s life the next day. But I pretended Celia wasn’t there. And I did not call Rachel or tell Laurie. Laurie would be heartbroken. She’d want us to hang on until she got there. I wanted to spare her the sorry trip. I wanted to spare Marika any more time of pain now that the time of miracles was over. Besides, now that I could see where it was all heading, I wanted my daughter for myself.

Alone with Marika in the glass fishbowl of the ICU room, I rubbed her feet, aware of the four teams that still took turns hovering near the door, peering in like buzzards checking out road-kill. The dose of Propofol had been upped to paralyze her so she could no longer work against the breathing machine. They said she felt nothing now. She was in deep trusting sleep as the monitors and mechanical devices ticked on.

If I had known how to face and share the awful conundrum convulsing in my head, I might have said: Marika, you put up an awesome fight. There’s no leukemia left in your body. But your lungs have been destroyed. And you have no immune system. I’m scared, Mareek. The only thing they can promise is more infections, more organ breakdowns, pain, a life attached to oxygen tanks and ventilators, maybe feeding tubes forever. I can’t let them hurt you any more. Your dad and I are letting you go. You are dying. For someone who prized independence and wanted to control the way you lived, you’re being given no choices now. You’ve been cheated and it isn’t fair. I’m so sorry. I wish I could make it all better. I love you and I always will.

Cut! I wish I had said that. But that is not how it played out. “Rewind. Replay,” as Marika would have said. Reality this time:

“Hang in there, Mareek,” I whispered, hoarsely. “Everyone is taking good care of you … so you can rest now. Stop fighting the breathing machine … it’ll be okay.” I kissed her arm near a small mole. And then my hands on her numbed feet kneaded a wordless love song. A silent dance over her soles, over and over: I love you, I love you, I love you, … It was like I was swimming in slow motion, in aimless circles, still trying to hang onto and lug my lifeless child back to shore. Still lifeguarding. Remaining vigilant, protecting and keeping watch over my precious charge. It was all I knew how to do. And slowly it dawned on me that soon there would be nothing left of her to guard. So, yielding to the miserable truth, the next thing, the only thing to be done was to fill my stinging wet eyes with her face. Memorize her face. The face that always fascinated me. The lavender-lined eyelids, her perfect nose, her rosebud lips. The face that, even when steeped in anger at me, was the most beautiful and best part of myself.

We all get caught up in storms. On the Shipwreck Coast in southeast Australia, the dangerous rocks just below the water’s surface have dashed many a ship to shards in storms. Sometimes captains lost their bearings. Or the pilots didn’t see through the heavy mist until it was too late to change course. Things got out of control. Ships smashed into pounding surfs. They capsized and couldn’t be righted. Passengers still on the sinking boat could see big fires built on the beach to warm survivors, but no one saw the reality of what was happening until the blue emergency lights burned and the rockets were firing. And in the commotion of it all, maybe there wasn’t even a clear second for the desperate ones on the doomed vessel to realize, “We are not going to survive this.”

 

 

 

 

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Duetting: Memoir 48

Duetting: Memoir 48 Robin Botie of Ithaca, New York, photoshops a duet of a dream she recorded with a song written by her daughter who died with leukemia.

My daughter was measured and marked for radiation. In a waiting area down the hall, I chewed at my cuticles as Marika got the first of her full body radiation treatments. She had to be seared and zapped cell by cell in order to live. It made me nauseous. They wheeled her back to the room on a gurney and she napped the rest of the day as I sat, waiting in the dimmed light by her bedside. At dinnertime neither of us could eat. I gently rubbed her feet before driving off to Hope Lodge.        

At Hope Lodge on Tuesdays I got free massages. Thursdays it was free dinners prepared by a group of med students. I took Bernadette, a cancer patient who lived there, out for port on her birthday, and watched another resident cook aromatic African dishes. In the afternoons I explored Swan’s German Market, the Public Market, the Monroe County Library, and Captain Jim’s Seafood, always bringing back some bit of Rochester for Marika. Each day I exhausted myself into oblivion. And then the transplant preparations got stepped up.

“Preparations,” Laurie said over the cell phone, “is really a euphemism here. What it really means is wiping out her blood cells and immune system with chemotherapy and radiation, and then ‘rescuing’ her with the donor’s cells.”
“Laur, what’s the deal with GVHD?”
“Didn’t you read any of the stuff I sent you?”
“I did, but it sounds better coming from you,” I said.
“Well, Graft Versus Host Disease is a fascinating condition. What can happen, just about any time in the first year or two after the transplant, is that the immune cells in the donor marrow can begin to attack the recipient’s tissues and organs. They still think they have to protect against ‘foreign invaders,’ and are totally clueless that THEY are the foreigners.”
“Yeah, they warned us it could get nasty,” I said, wincing.
“It’s her only shot, though. There are no more drugs capable of giving her a cure,” Laurie said. I knew that. I was still stuck on the part about the donor’s cells attacking tissues and organs “any time in the first year or two.”

It was snowing on transplant day, January 26, 2011. All morning long I watched outside the hospital window and checked online for weather-related transportation delays. Finally, midday, a courier delivered the stem cells in a picnic cooler. I collapsed on the end of the bed. Giddy with relief, I even smiled and joked with my ex-husband who had arrived with his wife and a cake. We gathered around to watch the donor’s blood product slowly seep into Marika’s veins via a long tube in which I pictured tiny cells charging forward on teensy running feet with swords pointing ahead. We had a little birthday party, and toasted to Marika’s new life, with Martinelli’s bubbly apple cider. After, in a trance, I washed my hands in the non-patient bathroom down the hall by the elevators, and sang softly, “Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you. Happy birthday,” I choked, “dear Marika.” My eyes filled. My jaw quivered, “Happy birthday.” It was like whispering a prayer. Only I was downright pleading for my daughter’s recovery, “To you.”

The next morning, I returned early to the hospital from Hope Lodge. Marika sat in bed peering down at her chest, her head angled to accommodate her good eye. She was flushing out and disinfecting her own port as a nurse gave directions. Glancing up at me, Marika smiled. She looked ready to take on the world. Like she could deal with aggressive foreign cells, or doctors who dared to tell her No, or whatever else life might throw at her.
“Mom. I just got accepted into the University of Technology Nursing Program. I’m going to Australia next year.”

Two weeks later, on a Friday afternoon in early February, she was pedaling away on an exercise bike someone had left in her room. In sweat pants and a tee shirt, she almost looked like her old self, the athlete, the soccer player, the powerhouse-Marika who would sneer at my panting as we jogged around the block together.

The car was packed for my trip home for the weekend. I felt torn, as I always did, whenever I left Strong.
“Don’t forget to put your laundry in the new blue laundry bag,” I reminded her.
“O-Kay, mom,” she said, dismissing me.
“And remember to keep yourself hydrated. No caffeine drinks.”
“Mom, okay.” She rolled her eyes.
“And when’re you gonna take these pills that have been sitting here all morning?”
“Mom! Get a life,” she barked. “Go.” Conscious of my nagging, I silently picked up my computer and the old green bag of dirty laundry. I walked out the door. Without a look back.

Late that night I got a call. Marika had been admitted to the Intensive Care Unit with pneumonia, low blood pressure, and respiratory failure. She’d asked for me as it became more and more difficult to breathe, while her doctors and nurses awaited her consent to be sedated and intubated. Somehow, at home, before racing back to the hospital early the next morning, I slept. I know, because I wrote down my dream.

 

 

 

 

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Duetting: Memoir 44

Duetting: Memoir 44 Robin Botie of Ithaca, New York, photoshops a love poem written by her daughter who died of leukemia.

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.

 

 

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Duetting: Memoir 43

Duetting: Memoir 43 Robin Botie of Ithaca, New York photoshops an old picture of her daughter who died of leukemia as she sang her last concert.

“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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Duetting: Memoir 42

Duetting: Memoir 42 Robin Botie of Ithaca, New York, photoshops the words and poems of her daughter who died of leukemia, in a scene exploring young love and cancer.

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.

 

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