{"id":2602,"date":"2020-02-03T07:03:04","date_gmt":"2020-02-03T12:03:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/?p=2602"},"modified":"2020-02-03T20:33:57","modified_gmt":"2020-02-04T01:33:57","slug":"duetting-memoir-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/duetting-memoir-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Duetting: Memoir 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Duetting:<\/a>My dead daughter drags me up the stairs and into her bedroom. I thought I\u2019d left her for good, in the hospital, in Rochester. But she walked in with me when I got home. Now, she is all over the house, excited, calling me to look, see this, find that. And she pulls me up the stairs. I don\u2019t want to see that room. But I can\u2019t sit still. Can\u2019t think. Can\u2019t eat. I want to be where she is. I want to be dead. It\u2019s almost bedtime now and for hours I\u2019ve resisted her luring me up here. But she wins.<\/span><\/p>\n

Look, she says.<\/span>
\nFor what, I wonder? I scan my daughter\u2019s room, trying not to believe she\u2019s ninety miles north, in a bag, in the hospital\u2019s basement refrigerator. No. Remember her here<\/em>. In this room. She slept with her eye makeup on, smudged, her red painted toes peeking out from under four quilts. I\u2019d wake her with breakfast trays\u2014smoothies and grilled cheese sandwiches\u2014to coax her into the morning. Now, sinking nose-down into the princess\u2019s bed, I sniff, searching for her dwindling scent left buried in the linens. I roll over to see the room like she did. It feels like her hundred thirty-five pounds are sitting on my chest. Is she okay, I wonder? No. Nothing\u2019s okay. I can\u2019t keep her warm and comfortable anymore. Who am I without her? Am I still her mother? Now what? What am I supposed to do now, Marika?<\/span><\/p>\n

Floor to ceiling, every inch and corner is filled with stuffed animals, photos, books, and memorabilia. Clothes. Papers. Nothing has been thrown out in three years. Since cancer. The room is crammed, and I am completely empty.<\/span><\/p>\n

Look, she kicks me.<\/span>
\nIn the middle of the bookcase, a small spiral-bound notebook stands out an inch from the other books. It appears to be an unused journal. Until I pick it up and flip the pages backwards. There, on the first page, written in her most polished handwriting, is the poem above.<\/span><\/p>\n

A wave crashes over my head. Inside me a seawall breaks. I take the poem and her stuffed Puppy to bed. The night fills with images of my almost twenty-one-year-old Marika flying over hills and mountains. And in the morning, I find myself back upstairs, haunted. Hungry for more. Another journal beckons, and then another. Rummaging through her things I find sketchbooks. Notebooks with poems and plays. Letters. When did she write all this? Songs. Diary entries. Bittersweet glimpses into her short life. And it\u2019s like an invitation. I\u2019ve found my daughter again. Marika\u2019s not gone. She is upstairs in her room in a dozen different journals, in a million words, waiting for me to finally\u2014really\u2014get to know her.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My dead daughter drags me up the stairs and into her bedroom. I thought I’d left her for good, in the hospital, in Rochester. But she walked in with me when I got home. Now, she is all over the house, excited, calling me to look, see this, find that. And she pulls me up […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1998],"tags":[2017,494,438,2018,2016,2021,1569,500,890,73],"class_list":["post-2602","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1998","tag-cancer-memoir","tag-child-loss","tag-coping-with-loss","tag-death-of-a-child","tag-duetting","tag-duetting-memoir-1","tag-duetting-with-my-daughter-who-died","tag-living-with-grief","tag-motherhood","tag-writing-to-heal"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2602","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2602"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2602\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}