{"id":2702,"date":"2020-07-10T07:15:26","date_gmt":"2020-07-10T11:15:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/?p=2702"},"modified":"2020-07-13T10:59:22","modified_gmt":"2020-07-13T14:59:22","slug":"duetting-memoir-24","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/duetting-memoir-24\/","title":{"rendered":"Duetting: Memoir 24"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Duetting:<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

There is always some anxiety as I wait for guests to arrive. My friends are so different from one another. They range from Marika\u2019s age to my mother\u2019s age. For the Feed and Reads I\u2019ve gathered them from my hiking group, from foodie endeavors, former workplaces, and past mother-daughter relationships. One friend\u2019s daughter will join us, and also a woman I\u2019ve never met who felt linked by loss. And Rachel. If I can reach her.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHey Rachel, where are you? You haven\u2019t called or emailed me in over a month. I\u2019m getting worried,\u201d I leave multiple messages on her cell, \u201cYou\u2019re coming to the Feed and Read aren\u2019t you?\u201d Rachel usually communicates with confidence, like she\u2019s the Mayor of Cool. But when I last spoke to her she\u2019d sounded almost suicidal. Too wrapped up in my own pain, I\u2019d never really considered how Marika\u2019s death affected her best friend.\u00a0<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Soon I\u2019m more warmed than worried, looking around the first assembly of my readers. They introduce themselves and talk like they are old friends. And in the months to come, they will be. In their courageous effort to help me, they will discover familiar connections and create new ones. But there are two who are missing. One is Andrea. She had often \u201cborrowed\u201d my children over the years, spoiling them and stretching their minds. She\u2019d visited Marika several times in the hospital. Andrea had given me my first teaching job, knowing what I could do long before I did. Two months ago we walked in the woods as yellow leaves fell. What kind of horrible joke was it that she was recently diagnosed with cancer herself? I wanted to be there for her. But wearing her head wrap and hoop earrings, she so resembled Marika, I could hardly look at her. Now Andrea is too sick from chemo to join the Feed and Reads.<\/span><\/p>\n

The doorbell rings and I run to answer it. Rachel.<\/span>
\n\u201cSorry I\u2019m late,\u201d she says, all bubbly at the door.<\/span>
\n\u201cLook at you!\u201d I gush. \u201cYour hair. You look adorable. You look \u2013 happy.\u201d She looks like she owns the world and has just walked into her own birthday party. Her makeup and manicure are gone. And her hair is shaved off except for a bit at the top.<\/span>
\n\u201cIt\u2019s a Faux-Hawk,\u201d she says, brushing at her almost bare head. \u201cDo you like it?\u201d It\u2019s freezing outside, but she\u2019s wearing a wife-beater undershirt, neon Michael Jordan sneakers, and low rise baggy khaki shorts that might be her dad\u2019s. She looks like the beloved janitor from some old TV show. But she still has on the fragile silver necklace that was Marika\u2019s.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been sober for fifty-six days,\u201d Rachel announces at the table as we feast on butternut squash soup, cheeses, salad, sushi, and shrimp cocktail. She proudly shows off her tattoos. One particularly huge one spreads across her ribs on her right side, \u201cBe strong when you feel weak,\u201d a quote of Marika\u2019s. I\u2019m very aware of how different Rachel is, from before, from the others. And I\u2019m proud of her, like she\u2019s mine.<\/span><\/p>\n

When the meal is over, we move into the small living room for the reading. A photo of Marika sits on a tiny table next to me. Next to it is a box of tissues. And pencils and notebooks, for comments.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Feed and Reads will go on for over a year. Whenever I have a couple of new chapters to share we will feast. My work is the focus at these gatherings, but everyone here knows grief. Before and after I read, we share our stories.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt was just like that for me when my husband was in the hospital, before he died,\u201d says Jane, the friend-of-a-friend I hadn\u2019t known before. Next to her, Barb, who will host most of the Feed and Reads, sits stunned, holding a tissue in mid-air between her lap and her face.<\/span>
\n\u201cAfter my husband died I wrote him letters too,\u201d says Annette, whom I\u2019ve known over twenty-five years, \u201cIt was a powerful healing tool.\u201d Celia, who remembers everything, brings the group back to my story saying, \u201cYou forgot to mention the prom. You have to write about the prom.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s as if they all know I need them here. They somehow sense the best way to support a grieving parent is to show up and listen. So I keep writing and rewriting. To read aloud my daughter\u2019s story. All a bereaved mother really wants is for her child to be remembered. For the rest of my life I will listen patiently while friends ramble on about their kids graduating, getting their first real jobs, getting married … and there will be no more news of Marika that I can contribute to the chatter. But here is my time to tell about my beautiful brave girl, her accomplishments, and her extraordinary passage through the bloom of her short life.<\/span><\/p>\n

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

There is always some anxiety as I wait for guests to arrive. My friends are so different from one another. They range from Marika’s age to my mother’s age. For the Feed and Reads I’ve gathered them from my hiking group, from foodie endeavors, former workplaces, and past mother-daughter relationships. One friend’s daughter will join […]<\/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":[2051,494,2105,1685,64,2044,890,2097,73],"class_list":["post-2702","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1998","tag-cancer-patient","tag-child-loss","tag-duetting-memoir-24","tag-grief-support","tag-healing-from-loss","tag-mother-daughter-relationship","tag-motherhood","tag-sharing-grief-with-friends","tag-writing-to-heal"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2702","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=2702"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2702\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}