{"id":2715,"date":"2020-08-03T07:20:53","date_gmt":"2020-08-03T11:20:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/?p=2715"},"modified":"2020-08-03T06:52:16","modified_gmt":"2020-08-03T10:52:16","slug":"duetting-memoir-27","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/duetting-memoir-27\/","title":{"rendered":"Duetting: Memoir 27"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

When your life gets completely obliterated you can chuck it or you can go on, wailing and whimpering as you plant one foot forward in front of the other. I don\u2019t know which is harder. In the thick of loss it\u2019s not like you can recognize any options.<\/span><\/p>\n

In March 2012, on the first anniversary of my daughter\u2019s death, people are sending me mixed messages: it\u2019s time to get on with your life; give yourself time to heal; get over it; this will be with you forever. It embarrasses me that I\u2019m not employed yet. I had allowed myself the year off. But now my mother\u2019s hints about getting a job have turned into sharp jabs that leave me gnawing at my cuticles. There are no jobs in Ithaca, not for me anyway. I don\u2019t even know who I am anymore or what I can do. Marika\u2019s been gone a whole year, and all I want is to stay home and write at my table in the corner of the house, overlooking the pond where the geese are back trying to nest again.<\/span><\/p>\n

They\u2019re early this year. Every year the same two geese sit in the same place and build the same measly little nest. Some years they even get to hatch their eggs before a raccoon or woodchuck claims them. Marika and I often watched a bevy of baby geese paddling in the pond between their parents, or waddling on the bank. One always toddled way behind or in the wrong direction. We woke many mornings to squawking and splashing as the parents tried to ward off other overtaking geese. And inevitably, every day, there\u2019d be one less egg or one more baby goose gone, and then another gone, and another, until there were no baby geese left. Then the father would fly off and the mother would wander back and forth along the pond bank, picking at the pitiful remains of the nest. And I can tell you for sure that geese cry; it\u2019s one of the saddest songs I\u2019ve ever heard. A sound, something like sobbing, sighing, heaving, and honking\u2014all at once\u2014 fills the sky begging, \u201cWhy on earth?\u201d and \u201cWhat\u2019s next?\u201d and \u201cHow?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cDid you hear from Pat?\u201d I call Rachel. Pat was Marika\u2019s Australian boyfriend. Rachel has his address, email, and phone number from the shoebox where she\u2019d found the final wishes and a sealed letter to be sent to him upon Marika\u2019s death.<\/span>
\n\u201cHe said he\u2019s expecting to hear from you.\u201d<\/span>
\n\u201cDo I have the right address?\u201d I\u2019d emailed Pat twice already and not gotten a response. None of the Australian connections have replied. This is not turning out to be the trip I\u2019d imagined. I wanted to meet up with people. I\u2019d hoped to make it a family pilgrimage with my mother and Laurie, but my mother couldn\u2019t go. And now, because of Laurie\u2019s recent knee replacement, we need to rent a car to get around, forcing me to alter the trip again. Laurie calls at the last minute.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cRobin, I\u2019m sorry. My knee is infected,\u201d she says. There is a long pause. I wait. For the inevitable. But she wants me to fish it out of her. Laurie must really feel bad; I usually can\u2019t shut her up to squeeze in a word of my own.<\/span>
\n\u201cYou\u2019re not going?\u201d I say, knowing already and seeing only stunning white light.<\/span>
\n\u201cIt\u2019s just not going to work for me. I\u2019m sorry. I really wish I could go,\u201d she says. And I try not to panic or say anything to make her feel worse. So. Why on earth? What\u2019s next? And how?<\/span><\/p>\n

The day before I am to leave for Australia. Greg carries his rifle down the stairs, and together we traipse outside and around the pond to shoot the Heart Drive from Marika\u2019s old computer. It bothers me that the box of Marika\u2019s life-before-cancer could get swallowed up and lost forever in Greg\u2019s vast accumulation of stuff upstairs. The Staples tech had said to destroy it. Destroying is a job for my warrior son; putting the pieces away in the right place is what I do. This is the last item on my list of things to take care of before the trip. And Greg may be called to his new job in Afghanistan before I get back. So we place the little black box at the base of the willow tree that still stands despite being shot at for the past year.<\/span><\/p>\n

BAM! LikeBAM! He shoots. All the homework assignments, Marika\u2019s pre-cancer concerns, the girl-life contained in that small black box, LikeBAM! The long-gone girl who preceded the almost-adult daughter I miss, BAM! BAM! No fanfare. No fireworks. No explosion of computer chips or chorus of hallelujahs. Just two surprised geese taking off fast from the pond at the first of the five shots. I hold back my tears as we examine the remains of the box. Satisfied that the contents are indeed destroyed, we bury it deep into a muskrat hole by our feet. This is Marika\u2019s pond. Part of her will always be with it. I curl my lips around quivering teeth, and clamp down hard.<\/span><\/p>\n

Back inside the house my friend Liz types away on the computer. Greg disappears upstairs, and I hover nervously over Liz as she fidgets with my iPad, and enters the email addresses of the women who have been gathering month after month to hear what I\u2019ve been writing. Time is running out as I scour my contacts and my memory for all the strong women in my life, to add them to the list.<\/span>
\n\u201cHow am I going to do this?\u201d I ask Liz.<\/span>
\n\u201cYou go to your gmail account on your iPad, you open up this email, then you \u2013\u201d<\/span>
\n\u201cNo, I mean the whole thing. Tomorrow. This trip,\u201d I say. \u201cIt isn\u2019t right. What on earth am I doing going to Australia\u2014alone\u2014to spread my daughter\u2019s ashes?\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

When your life gets completely obliterated you can chuck it or you can go on, wailing and whimpering as you plant one foot forward in front of the other. I don’t know which is harder. In the thick of loss it’s not like you can recognize any options. In March 2012, on the first anniversary […]<\/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":[494,2108,2107,102,2113,2049,1961],"class_list":["post-2715","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1998","tag-child-loss","tag-clearing-out-after-a-death","tag-daughters-death","tag-dealing-with-loss","tag-duetting-memoir-27","tag-mother-daughter-relations","tag-scattering-ashes"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2715","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=2715"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2715\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}