{"id":2951,"date":"2021-04-05T07:25:56","date_gmt":"2021-04-05T11:25:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/?p=2951"},"modified":"2021-04-05T10:39:35","modified_gmt":"2021-04-05T14:39:35","slug":"duetting-memoir-62","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/duetting-memoir-62\/","title":{"rendered":"Duetting: Memoir 62"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

In late September 2012, at a campfire with musicians, a friend\u2019s daughter tends the fire. Bent low to the ground, she blows at the coals until waves of flame dance up and embers riddle the air in fireworks of crackling jewels. Her every movement matches the music, and I sit in a lawn-chair, watching, mesmerized. When the fire is really roaring and the fiddles whinny at a feverish pitch, the young woman steps up barefoot on the rocks that circle the campfire. She tiptoes around the fire gracefully from rock to rock as the firelight plays on her face.<\/span>
\n\u201cMarika, you\u2019re too close to the fire.\u201d That\u2019s what\u2019s about to burst from my mouth as I watch this girl-woman. I catch myself just before toppling off the edge of my seat.<\/span><\/p>\n

No one is like Marika. My friends\u2019 daughters don\u2019t really remind me of her. But late the next day, as I stroll over crack-dry leaves in the driveway, there\u2019s the sound of an approaching car crunching gravel, and I feel a hopping in my heart. For seconds, I hear the old dented Toyota pulling up, music blasting, leaves flying behind it. Marika would show up suddenly like this. Just before dinnertime. She\u2019d tumble out of the car carrying a full laundry bag, with Suki pulling at her leash. A cool smoke-tinged breeze brushes by. My deepest sadness is triggered by these sounds and smells. Marika had come to me like this last autumn too. And it had taken a whole winter to creep up out of the dark depths of despair.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t magically recover in a year\u2019s time,\u201d says Meg, my CompassionNet social worker who still keeps tabs on me, a year and a half after Marika\u2019s death.<\/span>
\n\u201cBut I\u2019m tired of these triggers wrenching my emotions, at being accident-prone and making poor choices. Forgetting. Falling. Losing things. Breaking things,\u201d I tell her. \u201cMissing appointments was something someone else always did. I can\u2019t even dress myself right. I used to be a teacher. I was a lifeguard. I took care of other people\u2019s children. Except for childbirth, I was never in a hospital for my own care until this past year. Now I\u2019ve broken a wrist, my nose, and two toes. My eyes are cried permanently bloodshot. I had vertigo last week. And Lyme disease. My sister wants me tested for some kind of neurological impairment. Is this how it\u2019s always going to be from now on?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cTake care of yourself,\u201d Meg says, her brows twisting in opposite directions off her face. And I think, Yeah, I\u2019m my own lifeguard now.<\/span><\/p>\n

Sometime after, Rachel phones, \u201cYou hafta meet my new girlfriend.\u201d<\/span>
\n\u201cGirlfriend?\u201d I\u2019m caught off guard. Why would she want me to meet her new friend? This must be a really special new friend, I think. And then I finally meet up with them, Rachel and her Girlfriend. Not a boyfriend this time. I mull it over and over, trying to get comfortable with an ever-changing Rachel.<\/span><\/p>\n

These days I\u2019m desperate to have something stay the same. My whole life has changed. It seems like to live is to change, and I\u2019ve been fighting it. And I thought that Marika, being dead, would not change. I\u2019m finally getting to know who she really was, but even dead\u2014and after a year and a half I can finally say \u2018she is dead\u2019\u2014she is changing too. Or, maybe it\u2019s our relationship that\u2019s changed. Marika\u2014her ghost\u2014is no longer fighting me. I noticed that. Somehow, now, she\u2019s cheering me on.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAlways, Marika,\u201d she used to sign her letters, notes to friends, emails, \u2026 everything. Was that a plea to remember her or her pledge to always be there? Was it a wink at immortality? Or was it simply a pretty word that could sit next to one\u2019s signature instead of \u2018sincerely\u2019 or \u2018yours truly,\u2019 without too much thought behind it?<\/span><\/p>\n

Who dares to say \u201cAlways\u201d in a world plagued by climate change and ozone layer depletion? How could she sign something \u201cAlways\u201d with deadly global viruses, nuclear weapons proliferation, water pollution, terrorism, financial meltdowns, and ecological destruction all over the planet? With freak accidents, madmen with guns, asteroid impacts? With cancer. A million things can go wrong. It takes just one to end your \u201cAlways.\u201d Always is every time, at all times and for all time. Forever. Continually, repeatedly, in any case and without end. Always is the sun rising and setting, hopefully. Time. Space. Rocks, maybe. Even earth may not be around for always.<\/span><\/p>\n

I will not be around for always.<\/span><\/p>\n

Shortly after Marika died I found a small gold ring in her room. In many cultures a ring, an unbroken circle, symbolizes infinity and undying love. However, this ring is one of those adjustable bands where the ends don\u2019t meet. As soon as I put it on, I knew it would snag on something someday and fall off. Sooner or later I will lose it. But I\u2019ll wear Marika\u2019s ring as long as I have it; when it\u2019s gone I won\u2019t regret not tucking it away in a box or someplace safe. Can I treat people this way? Like they are not forever? Can I treat my own life this way, like it\u2019s not for always? Marika lived like she had only an hour left. How differently might we all live if we had expiration dates stamped on us like cartons of milk?<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In late September 2012, at a campfire with musicians, a friend’s daughter tends the fire. Bent low to the ground, she blows at the coals until waves of flame dance up and embers riddle the air in fireworks of crackling jewels. Her every movement matches the music, and I sit in a lawn-chair, watching, mesmerized. […]<\/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":[2172],"tags":[2212,438,224,2230,1626,2035,247,2152,784,2213,2214,2049],"class_list":["post-2951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2172","tag-always","tag-coping-with-loss","tag-depression","tag-duetting-memoir-62","tag-emotional-triggers","tag-forever","tag-grief","tag-grieving-moms","tag-healing","tag-im-a-mess","tag-immortality","tag-mother-daughter-relations"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2951","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=2951"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2951\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}