{"id":2964,"date":"2021-04-19T07:12:11","date_gmt":"2021-04-19T11:12:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/?p=2964"},"modified":"2021-04-20T10:56:28","modified_gmt":"2021-04-20T14:56:28","slug":"duetting-memoir-64","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/duetting-memoir-64\/","title":{"rendered":"Duetting: Memoir 64"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Greg grills steaks outside in snowy December. Still home, waiting to see where his new job will take him next, my son shares his aged Dalmore whisky with me while across the valley Ithaca College lights up the dorm windows to display the digits 2013. Another New Year tiptoes in. Another year that will pull my son far from home. One more year that pulls me ever farther from my daughter, from our times together. The second holiday season without Marika evanesces somewhere between the late night drinks with Greg and the few quiet dinners at friends\u2019 houses.<\/span><\/p>\n

Awake at sunrise most mornings, half-dressed, I grab my coat and camera, and clamber outside in the cold to catch the earliest morning light kissing the pond. There have been no photography classes over the winter break so I\u2019m trying to continue on my own, but I miss that community of students and photographers. I miss people in general over holidays. Everyone\u2019s mostly wrapped up in their own families, absent to me, making the absence of my daughter even more pronounced. I crave company but I seem to have forgotten how to socialize.<\/span><\/p>\n

At first, I was not to be the one to host the mid-January birthday party for Stephen, leader of the Ithaca hikers. But for too long I\u2019d let everyone else do all the entertaining.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cLet\u2019s do it at my place,\u201d had suddenly fallen out of my mouth when I was giddy in the company of fellow hikers. For days I think of little else until thirteen of us, including two friends\u2019 daughters, are squeezed around the table where I\u2019ve been writing for a year and a half. After a lunch of make-your-own sandwiches, the daughters help clear the table and light the candles on the cake. They\u2019ve already started to sing the Birthday Song when they hand the cake to me to place before Stephen. Don\u2019t let the flames go out, I think, carrying the candlelit cake ten short steps to Stephen. Suddenly my head reels. There\u2019s a jarring explosion of memories. Presenting birthday cakes to Marika. I was with her for every one of her birthdays. Twenty cakes, each year one more candle added. And one for good luck.<\/span>
\n\u2026 Happy Birthday Dear Marika, Happy Birthday to \u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

No. Don\u2019t go there now. It\u2019s Stephen\u2019s birthday and there are twelve people here, I tell myself, fighting back tears. I don\u2019t know if I set the cake down carefully in front of Stephen, or if I threw it at him like a hot potato. But by the time the song ends, I collect myself, clap cheerfully, and serve the coffee. And note that the Birthday Song is now a powerful emotional trigger, along with Christmas carols, carrot cake, and actress Drew Barrymore.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSusan and Stephen want us to come for brunch on Tuesday,\u201d says Liz, over the phone on Friday, the first of March 2013.<\/span>
\n\u201cI can\u2019t. I have my photography class on Tuesday,\u201d I say.<\/span>
\n\u201cWell, how about Monday then?\u201d Liz asks.<\/span>
\n\u201cNo, I can\u2019t on Monday.\u201d<\/span>
\n\u201cWhatcha got going on Monday?\u201d she pushes.<\/span>
\n\u201cMonday\u2019s March 4th<\/sup>, the second anniversary of Marika\u2019s death. I don\u2019t want to do a get-together with people then. It\u2019s the wrong kind of energy,\u201d I say.<\/span>
\n\u201cWell, what are<\/em> you doing on Monday?\u201d she prods.<\/span>
\n\u201cSomething quiet, reflective. Like light candles around the pond. Maybe a campfire. Yeah, Marika loved campfires.\u201d<\/span>
\n\u201cWell, let me know how we can help,\u201d Liz says, ready to hang up.<\/span>
\n\u201cYou wanna help me build a campfire?\u201d<\/span>
\n\u201cIn the snow?\u201d she laughs nervously, knowing I\u2019m serious.<\/span>
\n\u201cYeah. A little warmth in all the wet and cold, I don\u2019t know,\u201d I say, sensing a mutual doubt. \u201cI haven\u2019t figured it out yet. But there\u2019s no way I\u2019m gonna be fit for company on Monday,\u201d I say, ending the conversation.<\/span><\/p>\n

The period from March 4th<\/sup> to Mothers\u2019 Day is my season of hailstorms and hurricanes. In between those dates fall my birthday and Marika\u2019s, the first day of spring, Easter, and Passover. All are opportunities to wallow in misery and close off the world. Brain nausea sets in as I try to sort out what this day, the anniversary of Marika\u2019s death, really means and how I should commemorate it. What keeps coming up is my Aunt Bertha. My favorite aunt lost her husband on her birthday over fifty years ago. She\u2019s kept to herself for over half a century, feeding on little other than her immense sorrow. That is not living; it is dying in slow motion. The day my daughter died was the worst day of my life. It\u2019s a date I\u2019ll never forget. The only good thing about that time was the kindness and support of many friends. Without them, I would never have gotten through that day. Or the past two years.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHey Liz,\u201d I call back. \u201cDid you finalize a day for the brunch yet? Because I think getting together with friends is exactly what I need on Monday.\u201d So, in recognition of the day I lost Marika but found my caring community, I take Suki to brunch with Liz at Susan and Stephen\u2019s house. An hour later on the same day, my friends Barb and Jan take me out for lunch. I take Marika\u2019s friend Rachel, now Ray, and the woman she will marry, out for sushi dinner. And in between, because the assignment in photo class this week is to take seventy pictures of people in their environments, I go to hikers Dennis and Virginia\u2019s place, and then Dan and Celia\u2019s with my camera. Counting friends. Counting blessings.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

Greg grills steaks outside in snowy December. Still home, waiting to see where his new job will take him next, my son shares his aged Dalmore whisky with me while across the valley Ithaca College lights up the dorm windows to display the digits 2013. Another New Year tiptoes in. Another year that will pull […]<\/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":[313,1187,224,2237,1626,2224,2226,2225,951,2227,2228],"class_list":["post-2964","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2172","tag-bereavement","tag-coping-with-grief","tag-depression","tag-duetting-memoir-64","tag-emotional-triggers","tag-finding-community","tag-from-grief-to-hope","tag-grief-during-holidays","tag-mother-daughter","tag-reconnecting-with-life-after-loss","tag-socializing-again-after-loss"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2964","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=2964"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2964\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}