Tag Archives: loss

A Black Dress In the Closet

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black dressTonight, while Vivi and I were picking out her clothes for tomorrow, my hand brushed across this black dress hanging in her closet, a dress she’s never worn.  Size 7, light hounds tooth with a smocked bodice, a sash, and a lace trimmed color.  I got it for $8 at the fall consignment sale and it’s been hanging there in her closet through the winter with all the other lovely dresses that she never wears.

Vivi has never been to a funeral.  But one day, she’ll need a black dress.  We never know when, but the days come.  I remember my own nephews at Richard’s memorial.  Jake was about three.  He came up to me in the vestibule at the church and when I knelt down to give him a hug, he reared back and grinned proudly then announced, “We got new SHIRTS!”

A friend from high school lost her daughter this weekend and even though I never met the dear girl and I haven’t seen her mama for 30 years, looking at that tiny black dress in my own daughter’s closet stopped my breath in my throat.  It reminded me of a story of a mother, a daughter, a weary heart, and a black dress.

Many years ago, my stepmother’s niece was living her life the hard way.  She had spent so many years lost to drugs and alcohol that it was difficult to have any hope that she would ever be free.  That hole, that emptiness inside her–she tried to fill it with liquor or cocaine or whatever oblivion she could afford, but the hole only got deeper and darker.  No matter how much love came her way, tough or patient or long-suffering, she seemed determined to throw her life away with both hands.   Her addiction ate up her marriage and her relationship with her own children.  Her job, her home, her family.  She threw everything onto the fire.

Big Gay’s sister suffered through it all like mothers do.  She tried to help her baby, she tried to warn her, she tried to be strong.  But one day, after a nasty scene in her driveway, she had to step away and let her daughter live with the consequences.  As the police drove away with her daughter, she found herself calmly pondering whether or not she had a black dress in her closet.  She was that sure that she would need one.  That is a tough moment for a mother–when she has to watch helplessly as her grown daughter hurtles towards her death.

There was a happier ending to that story.  Big Gay’s niece got her life back.  Her mother never needed a black dress.

It’s hard to write this next part because I don’t want to share the wrong thing at the wrong time.  The young woman who died this weekend died in a single-car accident.  Her mother got that horrifying message in the dark of the night that we all dread.  She said, “I can’t say that I haven’t expected a call in the night but expecting it and getting it are entirely different things. Please, please, please let this hit home somewhere…”  

So that’s why I’m writing about black dresses and mothers and daughters.  It hit home with me.  We can’t control our children once they are grown.  We can’t keep them safe no matter that we would give anything to be able to do so.  We can only hope that they will have enough time and good luck to get the chance to save themselves.

Rest in peace, M.W.  And peace to her mother and her sister, in their black dresses.  Grief is the price we pay for love.

Just One Feather

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One feather

Have you ever had that moment when a squirrel darts out into the street as you’re driving by but it’s not safe to swerve so you keep going and cringe and wait for the thump…but it never comes?  That happened this morning as Carlos and I were driving to school (well, I was driving because his license has been suspended for being a TODDLER).  The squirrel ran straight for my tire.  I cringed.  Then I peeped in the rear view mirror and didn’t see anything splattered behind me, so I figured the squirrel performed some kind of magic and ran between the tires.

Thinking about that squirrel, and a friend who lost her husband this week, and that time I lost my husband–it all made me think about how we dart between the tires all day long.  There is so much risk in being alive, so many wheels flying past us as we’re just trying to get a few acorns back to the nest.  We can’t stay in the nest with our babies or they and we would starve.  We have to go hunting for acorns when the fall makes them plentiful.  It’s risky, but it’s why we survive.

Perhaps I should switch to decaf because I really do a LOT of thinking before the sun is high in the sky.

Once we got to school, I opened the car door to lift Carlos out of his seat.  His face lit up like we hadn’t seen each other in days.  He squealed, “MOMMY!” and flung himself into my arms.  I stood there between the minivans with my face buried in the dark curls under his ear and told him how I loved him more than anything else in the world.  How I would do anything to keep him safe and happy and growing.  He whispered, “Gotcha, baby,” and squeezed me between his tiny arms.   That’s what I usually say every morning when I pick him up from his car seat.  When he’s upset or startled or crying, I hold him tight and say, “Mommy’s got you.  Mommy’s got you.  You’re OK.”  I guess he could feel that I needed that this morning.

It’s all just so much some days.  Like walking across a tightrope and you can’t resist looking down.

On my walk into my office, I did look down.  And there lay a soft gray feather on the sidewalk.  I love feathers.  The hollow shaft that makes it strong and light–the only reason a bird can fly with all that architecture and not be weighed down.  The fluffy tuft of down for warmth because it’s cold when you get far away from the earth.  The gentle curve, like the curve of the horizon where the earth ends and the sky begins.

It takes thousands of miraculous feathers to make an ordinary sparrow.  Just like us, that tiny bird is a hodgepodge of miracles that all seem to work most of the time.  Soft and warm, hollow and light, brave and gentle.

But here’s the lesson I got from that feather on the sidewalk:  it was just one feather, one feather of a thousand that make up that bird.  Loss is real and loss affects us.  Loss may even slow us down or ground us for a while.  But it’s just one feather.  That bird flew on without it.

The squirrel made it back to the nest.  Carlos made it to the story rug.  Mommy made it to her desk.  The sparrow continued to soar.

Peace to you today if you are feeling afraid.  You can still fly, even as you lose feathers along the way.

CAUTION: These Pants Cause Cancer

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Cancer pantsThese are the pants that I was wearing on June 30, 2004.  That was such a busy day, a Tuesday, I think.  Maybe a Wednesday.  Richard and I had returned home from our vacation in New England, first at Linekin Bay for sailing then on Cape Cod for his cousin’s wedding.

We had so much to do after two weeks away from home–laundry, cleaning, paying bills.  I went right back to work.  I was teaching a Microsoft Access class that day.  Richard spent the day trying to get seen by a doctor to see if anyone could figure out why his vision was going blurry.

The day before we left for vacation, he cut the backyard with a push mower.  When he came inside, I noticed that he had a big red spot in the corner of his eye.  I asked a nurse friend and she said it was probably a simple burst blood vessel.  A common instance when one overexerts oneself.  It would clear up in a few days.  But it didn’t.  Over the two weeks we were away, the eye stayed red.  By the end of our trip, his vision was so blurry that he had to pull over to the side of the highway and let me drive through Boston.

Richard got in quickly with Dr. Blue, the ophthalmologist.  Dr. Blue looked inside Richard’s eyes and found what he thought was a dangerous bleed.  We spent a few hours in a panic–what if Richard lost his sight?  How could our life work if he went blind?   There was talk of going to Atlanta the next day to see a retinal specialist.  Fortunately (I guess), Richard also mentioned to Dr. Blue that he hadn’t been feeling well for a while and Dr. Blue had the foresight to order a CBC.  While I taught Access, Richard had the blood test done.  By that afternoon, Dr. Blue had called to say that we must get Richard to a hematologist that day.  A normal white cell count is between 4,500-10,000.  Richard’s was over 70,000.

We didn’t know the specifics yet, only that the doctor would be waiting on us at Northeast Georgia Cancer Care.  There was that word.  The unimaginable prospect of Richard losing his vision melted away and was replaced by that word.  We sat in the waiting room there, among those people with cancer.  I couldn’t find a single thing to read on the coffee table that wasn’t about…that.

So.  Dr. Marrano brought us back.  Richard took my hand and told me to wait in another room, that he wanted to talk to the doctor alone.  Dr. Marrano was so gentle with us that my heart went hollow.  You don’t have to be that nice and careful with someone who has anemia or an infection.

I sat in an exam room by myself.  I was so afraid that I couldn’t raise my head up and look around.  All I could see was those ridiculous pants.  Orange jungle print.  Ludicrous pants that hadn’t a care in the world.  I sat there thinking, “He’s over there on the other side of this wall and the doctor is telling him that he has cancer and I am over here trapped in this room with these incredibly obnoxious pants!”  If only, if only, if only.  If only one thing could be different.  Staring at those pants as the knowledge sank in that our normal life was over.

Dr. Marrano tapped on the door and brought Richard back to me.  The door closed behind him–I didn’t get to talk to the doctor.  Richard held my hand again and told me how it was going to be.  Looked me right in the eye and said, “I have leukemia.”  How there were lots of treatments and he had youth on his side and he was heading to Johns Hopkins for the absolute best experts in the field.  

Maybe those pants held me up.  I remember wanting to fall down in a heap.

We drove home, like people do.  I started crying at the traffic light at Prince and Satula.  He patted my hand on the gearshift.   The light changed and we moved on.

That night, we tried to find a doctor to talk to, any doctor.  My sister wasn’t answering, so we called Richard’s college buddy, Eeric.  A giant Viking of an orthopedic surgeon, but he knew how to interpret a CBC.  Richard was on one phone breaking the news to his parents.  I walked out on the deck to read the numbers to Eeric.  When I read the hemoglobin score, he sucked in his breath and whispered, “Shit.”   Normal range is about 14-17.  Richard’s was 7.  Eeric made me promise that I wouldn’t let Richard so much as brush his teeth until he had had a transfusion, which was scheduled for the next morning.

At the end of that long day, I took off my jungle print pants.  Nine years later, and they’re still hanging in the closet, with a fine haze of dust over the hanger.  I never could bring myself to wear them again–those are the cancer pants.  Couldn’t give them away either–they are part of a day in my life that will always be vivid.  Livid.  Obnoxious.  That innocent woman who walked out into the world in her ridiculous pants.  She never came back.

What’s that crazy thing in the back of your closet that you can’t throw away?