A Special God for Children

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There is a little girl who landed on our doorstep about a month ago named Krystal. Krystal is in 3rd grade by age, but cannot read or write. Krystal is deaf but does not know American Sign Language. Krystal cannot eat but is fed via a gastro-intestinal (GI) tube twice a day at school by her mother, who is having a hard time getting on Medicaid in Texas. Krystal is always happy.

Krystal’s hair is parted beautifully every day in a centered, zig-zag pattern and every day she wears a clean bib with some paper towels folded in the pocket to catch her drool as she smiles at us, nods, and gurgles throughout the day.

Every time I see Krystal, I say “Hi!” with bright eyes and a full smile, and she nods to me and says hi in her own way and gives me a hug. The children love her and have brought her into the school in the most amazing ways; gently tossing a ball to her in PE, looking after her at recess, and asking sweet questions about her when she cannot hear them (they don’t understand deafness). They ask: “Why does that little girl not speak? Can she hear us? No hearing?!?” They are mostly unaware of life’s greatest mysteries.

The other day I was walking with Krystal out to the Special Education room, which is where she spends most of her days. Her paperwork that came from California is out of date and it looks like she hasn’t been in school for about three years. Her mom was living in Orange County and said it was hard for her. Our district won’t use the old paperwork as they claim it is too out of date. This is a way they can keep her at our campus despite our lack of a Life Skills classroom. They say they have to follow policy and that until Mom gets doctor’s orders for Krystal, there is nothing they can do to help her. So we help her, every day assigning someone to walk around with her, hold her hand, and take her to meet her mother.

I was just watching “Fried Green Tomatoes” tonight. It is an early spring night and it is very cool out. When I was walking with Krystal the other day I thought about the part of the movie during which Ninny mentions Ruth’s belief in there being a special God for children. When I am with Krystal and she is smiling at me and gurgle-laughing, or when I am drawing with Jade and trying to get her to talk to me about why she is so violent, when Zoe is screaming at me over and over and over again, when Tara is able to calm down and come out of her hiding space and walk off her upset feelings, I think about that God. There are few mercies for little children who are in the dire straits of poverty during late-stage capitalism, parents who are under-employed, houses that aren’t sanitary or safe, in a school system that is only designed for children who would make it even if the system just went away.

Right now the stool holding up society isn’t steady and it’s because we are missing a huge part of its structure: the children. I wish it was as simple as praying to that God and asking her/him to step in and help us. For now, it seems that no one will help, and no one knows how, anyway. For now, we will walk around with our Krystals and try to soothe our Jades and try to figure out our Taras so we can make it through the school days. It seems so strange for a country to, over and over again, ignore and leave behind its children. Just as in the Pied Piper of Hamlin, we are trading so much for our children. What happens when the Piper comes to call in his debts?

Midnight in an Imperfect World

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I feel this intense sadness as I sit here, right now, listening to the rain beat on the roof of my school. The sadness comes from many corners of my emotional life; the loss of a best friend in November, the many issues at my school that all stem from a lack of organization and care for its most vulnerable children, the process of clearing and sorting and packing and selling of my home so that we can relocate. Grief is complex, and for me, extremely so.

Yesterday I sat here, in my office, and asked myself why it is so hard to let all of this go (the job), even though I have already resigned and am content (if not happy) with that decision. A friend of mine told me it is because I care so much, and that is most likely true. I wonder if caring so much is a bad thing when one is in the midst of a perfect storm of state-sponsored destruction of public schools, high poverty, a pool of inexperienced or low quality candidates, and district-level administrators who are cut off from the issues at the campus level.

I don’t know.

As the end of this year approaches, and fast at that, I find myself again in a position where I feel I know less than I thought I knew before the year started. I always keep the faith that people truly care for children and know how to treat and interact with them. I have learned this year that that is not true. I always keep the faith that people in positions of power and influence want to exert that power and influence to better the lives of children and improve the outcomes of schools. I have learned this year that that is not true, either. Sometimes people get in those positions simply because they want to be in them, whether it be for money, title, or lack of responsibility/accountability.

Working within a system that has no true sense of accountability for employees coupled with a lack of incentive for improvement can lead to pits of complacency. This feels especially true in schools and districts that are under-resourced and have parents who are less involved. Parents often trust the schools entirely, or distrust them entirely; there is little in between. Unlike wealthier districts in which parents feel entitled to advocate for anything they feel like they or their children deserve, districts that are under-resourced do not have demanding parents hammering at the schoolhouse door; they therefore can hide many things from parents who really need to know that there is no research-based curriculum, ineffective district-level administrators in programs like special education and bilingual education, lack of effort toward building inclusive, positive campus culture, responsive education, and trauma-informed practices.

I am about to step away from public school, again. I did this once before in 2012. Here I am again in 2023: time for a break. Time for some reflection and repair of my heart space. So many times this year I have felt my heart break, for different reasons. I have felt my soul tug at me; saying, what are you doing here? I am thankful to say that I have a new opportunity at a wonderful, small, experimental, place-based school where we are moving. There is a stream through the property, a learning forest, a barn in which middle schoolers learn, and a view of the ocean.

Time to heal, to read, to write. I wish Texas schools all the best.

In the Dark

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In the dark, I sit in my room; lamps glowing on the newly white walls. This week I will sell my house to someone new. I love this house; it has been a wonderful 5.5 years here and I will miss it.

In the dark, I sit in my room and reflect on this year of growth, learning, and heartache. I think about how heart broken I am on the one hand, and grateful on the other. How is it possible to have both?

The other day I had to send a child to the mental hospital. She became so upset that she cut herself and made herself bleed and she rubbed blood all over her face and hands and she looked like a doll or as if she was wearing a mask. She required sedation three times before she left campus and two more times in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. Someone asked me afterward what I was thinking about when it was happening and I didn’t know the answer.

After that happened I went on a walk to the park that is down the street from the school. It was a beautiful spring day and, as I walked, I began to notice flowers and spring leaves: neon green baby spring leaves. I arrived at the park and smiled and felt the wind flow around me; it was almost saying to me, “don’t worry as you are on your way away from here, I am carrying you away”. I could see the ocean in my mind’s eye and smell the salt air. I smiled and realized how much I love that park and all of its trees and the way its gravel always gets into my shoes somehow. When Oscar was a little puppy this was where I trained him to walk on a leash. This is where I ran into Paola the custodian who retired (she walks each day).

On Friday I had a meeting with the director of Special Education and she was very angry with us and criticized us and told us we would get used to these things and disassociate with time and experience. She mentioned the importance of running through scenarios with the team so that we could know what better to do next time. I looked at her as if she was insane, remembering my morning the day before and thinking there was no way in hell I would ever run through that scenario with anyone except the people who happened to be there at that one, specific moment. She mentioned that when she was lifeguarding this is what she would do with the other guards to anticipate things happening. I sat there, in my mind saying “lifeguarding?” and asked, over and over, for help, training, ideas, solutions. I was batting zero.

I love this beautiful place. I have loved it every day for 5.5 years and now it is on its way to becoming someone else’s and I can just sit here, remembering, feeling the heartbreak and hearing the song and understanding it is two sides to the same coin of life. There is pain and gratitude: bewilderment and truth all at the same time.

Copper Heart

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“Was it hard?” I ask.
Letting go?”

Not as hard as holding on to something that wasn’t real.”
― Lisa Schroeder

I have said before that this is the job that will break your heart, over and over, each and every day. I realized the other day that my time at this job is limited, being that I resigned about two weeks ago, effective the last day of the school year.

Memory is unreliable, so I have decided to try to write down as many things as I can; to keep these things here in the blogosphere until a later date when, I hope, I do something with the information and the stories.

Why did I resign my position? On paper, it is because we are moving to Maine, and that is true.We are moving to Maine and I am very happy about it: so is Cody. But the question from many people is why are you moving to Maine? There are many reasons: life changes, nature, scenery, community. But there is a truth that our jobs have become untenable and so stressful that I feel they have temporarily (I hope) changed our personalities and our way of interacting with others and each other.

On Friday I watched a student cut herself with pieces of a mug that she smashed on the brick wall of the calm room she was in (I didn’t realize the mug was there). She is 9 years old. I watched as a police officer and a nurse came in to speak with her. I stood outside, shocked and saddened.

Right now there is a little boy, age 7, in my co-APs office crying. He has been crying for over 30 minutes: wails, sobs, hollers, screams.

I can’t find reliable staff for the two classrooms that serve the children with emotional disturbance. The one who cut herself has had over 5 crises at school. Her parent is trying his best, I think, but he is also coming at this problem of living with a person (her deceased mother) who had substance abuse disorder, and no doubt, has his own deck stacked against him.

The public schools aren’t designed for this; we don’t have the resources or the knowledge to help. Even the “behavior specialists” from our district don’t seem to understand what to do with some students. It is this endless stream of trial-and-error, emphasis on trial.

My heart is broken. I feel depressed. Depression is not a familiar feeling for me, so I think that this is temporary. Anxiety and I are good friends, but depression no. I feel so heavy, as if I have no energy to do anything. I feel hopeless. I feel like I am doing everything I can for this kid and I am doing very little because there is little to be done.

I keep thinking about myself at 9; it was 1989 and my parents hadn’t lost all their money yet and we lived in this big house with a pool. I used to do my homework in a raft in the pool. I loved that pool; it had a waterfall made of rocks and one was so big that you could dive off it. The house had a screened-in porch on the second story and a hidey-hole room under the stairs. I used to sit in there and read with a lightbulb on a string glowing in the dark. While we lived in that house, my parents bought a ton of stuff including this really awesome stereo that I still wish they hadn’t gotten rid of! Shortly though, the money disappeared as fast as it had came and we had to sell off our belongings, cars, and then the house itself. We left private school and went to public school. My dad had a nervous breakdown and was never the same. Our family was never really happy ever again when we were together for too long; we could sustain a couple of hours but that was it.

That experience of watching my parents lose all their money and then lose their focus and happiness changed my life. It made me understand life differently, and as I aged, to commit to certain values. One of them is to not be attached to things, despite being a loving collector of weird objects. One of them is that it is important to listen to your heart.

I listened to my heart here back in September when the 5 year old brough a loaded gun to school. I resigned in my heart that day. But between then and now have been so many things that have happened that have just hurt this heart of mine. Perhaps hearts are like metal: the more they are hammered on, the stronger they are? I like to think so. I commit to never altering my love for children, despite the heartbreak. But, another thing I learned from my parents is that once you recognize dysfunction and an unwillingness to change, it is time to remove yourself from the situation and find one better suited.

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

This Too Was A Gift

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(In my sleep I dreamed this poem)

Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.

It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift.

The Uses of Sorrow – Mary Oliver

Years ago, I was younger and didn’t understand myself, or the bumpy ride of Life I was embarking upon. There was a time when I thought all fathers screamed and made their mothers cry, made their daughters scream back, lost all of their families’ money (repeatedly), and didn’t remember friends’ names. At this same time, I knew the core understanding was that no one was to know what happened in our house. It was like the sitting room in every one of my parents’ houses with its Ethan Allen sofas upholstered in blue, the mahogany coffee table, and the china cabinet, in which no one ever sat. The only time I remember sitting in that room was the day that my mother and my boyfriend Chris’ parents and I and Chris discussed how I had to get an abortion and that was our only option. (It was the best thing, don’t get me wrong, but the approach could have used some work. But then again, what the hell are you going to do when your 15-year-olds end up pregnant? Probably make a lot of mistakes and say the wrong thing.) There was a china set in my parents’ house that was purple with gold metallic rims and I always loved the dishes because purple is my favorite color, but we could never use them because they were so “expensive” then one Christmas in my 20s they were “worth more than you” and then there was a threat to break all of them (from 20 something me) and then one Christmas they were used for a guest who I informed should feel very valuable, and now, after death, are used all the time.

I used to think that all the things that happened in my parents’ house were normal until I became an adult and began to see how other peoples’ families worked. For some reason, as a child, I didn’t or couldn’t see it as clearly as I could as an adult.

My dad died in November of 2021 after a very short burst of a battle with lung cancer. As he died, my mom became extremely angry at him, at everything probably, and lashed out a lot. He died very quickly, 9 days after he was admitted to the hospital which was just a few days after being diagnosed. I had forgiven him before he died, partially as a by-product of COVID (we couldn’t see each other for almost two years) and partially as an effect of years of therapy including CBT and EMDR.

Beth died in November of 2022, the same week as my dad a year before. I can hear her laughing at me right now and rolling her eyes at me as I type about how great she was and how painful it was to lose her. Lately, I have been hearing her laughing and it’s like this twinkle in my heart-mind as if tiny gold bells are jingling together and I can see her laughing at the same time. She would not want me to be sad. It was out of my sadness at losing her that I began to find my way to understanding myself; no doubt this process has actually been cooking on the back burner for years, but the reality is that the grief I have felt and still feel for Beth has been one of my greatest gifts and one that she uniquely could give to me.

I mentioned above that I have been in therapy for years. I have had several therapists but two really are the most significant: my therapist in Ellsworth, Maine, and my therapist here in Austin, Texas. My Maine therapist was my kind of therapist: practical, insightful, focused, and pro-active. She told me when I decided to move back to Texas, to seek out a provider to do CBT next. And so, trusting her, I did. I began to work with my therapist in Austin and we first worked using CBT and then combined it with EMDR and, slowly, ideas began percolating in my heart-mind, and here we are.

This year has been incredibly stressful for me. I am a new assistant principal at a high-needs campus in a small, rural district that doesn’t seem to understand how to find adequate resources to help with serious needs in reading, teacher training, and changing student behavior. They are big fans of Joan Didion’s book “The Year of Magical Thinking”, or so it would seem: they appear to believe that if they just wait it out long enough, solutions will appear and they themselves don’t need to seek out experts or helpers or research or……anything. I have noticed this year, in moments of desperation, that my mind follows the path built for it during my CBT, and if I close my eyes for a few seconds, I go to the forest up the hill from Duck Brook, the location I chose years ago in a therapy session which, even to me, was fairly random because I haven’t even spent that much time there throughout my life, but apparently my heart-mind thinks it is the calmest place I have ever been. Visualizing Duck Brook makes the seething, buzzing stress disappear, calm down, and become manageable.

The other day I was in the bathroom washing my hands and thinking about a friend’s house who I was going to go to on Friday. I was nervous as right now I feel so stressed out that I feel a bit insane, despite knowing this is very temporary, and I wonder if it shows on my face or in my words, or will make people not want to talk to me. A voice in my head said to me, “you don’t have to be perfect all the time”. Wow! Really? And I said, wow! Really? It’s working! My messages to myself, in my heart-mind, are changing.

How does this connect to losing Beth and having my heart squished, smashed, twisted, and transformed with grief? Last weekend two friends and I talked about how we could hear her laughing all day. It was magical and funny. Lucy and I talked about how we felt that she was becoming a part of us like her spirit is living inside our body and that’s how we can hear her and feel her all over the place. I told her that last Saturday I kept thinking I would turn around and she would be sitting next to me. I love this idea of processing loss as a process of transforming with the person, and I love the words shared with me by my coworker Mr. Moore who assured me those we love don’t want us to be sad.

I remember one trip to the coast we were in Port Lavaca, walking along its dirty in-town beaches looking for a roseate spoonbill skull or a pelican skull or both (skulls were the main focus of those trips) and we found this tiny vegetarian or vegan restaurant on one of the shore roads. It was in an old Victorian house and had a traveler-esque caravan in the front yard. We sat on a couch in front of the bay window that looked out to the ocean and found a copy of “You Can Heal Your Life” by Louise Hay in the stacks of reading material. We were waiting for our fancy teas (or smoothies? I can’t remember) to be ready and she told me the story of Louise Hay and her belief that past traumas can “live” in the body and make you sick and how she believed you could heal yourself, and how she loved her because of what she did for gay men in the 1980s who were dying of AIDS and made them feel better and that it wasn’t their fault what had happened. I knew then that Louise Hay’s ideas had made a huge impression on Beth and that they had informed a lot of what she thought in terms of keeping her cancer at bay, which she was able to do for almost 15 years.

Beth was blessed because she was a blessing and was loved by many people. Some of them helped her change her life away from how she had grown up in Oklahoma (something about her early life she fundamentally decided she had to change), brought her to Texas, and helped her feel a sense of functional, supportive family, something she had never had. She began to learn about possibility and began to repeat the teachings shared with her by that family’s father figure, Mr. Rusque.

Throughout our friendship, Beth taught me a lot about living, not be afraid of dying, and being honest and present with oneself and with others; to not judge but also not judge oneself too harshly. These lessons sank in, slowly, despite my stubbornness and fear (the fear probably will linger forever, it is in there deep), and I think she was speaking to me last weekend when I heard that message about not having to be perfect. When she was alive, I heard her say the things she said, I heard her reflect on her life and her death, I listened to her reflect on people and laugh at things that had happened and never try to force anything to happen one way or another, but just to be delightful and loving and funny and extremely beautifully dressed.

In death, in transforming my heart, in creating a space within it in which she will always live, I can hear her words, clear as tinkling golden bells, and I can begin to take them to heart. It is an amazing feeling to feel someone so deeply, to miss them so much, to have them so close. It is the best way I can honor her, to hear her speaking, to hear myself speaking, to practice what I have learned in therapy and in life, and to move forward. She liked to say during the last few months about how she was getting out before it all fell apart. Little did she know she wasn’t leaving, not really. She was giving herself to us.

Acceptance

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Lately, there has been an elephant sitting on my heart. It is not sad, or a mean elephant: it is just elephant-sized. A weight.

I remember when I began to accept my Dad’s death last year. I felt like I had just gotten into the bath or taken a sip of perfectly-warm-hot delicious special tea, but only for the tiniest of moments. But it is a window, so that feels good.

I work with a wise man named Mr. Moore. He grew up in Smithville and has been a teacher, assistant principal, principal, and now, counselor. I have learned so much from him and he is the person I am most thankful for this year. Anyway. The other day we were talking and he said that the person who loves us wouldn’t want us to be sad about them passing away. I logically agree, my heart was in disagreement, but I think today we leveled up a bit to understanding.

A week from today is my friend Beth’s birthday; she would have been 44. ❤

Love Rising From the Mists

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When I tell you this story, there are some of you who will hear, some will listen, and some will know.

I feel that I am at the beginning of grieving the loss of my friend Beth. When I think of her lately, I can feel her hair in my hands; at the end of her life, her hair grew back as she wasn’t on chemo anymore. Her hair was brown and short and stuck up and out in places, but she still looked so cool with her yellow beanie. When she died, we realized that one of the colors was always yellow.

When we went to the doctor on October 4, her longtime doctor and trusted caretaker told her that she had lived well with cancer for a long time and that now she would not live well with cancer anymore. Her liver was failing; destroyed by chemo, it had changed from the soft sponge of bodily fluid filtration to a hard rock that didn’t let much in or out. Her tummy filled up with liquid and she felt ugly. She wasn’t, of course.

During that doctor’s visit, every experience that we had had together flashed before my mind. I thought of Port O’Connor, and Angela, apartments in Dallas, plastic jewelry, my first marriage, Cecile’s old apartment, and when she decided to marry “a rich guy”. I thought of searching for dead things and going out to Sunday Beach with Angela’s high school crush (or perhaps she was his?) and his two children. His son looked like a Troll doll and we loved him. He covered us with mud. We escaped without sunburns. I thought of walking through the Albert Memorial near Buckingham Palace, and traipsing past Embassies and through the city at night. I remembered getting dizzy in the jewelry room at the V&A and eating sandwiches on the lawn, watching naked British children bathe in the pool.

When we were told that it was the end, I remembered all the lived experiences; so much life! That is of course what I learned the most from Beth. I learned about LIFE. We once found a beautiful coffee shop with a caravan in the front garden in Port Lavaca; it was an old Victorian house and we never found it again, but that one time we found “You Can Heal Your Life” by Louise Hay and she told me about how and why Louise Hay wrote the book. On one of her last days, she said to me, “I wish my body could heal itself!”

During that last month, I spent most of my time with her massaging her and talking with her. She was in so much pain, although I suspect she didn’t admit the true force of the pain because she didn’t want to be woozy with Dilaudid. I massaged her because I wanted to keep her energy moving; keep her chi zipping around her body and soul. I spent a lot of time rubbing her perfect feet and legs and the middle of her back; this is where most of the pain was. I would also rub her face and her head and her shoulders. I would try to move the energy around, hoping it would keep her with us for longer.

One night I was staying with her and I looked at her in the half-light of the lamps. She was so tired but kept saying thank you, kept saying thank you and I love you. I went outside and called our friend Vivien. I said, “Vivien, I am worried. Her eyes look funny.” It was as if they couldn’t focus properly, or wandered when they shouldn’t. I remembered Maw Maw and how fast she slipped from us once she started. I will never forget her sleeping in that big bed with its white sheets and its golden light, falling asleep at about 7pm after I cooked us a dinner of lamb chops.

I have heard a theory of grief that I like and can attach to; the pain we feel is an alternative experience to the love we feel for the person. When my dad died last year, I felt like I was falling off a cliff into some bottomless space; there was no anchor. Slowly though, I found my footing again and realized that I must make my own anchor and remember all the tools he gave me, despite our many fraught years. This is different.

As I said above, when I think about Beth, really think about her (because I avoid it in my conscious mind sometimes), I can feel her hair in my hands, I can feel her hands, her shoulders, her tiny arms, her beautiful legs, and perfect feet. I can hear the sound of her moving in her hospital bed. I can see her eyes clouded with ammonia toxicity. I can see her moving around and saying thank you to me. I can hear her talking about cheese and visiting Italy. It is like she is becoming a part of me, of my body, as I feel all the parts of her. It is like she is right here, an ethereal version of a very real person. I think that this means that I truly love her, and she loves me, and this feeling, this painful transformation, is the process of grieving her loss. From now on, there is the Patience that lived when Beth was alive, there is the Patience during this grieving process, and there will be the Patience after.

Due to her immense grace, humor, love, and understanding, I suspect the Patience after will be a better person who is more in touch with faults and feelings, and with the preciousness of the moments.

When we went to the doctor on October 4, how would we have known she would die less than one month later, on November 2? She had lived so well, for so long. I wish I could hug her. But I can, because when I think of hugging her, I can feel her hugging me; I can feel her tiny body that cancer just ate up. I can see the light in her windows and the green of her houseplants. I can think of how great a hostess she was, and how she loved drinking dandelion tea those last few weeks to help her liver.

Beth, I miss you so much. I know you are here, in your own way. As Lilian said the other day, it’s like you are everywhere!

Griefburst

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“It is only by selection, by elimination, and by emphasis that we get at the real meaning of things.”
― Georgia O’Keeffe

Life is beautiful and life is painful.

Anger is a foreign feeling to me; I am uncomfortable with it, and it makes me feel fear. The fear stems, I think, from the concern that my anger may become uncontrollable, like my dad’s was.

Lately, I have been feeling a lot of anger. I now understand why people smash up their apartments when they get upset, yell, scream, and cry. I understand the 5 year olds in my care who tear up their classrooms. I am frustrated.

For years, for ages, for my whole life almost, I blamed my dad for everything wrong that happened. When he was dying, my brother and I thought my mom would get better somehow, after he died. But she didn’t. And I didn’t (this is most important). I realized that the problems came from both of them, not from just one.

Last night I realized that one of the reasons I am so angry with my mom is that she didn’t take care of herself, didn’t protect herself, let alone her kids. I had a grief attack Monday that started innocuously enough; I thought that Cody wasn’t listening to me and I became steadily afraid of him taking advantage of me financially (this happened in my first marriage), and devolved into me not really knowing what I was saying but refusing to end an argument that wasn’t based on anything real. At 11:30, I became scared and sad. I went into the front yard and cried. The dog looked at me with a worried expression. I came inside and cried some more.

The next morning, I realized that I had been acting like my Dad; after all, we are very similar. I lost control over my emotions, and what I was saying, and let it all come out in a way that made no sense. The next afternoon, I apologized to Cody and asked him to help me stay grounded.

My grief is stemming from the loss of my father, realizations about my mother, my relationships with both my parents, the recent loss of my friend Mary Ann, and my experiences at my job. I have never hated a job before, and, in reality, I quit this job that day when the 5-year-old brought a gun to school. That was the third week of school. We are almost at Week 16. In other words, I am overloaded and I exploded. I asked Cody to help me stay grounded, stay focused, to re-align myself by asking me to come back to conversations later, and to refocus by taking time to make something. I am finding that only when I am making things do I feel almost ok.

My grief is overwhelming. Little Patience is sad and tired. Little Patience feels that my parents tried their best, but they did a lousy job. Adult Patience hates the job I worked really hard to get, not knowing what the job really was in the present state of education in Texas. Present Patience, strong though I am, is incredibly sad that I was the person who brought Mary Ann to the doctor the day she was told she was dying, the person who arrived first the morning she died and watched waves of people awkwardly enter and leave that space and witnessed my friend Von be so sad and there was nothing I could do for her. I was also the person who packed up the apartment with and for her sister Pearl when all the other friends couldn’t see past themselves enough to help. I say that I am incredibly sad because I am, not that I regret being there in any of those moments; those moments just were and are incredibly, soul-shakingly sad.

Tonight I looked up the world’s strongest animal; it is the dung beetle, the scarab. When I was weeping with the grief counselor a few days ago, she said she felt my strength in all my stories. I am trying to get there; trying to cross that bridge from sorrow to accepting that God only gives us what we can handle. I have learned that when things are really hard, that is very difficult to remember.

A Letter Written the Day After Your Funeral

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She is neither pink nor pale,
And she never will be all mine;
She learned her hands in a fairy-tale,
And her mouth on a valentine.

She has more hair than she needs;
In the sun ’tis a woe to me!
And her voice is a string of colored beads,
Or steps leading into the sea.

She loves me all that she can,
And her ways to my ways resign;
But she was not made for any man,
And she never will be all mine –

Witch-Wife by Edna St. Vincent Millay

You once told me, when I described the trouble I was having staying asleep, that I should get up in the wee hours and write my memoirs. After all, that was what Patti Smith had done! I listened.

Yesterday we held the art show for you: the one you talked about every day until the day you left us. The art show had your shadowboxes and your bones and dead things, your bed, your cushions, some clothes, and most of the jewelry. None of your paintings made the cut; I am looking at one right now. I love the Fossil Hunters. I was interviewed by the videographer whilst wearing no lipstick, my Patagucci jacket, and frazzled hair. He said what I said was “great”.

Later in the day, I had had too much wine and was admiring Gary and Mary’s advanced 14-month-old baby ruling the roost like she was at least two, and we talked about past relationships and past lives and that time he saved all of us when we moved you out of the big house on the hill. Last week I learned about how the people you lived with really didn’t want you to move out; both parties the same, but different. Two locations, a similar feel. I will write my treatise on devil’s bargains later. Today is just a letter to you.

All day I thought I would come around a corner and see you laughing. It was unbelievably cold yesterday; fog descended upon the city and everything was cast in white-grey. The light was lovely. Vivian and I dressed the mannequin in a wonderful yellow-and-orange outfit; two kimonos and a yellow shirt dress and a necklace made of hundreds of charms. Behind the mannequin, in the window, hung jewels and pearls and chains, as well as the chandeliers. We made the room look like you had just left it after getting ready to go to a party.

I knew you, we knew each other, through so many different lives. Vivian knew you through more; she and I bonded during Covid over our shared moment in life. We bonded again during your death as we aimed to protect you ever still from people who sought to own parts of you, thinking your things would help fill the void. You, wiser than they, knew better.

I got to know your sister and her children over the last few weeks. She and I cried together and I became buddies with Aabah especially, laughed with Saabira, and stared into Faatina’s eyes, tearing up when I realized she will never know you because she is too little. Yesterday, I carried Aabah into the dressing room and said, “do you see Beth’s clothes?”. She nodded and said, “sometimes Mama gets very sad when she thinks about Beth”. I said, “we all do because we can’t talk to her anymore. But one day, you will wear this jewelry and that is how we will remember her”. She nodded.

Downstairs, just before we sang “So Long, Marianne”, Noah and I met and talked and he shared with me that he thought, he suspected, that you never wanted people to see the art while you were alive. We remarked on how mysterious you were in moments, how contrary. He said that he thought if you had had the show while you were still alive, you wouldn’t have come. I suspect he knows a thing or two (please see me winking to you here).

Yesterday I woke up and could barely get out of bed. It felt like the morning, at 4am on November 10th of last year, when I was woken by my mother to go to the hospital. I sat on the couch in the living room that morning and said to myself, “ok. You have to drive your mother to the hospital where her husband has just died”. I said to myself, “you can do this”. I said to myself yesterday, “you can do this”. I drank coffee and red wine and forgot to eat, but I did it. I went to sleep at 830 and woke up twelve hours later.

I said that yesterday it felt like I would walk around a corner and see you. Today it felt like I didn’t believe you are gone. I don’t believe it. You will come back, won’t you? I can talk to you again, can’t I? I know the true answers. I must remember you in my heart and mind.

Remembering you telling me you were having a heart attack (it was steroids) and speeding through tiny coastal towns until we reached a hospital, running inside, and announcing, “someone has to help me, my friend has cancer!”. The doctor was a jerk and we stole all sorts of things from the ER room, remember? Or when we walked through London trying to find strange buildings, and ate ramen and saw the city at night, and had cappuccinos under the Albert Memorial, and saw the jewelry at the V&A. Or when we went to Mexico and took mushrooms at Mimi’s mom’s ranch, drank too much cheap wine in Amanda’s trailer in Port O’Connor, cooked spaghetti and told our life stories in the dark, got stuck in sand bars, found skulls and skeletons, shopped at thrift shops, drank frozen rose on the one day you were angry at having cancer. So many more memories; the day we learned that you would die from your doctor, except we didn’t know you would die less than 4 weeks later.

I miss you. I miss you. I miss you. We had so much more to do. I will take you with me, see and feel you everywhere. The other day the sunset blew up the sky in orange and blue and I said, “Hi Beth”. I wonder if you are sitting on the couch behind me whilst I type, just out of reach; as I turn to check, will you slip away?

THE TIME you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.

To-day, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.

Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.

Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears:

Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.

So set, before its echoes fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge-cup.

And round that early-laurelled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl’s.

To An Athlete Dying Young by A.E. Housman

All of Us

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There was the one with the haunted heart, the one who feigned understanding; there was the one who had no time, and there was the one who worried. There was the one who sang to her in the depths, and the one who stood on the sidelines, watching. There was the one who kept the house and pushed all the feelings away. There was the one who said, “wow” in love and wonder. There was the one who breathed Italy and made pasta and asked nothing of anyone, only gave true love and feeling. There was the doctor a la distance, who made everyone well.

And then there was her.

She stood, sat, and laid, in the middle, fading away. Over the years it had begun to wear on her; you could see it in pictures, even if you couldn’t see it in real life.

The whole cast of characters stepped in to help that last month; in 12-hour shifts they monitored and assisted and wondered. The one who worried worried so much that it stole her away from her family, temporarily. She was the one who was there in the end, when it became so quiet.

She left us early in the morning one week ago; stealing off in the silence and the dark, saying her goodbye quietly, in the twilight sleep when everyone thought she would be there tomorrow.

They all wonder where she is today as they gaze upon her beauties, her treasure chest, her hoarde of collectibles that together make a life. What to do with such beauty? Hold fast, hold together: the one with the haunted heart seeks to haunt others, but the others resist and remember the love at the center of it all.

Where do they go?