Today is the 22nd of January. It’s been exactly three months since our older daughter passed away.
I didn’t used to care about the 22nd of any month (my apologies to those with a birthday on one 22nd or another — nothing personal). Now, I can’t help but notice every one.
I have a head for dates. Maybe it’s a byproduct of having been trained as a historian; I don’t know. Many, many years ago, on a June 5th in the 1980s, I think, my father told me that day was the anniversary of his first date with my mom. I have remembered this ever since, and on that day, I find myself thinking of them, of how cute they were together, of the different silly ways they expressed their love.
Some in our family have made things a little easier in the date-remembering regard. My grandmother on my father’s side, who adored my mother 99% of the time, died on my mom’s birthday. Coincidence? Perhaps. A final act of passive aggression from a mother-in-law? Also possible. And so maybe it wasn’t all that surprising that my mother died on the birthday of my brother’s wife, whom she adored. Yeah, that coincidence thing is looking a little less likely now, isn’t it . . . ?
I know — I’m bouncing all over in this post. I started off with a very somber remembrance of my lost, beloved daughter, and now I’m cracking wise about mothers-in-law. Grief and humor. To my mind, we can’t survive the former without the latter. And, the fact is, speaking as a creator, while death is often tragic, it can also be a wonderful source for cathartic humor. Have you ever seen the Chuckles-the-Clown funeral episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show? If not, do yourself a favor and watch it. Brilliant stuff.
As I said before, I have a mind for dates. But we also live in a society that remembers. December 7, 1941. November 22, 1963. September 11, 2001. Specific dates insinuate themselves into our lives, taking on significance in a variety of ways. Birthdays of family and friends, wedding anniversaries, days of loss, days of joy. I made the mistake once, when setting up my LinkedIn account, of choosing a date on which I began my writing career. I don’t know if it’s the right one. The site asked, I remembered the month and year, and so I threw in a day. Now, I get flooded with work anniversary notifications from LinkedIn on a date that has absolutely no significance for me.
At times, if, say, I’m on a highway and I see an accident by the side of the road, I can’t help but think that, for the people involved, this will forever after be “the day of the accident.” A weird way of thinking, I suppose. It’s my writer brain. There is a story there, a spiral leading to the crash, and then continuing beyond it into the aftermath. The accident might have been the result of random chance occurrences, but we are creatures of narrative, and it’s quite possible that in the minds of the accident victims, those random occurrences will, in hindsight, rightly or wrongly, be seen as a storyline of interconnected events.
Sometimes events become confused by perspective. I remember the day (and time) on which Alex informed us of her cancer diagnosis. But she actually needed a couple of days after that fateful conversation with her oncologist before she could tell Nancy and me. So the actual date of the diagnosis itself is not the day I remember. It doesn’t matter in any way. And yet, the dates themselves, and the very existence of that small gap, carries significance. It is a symptom of her fierce independence and her desire, even under those extraordinary circumstances, to protect us, to deliver this painful news with her composure intact, so that she could put on a brave face and thus cushion the blow a little.
Dates tell a story.
I have no greater point. Not really. I call these posts musings for a reason. It’s the 22nd, and this is what I’m pondering today.
I will close on a more positive note, however, and in doing so will echo my father. Of course I remember my wedding anniversary, and the anniversary of Nancy and my engagement. But I also recall, and always remark upon, the anniversary of our first date. Sort of. We had two first dates, as it happened. The first didn’t take. The second one, the one that counts, was February 24, 1989. Yes, there’s a story there as well. Another time, perhaps.
Have a great week.
As I say, if you know me, you probably don’t find this surprising. I have spoken and written about my love of the Grateful Dead, my experiences shivering outside on cold nights, in the dark of Providence, Rhode Island winters, waiting at the Providence Civic Center for Dead tickets to go on sale. People don’t do that unless they have already done damage to their prefrontal cortex. I could tell additional stories. It is possible that I (and select others) was (were) high during at least one musical performance that we gave while in college. I might remember playing Cat Stevens’s hit “Wild World” and literally watching my digital dexterity degrade over the course of the song.
At this point, the celebrations of her life are over. Guests from out of town have left. Erin has gone back home. Nancy is starting to work again, and I am gearing up to do the same. We are, I suppose, stepping back into “normal” life. Except there is nothing normal about it, and in ways that truly matter, in ways that will remain with us for the rest of our lives, it will never really be normal at all, ever again.
The numbness, though — that bothers me. I want to feel. I want to weep for my child or laugh at a golden memory. I want to feel pain and love and loss and connection, because those keep my vision of Alex fresh and present. Numbness threatens oblivion. Numbness makes the loss seem complete, irretrievable — and that I don’t want. Not ever. Better to cry every day for the rest of my life than lose my hold on these emotions.
The news of Jimmy Buffett’s death this past weekend, hit me surprisingly hard, and I am still trying to figure out why. Buffett, the “Roguish Bard of Island Escapism,” as the New York Times called him in an online obituary, was a strong musical presence in my life. I have been listening to his music for more than four decades, I own a bunch of his albums, and over the years I have learned to play many of his songs on my guitars (none of them is particularly difficult to master). But the truth is, if asked to name my top five or top ten or even top twenty-five favorite bands and musicians, he probably wouldn’t make it onto any of those lists. So why do I feel as though I’ve lost a friend?
Graham was incredibly generous, kind, whip-smart, fierce in his devotion to Di and Laura, and one of the funniest people I’ve ever known. He and Di were both school teachers, both utterly devoted to education, to serving their schools and communities. They were active in their unions. They were political. They loved nature, loved good food and good drink. They were, in short, a lot like us. We knew that we wanted to maintain our friendship after our return to the States. And we did. The following summer Graham, Di, and Laura came to the States for their winter holiday (Southern Hemisphere and all that) and stayed with us for several days. Another great visit. We had tons of fun, but Graham and I also spent a good deal of time talking. He had just lost his father, something I went through a decade earlier. I can honestly say that even though we were now living literally half a world apart, our friendship had only deepened.
Yesterday would have been my mother’s birthday — her 101st. I’ve written about her, and my dad, quit a bit in this space, though I haven’t written about my mother in a couple of years. She was smart and funny, classy and beautiful, quietly ambitious and deeply accomplished. She doted on her children and was, in turn, doted on by my father. She loved to travel and was passionate to the point of reverence about literature and the arts.