saying goodbye

Four years before this photos was taken, in my first year of graduate school, I had the good fortune to land a field placement with Fox Chase Hospice on the northern edge of Philadelphia. My supervisor was wonderful and the nurses were hilarious, compassionate and wise. When I walked into the office after a home visit one afternoon feeling discouraged, unable to help a family resolve their longstanding conflicts before their mother died as I'd hoped, a seasoned nurse named Debbie took one look at me and sighed. "People die the way they live, Meagan." 

That stayed with me. People die the way they live. It isn't fair or reasonable to expect them to do things differently while going through a whole-being transition, a whole-world change. Just getting through the day during times of loss requires tapping into our deepest reserves; it's nearly impossible to find the energy and wherewithal to do things with a new spirit or perspective. Of course sometimes we do, despite the odds. Maybe that's grace. 

I kept thinking of Debbie and dying the way we live, in the lead up to Frances's college move-in on Friday. Yes, everything was about to change forever, and yes, we had been anticipating it for years and named countless big feelings about the event as we moved ever closer to it. But we were still us. We were handling this little death the way we handled life - with flashes of anxiety, dark humor, conflict, dog walks, domestic chaos, and ice cream. It seemed that something really big should happen, something to reflect back the momentous cusp we all stood upon. A ceremony of some sort? Collective weeping and gnashing of teeth? A brilliant rainbow arching over our house?

But no. Nothing unusual happened. Life kept barreling us ahead, and then on Thursday evening Frances and I lugged everything from her room down the stairs and into the car, occasionally looking at each other in bewilderment and asking, "what are we doing?"

Was she going to college or something? 

Friday morning we woke up early and got on the road, and it was good. We arrived on campus and followed the mobs of parents and students and figured out where to park, where to unload, how to find the dining hall. We kept doing the things, and the things kept moving us closer to saying goodbye.

And when we did I felt it deep down in the taproot of my heart. I felt it all: hope and excitement for my daughter, gratitude to see her already finding her way in a beautiful and extraordinary place, a hint of pride in the path we have walked together, the role I was given to play in this exquisite human's life, and ragged grief over the brute reality of the moment: I would go home without her.

No matter how long we anticipate these shifts in our lives, it's shocking to become a parent, to lose someone after a long illness, to say goodbye to a child. To undergo a structural change that you can't reverse. Anticipation is its own thing, its own difficult path one can't avoid. But the event itself is something else entirely. And the word 'prepared' has no place here. How can you prepare? You've never done this before!

For instance: I didn't know how much I would miss Mike as I moved Frances into her dorm room and watched her chatting with her new roommates. I didn't know how it would ache as I walked amongst couples on their way to parent orientation. After our big goodbye hug outside her dorm, I walked to the waiting car in a lot on the far edge of campus and cried. Those tears were not so much about saying goodbye to Frances as they were about saying goodbye to her without Mike. 

Then as I crossed the enormous parking lot, he sent me a memory. When Frances was born, less than an hour old, Mike had a vision. It was a flash, a scene, one so powerful that he never forgot it. He saw her as a tiny, frail old woman (not so very different from a tiny, frail newborn) with fine white hair. She was in bed and people Mike didn't know were in the room with her - except he did know them, because he knew that small crowd of adults and children were her family. He was seeing her on her deathbed, surrounded by nieces and nephews, grandchildren and maybe great-grandchildren too, and they were all loving and supporting her as she made the passage.

But that wasn't all. Mike saw the scene, and knew he would be there too. He was there too. It was as if time spread out in every direction in the moment of Frances's birth; everything was happening all at once. Everything was. Impossibly, the love he felt for a tiny person he had only known a matter of minutes was the portal to briefly entering everything-is time. Mike was aware that he couldn't possibly still be alive when Frances died, an old woman surrounded by future generations, and he knew he was going to be there with her all the same. 

I remembered all of that, and I thought: if you're going to be there when she dies, why not be here for this passage too? 

People die the way they live. They live the way they die, too. We are all dying all the time: to our old selves, to chapters past, to relationships and narratives and identities. But the small deaths we experience, like saying goodbye to Frances, can lead to bounteous, ardent new life. She is on her way. We all are.

Driving and crying through New Jersey, I talked to Mike, her proud papa, her first teacher and the biggest nurturer of her bright intellect. I don't know what dead people do all day, but after I remembered his vision from her birth, it seemed possible that I wasn't alone. It seemed possible that the only person in the whole world who loves Frances like I do - who listened with me to the music the sound of her breath and a cricket outside the window made as she slept nestled between us on her first night on earth - he was somehow there with us. With her in her beginnings, with me in my endings, maybe even with us forward and back through all the moments, and somehow helping me ensure that when Frances sleeps her last night on earth, she will also be surrounded by boundless love.  

the longest day

Yesterday was my official last day off. Our offices reopen next week, and even though I chose to delay my return and squeeze in one last trip, I felt the usual clutching sadness about Friday. My last real day of summer. Last day to wake up whenever I wake up, drink tea and bustle about in the quiet kitchen, go to barre class in the morning, spend open time with my kids, deal with one of the endless house things on the list I wrote on the back of an envelope that sits on my desk by the window in the living room, spend a few minutes flipping through a magazine or cookbook on the couch. The last day to live inside the languid pace of summer.

Sure, Gabriel was leaving in the afternoon on an epic trip with my mom to Iceland and we had to gather all the last minute items he needed to pack. And sure, Beatrice and I had to pick Frances up at the airport in Philadelphia that night, back from her trip visiting a friend in the Pacific Northwest. But there would be so much time in between it all to let summer seep in.

I woke up and came downstairs where I found Gabriel clad in a tank top and shorts and his golden skin, burnished over countless summer runs, getting ready to go for a bike ride. We chatted for awhile and made a plan to head to Target later for sunglasses and an eye mask (recommended in a land where the summer sun barely sets). I didn't notice when he slipped out. Beatrice, the most teenagery ten year old, sleeps in later than any of us and so while she slumbered on, I put on my leggings and headed out the back door. 

Just as I slid into the only parking spot left on Prince Street, four minutes before class was due to begin, Gabriel called me. 

Hi honey, I said. What's up?

Mama - inhale, pause - I got hit by a car. 

My body reacted before my mind could register what he said. My breath seized and caught in my chest. He told me he was okay, some police officers and neighbors were with him, and that an ambulance was coming to take him to the hospital. 

I tried to breathe and steady myself. I told him I'd be there in two minutes. 

As I headed down Orange Street towards the corner where he'd been hit, I could see two police cars and a firetruck double parked nearby, and just as I pulled up, an ambulance arrived. There was Gabriel, standing in the middle of people in uniforms that I didn't know, the side of his face scraped and bloodied.

I could barely figure out how to open my car door. 

I ran to him awkwardly, confused by what was happening, thanking the police officers, halfway taking in what they told me. They offered to drop his bike off on our porch. I was aware that Gabriel wanted me to not freak out, and so tried my best to not freak out. Some other people seemed to be waiting to make sure my son was okay, and when we left to go to the hospital ourselves, they waved and smiled at Gabriel and wished him well. 

For awhile we were quiet in the car on the way to the Emergency Department, a path I'd driven too many times with Mike when he spiked fevers. Then Gabriel explained the accident, and how so many neighbors and people walking by had stopped to help. The only time I heard any emotion in his voice was when he said, Mama, everyone was so kind to me.

By the time we'd made it through triage Gabriel was sliding back into his usual self, cracking me up with jokes about the hospital and the police. They made sure the whack to his helmeted head hadn't done any serious damage and tentatively bandaged up his scrapes. The doctor told me that he could go to Iceland, just skip the hot springs with those oozing wounds. We came home around eleven and Gabriel suddenly said, I haven't even had breakfast yet!

Oh! A caregiving task, that would make me feel like my normal self! But as I made him toast with almond butter and apples and boiled water for tea, my hands started to shake. I put down the plate and leaned on the kitchen counter, took a breath. Gabriel got up and pulled me into a hug, wincing a little when my head grazed the bottom of his injured chin.

It's okay now, Mama, he said. It's okay.

Later he showered, Beatrice wandered downstairs to discover all the drama she had missed, and I left for Target, adding antibiotic ointment and bandages to my list. I called my mom and told her what happened. I came home and worked on his suitcase. I noticed Gabriel reading on the couch. I went to sit with him and  found he was feeling shaky himself now that the adrenaline had worn off. Exhausted, beat up and unsteady. I worried about putting him on a plane with my mom. 

But they did it. Beatrice and I performed an upbeat two person wave for them in the heat as they pulled away, and then Beatrice dropped the act and told me how stressed and strange and ignored she felt. 

So we did what any Howell Brogan would do in such circumstances: we planned to bake a peach pie with the many peaches we'd picked the day before, and went to Wegmans to collect supplies and cheer ourselves. It worked. We got sushi for dinner, picked up extra to bring to Frances at the airport. She complained about having to come along in the car. I explained everyone we know is on vacation and I wasn't going to leave her at home alone all night. She said why can't I just stay home. I said because I want your company.  

And just as we closed the door behind us, the darkening skies opened and lightning began to flash. We were soaked by the time we got into the car - even with our umbrellas. I thought of the water in the basement. I thought of the dog all alone. I thought of Frances in that sky. I clutched the steering wheel and joined all the other freaked out drivers who cruised along at 42 miles per hour on the Pennsylvania turnpike, while Beatrice and I listened to a blessedly diverting audiobook. 

The plane was late. I turned on my hazards as the rain continued to pound us and parked along a ramp near other cars waiting for their late-arriving family and friends. Unwanted thoughts of plane crashes and how I would find out flashed briefly in my mind, which led to similar thoughts of Gabriel and my mom crossing the Atlantic. Was the storm following them too? 

But Frances (and they) survived. She finally landed. They had gate checked her bag and there were problems getting the bags from the plane to the baggage claim; they weren't allowed to take it out when there was lightning. We waited. Frances ate her veggie sushi and remained faint with hunger. We waited more. Beatrice draped her arms around my shoulders and hung there, all out of complaints. Throngs of tired, vaguely annoyed people surrounded us. We went to the office and waited in a line to talk to two incredibly good-natured women who were joking to each other that today was the wrong day to come to work. We decided to have them deliver the bag rather than wait indefinitely, then lingered in the airport wondering if that was a dumb idea. In the end, we left bagless and doubtful about its eventual arrival.

We went through a McDonalds drive-through around 11:30. I accidentally slopped bits of my McFlurry into the cup holders and smeared ketchup on the steering wheel as I drove through more relentlessly stormy weather. We made it home by 1. I apologized to the confused dog, who seemed to think it was morning and our arrival marked the day's beginning. The girls slept together, and I climbed into bed with a big book, asking its words to soothe my still-shaky hands. 

There is an undeniable loneliness in being the only parent to three precious people. No one else loves them like I do and no one else can, because no one else is ultimately responsible for their exquisite beings. That job belonged to me and Mike, and now it's mine alone. Tapping the reserves of energy and calm that yesterday demanded pulled me down below the surface, down to where my solitary solo-parent vulnerability that normally putters along agreeably began to heat, to throb, and find its raw center. 

*

Thanks for listening, and easing all my tattered edges. It's a gift. And now? Off to bake a peach pie. 

the uncomfortable cusp

Here I sit on the old L-shaped couch, surrounded by a bulging duffel, piles of laundry, backpacks, travel information gathered for my unaccompanied minor when she flies home from camp later in July, the napping dog, the black sharpie for labeling. I've been packing and organizing all morning for our week vacationing in Asheville followed by camp pick up (Gabriel) and drop off (Beatrice) at the beloved UU camp of my youth. 

It is a rare thing, to be alone in my house on a weekday, with only the sounds of foot and car traffic outside the window to give some texture to this silence. Normally I long for a morning like this. Even if it's spent doing laundry and ticking off packing list items! But damn if I don't feel melancholy today. 

Also. I feel very annoyed that I feel melancholy. I mean, wtf Meagan?! This is a beautiful thing you have going here! Why you gotta mess it up with the whole heavy pit in your stomach furrowed brow thing? What a waste!

(Isn't it outrageous when we judge ourselves for feeling bad and thus feel way worse? The dreaded second arrow, it gets me every time.)

It's just that everything is changing. Frances and I have been getting all her health forms together for Princeton, and yesterday she found out her roommate assignment. Gabriel is away at camp and not here to talk with me about what to make for dinner. Beatrice is turning into a new kind of being, taller than ever, stunning me with her bright insights and new flashes of anger. 

I told my boyfriend I was worried that being on my own for five years had ruined me, that maybe I'm no good at partnership anymore. Maybe I've grown too attached to my own clannish family, my own ways of doing and avoiding things. As I grow closer to him I have to contend to what it means for me, a person who was with her husband for twenty years and then alone for five, to share the fretting and pleasures of daily life with someone else. To let that someone else help! Hoo boy, that one's big. Trusting someone else to help. How strange to recognize that having to do all this shit by myself - even though I often do it through gritted teeth - is something I'm reluctant to give up. It's my shit, darn it. Don't touch it.

I mean, do! Please! Please help, please hold my hand. I'm exhausted, really. I can feel so mixed up. 

Everything is always changing all the time, in fact everything has already changed all the time, and I'm just struggling to catch up and adjust. I know, I know, that's just life. Flux may be the norm for everyone everywhere all the time, but when you let the fullness of it touch you, it still rocks your world. 

Sending my oldest child off to college is a fullness-of-flux kind of moment. Raising my children on my own, and before that raising them while caring for my ill husband, and before that raising them with a husband who worked way too much and left the lion's share of it to me influenced my nearly 18 year long habit of being pretty cavalier about the whole 'kids grow up' business. Like, yes. They do. They should. That's the idea. Fly little birds, fly! Can't wait to see you soar while I get back to chilling in this nest on my own, enjoying my own agenda and time and space for once.

But here I am in my empty house and I feel terrible! About two months ago, after Frances returned from a Taylor Swift concert and played me all her saddest songs, it hit me with shocking force: she's leaving. They're all leaving. I knew this, I've always known this, but not like that. I cried and cried. Frances, Gabriel, and Beatrice are the center of my world, and what will I have (what do I have) to show for all these years of pouring my heart into them once this house is truly empty? Have I written any books,  become a world class therapist, done anything fancy or impressive with my time? 

They will leave and I will be old and alone and unimportant. At least, that's what the dark whispering suggests when something external triggers her release within. 

This moment is a bookend to those early Homemade Time years, when I was mostly staying at home with my little children and wondering how I would ever return fully to the world of adults. Could I pass as functional, productive? Could I conduct conversations with nary a reference to my children? Could I ever do the things I dreamt of doing when I kept on loving these children so damn much?

I am always keenly aware of the things I want to do and can't, because when you're working full time and parenting three children alone and have to remember trash night and figure out how to deal with water in the basement there isn't time for a whole lot else. Yet I sit here and think about the dining room full of lanky boys playing D&D, the sleepovers, the family dinners with friends, the porch sitting that leads to chats with neighbors, the way one of the kids reading on the couch next to the dog fills the room with quiet peaceful energy. And while I can't travel on my own, go off on writing retreats, read lots of novels, pick up a new instrument or spend as much time in movement classes as I'd like, there is so much here and now. So much that takes from me, and so much that fills me right back up. It's an abundance that is always changing. I might not have much to show for these overflowing days, but it's good to remember I am part of it all, and it is all part of me. 

Fullness of flux, fullness of life. The thumping reggaeton and the birds singing and the whoosh of tires outside my window; a rippling current that never ends. 

I've missed writing to you here. 

moving forward

We moved into a new house last Saturday. It's around the corner from our old house, and promised peaceful mornings with its second full bathroom and spacious dining room to accommodate friends waiting to ride to school. It has an open living room that, while still full of boxes, has already facilitated more time together. The neighbors on this block are tight, and have welcomed us kindly. I hear buses rumble by on the street below my bedroom window in the early morning and find it a comforting sound. On this street we are more pulled into and embraced in the flow of life. 

Yet what big change agrees to leave one's tender hurting places alone? Our first morning in this house fell on the five year anniversary of our lives without Mike. I decided to welcome that synchrony; while it is a terrible day, even more than that it's a day about honoring and remembering my children's papa. 

Since I last wrote here in mid January, I became the Head of Counseling Services and thus took on a lot of new responsibilities at work. I bought this house on January 31st (renting to the sellers until March), packed up my house (including many unexamined boxes and objects brought in from our life before cancer), celebrated Beatrice's tenth birthday, helped Frances through college and financial aid applications (still waiting on most of those decisions), prepared my old house for sale, marveled at the sheer quantity of objects we possess, and moved into this new house. All of these things were accomplished with the loving support of an army of friends, it's true. But seriously. A week into my new role at work, it hit me: now I'm the mom at work and at home. Shit. All the things eventually fall into my lap. 

I may need a bigger lap. 

(Possibly already in the works, given the copious amount of ice cream, chocolate and wine this season has led me to consume). (Though the anxiety, plus carrying countless boxes up and down stairs, may be effectively counterbalancing those influences).

I'm telling you all this just so you know. Just so someone knows that all this has been really, really hard. I've worried about so many things. My adulting capacities have been pushed to the brink. My brain is operating at a pretty sad pace, and I forget every 12th word I intend to utter. And when I can't think of the 12th word, I say fuck. Like, when I can't think of the word radiator or router I say instead the fucking thing. As in: you guys, we're going to have to learn how to bleed the...the...the fucking things.  

And my kids look at me blankly. Okay, Mama. On our way out to dinner on Sunday night in honor of Mike, after the taxing moving weekend, after picking up the cats at a friend's house and stopping by the cemetery with them and Lulu peeing all over her carrier in a total fit of feline freak out and all of us screaming in the car and frantically rolling down windows because of the astonishingly awful smell, after all of that, I called my car a fuckhead when it wouldn't shift into reverse immediately. The kids started laughing.

Mama, the common usage is fuckface.

And also, you've said the f word 800 times since yesterday morning. It's really not like you. 

Yeah, well, I'm not really like me right now. 

But I took this week off of work. And I have had days to unpack, to organize and figure things out, and even more wonderfully, to be alone in this space, and I am beginning to be me again.

As I unpack boxes, I've been touching so many objects that were once essential, and now no longer are. Yesterday I found a bulging binder given to us by the hospital, with neatly labeled dividers in Mike's handwriting, full of insurance documents and experimental treatment options. A notepad tucked into the righthand side whose first sentence at the top was How chemo works. Mike's notes from our first meeting locally, before treatment began. A clattering collection of PET scans tucked into a pocket. 

I had to touch all those pieces of paper and shiny CDs that once held the possibility of Mike's survival, read all those reports and look at all the words he dutifully wrote. Then I threw it all away, feeling weightless and strange inside.

This week I've found cards made by much smaller hands for me and for Mike, photographs, abandoned craft projects, journals. I've found lumpy ceramics, colorful paintings, and so many picture books that no one is young enough to want to read anymore (with the exception of George and Martha, which I think we will always want to read). I read those books aloud hundreds of times, snuggled next to one or two or three rapt, quiet, freshly bathed children. I love those books. They hold our history.

But we have too many, so I filled a box yesterday with beautiful, beloved picture books and put it outside our house with a 'free' sign. And the flow of life plucked them up and took them along with it, and within an hour it was empty. So I filled the free book box again.

I'm saving the most special ones. But you can't save them all, can you?

All these objects are comforting, tender reminders that it was real. We were a young family with regular young family cares and pleasures, then we were a suffering family struggling to live with cancer, then we were a grieving family struggling to live without Mike. It all really happened. Here, all around me, in half empty boxes, is the proof. Letting go of the evidence isn't easy.

One of the perks of this week off work has been picking up Beatrice after school and hanging on the playground with other parents while the kids play. The other day, Joshua and I were talking about how hard it is to be consistent when it comes to discipline, structure and routines. The authoritative aspect of parenting was never my strong suit.  

But, said Joshua, I try to remember that the most important part of all of this is joy. That's what I want to prioritize with them. 

I nearly cried. 

Me too, I said. 

I want to always make space for ... for the fucking thing. The joy. That's what moving to this house was about, and why all the angst is worth it. Keeping the doors and windows open, having plenty of places to pee, extra space for guests, places to curl up with a book or watch a movie or eat a meal. A home where we can be alone and be together. Where we can know where we've been, accept who we are now, and not be afraid of the changes and growth to come.