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Tante
This weekend was packed with family stuff (my niece’s graduation, day trip to visit Max’s brothers in Philadelphia) and it seemed to go smoothly on all counts. There’s a satisfaction to spending time with family and having it go easily and well and simply enjoying the time together. People who have been in therapy over family issues know what I’m talking about. A sort of contentment like from the Desiderata; you are going placidly among the noise and haste and you are a child of the universe no less than the trees and stars.
There have been too many times in the past when that didn’t seem possible. I had a lot of issues growing up because my brother seemed so perfect. Perfect grades, perfect behavior, perfect role model. He was like a third parent and he liked to discuss me with my parents as if I were their throuple child. At any rate, as my father says, he was a tough act to follow, and I did not even try for a long time, until I was in college on my own. Oddly enough, we did both end up becoming lawyers (criminal for him, labor for me) and he’s always been very encouraging of me from the very beginning of my career, but sometimes it’s hard to be encouraged.
I’ve done stupid things to harm the relationship, taken offense where none was intended, particularly having to do with inclusion of Sarah in family events. There was a period of several years where we basically had no contact because I felt Sarah had been insulted and he felt Emmy had been insulted and we were at an impasse. I’m glad that whole period is over.
Now that I obviously don’t have any living children of my own, I feel like I may slip into a kind of nice Tante role with my brother’s three kids. I can send baked goods to Andrew when he leaves for Syracuse U in the fall, although he’s allergic to nuts and follows a kind of protein diet to go along with his workout regimen so maybe I’d better hold off on that. Well, his roommates might enjoy them.
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Friendly’s
Today is the first of the triumvirate of social events we have going on in the next few days: my niece’s college graduation, then a quick day trip up to Philly tomorrow to see Max’s brothers, and the field day at Sarah’s school on Tuesday. That’s a lot for us. I’m a little wrought up, so I got up at 3:15 this morning which probably isn’t great.
Being by myself has always been easier for me than being around other people, and I rarely have feelings of loneliness or isolation. I’ve always liked to do things alone, even when I was a child. I used to get a kick out of watching the show “Say Yes To The Dress” on TLC where women shop for their wedding gowns at that big bridal salon in NYC, and it always fascinated me how each bride-to-be brought her mother, her two best friends, her sister, her cousins, her neighbor, her great aunt, and her 6th grade teacher as well as her 3 year-old nephew. Maybe all those people just wanted to be on television and had no real attachment for her, and in reality the bride was oblivious to their opinions, but it always struck me as amazing that there was this coterie of people around each bride. I picked my wedding dress by myself. Of course, I got married when I was 32 weeks pregnant and I wore a garnet-colored velvet dress, but that’s another story.
When I was a kid in Brookline, Massachusetts I liked to go places on the T by myself, and in that era people didn’t worry as much about kids being out and about. I would take the T to Coolidge Corner, which I think was one stop away, and go to a bookstore or sometimes a matinee movie, which cost 75 cents. If I had a dollar, I would sometimes go to Friendly’s in Brookline and order a Fishamajig with a Fribble (their milkshake) at the counter and eat and read. The meal cost 92 cents and I would leave an 8 cent tip (!). Once, after eating, I couldn’t find my dollar in my pocket, and I was afraid I was going to be arrested by the Brookline Police. I called home and someone eventually brought a dollar over, maybe my father or brother. Friendly’s did not seem upset over my situation; they even offered me a free ice cream cone which I was too scared to take.
We wanted Sarah to have independence too, to be able to drive her power chair up our block to our little downtown area near where we live to go to Five Below (her favorite store) or the movies or where she chose when she was old enough. She didn’t really achieve that level of independence. She did love going to our little local mall with a caregiver and buying something for herself or me and suprising me and showing us what she bought. When I go there, I miss her so much. I always loved her company.
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Bandana
Yesterday contained a surprise. A few months ago we approached Sarah’s school about arranging some sort of tribute for her there — a buddy bench, or a piece of equipment her classroom needed, or something else that they thought was best. They said they would let us know, and we didn’t hear back, but figured the administration and teachers were super busy. And there’s a lot of stories about understaffing in the county schools right now. So we didn’t push it.
Anyway, yesterday morning I got a call from Sarah’s principal and he had come up with a wonderful idea. Every year the county schools do a kind of Field Day/Special Olympics for the kids with physical disabilities. All the kids from around the county go to a designated school for the event. I remember Sarah really enjoyed participating. Principal Munsey said that Sarah’s school wanted to host the event permanently and name it after Sarah. We are so touched. This is a lovely idea.
So Tuesday we are invited to the official opening of the Sarah G- Games at Sarah’s school. We are very excited! I have arranged to take the whole day off and I think we will try to get a sheet cake and bring it with us. I hope the kids are allowed to have cake — sometimes schools can be funny about that. Well, the teachers can eat it if not!
It will be exciting, but also a little sad, to see Sarah’s aide Ms. Kim again, and Danny and Sammy and all the other kids from her class and her teachers and therapists. I suppose Ms. Kim might have transferred to another school, but I hope not. We haven’t had contact with her since she came over a few days after Sarah died. We haven’t seen Danny either. He was too scared to come to the funeral or come to our house. Death is so hard.
I’m going to have to try not to cry around the kids because I don’t want to scare them, but I think it might be a hard day too. Maybe I’ll wear a bandana around my neck so I can discreetly wipe my eyes, the way Sarah wore a bandana to discreetly wipe her mouth.
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Pep Talk
Today seems less fraught with sadness and angst than yesterday, but I’m still feeling down and kind of over-sensitive. Generally, I do not like the term over-sensitive. People are as sensitive as they are and if they feel especially sensitive, that’s life. It’s like the Doctrine of the Eggshell Plaintiff that you learn in your first year of Law School in Torts. If you are a Victorian Gentleman and tap someone on the shin on purpose with your cane and that person happens to have Brittle Bone disease and ends up with multiple fractures, you are liable for the injury. You take your plaintiffs as they come, not as you would wish them to be. If that’s true in the law, why do we go around blaming people for supposed oversensitivity to our barbs and jokes and comments?
I’m feeling “oversensitive” because I just finished a huge project at work that is currently being reviewed by the Brass Hats, as we refer to higher-up people in the federal government, the really tippy-top people in the Agency. No, I don’t work for the CIA, we all refer to our federal workplaces as The Agency. While they have relatively few comments on my work, I keep hoping to see some kind of little accolade in the Comments Section like “E-, this is so well-written and intensively researched. We are so lucky to have you at this Agency and surely we would not know what to do with ourselves if you had never been born and come to work here.” You know, some small crumb of praise thrown my way. A feel-good moment.
Yes, I know, I’m not four years old. I don’t need a plaque and an award and a ribbon every time I mangage to button my own clothes correctly. In general, I do feel people respond to praise and positive reinforcement better than criticism and negativity and I try to “supervise” that way although I don’t really supervise anyone right now. Except Polly the Beagle. And she runs me ragged. So I guess I’m not really qualified to say too much on this subject. But I always praised Sarah a lot and talked about all the things she could do. We had our heart-to-hearts in the early mornings when she was feeling anxious and we would discuss Big Feelings too and sometimes cry together, but I wanted her to feel good about her life and the world around her. School lunch in the cafeteria? Yum, so fun!!! Staying in a hotel for a week because of a power failure? We were having an adventure and could use the pool every day!
In the last couple of years of her life, she had some anxiety about her relationship with Daniel, her best friend/boyfriend from Sixth Grade up until she died. He was super loving and attentive with her but I think she had a lot of obsessional thoughts about the relationship and some jealousy and possessiveness over him. She would sometimes point to his pictures next to her bed and pull a sad face. Maybe he’d eaten lunch with other friends, or paid attention to another girl, I’m not sure. Max said that a friend of his from AA who also had a teenaged girl assured him this was typical girl behavior over teenage boys, but I felt bad for her. I gave her lots of pep talks.
I don’t know anymore if pep talks are such a good idea. I don’t want a pep talk right now about Sarah’s death, some crap about her being in a better place or God needing another angel. I can raise my mood for a little while but there’s no way to pep myself out of this.
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Ferry Boat
I’m feeling really fried today and I actually did not feel like writing. Tomorrow is the 18th and it will be nine months since Sarah died. I’m not feeling like it’s any easier. I actually feel like I’m more prone to bouts of tears and craziness. I get pumped up and smiley and almost giddy when I’m around people as if I’m trying to prove a point that I’m okay, I’m going on with my life, but inside I feel terrible.
I don’t know why children have to die. I saw a photo posted in one of my Facebook vintage photo groups yesterday of someone’s great-grandparents with three or four daughters and the poster was saying that one of the daughters died at nine months and one died at age twenty-two. I can’t imagine the mother’s sorrow. Of course the other day the BBC had a news item about a man in Nepal (or somewhere else) who lost eleven family members in a pleasure boat disaster. He didn’t think the boat looked safe but his family members wanted to go, so off they went.
Would it be better to be on or off the boat? I really can’t say right now. I’m feeling very down, I suppose I’ll feel better soon.
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Mall About Town
It’s turning into a busy upcoming weekend. On Sunday we will drive up to Philly to visit with Max’s brothers, and probably drive back the same day. Saturday is my niece’s college graduation ceremony here in DC and my brother phoned last night to invite us to come. (They tend to plan things at the last minute.) So it will be a hectic weekend by our standards. I’m jittery and I went to bed crying a little bit, which is normal for me, thinking about Sarah, and I also woke up crying a little bit. I’m not sure why. I was having one of my standard anxiety dreams in which I was trying to find a new apartment and lugging around old furniture.
I’ve been looking at retail websites since I got up, thinking about finding a new dress for Emmy’s graduation, and sussing out the best plan of attack for shopping. I will try to hit Montgomery Mall (the Mall About Town, as it was known in the 80’s) sometime before Saturday and find something I like. I do like shopping and getting new clothes although going to Montgomery Mall always makes me think of my friend Nahid (Leila’s mother) who died in 2014. I still miss her.
We met in Sarah’s ballet class and she had such a positive and warm energy. She made me laugh about so many things, and she and I loved to go to the Mall, shop, and have lunch at California Pizza Kitchen or the Food Court and take the girls to Build-a-Bear. Nahid loved to shop and she would gift Sarah with fashions that she said she just couldn’t resist buying for her because they were such a good bargain. She was so generous.
Her death was really unexpected. She had a mammogram and the radiologist said that a growth was benign and not to be concerned about it. Over the next months she lost a lot of weight and she was enjoying it because she could buy more fashionable clothes, but it was strange and in the back of my mind I heard alarm bells. She developed a cough and stomach pains and finally it was determined that she had Stage IV Breast Cancer that had advanced to her liver and lungs. She died about 8 weeks later. I think I saw her once or twice after she got her diagnosis and then of course I went to her funeral.
I feel good usually when I think about Nahid. I remember once at Sarah’s birthday party at Chuck-E-Cheese, Nahid and Leila were pretty late showing up and I was a bit worried. Finally they arrived and Nahid told me she had gone to the wrong Chuck-E-Cheese and sat down at another kid’s birthday party for a while until she realized she didn’t know any of the kids or parents. She even helped herself to a slice of birthday cake. Finally she realized she was at the wrong venue and grabbed Leila and left. We laughed so hard. It was a classic Nahid story.
Maybe Nahid and Sarah are together, along with all the other dead people I’ve talked about. I can’t keep straight all the death scenarios I keep imagining.
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Hat Tip
Yesterday, Mother’s Day, did turn out to be very difficult, with me feeling like I’d been hit from both sides without Mom and Sarah, and I just got into bed and slept for a long time. Max did his best to try to cheer me up and my Dad called as well, but I’m just glad the day is over. I feel very depleted.
I guess it must be time for another list of some things I’m grateful for, right, right? The Jewish News sent me an article recently just chock full of scientific studies about the connection between lower rates of depression and mental illness for people who take the time to be grateful every day and express their gratitude. Strangely, no connection between better mental health and high rates of snideness and snarkiness and sarcasm.
The Jewish News recommends starting with the Shehechiyanu (a Jewish Prayer): “Thank you God for keeping me alive, sustaining me, and letting me reach this moment in time.” Well okay. I’m not sure I buy into that version of God as a kind of nanny and crossing guard, getting me across every street safely and making sure I floss and use my turn signals, but I get the general idea. Hat tip to God.
So without further ado:
- I’m grateful for my husband. He’s kind, caring, and listens to me (most of the time) and is a very affectionate person. He tells me he loves me every day and it’s a day brightener.
- I’m grateful for my work unit and my supervisors. I like what I do and I respect and like the people I work with/for, personally and professionally. I’ve had some pretty awful work set-ups and this is such a treat.
- I’m grateful I have time to write this blog.
- I’m grateful my Dad is still alive and is healthy.
- I’m grateful to have freedom from want: we have a house, health insurance, bills are paid, savings, etc.
So there you go! I’m sure my morale is going straight through the roof now that I’ve constructed my gratitude list, and sunshinier days are surely on the way. I’m off to skip through the neighborhood holding hands with Polly the Beagle.
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Borsht Belt
Today is Mothers Day (Mother’s Day? Mothers’ Day?) and I’m just surfing the wave. Max and I agreed yesterday that flowers and a card will suffice for today. I’m not feeling any sadness about the holiday aspect of the weekend, but I did have a little cry last night when I was putting laundry away, thinking that I will never wash and fold Sarah’s little shirts, socks and other colorful clothes again.
I’ve also been thinking about my own Mom, that this is the second Mother’s Day since her death in 2021. As you might have been able to glean from reading my blog, I had a more complicated relationship with her than I do with my Dad. Maybe we were too alike in some ways, always analytical about people and what motivated them, and mulling over some past events. I think as she got older she had less good will toward other people and didn’t realize how abrasive she could be. Her health became poor and she wasn’t happy.
I remember the first May after Sarah was born, I got it together to dress myself, dress baby Sarah, and load her up into this hideous baby-wearing Maya Sling that was very popular around the time Sarah was born, but which she turned out to hate and which was dreadfully uncomfortable. We walked together without leaking too much poo and breastmilk to the Whole Foods to buy birthday and Mother’s Day cards for my mother (the days are close together). By the time we got there, Sarah had more or less had it with the Maya Sling and I was terribly uncomfortable too so we just grabbed a couple of cards, paid and left.
The day after Mother’s Day my mom said she needed to talk to me and it was very serious. I thought she was going to tell me that she or my father had been diagnosed with a grave illness. No, she wanted to talk about the card I sent her. What did it mean? Mean? It was a Mother’s Day card. According to Mom, the card was very, very strange, even troubling, causing her serious concern about my state of mind. Why? There was a frog on the front, and a glass of champagne. When you opened the card, it said “Have A Hoppy Mother’s Day!” and the frog hopped off. Mom just didn’t understand the card. Why was there champagne on the card when neither Max nor I drink alcohol? Ummm…because it’s festive, Mom? What does the frog represent? It’s a frog, Mom. Needless to say, this sort of Hallmark psychoanalysis did not go well and ended in exasperation for me and a few days time-out from Mom.
I was not much of a feminist when I was in elementary school. I wanted a mom like my friends had, a mom who stayed home, and cooked dinner every night, and baked cookies and didn’t work outside the home and who always wore dresses and attractive pantsuits. My mother was the Reading Teacher at my elementary school and sometimes I tried to read with a lisp in order to be sent to the Reading Teacher for extra help. It did not work. Later, my Mom went back to school and got her Masters in Social Work.
My mother was loving and oh so generous with me. She taught me that women work too and that the women in our family are as educated as the men. I wish we hadn’t spent so much time butting heads over nonsense, or being in time-out from each other. I wish I could have realized early on how her anxiety drove most of her abrasive behavior and just…let it go.
Max was very key when he came into my life at helping me deal with my mother in a more constructive way. Just helping me see family nonsense as if someone were putting on a play in a Borsht Belt Theater rather than having to respond. I can’t say I have a perfect record but it’s been helpful.
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Ethan
Next week we are going up to Philadelphia to Max’s family home where two of his older brothers still live because his oldest brother, Jeff, is coming in from Michigan for a visit. I think I have mentioned before that Jeff is 21 years older than Max and was leaving home for graduate school when Max was born. Nevertheless they’ve always been pretty close. Jeff and Max are the only two brothers that married and had families. Marilyn, my sister-in-law on Max’s side of the family, is very kind and welcoming, and Jeff and Marilyn’s daughter Jennifer has two boys who are both older than Sarah.
There must be a word for this kind of family situation in German or another foreign language, where some grandkids are born after great-grandkids in a family. I Googled this morning, and I got nothing. When my mother-in-law passed away, she was in the hospital having her heparin levels adjusted and was apparently chatting with some nurses and joking and laughing about the fact that she had a new grandbaby coming although she already had great-grandkids, and amid laughing she starting coughing and choking and her heart gave out and she went into a comatose state. I’ve always felt a bit guilty about that. It was a huge shock and loss to everyone.
Jeff and Marilyn, along with Jennifer and her brother Julian, came out very quickly after Sarah died, and they stayed a long time. Jeff and Marilyn lost their third child, Max’s nephew Ethan, when Ethan was 16 or 17 and Max was 22 or 23, I’m not exactly sure. It was a terrible loss. Ethan killed himself with a gun the family owned. Nobody really knows exactly why. Max says that the belief is Ethan had some anxiety around leaving home to go to college. But the specific circumstances are not known. Teenagers can be so impulsive and one thought follows another into action. Jeff and Marilyn wanted to be here for us when Sarah died because they knew what it meant to lose a child, and they were.
Jeff called a couple of weeks after they left, and we chatted for a few minutes. He asked how I was doing and he told me “I still think about Ethan every day.” This was reassuring to know, and a little daunting too, I guess. It reminded me for some reason of my mother telling me that her father, my Papa Manny, would sometimes get sad and maudlin thinking about a younger brother who died back in the early 1900’s when the boy ran into the street and got kicked in the head by a horse when Papa Manny was “watching” him.
I guess people live a long time with grief, guilt, and their memories. I don’t have to worry about forgetting about Sarah. But on the other hand, there’s probably not going to be a point when these “triggering” moments just go away, and I stop feeling guilty for not being here when she died.
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Grass Experience
For many years our aross-the-back-fence neighbors were an older retired couple called Margaret and Frank. They were nice for the most part except that Margaret was obsessed with gardening and weeding her back yard and with the possibility of contamination from weeds or “trash trees” in our yard. We are not gardeners but we do keep the lawn mowed and get the overgrowth cleared out. However we don’t stress about weeding the perennials or about what’s growing out there.
Margaret would ambush us with requests whenever she encountered us on the street or at the local voting precinct, to dig up “trash trees,” as she referred to any tree she didn’t like the looks of in our backyard, all the while informing us that we really didn’t want Sarah running around under low class, tacky trees or shrubbery. This was all the more weird and annoying because she was quite aware that Sarah was disabled and not doing any running, walking, strolling or other physical play in the backyard, around either trashy or high-class trees.
One evening when Sarah was around 2 or 3 I saw Margaret’s number come up on our phone and I answered and knew I’d kind of had it with all this gardening crap. Margaret must have known I was already irritated because she awkwardly said to me in a chirpy tone of voice “Hello. I’m calling to talk to you about your grass experience.” (!!) And then launched into her usual wisdom about digging up trees, shrubbery, weeds etc. lest Sarah be exposed to them somehow in her nonexistent perambulations through our backyard.
I told her very bluntly that I worked full-time and had a young child with cerebral palsy. That she was welcome to come on over and dig up weeds and trees in our backyard if it was important to her, but that we were not going to be doing that. Ever. Period. And I hung up. She did not speak to me again after that, and I can’t say it was a problem for me.
(By the way, Max thinks that when Margaret asked me about my “grass experience” I should have just detailed every bong hit and doobie from back in the day as if it were perfectly natural for her to call me up to inquire. I suppose that’s one way to have handled it.) After Margaret and Frank moved away, a young couple bought the house and they now have two small boys. They are not big gardeners either. I left them a little note last year because there was a wasp’s nest that they hadn’t seen growing in one of their azalea bushes and I didn’t want the kids to get stung.
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The First Year Without Sarah 