NO CARRIER
A few weeks ago, in one of my periodic refusals to go to bed, I read the journal of someone I've lost touch with, and discovered she'd suffered a terrible loss several months ago. I no longer know what's up with her on a regular basis, mostly because I find her way of thinking too eccentric to mine and because some of her recent successes remind me too much of my own failings. OTOH, I know her well enough to know the loss was devastating and feel like I should reach out to offer some sort of condolence. So awkward. What do you recommend?
The last week has been physically tough for me. I overdid things on Tuesday: I forgot there are limits to how far I can walk, walked an extra mile (instead of taking the subway one stop), and could barely move the next day and had to cancel two sets of plans, including with my ex-boss, who was coming in from the 'burbs largely to see me. Wednesday ended up being a sick day, because I lacked the brain to do anything complicated, like read. Oddly enough, I still rejected the new season of Alpha House and ended up watching a few episodes of House of Cards s1 and The Wire s1.
Thursday was the last of my monthly visits to the obstretician: from now on, it's every other week. We were oddly distracted and Jon and I failed to note how big the baby is or how large his head is. However, the doc mentioned he's gestationally large, running 2 weeks ahead of schedule. oops. And that was before Mama rediscovered Butterfingers.
Saying I went to my cousin's funeral yesterday does not begin to cover my grief. She was a second cousin once removed, but she was also the closest family on my father's side and part of the family with whom we spent every Passover since I was a baby. Everything my mother prepares for Passover was learned from her mother. She's been dealing with chemo and radiation therapy for her triple negative breast cancer, but when we saw her in May, she was talking about a new business she wanted to start, and when we saw her in August, she was talking about how many Stines she'd have at Passover because of all the new babies. Yesterday I shoveled dirt on her grave.
I've known her so long - I remember her years as a too sharp-witted young lawyer, her struggles to find a husband, her struggles to have children - but it wasn't until this summer I realized what a wise person she was, someone I really wanted to know better. There aren't many people I know whose brains glow like that - I can count the ones I know on a hand - and I certainly don't have many relatives like that.
Hormones make everything worse. So does knowing that she left behind 10yo twins. Listening to her husband's eulogy, I realized that not only is their story similar to Jon and mine - true love found after so many years of loneliness - but even their origin story is similar - a stranger across a room and all that.
Of those we invited to our engagement party last June, this is the second person we've lost to cancer in the past few weeks, the second who suddenly disappeared from our lives during a weekend breakfast. Even before I heard about my cousin, I'd been thinking about ayem_willing, thanks to a conversation at the vanilla Halloween party we attended, and the line between the living and the dead felt very permeable this weekend.
There were two other women invited to our engagement party with cancer, neither of whom I know as well as I ought. During my cousin's father's funeral, I learned things about him I'd never known and the same with my cousin. If my husband died tomorrow, I still couldn't narrate parts of his biography, because there are parts of even his life I don't grok. Is this what death and loss is about, the end of the chance to connect? I feel so disingenuous, reaching out to someone who is or has been facing death, and asking to understand them when they themselves are putting it all together in the final story arc. OTOH, I'm so very glad I emailed my cousin in August, to express my regret at not spending more time with her, and I'm glad she got to chat with my son, even if it was through the womb.
The last week has been physically tough for me. I overdid things on Tuesday: I forgot there are limits to how far I can walk, walked an extra mile (instead of taking the subway one stop), and could barely move the next day and had to cancel two sets of plans, including with my ex-boss, who was coming in from the 'burbs largely to see me. Wednesday ended up being a sick day, because I lacked the brain to do anything complicated, like read. Oddly enough, I still rejected the new season of Alpha House and ended up watching a few episodes of House of Cards s1 and The Wire s1.
Thursday was the last of my monthly visits to the obstretician: from now on, it's every other week. We were oddly distracted and Jon and I failed to note how big the baby is or how large his head is. However, the doc mentioned he's gestationally large, running 2 weeks ahead of schedule. oops. And that was before Mama rediscovered Butterfingers.
Saying I went to my cousin's funeral yesterday does not begin to cover my grief. She was a second cousin once removed, but she was also the closest family on my father's side and part of the family with whom we spent every Passover since I was a baby. Everything my mother prepares for Passover was learned from her mother. She's been dealing with chemo and radiation therapy for her triple negative breast cancer, but when we saw her in May, she was talking about a new business she wanted to start, and when we saw her in August, she was talking about how many Stines she'd have at Passover because of all the new babies. Yesterday I shoveled dirt on her grave.
I've known her so long - I remember her years as a too sharp-witted young lawyer, her struggles to find a husband, her struggles to have children - but it wasn't until this summer I realized what a wise person she was, someone I really wanted to know better. There aren't many people I know whose brains glow like that - I can count the ones I know on a hand - and I certainly don't have many relatives like that.
Hormones make everything worse. So does knowing that she left behind 10yo twins. Listening to her husband's eulogy, I realized that not only is their story similar to Jon and mine - true love found after so many years of loneliness - but even their origin story is similar - a stranger across a room and all that.
Of those we invited to our engagement party last June, this is the second person we've lost to cancer in the past few weeks, the second who suddenly disappeared from our lives during a weekend breakfast. Even before I heard about my cousin, I'd been thinking about ayem_willing, thanks to a conversation at the vanilla Halloween party we attended, and the line between the living and the dead felt very permeable this weekend.
There were two other women invited to our engagement party with cancer, neither of whom I know as well as I ought. During my cousin's father's funeral, I learned things about him I'd never known and the same with my cousin. If my husband died tomorrow, I still couldn't narrate parts of his biography, because there are parts of even his life I don't grok. Is this what death and loss is about, the end of the chance to connect? I feel so disingenuous, reaching out to someone who is or has been facing death, and asking to understand them when they themselves are putting it all together in the final story arc. OTOH, I'm so very glad I emailed my cousin in August, to express my regret at not spending more time with her, and I'm glad she got to chat with my son, even if it was through the womb.