The teacher asked us to take notes.
I had no idea what she meant by that.
Pauli saw the panic.
She met me where I was.
She calmed me down and step-by-step, taught me how.
I will never, ever forget her kindness.
“Look for the helpers.” Mr. Rogers said.
I did.
And I still am.
In fact, I’ve become one.
Dear Daughter,
As your grandfather reaches the end of his life, I find myself craving more.
More time. More information. What was his life really like? How did he come to be who he is today?
So, I figured I’d make it a little easier on you.
I was born in the early 1980s, when TVs still had antennas, or as we liked to call them: rabbit ears.
If the show was fuzzy, I had to get up and move the rabbit ears to try and get the station back in tune.
There was no remote. Instead, I had to get up and turn the knob for the very few channels available to us.
There was no choosing what we wanted to watch. We watched what the stations offered.
Sometime in the 1990s, we got a tv with a remote and cable which offered a lot more channels. Still, we found out what was playing by reading the newspaper, The Virginian Pilot, which printed a schedule of shows by the hour.
I vividly remember channel 99 because we didn’t “subscribe” to that channel but there was a lot of moaning and an occasional boob or two amidst the fuzziness- chaotic, zig-zag lines that perpetually moved down the screen so you couldn’t get a clear view. I was equally confused and fascinated, wondering what these people were doing.
Yikes. Now, I know.
My grandmother had a rotary phone- one where the numbers were displayed in a circle formation and you rotated the dial on the front for each number. I loved it when someone had a nine in their number because I got to move the dial almost a full 360 degrees!
We had a phone with a very long cord so that my teenage sisters could walk into another room from the kitchen and close the door to have their private conversations.
Sometime in the 1990s, the “sneaker phone” was all the rage and boy, you know I had one, too! It looked like a shoe but was actually a phone (with a cord of course)! That was the bees knees.
When I heard a song on the radio that I loved, I had to quickly find a blank cassette tape to record the song if I wanted to be able to hear it again. Cassette tapes were four inch long plastic cases that held magnetic recording tape. Sometimes, I accidentally recorded over another song that I loved and there was no going back. Once it was replaced, it was gone.
I lost many a tragic recordings to this oversight.
I also eventually got a boombox that had TWO cassette tape players, which meant I could copy one tape to the other, making “mix tapes” for my friends. I would create a playlist of my favorite songs, decorate the plastic cover, paper insert and plastic case and give it to them as a sign of my love and friendship. It took a long time, so it was a gift from the heart.
The same went for movies. We had VHS tapes, not DVDs. If you wanted to jump to a certain part of the movie, you had to fast-forward. If you wanted to go back and re-watch, you had to rewind. It wasn’t as easy as choosing a “scene”, so you really had to want it to make the effort.
I think that’s what I’m learning from my dad.
He was born in 1931.
Everything took more effort, then.
And even in the 1980s, things took more time.
Now, it’s faster.
And yet, I frequently feel the need to slow down.
Your dad, born in the 1970s, really works hard to keep you all grounded.
To keep you playing outside.
Often shoeless.
So, when things feel too fast.
Cast off those shoes.
Head outside.
Remember where you came from.
And slow down.
Dear Daughter,
Stay grounded.
I was in the room when the doctor announced “There appears to be a mass behind your aorta.”
My father is an intelligent man and although we spent the rest of the week in the hospital for the biopsy and a week more for results, we both knew.
Fucking cancer.
I wish I had words for the experience of breath leaving your body.
It’s as if time stops.
Short enough for no one else to notice but long enough to recognize when it begins again.
She left the room.
And we just stared at one another, half smiling.
“So this is how it ends.” He almost chuckled.
Even when you’re 91, you never expect it.
And ignorantly, neither did I.
Weeks later we were having breakfast together, discussing death (as one does when upon death’s door) when he did one of my favorite things:
He spoke in poetry.
“Death, be no proud, though some have called thee . . .”
I asked him if he had a copy of the poem and he described the color, size and feel of the book I should look for on the wall-to-wall bookshelf.
I found it, along with many of his other favorite poems and (as one does when upon death’s door), I asked him to share.
Because at the end, isn’t that what we all seek?
Time to share.
Time.
Let us share.
It’s been a lifetime of regret
For a crime I never committed.
I was born.
The illegitimate of a love affair.
Forever, a child, apologizing for my existence.
I’m so sorry.
And yet, Here I Am.
You’ve welcomed and accepted me,
Flaws, painful memories and all.
I’m so sorry.
I was born.
It’s been a lifetime.
But, here I am.
Here I am.
“Have you eaten breakfast?”
I stared at him, confused.
Milliseconds passed as I wondered what on Earth had prompted my misinterpretation of this question.
Surely he had asked something else.
I was in the Apple store, after all.
He must have seen the perplexed look on my face when he followed with,
“I just know that when we are under stress, we forget to eat.”
I wanted to bawl cry into his arms.
This simple act of human kindness had reduced me to near tears.
I was there on business.
My phone battery was dying mid-day, every day and had been for months and now, as I sat by it, waiting for important calls from doctors, it felt more dire than ever.
It was the straw that broke the camel’s back- the reason I’d finally relented to replace my battery.
And now I found myself in front of this young man, asking if I had remembered to eat breakfast.
“Yes.” I managed. “I don’t normally, but today, I ate.”
He smiled.
And I left with the reminder that, life or death, humanity perseveres.
Camille Vaughan Photography
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
– Emma Lazarus
My father is first generation American.
Italian, born and bred.
So, when I graduated high school I asked for proof.
In other words, bring me to them.
My relatives.
We traveled first to Rome.
A hotel, he’d booked online.
We’d spent exactly two nights ever together in a lifetime and suddenly,
we were residing in a closet.
On to Naples, Pompeii and Calabria: the place of my grandfather’s birth.
Rich with olive trees, oil and seven-layer fresh lasagna.
Here, I bonded with my foreign relatives as I screamed “Aye! Aye! Aye!” on motorbike
through winding streets, experiencing food like it was the first time.
Eating “al fresca”, pretending I followed their animated conversation.
Next, to Sicily where we knocked on many a neighbor door
until we stood in the room my grandmother was born in 1898.
I looked around and wondered, “how?”.
And here I am.
Standing in my father’s hospital room wondering, “how?”
If there was ever a man to give to the tired, the poor,
Those that needed to breathe and required refuge,
He’s right here.
Beside the golden door.
And here I am.
Standing in my father’s hospital room wondering, “how?”.
She called it what it is:
Grief.
I had never associated that word with what I had been feeling but it all clicked into place.
Grief can be due to a loss of any kind: a loved one, job, marriage, friendship or a major life change.
What I had been feeling was grief!
I described how desperate I had been to make sense of it all and store it neatly in its box.
I’m a writer: I like a good ending.
And this . . . this just carried on.
I described it as spilled slime.
Here I was, frantically trying to return the contents to its original container and no matter how hard I tried, it lingered.
Grief has no blueprint, no timeline.
It’s messy and ugly and nonsensical.
It does not wield to your plans or box.
It takes its time and you are merely a companion to it.
Many try to escape its grasp- be it denial, alcohol or busyness.
Others drown in it.
And then there’s me- failing to recognize it for what it is.
Well, hello grief.
I relinquish my need to control.
I let you take your time.
I identify you.
I respect your process.
And I walk with you
Until you move along.
It is what it is.
Grief.
Camille Vaughan Photography
We were born 20 days apart with just 2 houses sitting between our own. My dad taught him how to swim; his dad taught me how to ride a bike.
We were always outside, waiting for the tell-tale whistle from his parents at dusk, letting us know it was time to come in for dinner and bed.
In our early teens, he would climb the tree in front of my house, clamber up the roof and knock. There was a landing just outside of my window and we would sit there, contemplating life until we were caught.
His parents had been married just shy of 45 years when his mom succumbed to cancer this past September.
The funeral was held in late October and just 5 days later, with the fragrance of the funeral flowers still permeating the living room, his dad passed away from sudden cardiac arrest, right into my friend’s arms. It was two days before their 45th anniversary and we all collectively knew, he had died from a broken heart.
My mother and I had wept during Mr. White’s eulogy for his wife. He spoke of their first date- when Mrs. White had invited him to lie underneath a Christmas tree to watch the twinkling lights.
Mr. White then compared those twinkling lights to the thousands upon thousands of prayers family and friends had sent up to God as cancer ravaged his beloved’s body.
And then, just like that, he was gone, too.
My friend and I stood in the kitchen where he had administered CPR to his dad, just hours before and we hugged, screamed and sobbed. At 39 years-old we still felt like children, never ever having been in his parents’ house without them there.
Shocked and numb, I drove away, contemplating the loss.
Mr. White’s eulogy had been full of love and awe for his wife and the life they had shared.
And I wondered,
“What is a well-lived life?”
Have I lived one?
Am I living one?
In this distracted day-in-age, it feels all too easy to lose sight of the most important part of life:
Our connection to others.
And if that is the meaning of life,
Then I’ve lived it well.
Let us all lie under the Christmas tree and watch the twinkling lights.
We want to freeze time.
Even go back and relive with new eyes.
But there’s a guarantee;
And that is,
Nothing ever stays the same.
We evolve
Or fester.
So, what’s it going to be?
“Unable are the loved to die.
For love is immortality.”
-Emily Dickinson
Looking around, questioning the validity of everything I sense. What it must feel to walk on the moon. Like I’m floating out of this world. Not really here, but watching from the outside in. This is how it feels to live after loss.
And the more I realize I’m actually here, and she’s not, the more painful the reality becomes. Words like unfair. Too soon. And Why plague my mind.
The phrase “Be Kind for everyone is fighting a hard battle.” takes on a new meaning.
Suddenly, that asshole on the road is just another poor bastard doing the best he can.
And my child’s fit, is just that: a fit that will pass.
Love and Loss like spaghetti and meatballs, peanut butter and jelly- one not without the other.
And for a time, Kelly and Lauren. Best friends forever.
Rest In Peace my sweet friend. You are loved.
New Leaf Parenting 