dear barbara

Some days I miss you so much it hurts to breathe. With every new step Brady takes I am acutely aware it is a step away from you, from me, from us. It begins small, with awkward passes and toddling. Then while you clean dishes, make sandwiches and pay bills, he starts to run – full of glee and sweet abandonment like someone who’s accidentally discovered he can fly. And there is the beginning of the rest of his life. I can’t help but think every step he takes from now on is a step toward his own journey, one that will lead him further and further away from us over time.

The night started ordinarily enough. We were re-arranging our garage, making more room for all the small stuff you’re not supposed to sweat about. A family grows and its garage shrinks. There was stuff everywhere – photo albums, basketballs, candles with thick layers of dust caked on, remnants of hobbies taken up in great excitement and abandoned with even greater haste. I even found our old running medals from that crazy marathon phase. I wondered why we kept any of it.

My job was to sort it all out: throw away the useless, give away the maybes and find a place for everything else. It was a daunting task and I was still at it at almost midnight when I reached for a manila envelope sitting at the bottom of a very large pile. It was heavy in my hand and too fat to close. I wasn’t expecting the weight of it as I picked it up so the photos spilled out everywhere like marbles hitting the sidewalk.

There he was, the rabbi lifting Gregg only eight days old. The earliest picture I’ve ever seen of him. You looked on, still swollen from the birth, but the grin spread wide across your face glowed like a schoolgirl’s crush. A proud mother.

There were more photos of you and Ronnie, so young you looked like kids really.

Photos of your wedding day with a photographer making you pose awkwardly. In one of them you’re sharing a private joke – I’m pretty sure it’s at the photographer’s expense. Photos of Julie as a baby. Photos of a house and friends. Photos of your parents who would one day become great-grandparents before you even saw your first grandchild born. Photos of Gregg’s first day at school. Little League. Bat/Bar Mitzvahs. Holidays. Photos of you and Auntie. Photos of Julie’s wedding. Photos of a lifetime.

It was all there, tucked away in a faded yellow envelope. The very beginning of your own journey straight through to your fiftieth birthday. For the occasion, Julie and Gregg each wrote you a letter sharing how much you meant to them. Within three years of writing those letters Gregg would be reading your eulogy. I cried reading them. It felt so intimate – it was just you and I on a quiet summer night. I felt closer to you then than perhaps ever before. One mother speaking to another.

The voice was pretty clear: Cherish the stuff now -- all of it. The basketball is from Gregg playing hoops with his dad on the backyard court. The candles lit up our first Valentine’s Day dinner. The hobbies helped us get to know one another. The medals helped us get to know ourselves. And the photos are now priceless.

My mind raced back to Brady, learning how to make his way through this new world. I could hear her say, He will forever be running in one direction or another – sometimes with you, sometimes away from you, but hopefully always back to you.

thrown

"So, when are we going to have a baby?"

Few questions can make one lose her balance even while lying in bed about to drift off into some much needed post-holiday sleep. This is one of them.

The question might not have been so shocking had it not come from the lips of my husband, also lying next to me in bed about to drift off. My entire body went tense. I could actually feel each muscle in my body freeze and hold their breath while my brain quickly assessed the situation.

Is he serious? Is he joking? Is he dreaming? Am I dreaming? IS HE SERIOUS?

I don't know why, but I've rarely, if ever, allowed myself to think of actually having babies, kids, a family. Maybe all those years trying NOT to get pregnant -- condoms, pulling out, the Pill -- and those two scary I-Think-I-Might-Be-Pregnant-Holy-Crap-What-Am-I-Gonna-Do? moments scarred me for life, but I've always been weary about family fantasizing (although I do admit to an occasional baby name picking game here and then). I can hardly remember ever wanting kids as a little kid. I didn't want the cuddly baby in the crib. I wanted the fancy Barbie in the hot pink Corvette.

Anyway, there it was. One of those questions that just hangs in the air -- words strung together like paper lanterns to be lit or taken down.

when faith remains

I hate that we don't talk about her. I miss her. He misses her. We all miss you. "All" is a lot of people. Many, too many, touched by your spirit which is where now? Where have you gone? I used to believe -- believe in "the spirit remains", in "they live on through us", but really, I think it's all bullshit. I think it's something someone made up to make others feel better and not be afraid. By "others", I mean those who have yet to lose so suddenly or severely. Those that have been through it -- living with it -- well, they'll smile and nod and pretend those stupid sayings mean something but in truth, in the dark of night, when sleep is the elusive enemy and you can't find a clear thought to save your mind, then those stupid sayings are insulting.

You sit in my heart. You sit in my soul.

Some days it's fine, okay. But some days I think it's hard to breathe -- hard to think about a heaven or a G(g)od that would dare take you from us. It's hard to pray, bow down to someone who took ________ from you. And that's the awful truth. The one we get to live with. When it comes down to it, faith isn't for the fearless, for the lucky ones; they have plenty of it already, masquerading as perkiness. Faith exists for those desperately grasping at a semblance of normalcy. And finding out there might not be one.

I knew Barbara only for a short time -- a little over a year. Who am I kidding? I knew her for 15 months and 5 days (as if I didn't count).

Fifteen months. A life can change in 15 months. The world around you can spin backwards; the sun appear in the middle of the night; the stars linger till noon. Fifteen months and everything can change. Fifteen months and your life can fumble into something so unbelievably different from when you first knew it...

Yesterday, her son turned 30. Thirty years. I wonder if he's counting the years to come or counting the years to come without her. Something told me, over an Italian dinner last night, it's the latter. Something tells me nothing I buy, make, write, say, do, wish, think, hope for will make a difference. It's nice of me to try, I'm sure he thinks, but really, you can't undo World War III. And that puts me at somewhat of an awkward passing. It's like I'm falling short or something. Like no matter how hard I try, I will never be the perfect wife because he will never get to touch her again. Smell her hair. Hear a sweet Hello over the telephone in the middle of a busy work day. Feel the delicate embrace of a hand sun kissed in the warm South Florida sun. No matter what, I can't make my husband's fantasy come true. Fishnet stockings and push up bras just won't do on this one.