He’s home that night and the next and for a few weeks after, and then he’s gone again. My mother bitches about him one night, says some really harsh and cruel things about him right in front of me, and I start to cry. “I like Dad,” I say. “Everyone likes your father,” she says tiredly, “but he is a drug addict.” “I know,” I say. She kneels down next to me and holds me, but it is not for my sake, it is for hers.
Six months later the actor dies of an overdose. When we watch the Oscars that year, the actor’s face flashes onscreen during the In Memoriam segment, and my father cries silently next to me on the couch. My mother says, “What on earth, Arthur?” and he says, “I really admired his work.” The next day my father tries rehab for what I find out is the third time in his life. He does the work, he goes to the meetings. But then he relapses again, and this time it sticks, him and the drugs, and he dies in our living room, on his recliner, high, listening to a record. In my head I imagine it’s Free Jazz, but my mother had turned the music off long before I got home, so I’ll never know what it was, and now it seems too late to ask.
At my father’s funeral my mother sits with her arms around my brother and me and sobs, “What am I going to do now?” She is sad and tired but at least it’s over. I can feel her giving in to it; I hear the relief in her voice. Had she been waiting forever for this moment? To tip to the other side. Was she ready now, was it time, for whatever happens next?
Come Together
A book is published.
It is a book about death and dying and how to cope with losing a child who is born terminally ill. It is a memoir, written from the perspective of the mother, and it is something I would never read in a million years because it sounds super-depressing, even though it is relevant to my family and me.
My mother sends me a copy of this book with a note that says, “You should read this book. Everyone in this house has and it has seemed to help us all. I’m not telling you what to do with your life, but I think this might help you understand what’s going on over here. See you at Thanksgiving.”
I read the book. It is devastating. I sit in the laundry room of my apartment building reading it, waiting for the fluff cycle to end, wiping my eyes with the backs of my hands. There are at least three chapters that conclude with me sobbing. I am crying about this mother and her child and all the people around them who showed them love and also I am crying about my own family, the people I have lost in my life, my father, my friends, lovers, and also the years of my life that will never return to me. It is a singular head-crashing moment with mortality, this book. God bless this book.
I find myself posting a quote from it on my Facebook wall along with a picture of my niece, and I ask people to think good thoughts for her, which feels gross and overly personal and yet I cannot help myself, this is how I can reach out to the most people, this is how I can feel the least alone about this situation in this moment. I do not pay attention to the likes but I know they are there.
My coworker Nina sees me reading the book at lunch in our cube and says, “That looks like a bummer,” and I say with a serious tone, “It is,” and she smiles and starts to say something that I’m sure would have been witty and hilarious but then something comes over her, a cloud of wisdom perhaps, which is surprising given her age and self-involvedness, but maybe now is the time for change, and she catches herself and says, “Are you all right?” to me for probably the first time ever.
I call my sister-in-law, Greta, to talk about the book, but my brother, David, answers instead and we somehow completely avoid talking about it, and then he hands the phone to his wife and we almost instantly land on it, dead in its center. And I say, “Oh my god, that book, I might not ever recover,” and she says, “Try living it.”
I go out on a date with a man I meet on the internet and he has tepid blue eyes and is a smoker and his leg jogs a lot even while he’s sitting and he works in IT and I ask him if he’s read this book, and he says, “Why would I want to read it?” and I say, “I don’t know, I just thought I’d ask. I was trying to find someone to talk to about it,” and it’s not his fault that he doesn’t want to talk about it, but he really, really doesn’t.
I call my therapist, whom I fired six months before, for a touch-up session. I sit down on her couch and hold up the book, and she says. “Andrea, I’m glad you’re finally dealing with this,” and even though she is totally right and I should have dealt with it a long time ago and it was a good choice to read this book, there is a smugness to her tone, reminding me of why I had ended the relationship in the first place, so now I’ve made two good decisions this year.
When I see my best friend Indigo for coffee, I tell her about the book and she says, “Oh, I know about it, all the mothers do, it’s the book you read if you feel like never sleeping through the night again.” Mothers, I think. She’s in that club now, I sometimes forget. We’ve been working really hard at hanging out one-on-one ever since she and her husband split up. Her mother is more than happy to babysit for her. She continues: “I saw an interview with the author and I dedicated one of my yoga practices to the family, I sent my best intentions their way. It would be hard for me to read it with a happy, healthy baby at home. You almost feel guilty that something’s not wrong with yours.” Guilt, that’s a feeling I recognize. “But do you want me to read it?” she asks. “Will it help you some way on your”—she puts her hands in prayer pose—“journey?” I throw my arms around her and hug her and tell her I love her and never to use the word “journey” around me again.
Just when I think I’m recovered from this book, my mother calls me. “Come now,” she says. “Don’t wait till Thanksgiving. It’s time.”
I ask my boss for a week off work. This has been going on for a long time, the days off, the early exits, the hangover mornings, the half-assedness of it all. I explain to him that my five-year-old niece has been taken off her feeding tube, and soon they’ll remove her breathing tube. I don’t bother to ask him if he’s read the book.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” he says. “You’ve had quite a . . . run lately. All the cycles of life.”
“Indeed,” I say.
“Well, listen,” he says. “Do you want to talk about where you’re at here when you get back in town?”
“Not really,” I say. “But yes.” I don’t give a fuck. Fine. Good. Done.