Glow

(I wrote about my mom’s death in previous blogs, but wanted to remind you that as my mother lay dying, I saw a pinpoint of light glide across the floor towards her bed. After that, my mom opened her eyes, she smiled, and there was an undeniable, bright glow on her face and all around her head that everyone in the room averred. This is when I believe that most of her spirit made the great transition.)

GLOW

A point of light floats through
the room where her body rests.
It alights on the pillow
like a robin on her nest.

It settles on her head,
it fills her countenance.
She smiles riant beams –
it is her circumstance.

Did you see it, was it there?
Yes, I saw it, I know:
her light, her friend, herself the angel.
I saw her glow – she glowed.

Stalker

In one of my past youthful fantasies of being a celebrity, I always thought it would be groovy to be so rich and famous that I’d have my own personal trainer, a massage every morning, a personal assistant, and a stalker – someone obsessed with my entire being and persona; worshipped, adored, glorified like a god.

I mean, what are these celebrities complaining about when they’re stalked? They asked for it, and one just can’t buy publicity like a good stalker. Don’t become a celebrity and expect to run from the limelight. They know they love it, they crave it, and I think secretly, most of them appreciate their stalkers.

But stalkers are not resigned to the celebrity set. Sometimes they prey on unwitting Joes and nobodies. For instance, I knew a dance teacher once – let’s call him Michael Murphy – who became a victim of someone I would call a post office stalker because her stalking was done through the mail. Let’s call her Francesca (that was actually her real name). From people I’ve talked with that knew her, she was a butter face: a great body, “but her face….” It also didn’t help that that Michael was without a doubt, absolutely, one hundred percent, totally, indubitably, gay as three red hats.

What follows are the actual mailings that Francesca sent to Michael in chronological time. It’s all true – really. I haven’t fabricated any of this. I saw the file years ago and typed everything up for future writing fodder and this is it. Being stalked via mail is probably scarier than someone following you because when you read what they write, you get inside their heads and understand the obsession and paranoia in which they live.

I want to preface this with the fact that Michael didn’t have any dogs and absolutely hated Vermont.

Exhibit A
Stapled to a Dog Food Advertisement with Coupon:
Mikey – here is some good stuff for your dogs. I'm looking forward to many good times, starting with Christmas!!!
Love ya, Francesca

Exhibit B
Music Schedule for the Chelsea Arts Organization:
Hi Michael,
Here is a concert schedule for you. This is part of my volunteer work. Hope you got all the burgers, soups, fruit, candy, hats, t-shirts, mags, papers, cups and goodies that I always leave for you at the studio. I haven't heard from you about them. I care for you, you know.
Love,
Me

Exhibit C
NYC Free Literary Events Tear Out:
Honey,
Let's go to the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference!
Love,
Wifey Chesska

Exhibit D
Mr. Peanut Postcard:
Darling,
Can you please be a good hubby and put the answering machine back on so that I know where you are? Be so kind as to do that. Also, can you please do Tuesday and Thursday dance lessons at City Center so I can see you? You can tell them about all my shows - it should help you get in. Also, take aspirin with tea, wine or beer so you can sleep better - it's good for your heart. I love you lots and don't want to lose you.
Wifey

Exhibit E
Energizing Fragrance Postcard with "Revive Your Spirit" Ad Line
Micahel dear,
This is to let you know that you have two more weeks at the Y on Lexington Ave at 53rd Street. I hope you enjoy the membership I got you for an early Christmas present. They have a fabulous pool, which has been completely renovated, cybex room, and steam and sauna in lockers. So enjoy! That brings us up to December. I'll let you know what clubs open up for then. I also wanted to tell you that my biological clock is ticking and I think yours is too. You might be in your 40s, but look 20s – and I look young. So childhood bride and groom are what we'll be. They say kiddies (or kid) keep you young anyway. For you birthday you were busy, but I don't count on the year turning over without you around me - it simply isn't right. And the dance schools will be moved/renovated while we are away so everything will be on hold anyway. We have an opportunity to go to Vermont this year-end and I want to take it. We can drive up with Henry when...

(this is continued on the next postcard, which looks like a Rorschach Ink Blot Test)

...he goes skiing. Please go along with me this time. Meet me 12/27 Monday @ 12 noon by the tall trees of Annadale Road and Figure A - down the road from Annadale firehouse. Bring a U-haul or van and get our stuff. We will have a furnished room and then a furnished house - what more do we need? Rent from upstairs will be at least $750/month for 3 cozy rooms. I shop discount houses.

House is on a quiet private street with small park nearby (and Snug Harbor too). Do this now Michael - take a leave of absence (you can always guest teach up there or whatever). I have money coming to me from my teachers (ask your father to help us too - now). Daniel's sister has a gift for us. We can watch TV and let AC Nielsen Ratings pay our bills for a year.

Vermont is lovely. I found a great doctor whom I trust (plus midwife service).

It is time Micahel. I'll see you on the 27th - be there this time.

Love,
Your Wife Fran Chesska

Exhibit F
On Torn-Out Pieces of Mini-Notebook Paper:
Michael my pet,

Just to review checklist. Still need:

1) Next-to-smallest size van ready Monday noon time, Dec. 27th, U-Haul-it, by the tall trees on corner of Annadale Road/Figure A, down the road from Annadale firehouse, off expressway exit.

2) Will be taking 3 chairs, 2 lamps, bed and beddings, TV and stand, stereo, tapes and vinyls (still have them!), books, extra fish tank stand and wooden board, gown, accompanying trimmings, clothes and shoes, Christmas ornaments packed away, mid-height dresser and low dresser (all knick-knacks packed away), one small closet of clothes, iron board and iron, and linen closet contents: toiletries, towels, rose vases, Mikasa soap dish, blue jar, bird statue from Japan.

3) Leaving behind: a complete bathroom display because the house is not saleable without it.

4) I also have bags of kiddy type games, which we can play on cold winter nights or even save. Simple stuff that works on imagination, not on electricity!

5) I have Snapples for the drivers (you and me and Henry too). I'll defrost them before we leave.

6) Ask your father to help you if you need a pep talk or encouragement. Be on good behavior please. We'll be gentle folks who are kind and neighborly.

7) Our house is almost all complete. They are leaving stuff for us and they finished the downstairs too (finished bathroom and added carpeting and walls, etc.) We'll move back when they move out so we'll have to check daily. Should take a short time, since they are ready to move now.

Get a good night's/day's sleep the day and night before. Looking forward to this.

Love always,
Me Wifey Chess

Exhibit G
A Brochure for the Carnegie Park Swim and Health Club:
Michael darling,

Happy Early New Year's 2002!!!

I got you a pass for here as an early New Year's gift. You have 3 days in which to swim here. Isn't it lovely? Enjoy yourself. I love you very much!!

w/luv always,
(drawn within a heart) Wifey Fran

Exhibit H
Little Greeting Card with Mouse at Mailbox Pictured on Front:
Dearest Michael,

I'll be seeing you for Christmas Day early evening at your parents' house (I have the address, you know I do). I come bearing gifts (a few). We'll be getting our own show on the road now, so to speak.

W/love Always,
Chesska

Exhibit I
McDonald's Coupons Stapled to a Whole Foods Postcard:

Michael darling,

This is a nice card to give you a nice new message. I'm planning our move to our cozy little cottage. Now you must come forward to do your part in helping all the others and me.

Imagine your most comfy sweats and slippers and that's how it will feel being there. A private street, so no traffic (only birds chirping, maybe squirrels). Sunlight creeping through bay window w/seat. Cool breeze in backyard. A nice cozy house also.

So I think it may be time to be there soon. I really want to go to Vermont this time and I know you get one week off and then you can take a leave for 3 months. That's all you'll need. I think the owners are ready to call it quits. They'll be telling them that the school is buying it so nobody yet knows who we are.

We need second from the end smallest U-haul. It's fine. The timing is right to move us now. Everyone here is restless and chomping at the bit.

Tell Richard (at Helene's) to get white wicker - it's the lightest! And wear fuzzy slippers. He wants fold-up couch in living room. Robert in one room, his sister in one room, but one spare room for storage or guest.

It's great!! Delis, takeout, videos, magazines, newspapers (domestic and foreign), catalogs and relaxing. Will write again. Don't disappoint me.

Love,
Fran

Exhibit J
Letter to Artistic Director on Ripped-Off Notepad Paper:

Dear Mr. Pearlstein,

Holiday greetings. I need your assistance at this time. Please give my husband, Michael Murphy, his holiday time (I believe it is a week or two) off. He also needs a leave of absence for about 3 months time. Within this time we will be going to Vermont on holiday and then moving simultaneously others and ourselves into a house, which is being renovated for us. He will be buying the house up front, bank teller's check, no mortgage involved. His father has some monies for him as a wedding present. He's so thrilled his son if finally married! Please raise his guest teaching fee. I have an account at my disposal. We will also be collecting rent from tenants upstairs.

Do not reschedule this time as this move must take place now. (Put his usual substitutes on instead). Thank you for your help. Tell him I'll see him at the appointed time with William Henry Wright (Dec. 27th 12 NOON Annadale/Figure A).

God bless you and Merry Xmas - Fran Chesska Lauren-Murphy

Falling Into Family

I’m always reluctant to visit my dad and sisters. I try not to be, but that’s the truth of it. When F. asks if I’m looking forward to the trips, my usual response is, “Honestly, no, I’d rather stay here.” It’s not that I don’t love my family; I adore, cherish, and love them unequivocally. I think my ambivalence towards visiting them comes from family being a paradox of support and a source of threat. Part of me wants the sense of connection to them, but they’re also a reminder of painful memories. If I’m not mistaken, I think that’s apropos for everyone who has a family: sometimes it’s full-throttled love, and sometimes it’s a down-shifting of gears into malaise.

I still mourn my mother’s death. I wonder if I’ll ever stop. I’m sad. I miss her. A day doesn’t go by that I don’t think about her. Sometimes the horrific images of her deathbed flicker like celluloid. I then think of her last words to me – “love you” – and the peaceful moment of her final breath, and I feel better.

When I visit my family, they’re a sore reminder that there’s someone missing at the dinner table. Her chair in the living room is empty, but sometimes I still see her sitting there. I also feel the absence of her inimitable laugh at my bad jokes. That’s why I don’t want to go to Pennsylvania. I was going to call it home, but my home is in New York City now. My home is where I am, and that past home life of my childhood only a memory and place that writer Thomas Wolfe said you can never go back to again.

Before I continue, I want to state that every family is dysfunctional, and perhaps that’s an inapt word that’s slipped into our cultural consciousness by psychologist who are determined to wipe it clean from the slate. Dysfunction is normal, so perhaps we should just simply say that family is what it is and leave it at that and stop trying to label it. Perfection in relationships would be very boring.

Last Spring, I went with my Dad to my sister’s house in New Jersey for Father’s Day. It was essential for me to go. Tears and emotions that had been blocked by my life in New York City needed to be unplugged, like a soapy bathtub being drained. It was a good trip. Once I got there, I was glad I went.

I’ll go back to the sister’s in November for Thanksgiving, although I dream of having a Thanksgiving in New York City with my family of friends. But I can’t do that to my dad right now. Holidays were my mom’s favorite times of the year, and this year, every holiday and birthday is the first one without her sitting with us, eating a meal that’s “the best ever”, and devouring a little bit of each dessert that fills the table.

We arrived at my sister’s on a Friday afternoon. During a late lunch, my dad said that my sister should stop praying for him because he’s never going to be all right, he’s never going to get over his wife’s death, he’s always going to feel an empty part in his heart where she used to live. I wanted to tell him she’s still with us, the pain will lessen, you’re going to be all right, but I didn’t. He didn’t need to hear that. It was important just to listen. I try to respect that more with people. Many times when friends or loved one express sorrow or complaints, I don’t think they want me to solve their problems or give vapid words of support because I can’t empathize; I think they just want me to listen, and that can be enough therapy in itself. Sometimes it’s better to simply shut one’s gob and open one’s ears.

On Friday night, I stayed up late watching Oh Brother Where Art Thou on the basement TV. My dad and I were sharing a bedroom down there. After the movie, I slipped quietly into one of the twin beds, but my dad was awake. I could feel that he wanted to talk, so I turned on the light. He cried and told me how badly he missed Mommy. We talked about her, reliving happy memories of the time we had with her, talking about her idiosyncrasies: she didn’t like drinking water, she wouldn’t think of sending back bad food at a restaurant, and she never, ever wore a hat because it would mess up her hair.

Daddy lay in his bed looking up at the ceiling as we exchanged our individual senses of loss. We talked for an hour until finally the conversation faded to silence; there was nothing else to say, and in that comfortable silence of empathy, I turned off the light and we slept peacefully.

I have to keep reminding myself that my mom is with me, because my family believes adamantly that she is gone, in heaven, and can’t be a part of our lives. But she is, and always will be with me because the past is a dream, the future doesn’t exist, and the now in which I live is inhabited by my mom’s presence, grace, and pride.

I can’t escape my family. Maybe escape has a connotation of imprisonment that isn’t appropriate, so perhaps I should say, I can’t leave my family. Even though I sometimes wish I could, I know deep, underneath my furrowed brow, behind the skin, and down deeper still, is a place that wants them in my life.

What if I said, “To heck with it!” and walked away? I would hurt them immeasurably. I don’t want to do that, even though the thought enters my mind now and then. I am theirs and they are mine, and we’ve come together during this lifetime for different reasons that I can’t always grasp. We’re here together and that I can’t deny. We’ve got to learn from each other to love unconditionally. My mom was an example of that.

On Saturday, I sat with my sister on the back deck of the house. We both read our different books – hers a Bible Study workbook, mine The Wild Braid by Stanley Kunitz. Like our books, we are two completely different people, but connected by the bond of our mother. And it was sitting there with her, quietly, when the moment hit me as something beautiful (the first few descriptions sound like something out of a Disney cartoon, but it’s true): chipmunks pranced around in the leaves, a rabbit ran by, a robin fluttered down on the deck with a worm in its mouth, clinking silverware sounded as someone set the table for breakfast, I smelled pancakes and quiche, and heard horses whinnying across the fence at the horse farm. This was all going on around me and I was comforted as I thought of Mommy and my family. It was both a burden and joy to be there, but then I forgot about the burden and only happiness was left. By being present, and in the beauty of the moment, I changed, and everything was enjoyable.

On Sunday, Daddy and I prepared to leave. I was upstairs with the family, but then had the overwhelming feeling that I had to go back down to the basement for some reason. On the wall at the bottom of the stairs was a picture of my sister and mom. It was taken on a cruise they went on a few years ago. Mommy looks radiant and beautiful, and looking at her arms and hands I remembered the feeling of them when she hugged me. My mom was great for hugs. She’d hug anybody. I remembered how her hands were wrinkled and soft, like fine tissue paper. I wonder if she wanted me to go downstairs to see her, to remember that she was with me.

Changes and decisions seem to be coming more quickly to everyone around me, and like it or not, it’s time to embrace them and take giant leaps of faith knowing that the net of our Source will be there to catch us if we teeter and fall. I fell back into my family that weekend and they into me, and my mom was there to catch us. This doesn’t mean I’m going home to visit every weekend. Once a month, every five or six weeks, that’s fine by me.

A Squeeze of a Hand

“I still can’t get over it,” the bent woman said to her friend. They sat next to each other on the almost heartlessly rigid subway seats the Metropolitan Transit Authority provides for straphangers. With fares at two dollars, with a threat of increasing once again this year, would it be a lot to ask for a nice cushioned seating device on which to park one’s posterior? Just a little cushion – half an inch.

“Can’t get over what?” asked the friend.

“Julie.”

The friend raised a hand to her ear and said, “What?”

“Julie, my daughter,” said the old woman, a little louder this time.

I couldn’t help but hear the conversation. I was standing right in front of them, holding onto the overhead pole, trying to read my book, but since the one woman seemed hard of hearing, their voices were a few decibels louder than usual.

When I say the one woman was bent, I believe she had osteoporosis because she was hunched over at the shoulders, on the critical verge of being deemed a hunchback, but not like the one from Notre Dame. The other woman was much taller and sat up straight like a beanpole. Even sitting down she towered above the other people. If I were to make a guess, I’d say they were both in their late sixties. My mom used to wear a perfume called “Beautiful”, and that’s what I smelled; that and – strangely – tapioca. They both had sweet, delicate voices, the kind that I could listen to for days as they read aloud some Mark Twain or perhaps a few poems by Dickinson or Millay.

I’m not making this up, but I could feel the compassion they had for each other; it was palpable. They were great, long-time friends whose eyes alone and together had seen and experienced so very much that my own meanderings paled in comparison. Who were they? Where were they going?

“Oh, yes,” said the tall woman, “It’s so sad, my dear. I’m so sorry.”

“I still can’t believe she’s gone,” the bent woman said softly, shaking her head.

“Hmm?”

“I SAID I can’t believe she’s gone.”

“Oh yes. My mother’s been gone five years and I’m still going through her closet trying to throw things away.”

The bent woman swung her head up and said, “Whenever I read or see something interesting, I still think, ‘Oh, Julie will like this.’”

I usually don’t try to intentionally eavesdrop on a conversation. I figure it’s none of my business, but the pathos gripped me and said, “Listen.”

The grief of losing my mother has run the gamut around my heart lately. As each day goes by, I don’t miss her any less. I think about her every day, but not as often as I did one, two, five months ago, but the pain that wells up when I do is unabated. I actually woke up one recent morning after a fantastic dream in which I was swimming with dolphins and thought, ‘I’m going to call Mommy and tell her about it.’ And then I realized: I can’t do that anymore. This doesn’t dispel my belief that she’s with me always, that she’s doing even greater spiritual work than she did here on earth. I accept that. But I still miss her physical presence in this life; I miss picking up the phone and simply calling to say hi. For three years, I called her almost every day because I knew that when she did die, I didn’t want to have any regrets.

Two of my grandmother’s boys died way back when – one at two months old, the other when he was nine. Grandmom said that unless I lost a child, I’d never know the pain. “No parent should ever have to bury a child,” she often said.

I don’t have children and probably never will. I can’t imagine what the bent woman must have been going through. I didn’t know how long it was since her daughter had passed, but as Grandmom said, “It’s something you never, ever get over.” For seventy years, a day didn’t go by in which she didn’t think of her two sons.

I wanted to say something to the bent woman, but I didn’t. I think it’s too easy to say life goes on, they’re in a better place, it was your daughter’s path, and all the other things said in sympathy to another person’s loss that doesn’t mean a tinker’s cuss to the grieving.

The tall woman grabbed the bent woman’s hand and gave it a squeeze and the two of them smiled. I think in that one gesture they shared a silent moment that transcended trite words and idioms – a true example of empathy and love. Nothing else needed to be said. They were quiet for two more stops, and then got off at 96th Street. The train pulled out of the station, and through the window I saw the tall woman take her friend’s arm and help her towards the exit.