My other motivation felt even simpler. I wanted to honor my dad and live a life that he would be proud of, and I knew that I could not accomplish that if I continued drinking. I had to give it up. On August 23, 2015, my stepmom offered me a beer at dinner. I quietly said no then, as I did thousands of other times in small and big moments in the days and years that followed.
32
Resentments
“It’s normal to lose a parent,” Jill remarked to Meagan one afternoon as we headed into our first winter without him.
“Have you lost either of your parents?” Meagan replied, as carefully as she could.
“No,” Jill admitted.
But I could understand the unsaid half of what Jill was saying. She and my dad were married for more than twenty years and considered each other their closest confidants. I have many memories of them dancing through the kitchen with the music cranked up way past the normal parent-friendly audio setting. Most often my view of them was sitting at the kitchen table side by side, reading the Times together. Both she and my dad were independent and stubborn, but they were each other’s constant.
They were not people who included their children in their relationship. They had their own coded way of speaking to each other. Nicknames, media gossip—I was never sure what they were talking about. And they made little effort to change that when we would complain about it. Eventually we stopped when we realized that this was who they were: a couple devoted to each other who showed one another respect and love—a model I made a mental note to try to emulate someday.
Jill told me that the night before he died, she’d slept on the spare bed in the attic. She was sick with a nasty cold and didn’t want to pass along any germs before his panel the following evening. Her last night, another thing snatched away by circumstance.
Jill and I had never been close. She, who came into our lives when Meagan and I were six, had been the designated disciplinarian, always insisting on good manners and respect toward our elders. But our relationship with her never went much beyond that. Never really softened. I was sure it was hard for her then, as it was now. I could have used some softness, though.
It was November. The holidays would soon be here. I had been actively trying to not think about Thanksgiving, my dad’s favorite. I remembered past Thanksgivings and cringed. I recalled 2013 as being a particularly hard year in our relationship. I’d kept delaying, refusing to commit to any plan for the day of feasting, and eventually got a furious call from Dad. Where was I? Everyone was waiting for me. I threw some sweatpants on, which I knew would piss him off, and headed to the dreaded Port Authority.
My dad had always wanted his kids to be as excited about Thanksgiving as he was. There was none of the annoyance of gifts or reindeer that Christmas entailed. Turkey Day was just about the turkey and us, and that was something he could certainly get down with. Every year he was responsible for the bird, while Jill would handle most of the sides, except for the gravy. My dad was a complete freak about gravy. He would labor in the kitchen making his homemade savory concoction, tasting and seasoning it until he declared perfection. When we were called to the table for the meal, he would smile and ask people to taste it. “Nothing is too good for my family,” he would say as he grinned toothily at us.
We were traditionalists and held hands and went around the table to say what we were thankful for. Often, he discussed his sobriety and his love of us, his girls. Work was rarely mentioned.
I can taste that gravy now. I have never attempted to re-create his magic.
On this day, with Thanksgiving a few weeks away, that magic was gone. I turned to Google for answers: “how to get through the holidays without murdering anyone.” Hmm, grief seems to be missing in that Internet query. I add “grief.” Whammo: “64 Tips for Coping with Grief During the Holidays.” Sixty-four seemed an oddly specific number, but I figured I’d take each one I could get; however, “Lighting a candle and thinking ‘nice’ thoughts” about my dad sounded like a fast route to a revolver-in-mouth-type depression. I was looking for a more pragmatic approach, the advice the brunette best friend character in a movie would dispense: Stay off social media, eat whatever you want, and this sucks, and it should, because nothing a website or anyone else says can make him come back.
Meagan organized a group video chat to discuss how “we as a family” wanted to spend our first Turkey Day without him. She was always doing that, thinking about us as a unit instead of the fragmented individuals we had become. Jill had moved into a new, smaller house, and that might have been an option, but she wouldn’t be there because she had to be in Tokyo for work. I was secretly relieved. I thought I would much rather scarf down bowls of green curry, alone, with The Office playing in the background, than try to get through this ludicrous holiday and all its trappings.
Meagan wouldn’t have it. She suggested we three girls gather in Michigan because she had space and was willing to cook. Like a jerk, I automatically said, “Pass.” Traveling during the holidays is such a nightmare. Never mind that she’d done it for the past ten years. Boston was brought up, as Madeline was there attending college. I said yes to Boston since it was closer than Michigan. “We can rent an Airbnb and cry together,” I said.
Meagan got off the phone so quickly that I knew I should call her back. She picked up, and her voice was fractured and soft, like she’d been crying. I asked what was wrong, but I knew the answer.
“I just don’t know what to say. No one is making an effort for us to be together. It’s important that we stay connected….”
Her voice trailed off but I knew what she was implying.
I nodded but said nothing.
At the end of the phone call, we agreed on Boston because it was near-ish to all of us. Our grandma, Jill’s mom, who is also known as Grammy Diane, would fly out from Minnesota and be the stand-in for Jill. She is kind, sweet, and loves Elvis Presley. She is a young sort of grandma and a reassuring presence. Plus she always brings us candy. On this Thanksgiving, we chose gummy bears over turkey.
I felt a mixture of emotions about my stepmother as we headed into the holiday. I felt grateful that my little sister still had a parent, but I was unable to ask Jill to be mine. I’m not sure if she was ever fully my parent. I’m not sure if my dad ever allowed her to grow into that role. He was our mother and father; he wanted to be all things to us. Intellectually, I knew I was not a child. Still, I relished my anger over her absence, and that was both troubling and comforting. It wasn’t that I wanted Jill to be there; I just felt comfortable being mad at her. Placing blame somewhere. It felt good to feel something other than sadness.
Jasper offered to drive me up to Boston. As we got in the car the air felt bitingly cold. I had underdressed as usual, and I cursed the whole Northeast as a region. Madeline’s friends had agreed to let us stay at their apartment for one hundred bucks, but I’d been warned that it was a complete and total pit. The Airbnb idea had been nixed because we were all broke and there was no parent around to pay for it.
I was three months sober (again) at the time, and was craving a drink to take the edge off of what I could only imagine would be a disaster. When I arrived, the mood was pretty much dire. Meagan had been scrubbing the apartment for hours, as she wanted the place to be suitable for our grandma. Madeline was holed away in one of her friends’ bedrooms, stricken with bronchitis or some other joy-suppressing ailment, but came out to survey the work being done and say hello. Jasper said hi to everyone and then gave me a quick hug goodbye as he headed out the door. I knew he was happy to return to his nondepressed family, which irritated me. I wished I could hide in his trunk and go back to the land of dumplings and plush red blankets. Instead I was stuck with two of the witches from Macbeth. I completed the set.
“Hey, do you want some help cleaning?” I offered unconvincingly.
“No, I’m fine. Almost done,” Meagan responded quietly as sh
e swept the remaining dust into the dustpan.
“It’s a good thing Dad doesn’t have to be here this year,” I joked, trying to break the tension. She looked up, said nothing, and walked away.
Later we headed to a museum on the T, our grandma now with us. Jill hadn’t called. The time difference was too much from Tokyo to Boston. There was a general uneasiness that permeated every discussion our little family had. We were outside our routine, and I was filled with resentments. I resented Jill for being gone, Meagan for forcing us to spend time together, my dad for dying, and Madeline for coughing all night long. I walked from room to room in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, reading about the 1990 theft of the prized Rembrandt Christ in the Storm, on the Sea of Galilee, among others. I wondered who on earth had those paintings and what they’d done with them. Anything to take my mind off the present. Amid my reverie, I caught a glimpse of my sisters as we all walked toward the end of the exhibit. All I recall is liking the feeling of being lost in the art rather than in my own head.
At the end of the day, I crawled under the covers with my two sisters, uncomfortable, anxious, longing for my own bed. I’ve read that in grief, families come together or break at the seams. In that moment it felt obvious what sort we were.
That night, late into the wee hours, I asked Meagan about what Dad would have thought about our first holiday effort without him. I knew he would be beyond disappointed, maybe even furious with the results. But I couldn’t seem to get any closer than I was, sharing a pillow. I watched the ceiling as I waited for Meagan to answer. We might have been alone as we worked our way through the night, but at least I could try to be as physically close as possible.
Trying to smile and get through our first Thanksgiving without him.
33
Sad Girl’s Guide
“Woke up last nite thinking about you—did you know you are always on my mind?”
Before my father’s I had only witnessed death in disparate flashes, mostly through social media. A girl from high school was running in the park at exactly the wrong moment and part of an oak tree splintered off and hit her. She died instantly. My high school mourned her through a Facebook post, and it caught my attention. My mind recalled another death that made little sense. Outside the tutoring place where I worked, a girl named Michelle told me that her sister, a twin, had died speeding down a street in our town at one in the afternoon. The twins were identical, and I immediately imagined the parents looking at her, exactly the same as the child they had lost.
These disruptions in space and time rattled me. Why did these young women die? After college, the Facebook posts started coming every couple of months, notifications that one friend of mine or another had lost a parent or grandparent after a long illness. I melted into the pictures, looking at the toothy smiles of proud relatives no longer here. I scrolled my way through the tapestry of their relationship. The big moments that they’d been there for and would not be in the future. It shocked my system. Now it was my turn.
As a millennial, I tend to crowdsource everything. So why not grief? I wrote to the three women I knew who had lost a parent, revealing that I had lost one, too, and asked a series of inane/oversimplified questions:
Were there any books or movies that helped you?
What was absolutely not helpful to you?
Did you gain weight? Did you lose weight?
How do I wake up in the morning and not feel insane? How do I work?
How do I cope (without using wine)?
How do I deal with the self-pitying thoughts that are on a loop in my brain?
How can I talk to my dad still?
Did writing help?
What do I do when I feel irrational rage when people are talking about their parents?
How do I communicate about it with people that I do not know?
My friend and fellow namesake Erin was the first to respond. Her words floored me. But first, a little about her: Erin is captivating in looks and in spirit. She is the former girlfriend of a boy I loved. She has dark, shiny brown hair with large oval brown eyes. Freckles line the top of her cheeks. She looks like an actress Warhol would have hung out with. Porcelain skin with a penetrating gaze. I felt immediately jealous as I secretly crawled through her digital existence. I heard that she could be mean and sharp. I met her and kept a distance, jealous but also intrigued.
A close friend of hers moved to the city, and I offered to take him out to a VICE party. I wore a black fitted dress with my jet-black hair, never making a move and understanding that I should not because I was likely to be rejected. I got a message from Erin, early the next day, saying I should stay away from her friends. We were so, so similar, it was painful. Years later, she apologized and asked for a meeting. The stars aligned and we saw each other for what we were, kindred spirits and drinking buddies. When I first got sober she supported the cause.
Her mother died in a personal tragedy (her story to tell, not mine) that I watched unfold through the Internet. I felt awful for Erin but didn’t know what to do or say, so I said nothing. This was before my dad died, and I knew little about the etiquette of grief.
The next time I saw her, her skin was paler, almost translucent. Her face looked thinner. I asked her what the most difficult thing was. Zeroing in on the question made me feel stupid, but I could not speak the dreaded words “How are you doing?” She closed her eyes and said, “Everything.” I nodded.
But when I needed her, after my father died, she was there. This is the response she sent me.
To: Erin Lee Carr
From: Erin C
Date: 02/24/2015
Subject: Sad Club
Have you ever read East of Eden? I think it’s the first thing i read after losing my mom that really got close to me. For me, self-help books or books on grief don’t get through to me. Maybe because they threaten to make your pain universal? You know? Like no one in the world feels exactly like you do right now, and although so many come close, you have to naturally find the stories that come to you, without coercion. Just pick up anything that piques your interest, through divine force it will have something in it for you. But omg I’m basic, because Wild made me sob uncontrollably. I think it’s easy to relate to avoiding that pain and loss and what it will do to you. I think both you and I are the “type” to push those feelings as far back as we can…but it will destroy you. Gotta ride those waves up and down. Do not fight the weeping just yet. Let your body move through it.
You need to work at your own pace. I know it must be so difficult for you, being that he is so entwined with your work. You know how bummed he would be if this got in the way of your fucking masterpiece though. Take all that work ethic he ingrained in you and do what you are meant to be doing. Get it girl, I know you will. But remember if you need a personal day, you need a personal day. Just don’t let those add up to weeks and then months. I am not concerned about your work. You will do great things. You are destined to.
Waking up is the worst part because you have to remind yourself. Rather, it’s that mean self-sabotaging side of you that is hitting you with that as soon as you wake. The only thing that can really help this is to start thinking of everything you are grateful for when you feel hit down by his absence first thing. Hey, you are waking up, you are alive, you have a home, you have love, you are not hungry, you are incredibly taken care of by this universe. I know this is some new-agey shit, but it is completely true Erin. You will have to eventually replace this grief with appreciation and understanding.
The wine is really difficult, because I want you to be able to have a glass, but at the same time i really don’t. Keep going to your AA meetings. At all family functions I typically am the only one drinking, and my family watches me so closely because I mimic my mother. This past Christmas I didn’t drink because it wasn’t wo
rth upsetting my family, because they are right to be concerned. Go to your meetings. I will be happy to join you again.
When i caught myself feeling bad for myself, i had to remember that I was so fucking lucky to have my mother at all. Fuck, even to have my mother into early adulthood IS FUCKING REMARKABLE in this world. Kids are orphaned everywhere without ever experiencing a drop of support or parental love. You know?
Literally none of my friends had lost a parent when my mom passed. It was/is so isolating and I would feel fucking LIVID when someone would complain about a parent or even talk about them at all. These situations are the ones where you have to be kinder than you feel. Be tender. Everyone will lose their parents, even though somehow we convince ourselves it will never happen. And like I said to you before, you are standing face-first with your nightmare. The other ones don’t know it yet and have to subconsciously fear it until their time comes to say goodbye. Be tender Erin, it is not their fault and they don’t have any idea yet.
I used my mouse to highlight all the words that she’d given me and create a new Google document. I thought for a moment and then typed in “Sad Girl’s Guide” as the title in the upper left-hand corner. “Tender.” It was not something I ever thought about. How to be kind when I only felt rage? Her words buoyed me and kept me afloat.
All That You Leave Behind Page 19
