Normal Gets You Nowhere

by Kelly Cutrone

  When the end came for my grandmother, I was a different person than I had been when my grandfather passed away sixteen years earlier. I had significant life experience and, more important, my belief system was in place. I’d lost several friends, had a couple abortions; I’d met The Mother, discovered Eastern meditation, and knew that death was not the end, but merely a snap, blink, and great transition—a leapfrog jump into the known of the unknown, if you know what I mean.

  As I watched my cousin Donny’s men carry my grandmother out of the house in a splendid purple velvet body bag toward his new Mercedes hearse (being family, we got the VIP funeral treatment), I waved good-bye to her from the same window where she’d stood and waved good-bye to me for thirty years, tearing up each time like she’d never see me again. I remember that moment like it was yesterday.

  It’s times like these when tribal life and ritual—these concepts that humanity, despite ten thousand years and countless different civilizations, religions, wars, and scientific advances, still holds on to, such as taking care of the dying and discarding our loved ones’ bodies—bestow teachings we simply can’t explain, not in English or even French or Sanskrit. People can write millions of books analyzing their ideas about life and death, but we can only talk around the most profound moments; we cannot speak of them. I didn’t know at the time that my mother would become a grandmother herself within a year, since I would soon get pregnant with Ava as I weathered my second divorce. But I did know, as my mother did also, that she was now next in line—that we’d all taken one more step down the plank.

  I had the foresight to perform one last act of service for my grandmother. I marched over to the funeral home, where I demanded to meet the hair and makeup people and proceeded to terrorize them. “Do you hear me, no orange blush!” I insisted. “I do not want to see any teased hair!” You have to understand, in upstate New York you have to be very specific about this. I demanded a nice simple chignon. Then I brought fabric swatches to the funeral home to ensure my grandmother’s final look matched her coffin lining. At one point my husband, who had come up right after she died, took me aside.

  “This is not a Vogue shoot,” he said.

  “Oh, I agree,” I said. “This is something far more important. It’s my grandmother’s last visual moment on this planet, and I want to make sure she goes out looking great.”

  S.O.U.L.: Sparks of Understanding and Love

  I would like to tell you that my grandmother’s death was the last hard-hitting death I experienced, but it wasn’t. In 2010, I buried my father. I’d heard mixed reviews on what it was like to lose a parent. In yoga, to not have parents is to be free. But it’s still undeniably disconcerting to go back to the house you were raised in as you get older and see your parents with new eyes. When you’re young, your parents are everything: your government, your God, your food supply, your bank. Over time, they become actual complex and fallible human beings, which can seem very confusing and very Dada (pardon the pun). It’s almost as if the Wizard of Oz becomes the Lion or the Tin Man.

  In the last years of his life, my father went from being the omnipotent, all-knowing Leland Level Blanding III, the person who took care of everything, to the person who needed taking care of himself. Instead of calling the shots, he was now getting them, from my mother, who did not take her marriage vows lightly. (Another word to the wise: you’d better be really nice to your partner when you’re young, because if you’re not, your later years will be hell!) But one thing I also realized at my father’s death is that people are people. We might call them mother, father, brother, sister, lover, husband, or enemy, but at the end everyone’s just a person, a fleeting incarnation of a soul that will someday disappear as suddenly as it arrived. One way to think of a soul is as a Spark of Understanding and Love.

  All of us are sparks, and the whole global universe is a fireworks show. How does your spark manifest in the world? Is it progressive or effective? And what will it leave on this earth when it has moved on?

  It could be a child, a company, a book, a piece of legislation you wrote, some other legacy of your creativity, or maybe just the granddaughter who grows up feeling loved and special because you took the time to call her every day. My father was one of six children. Placed in an orphanage at the age of nine, he was a noncompliant, bad-ass, truth-telling punk (sound familiar?). But he ultimately became a loving husband, and his spark with my mother produced three children. Here was a man who had no reason in the world to hope for a relationship—but my parents always loved each other as much, if not more, than they loved us kids, and they always had a healthy sex life. Ultimately, my dad got a lot right. I realized at his death that if you die in your own, noninstitutional pajamas, whether they’re designer silks or Target flannel, in your own bed, whether it’s a hospital bed or the most expensive Swedish mattress, and you have at least one person who loves you and is not being paid to be there, then this is a high death. No matter how rich or loved you are, there is probably no better way to go.

  For me, the experience of losing my father started when I was invited to speak at the Savannah College of Art and Design, a very prestigious art school in Georgia. As my visit to Georgia drew near and the demands on my time intensified, I considered canceling. Why had I agreed to give two talks in Georgia—one at the Savannah campus, and one at the Atlanta campus—for free?

  Not long before I was due to depart, I got a phone call from my mom. My dad, who had been battling emphysema for eight years, had taken a turn for the worse; they weren’t sure he’d live through the day. All of a sudden it made sense. I’d psychically agreed to take this terribly inconvenient trip to Georgia, so I’d be a quick one-hour plane flight from Virginia when my father’s time came. On the Saturday night before my trip, I called him to tell him I felt like I may not see him again.

  “You know what, honey?” he said. “I’m proud of you. Your show is great, your book is great.”

  He sounded upbeat and lucid. Then seventy-four, he’d been bedridden since Ava’s birth in 2002, when he’d made it to New York to meet his newborn granddaughter. Soon after that he’d been given three months to live, and we’d dutifully attended his “last” Christmas for seven years, shipping Ava’s presents down to Virginia and then hauling them back up to New York. Through it all, my mother, Beverly, had been his devoted caretaker, even though it basically confined her to the house too. (FYI, you know how they say, “Smoking kills”? Well, they mean it.)

  When I left my office to catch my plane, I told my staff, “You watch. I’m going to get to Georgia and my dad’s going to die.”

  The morning of my talk in Savannah, I was told that 475 students were gathered to hear me speak, one of the best turnouts ever for a speaker. As I sat at a faculty lunch before the talk, my mother called again. Here we go, I thought. “Your father isn’t doing well,” she said. I told her there were nearly 500 kids waiting to hear me speak. “Do what you have to do, and call us afterwards,” she said.

  I walked onto the stage. I have no memory of what I said. I just remember being conscious that my dreams were attacking me. That’s the weird thing about dreams—as soon as you start to manifest them, they turn on you, forcing you to rebuild and fortify your belief systems.* By now I had so many of the things I’d always wanted, both professionally and personally. But all these things I teach, about the soul, about the physical body being just a cage, were about to be really tested. Did I fucking believe in all of my shteeze?

  I finished speaking and called my dad. “You need to go,” he said, urging me not to cancel my second talk in Atlanta. “Finish your work. I’ll see you soon.”

  I did as he said and then caught the next flight for Virginia. When I arrived at my parents’ condo, I offered to take the night shift. For nine days, I sat up with my father, hoping he would die. I’ll be honest. I wanted my father to die when I was sitting with him, since my grandparents hadn’t. I even contemplated killing him myself. It would’ve been so easy to step on the oxyg
en tube that was keeping him alive. When you’re dying of emphysema, you can’t breathe on your own. And it seemed like the right and loving thing to do. His eyes were silver, he was no longer communicating, and I’m sure that nurses and loved ones do it all the time.

  But I stopped myself, because, despite what I could see happening on the outside, I had no idea what was going on in his inner world. I didn’t know if he was still processing things or why he was still here. (I could also see myself, on my future talk show, accidentally confessing my crime or, worse yet, having a psychic as a guest. I could even see the headlines: “Talk Show Host Admits Killing Her Father!”) Instead, I just sat there and watched and listened as death stalked him and he said funny things like, “Sergeant Blanding. Sergeant Blanding, reporting for duty!” (He’d served in the Korean War.) When I started laughing, he said, “Miss, if you don’t mind me saying so, you have an infectious laugh and wonderful breasts.” I mean, I’ve always wanted to talk to guys about my boobs, but my dad has never been one of them.

  Here’s another thing I learned from my father’s death—one I want you to learn too. You have to be very clear about whether you want medications at the end and what kind of treatments you’re willing to undergo to keep you (or your loved ones) alive. My father had a “Do Not Resuscitate,” which meant he didn’t want to be resuscitated by machines if his heart stopped beating. But he was still on oxygen, which was keeping him alive—artificially! I also noticed his nurses were giving him Haldol, an antipsychotic medicine most often given to schizophrenics and patients with Alzheimer’s. When I asked why, they said, “He seems anxious and confused.”

  “Fuck you,” I said. “He’s not anxious and confused. He’s dying!”

  Ten days after we arrived, my father was no longer speaking (but he was breathing, compliments of the oxygen). Ava and I left for New York City. She had to get back to school, and I was scheduled to fly to L.A. to produce a Nylon magazine event—of all things—with Zac Efron and Vanessa Hudgens.

  “Just watch,” I said to the kids in my New York office. “Now my father’s going to die.”

  In fact, I was in my closet with my assistant packing my bags when my sister called, crying. I could feel my assistant looking at me, thinking, Oh dear God, please, please tell me that’s not your sister. Don’t tell me he’s dead. I do not want to be the one in the room with you. I have done everything for you. Don’t make me do this. Please do not freak out. Please, please, please. He looked like he was bracing to be hit by a tidal wave.

  “My father is dead,” I told him calmly. “But I am not going to lose my shit. Everything will be all right.”

  I immediately called my teacher in India for advice. He told me to take the flight to L.A. I got a car to the airport and called my nanny, Nana, to tell her to get Ava out of school and on a plane to L.A. as fast as possible.

  When I arrived at the airport, I was informed by the woman at the Delta counter that there was no way I’d make my flight, since I was eight minutes late for check-in. For the first time since my father had taken a turn for the worse, I started crying. I cried and cried, and I was definitely not outside. Out of nowhere, two more Delta employees appeared, both very large African American women.

  “Girl, is that Kell on Earth?” one asked. “Didn’t she write that book about crying outside, and now she’s crying inside!”

  They asked me what was wrong, and I explained that my father was dead, but that I was flying across the country in the wrong direction to put on an event with Zac Efron, and now I’d missed my flight check-in by eight minutes.

  “Her daddy just died, and you’re not letting her on the plane?” exclaimed one of the women accusingly to the ticket agent. “You are heartless. She’s famous.”

  Who was I to argue? I put on my black sunglasses, and the two women ushered me through the airport, accompanying me through security to my gate and making sure I had the best seat. Sitting on the plane, relieved and drained, I felt like a layer of my existence had been peeled off. I was about to fly to L.A. and attend a party, while the rest of my tribe was retreating to grieve. Was I really going to work?

  But I also knew that, as a yogi, I needed to put my belief systems into action and suck it up. If I really believed the physical body was not the soul, and that my father’s soul was levitating with my jet as we lifted above the runway, then why would I allow myself to be paralyzed with grief? Why wouldn’t I continue the work that had made my father proud and that was supporting my daughter, his lineage? At the moment of takeoff, I imagined him moving physically and psychically in the same direction as the plane, from the earth to the sky.

  My daughter arrived that evening to meet me at the event. The good news was she got to meet Zac Efron. But later in our room I told her that her grandfather, “Da”—who had always called her his “downtown girl” and taken it upon himself to be the premiere loving male figure in her life—was dead. Ava howled like a cross between a baby whale and a wolf.

  We flew to Virginia again the next day. By now I’ve seen a lot of people die, and I can tell you that having children or money or fame is no guarantee that anyone will be at your death. At the scene of my father’s death, we found my two siblings, their children, and my mother, who had morphed from a conservative 1950s housewife to something else entirely.

  “Now let me tell you something,” she said to us. “My husband is dead, and this is my house, and we are going to do what I want.”

  All of us—my sister, Allison, my brother, Lee, our kids, me—felt our jaws drop.

  “We are not going to church,” she continued. “We’re going to have a celebration of life ceremony. We will put your father’s ashes on the table, we’ll have Father Jim come to the house, and we’ll all stand around talking about what we liked about your father.”

  The message was clear. Allison, no more hysterics. Lee, no more bullying, and Kelly, no spewing liberal dogma. We would celebrate my father, and the sparks that created all of us and our children too. There we were, all of his sparks, shining to the rhythm of his love, teachings, and memory.

  Not long after my grandfather died in 1986, my mom called me to say she was worried we might need to move my grandmother to Virginia to be closer to her. The problem? She wouldn’t stop talking to Billy, her dead husband, in the dining room every day. “She thinks he’s really there,” my mom whispered. I told her I agreed that we should move her, on one condition—that my mother could prove that my grandmother wasn’t speaking to my grandfather. Well, this story later proved yet another reason we should not point our fingers at our tribal elders.

  When my mom walked down the plank of life herself and became a seventy-one-year-old widow, she also missed her lover, and she too started speaking to him every day in their home. In fact, if you ask my mother, he’s still living on the second floor. So I’m very aware of the fact that my daughter is watching to know how I behave toward my mother, and I’m encouraging my mother to continue her relationship with my father. To be honest, this is where my yogic training has given me an edge over my siblings—in being able to embrace my mother as a woman, and not just as my mother. She’s just another beautiful young woman who fell in love with a really great guy who rocked her world, brought out the best and worst in her, and fathered her kids who eventually grew up and left the house, leaving the two of them alone together yet again. At death, we see this kind of panoramic view of life—I saw my mother not just as an old woman, but as a little girl. I saw her as the teenager, as the lover, as the mother, and as the grandmother, all simultaneously, in a gorgeous kaleidoscope view of the feminine. And I knew I was just another kaleidoscope looking at her.

  When I was in Ireland recently, I found her a Victorian necklace. She can unscrew its small capsule and fill it with my father’s ashes, so she can keep him close to her heart. This way, she and her lover can leave the house together.

  Epilogue

  The truth is, I actually do practice all the things I preach. I really do believe
that normal gets you nowhere. After all, from the time I was seventeen my life has been anything but normal, from starting a company in my early twenties, to selling everything to become a tarot card reader and living on a yoga mat in Los Angeles, to getting randomly signed to Atlantic Records in my late twenties on a total fluke (despite not being able to read music). Throw in a couple weddings and divorces and ultimately having a child by myself at thirty-five, and, well, none of these things is normal.

  In fact, it got to the point a few years ago that normalcy started to seem like a really exotic fruit that I really, truly wanted to eat. I had no idea what it would be like to drive my daughter to a ballet lesson or soccer game on a weekday or even to live with the father of my child as a family, to walk down the street hand in hand together. I’d never had the experience of someone coming home at seven and saying, “Hi, honey. Do you want to go out to dinner?” It’d been years since I’d lived with anyone at all! I mean, I think maybe the last movie I saw in an actual theater was the first Harry Potter, when I was pregnant and in Montreal on business with Ava’s dad. And what can I say, I guess it started to irk me when I’d meet cute, seemingly happy families at my daughter’s friends’ birthday parties and imagine them wearing matching Snuggies and watching TV on Saturday mornings on the couch. Or when I’d walk by bistros in my neighborhood and see couples having what seemed to be romantic dinners at seven thirty on a weeknight. Let’s face it, seven thirty was basically lunchtime for me, and there was nothing romantic about it.

  I admit I’d let my schedule get a little out of hand at the time: On a typical day, I’d wake up at seven, meditate, see my daughter off to school by eight fifteen, work, work, work, drink coffee all day, grab a salad at two, work, work, greet Ava when she came home from school, see her at six for her dinner, put her to sleep at nine, get my own dinner at nine fifteen, usually with someone I worked with, and then work until one or two in the morning. I even slept with my BlackBerry under my pillow in case someone called wanting to work in the middle of the night (now, with the recent research on cell phones and cancer, I keep it off but still within reach). I know I’ve said my work is my yoga, but there was nothing yogic about this schedule. It was more like boot camp for really crazy monks.