grace

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When the Dance Becomes Graceful

When we were sixteen, Mary Ann and I went out on a date with our fathers.

I don’t remember what the occasion was, or what inspired the date. We lived on the same block, a short street that curved into another, but our fathers weren’t fast friends.

It was a midweek evening. They dressed up in suits, not their work attire (my dad was an electrician, hers supervised maintenance crews for our town), and took us to the Rock House, the fancy dining place in our small Bay Area suburb.

I had recently gotten my driver’s license, so while our fathers lingered over after dinner drinks, Mary Ann and I took off in my family’s 1960 turquoise Ford station wagon.

Radio tuned to KYA, we tasted a nascent luxurious moment of freedom as we crossed Chestnut Street and bounced over the railroad tracks. The moment screeched to a halt with a loud, ominous crashing sound.

We hadn’t been hit. There was no other car in sight so there had been no accident. I maneuvered the car to the curb and looked in the rear view mirror. There, just past the railroad tracks, was a muffler.

I think Mary Ann and I had a brief discussion about whether or not that was my muffler. I know we didn’t get out and pick up the muffler. I’m sure that the sound of the car as we drove home verified that it was the muffler of my family car lying on P Street.

I’m sure I told my dad. I don’t remember his reaction, though I doubt he was angry with me. I’m sure the car sounded a bit like an airplane as we drove home.

But it was the muffler-falling-off-the-car incident that came to mind on Monday when Mary Ann called to tell me her father, Mike, had died two hours earlier. It was not unexpected, he had been in a nursing home for eight years, he was in his late eighties, and hospice had been called in a few weeks before. But, as Mary Ann said, whatever expected means, that’s not how it feels when Death arrives.

There is a special place in your heart that gets touched when your friend’s parent dies – especially if you knew the person when you were a kid and he or she was the parent with all the collateral authority.

The last time I saw him was when I visited Mary Ann in the middle of September. She had received a phone call early that morning from the nursing home, letting her know that he had fallen, but seemed to be uninjured. We stopped by to check in on him.

He was in a four-person room. One bed was empty, the occupants of the other two were sleeping. Mike’s bed was hidden behind the curtains drawn to provide him privacy.  He wasn’t very social. His cave protected him from his surroundings.

I hadn’t seen Mike for probably fourteen years. He lay on his bed, curled up, his back to us, his body as lean as I remember it. “Mary Ann,” he called loudly as she bent over to kiss him on his cheek.

Mary Ann. As long as I could remember, her family, even her parents, referred to her as Sis or Sissy. She had two younger brothers, but really, I think everyone thought of her as their big sister.

Her father in particular used to piss me off. He insisted that his wife shouldn’t work, but from the time she was twelve, Mary Ann worked, contributing her income to the household budget. One Friday afternoon in high school, Mary Ann learned that she wouldn’t be going to the movies with us because her father had accepted a babysitting job for her. He knew that she would use the money she made on Friday night to take her brothers to the movies on Saturday, giving him the afternoon free to be with her mother.

After Mary Ann’s husband died, Mike wondered aloud what they were going to do with her, as if she had ever been their burden.

I wanted to strangle him on Mary Ann’s behalf, to slap him silly, over the years.

But as I saw him lying on the bed, calling her name, I understood that the two had found a place of grace between them.

I have a picture in my mind of our fathers at the table the night of our date. My dad was raised on a farm; Mary Ann’s was the child of Eastern European immigrants. Both had served in World War II.

There was something rather dashing about them dressed in their suits, the slight scent of Old Spice on their clean-shaven faces. These were men who would know what to do with the muffler lying on P Street.

My father died in 1994 from complications of Alzheimer’s. He’d been in a nursing home for two years, had spent the previous ten years slowly being swallowed by the disease.

Mary Ann was at his memorial, and at my mother’s twelve years later.

It’s not that parents become like children when they begin to decline and need our care. It’s just that the balance changes. It’s a dance that has no choreography, and is different for every set of parent and child. Who leads and who follows is always in flux: Sometimes both lead. Other times both follow. Then there are moments when both surrender to love and the dance becomes graceful.

Maybe that’s what touches the heart when a friend’s parent dies, seeing that it can become more graceful over time.

He called her name. Mary Ann. Not Sis. Not Sissy.

Mary Ann.

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The Grace of Everyday Living

Summer is in season. The summer solstice is two weeks away, but, summer is in season here where my writing shed lives.

When I lived in San Francisco, it would be a foggy day. There might have been other foggy days, but there was always the one that seemed to herald to me a change of season.

Here, it’s the bright morning sun with a cool breeze finding its way into my writing shed. I think the same birds visit at this time of year as other seasons. But their songs sound like summer to me.

Summer is in season.

I love the day that heralds the seasonal change – the passage of time.  It seems foolish to ever want time to stand still – or worse, to kill time – doing whatever it is  we do when we say, “I’m just killing time.”

I did a major housecleaning in my writing shed. Books had been strewn on the floor, magazines haphazardly placed in baskets, old photos stored in multiple places, waiting until I got around to organizing them.

It’s great to find old photos. Talk about visible signs of time passing. I found photos of my stepdaughters taken at the Renaissance Faire, at Fort Point, on Fathers’ Day – the French toast brunch they’d prepared spread before us.

I came upon one of my mother and I taken twenty years ago in front of the Haida totem pole that had been installed in Sausalito as part of a celebration of Haida culture and art. The Haida artists had carved it in its place.

I visited the totem pole from time to time — experiencing  it.

One early morning (I can’t say for certain, but I think it was in the fall), as I sat at Caffee Trieste, I saw the totem pole being carried away on a truck. I knew that the installation was temporary, but I hadn’t known when it would leave. Perhaps it had been there a year, through the four seasons.

I felt somehow privileged to see it pass by me, as if I was in the right place at the right time. I think it would have been much harder on me if I had just gone to see it one day and found it gone.

My father was still alive when the photo of my mother and I was taken, but Alzheimers had already stolen him from us. I had just recently divorced my husband. So it was just my mother and me.

Those were good times with my mother. She trusted me, which she didn’t always do. I used to think it was because I was untrustworthy, not worthy of her trust. But time taught me that that was just the flaw in her tapestry – not trusting love.

But this photo captured a moment of trust. Two women on their own, riding change.

Spring and fall seem like active times to me – times for planting and gathering. Summer and winter seem to me to be more about nourishing and trusting and waiting. Winter is about trusting that the sun will return. Summer about trusting that what you planted in the spring will grow – that you will be able to reap it in the fall for nourishment in the winter.

I’ve gathered a number of baskets over the years since that photo of my mother and I was taken. As I went through my writing shed, divesting myself of stuff I no longer need, organizing the stuff I do need, I emptied baskets. I have five empty baskets — baskets waiting to be filled.

I think that might be what summer is to me – baskets waiting to be filled.

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Lavender Honey

My friend George died six months ago today.

He died as fall was fading into winter. Now, with the waning of spring, there are signs of summer. The lilac blossoms are gone. The lavender stalks will blossom within a day or two. I pass the lavender on my way from the house to my writing shed.

It’s not so much that I miss their scent throughout the rest of the year as that I anticipate it as I see the passage of time in my garden. I know that one morning the scent will be there — a presence. Along with that — the faint buzz of bees. I wonder where they are making their lavender honey.

Lavender honey.

The sound of those words — lavender honey — slows me down. I’ve been wanting to slow down. Not having time slow down, I know that’s not possible, but my slowing down. Taking time to feel that there is time enough, if I let it be.

George’s dying was hard for me. I thought I would be a much bigger part of it because we met as hospice volunteers. I actually think that George pushed me away, as he did many others. He was so sweet and supportive that everyone thought that’s what George wanted—to be up close sweetly supported.

But, really, George kept people at bay. I suspect that for complicated reasons, he just felt safer that way. And so that’s how his dying went. In retrospect, I can see how bravely he faced it; how he marshaled all the forces he was accustomed to using in relationships to carry him through this most difficult of relationships. The one we have with dying.

Contained anger was a big force with George. I suspect that underneath that anger was the pain that people he loved both loved and betrayed him. That’s a difficult dichotomy to live with.

Fifteen months between his diagnosis and his death. During that time, lavender’s presence graced the path to my writing shed. I couldn’t tell you the day I noticed it was gone. Or even if I noticed it was gone. It’s just that once again, I anticipate its presence.

A friend who was a midwife to George’s death recently listened to the music Tom and Rob created that night that George died. She said it captured his breathing as he made his way through his final breaths.

Inspiration means filled with the gods. Perhaps expiration is about releasing them—releasing all those life forces that animate us.

About three months before he died, George wrote and then made a video recording of a message he wanted to leave behind. I watched it recently. Frankly, I can’t remember specifics. I just know that it brought his presence back to me. It’s the presence that isn’t armored with contained anger.

Loving is neither simple, nor easy. Sometimes you have to stand at the precipice of disappointment of what you wanted and what you got—and be grateful. For me, that’s being in a state of grace.

If Tom’s and Rob’s music is any reflection of George’s dying, then he died in a state of grace.

I read recently that grace is the unearned gift.

Grace.

Lavender honey.

Unearned gifts.