A New Year
2021 was a stinker of a year. I know I am not alone in this feeling as I have noted through various social media postings and the blank stares of people on their 2,000th walk in our neighborhood, sometimes leashed to a dog, other times following the same route they have followed for the past year blindly, believing that it was not possible to live through a second, pandemic year.
A lost year. A painful year. A year we learned nothing, took steps back, tussled with ironies, fabrications, and loose ends. We were all ready for 2022 to land, like a spaceship from another planet, bearing strange beings ready to discover us through sound and touch.
“Done with 2021” Jay and I announced to each other, several times in December. It has a nice ring to it, and we could smile a bit as the year moved behind us and the last page of the wall calendar dangled from the corkboard by the kitchen.
Last year at this time I was grappling with death (of our family dog). It seems death is a winter thing, or that it headlines in the winter, when celebrities and writers we adore, like Betty White and Joan Didion, die. Not shockingly, at a certain age when you expect to read of their deaths, yet you are still surprised, in a small wound way, like slicing a bit of skin off your finger with a sharp knife, cutting carrots. The unexpected deaths, such as the director Jean-Marc Valle (close to my own age; I self-instruct to not think about this too much) have us sit for a pensive moment. We research the internet for the cause, imagine the guests showing up for an extended holiday weekend at a cabin in Quebec, their footprints barely softened in the snow on the path to the door. There is a rap tap on the door, followed by a cheery swing in. Brisk cold air. Oh.
There he is.
Closer to home, my mother has been monitoring the slow decline of her closest cousin’s husband’s life, Alzheimer’s being what approached him several years ago. Gentle at first, just loosening his memories, blending them smooth. Now, it has taken over his brain and body in a more aggressive way. My “aunt” still worries over the state of his beard, which grows so fast.
To observe the tedious and painful method by which Alzheimer’s infiltrates a person is to continue to live with them, believing that this day at least, it will be ok. You tuck your despair behind bookshelves and floor mats. You sit next to them on the couch and lie in bed by their warm body at night, watching as they work at the simplest of things – swallowing a teaspoon of yogurt, lifting the toilet seat, pulling on a sock – it is brutal for someone who has loved you, and continues to. My aunt has continued to keep him there by her side, despite numerous falls, wandering into the street, hospital stays. When I see him, his skin is mottled purple and grey, his hands fluttering as I reach for one, and then the other. He is cradled in blankets, cocooned in a dream and I find myself wondering how sweet it is there, where he is kissing my aunt and giving her flowers, where he is holding his last child up in the air, where the sun is pulsating and shining on everything from his feet, to the glass of his car window, to the rows of corn waving for miles along a country road.
She says she is afraid of when he is no longer there. He has been her companion for forty-four years. Even recently, when they moved into this house, he and she would sit on the patio with a glass of wine and some chips, and watch the golfers find their balls.
I wonder if the fear is the fear of loneliness, of having nobody to take care of, of being able to make all your own choices day by day, or if it's more of a primal fear, like being alone in the dark in the woods and unsure what is out there. Menacing. Lurking.
I suspect it is just the fear of what comes after he is gone. The unknowing.
In my first real experience of grief, last year, (my dog, my friend Annette) I felt a sorrow that was unexpected and deep. I entered a circular pattern of days, sometimes weeks of not remembering the soft ripple of Teeka’s ears, her hard claws on my thigh demanding to be pet. Of not remembering Annette bustling forward on one of our cold winter walks, her hands always warm and gloveless, bundled in a long black parka coat she wore to thousands of soccer and softball games. And then something will catch my eye, a photo, or a dog dish, and I am caught up again in the grief, my insides like the spin cycle of a washing machine. Eventually it stops. I hang my feelings back up to dry.
What I would tell my aunt is that she will pull through and she will blossom as she goes through this next stage. I would tell her that you are never too old to wake one morning and know your life can be different.
At Foxglove, we have spent the weekend with some of our dearest friends, the kind where you open your mouth and say things you barely need to sample before they slip out. You talk about things that always make sense to each other, that belong to the same soup. We have had several conversations this weekend about self-worth, change, and moving on. I am old enough now to look back on change and be grateful for it. I cannot imagine being so prescient that I could witness my own changing as it occurred. The lesson is in the remembering what you endured.
Death is one of the triggers for change. It is the opposite of stagnation, of lying still and waiting for an attack, instead of surging forward, opening doors, anticipating that silent, sullen moment after a storm has passed through. When all the world, the grass and plants, the beetles and snakes, buildings made of brick and plyboard alike, unfurl into the aftermath, hopeful and strong.