Death and Robots

I took Oliver and Sophie down to a boat festival in Redondo Beach late this morning. We left Henry at home, sleeping as is his wont. After walking around all the booths, looking at the beautiful boats, and eating some fried seafood at one of the clubs that had opened its doors to festival-goers, we drove back home and listened to the Moth on the radio. First we heard Bliss Broyard's very first Moth performance when she told the story of discovering her father was black when she was 23 years old. Oliver thought it was weird, but he listened and didn't beg to switch to his godawful music station. The next up was the Indian-American physician Siddhartha Mukherjee who told an amazing story about his grandmother, her life and how she died. He recounted a memory of traveling on the river as a child and rounding a bend to see the dead being bathed and then put on funeral pyres, and then rounding another bend back into "normal" life. When his grandmother died, he and his father carried out the simple rituals of death -- the wrapping of the body in a white sari, bathing the body and then taking it to be burned. He compared that to the dying he witnessed in the United States as an oncologist. He described a woman with breast cancer who he had treated and who had died overnight after being admitted. He went to her funeral and noticed that lipstick had been applied to her lips and described how the whole process of death had become sanitized. He asked his students later, How many of you have actually lifted the body? What does the weight feel like? He spoke about gravity and the grave. He spoke of how our culture is actively forgetting the rituals associated with death. 


Oliver said, That's kind of true. I agreed. It's kind of creepy, too, he added, and I talked a bit with him about why that is so. I told him about a friend of mine whose young daughter died, how she and her husband and their other daughter carried out some of the same rituals, how beautiful that was to me. Oliver, who had just recently attended the Eastern Orthodox funeral of my aunt noted that the service made him feel weird and excluded. He reminded me that on Mother's Day he had seen a giant bee flying about, and in the moment he saw the bee, he thought of Aunt Yvonne and how weird that was, too. We were silent for a bit. I told him that when I die, I would appreciate a non-religious service that celebrated my life and that I would prefer something simple as far as my body goes -- that I'd like to be cremated and my ashes scattered somewhere I love. Then again, I said, since I'll be dead, it doesn't much matter how and what you do with me. Oliver said, When I die, I want my head to be removed from my body and frozen until it can be put on a robot, that way I can be in the future, too.



You can listen to Mukherjee's brief talk here.

Aunt Yvonne

My beloved Aunt Yvonne died last weekend, and I headed up to northern California on Monday to attend her funeral. Aunt Yvonne was a wonderful lady who had a long and prosperous life. I'll miss her gentle spirit and regal presence, as well as her incredible generosity. I'm grateful for the extra time that I got to spend with her over the past seventeen years in California, this incredible state that she and I, both east coast transplants, loved. She will be missed.

Aging and the Strong of Heart

I spent another quiet day with Aunt Yvonne. Listen, Reader. As they say, aging isn't for the faint of heart. I'm 51, and while there are days when I feel as if I've dragged three times as many decades around, there are more where I'm almost blithely unaware of how short our time on earth is -- at least the young part. In the quiet of the room where my aunt's rest is marked by the puff and wheeze of an oxygen machine, I wonder what it's all about, it the operative word. A parade of friends came to visit -- an Indian woman, a Philippino woman, a blonde in a periwinkle sweater, a beautiful Romanian young woman, a Russian Orthodox priest with Alzheimer's in a long, brown robe, a heavy gold chain with a cross dangling, an 84-year old woman who told me she was taking care of her husband with dementia and battling his children in court.

We know what it's all about.

Just outside my aunt's bedroom is an amazing succulent, its waxy eggplant-colored leaves swollen, clusters and clusters of them sprouting from one gnarled branch and in the middle, a cone of yellow flowers so bright and perfect and multitudinous that they made my eyes fill up with tears.

Holding Space

I'm visiting my Aunt Yvonne in northern California. She is quite frail, her once nearly six-foot frame shrunken, her voice a soft rasp. I read aloud to her a bit from Taylor Caldwell's novel about St. Paul, but after a few pages, she asked me to stop. We watched a movie with Clark Gable and Heddy Lamarr. She was considered the beautiful woman in the world, my aunt remarks, several times. Hedy is wearing some kind of silky white shirt with enormous shoulders. She is spectacularly beautiful. Why do people not look like that kind of beautiful anymore? I can't help but wonder what Aunt Yvonne is thinking about, so I ask her. Nothing, she says. Russian Orthodox icons stare down at us from bookshelves, madonnas with babies, heads tilted, halos. She's lying down now, and we're sitting here in silence. The sun slants across the floor, a bird chirps somewhere and the oxygen machine clicks and breathes, a steady beat, a wheeze, a puff.

Post Gratitude

The weekend passed in a blur, really. The boys, Sophie and I drove up to northern California and met my parents at my aunt's beautiful house near Palo Alto. My aunt is very old and very frail, and of the four sisters, only the youngest (my mother) and oldest (Aunt Yvonne) are alive. My Uncle Charles, who lives in Mississippi is also quite old and fragile. My own parents are still so vibrant, and I know that I take this for granted. Our relationship has its ups and downs, but I'm so grateful for their active presence in my life, for their support and for their love.  There's a terrible melancholy in leaving them, seeing how tied they are to my children and my children to them. The relationship between grand-children and their grand-parents is truly a love affair.

I felt grumpy over most of the weekend, precipitated, I guess, by the near 24-hour care of Sophie. I haven't traveled with her in years, and I know why. I had to be vigilant nearly all night because she doesn't sleep well and would have gone careening off the bed if I weren't there to wrestle her back down. It's difficult to not miss what I insist on calling a normal life when I'm out and about with Sophie. You must know what I mean.

I'm filled with a deep gratitude for my boys, Henry and Oliver. They have never lived a normal life, either, yet they help me instinctually and uncomplainingly. I have worked hard to not let them think they are responsible for taking care of their sister, but the older they get, the more understanding they are toward me, to the strains under which I operate. Sometimes I wince at their aide, wishing that it didn't have to be so. I struggle with that old cliche that well-meaning people dump on us. They're learning such compassion! I worry that one day they'll be on a psychiatrist's couch, wailing about their stunted childhoods, their stressed-out mother, their sister who demanded so much attention. Those thoughts make me falter on the tightrope where I've balanced, for the most part, for nearly twenty years.

It is what it is, is another cliche. I can't do much better.

Other than the Night From Hell, though, Sophie was pretty good. She had few seizures and really enjoyed riding in the car up to northern California and then back home. However much I struggle against it, her identity and mine are entwined. When I surrender to that fact, I really do feel bathed in light, filled with gratitude for having the honor to care for her.

The San Francisco Hard Hat Walk and Riding Planes with Valkyries

Oliver and I had a wonderful weekend up north. We had a good visit with my sweet Aunt Yvonne who is eighty five years old and very frail but still sharp as a tack. We also drove up to San Francisco to participate in the Children's Hospital Hard Hat Walk. We were proud members of Team Maggie, walking in her memory alongside many of Sally's friends and family. The energy there was lovely -- there was music and delicious food from local restaurants, and the hospital looks like it will be an amazing center of health and healing. The only thing missing, of course, was darling Maggie, but I imagine her spirit infused everything and everyone. It was a beautiful evening in San Francisco and an impressive event. I confess to not realizing that it was a real walk, like a miles and miles walk, and only wore a trusty pair of Birkenstock sandals, but my feet are still attached to my body twenty-four hours later, and I'm pretty excited that I finally got a decent amount of exercise after languishing for weeks with that dadgum virus.

Here's Sally and me:

Here's the Big O and me:

Not a bad view to walk along and gaze upon --

Oliver and I flew back on a Southwest Air flight from San Jose to Los Angeles this afternoon with the entire UCLA women's volleyball team. I don't think I've ever seen a powerhouse college volleyball team, and ya'll -- these women were like Valkyries. The tallest ones, and there were a bunch of tallest ones, were well over six feet and many had waist-length yellow blonde hair. The team was pretty diverse in every way except for height, and I have to say that it was hard not to stare at them walking as a group -- they honestly looked like they'd stepped out of some kind of mythical adventure book. These photos really don't do it justice, but I wonder where they all come from if not the realm of the gods.

How was your weekend?