Countdown to 2008

When I turned 7 years old, my dad told me 7 was a very special year and from that point on, I considered 7 my lucky number.

It turned out my dad was wrong. Kyle died in the 7th month of the year 2007. Although he was officially pronounced dead on the 6th, his respirator was turned off and his organs were taken in the earliest hours of the 7th. In fact, his last phone call was just about at 7pm. His accident was within minutes after. I remember looking up at the clock at UCLA where I was running a parenting group and it said 7:01. The group was supposed to end at 6:45, but I tend to run over, trying to give folks every bit of wisdom I can muster. But I felt a strong urgency to stop right then.

I met my friend Marylou and sister Sallie for dinner. I was a misery. Looking at the tiny table, the cramped chairs, the loudly colored images on the flat screened TV on the wall above, I actually said to them, "I don't see a way I can be comfortable." I went to the bathroom. I said out loud, "Cyn, what the hell is the matter with you?" I returned to the table. Apologized and sat down. I had a hard time ordering. My conversation was forced. Later I found out, Marylou thought I was angry at them. At a place they were both so excited to show me. Korean barbeque. Sizzling bits of beef and vegetables. Perfect for my perennial diet. But the food tasted strange. My mood was disturbed and disturbing. Nothing was right.

I had left my cell phone in the car. I rarely do that. Normally I think, "if there's a hold-up, if the roof collapses in an earthquake, I want to have my cell phone." But the phone had run out of juice. I didn't hear the 15 calls from Sean, Gearey, Licie, everyone. Not until I was driving away with Sallie did the phone ring again with Gearey telling me to stop driving the car. That was how it happened.

There may be other bad years to come, but 2007 is bound to stand out as the very worst.

2008 will be better. But I'm afraid of that. I picture learning to live with the grief, but I wonder -- as grief's sharp edges dull, will Kyle fade in my memory? Will the pictures in my mind reduce to the photos around me and the ones on the slide show? Will I eventually capture on this blog all the stories about Kyle, so that my love and memory of him will be no longer boundless, but a completed set of images within a frame? If I write a book about Kyle some day, will that reduce him to a collection of words on a limited number of pages between the covers? I find these possibilities heartbreaking.

But 2008 will be the year I accept Kyle's death. It will be the year I return to sanity. It will be the year I (and I do hate this phrase) move on. It will be the year I start to forget. I guess 2008 won't be so great.

I am sorry for this post. I know I don't need to apologize, but I had meant to blog about the peace I have been feeling and the spiritual strength and love and connection that is growing among my family members. I wanted to talk about having a lovely Christmas with Miranda in NYC and staying at Gail's house in Brooklyn and going to the best party on Christmas eve at the home of 3 wonderful Greek sisters who had married wonderful Italian men and all had had daughters, so the place was rocking with 3 generations of folks and great fun and food. And I wanted to talk about the plays Miranda and I saw. And I wanted to brag about my 22 pounds of weight loss and fitting into smaller clothing. I wanted to share that I am not in the excruciating place I had been in. But I guess that will be for my first blog in the new year.

Meanwhile, don't let this get you down. I think I just needed a few minutes of thinking about Kyle and mourning a little, before heading out to a party with my BF and welcoming the new year. Everything's gonna be alright. It's gonna be "All good." Right, Ky?

So have a Happy New Year. I will. I promise.

Holiday Greetings

This is a picture of Kyle celebrating with friends, Brent, Maria, and Phil during a recent Christmas. They are were part of the SFSU Early Bird Program, and met in the dorm the summer of 2003.

I keep going back to my blog looking for new posts and realizing they won't show up unless I write them!!! BUT, heavily involved in pre-packing, some present creating, office parties, and general chaos, so not so much time to write.

So, I'm heading out again for errands, but wanting to let you know I am filled with relative peace, intermittant joy, and love for all of our family and old and new friends. The sky is blue today and I'm wearing the beautiful maroon and black t-shirt that Laura made for me, with Kyle's face silkscreened on it. And since I've lost 20 pounds, I look downright adorable.

So I hope your post-Chanukah and pre-Christmas preparations are going well.

Love,

Cynthia

A Present for Kyle

i went to ky's grave today. i didn't go last week (combination of going to the RFO Clinic each Saturday morning before work and the length of my workday). and, because i'm going to NYC to spend Xmas with Miranda i won't be able to visit next week. i couldn't bare being away for 4 weeks and not going to say goodbye and explaining i'd be away for Xmas. no, i'm not losing it, it's the magical thinking thing.

these 4:45 pm sunsets wreak havoc on visiting the cemetery after work. at 4:55 i whizzed through through the open gates. just in case FL was serious about their "closing at 5pm" sign, i didn't stop to buy flowers from the vendors on the side of the road. i didn't like arriving empty handed, particularly when i could see so many poinsettias and mini christmas trees dotting the landscape. i'm new to all of this, but i can see there's a whole series of graveyard rituals that i'm not privy to. i'll learn.

it was pretty dark as i sat down beside ky's grave. i remembered the stick of incense i had left in the sunken vase holder. the vase was overturned (that's how it's supposed to be when there are no flowers in it) and when i pulled it out the incense was still there. i had matches in my purse so i lit the incense for kyle. i felt better.

but there was something else there. right on the edge of the holder was a tiny rubber dog. a little beige and black bull dog. maybe an inch or so high and an inch long. rubber not plastic. clearly, an ancient little pupper. i haven't seen rubber toys in forever. black on his head, with the black worn off so most of him was yellowish.

i put the little bull dog on top of the overturned vase. below the ground level a bit. that way when the lawnmowers come by he won't get chewed up. i didn't feel so badly about going on my way then, as ky didn't seem so alone with the little dog standing guard. i stuck the incense back safely as well.

thank you, dear friend, who left that little gift.
thank you, all who keep vigil at ky's resting place.

Last Night I Had A Dream . . .

actually it was the night before last. And Kyle was in it. It was only the second time I have dreamt about Kyle and it was wonderful to see him again. This picture (sent recently to me by Maria H., who lived in Ky's dorm when they were freshmen and who stayed a good friend) was kind of like how Ky looked to me in the dream.

Like most dreams, it was illusive. I awoke and couldn't remember the whole thing. I do remember holding Ky's face and stroking it and talking to him. I knew he had died or was going to die and I knew he knew it too, but I said something like, "Things are not going to turn out" or "Things are going to be bad" and then "but right now we can enjoy this time."

The earlier part of the dream felt like the real-life illusory nature of a visit home from Kyle. He'd be rushing in, rushing out, in his room, off at the beach, out with friends. Getting him to actually light on the couch or at the table for long was not easy.

That was what was so memorable about his last visit home. He hung out more. He laid down on my bed and listened and indulged his mother's going through her Scotland slide show. He took time to talk to me about his girlfriend Laura, whom he clearly loved. "She's different, Mom. You'll see. She's special. I want you to meet her." He even organized all his stuff and got ready to go (Sallie drove him to the bus) in a timely fashion. Almost as if he were savoring his time with us.

I still am surprised, although not shocked, when I remember each day that he is not coming home. I do hope he'll be hanging out in my dreams again. And I hope I remember more of the dream next time.

Get Thee to a Nunnery

since sal brought it up on Mir's blog, i'm going to talk about my weight.

when ky died i couldn't eat. couldn't think about eating. people kept saying, "you've got to eat," but no, i didn't have to eat. i have enough stores of sustenance on this body to keep me going for a long time. if i'd been in the Donner party, i still would have been been worth munching on at the way end of the trek.

true to form, a few days after my appetite came back. in spades. it was if my stomach thought it could bring kyle back if i could just fill it until bursting. and talk about really understanding the meaning of comfort food? ohmigod. i only wanted ice cream, french fries, cheeseburgers, candy bars, chips. not good. i was miserable about kyle and miserable about eating. i loved and hated every morsel. i gained 7 pounds in the weeks and months following kyle's death. but i didn't care.

except that i do care. in fact, i am a little hyper-aware of my mortality. i have a nasty genetic situation. my mother died at 59 (i am 58 and 11/12ths) of a pulmonary embolism; my father died at 61 of a massive coronary; my nana whitham had 3 heart attacks in her 50's--although lived to 84; and there's more. cancer, diabetes, stroke. we have it all in my family tree.

i needed the dietary equivalent of a nunnery. unless i did something drastic, weight loss was not gonna be happening. and then i remembered the UCLA RFO (Risk Factor Obesity) Program. i had done it 4 years ago and lost 35 pounds--i looked pretty damned hot for a zoftig gal. but did i reach my goal weight? no. did i do the maintenance classes? no. did i resort to my old habits (Eating Equals Over-Eating)? yes, i did. and regained the weight.

so, on miranda's birthday i returned to the RFO clinic, where they have a team of folks on you like white on rice. weekly you are weighed; they take your blood; they give you an EKG; you visit with the doctor and the nutritionist. then you go to nutrition, behavior, and support classes. it's a chunk of one's Saturday morning (and i have to be there before 7:45 a.m. in order to get to work in Eagle Rock by 11).

oh, also that's when you buy your food. well, your boxes of envelopes of nutritional product. you get 7 soup/shake packets a day, each packet containing 15 grams of protein and 100 calories. "Seven hundred calories a day!" you gasp. yes, indeed. and ohmigod does the weight fall off. i've lost 15 pounds since 11/17, even with Thanksgiving.

i am feeling terrific. the stuff tastes fine. i usually take Saturday nights off so i can be a bit better of a companion when i get together with friends. even then, i am cautious in my choices. you would never believe how good a cup of fresh berries (with a little whipped cream) taste when you've been living on soy protein.

i know this sounds extreme, but i need to take extreme measures. i was killing myself with food. and that is selfish and unfair. i have a daughter and brothers and sisters and nieces and nephews and cousins and friends. and, damn it, i am not going to give any of them one more loss for a long long time. i'll meet up with kyle at that great reggae sunsplash when i'm ninety and not a day before.

Xmas Blues

I have pretty much always hated the song, Blue Christmas. I'm fairly picky about my holiday songs and it would never make my Desert Island Disc top 10 or top 1000. I always thought of it as a sappy song about girlfriend/boyfriend breakup.

So today I'm heading to work, feeling good after hearing "Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow" on the oldie station. I'm smiling at folk and holding the elevator door open for others. I've got a swing in my walk.

I go from the parking lot into the hospital and hear the piano strains of the theme to Charlie Brown's Christmas, you know the one. There's often a volunteer playing the piano in the lobby, cheering up all those injured, ill, and old folk moving through the hallways, appointment to appointment, stopping to sit in the lobby chairs.

By the time I reach the front of the lobby, I turn and see a handsome African-American young man at the piano. It's never the same pianist, but more often it's a middle-aged Anglo woman. Well, he stops the Charlie Brown boogie and starts up with the music to Blue Christmas. He is not singing, but I supply the words in my head:

"I'll have a blue Christmas without you
I'll be so blue just thinking about you
Decorations of red on a green Christmas tree
Won't be the same dear, if you're not here with me"
and on . . .

and the tears well up. I'm a gonner.
I will be a puddle this holiday season, if Elvis Presley in my head can start me up. And I haven't yet even seen the Budweiser Clydesdales ring jing jingling to the strains of "I'll be home for Christmas."

Somehow I was feeling so safe.

I've been reading . . .

a bunch of books about grief: several lovely hopeful books about afterlife (keeping my fingers crossed on that); Good Grief--a novel about a young woman experiencing the loss of her husband; Eat, Pray, Love--a memoir of life after divorce; and now Joan Didion's book The Year of Magical Thinking--about life after losing her husband. Didion's grief is further complicated by the fact that her daughter was in a coma at the time of Dunne's death.

I am reading Joan Didion's book in a search for a certain compatriotism. I have never cared for her as an author, although I can't tell you which book I tried to read and put down, but I figure, "We are sisters in grieving. How can I not embrace her?" I am reading her book, perhaps, with curiosity for how another writer will express all of this. How will she describe the numbing part? Did she go through heightened clarity? Will she walk into a Grand Rounds seminar only to find it's a Faculty Meeting and that Grand Rounds is next week?

The book is cold. Skeleton-like; black bare branches against a clear sky. Spare, the way a poem is spare. One must provide the emotional content oneself. Yet I find myself resonating here and there. When she reviews the doctor reports, the ambulance records, the apartment building logs, I flash back to decoding the ambulance bill. I connect her search for all the specifics to my inability to stop Ky's phone service, because I want to save the records of his last calls (even though I've written down every number and time, I can't bring myself to stop the service). The most poignant connections for me are brief recounts, as when Didion describes closing the dictionary her husband looked at every day and realizes she will never know the last word he was looking up or even the page it was on. Joan Didion even refers--in a "what if" kind of way to Appointment in Samarra--as did I; actually I think my use of the analogy is the better. But we were on the same track.

Although not a word about this is in her book or on the jacket cover, I googled and found out that indeed Didion's daughter Quintana Roo died at age 39. My heart broke for her. No one should lose two people. Losing one is more than sufficient.