I know I was going strong there for a bit, but last week was the last week of classes so the big push to get papers DONE for the last class (I made it) followed by a petite cat crisis and then a large holiday crisis: my uncle Dan passed away. This makes Dan the second relative to die close to christmas in the last five years. See why the christmas spirit is so difficult for me?  Doesn't help the other one is my grandmother so my mother is already in the wallowing in sadness portion of the holiday.

Dan was a larger than life character. He had a huge booming voice that preceded him, but he was always jovial and welcoming. Long before he'd enter a room, I'd hear him calling out "Is that Bunni and Mere Lapin? C'mere you." And he'd hug us and give us kisses on the cheek. I always associated Dan with Christmas because he and his wife would host a huge christmas party on christmas eve with drinks, games, a huge food spread, and an appearance by santa with gifts for the young children. Some of my relatives remember seeing me spotting santa in the snow outside Dan's house. He bought a jukebox in the 80s, which had christmas songs like Jingle Bell Rock, a song I still associate with him (and strangely had just bought a version of it off iTunes three days before he died).

Dan's house was a short walk through woods from my grandmother's former house. I remember many times loading up with gifts and merely walking through the snowy woods towards the sounds of laughter and Christmas songs coming from his house. The day after Christmas all the kids would get together and play games-Trivial Pursuit usually-or sing karaoke. It was the one time of year, I saw that side of the family. In recent years because of Dan and his wife's age, his daughters took over hosting. Same party, same food, same guests, same spirit, just a different venue. His one daughter would jam every inch of her house with Christmas decor right down to the toilet paper (no joke). I got tired just looking at all the things she set up on her mantle-houses, angels, snowmen, santas, elves, reindeer, presents... I hope this will not kill her Christmas spirit in the future.

Sadly, after my grandmother died three years ago, my mother and I didn't venture back to visit on Christmas Eve. With Nana gone, we had no place to stay that night and so instead we made our Christmas at my mother's house. While it's obviously more comfortable and easier than a three hour drive to stay at a hotel, I missed those parties and seeing my relatives. I was going to bring up to my mother visiting next year-that perhaps I would rent a car and go out there on christmas eve for a bit. Not the most practical plan, but I missed them.

Unfortunately, even if I do, Dan will not be there. Dan, I miss you, but I'm singing Jingle Bell Rock for you. I will keep the Christmas spirit alive in your memory as you were always such a generous man.

I will be posting new movie reviews and dating stories soon, but hopefully you understand that this will take a while to work through. In the meantime, if there is a relative or friend you haven't seen in a while, make plans to go see them for the holidays if you can.

Labels: christmas, death, loss, mourning

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Now playing: Poi Dog Pondering - Bury Me Deep
via FoxyTunes

I was debating whether to go out on Friday night-on one hand I was being good on my new diet, and if I went out I would be drinking, which meant lots of empty calories. On the other hand, it WAS friday night. My friend the Amazon had texted that she was at a nearby bar, but by the time I got the message she and her boyfriend, Big Bad, were about to leave. So I decided to knit on the couch. Dr. Strangelove came on AMC, and I decided to watch it.

My father introduced me to Dr. Strangelove, in the same way he introduced me to Monty Python, Woody Allen, and Mel Brooks. My father and I often spoke to each other in quoted lines-we had a rotation: Monty Python, Love at First Bite, and Dr. Strangelove. It wasn't uncommon for him to turn to me and say "You're going to have to answer to the people at the Coca-Cola Company!" and I would say "Lt. Batguano, if that is indeed your name" and he would retort "I know Dimitri. I'm sorry too."

While I don't often say anythign nice about my father-this banter and love of verbal humor-had a profound impact on my development, and watching the movie I thought of how much I missed having that back and forth with him.

The movie was almost over when I got the text message from the Amazon that A. had passed on. I had known he was sick, dying even, and his prognosis was poor. The week before the Amazon and I had been talking about him and how his wife was coping with the situation. I hadn't been close with A. We had lunch together once, but mainly I knew him to give him a hug and kiss at the local. We barely even spoke that much. Still I knew his wife, who was always very sweet and complimentary to me. And I knew about his daughters.

So I was surprised when I burst into tears. I didn't even cry when my own father died.

Well, that's not entirely true.

I had moved to Upstate New York 10 days before he died. Even so, I had gone back to CT to spend time with one of my oldest friends. I was going to stay with her a few days and then go spend a few days with another childhood friend. It was August and I knew I wouldn't be seeing them during the year so I wanted to take advantage of vacation while I had it. I had spent about 2 days in CT already, and had even driven by my father's house. I almost turned the wheel. Almost.

But I didn't. I kept driving. He didn't even know I was 20 minutes away when he died.

By that time, I was barely speaking to my father. His madness had made it almost impossible for me to spend any time with him without risking serious psychological damage so I had simply cut myself off from him. He couldn't control himself, so I had to think of what was best for me even though I knew he was dying. we had dinner together my last night in CT before the move. He ordered a martini with dinner. My father had been off alcohol, or at least publicly so, for several years-ever since he went into the ER drunk one night. When he ordered the martini, I knew. It meant, there was no point trying to be healthy anymore so he might as well having a drink or two before the ship went down. He had already gone into heartfailure once that year. He had called me from the ER. I was 18 years old on the phone with my father as he told me he was scared he was dying. I kept telling him he was going to be fine. I had no idea what else to say. How do you comfort your crazy dying father? I didn't know. He survived, but I knew that he was living on borrowed time. I just didn't realize how aggressively he was borrowing that time.

The following day, my friend, Jewel, and I went to the mall. When we returned home, Jewel's mother informed me that my mother had been calling. Just then the phone rang. Jewel's mother answered it and passed it to me. Before my mother could say anything, I said "He's dead, isn't he? Pere Lapin is dead." My mother choked out "Yes."

I could see how Jewel and her family transformed when I said those words. Suddenly they were worried about me. I don't really remember the rest of the conversation, but I know I was fine. I was supposed to go to see my other friend, Bridezilla, that night. I called her to let her know of my father's death, but that I was still coming. It's not like my father would be any less dead, might as well continue with the visit as planned until I had to go to the funeral. I packed my things. Jewel's mother was worried, asking me if I was alright.

I was fine. My father was crazy and sick, and he wasn't getting any better. Dying was not only what he wanted, but it was the best thing he ever did. It wasn't until years later that I found out my father had taken himself off the heart donor list. It was his only chance of survival, and he turned it down. He wanted to die.

And I was finally free. Free of not being good enough. Free of not being criticized for not being a basketball player or going to private school or not being healthy enough. Free of his emotional manipulations and insults. I was free.

I took my bag and got in the car. And for about 30 seconds I cried. And then I turned on the car and drove to see Bridezilla. And I didn't cry before, during or after the funeral. I didn't cry for the months afterwards. In fact, I never cried over my father's death. My mother did. She stood behind me, tears streaming down her face, but I didn't. I stood there like stone. Later my mother would tell me that my re-action to his death was so unnatural that she wanted me to see a therapist. But then again, she hadn't seen him the last four years, hadn't seen what he had become. She was mourning a man who died years before.

But I didn't cry. If anything, I was more worried that Pere would find a way to harass me from beyond the grave. He appeared in my dreams, telling me things like "I can't leave you alone for one minute, you don't start fucking up." And finally after a year, the dreams stopped. He was gone, and he wasn't coming back.

So if I didn't cry for him why would I cry over A? Yet there I was, sobbing. I poured myself a glass of Brandy to settle my nerves and called the Amazon. Her text said I should come to visit the family-the building was around the corner-she was there with Big Bad. I double checked because I felt wierd going and I didn't really want to go. I didn't know what I wanted to do, but I didn't want to see them. I'm not good at these kinds of events. People being vulnerable. I don't know what to do or say. You would thinking having lost a parent it would give me insight, but my relatioship with my father, how much I hated him and resented him, it's yet another thing that seperates me from other people. I don't know what it's like to lose a parent with whom I was close, a parent I would miss. But the Amazon was adamant that if I could come over, I should.

I called a few friends. I couldn't explain why I was so upset, but I was. I finished getting ready and began to walk to the building.

I've not been good about keeping up this blog. After the Paris Diaries, I just lost the impulse to blog. It bothered me, and I couldn't figure out why I didn't want to blog anymore. Years ago when blogger friends of mine talked about shutting down their blogs, it was shocking to me. I couldn't imagine not blogging-even if no one was reading. I would get emails from readers asking me not to stop writing, and I would assure them that I would always write. I had been a prolific journal writer since I was 12.

Yet last year, even when I would think to write blog entries, I didn't do it. I had lost the drive, and I had no idea why. But walking to the apartment, I suddenly wanted to write. I wanted to write about how losing a parent is like having a sibling-it's something you have to experience. I can intellectually understand the relationship, but the bond between my mother and her brother is as unfathomable to me as it is for some people to conceive of being mobility impaired. Even if it's a parent you don't like, it changes you. I didn't realize how much until almost 10 years later.

When my father died, I was going to NYU to be an actor. He was thrilled that I was moving to the city, that I was pursuing a career in the arts. Near his last years, he got into sculpting and even dug out the opening chapters of a novel he had written in college. I was going to commit myself to the life he wished he could have led, but didn't. He didn't live long enough to see me graduate as a founder's scholar and then have my graduate school ceremony at Radio City. He didn't live long enough to see me become a professor. He didn't lived long enough to see me become an adult. The last time he saw me, I had all these possibilities open before me, but he never got to see how I developed.

Even if you don't like a parent, even if the parent is long since dead, you never grow out of wanting their approval. There have been lots of times in this last decade, especially after Eric left, that I wanted his advice. He was all shades of fucked up, but he gave great advice. And then, he would make me laugh by singing the lumberjack song.

I got to the building and the doorman turned me away-the family wasn't accepting anymore visitors. I burst into tears again. I called a friend who lived in the same building. He invited me up and we watched South Park for an hour. Then I went over to the local. I knew the packwould be there.

Sure enough, everyone asked me if I knew, and I did. A. had died of liver failure and here we all were doing shots and drinking cocktails. Chocolate Thunder was talking to me about how many people had died recently-her father, her boyfriend's brother, I tuned out on the list. I thought of how many people I know who have died-2 grandparents in childhood, a friend from camp and a friend from high school while I was in college, a professor who committed suicide and college friend ODed the year after graduation, almost all of my older distant relatives-Johnny Coffee and his wife Ruth, Aunt Elsie, Aunt Dot, my grandmother's second husband-my close friend's mother, my upstairs neighbor, a regular who fell off the roof, Dean Martin's wife (my Dean Martin not THE Dean Martin). I'm in my 30s yet my list of the dead goes on and on.

Labels: death, dying, mourning, parent

For Larry Norman

I got the text message on the way to my yearly gynecological exam. "It's Don Juan. Despite our issues, I thought you would want to know that Larry passed way last night," And my first thought was that Don Juan had, despite all my expectations, found a way, yet again, to shock me with how he was willing to sink in order to get my attention. Without considering that there might be any veracity to the statement, I texted back, "Is it true?" And he responded, "Well, that's the rumor." And I thought, "That disgusting bastard using some pathetic excuse like that to try and get back in touch with me. As if, considering that Larry is my upstairs neighbor, I wouldn't know if he was dead."

And I didn't give it much more thought...for about 15 minutes.

If it had been anyone else, the Amazon, the Doberman, Meathead Mike, I would have completely dismissed it. But Larry, Larry was a type one diabetic who drank. We had conversations about what it was like to be a person with health conditions who took risks. We both had that "We all gotta go someday babe" attitude. But after fifteen minutes my mind began working the way any child raised by a medical family might think. A type one diabetic, he certainly could die suddenly. Especially with his habits. And while at first I dismissed the idea of him being dead because he was my upstairs neighbor, there was no rule that said he had to die while he was at home, or while I was at home. He might have dropped dead at the bar where he worked. He might have dropped dead at his girlfriend's house. He might have dropped dead on the street. Christ, the truth is he could have died several days ago, and I was just getting the news now.

All the while, my gynecologist was telling me to relax.

After I gave her some advice on how to help her daughter on a book report of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, I found a restaurant. I hadn't eaten, and I had an appointment for drinks with some hopeless IT twit who needed the brilliance of a word smith to help a few of his projects get off the ground. While I sat at the table, I called the Amazon. I thought if anyone could get to the bottom of this quickly, she could.

The answer came back within minutes.

"It's true."
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I'm not sure why I walked in that night. The bartender looked familiar although I couldn't say how I knew him. "Hey, you're my downstairs neighbor," and stuck out his hand "I'm Larry." We had met before. Lord knows how many times on the stoop or getting coffee, but I don't remember. I remember that time. And after that he always looked after me.

Some nights I would walk in and Larry would say, "Hey, I saw a strange man leaving your apartment, are you OK?" It was the Doberman (who is indeed a strange man) who he had spied in the hallway. If a questionably guy was talking me up, Larry was sure to let me know. Before I left for vacation, I had to let him know lest he take my absence as sign of homicide or worse. My last birthday, I stopped in at 12:05 to do a birthday shot with Larry.

We had both come from private schools in CT. We had both grown up with health problems. We understood that death was not an abstract construct, and we were gonna live life fast. Because we didn't have the luxury of thinking we had a long life. Not us. That was our bond. Us sick children who really understand what life is. We were living on borrowed time, and we were gonna make every minute last.

Were.

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"I can't think about this right now." I told the Amazon. This is my gift. Block everything out. It didn't happen. Not for the next two hours. For the next two hours, I can be on. Drink Guiness. Listen to his ideas. Pretend that nothing has changed. Nothing. He won't have a clue.

And it works. He thinks I'm dazzling. I have to pry him off with a crowbar.

Finally I shake the IT guy and make my way uptown. On the bus, I'm having a debate. I know if join whoever is at the bar, I'll never go to work. Am I that close to him? Is it justified? Is it my own invented drama? Does it matter? I'm expected. I am to show up and drink in the name of all that I hold holy-a great bartender and a good man. If I can't get drunk and take a day off in honor of that, when can I?

Morgaine, the bar manager, hasn't stopped crying. Her eyes are swollen and tears keep streaming down her face. It's the same crowd of miscreants, but we hug without explaining ourselves. We hold each other long. We pat each other. We do not ask each other if we know. We know. And we know that we know.

Everyone wants to tell me how close I am to him. Morgaine tells me how she thought of me when she was in his apartment . The Amazon says we were such good friends. But me, I can't think of anything about him. How many nights have I sat at this bar with this man? Hours. Days. He used to push the candles around me so I could read. But aside from that I'm drawing a blank. Close, right, so close I can't think of a god damn thing. So close I had no fucking idea the man was dead and thought it was a bad ruse for some jackass to get back on speaking terms with me. Right, close, but I feel nothing.

The girlfriend comes in. She has that hollow look. Like someone who woke up to find a sandbag where her heart had been. Sick and empty. I can see she hasn't processed it yet. Who can? Who would want to?

And for the first time, down deep, I begin to feel something. Not sadness, not loss, but anger. Anger for myself. Because I'm too young for this. I'm too young for so many dead people. My father, my friends from AIDS, from diabetes, from a stroke, from suicide. I'm too young for this. My grandmother loses friends like a fistful of sand. She's buried 2 husbands and all of her sisters. What's another friend here and there? But me? How dare this fucker die on me? Another one? I have to bury another one already? They are not supposed to die before me.

That is, as I said, the deal you make with yourself. It's OK if you get sick, to spare the rest. To spare your friends and your family. They are supposed to be OK. Supposed to be. Except the universe is no respecter of contracts. Of decency. Of justice.

And it's at moments like this that I know that it isn't so much that I don't believe in God, but that I want absolutely nothing to do with the mother fucker.

My now my mind is succumbing to the Jamesons, as I hoped. I haven't given in yet. To the sadness, to the rage, to the loss. The Amazon hugs me good-bye, and I tell her that when I die, she better hold a party. This is what I want when I go. Fucking drinks and glitter and "Can you believe the time she picked up the frenchman off the street?" stories for days, people. I want orgies and gladiatorial games. I want poetry readings and full body massages in my honor. I want table dancing and free shots for everyone.

My last clear thought is "Fuck all of this. This is a sign to get my ass to Paris." I want to dissolve in someone's arms. I want my french boyfriend who can't pronounce my name to take me into his warm bed and not let me out for days. I want him to bring coffee and crepes in bed. I want to forget all of this. Send me to the land of Colette and chocolate and let me forget all this death.

I end up hugging and crying in the arms of Pompous Actor who is one of those people who is decent only when you really need them to be. Tomorrow he'll be an asshole, but tonight he holds me while I cry. Before he goes to the bathroom, he makes me promise not to leave. I wait for a minute and then slip into the night worried he'll try and use my sadness to talk his way inside.

I stay home the next day, my head hammering, utterly useless for most of the day. I call myself a pansy. A pussy. I shouldn't be this effected. He isn't the first friend to die or die suddenly. Hell, I was less upset when my father died. I didn't even have this guy's phone number. I tell myself I'm being a drama queen. I'm not that upset. I even find myself cursing at the now invisible man. "God DAMN it Larry."

But when open the shade, there on the street is all of his stuff-his mattress, couch, paintings, cd rack. Bags of garbage. All heaped on the street. And again I feel that rage rising within. For throwing away his stuff to be picked over on the street. For him risking his life so casually. For his girlfriend, for his boss, for his family, for me, for his friends. For all of us who feel lost and hurt and upset.

I sit there and watch person after person sift through the detritus and walk away, usually with nothing. One or two people find something. Many of them hover and circle, like crows, before departing empty handed. They know nothing of why the stuff is there. Or who it belonged to. They don't notice me watching from the window. And if they did? What would I tell them? "Hands off the dead man's futon"?

It is moments like this that my function in life is supposed to be apparent. I am supposed to strip off all the cynical comments about dating men and feckless friends and see the deep rich fabric of the universe revealed in beautiful and seamless prose. I am to give meaning and poignancy to this seemingly senseless loss. I am to find something worthwhile in all of this muck of tear stained bar napkins and spilled jamesons. This is what I give hours of my life and my privacy for. This is what I sacrifice my friends for. Their secrets. My failures. Our little world of incestuous relationships. To give solace. To give comfort. To give order to the seemingly reasonless chaos of the universe. This is what all those hours of scribbling by tea lights in bars is supposed to be for. For this. For this moment. The Amazon says, "I know you'll blog about this" before she leaves. She's expecting something profound.

But there are no words for this. Like the look on his girlfriend's face-tear stained and mute. Like Morgaine's never ending font of tears. Like my blank stare at ever clearing side walk. No quotes from Shakespeare, no lines from Dante, no pithy analysis of Kafka that will help. What is the genius of loss? What words can justify this? Even Voltaire gave up and told us to merely tend the garden.

And this is the secret horror of loss. If there was a reason, if there was something, anything, we could understand. If there was an answer to "Why? Why him? Why now?" Then we could accept. But there is only silence.

The Jews, as Larry was, as I am, believe in focusing on the present. This moment. Not the afterlife. Not in the past. For it is all we can do. This moment is what we have. Death reminds us of how much we fail to live while we live. And thus rather than look for a reason, we are to look to each other. And instead of thinking about what we should have done, we should think about what we can do. And for those of us, who like me, play fast and hard with our lives, we should perhaps ponder that our lives are not really ours, but rather we belong to our friends and our family. To those people who gave up hours and days and years to make sure that we made it this far. Because it takes a freakin' village to get through every day on this ridiculous planet and especially in this city. And to be cavalier with our lives is an insult to all of those who worked so hard to make sure we got one more day of Ben and Jerry's ice cream and Nina Simone albums.

And so the next time I book my ticket to France, and someone says, "Again?" I'm going to tell them that I am doing it for Larry. For that is what we owe the dead. To enjoy living as much as we can.

Labels: death, mourning