now excuse me, I have to go.

First published on Associated Content . . .

Blogography pointed me towards one of the most beautiful farewell letters I have ever read. Japanese anime director Satoshi Kon recently passed away from pancreatic cancer. He left a moving message to his family and fans. After losing my beloved cousin Ann to ovarian cancer last May, so many of his words are especially poignant. But his words I think are also helping me deal with Ann's death.




I have been holding on to some hurt and disappointment at feeling held at arm's length in her final days and hours. My daughter and I shared so much of our daily lives with her that it struck an odd note to not be there at the end. I know these times are difficult for everyone, and I've been struggling with letting go of Ann and my own sense of letdown, but I never really felt how it must have felt for her until reading Satoshi Kon's apology to his friends and parents.

There are so many people that I want to see at least once (well there are some I don't want to see too), but if I see them I'm afraid that that the thought that "I can never see this person again" will take me over, and that I wouldn't be able to greet death gracefully . . . The more people wanted to see me, the harder it was for me to see them. What irony . . . I wanted most of the people I knew to remember me as the Satoshi that was full of life.

He seemed to have clarity to the last, and desired nothing more than to go home to die. I know from Ann's mom and brothers that she felt the same. I know that I would, too.

I just wanted to go home to my own house. The house where I live.

He seemed to get a brief respite from death and he used it wisely. My cousin had a (too brief for us) remission, but when the cancer came back it was clear it meant business. She once expressed to me that maybe she should have taken a trip or used that sixteen cancer-free months in a better way, but I assured her that she spent her time in the best way possible, living her life with the people she loved.

Afterwards, when I could think of nothing else but death, I thought that I did indeed die once then. In the back of my mind, the world "reborn" wavered several times . . . Now that my life-force had been restarted, I couldn't waste my time. I told myself that I'd been given an extra life, and that I had to spend it carefully.

I find it beautiful and fascinating that he may have indeed died the first time and that the remission was a rebirth. I know Ann would have loved that poetic idea as well.

It's so disrespectful to die before one's parents . . . I've felt as though I've lived more intensively than other people, and I think that my parents understood what was in my heart. 

How hard to leave those you love behind and how hard for all of them to let you go. But Satoshi Kon seems to have left this world, like Ann, very gracefully. I am sorry for any suffering that they had to endure. But I am forever grateful to have had Ann as a part of my life and my daughter's life, and to this stranger, this artist, for putting into words what also must have been in her heart.
Thank you, Satoshi Kon for helping me to take a further step on the road to acceptance. Domo arigato.

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the story of ann

Every story has an ending. Every life is made up of thousands of little stories. I'd like to tell a few stories about Ann and me.

She was my cousin. When I was a baby she was a little girl. When I was a little girl she was a teenager. We didn't really get to know each other until I was at art school, at Parsons, in New York. At our cousin Barbara's wedding Ann invited me to come visit her in D.C. I jumped at the chance to get away from my Brooklyn railroad apartment and see a real professional artist, as well as get to know my beautiful cousin. I fell in love with Ann and this lovely, provincial town. I started visiting regularly, and many years later, when N.Y. had lost its charms, DC, near Ann, was where I wanted to be.

at the Arboretum

She was my friend. Ann and I were close friends as well. We had so many common interests. We were both artists. She was incredibly intelligent, and talented. We often joked that there must have been a family mix-up. She and I were similar in so many ways that surely we should have been sisters and our younger car-crazy Navy-enlisting brothers should have been brothers. Cousins, identical cousins . . .

We complimented each other. Ann was a wonderful counter to my city-girl brashness with her gentle voice and manner. But her soft demeanor didn't fool me or, I suspect, anyone who really knew her. Inside Ann was a strong core, an iron will. Sometimes curiously evidenced in her strict home driveway parking regulations . . . Sometimes joyfully, willingly, enthusiastically chasing my daughter "just one more time" on the playground while her tired mommy relaxed and watched. Ann's inner strength could rival anyone. Such strength as evidenced in her daily, sometimes moment-by-moment battle with an unrelenting illness.

we found a caterpillar

But Ann's empathy and her huge heart were probably her most defining characteristics. She (twice) gave me a place to stay as I moved down here from N.Y. and set about looking for an apartment, a job. Her home and her heart were always a safe haven. She was with me every step of the way through my pregnancy, birth, and of course, the life of her beloved little first cousin once-removed (yes, I checked that on Wikipedia). It was love at first sight for them both.

When I was a child my family spent almost every Sunday at my Grandma's house—for the great dinners (of course), but also for the family time, for the stories. I really missed those times and connections. Ann understood, and we tried our best to keep that tradition alive by creating one of our own. Before the baby, we might do dinner, a movie or a museum either here or in town. I even got her to a Yankee game. After my daughter was born, it became not just our attempt to visit regularly, but our weekend routine, our life here in DC.

piano lessons

I will be forever grateful for the life and times, discoveries and stories, we shared together. I know my daughter will as well. I will miss our talks, our hugs, our visits. But I know that as long as I continue to tell the stories, to remember, that she will never really be gone. Ann is with us always.

memento mori

One of the best moments from Buffy has been running through my head all week . . .

. . . from The Body, after Buffy's mother dies:

Anya (crying): But I don't understand! I don't understand how this all happens. How we go through this. I mean, I knew her, and then she's, there's just a body, and I don't understand why she just can't get back in it and not be dead anymore! It's stupid! It's mortal and stupid! And, and Xander's crying and not talking, and, and I was having fruit punch, and I thought, well Joyce will never have any more fruit punch, ever, and she'll never have eggs, or yawn, or brush her hair, not ever, and no one will explain to me why. (She puts her hand over her face, crying.)

Memento mori, "remember you must die." Found in Buddhist and especially Christian art—ranging from Day of the Dead images to Puritan America, Medieval Europe and beyond—writing, painting and sculpture and pop-culture attempt to help us cope with the puzzle that is mortality:

Vita brevis breviter in brevi finietur [Life is short, and shortly it will end],
Mors venit velociter quae neminem veretur [Death comes quickly and respects no one],
Omnia mors perimit et nulli miseretur [Death destroys everything and takes pity on no one].

This is the first stage of grief, I think, just accepting the jarring interruption of death into your daily routine. The routine becomes shattered, as you cope and try to deal with the sadness of the loss of the loved one. The only thing that can bring back a semblance of your previous normal existence is time and remembrance and more time.

memorial day

Today, Memorial Day, is the day we honor all those who served and remember how they risked their lives in wartime. It was first celebrated after the Civil War.

But today is also when my family is making all sorts of arrangements, among them, a memorial service for my dear cousin Ann who died on Sunday.

The word memorial has derivations starting in Latin, not surprisingly:

[Middle English, from Old French, from Late Latin memorile, from neuter of Latin memorilis, belonging to memory, from memoria, memory; see memory.]

from TheFreeDictionary

I especially like "belonging to memory." After someone dies, what better way is there to describe how they can still be in our lives, while no longer physically present?




With a six year-old daughter who was part of my cousin's life since the day she was born, and vice-versa, I have been struggling for a very long time how I was going to tell her when the inevitable moment came. How much should I tell her? But when it happened, it happened exactly as I do all things—directly. I was as gentle as I could be, told her, answered her questions, and held her as we both cried. One of the only reassuring moments in the conveying of this terrible news was that I could tell her that Ann would always be a part of our lives. That we had memories and pictures and drawings to keep her with us, to help us remember.

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ann

I can't write much today, but I will be writing a lot more in the days and weeks to come. In the meantime, here is one of the earliest and most recent pictures I found in my iPhoto library. Ann, I already miss you tons.

xoxoxo e

a beautiful death

The fantastic blog, Letters of Note published recently this amazing letter by Laura Huxley, wife of Aldous Huxley, chronicling in great detail the author's death. She also covers his attitudes about drug use, philosophy, and art while trying her best to give her husband "a beautiful death." She also wrote about her husband's death in The Timeless Moment.





It is a moving letter and a reflection of how very different the sixties were. Reading it also brought back echoes of my mother's mother, Grand’mére's, death. I was in my Park Slope Brooklyn apartment watching television one evening when I got the call from my mom, who lived with my grandmother in Florida. It was time, she said. My grandmother, just a year short of 90, had had a series of strokes over the past few years and the latest had left her bedridden.

I visited Grand’mére in Florida for the first time when I was fourteen years old. It was my first solo travel, first solo trip on a plane. It was a great visit. She took me to fabulous lunches with her friends, showing me her world, which was quite different from my teenage life back in New Jersey with my family. Over the years I would visit as often as I could, on breaks from college in New York, and continued to go whenever I would get a break from work. When my parents split up my mom headed down to Florida. Grand’mére's home was her port in a storm. She ended up moving in with her permanently when Grand’mére's husband Paul became ill and they needed help. After Paul died, my mother and grandmother spent some very companionable time together, traveling, etc. As Grand’mére started to become frail, it was wonderful for her to have my mother there, as well as a much-needed day nurse, so that my mother could get out and about and get a break.

As I spoke that summer evening with my mother on the phone, she described what Grand’mére was going through. How her legs were gradually turning purple. She was telling her, over and over again,  that she loved her, and that I loved her, and that my brother loved her, and that she had been a wonderful mother. She told her it was O.K. to let go, that we would be all right. We stayed on the phone for about an hour or so. There was a pause and then she quietly told me that she was gone. We cried a bit together on the phone. We both knew that we had shared an amazing passage with Grand’mére. Then we said we loved each other and hung up, as my mother had some other calls to make, as the business of death was about to begin.

Laura Huxley's letter reminded me of that beautiful death.

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henry 1993-2009

I remember when he was a kitten and he saw his first snowfall. He leapt into the window and tried to catch the big flakes as they drifted by.

He loved looking outside, watching the birds, so I got the brilliant idea of getting a cat leash and trying to take him for a walk to Prospect Park. He was terrified. I had to carry him (it was only a block from my apartment) and he cowered under the park bench the whole time we were there. Pigeons could have been covering me and he wouldn't have budged from under the bench. That was the end of the leash.

He could open cabinet doors and dresser drawers and loved to leap up to the top of my dresser, open the drawer and make a cozy nest in my underwear. Needless to say, my underwear had to find a new home, not hairy Harry.

His original name was Henri le chat, named after Matisse. But being a Brooklyn street cat, I thought he should sound a little tougher, so it became Henry. Other nicknames he acquired along the way: Hinky, HenHen.

A well-traveled feline, he had been on a plane at least twice to Florida, moved from Brooklyn to Virginia to DC to New York City, back to DC, and ultimately Virginia. When I was moving from New York he was crying in the car the whole first hour, and as I was crying myself and flipping radio stations to drown us both out, a song came on that had the tune of "Hernando's Hideaway" in the chorus. He magically became quiet. If he started to get agitated on that trip (or other ones), I would start singing "Hernando's Hideaway" to calm him. Worked like a charm. Add Hernando to the list of nicknames.

While I was pregnant he sat on my lap every night, and adjusted his cuddling position to my ever-changing belly. When the baby finally came, his nose was only briefly out of joint, and he soon grew to love her and was quite patient with her baby-grabbing of his tail or hair. I never once saw him hiss at her and certainly never swat at her. If she was too much, he would just remove himself from the situation. I wish I could always exhibit that sort of patience and understanding with a small child!

He was truly the best companion ever.

farrah

Her poster was part of my childhood. I don't think it was on my brother's bedroom wall, but I do remember distinctly when we were alerted to "crack the code" and spell out S-E-X in the curls of her amazing hair.

I of course grew up on Charlie's Angels and realized immediately how simultaneously silly and empowering for females the show really was. Completely absurd - the Angels always seemed to solve every mystery by rifling through file cabinets to find that one bit of evidence - it also depicted women as beautiful and kick-ass. Not a common thing on T.V. at that time. So Aaron Spelling wasn't all bad (Love Boat). It's hard to believe she was just on one season.

I remember going to see Logan's Run at the movies and being excited that she was in it - and disappointed that it was such a teeny part. But then Michael York caught my attention...I also remember some crazy mini-series with Sam Elliot (who I LOVE) where he is her murderous spouse that was pretty good.

But mostly Farrah was an icon for me via her relationship with Ryan O'Neal, which seemed solid for most of my dating years - a relationship lived out in the public sphere that showed there was life and love beyond, beside marriage. During my parents' divorce and my own ambivalent feelings about that institution, this was invaluable.

It sounds like she had a tough go of it at the end, and I'm very sorry for that, and for her family. One article I read said that as an infant she actually had to have a tumor removed from her intestine. Is it possible that such an event could be a blueprint for her later-in-life illness? A sobering thought. But she appears to have lived quite a full life, loved by many. That's something to be proud of, as it's really all that matters in the end. R.I.P. Angel.

life 9 1/2, 9 3/4, 9 5/8...

Henry is on the way out, but apparently intends to go out in style. My cousin found him outside her house the other night and was wondering how he got there. He has access to the (second story) deck, but she found him hanging out in the front yard. He has been taking the air quite a bit this week, it seems.

This evening we saw him in action. He perched at the edge of the deck, and took his time, looking below. Then, one swift JUMP and he was down, making his way to the front stoop and a towel-lined box to cuddle up in. He may not have much time left, may just be practically skin and bones, but this Brooklyn street cat has definitely chosen to go out with a bang and not a whimper. Rock on, Henry.