Heading for the Surface

Los Angeles, California

And then we had a hurricane. Seriously. A hurricane in Los Angeles. Ok, it wasn't really a hurricane but the first tropical storm warning issued in over a century. Hurricane. Tropical Storm. Tomato, tomato.

I last wrote about hummingbirds and rain, suicides and signs. I suppose all this odd weather was really about global warning. Still, it felt like something else was going on, but perhaps only to me. It is easy to see things and interpret them as signs. Not everything that happens in life is programmed like our morning alarms. And, some things happen once in a blue moon; which is, incidentally, a lunar occurrence that will present itself next week.

Back just before we locked down at the beginning of the pandemic, I was involved in a flight incident where we were diverted, from landing in Monterey, to Fresno. I wrote about it in the posts entitled That Was the Year that Was, Part 1 and 2. In the hours that we four women were together in the Ford Explorer with Dina at the wheel, we talked about a lot of experiences and traumas. And I told them about Tom's suicide. One of the women, my flight seat mate Courtney, remarked that what can lead to suicide had once been described to her as being underwater and not knowing in which direction the surface lies. I thought it was as apt a description as I have ever heard. Is that what separates us from the desperate ones -- our ability to navigate to the surface even when we're not assured that we can make it? And even more so, with the near-certainty that breaking the surface can still require treading water to survive when land is not in sight?

I once heard Robert Redford say about his film Ordinary People: I'm interested in that thing that happens where there's a breaking point for some people and not for others. You go through such hardship, things that are almost impossibly difficult, and there's no sign that it's going to get any better, and that's the point when people quit. But some don't. If you have done your cinema homework you will remember what the film's primary survivor had to come to terms with. In the boating disaster that took his brother's life, he had held on.

So, I wrote to Tom's niece about the loss of her husband. I wrote that the news was heartbreaking, especially as his loss had happened in such an incomprehensible manner. And, importantly (to me) wrote that the situation and story surrounding his death matters less than the insurmountable journey of surviving this profound and complicated tragedy. I was fortunate, I continued, to connect with other survivors who, along with my friends, helped and supported me through my own unexplainable loss. Why did I feel the need to reach out to this member of my husband's family, a family who were, frankly, pretty wretched to me after his death? Why do we do the things we do? In this case, because no matter how I was treated, I recognize and empathize that she is now in the club. You don't recover who you used to be after you survive the suicide of someone close to you. You just . . . don't. Life goes on, and you go on with it. But who you were before, before that block wall appeared in front of you when you were traveling at high speed; that 'before' you gets left behind. And my heart goes out to her and her sons because it will be a very slow dawning that they will remain a part of that wreckage forever.

No one in that family ever called, nor sent me a note or a card, after Tom died. No, that's not true. Tom's mother stayed in touch with me and sent me notes of thanks for the birthday and Christmas gifts I sent. Her last note asked me to stay in touch. I care about you, she wrote. As for the rest of them, his siblings, Tom had given up on all of them a long time before. And I understood. I have never, ever, in my life met a family of siblings who felt less for each other nor who treated each other with so little respect or caring. I thought maybe it was a syndrome of a large family with the siblings too close in age to each other. I'll never know. My mother-in-law was a kind, honest, good, salt-of-the-earth soul. But she raised five completely fucked-up kids. Go figure.

Los Angeles survived its tropical storm. We have survived earthquakes, floods, fires and, as the joke goes, awards shows. We will endure. But some of us still live in destruction, through no fault of our own. It doesn't mean we can't be happy. Joyous, even. But even in the midst of our joy there is always what John Irving called the undertoad. Yes, we are the water-treaders. The dancers, even. And our hearts and minds tell us that life is for the living and it goes on. We can survive the natural disasters of earth, wind and fire. But nothing prepared us survivors for that block wall that sped towards us. Nor for the knowledge that will dawn that you have left a part of yourself behind at the moment of impact, and it will not ever be retrieved.

The Day of the Dead

Los Angeles, California

Robbie Robertson died today. He was eighty. The metaphorical clouds have been circling for days, not unexpectedly. Everything has been pointing to this date. Tom would have turned seventy today. Had I forgotten, or ridiculously tried not to remember, that blankness would not have succeeded. Signs, everywhere I turned, kept pointing to this day.

A few days back I listened to an interview with the actress/hyphenate Joanna Gleason who spoke about her parents' deaths and about the signs that accompanied  the experience. I believe in signs, she said. I do too. Just after my father suddenly passed away, a hummingbird came to visit, hovering outside the large windows where Dad had stood just forty-eight hours before his death pointing out the abundant buds on my rosebushes which encircled a bird bath. Was it that same bird that kept coming back, day after day, batting its wings just outside the glass?

Almost two decades later, after Tom died, we purified the house with burning sage, stopping for a prayer in the last room. The prayer was to ask for release both for him and for our grief. As our prayer ended, a door slammed somewhere in the house. But my friend Carole, who was the other participant in this ritual, and I were the only people in the house.

August ninth is a powerful date. In 1969, the Manson family murders, which included Sharon Tate, occurred on the night of August 8-9. Nixon resigned on August 9th, 1974, on Tom's 21st birthday. The powerful earthquake that hit the San Fernando Valley in 1971 occurred on the midpoint of the year from that date, on February 9th. But those dates are in the past.

Yesterday I met my friends, Lisa and Susan, for breakfast. Lisa announced that someone she knew, a woman who was a good friend of a friend, had committed suicide the day before. I mentioned today's date and its many connections. That was my dad's birthday, Susan said. I left the restaurant and was driving out to the market when a text came in, letting me know that one of Tom's family members, the husband of his niece, had taken his life. The second suicide in that family. W.T.F? He left a wife and two teenaged children. My heart goes out to them, I wrote back. They just ran full-speed into a brick wall.

And then the following day, the ninth of August, began not unexpectedly with so many thoughts of Tom. Later that morning, the answer to Wordle was: Lover. Something I had always thought I would be to him, and he to me. I am very much in love with Joel. I love his soul. I love that he provides safety, trust, intimacy and dancing; things that were utterly missing in my union to Tom. Still. I thought my marriage would last forever.

So, Robbie Robertson has died on August 9th. He was 80. We came of age with The Band. And Tom had once commented, after viewing Scorcese's The Last Waltz, that Robertson was one of the handsomest men he had ever seen. That he was. I saw the NYTimes notification today while I was away from the house, coming home in a light rain. It had been cloudy all day and rained a bit this morning. Rain in the summer in Southern California is rare. But I am reminded that the day my mother passed away on a date in mid-July, it was also cloudy and drizzly. Clearly, all of the clouds, all of the signs, were gathering. And I am still wondering about that hummingbird...