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...