Or why my youthful marriage to a fine man had failed, a fact that deeply puzzled him. Or why I had fallen in love with another man. Or why that second man had left me. For my dad, rocks were just easier. And now he is gone. His arthritic, freckled, knuckled hand, with the sl im metal engineering ring, gripping a pencil mid- diagram, his gray-blue eyes al ight: disappeared. My mother is gone too: her beautiful brow no longer furrowed, wrestling for the right word in Scrabble, struggling to land her “k” on a triple. (At 80, she–ever proper, settled on “Fuck.”) Tonight, I remember them. He, racing his sailboat into a headwind, his whole body thrust backward over the side, legs slim, one fist grabbing the main sheet, the other steering the tiller. She, kneading pastry, her arms dusty with flour, her whole being fragrant with apples. And of course, I remember the boy, the man, and the woman—all who have made their exits. For years, I was so busy with the granular details of boy-raising and career-making, too absorbed with the fullness of life to worry what would happen when the script changed, when the exits came. For decades, my generation crammed each hour the way my mother stuffed cherries in her Christmas cake: jammed to the max. Life zoomed by. We were all that busy, juggling the double agendas of work and home, the first shift, the second shift, and yes, the third. But here I am, someone who has always found her voice and exercised her choice, considering what it means to be a woman of a certain age in an uncertain age. I am considering what it means to be alone.
Twelve years ago, the ground began to shift. Major players began to disappear.
First, my son, off to study in Chicago. This was expected. Then, my lover of 14 years took flight, the man I was to marry. This was not. Six months later, my father, my so-called sober parent, died of end-stage alcoholism. Again, unexpected. Then my wayward and hermetic aunt, the one handcuffed by police and tossed into a psych ward exited as well, barely weeks after we rescued her from the hospital. We bundled her up for a better life. She died three weeks later. A year later, my beloved mother failed: my longtime nemesis turned confidante, travel partner, and intimate friend. Gone. Then, a close cousin, not yet 55; a favourite aunt to Alzheimer’s, and then another one too. A whole generation cleared out, but for one elegant uncle. Grief is a great leveler. We’re told it comes in stages, but that’s too tidy. We’re told that time will work its magic. But no, that’s a myth: time, on its own, won’t heal anything. Patti Smith says that when her husband Fred died, her father told her that time does not heal all wounds, but it gives us the tools to endure them. I hope he’s right. Grief is the price of a full heart. It can take you to your knees, and upend you. When I think of grief, I think of the black-suited surfers trying to ride the waves at sunset in Santa Monica: tumbled and tossed head over heels, into the roiling water, stumbling to find their footing. When the waves roll in, all we can do is aim for grace. And when the script changes, there is no manual. This, we do alone. Of course, the loss can come at any stage. I have three dear friends whose brothers died of childhood
HOLA SOBER | MADRID
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