Ah yes, I remember this day just a year ago today. I remember it so very well. It's carved deeply into my soul and it will always be there each time the cycle of time and dates repeat. It was one of the most difficult days I have ever experienced in my life, and likely the most peaceful you had experienced after all of this life business! You did it so well, the living, the dying. And there's no way I don't miss you. But I'll share some of what I have been wanting to write to you over this time, because as we both know, writing is our sacred space with one another. As sisters.
I was at moms the other day and I was walking down the hallway and all of a sudden I smelled you. It was totally unmistakable. It was like you were standing or walking next to me right there and I thought, "That's Beck!". It's one of those things I think we maybe don't notice so much when we are around someone, the specific scent of them. The one that is only theirs when they are walking the earth. And maybe when they pass, and when suddenly that scent returns out of 'nowhere', it is so visceral and real we cannot deny it. And then, like such things do, the memories of the connection you had with them become triggered and surface, which they did for me in moms hallway.
In that moment, it was both comforting and a deep pang of missing you all at once. I was going to ask mom if she had something of yours in one of the rooms off the hall, but I decided not to so I could just stay with the mystery of it all. So, I just stood there in the frozen moment of my love for you. Surrounded by the scent of my sister,
It's not easy at times you not being here. I still fall into a dizzy haze of disorientation at all that we went through in 2015. I've wanted to call you 1,000 times and just talk it out and sort it out and cry it out with you, since you were there, and we were so fully in it together. All in. I don't quite know when that will all heal, or maybe it's not meant to totally, but I know it has taken it's sweet time and will continue to change in me as I can find space to let the truth that you're gone in a slice at a time.
I have faith that I will continue to find the joys among the dark. I know you would and do encourage me to continue to live.....and I am beginning to do so again in the ways that feel good and right and where my feet find steady ground. But please let me flash back, if just for a moment because I feel you here, and I know you are reading as I write and I still so want to share something of this remembering with you......
Remember you, me, Alexander, mom. Kat, Joel, Kevin. Dolan,, Annie, David, Cheri and all the other family and friends in the surrounding circle that walked with us and held us all so close? Remember the fucking insane immediacy of trying to hold on so close and navigate at the same time through the most turbulent of waters? Remember that first night at the Kabuki when we finally got Alexander to CMPC?
You the most stunning, strong, courageous mother. I know you kept your boy alive with your pure momma love, and I think also along with those bright colored Popsicles we fed him hour by hour. Remember that same night you drew that hotter than hot bath you took at 1am in the deep Japanese tub with your bath salts and the scrubbing cloth you brought with you knowing you'd need it? I remember the steam falling out into the room and fogging the sliding doors on our 12th floor room. I was watching some blaring TV show that filled my mind with the much needed numbness. We stood on the balcony, looking out to the Japantown square, the SF night buzzing and you and I in silence.
Even these long 365 days later, those memories still surface first, soon after the memory of the actual day you left. It's like the time-line and the memories still start with the end and then go backwards from that, and then maybe at some point begins to drift into the times before that year. It's a strange sensation to keep going over the recent past, and not being able to enter into the past-past which is where the perhaps "happier" times might live.
Please know, I am so totally grateful that I was able to be there within that time, and I don't regret one moment spent. It was real, raw, pure life.... and life at it's depth. Happy times or not, what I do know now is that there was more love happening in all that than any I have ever experienced before or since. I will always remember. The love remains. Our love is alive and living.
And then I roll back into my childhood with you. You washing my hair on a Saturday morning, in the kitchen sink, when I was six years old, on Sea Wolf Drive in Santa Rosa. You were probably made you do it as a Saturday morning chore, but it was our time, big sister to little sister, and I think we both knew our true connection. I realize now how you always took care of me, and I felt your love among the larger teen aged challenges you had within the family being the oldest sibling. You playing The Beatles loud from your teen aged room. It was 1976. I only wished we had been closer in age and shared more music together. But I still love the St, Pepper album which I attribute to your influence!
Flash forward 1982. You're now living in Japan and you've essentially escaped the confines of the family. It was well timed for you. You needed your freedom. I 10 or so, receiving letters from you from across the sea with small origami folded in the middle of the fine Japanese paper and tiny animal stickers on the envelope. You knew how to reach me. I loved you telling me of your time there, and I imagined you living a life of adventures and freedom. You loved that culture, and I imagined you fit in so well with your gentle ways and your attention to details. And you also told me you "danced" there. As I child I did not know what kind of dancing you did, but as I learned later you seemed to have swooned the US and Japanese sailors with your fluid moves and likely made more money than you would have here!
1987. You're 28 now, I'm 16. You returned from Japan and moved into dads apartment and you had come home pregnant with Alexander. You met his father Alan in the Philippines and fell in love. He was a musician, you met him in a club, and you were head over heals. Alan was an island man and he was beautiful. But he stayed behind on his island and your son met him only once as a infant when you returned to visit. You asked me to be your birth coach and even though I smoked a lot of weed and I liked to party with my friends, you trusted me as his auntie, and we did the birthing classes together. I took it very seriously. So when the word came on that afternoon that you were in labor and I had to leave school to come help you breathe, Alexander arrived quickly after I got to the hospital on the late afternoon of Nov 7th, 1988.
That I know was your happiest day, and the most amazingly beautiful thing I have ever witnessed. The boy. I remember spending weekends at dads with Kevin, Kat and Joel all helping take care of him. I loved taking care of him, and all the time we spent just hanging with the wee one. At some point you got back on your feet and were ready and moved out of the apartment, but I know that time was a true moment of family togetherness and Alexander being the light in our lives.
1999. It was pouring with rain one night and I remember calling you and asking you if I could come and stay with you and Alexander. I had broken up with my girlfriend and I was a total wreck. You without a blink drove out to Sebastopol and picked me up no questions asked. You helped me breathe during that time until I could get back on my feet. I will always remember that generosity and your love for me.
2015. Late September. We sat outside in the courtyard under the redwoods at Memorial Hospital, Alexander was up in his bed on the 5th floor, and we took a break and went outside for a heart to heart. You told me you were "ready" to go. Ready to die. Ready to leave the Earth. You shared your dream you had a few nights before, and I listened. It was of you, out in space, floating, looking back at the Earth. You had dads navy sword in your hand. I asked you what you thought that dream message was about, and you said that you didn't feel scared floating out there, and that dads sword was your protection. I asked you if you were going to miss the Earth, and you said yes, the beauty of it, and the people you loved, but not so much of the bad things that were happening on and with the planet. I asked you if you would promise to send me messages from wherever you were after you left, and you said yes, you would. I said I was going to miss you so much, We started crying with one another. We held one another for awhile, just the beginning of saying goodbye. And you have sent the promised messages...and I will continue to look for and notice them.
2015. Late September. We sat outside in the courtyard under the redwoods at Memorial Hospital, Alexander was up in his bed on the 5th floor, and we took a break and went outside for a heart to heart. You told me you were "ready" to go. Ready to die. Ready to leave the Earth. You shared your dream you had a few nights before, and I listened. It was of you, out in space, floating, looking back at the Earth. You had dads navy sword in your hand. I asked you what you thought that dream message was about, and you said that you didn't feel scared floating out there, and that dads sword was your protection. I asked you if you were going to miss the Earth, and you said yes, the beauty of it, and the people you loved, but not so much of the bad things that were happening on and with the planet. I asked you if you would promise to send me messages from wherever you were after you left, and you said yes, you would. I said I was going to miss you so much, We started crying with one another. We held one another for awhile, just the beginning of saying goodbye. And you have sent the promised messages...and I will continue to look for and notice them.
........And suddenly like that first memory in the hallway, I have just returned to this day this hour a year ago. It's 4:55 as I write this and you left your body for good at 5:13 Dec 30th, 2015. I had just left the house where you were taking your last long breaths. I put my hand to your heart and told you I loved you forever. Joel arrived, Dolan was pacing the room. I left at 4:15 and went to the movies with Annie. We sat down with our popcorn and I got the call right as the movie started that you had just passed. I remember the shock that hit me, (it never doesn't hit like a thousand waves at once), and then that release that flooded through my body knowing you were finally free. It was not an escape this time though. It was simply your time to breathe again.
I sit here with these memories all fully surfaced now and feel more of them awakening. It's good, and I am grateful that they have because I was not so sure where they have been hiding. You, my sister, have brought them alive again in me today, a day I will always remember too. I know you have walked with me through them again as well. Such a full and wondrous life huh? One moment after the other with the connections we make with one another being what remains most alive within us. We shall continue.
Wherever you are Beck, I know you know we will meet again beloved sister......When it's my time to join you. But until then, I will keep hearing your whisper in my ear "It's ok baby girl.....it's all ok."
With Eternal Love.
Your little sister Molly
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