Mar 25, 2021
I once wrote that the main thing I fear about aging is the death of more and more friends and family. That was eight years ago, and now at 73 I have reached the time of losses. I have lost a brother, a sister, and seven friends. The experience is as profound and hard as I feared. Each death leaves a hole which no one else can fill, in a shape peculiar to that person, like a missing piece in a jigsaw puzzle. We hear about the deaths of old friends whom we have little contact with, and it sends us back to earlier times in our life. But the people who are part of our present life – whom we talked to daily or weekly – whenever we turn a corner we encounter their absence again.
Brother Dickie
Sister Luli
I would like to say I am learning to deal with loss, but I don’t know what that means. The idea that in a year after a death you will have folded up the sorrow and put it in a drawer where you can visit the memories doesn’t ring true.
Grief in a drawer
My sister Luli died three and a half years ago, leaving many writings and cartoons. My friend Arupa died a little over a year ago. She was a writer, painter, and founder of the HOME Van; she had asked me to be her literary executor. I carried home cartons and two file drawers with her writings, along with the remainder of her paintings. I plan to compile her writing about homelessness into a book and sell it to benefit homeless services, then share some of her remaining work on Facebook or on this blog. A writer wants to be read.
Birthday card by Luli
Painting by Arupa
Early in March I finally began reviewing Arupa’s work. Luli’s birthday was March 4, and she haunted the work – when I took a break from Arupa, I would go to Luli’s writing. My friend and my sister had a lot in common (besides their fondness for drawing nudes). Both bore scars from childhood and survived trauma, confusion and pain to become women who were larger than life. They were both writers and visual artists. Luli’s huge, generous heart had a genius for friendship, while Arupa shared her heart and her last twenty years with people who are homeless.
The legacy left by an artist and writer’s death gives us more than memories; we can visit their voice and vision whenever we like. They come back so clearly, with an intimacy and honesty we may only have glimpsed when we were together. But it is a mixed blessing. All that we lost is there before us, right on the page, and we can’t offer comfort, ask questions, share our own stories.
Mourning doesn’t end after a year. As time goes by, grief, at first an acute condition, becomes chronic, flaring up from time to time when we bump into a memory. But I suppose after a few years we become used to the jigsaw gaps, accustomed to grief. Sometimes we deliberately visit the memories; sometimes we run from them. But after someone dies, all we have are memories. If we flee the memories because they carry sorrow, we lose a loved one twice.
Missing pieces
About Arupa: The Fairy Queen
About Luli: Sisters Two
May 16, 2019
In May, Joe and I went camping at Cumberland Island, a barrier island just north of the Florida border. Although there is some private property on the island, 18,700 acres have been set aside for the rest of us. No cars allowed, just people and bicycles, and lots of wild horses.
The world has so many beautiful places; this is one of them. A boardwalk traverses wide dunes to a long, empty beach. Salt spray discourages the live oaks from growing high, and their limbs twist to reach the sunlight. Underneath are palmettos, each frond with its population of tiny green frogs with large voices.
images: National Park Service
Only 300 visitors are allowed on the island at a time, so campsites and ferry tickets must be reserved many months in advance. There were few campers at Seacamp in midweek, and the beach near the campground was almost empty; back-country campers go to beaches farther north on the island. Loud groups of school children arrived for daytime field trips, but we didn’t see or hear much of them. They were usually leaving as we went to the beach in the late afternoon.
The entrance to our campsite curved through the trees and underbrush so it was hidden from the trail. No water spigot, but there was a fire ring, a picnic table, and a high cage for all our food and sweet-smelling toiletries. We hung our trash bag from the cage temporarily, thinking no scavengers would visit while we were in camp, but one well-fed raccoon came in boldly and chewed a hole in the bag and another jumped on the table to get to our toothpaste and soap.
On the first morning I rose at five-thirty and boiled water for my coffee. I set out my big insulated mug and turned away to fill the cone and filter with coffee, then put them on top of the mug and poured the water through. The fifteen-minute walk to the beach through the twisted live oaks, the sky just beginning to brighten, brought memories of Amanda. We took her camping at Cumberland Island when she was seven, and as she and I walked to the beach at dawn, and saw the brilliant colors through the trees, she began singing ‘Mister Golden Sun, please shine down on me.’ click
I walked across the broad empty beach past rippling tide pools to the edge of the water, and watched the sky change. The sun was soon up, but it was another twenty minutes or so before a thin gleam outlined the dark clouds on the horizon. I drank the delicious, strong coffee. In my loudest tenor I sang what I remembered of a song from my youth – ‘Sun arise, she bring in the morning…’ by a now-disgraced Australian singer. It’s an old song, a chant and a rejoicing. click (the comments following the video debate the propriety of enjoying art by bad guys)
I was purely happy, alone on the beach for half an hour, watching daybreak. Just a moment before the sun rose above the clouds, I heard someone walking up behind. I turned, and it was Joe. He hadn’t had his coffee, so I offered him my last swig. He took it gratefully, and then spat. “There’s something in it.” It was an inch-long caterpillar, boiled. It had fallen into the mug as I put coffee in the cone. I had been drinking caterpillar soup.
Dawn post-caterpillar: still cheerful
We walked back to our camp along the boardwalk through the twisty oaks, past the bathhouse, down the trail. I tried not to think about the caterpillar. We met a woman and told her about it. “It touched my lips,” Joe said with horror. She answered without hesitating. “You kissed a caterpillar.” I was so impressed. When I encountered her again the next day, at the bathhouse with her husband, I praised her wonderful attitude toward life. “She finds something good to say about everything.” her husband said. He didn’t seem to appreciate this, but it put a cheerful song in my head. click
Florida beaches are too hot from morning to late afternoon, so after breakfast we walked along the River Trail through the woods. Surprisingly, mosquitoes don’t seem to be very active yet; they only troubled us for about half an hour at dawn and dusk. It was a beautiful day for walking, with a soft, steady breeze.
The trail took us to Dungeness dock, and the broad pasture where wild horses graze. When we were there with Amanda, she saw a stallion’s imposing penis, and I explained, though I feared it could make sex scarier than it already is. Now it was the height of mating and foaling season, and the first thing we saw was a grazing bay mare with a white foal suckling beneath her, a bay stallion grazing a little distance away.
I was tired from the walk, though it was under a mile, and sat on a bench watching a dozen horses grazing, rolling in the grass, trotting around, while Joe took pictures. I was reading the park brochure when Joe called, “Look up.” I searched the sky for birds, but then heard hooves, and looked across to see the stallion galloping straight towards me, followed by the mare and foal. He hadn’t read the brochure about staying 3 bus-lengths away from people. I sat frozen, nothing to be done, but fortunately he turned about eight yards from me, and the family circled the field.
Feral horses grazing at the ruins image: National Park Service
We walked on to the ruins of Dungeness, a mansion built by Andrew Carnegie. Joe headed to Raccoon Key, where he saw thousands of crabs swarming on the sand. I walked the mile back to the camp, exhausted and blue because my stamina is gone. As always, a song came to me, and cheered me up a bit, and I could sing freely on the empty trail.
I love camping. I like the way daily activities become a slow ritual; showers, toilets, and potable water were a ten-minute walk through the woods. I like being outside in the dark under the stars. I like playing cribbage by lantern light.
I tried sleeping in the tent, but the ground, even with the Thermarest mattress, was too unyielding for my left bad hip and my right bad shoulder, and wouldn’t make room for my butt. So I slept outside in the string hammock, and I was blissful, looking up into the sky and stars until I couldn’t keep my eyes open. The frogs sang all night and the birds began before dawn.
It was wonderful, but this may have been my last tent-camping trip. I have less energy than I used to, and I need to sleep well at night. I can still spend parts of the night in the hammock in our backyard. I can still sit outside at dawn and dusk. And I can still remember, and sing the songs that cheer me. click
Jan 4, 2017
2 New Year's gifts for my dear readers: a light hearted encomium to the sine qua non of home maintenance, and an easy recipe.
A couple of months ago Joe said, “I’d like a birthday party this year.” We only celebrate our birthdays in a big way every few years, so I told him if he’d give me the list I’d organize the whole thing. Then I forgot, and I think he did too, until eight days before the date. We went into high gear. He gave me the list, and some email addresses, and I sent forty invitations.
What about the menu? I suggested a big pot of chili, fried chicken from Publix, salad, and of course birthday cake. Over the years I have let go of the show-off cook, so I felt no need to prepare all the food for thirty or so people.Joe made it even easier. He wanted oysters, and he wanted to be in charge of them. He vetoed the chili, asked for deli sandwiches and fried chicken. And for everyone who asked “What can I bring?” the answer was salad.
After consulting with Luli, my sister and on-call food professional, I decided I could quadruple the Blitzen Kuchen recipe to make two sheet cakes without any unanticipated chemical reactions. (I did not consider the capacity of my stand mixer, and after beating the butter, sugar, and dozen eggs I had to transfer it to my largest bowl and mix in the flour by hand.)
The bowl was too small
The guests were all old (in both senses of the word) friends of one or both of us. There were clusters of guests – Joe’s poker buddies, his movie and football buddies, and the Muumuus – many with spouses. These were supplemented by a few outsiders who were welcomed by the different groups, including my middle-aged son – some of the people had known him as a toddler. And people saw old friends they had lost track of – there were warm reunions complete with pictures of grandchildren.
The weather obliged us. The sky was overcast and blustery, almost chilly, perfect for raw and grilled oysters out on the deck, with plenty of beer. As it got darker and colder, we moved inside to eat sandwiches and chicken by the fire, with Etta James on the stereo. Sitting on couches and folding chairs and coffee tables, people talked of books and movies and old affairs and (ugh) current affairs, which led Kristin to give us a song about Hitler’s (and Himmler’s and Goering’s and Goebbel’s) balls. She sings very well.
image:michael'stvtray.com
The party was well underway. Joe was basking in friendship – I’m not the only one who loves him. I was moving from place to place, checking on this and that, responding to the teenage girls’ boredom complaint with a look and then Netflix on my laptop, when Bruce said, “Liz, the front door won’t close.” “Whaaat?” (Translation: I don’t have enough to think about?)
It stood open about 18 inches, letting in the cold and letting out the cat. It wouldn’t go over the threshold. On our knees we discovered that the bottom of the door had come loose and slipped down. We agreed that this called for Larry, a retired cabinet maker with meticulous skills and a generous willingness to help. I went out on the deck and said, “Larry, please stop shucking oysters and come help with the door.” (We had bought a bushel and hired a shucker, but guys like to stand around shucking oysters and shooting shit.)
image:gypsygema.com
I went about my business while Larry and Bruce investigated, until Larry called for…duct tape. So much for the gifted cabinet maker. They jammed the bottom board up where it belonged and fastened it neatly. “To fix it you’ll need to take the door off the hinges. This is just a temporary fix,” Larry said. But I wasn’t so sure. Duct tape is a theme of our decor. The lovely silvery gray complements our lifestyle (I sneer at the brightly-patterned stuff they sell at Office Depot.)
Seven years ago Amanda was, to put it kindly, rambunctious. Sometimes it was a product of anger, but sometimes it was sheer exuberance. She was dancing in the shower one night when she slipped and grabbed onto the ceramic soap dish set into the tile. It broke off, leaving a gaping hole which exposed the pipes. (I still don’t understand how the weight of a slender seven-year-old could accomplish this, but that was her story.) Call the tile man? No. Get the duct tape. Joe, an ingenious – if not a handy – man, made a neat silver rectangle which has lasted to this day.
Three years ago Amanda had settled down and we had a slumber party for her 11th birthday. click This entailed moving all the living room furniture against the walls and laying down pads and mattresses. It was a lovely and boisterous affair, and after she had slept it off, Amanda was very cooperative in restoring the house to our standard of tidiness. Alas, in pushing the piano back into place she smashed the light switch plate and rheostat. Clearly a job for…Superduct!
This repair only lasted a week or two. I was uneasy about all the unprotected electrons shooting around behind their silver cover, and tired of not being able to turn on the lights, so I called a handyman.
image:warningacooleelectric.co.uk
I have written before about our low standards of tidiness and decor click. I love to visit my friends, their houses filled with beauty and the tranquility that comes from order, at least when they have visitors. Our disorder is a product of laziness, distractions, and perhaps most of all, the way messes become invisible as time passes – I no longer see the shoes in the middle of the living room, the pile of books waiting to be shelved.
Joe and I are fortunate to be well-matched – I can’t imagine a tidy person living with either one of us. It’s not that I’m proud to be a slob – sometimes I even think how nice it would be to be otherwise – but I’m no longer embarrassed. And in the way we all redefine our faults as virtues, I have created a new etymology for sLOVEnly.
BLITZKUCHEN
350 degrees (325 for pyrex) 8"pan, greased and floured 25-30 minutes
1 C white flour
1 t baking powder
pinch of salt
1 stick unsalted butter, softened
3/4 C sugar
3 eggs
zest and juice of half a lemon
1/2 t vanilla
Cream butter well, add sugar and lemon zest, beat well. Beat in eggs, lemon juice, vanilla. Stir together the flour, baking powder, salt, and beat in at low speed just till blended.
Frosting:
1 stick butter
1 C powdered sugar
2t vanilla
3oz unsweetened chocolate, melted (I do it in the microwave at 50% power)
Cream butter a LONG time, beat in sugar for a while, add vanilla and chocolate. If too soft to spread, refrigerate a while, if then too stiff, put in bowl of warm water and beat again.
Sep 19, 2016
For years I’ve had an idea running unnoticed behind my thoughts, the way programs run in the background on a computer: this is the way my life is supposed to be.
image:slideplayer.com
It’s an idea that can lead to resentment, but recently I’ve had a revelation. There’s no supposed to be; there’s just what is. Maybe this new (to me) version of truth will help me with my quest for acceptance, as in, “Accept the things you cannot change.”
It’s not that I’ve ever thought life was supposed to be all gardens and beaches. Accidents and illness, struggle and heartbreak – I’ve long known they were part of the mix. Since I was quite young, I’ve had a vision of how life works. You go along happily for a few years, encountering joys and troubles along the way but staying fairly upright, when suddenly life comes along with a catastrophe and pulls the rug out from under you.
image:missionblueprintonline
Still, I had a sense that there was some natural progression from infancy to old age, stages of life that would come in a certain order. This was one of a number of unexamined assumptions produced by a safe and secure childhood. As a child I lived in a luxurious cocoon. I was the youngest of four children, the baby of the family. My family was intact, my father made a very good living, my mother made a comfortable home life, my brothers adored me.
a luxurious cocoon image:busyknitter.com
Some of these unexamined assumptions are useful: I can do it; I am loved. Some are just silly. I was born when my parents were in their forties; we lived in big houses. My grown brothers lived in tiny apartments. I concluded that when you’re young you’re poor and when you’re old you’re rich. This idea miraculously survived years of working in poverty law. I was probably forty when I realized there wasn’t a natural progression from one state to the other.
images:thetinylife.com, wikipedia.org
When I was little I assumed my future was college, husband, housewife, motherhood. (You can tell from this when and into what class I was born.) This assumption exploded with the second wave of feminism, with reading the Second Sex at fourteen and The Feminine Mystique at fifteen. When the dust had settled, a new assumption took its place. I was in charge of my life, I could choose my path.
I’ve always known life isn’t fair. When I was raising two kids they’d say, as siblings do, “It’s not fair.” And I’d annoy them with a little ditty, “You always, you never, IT’S NOT FAIR,” and tell them no, life isn’t fair, that’s just the way life is. Every year I’d spend a semester and three credit hours trying to teach my law students that life’s not fair. They had not entirely earned their good fortune, nor did poor people deserve their misfortunes; a good deal of everybody’s situation was due to luck, good or bad. click
Life is what happens when you’re making other plans. I’ve known this for years; I’ve said this for years. Yet there in the background, belying this knowledge, was the belief that my life would proceed in ordered stages.
image:thepragmaticcostumer.wordpress
The gods have laughed at me over and over, yet I have to learn the lesson again and again. I had to learn it once more when my son came home to recover from a serious illness. Now the four of us – hard-working husband, retired wife, teenaged granddaughter, and middle-aged son – are bumping along together as well as we can. It’s not what I expected when I retired. It’s not the way it’s supposed to be.
All my life I have struggled to accept what comes my way. I should have been an alcoholic; then I could have gone to meetings and heard the Serenity Prayer. Maybe it would have sunk in. But I can’t go much beyond one drink without getting drunk, and I hate being drunk. I prefer musical inspiration anyway; I want to learn to take One Day at A Time. click
Writing has always brought me clarity. But I’m still confused, still trying to understand. There’s no supposed to be. There’s just what is.
N.B. This post is full of God and Jesus. I haven’t become a believer. Growing up in a sanctimonious culture, I’m saturated with pious aphorisms. And just about my favorite music is gospel, full of trouble, promise, and joy.
Nov 6, 2015
Amanda came into my office this morning in a rare friendly mood and said,
“Yes! Now this place smells like old ladies.”
She was standing right by Trisket’s bed, which is under the desk, so I wondered.
“You sure it doesn’t just smell like Trisket?”
“If I leaned over and smelled her bed it probably would. But no, this is old lady smell.”
“What do old ladies smell like?”
“Cinnamon and old libraries.”
That was a relief. She might have said something about pee. I pointed out the musty books that produce the old library smell, then directed her to the dried lavender and roses hanging on the closet door.
“Take a whiff of that.”
“That’s it! That’s the old lady smell!”
“Oh I’m so glad. People always say old ladies smell like lavender”.
“You like that?”
“Yes. I love being an old lady. And I love that smell.”
“You’re weird, Grandma.”
I’ve always loved smells – sweet, floral, sour, pungent, funky. Even nasty smells intrigue me, though I draw the line at those that make me gag. About ten percent of women lose the sense of smell as they grow old – this is known as anosmia. Parosmia- when fragrant smells turn foul – is worse. I hope I never suffer either one.
My garden is full of fragrant plants – citrus, roses, anise, tea olive and many more. The most successful is my HUGE lavender bush. It keeps going through frosty winters and baking-hot summers. I’ve never understood why it’s so happy in my yard. It reminds me of rosemary, but numerous rosemary plants have shriveled in the same bed. (I decide whether plants are similar according to whether they remind me of each other. I am not a skilled horticulturalist.) This year, for the first time ever, it has produced a single little flower. It also has a resident spider.
I love this plant. I tear off branches and carry them around with me for happy smelling. I used to put sprigs in all my drawers and in the linen closet and under the bottom sheet on our bed, until Joe told me he doesn’t like the smell of lavender. So now I make big bunches of lavender to give to women in stressful situations, such as my friend April when she was pregnant and surrounded by babies. I hang bunches out on the atrium to dry, and then crumble them into ziplock bags to give away.
Every room in our house has a different smell, some pleasant, some not so. When I was little, I liked the musty smell of my grandmother’s New York apartment. I cherish the title “old.” click I’m happy that my room – my retreat and my refuge, filled with photos and paintings of women – smells like an old lady.
Paintings by Arupa Freeman click
My mother at twenty
Collage by me (images by many, including Esther Garcia Eder click)
Aug 14, 2015
I’ve been retired for 13 years. But I still have days when, sitting reading the paper, I think “Yeehaw and hallelujah, I don’t have to go to the office.” This is what a more sophisticated writer might call a frisson.
Yeehaw and hallelujah! image:chroniclelive.co.uk
With Amanda at camp, Joe and I took a road trip – two days with my sister in Chapel Hill click, two with Ed and Lisa in the Smoky Mountains, and two with Sue and Max in Atlanta. Ed has been retired since June, Sue has been retired six months, Max has been retired several years. So the trip gave me a chance to, among other things, ponder the puzzle of retirement.
Joe in the Smokies -pondering retirement?
Many people can’t afford to retire. Others think they can only retire if they have enough to continue living in the style to which they have become accustomed, or by which they have been trapped.
Trapped? image:dailymail.co.uk
Free? image:hgtv.com
Some people love their work and never want to retire; some dream of retirement all their working life. Often they have a list of all the things they want to do when they retire. My list was short. I wanted to write, garden, learn to play the piano, and get a dog. Six weeks after I retired I developed tendonitis, and couldn’t play the piano, garden, or write. I got the dog click. When the tendonitis was gone, I returned to writing and gardening and gave up on the piano.
Gathering dust image:sweetlilmzmia.co
Generally writers don’t retire, though they may write less, or change their genre. In very old age, Donald Hall switched from poetry to prose click. Alice Munro keeps announcing her retirement, and then comes out with more stories. She claimed she couldn’t write fiction anymore because of her failing memory, but several years later she had another brilliant book.
Munro the Magnificent image:therumpus.net
In the first few months after retirement, people fritter away the time. All our working lives we’ve dreamed of free time, and at first it’s every bit as blissful as our dreams. A friend sat on the couch each day and watched the birds in her back yard. I read old notebooks and letters.
image:birdorable.com
image:dreamstime.com
New retirees putter. Many begin with a long-postponed house project. I cleared out my bookcases.
Maybe I need to do it again
But thirty years of remunerated work, of dancing to someone else’s tune, leave their mark on the soul. With no schedule and lots of idle time, retirement can begin to feel empty rather than free. We lie on the couch, eating and feeling worthless.click click
Then we start making lists and plans for tasks and travel. We start, at least, an exercise program. We wonder where we might put our talents to use. For me, retirement meant giving up committees. No more collaboration and compromise. From now on, my work would be my own, no need for consultation or permission. I dusted off my No Bird to take care of all the requests that came in when people realized I had retired click. I was already part of the HOME Van, but I loved most of that work. It is an anarchic organization, and I never had to attend a staff meeting.
image:powerpointforpreachers.blogspot.com
For a few years my retirement was what I had planned. Lots of writing, some travel, playing with friends, exercise programs that I often complied with. But as we all know, when people plan, the gods laugh. They may send illness, or death of a loved one. In my case, the goddess laughed and I found myself raising a child.
Hestia the hearth goddess laughed at me. image:theoi.com
So Fortune and I filled up my time. I had a mini-retirement when the HOME Van stopped doing drive-outs click. I was bereft, and wondered how I could find another work as wonderful as that. But I was surprised by how much time I gained – I realized I had been putting in at least a full day a week. So I puttered again, and postponed looking for other work, and then Arupa called and asked if I’d help with the food pantry one day a week. That is great fun – meeting people in small numbers and visiting with Arupa in between customers. And no eggs to boil or soup-makers to coordinate.
After long experience with retirement, and spells of thinking about it all, I offer the following advice to people entering retirement: Allow yourself to flounder for a while, and relish the emptiness. When you’re ready to fill it, minimize the gottas and oughtas, increase the wannas, and enjoy good health and loved ones as long as they remain.
*“Unsolicited advice is the junk mail of life.” – Leah Jackson
