Tag: anniversary

Posted in Memoir and Memory

Sixteen/Seventeen

Posted on by Queer Mama Rising

Content warning: This post is about my personal experience and history with non-suicidal self-harm. It’s not the first time I’ve mentioned this, but I believe it’s the first time I’ve got into this level of detail. If that’s not comfortable for you, for any reason, you don’t need to read on. It’s okay to skip this one.

Today is kind of a big deal, coming at the end of a year that was crowded with all sorts of joys and challenges. Today – a good friend’s birthday, fifteen years since my would-be wife kissed me – marks seventeen years since I self-harmed. 

Humblebrag? Nah, straight-up bragging. I’m proud as hell of myself. 

This is also the first year I remember self-harm (cutting, in my case) was acknowledged as an addiction. Prior to reading Bruce Perry and Oprah’s book, What Happened to You?, the only people who had ever called out the behavior as an addiction were two of my therapists. Every one of them was a fresh bandage on old wounds that I still feel; each one, a layer of validation I didn’t know I needed to hear. 

When I call cutting an addiction, I’m not comparing it to other addictions. I’m using the term as good ol’ Merriam-Webster defines it: a compulsive, chronic, physiological or psychological need for a habit-forming substance, behavior, or activity having harmful physical, psychological, or social effects and typically causing well-defined symptoms (such as anxiety, irritability, tremors, or nausea) upon withdrawal or abstinence. 

And yes, of course I’ve gone down the rabbit hole of the DSM-V and ICD-10/11 and found that self-injurious behaviors that are not precipitated by the use of a substance (one of the eleven listed, including caffeine, which seems awfully rude to me) are actually in a section called “Conditions for Further Study” of the DSM-V. They’re referred to as non-suicidal self-injury, or NSSI. And in my experience is a perfect fit. I didn’t cut because I was trying to die; I cut because it was the best way I knew to immediately feel like I didn’t want to die. 

Seventeen years ago, I would have hit every point in the criterion – I engaged in it more than 5 days a year, I expected it would provide relief and create a positive emotional state, I had negative thoughts prior to cutting and I thought about it often, it was definitely not socially sanctioned, it was something I did to manage things across settings (ie, work, school, relationships), and it didn’t occur in the contest of psychosis or substance use. 

I was not doing it for attention, as the therapists and psychiatrists in my teens told me and my parents. They had no idea of the extent. They only found out when I had a period of anxiety and happened to have a safety pin on me, and was absently scratching at my arm – not enough to do anything but turn the skin white. But a friend saw it and was concerned, and that’s how I ended up sitting in the psych hospital ER with my mom that afternoon. But it was something I had been doing – and hiding – since I was a child. 

I remember being around six or seven, playing in the woods behind my house. If there were brambles, I’d run through them. I would try to throw stones and branches up and get an arm or leg under them before they came down. I loved the bruises and cuts and scrapes; loved how it would sting when I got in the bath, or ache when I pressed on the bruises. I did this. I felt this. It’s just for me. Everything about it was for me – my choice when and where and how. I think it was my first cognizant experience of autonomy; well, that will be fun to unpack with my therapist in 2026. 

In order to keep it for myself, I knew I had to hide it – that, or explain it. I’m a terrible liar, so often, part of the build-up to cutting as I got older was, how can I believably explain this away if someone were to see it? Luckily, in a way, I figured out that I didn’t need to see the blood to feel the relief, to get that rush of endorphins that let my shoulders relax and my vision clear. I just needed to feel the pain from something sharp, and if there was something to keep the feeling going, all the better. I used a push-pin a lot – poking into the skin far enough for the sting and especially where I knew I’d get sweat in it later. No one was looking where I was using it – my scalp, behind my ears, the thin skin between my fingers and toes. When that wasn’t enough, I made sure to have a damn good explanation. Sometimes I’d blame it on sports – a branch I hadn’t dodged while running, someone hadn’t clipped their toenails in sparring. I blamed the cat once or twice, after she bit me and actually sent me to the ER with cellulitis in my hand – she’d scratch, too, and was an easy scapegoat. Shaving my legs was a good one, too. One of the last times I cut, shortly before I stopped, I said I’d slipped stepping out of the back of the ambulance, and managed to get a cut from the corrugated metal step. 

My palms are damp, and my shoulders are tight as I write this. Why this is what I need to write right now, at the end of December when there are so many things I could share, I don’t know. But I need to, I suppose. 

Seventeen years. There are some hard truths in those years – times when I came close, times when I thought I’d break the streak because of everything going on. Because, as readers of this blog know, in the past seventeen years, I’ve been through some shit. I’ve lost a parent, a child, a father-in-law, a damn good dog, and my wife. I’ve divorced, married, and been widowed. I’ve lost lovers and chosen family that I never thought I would. I’ve been officially diagnosed with ADHD, PTSD, anxiety, and many flavors of depression. I’ve had arteries in my neck dissect and put me at significant risk. I’ve left jobs and started new ones; I’ve given birth twice, and have the most amazing muppet of a six-year-old. I’ve written books and been rejected by agents. I’ve fought the IRS and gone to graduate school. I’ve lost my brakes while driving, and climbed (small) mountains. I’ve been living this one wild and precious life – not always to the fullest, but I’ve been doing it, and I’m going to keep doing it. 

Do I miss cutting? Yeah, I do. Do I think about it often? Yeah, almost daily. In the words of the Goo Goo Dolls, scars are souvenirs I’ll never lose; the past is never far. I don’t have many – I was careful; I never needed stitches, and I rarely cut in dangerous areas or deeply. On this aging body there are four – three thick white lines, and one set of three small thin ones. I can remember each one in vivid detail. The little set I blamed on the cat; and one of the big ones was the time I “slipped” out of the ambulance I was working in. The other two I wasn’t living in a situation where I was making excuses anymore, and had no one to hide them from. 

One of those scared me – I had cut way too deep. I felt, for the first time, that I wasn’t in control of the cutting. I know I had other marks on me then, too, but it was that one 2” gash that had me frightened enough that I ended up in ER. I didn’t need stitches, but spent five days in the locked psychiatric unit. I was discharged on a fistful of meds for depression that my ex encouraged me to stop taking because they weren’t helping, which lead to my first experience with venlafaxine withdrawal, landing me back in a different ER and needing sedation. My memory of that time is poor; and not especially traumatic, seeing as I remember little more than flashes. Enough that when I deliberately tapered off venlafaxine after spending six years taking it, my body remembered, and the taper had to be slowed and extended in order for my system to acclimate. PSA – If you ever want to stop taking venlafaxine, please do so with caution and medical provider support. 

But that experience didn’t make me stop. I continued for another 21 months. Why? I mean, to my thinking at the time, why not? I had found the boundary and knew exactly how far I could go. I had no reason to stop. Even when my [then] husband begged me or ordered me not to, I just went back to hiding it, easy-peasy. 

The final time came on December 28, 2008. We had just finished a call; I don’t remember the patient or the reason we were there, but there’s a clear moment I do remember. I was standing in the stall of a bathroom in the women’s locker room at Sisters of Charity Hospital in Buffalo New York, my boots on, the legs of my pants and long-johns shoved up to above my calf. Chest heaving, I looked at the Swiss army knife in my hand, the blood seeping from the fresh cut. I was in a bathroom stall, for fucks sake, in the middle of the goddamn night, cutting with an old knife that wasn’t likely super clean. I remember thinking, I don’t want gangrene. This would be a stupid way to lose my leg. And then, I don’t want to do this anymore.

I don’t know exactly what I did then; I’m sure I cleaned up and got back to work like nothing had happened, like every time before. Talked shit with my partner, got coffee from a 24-hour Tim Horton’s, and took another call. 

After that, the first few months were touch and go. I got so close – got to the point of pressing the blade to my skin, but never moved it. I tried other ways to trick my brain, recommendations from reddit and from therapists. I used a red marker where I wanted to cut; I snapped a rubber band against my wrist; I used the back of the knife to lightly indent where I wanted to cut. They all felt silly to me. At the time, having a knife in my pocket at all times was important, so I didn’t feel like that was a solution either. 

Eventually, it got easier. I indulged in the fantasy a lot – like, a LOT. Any time I wanted to cut, I let myself walk through it in my mind. And yeah, sometimes, I still do. There have been plenty of times where the only reason I don’t is I know that I would never hit this long of a streak again if I go back to it. 

The desire is still there, the urge always simmering. It is a craving, sometimes far stronger than others, but never gone. I don’t use the rubber band or the red marker anymore, and if I’m not at work, still often carry a pocketknife. I’m still active; I probably could avoid thorns a little more, but hey, hiking in New England carries its own risks. Plus, I’d rather stand in the midst of them so I could lift the kiddo over them. 

I’m able to identify and name the times when I’m feeling self-destructive, and I’ve gotten good at reaching out to people who can hear me say that and speak to those parts of me. In those moments, they remind me – just get through this night, and tomorrow you will get up and do it again. They’re right, and I do. 

Looking into the DSM characteristics and the published literature of it has been interesting, too. I didn’t know NSSI is considered a “behavior specialty” for borderline personality disorder – luckily, something I’ve never been diagnosed or considered for. Most of the studies done are in the context of BPD, and when they aren’t, it’s with veterans or adolescents. Yes, I was an adolescent during much of the time I self-injured; if I estimate the time, it was a period of 16 years that I was consciously trying to hurt myself, though the method evolved over time. 

Sixteen years of self-harm.

Seventeen years since the last time. 

Next year, my abstinence from self-harm will be eighteen, and I’m gonna buy myself a scratch ticket to celebrate. 

Thanks for reading; it’s not an easy topic, I know. It’s not easy for people to talk about, and therefore, it’s something I feel like I need to talk about. If one person out there feels less alone in their struggles because of what I write, then it’s worth it. 

Take care, and see you again in 2026. May the coming year be kind to you, and full of adventures and peace. 

Posted in Oscar

For All That I Carry

Posted on by Queer Mama Rising

There’s always music on in this house. Always sound. For now, for these morning hours on this day, it is as silent as it will ever be. Lucy is at a friend’s house, waking up soon at a sleepover before spending the day with the sitter. TV is off, there’s no music; every single device on silent. The dog sighs occasionally, the cars pass outside the window. It’s early enough on a Saturday that the general sound of two men having a conversation across the street carry over. I’ve opened the window, the first time in months; there is no breeze, and the shade is still deep. I’ll have to remember to close it soon and turn the AC back on. 

Seven years ago, time stopped somewhere on Tuesday morning, July 17th and didn’t start again until 6:34AM on Thursday, July 19th. The time between exists only as a liminal space, a time hung in the balance of disbelief. 

Today, at 6:30, I held the tiny urn to my chest, cold stone, until it was warmed through, and I felt the cool patches from where I had given it my warmth. I set it next to his crown, then struck a match; the tiny stick splintered, enough fibers holding together that the flame didn’t fall. I lit the candle, the one given to me by someone else who had similarly birthed stillness, and sat. The Mother watched over, her face serene in the candlelight.

I spoke to him for a minute, words so similar to what I tell Lucy – I love you so much. I’m so proud to be your mama. I love you, I love you – and more that I hope never to say for Lucy – I miss you every day. 

My body knows the time without checking my watch. My whispers trail off, and I let the minute of his birth pass in silence, acutely aware of the emptiness of my hands and my womb. They ache for the tiny life they once carried. 

Then I rise, and gently lift the baby blanket his Nana made, the only thing I have left that held him besides my own skin. I opened my phone and pulled up the video of Andrea Gibson reading their poem “Love Letter from the Afterlife” to their wife. I let it play, feeling the words echo in the empty parts of me. “One day you will understand. One day you will know why I read the poetry of your grief to those waiting to be born –“ 

The playback stopped. I looked over at my phone, laying on the bed. The video was still up, so I didn’t move, just closed my eyes. Waited.

Waited until my body sobbed, unbidden, and I reached for the phone. I picked it up without touching the screen, and – 

“ – and they are all the more excited.”  

The mortal death of Andrea Gibson hit me hard this week, in this space between Hawthorne and Oscar’s birthdays. They left right smack between them – 9, 14, 19. I can’t ignore the symmetry of those dates strung together. I haven’t written since their death, but I’ve felt it coming, the words building up behind a dam made from capitalism and parental responsibilities. Apparently now is when the dam breaks. 

Every year, I try to be gentler with myself in this between time. I liken it to the days between Christmas and New Year in workplace. There’s no deadlines, no major work being done – I know that’s not true for everyone, but in my world, the fiscal year is separate and tends to be when the rush of deadlines hits. And, in so many ways, it is a new year for me. Forget CE/BCE or BC/AD. Life is divided differently for me, and I think, for all those who have carried both life and death in their bodies. There is the Before Oscar time, and the After Oscar time. And so, when the clock strikes midnight tonight, The Year After Oscar 7 begins. I’ll return friends calls and texts, and get the weekly grocery shopping done. I will set the new year off with music in my soul-home state, and dance with my amazing, brilliant, feral child as it echoes off the lush green mountains. Hawthorne and I played that music for hours and hours for both of the little lives we shepherded. How fitting to find the concert there, ten miles from Lucy’s birthplace, on the first day of AO 7. It also feels a little strange to think that’s what I’ll be doing merely 36 hours from now, from these moment of heaviness that drag my fingers to the keyboard to catch everything that is pouring out of me faster than the pen can. The reams of paper I already go through. 

Seven years. I’ve written before how “should” is a four-letter word. He should be seven; he should be starting second grade a few days before Lucy has her first day of kindergarten. We should be shopping in West Lebanon for new clothes for them to start school in our tiny town of Stockbridge, Vermont. Should sucks. 

Lately I have been feeling called to lean into my witchy aspects more. I started keeping my tarot cards closer, and being less prescriptive with my own self on when I use them. I’ve been reading more, and while I roll my eyes at the algorithms, enjoyed the content that’s crossed my feeds. I’ve been listening to my horoscope from an astrologer and witch I feel a connection to, and have finally done my star chart. But I find myself wondering, this year, about the symbolism and signs around Oscar. So, I did his star chart – and downloaded the full explanatory report, because again, I’m just learning. He’s a Cancer sun, like his Papa, that I knew; also Libra moon and Leo rising. 

Today, he would be seven years old. Today, grief weighs seven pounds and one ounce, and is the heaviest it ever is. I’ve tried to explore numerology before to no avail, and today is no different. I feel no connection to it; maybe I don’t understand it enough, but today does not feel like the day to pursue it, either. 

Today is a day to give myself the space to feel what needs to be felt, just like I did on Hawthorne’s birthday last week. That day I walked over 18,000 steps on the beach and on a hike at the (poorly named) World’s End park, and I found what I needed. Today I have some options after writing – writing is compulsory, after all – and whatever feels good, I’ll follow. Last week my therapist asked what containers I have for all this grief; how do I hold it? And really, the containers are the same as they have always been. Writing, and natural spaces where the air isn’t crowded with voices.

So if you see me today, just give me a wave. Leave a message at the tone, drop me a text or a DM, and just know that I’ll get back to you in the new year. 

Posted in Beliefs and Practices

Muted Rainbows Demand More Sun

Posted on by Queer Mama Rising

Just a few months ago, in one of my many notebooks, I scribbled down that I couldn’t wait to welcome back June me. Now that it’s here, it’s almost disappointing; I feel far more subdued, far more anxious. I feel the things I associate with November and winter, not my favorite time of the year. 

I love summer and Pride and hot weather and sunshine. I love the thick, lush canopy of leaves that erupt from every stick that survived the ice and wind of the winter. I love the extra hours of sunlight – not so much the fights that come from trying to put my kid to bed before it’s dark – but the extra time that I take, that I am granted by the natural world. The longing for my home in the mountains doesn’t slice quite as hard when I can raise my eyes from typing and see a spectrum of broad-leaf trees, and pines that seem to relax because their friends and neighbors are visiting again. 

But this year, June dawns grayer and cooler than expected. Whereas the turn of the calendar always filled me with life and vibrancy, this time I find myself struggling with motivation and a level of anxiety that is usually reserved for fall temperatures. 

Pride season always fills me with hope and gratitude; this year, those burgeoning emotions war with trepidation and a near-existential dread. It feels like more than I have the reserves for after this past winter and cool, rainy spring. 

Changes come; patterns emerge, change, revert, change again. 

As we approach the solstice, I find myself seeking solitude. I am reflecting, drawn to digging into my own shadows. The tumult of the past half-year have found me here, sitting in the same physical place as Mabon. So much the same as then, and I feel so very different. 

I am drawing back, recommitting to myself right now; my body, my home, my kid, my writing. The investments of my time and energy, my blood, sweat, and tears; none of it is without deep thought and intention. 

I am indulging – no, not indulging, because that makes me feel as if it’s something I don’t deserve or need – I am embracing where my heart and soul are leading me. 

I’m no longer waiting for perfect moments and clean spaces – if I feel called to read my tarot, I pull out my cards. 

I’m no longer waiting until the house is clean to sit and write. 

I’m no longer waiting until the weather is nice if I want to go outside. 

I’m not waiting until the kid falls asleep to take care of myself.

I’m not waiting for someone to come over and watch a particular show or movie (though, let’s be honest, how much do I actually watch). 

I’m not waiting for things to be offered. If I want it and I have the energy, I take it. 

I’m tired of feeling like “deserve” is a word that doesn’t apply to me, that never has. That I don’t have intrinsic worth, just by being alive and here. I’m tired of feeling like I don’t deserve; I’m tired of constantly feeling like I have to earn, to strive, to compete. 

I recently bought a t-shirt from a writing conference I am attending that says “Writing is my therapy,” and as I sit here, words flowing from my fingers, I can feel my soul working through some sticky shit. 

I’m tired. I’m grieving. I’m frustrated. I’m despairing and frightened. 

I’m angry. 

I thought I knew anger well. She is but one of my familiars, after all. But there are times when she surprises me. She does not take my hand and smile gently, pointing out the flight of a bluebird. No. She grabs my face in her hands, forces me to look at her head-on, then turns my head to shove my face in what’s been waiting for me to see. 

Oh. 

Oh. 

Thank you, I breathe. 

She draws a finger down my spine, reminding me that she is aware of the steel in it, even when I forget. 

So I sit here, writing, feeling, one eye on the clock. Today is a big day. 

It is Saturday, one week from Midsummer. It is Boston’s Pride for the People. It is No Kings Day. It is my eleventh wedding anniversary. 

I have been turning to… well, “faith” would be the easiest way to phrase it, but that feels jarring and uncomfortable. “Spirituality” doesn’t feel quite right, either, but not as icky. “Craft” still means writing. Eh, fuck it. 

I’ve been turning to my witchy shit a lot more lately. I shove stuff out of the way on the couch, or the blankets off the bed to spread out my cards. If the dog is asleep and I can get some space from the child, I still take the floor, or even better (and of course, far rarer) outside. I don’t spend (read: waste) a lot of time searching for the perfect spread to lay out, the questions that fit. I’m following my natural curiosity and determining what it is I need, and find that the cards appreciate that a hell of a lot more.

In almost all my spreads these past few weeks, in every deck, I keep pulling the Wheel of Fortune. This card indicates the nonstop movement of life, change and cycles, that what comes will also pass. [I remember someone I love dearly pulled the Tower for months, and I miss them acutely.] I’ve also repeatedly pulled the eight of pentacles (indicating hard work pays off, effort creates progress), the nine of wands (ready and prepared for a fight), the ten of swords (the pain is real, but the storm is passing), and the Fool (adventurous, experimental, possibilities). Again, these cards come up to me through three different decks, at completely different times, and after lots of shuffling. 

When I did my yearly pull for my birthday (which I actually did on May 1, Beltane) I rejected the first reading. It was full of angst and anxiety; also my most intense deck, so I tried with one that I feel is better for my creativity. And still, though I accepted it, there was a lot of uncertainty in messages; a lack of clarity in my life, clearly indicated by the cards. 

I keep thinking about that. These days feel so uncertain, so fraught. I’ve removed social media from my phone, and I feel better about that most days, but also know that I’m sticking my head in the sand. Whenever I pull it out and get a glimpse of what’s going on, all I can think of is “the fascism, boss!” 

So… now what?

Great, I know that I’m angry. I know that the world is constantly moving. I know that I deserve, not riches or success, but to live as myself, love myself, without compromise or apology. 

And so, I’ve signed on with a writing coach for six months. I booked a writing retreat and I’m attending a virtual conference. I’m clearing my mind before I get to work, and I’m taking messy action. I’m leaning into my witchy shit. I’m planting gardens and my own roots. I am investing in myself. 

I am afraid (I am doing it anyway).

I am creating (I am protesting).

I am parenting (I am resisting).

I am loving (I am rioting).

Here’s to Pride, not just today but always.

Here’s to No Kings, not just today but always. 

Here’s to La Vie Boheme, reminding us that “the opposite of war isn’t peace, it’s creation!”

June may have dawned gray, but I vow that I will keep reaching until I can pull the brilliant sunlight out of the clouds with my bare hands. 

And so it is. 

Posted in Hawthorne

Entry to the Memory Museum of the Chaos Muppet

Posted on by Queer Mama Rising

It’s been four years since they died, because time is both nonsense and inescapable.

Four years. The memories come in italics now; softer around the edges, less of a bloodied scalpel excising moments to peer at under the microscope, watching the grief-heavy wounds lay open. They weave in and out of ordinary moments like sutures stitching past to present; I rarely flinch at the piercing anymore. The big days, though  – the anniversaries, the birthdays – those still make the scars throb in remembrance.

Four years since I was held in their strong arms, since I whispered I loved them and kissed their forehead. Four years since I rubbed my fingers over their baby duck hair, newly buzzed; four years since they could laugh with delight. I think of all that laughter silenced, all those stories that died with them. They are by no means the origin story of my own writing, but on my dark days, I am reminded of all the stories I carry – Hawthorne’s and Oscar’s and my parents and father-in-law – that may also, one day, die unwritten. 

Recently I’ve been frustrated with writing, having trouble with the final edits and the publishing aspect of finishing my current book. Someone close to me, unafraid to ask hard questions in hard moments, reminded me that I have Hawthorne’s stories to finish, too – and my own. The combined taste of frustration and “I love you” is familiar, one we share between us over Hawthorne, who introduced us. I’m forever grateful. 

And so, I woke up this morning to write, the still-full moon hanging in my window. It is Mabon, when the days and nights are cleaved in two, a changing of the seasons that heralds the rise of the Holly King. There was a partial lunar eclipse last night, and I felt both the weight of memory and the breeze of Hawthorne’s laughter as I watched the little bite disappear. Hawthorne had been adamant about charging our crystals during a lunar eclipse just before their birthday in their last summer, and so we laid them out on the windowsill at the top of the stairs. On nights like that, with the moon full and glowing, we spoke smugly of the lack of light from streetlamps and local businesses. We reveled in the quiet and dark of our mountain, scoffing at our days in the city, so clearly behind us now. We were never leaving this place where we didn’t have to play “were those gunshots or fireworks?” during the summer (they were gunshots) and there were no neon or LED lights to interfere with the moon. 

When the pain from their last surgery didn’t fade, and they struggled to hold on to hope, they cursed themselves for trying to charge the crystals during an eclipse and vowed to never do that again. I’ve kept that vow for them, though mostly unintentionally.

I often wonder if Hawthorne had lived, and been somehow left unchecked, if they would have become a hoarder. They were a collector, a maximalist, someone who could fill an empty space in haphazard form and sit happily in the chaos (until they needed to find their inhaler). When we cleaned, I could hand them a shoebox or a junk drawer full of random, stuffed-in things, and that would keep them occupied for the three hours it took me to clear out six totes old clothes and switch the summer and winter wardrobes. They’d tell me stories that the items represented, or reminded them of, or had absolutely no discernible connection to anyone but themselves – and only in that moment. The thread between the item and stories sometimes never revealed itself again.

I’ll admit it took years for me to get comfortable with this dichotomy of tidying. I know I look back with far more fondness than I felt most of the time. I would be able to empty boxes (for a while, it felt like we were always moving to a new place) and find new homes for things I wasn’t allowed to throw away at a comparatively ridiculous rate while they sprawled on the bed, a box of treasures spread before them. This would happen, too, when we were just tidying the house. One day I removed a small bowl (meant for food) from the windowsill to cries of “no, don’t, I was saving that!” only to look in it and see an empty stem of grapes, a small rock, a guitar pick, and some pistachio shells.

“Why, muppet?” I asked, showing them the bowl. 

They peered in and shrugged, their signature sound for “I don’t know” sitting in the air between us until their peal of laughter as they looked up and caught my eye. I threw the contents into the trash bag, squealing “Noooo! Grapey! Rocky! Shelly!” as they laughed harder, tears gathering in their eyes. “P-p-p-picky! Not Picky!” By this time, they were on the floor giggling uncontrollably, braced against the chair they’d been sitting in. I shook my head and put the dish in the sink. 

I miss their laugh. I miss their stories, and their music. 

Dawn is breaking now, the tallest trees burning with color as pink clouds streak slowly across the sky. Most of the leaves are still deeply green here, but I remember that morning in Vermont. The world was turning gold and amber around us, the remaining greens poised to flame into vibrant yellows and reds. The sun sparkled on the dewy grass, the not-quite frost sliding off at the first rays of light. The sky was sharp and blue, horse-tail clouds distant and starkly white. By the time I stepped outside, there were no other cars in the driveway, those of the first responders pulled over on the side of the road instead. Lucy sat in her stroller, entertaining the half-circle of volunteer firefighters who watched her. The men stood far enough away to be able to claim “not it” for a dirty diaper, and close enough that they would get anything she dropped. She babbled and laughed, and that moment crystallized in my mind. 

Recently I (finally) cleaned out the toolboxes. I had been meaning to for years, just one of those projects that is always somewhere in the back of my mind (untangling the clump of broken necklaces, hanging up my hats, scrubbing the walls along the stairs where I spilled coffee about knee-height). I put my music on and emptied it, wrench by hammer by screwdriver. I grouped them, then gathered the random hardware – the screws and loose zip ties and washers to who-knows-what. When that was done, I looked back inside; what was left behind could be read like tea leaves. 

Hawthorne would have had a field day about this collection here. It would have resulted in hours of stories and laughter, and too many beers. It’s fascinating to me how a handful of random shit could representatively encapsulate them, or at least, the version of them they brought to a shared space with hammers and drill bits. I swear I could create a miniature museum dedicated to my wife, and everything pictured here would be in it, tokens from seasons and phases of their life. They would remind me where the rosary came from that they couldn’t just throw away. They’d talk about JPUSA, and the beautiful girl they fell in love with before being shunned. We would remember EMS stories together, the good and the bad, and the silly flogger they made with a nasal cannula, gloves, and medical tape. They would swim the shark (box cutter) through the air and make up a little song, if Baby Shark hadn’t come out yet. They’d call Ella over, all high-pitched and hysterical, and explain to her that she could not eat this old-ass piece of dog food, but it was OK, they’d go get her a treat (ella had been sleeping until this point). They’d defend keeping a stray match, and they’d want to leave the half-finished toolbox and take the weight and go fishing (we didn’t use weights).  They would ask the shark (again, box cutter) to chomp open the Altoids tin, because they couldn’t remember if it was an emergency fishing kit or emergency fire starter kit; clearly it had to be one or the other, as indicated by the stray match and fishing weight. At some point they would have dropped the (BOX CUTTER) and screamed “AH! SWIM AWAY! I DROPPED THE SHARK!” 

Elsewhere in the house, I still have the drivers’ licenses of two other people that were not me or Hawthorne. There are countless keys and pieces of bike locks that don’t go together. There are lists and half-filled notebooks with turtles and absolutely no concept of how to chemically write H2O.

In which strand of  the thread did they live? I want to find the one where Hawthorne woke up without the blinding pain, without the need for 90-proof medicine in plastic handles. I want the one where we went to couple’s therapy and figured out shit out, and bought a place in the mountains to raise our feral child and sheep and chickens. I want the one where I finally got them on a plane, where we went fishing in Alaska, where we vacationed once in Trinidad. I want the one where they never fell down the stairs, where the medical system believed them and treated them appropriately, where they didn’t lose their wedding ring in the river. 

I want the one where our memories come back in bold, in large font, in a Spread Eagle Feminist shirt and fist raised. I want the mornings of serving them coffee and first breakfast while they played guitar, eager for the People’s Jam and Heather’s bagels. 

I want them to know their kid loves fresh dill on salmon and barely eats bread. I want them to know the laughter of their kid is just as raucous and infectious as theirs, but with less albuterol and more lung power. I want these things that will never happen. 

The ink has long since faded from the receipts in their wallet, the thin paper blank and smooth. There are still moments, hours, days that I am angry, days where grief strips me raw so I can do no more than scream at the sea. And it’s okay. I’m not fighting them or trying to get rid of them. They come, and they go. 

I’ll take the memories I get and keep them, become the hoarder of their tokens and their left-behinds. I’ll tell their stories, and let their old guitar be played. I have kept the notes and given away the books. I’ve bundled the zip ties and let go of duplicate tools. I’ve kept the pictures and trashed the hat box. I am down to a single box of nostalgia clothes, tucked away in the closet, and I wear their socks in the winter. I might hoard these moments, but I will continue to curate the collection, and let go what no longer brings forward the immeasurable love that we shared. 

And fuck knows I’ll be finding these in random places until the day I die.

Posted in Hawthorne

No Less Magic Than Before

Posted on by Queer Mama Rising

It has been three years.

I sit here this morning, heart heavy but failing to weigh me down. I may find myself sinking later, pressing down to the floor, our songs playing and the curtains pulled. For now, I’m following what feels good, what feels fitting; and so this finds me at my favorite local café with a hot mocha, coffee cake, and classical music to cover the soft sounds of the other patrons studying. I came to write, and through that, hope to process the past weekend in a way I couldn’t while I was in it.

It’s been so long since I have written here in this space, and the years have been so full of both planned breaks and impromptu hiatus, I almost don’t remember what I’ve written. I’m not even sure I know where to start. But Sunday morning found me sitting there in the mountains that I called mine for nearly six years, and I felt more at peace and at home than I have in a long time. 

It was almost the anniversary: almost three years to the day since Hawthorne died, and this stopped feeling like home. At least, I thought it did. The immediate loss and grief, the overwhelming urge to run away is not forgotten. Neither, though, was the slide of my shoulder blades down my back as the mountains came into view on I-89. The folds in the rolling fabric of trees that covered them, growing shabby as summer so quickly faded, blanketed me with warm welcome. 

I was visiting with dear friends, a trip that got postponed from a summer of illness followed by Covid last year. Lucy was there, of course, and nearly twice as tall as when we left. The magic within her is likewise sparked by the return. She’s asked to watch TV a couple times but is mostly content to play with one of us, read her books, and plow through the donuts she asks for. Plus, I’ve told her that the TV isn’t working, just like every AirBnB we have stayed in. An unfortunate coincidence, should she ever call me on it (and one day, she will — she’s not yet four, and has already asked if it is plugged in, needs to charge, or needs new batteries).

I’ve been here twice more since the people’s jam for Hawthorne the July following their death, which was the most fitting celebration of their life I could have ever hoped for. The first was earlier this year, a random rainy Saturday in June where I let the tires point where they may, and stumbled upon a local author/book fair in the center of Woodstock. Lucy and I got maple creemees, and we took the dog and played at the river in the rain, driving all the way home stripped and wrapped in blankets with the heat on. Then just last month, another branch of my village spent two nights here, soaking in the music and the mountains. We stayed in Killington, and as the stars prick through the dark sky, I felt at home.

Those trips were lovely and I’m so glad I went both times, but now, I don’t ever want to leave.

Overnight the mountains started to dapple with color; green, still, with tints of yellow and ochre. The wind rustled leaves gone dry at the edges as the first showers of foliage began to fall. Every now and then a beech nut clanged off the metal roof above me on the covered porch, making me jump in the relative silence of the forest.

The whole weekend was magical. Friday morning, I took Lucy home, and brought our friends to see the river and the road we had called ours for almost six years. I took the backroad, turned onto the dirt road that warned against using GPS in that area. I parked just over the bridge and we walked the same path I had walked for so long, the same run that I’d taken with Lucy asleep in the stroller before the world changed under our feet. But this road was the same. The house, no longer ours, stood the same; there was evidence of updated utilities and the skeleton of a structure where the woodpile had been, likely for the same purpose. The grass had been recently mowed, and the meadow looked more natural than ever. 

The streams that tumbled down the mountain looked the same, and the track of the river hadn’t changed much. It sounded like home in the water, and the air tasted of it as it crossed my lips. Lucy dragged a stick around in the dirt, running to my outstretched hand as cars announced themselves far enough away for her to be safe running ahead. We walked up to my Mother tree, standing tall and proud as ever. I leaned forward and placed my hand along her bark, and felt the warm beat of recognition. 

Later that day, we had a picnic in the cemetery where Hawthorne and I would walk. We all trekked up the hill, leaving the blanket (and most of Lucy’s lunch) at the bottom. I spread myself over the thick green moss and let myself sink, sink, gentle and slow. I tried to teach Lucy how to respectfully explore the graves, with gentle hands and careful feet. Most of it went unheeded, and she log-rolled away from us down the hill, laughing wildly, whenever possible. 

We journeyed throughout the day, my friends exceedingly patient with multiple stops where I’d see friends and folks I hadn’t spoken with in two or three years. I continued to be shocked and humbled by how many people recognized me, and more, recognized Lucy as the little tiny potato that Hawthorne and I had so welcomed and wanted to share, only to be mostly denied by the onset of Covid.

We did all the beautiful, mundane things that made up our lives in Vermont – went to the coffee shop and bookstore, got sandwiches at the local general store, visited the library, and shopped at the little grocery store. I bought eggs and tomatoes for dinner at the farmer’s market, and sat in clean air on green grass while Lucy played and danced. I ate a whole pint of small tomatoes, the aromatic scent of their stems filling my head with memories of tilling, digging, and planting. 

It was Saturday night that hangs on a string around my neck and pressed to my heart, never to be lost. We were at the Wild Fern, a pizza café that defies simple explanation. It is the heart of the magic of that corner of the world, and is fed by the rivers and the trees all around it. I had planned for this to be as beautiful as it could be, and was given more than I thought possible. I had taken some edibles a couple hours before the show, and they kicked in just in time for the ride to the Fern. Once there, once inside, I was caught between two worlds. The front view – a 180-degree semicircle that bisected my body along the coronal plane – was the present, the now, the moment. Pressed up against that, all behind me, it was a Thursday night in the late winter, with Lucy a tiny bundle being passed from person to person, the cold night outside no match for the warmth of the kitchen and the music inside. I existed there, in that liminal space between, fully present in both. If I turned quick enough, I had a flash of that night before it slipped back behind me out of view. I could see the lights and the darkness outside, I could feel Hawthorne’s hands on the small of my back or my hips. It was as real as the Saturday night I faced.

This feeling stayed with me for hours, and I sank into the comfort of it, of being deeply aware of its transience, and soaking in every moment I had. On the stage outside was Rick Redington and Tuff Luv. With three fire pits glowing and Lucy dancing for hours, the band played. Bass, guitar, and drums all seamlessly blended to evoke emotions that swirled along with the fire smoke and prompted Lucy to yell, “rock and roll!” half a million times as she played air guitar and punched her fists in the air. 

The music paused for a bit, as Rick introduced the next song and from the shadows pulled out a different guitar. It was unusual; small, double-necked, and heartbreakingly familiar.

Hawthorne had found this old guitar, a bit busted and unstrung, at the local dump on a Saturday morning that we were set to return to Buffalo for a visit. They didn’t know anything about it other that it clearly needed to come home with us, as every cast off guitar they’d found before had. 

But this one was different (and more, I remember writing about it here). We brought it to our local luthier (because of course, hidden in the Vermont mountains we have an incredible luthier), who took wonderful care and brought the guitar back to life. It turns out it was a custom build, a small harp guitar, most likely from the late 1800s. One neck was strung like a guitar with a fretboard, and the other side reminded me more of a viola or cello. I wasn’t the expert, that’s for sure, but Hawthorne held that guitar with the highest reverence. 

When they passed, they left thirteen guitars that I suddenly had to figure out what to do with. I kept a few that I knew were intended for very specific people, and the rest went to Rick, as I knew Hawthorne would have approved. That was a bond between musicians, and the harp guitar was a natural fit.

So there, sitting around the fire with our daughter dancing, Rick and I told the story of the guitar, before he played. I’d heard him play the song before, but not like this. Not holding a piece of Hawthorne so close that I could hear them in every note. Not with the stars shining down on me and Lucy. My tears fell fast and hot, soaking into the ground as my breath sobbed out. My friend held on and let me lean even as she cried herself. 

For weeks, our closest chosen family has been telling me the ways they’re feeling Hawthorne and experiencing their presence, especially with the advent of fall and the time spent in Vermont. It’s been hard to respond over the feelings of anger and jealousy that I have not felt them. 

Sitting there, listening to the harp guitar sing under Rick’s skilled fingers and vocals, I felt Hawthorne’s embrace. My face pressed against the night sky, against their chest, I wept out the pain and sorrow of the years prior – the words unsaid, the “I love yous” and “where are you for this?” unanswered. My soul cried out and was soothed; my heart broken and gently held. I was wrapped with the long-ago night of music and family and Hawthorne and magic against my back, and the current moment of unimaginable community and love and love and love.

The night continued on after that, and the nights began to blur together. Lucy fell asleep in friends arms with the stage lights shining and bass line thumping, just as before. I had one of Hawthorne’s flannels to keep me warm, and we stayed until the crickets took over for the band and it was the music of the night that echoed off the mountains. 

It’s daylight now, and I’m nearly two hundred miles away. It was – is – hard to come back. I look up from the computer now and then to the café around me, half expecting the music to be wafting through the trees that surround me as I feel myself back in my forest. Everyone seems blurry and little unreal, as if the café has been the image imposed over the forest and not the other way around. The image fades when I remember to remove my reading glasses, so I don’t. Let me be there, in that other world, with the industrious squirrels under the music of the fairies. 

There is a melancholy in me, sorrow that has softened with time and carries gentle waves of yearning – to have Hawthorne back, to feel the warmth of their love, to return home to our mountains and their arms. And while those things will never be realized, I can easily trade any windswept moors to wander despondent for the cool forests and running rivers of Vermont. 

I will make my way back there. To visit, and one day, to stay. To return to a place that gave me so many memories, so much community, and family and music and love. That time isn’t here yet – I’m still in that space where I need the distance as much as I need to know it is there. I will get there; after all, I am forever a child of the woods.

Posted in Beliefs and Practices

Dia de los Angelitos

Posted on by Queer Mama Rising

We kept the celebration small this year. The kitchen table was pulled out, the basket of condiments banished to the pantry for tonight. There were 6 place settings crowded around the square table. I pulled the three chairs I owned in around in and added the stepstool; the kiddo would get a kick out of that. Lucy had her high chair, and I was happy to stand. Truth be told I was too excited to sit. 

We set the table together, with silverware clattering on plates, as “Lucy Danger” and “gentle” don’t always go together. The sun had set already, and the sky was vaguely purple with the cloud cover and light pollution from the city refracted inside it. I fiddled with the vases of bright orange carnations, and bit my lip as I worried that they were not marigolds.

Suddenly, there was a rush of warmth and the voices of our beloved guests poured into the room. Lucy was startled and ran to grab my leg a moment, but found herself swept up in hugs.

Oh, but they looked wonderful. They’d all dressed up for the occasion. Stan, in his suit from the church picture that his wife had taken, shit, must be ten years ago now; Clark, a fresh flannel button down and pressed slacks, with his hat and walking stick and sunglasses. Hawthorne, dapper as could be in a lavender button down, jeans, vest, bow tie, and pocket chain. And Oscar, my sweet boy, in a checkered Oxford shirt and suspenders on his jeans.

He’s gotten so tall, a full head taller than his sister, who was looking at him with wide eyes from her perch up on Clark’s shoulders. He’d be four now; he sure seemed like it. Lucy kicked her legs and demanded “down, down please!” Clark lifted her off his shoulders and put her down, and I watched my children, my babies, run into the other room to play. Their grandfather went with them, a smile on his face that I could tell reached his eyes, even with the sunglasses.

I turned from hugging Stan, who followed in to watch his grandkids play, and found myself back in my spot, head under Hawthorne’s chin, their arms wrapped right around me. We fit perfectly together there, and always had. I breathed them in; sandalwood and calendula, and the smell of their skin that I remembered so well. I wanted to pause time, to feel those arms hold me like no one else could, to lay my head on their chest where it fit so naturally. The bossa nova station I had playing on my computer slid toward something slower, wrapping around us as if we needed help holding on to each other. We swayed in place a moment, then Hawthorne tugged my hand. I spun away and back in, laughing into their eyes. We danced in the kitchen like we had so many times before. 

The kids ran in, demanding food, followed by the men. Hawthorne gave me a last squeeze and let go, reaching to pick up Lucy as I turned to the stove. 

“Hey, baby. Remember me?” 

Lucy  nodded. “You Papa,” she said, pointing. My eyes stung, and I closed them against the wave of emotion. She was always to ask to look at pictures, and didn’t always recognize Hawthorne. “That my Mama,” she continued, the same way she told her friends at school every time I came to pick her up. “Who that?” 

“That’s your brother Oscar,” Hawthorne told her. 

She gasped. “My picture!” She strained to get away, and since neither of us knew what she was talking about, they set her down. She ran into her room. “Mama, my picture!”

We all followed her in, Oscar pushing through legs to get to the front to see. Hawthorne gripped my shoulder and tears filled my eyes.

She was pointing to a painting given to us by our beautiful and talented friends when we had been pregnant with Lucy. A branch of a birch tree against a truly Oscar blue sky – she had color matched it to pictures we posted of our Oscar sky. On the branch was a birds nest made of twigs. Inside the nest was a gold crown, and half of a perfect egg. Well, when it had been given to us, it was the shell of the egg, glued on like the twigs and the crown; the shell had been broken during the move. Lucy asked about it often, asked why it was broken. I always told her it was because she had hatched, and the crown was for her brother Oscar. He left it here when he went to the stars, I would tell her. 

Lucy climbed up on her bed, turned and gestured to Oscar. “C’mere,” she told him. “My picture. My egg broken, I hatch. You has a crown! My picture!”

Stan clapped his hand on my other shoulder. “Ya done good, kid,” he said as he turned and walked out. He wasn’t much one for displays of emotion, his own or that of others’. Clark echoed the sentiment and action. “Well done,” he nodded, before stepping out. The kids began chattering about the books on Lucy’s shelf, and we watched our babies play. 

The timer beeped, and I ran back to the kitchen. It wasn’t a traditional dinner in any sense of the word. We had chicken nachos with Chiavetta’s, shepherd’s pie, shrimp cocktail, cereal with milk, and ice cream. We sat and ate the smorgasbord happily, passing things around the packed little table, then one of the grandfathers would turn easily in their chair to place the dish on the counter. Oscar got a kick out of sitting on the top of the backwards stepstool. Wine flowed and beer foamed, raised in toast, and enjoyed without any negative anticipation. All were well here. 

After dinner was finished, I pulled out a cake I had hidden in my bedroom, away from little fingers, frosted with bright orange flowers. I lit the candle and brought it out carefully. Hawthorne, Clark, and Stan joined in singing Happy Birthday to Lucy, and she clapped along in her Papa’s lap. Between us all, we managed to eat half the cake, and polish off a tub of ice cream with it.

Despite the sugar rush, Lucy and Oscar were both beginning to droop after the meal. We moved to the living room, where there was just enough space to have Stan and Clark each take a comfy seat in a high-backed chair known for cradling its occupants. Hawthorne and I snuggled up on the couch with the kids. I took our son into my lap, and Hawthorne held our daughter. We sat and talked, sharing family stories we never had a chance to, as well as old favorites. I caught them up on the highlights of the year. They had felt some disturbance through the veil, more of the unpleasant things that I tried to lighten in the retelling. I didn’t want to dwell on the hardships and illnesses, the tears and sleepless nights. I wanted this bright, golden memory. 

We continued to talk as the candles burned low, and the grandfathers each drifted off to sleep. I held Hawthorne’s hand over the back of the couch, surrounding our sleeping babies. I was having trouble keeping my eyes open any longer, but I didn’t want to let go. Hawthorne laughed and my head came up; I’d fallen asleep and kept talking, nonsensical ramblings. I shrugged and smiled. It’s not like it was the first time that had happened. I laid my head in their hand as they murmured to me, all the little things we used to say in bed together, before they rolled over and I’d curl around them to finally fall asleep. A tear slipped from my eye – I knew they would be gone when I awoke, my lap back to being space for only Lucy, my couch and house otherwise empty. The dog would wander around, confused as to where her family went. I didn’t know how Lucy would respond. Another tear fell, and Hawthorne wiped it away with their thumb. 

The last thing I heard was them telling me they loved me, with the weight of Oscar back in my arms, before the candles faded out and I drifted off to sleep.

I hadn’t needed the marigolds after all.

Posted in Uncategorized

Reluctant Time Travel

Posted on by Queer Mama Rising

I’m back.

Back where I don’t want to belong, or at least, I don’t want to belong. Yet I find myself here, again and again. 

Back in that cool fall room, the morning mist still rising from the recently shaded lawn. Even as the leaves fell, the shadows deepened, and the buzz of insects was slower to chorus. 

Not from exertion, but from having it stolen, I stand out of breath at the doorway. My wife lays in bed, not noticing my approach. The scene glitches, and then they lay on the floor, pale and cool, wearing only red plaid boxers and top surgery scars. We had joked so often about the near-translucent whiteness of their pale skin; now it was the brightest color in the room. 

I don’t want to belong here. I don’t want to be here. 

I don’t want to find myself here, over and over, when I am running down the sidewalk, waking up from a dream, startled by an unexpected hand on my shoulder; this is where I wake. Thanks, I hate it. 

I hate that the vision I have of the love of my life is, most often, their death.

Sometimes, the doorway is as far as I get. I stand there, frozen in time, staring, unable to move.

Sometimes I feel the bones in their chest break under my hands. 

Sometimes I am pacing in another room, begging for someone to come while the first responders push breath and electricity into someone who doesn’t need those things anymore.

Sometimes I walk out the front door, dazed, and see the volunteer firefighters in a social distance half-circle around Lucy in her stroller, too small to be strapped in that way. 

I have never been in time. 

I have never had a do-over; never got there early enough, never yelled loudly enough for them to hear, never threatened – then followed through – on calling 911 if they didn’t answer. 

They never answered. 

Sometimes, in the bright sunrises over the duplex homes on our street, I’ll remember the last time I saw them alive. The soft moments just after dawn when I had tucked them in after a bath when they’d been unable to sleep, nuzzled the recently buzzed baby duck hair, and told them I loved them. Get some good sleepies, I said, and slipped out the door while they were still asleep.

What if I hadn’t? What if I had stayed while they’d slept?

For years, I have prized my early-rising morning time. My body has never liked sleeping in. And now, that morning especially, I wanted to write. I had just started really writing again – just the week before, I had posted for public accountability that this blog would be updated every two weeks. I figured the off-weekends would be the best time for actually writing, so I was at my desk with full-octane coffee. I was no longer pumping breastmilk for the baby, so when she woke up, I’d changed and fed her, and settled in her swing next to my desk for her first morning nap. I was tapping away at the keyboard – like mice tap-dancing, according to Hawthorne – when the sound of their snoring coming through the floorboards changed. I listened, and didn’t like how long it took the next one to sound out. 

Sometimes I go back to walking up the steps, and think I remember thinking about getting the phone, unlocking the door. But I didn’t then, and like I said, I haven’t had any do-overs. 

I remember the turn of the stairs, my thick socks cushioning my steps down the hall. I couldn’t hear the creak of the swing or the tinkly music, but knew I’d hear Lucy if she cried. Then I’m back at the doorway. 

I don’t know if it was grief or parenting that made me realize what a bullshit construct time really is. The two have been intertwined for me since July 19, 2018. Some days, I look at their picture and wonder where they’ve disappeared to, since the house isn’t that big. Some days their life seems like it was too long ago to count in anything but eons. 

It’s been two years since I first walked into our bedroom and found my wife, too pale and still for this world. It’s been nearly that long since I physically stood in that bedroom. It’s been about three hours since I was last there. 

This is not what I thought time travel would be like. I mean I suppose I should have expected some pain, what with the rearranging of atoms across the time-space continuum, but this keen slicing of paper-thin sheets of my heart is a little much. The wail of grief is well imprisoned, an iron mask that no one really wants to acknowledge; if they did, they’d have to face their own certain mortality, and so many people just aren’t ready to think about that. Who is? Only those who have been given no choice, their brush with it close enough to feel her breath. 

Have you felt it? 

I live with that breath inside me, entwined in me. It has the most intimate knowledge of my lungs, my arteries and veins. I have carried life in my womb, and in my arms. I have carried death in both as well. Sometimes I feel she walks alongside me, and the touch of her hand to my shoulder is the trigger that sends me back across time and land to arrive, again, at the open bedroom doorway. I am the time traveler, but it is at her whim. 

I want to belong at home, here at my desk, tap-tap-tapping on the keyboard like mice in the walls. I want to belong with the scent of farmer’s bouquets, pungent and spicy as the world turns toward autumn. I want to belong where the laughter of my daughter is, and her increasingly clear speech.

But I don’t; at least, not only there. 

Time passes when I’m in the bedroom doorway. It starts out bright, the early morning September sun streaming through the bathroom windows and onto the floor just where I stand. It moves; the beams of light grow shorter as the sun rises higher, changing the angles. I stand, staring, as the world continues to turn around me. I don’t want to belong here. 

But I do; at least it’s not only there. 

Grief is a trickster, for all her sad smiles and damp eyes. She’ll fool you without mercy. Death is the one who makes things happen, who pushes the buttons and programs the machine. Time is a construct, a scarecrow, a nonsense creation that falls apart and gets stuck back together at odd angles. These three sisters, hair falling down in mobius curls; they are muse and master. There is no one that they have not touched, not rock nor tree nor person, let alone a displaced people. We are at their mercy, of which they have none. Always a step ahead, up around a quiet corner, waiting; waiting until you are right where they want you. 

And what do we do? We fight back, because that’s what we’ve been told. On the ambulance, we raced to the scene, sirens screaming down side streets at all hours of the night, letting everyone in earshot know that we were the front line against death. We buy cards with platitudes, console people with thoughts of being in a better place and sanitized images of angels. We buy cream after lotion after facelift in order to turn back the clock. 

For all of that, though – the bravado, the Hallmark and Oil of Olay profits – we fight back with hope, and continued solidarity, intrinsic to our corporeal bodies. We rise, and breathe in, then out. Over and over and over again. 

Time passes, smoothly or in fits and starts. Grief waxes and wanes. Death eventually takes our breath for her own.

I am standing in the bedroom door, watching the chest of my wife fail to rise and fall. I breathe in, then out, over and over as I stand, immobilized, wishing for this not to be true. Eventually I awake, and I am back. I breathe in, then out. And I rise for another day.

Posted in Uncategorized

“Should” is a Bad Word

Posted on by Queer Mama Rising

I should be planning a party. 

I should have sent invitations to the whole pre-K class. I should have bought a specially designed cake from the grocery store bakery. I should be filling colorful paper bags with candy and crayons and little activity books. I should be decorating the house with streamers and balloons and Paw Patrol party supplies.

I should be making plans with my wife for a special bottle of wine – let’s be honest, whiskey – for when the kids go to bed after the party. 

Instead, I’m sitting down with a cup of coffee. I’ve been up for more than two hours; my journals are completed for the day, the yard has been picked up for the landlord to mow, and the front gardens have been weeded and watered. The plans I’m making are for one kid and one adult – visiting the library, and maybe a splashpad, since it’s going to be ninety out today. 

Instead of wondering who will show up without having RSVP’ed, I’m wondering when it will stop hurting. When the milestones will stop the daydreams of what I should be doing, or would be doing, if Oscar had lived; if Hawthorne had lived. 

I should be in Vermont, making breakfast for my family of four. 

I’m in Boston, vaguely planning to get Lucy a donut on our way out and about. 

Facebook reminded me that four years ago, we were painting the nursery. Sweet Buttercup, the shade of yellow was named. It made the oddly shaped room seem happy as we rolled it over the terracotta walls and up to the ceiling. We got less than a wall done before we gave in to the heat, and my big-bellied exhaustion. We spent the rest of the day in the river. 

Just two days later, I felt Oscar move for what would be the last time. I remember it so clearly; sitting up on the edge of the bed after using the bathroom for the eleventy-millionth time that night. I knew he was big, and actually had my growth scan coming up to make sure I could deliver without a C-section. 

I woke up in the morning and something said to me, remember this date. Something big is going to happen today. 

I thought my son was going to be born a few weeks early, but breathing and healthy and here. 

I remember that whispered premonition as well as I do all the other stark moments that followed. The moment I realized it had been too long since he moved, and I ate a brownie and chugged some coffee. Calling Hawthorne. Leaving work. Hawthorne keeping steady while driving us to the hospital. And everything that happened from there. It makes this anniversary difficult because it spans nearly a full week, from the hope and the wonder, through the terror and the devastation. 

My body remains an active participant in this, even now. I get phantom contractions that my body tells me are an elbow, or a foot. I rub my hand over it and for a split second, I don’t understand the softness of my belly. I have been through physical therapy trying to repair the diastasis recti, the separation in the muscles of my abdomen that never knit back together. More recently I’ve developed a small hernia at the site. Add that to the list of things to handle at some point, should it ever cause me its own pain, not this psychosomatic bullshit kicks from a baby who is no longer there. 

This was one of the hardest days of 2019. 

In 2020, we also had Lucy, who at eight months had already been outside my body longer than she had been in. We were preparing for Hawthorne’s surgery from their back injury, delayed by Covid as it was somehow deemed “nonessential.”

And it 2021, it became even worse. 

Hawthorne’s birthday is July 9; Oscar’s July 19. Those ten days in between remind me of the time between Christmas and New Year’s, when no one knows what day it is, and are loathe to put on pants or have responsibilities. Except those two occasions are, at least, supposed to be joyous and celebratory.

This month I should be trying to figure out how to celebrate and mark the passage of another trip around the sun for half of my household family. Instead, I am desperately seeking solitude and space away from my own kiddo. Her muppet-ness and the light in her eyes are she causes trouble are 100% from her papa; the way she holds her hand up to her face some nights while falling asleep in my arms are a carbon copy of her brother. For these days, this space between, it can hurt to look at her; a fact that fills me with guilt about being a terrible mother.

(I am not a terrible mother, and I know this is grief. And still.)

The books don’t tell you how to handle this. What to Expect When You’re Expecting doesn’t mention how to respond to your kid when they start asking, where’s daddy? The grief books prepared me for this incapacitating mental paralysis that prevents me from doing anything more to mark these birthdays, and I know it’s OK that I haven’t done much this year for either of them. Truth be told, other than trying to be alone, I don’t know what I did last year, either. This year, too, my body has decided I needed to sit down. I can’t run to turn off my brain and escape my thoughts. I can’t blow off work for a day and go for a hike and lose myself in the refuge of the forest. At least I’m able to think a little clearer now, and again able to focus enough to write for short amounts of time. I used to do a post like this in one go; I’m not sure what sitting I’m on now. 

One thing I remember from last year; July 20 felt like a new year. A new chapter, a fresh start. It would be another twelve months before I had to feel like this again. And, as with most things, there’s both truth and folly in that idea. 

It’s a good time to reset how I care for myself, to make sure I’m doing certain things every day that keep me level and healthy. I can set some intentions and resolutions, and I’ll know exactly when they are coming due. It’s also ridiculous to think I won’t feel this way, this squeeze of grief, at some point over the next year. Oscar and Hawthorne are just as gone from this world on any other day. I think it’s safe to say no one understands that better than I do. 

I should be planning a party. 

Instead, on July 19, I’m going to take lucy to daycare, go to therapy, and find some solitude. I’m going to pick up a single cupcake. When I pick up Lucy from daycare, we are going to go home, light the candle, and sing Happy Birthday to the brother she never met in this world. I won’t wish for him back when we blow out the candle. I’ll put Lucy to bed, and wonder what it would be like to have a four-year-old, and a papa of two. I know those three would cause so much trouble together. I’ll imagine the giggles of all three combined as they all hide from me to evade bedtime. 

I’ll look at the only pictures I have of my son, and turn out the light, and go to bed alone. 

And then a new year will start. 

Posted in Uncategorized

Last Year Was a Son of a Bitch For Nearly Everyone We Know

Posted on by Queer Mama Rising

On the morning of the anniversary, I awoke in the dark. I was sharing a room with both Lucy and a cousin; we had just had Stan’s funeral mass, and the family was spending the weekend together. 

I have always had a hard time with anniversaries. I’m good with dates; they stick out like pins in a map, destination points on the journey. If I can just make it to the next one, then I can think about what comes after. This mindset evolved after my father died fifteen years ago. His long battle with ALS seems more like limbo now, as if life was paused on this side of the veil. He wasn’t ready to be counted as one of the dead, and yet, it was hard to exactly see how he was still one of the living. This moratorium on mortality remains nebulous, a shadowy place on the map where the same paths have been trekked so often the lines themselves are blurred. 

October 12, 2006, I got a panicked call from my mother around 6:30 in the morning that “something is wrong with your father.” I was groggy with pain, having separated my shoulder in a rugby game 5 days prior. One of my roommates helped get me into a sweater and my sling, my boyfriend and his dad came to pick me up. My mom had been unable to say it, but my father had died, finally and peacefully. Eight years after symptoms started, six years after diagnosis, and two years after losing the ability to communicate, his body let go of its tether to the machines, and he crossed over. 

The date was burned into my brain. The twelfth of every month after that was hard; I don’t think I understood it as grief necessarily. I didn’t know why I grieved; he and I had said our goodbyes long before that day. I felt as if I had done my grieving (breaking news, I hadn’t). Years went by. I became an EMT, I graduated; I made an ill-advised decision to get married, bought a house, became a paramedic, suffered through the marriage until my breaking point. 

January 5, 2012, my mother died after a sudden episode of a silent heart attack, complications from the medication, and a Stage III cancer diagnosis. She was spared the years of suffering my father endured; just over a week passed between her hospital admittance to her death. We had never mended our fences, but she squeezed my hand and smiled at me as best she could. She died comfortably, surrounded by family and friends. 

September 20, 2016. My father-out-law, Clark, died under hospice care at home, after a series of strokes that spanned close to a decade.

July 19, 2018. Oscar, my starside wild child. 

September 19, 2020. Hawthorne, the love of my life. 

Grief is the compounding interest of daring to love. There is no formula to guide you through it, no way to quantify it; there is no forewarning before she appears. She knocks silently and lets herself in, making herself comfortable. She has permanent lodging in my heart and holds the master key. 

I spent the morning of the anniversary watching dawn break over our favorite beach. I wore one of their favorite dresses and walked barefoot in the cool sand, picking up shells to make the heart. I talked to them down the first side of the beach; it’s rare to have that conversation out loud, but I needed the wind and the sea to carry the message to where they might get it. I love you, endlessly; I miss you, I’m angry, and I’m surviving. 

I took the path into the dunes and visited Oscar’s tree. I sat in silence as I watched the early sunlight brighten the branches that now stood for both of them. The colors were so vibrant; the blue of the morning sky, the deep green needles of the pitch pine, the silver of the sticky sap that exuded from the cones turning brown. Not for the first time, I thought of just how bullshit it is that they have to miss this. 

I went down the dune path and over to the leeward side of the beach. There was more chop than I had seen over here before. It’s as if the wind knew I needed to feel her as surely as the sand beneath my feet, the water a breath away. 

I knelt in the sand, weighing the bag down with my sandals as I removed the shells and rocks and flotsam I had collected. My hands shook as I began placing the natural decorations into the heart. I made dozens of adjustments to create the outline just so.

I hadn’t found a stick, and didn’t want to leave before it was finished, so I traced their names out with my finger, patting down the sand moved away from the lines and curves of the letters. My heart ached without a trace of sweetness to temper it, and the wind blew the tears from my face to rejoin the sea. When I had finished, I took my pictures, the heart half in the sun now. I sat a few minutes, steeped in grief, before slowly making my way back down the curve of beach.

When I got back to the house, we packed up the cars, did the sweep for tiny toys and phone chargers left behind, and left the rental. We made our way across the Cape to the bay side and met up with some friends for breakfast before going our separate ways.

The one other thing I really wanted to do to mark the anniversary was to visit Walden Pond, where Hawthorne had asked me to marry them. They did the whole down-on-one-knee thing; I have the picture of their sandy jeans to prove it. That afternoon, I tucked a sleepy Lucy back into her carseat and headed out again.

I was more focused on being at Walden Pond and taking a walk around than I was with silly things like directions. Turns out, there is a small pond also named Walden a mere 20 miles away from the one I was trying to get to. It was 4:30 by this point, and all I wanted to do was cry and give up. I was tired and heartsick, and Lucy was awake by now and unhappy with being in the car. Still, I plugged in the real destination, and followed a typically convoluted path through Boston and out the other side to get there. 

We arrived at 5:30 to a full parking lot that still demanded payment. I took my ticket and hauled Lucy out. I was still in my dress, with the addition of hiking boots it had become clear I would not be using, since the park closed at 6:30. Lucy was in one of my favorite new fall outfits, sparkly shoes and all. 

We started towards the entrance and I realized that I had never been here when the park was “in season.” The tears welled up as I lost hope of a quiet moment with every step.

I knew, of course, this was a pond; it had never crossed my mind that where there is a pond, and a sandy crescent of beach, that there would be swimming. My heart sank as I gave up every notion of what I thought this trip would be. My steps fell heavy as I skirted the water’s edge; the spot where I had wanted to be, where Hawthorne had asked me to be their forever, was completely across the pond. We wouldn’t be getting there today.

I was holding Lucy’s hand as we navigated the narrow strip of shore between larger sections of the beach when she tugged her hand and broke away. No longer content with the dry slope, she had noticed we were right next to her favorite thing besides trucks and dinosaurs – water. 

She stepped, shoes sparkling in the sun as she splashed just in the surf. Tiny fish darted at the disturbance, and as I crouched to point them out to her, she ran into the water up to her knees. I could do nothing but laugh. The sheer joy on her face shone brighter than the sunlight, and her laughter rang out over the water. She danced and threw herself into the water as I stood at the edge. The water was still and very shallow and full of kids, and she strayed no further than six feet from the sand, splashing and stamping her feet. The droplets that flew from her glittered like diamonds until being swallowed by the growing shadows, and I heard the announcement over a loudspeaker that the park was closing soon. 

I watched her play a few more minutes, making sure she kept close, and she made sure she got every inch of herself soaking wet. The next time she was in grabbing distance from shore, I caught her and hauled her up, dripping and screaming. I caught several looks from other adults, both parents and not, and there was more judgment than there was sympathy. I missed Vermont keenly in that moment, homesick for the mountains, and the acceptance of the wildness of kids. Fuck ‘em, I thought, as I held my chattering Lucy close. We got back to the car, I pulled off most of her wet clothes and wrapped her up in a towel for the twenty-minute ride home. When we got there I put her immediately into the tub, which she made abundantly clear was not a substitute for the pond.

As I rocked her to sleep, I thought about the day. The morning at the beach had been what I expected, wanted, and needed; the afternoon hit one out of three. Walden Pond gave me neither what I expected or wanted, but it may have given me something else I needed.

One of the biggest surprises of the day was the emotion of pride I had felt; a little at the beach, but more so, at the pond. Watching our curly-haired ray of sunshine act just like her Papa in the water was a balm I hadn’t prepared for. I have been accustomed to sitting in the grief and pain on anniversaries. I understood the craggy emotions that coalesced into mountains, and I could isolate behind them until the date passed and they crumbled away to more manageable bits again. 

Lucy doesn’t let me do that. Lucy demands to be seen, to be experienced. There’s a line in Brandi Carlile’s song The Mother that comes to me in these moments: “the first things that she took from me were selfishness and sleep.” I cannot be both selfish and present with her. What I can be, however, is proud. 

I’m proud that I’ve survived this year; I don’t mean in the life-or-death sense of survival, but mentally and emotionally. I have been active and present, and while I may have felt like it, I haven’t been consumed by grief.

I will never stop missing Hawthorne. My heart will never be complete without them; the wound heals, but the scar remains. And I still see them: in the crow presents I find in my path, in the exuberance of our daughter. There is nowhere we will go that I won’t know that some atom of them hasn’t touched. 

It feels like a new year, like the holiday now falls on September 20. Maybe that’s a good thing; it’s the equinox, when the season turns from summer to fall, that midway point between light and dark. It feels fitting that the calendar should reset here. I’m trying to hold less expectations of what this year will bring, and make sure that I am getting what we need to keep on living presently and actively, with a solid dose of what I want as well. 

And on it goes.

Posted in Uncategorized

Please Don’t Take My Sunshine Away

Posted on by Queer Mama Rising

The evening light is streaming golden through the windows in the kitchen and in the back hall. Past the washing machine and humming refrigerator, radiant through the leaves of the money tree, it lands on the hardwood floor, illuminating the polished boards with the warmest glow. I close the door to Lucy’s room quietly, the dying day washing over my bare feet. 
It’s been gray for three days, rainy for two, so the evening sunshine is a welcome surprise. My hair curls in the humidity, sticking to my skin as I try to brush it away from my eyes, then my neck. My body is aching and exhausted; my tired heart still weeps.
Our wedding anniversary has come and gone; check off another painful box in the Year of First Withouts. The day was bleak, but hot; the rain did nothing to soothe for once. Work was futile; I should have taken the day off. Instead, I hoard my PTO like a dragon with her gold, burned from years of workplaces with punitive attendance policies. 

It feels dramatic to say that I survived the day. I mean, of course I did; there was no danger of not waking up the next morning, that is to say, no more than for anyone on given day. But for a day like that; when the grief has claws that carve deep, when it hurts to draw the next breath, when every sob wracks you to the bone; yes, I survived it. It was one of the most difficult days that I have had in several months, but it was over. The first anniversary without them; in the books. 

The next day, just as my heart was starting to steady a little, I got a text that ripped the rug out and sent me tumbling again. 

“Hi! We are making Father’s Day presents with the kids, who should Lucy’s be addressed to?”

Innocuous enough. Gutting. I had compartmentalized the month so well, so focused on our anniversary, I forgot about Father’s Day. 

There is nothing that is not irrevocably changed. As if the little family we made were our own little world; Death came to cradle Oscar and just sheared off a third of it, before out sweet boy even got to see it. We tumbled along, sometimes rolling, sometimes clunking when that missing piece reminded us. Then our bright little light came around, and that hole felt a little smaller, and we felt a little less broken. And then. 

We had two days with Oscar to prepare for his birth after learning of his death. Forty-three hours where he was still, and still with us; where he was held, warm and perfect. When Death came for Hawthorne, though, she gave no warning, pulling the last breath from them in front of me. I was left with minutes to hold them, precious minutes spent trying to drag them back to me, to put breath back in their body and make their still heart beat, please, beat. Then there was nothing warm at all. 

And so our little broken world, again, split. Jagged and raw, I am left clinging to Lucy as another massive part of our world was wrenched away, cast back and returned to the depths of the universe. We’re left with memories that shower down like meteors as half of our home spin among the stars. 

There are some days, like today, where I can’t look ahead or behind. The tumbling yaw of our haphazard trajectory makes me dizzy. If look around, I wonder how things possibly worked out that I’m living back where I never intended, and with so much missing. Look back, and I’m searching for the turning point, where things maybe could have changed, and I feel sick with futility. Look forward, and there are still empty places where my baby and my beloved should be. There are some days where the calendar feels coiled up, compressing so many hard days into just seven weeks. 

First, Hawthorne’s late father’s birthday; ten days later, my own father’s. We were married directly in between. Then July, with its fireworks and festivities; I should be planning birthday parts for Hawthorne, and again, ten days later for Oscar. 

Instead this year I am planning a memorial. On a loop in the back of my mind I keep saying, this is bullshit. This shouldn’t be happening. 

At this strange point of what feels like middle distance – it has been over nine months, not yet a year – I almost feel more incredulous that they are gone. Even though I have moved, found a new job, and everything around me is different, I still feel like this can’t be happening. It does not compute. 

What do you mean, they didn’t see Biden elected, or sworn in? They didn’t call me at work, panicked about the Capitol riots? They haven’t met my new friends, or had post-pandemic dinner with the family? What do you mean, they weren’t able to see Stan again? They missed Christmas? And Easter? How is this possible?

By the time Hawthorne’s birthday comes, they will have been gone almost exactly half of Lucy’s life. I don’t know what to do with that. She won’t have any of her own memories with her Papa. She will have pictures and guitars, and tales from friends which seem too tall to be true; they will always be a legend to her. 

Last weekend, after the anniversary, we were visiting a couple of friends out in the country for a few days. I was getting Lucy ready for her nap, and had slid Hawthorne’s signet ring off to change her; depending on the weather, it gets loose sometimes. She picked it up and played with it, pretending to put it in her mouth and laughing at me when I pulled her hand away. As I was pulling her pants back up, she put it on her tiny finger and held it up, turning it in a princess wave. Clear as day, she says, “dada, dada!”

My heart was pounding, every beat bittersweet. I grabbed my phone and tried to get it on video, but she had moved on to her few other words. I held her tight to me for a minute, tighter and closer than the hot day allowed for. I put her down and snuck out, quickly, as she protested her nap before falling asleep. I ached, feeling the scars left on my heart from seeing Hawthorne hold our Oscar, so still, and the tender new muscle exposed from watching them hold Lucy, her tiny dark eyes already staring up at them in wonder.

Now I sit, facing the golden sun as she continues her descent. I have only to look behind me for the thunderclouds, slowly receding into the distance to blanket the sea. The veil of the evening begins to fall over me as the beer in my hand catches the last rays in the brown glass, shining. Tomorrow will be a new day, and my heart will be rested, if not eased. For now I give in to the night; let the tears wash away the makeup and the day. I turn their ring around on my finger and hold on to the sun, as warm and bright as their love, just a little while longer.