I'm thinking of calling it "The Journey"
It's being shipped to Columbia and NYU tomorrow.
I had tried to accept reality by way of tears and poetry, but could not. Jenise had died. Every sentence that escaped me torpedoed to the sidewalk, exploding into undefined “proper” and “improper” terms. “She was sick a long time,” I reasoned with myself, who shot back, “Five years could have been six, or seven, or eight. She was one of the strongest women you knew!”
“She was. Was. And now she’s gone.”
“And not gone enough! If she were really gone, you wouldn’t be standing here in black with all of these tissue-mongers on a perfectly sunny day in March, waiting to go inside!”
“True,” I said, “but it’s not like it doesn’t happen all the time. You’ve seen the commercials; ‘One in three women are diagnosed.’ Why would your life be exempt?”
“Because this sort of thing only happens to people in the movies! Where is Celine Dion’s inspirational credit ballad? Where’s the Oscar nomination? And where are your feelings? You’re never numb after somebody dies on-screen! Not like this.” Having no answer for myself, I did what most people do when wit and timing run off to play hide-and-seek, and turned further inward to explore the trenches of my memory, making everything about somebody else. In this case, “somebody else” meant my best friend, Jenise’s daughter Sarah.
Sarah had to be somewhere close by. I could see her father accepting condolences near the temple door, next to a self-portrait Jenise had painted, when she’d had hair, propped up on an easel. It reminded me of the last conversation Jenise and I had had. It was in her car, on route to retrieve Sarah from a salon. Jenise had tied a pretty scarf around her head to hide its starkness. She’d gone bald again from the chemotherapy.
“This last time in the hospital, they couldn’t do anything,” she said.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“They’ve tried everything, but the cancer seems to have grown immune. But you know what?”
“What?”
It was dark outside, but the streetlights lit the car enough to accentuate the shadows her face had accrued in battle. Her chin jutted out from her dry, deflated lips. She looked tired, despite sleeping as much as she had in the weeks Sarah had been home from school. The only normal things about her were the eyebrows she’d drawn on before leaving the house. They were so perfect, they looked like they belonged to somebody else.
“It was the first time I didn’t really care.”
Turning to her positively horrified, she sighed.
“I’ve been fighting a long time and I just think I’m done. I’m too tired. I tried to tell Bruce while we were there, but he couldn’t accept it. He’d just nod and say, ‘You’ll be fine,’ like he has every time,” and she chuckled. “Can’t blame him, really, but it’s true. I am done.”
“You’ve survived this long and you’re getting better,” I stammered. “And that’s hopeful, right? I mean, I don’t know what Sarah would do.”
“I don’t know either,” said Jenise.
On the way back, I remembered listening to them joke from the backseat, and wondering how much longer they’d be able to do that. I romanticized. I thought of Jenise’s white blood cells reclaiming her lymphatic system, of her waking up the following morning to the breasts she’d removed knit back into place, of eons of fat restored to her flaccid cheeks, of her hair-follicles rust-free with blond threads sprouting like it was going out of style, and not once did I think she’d be gone six weeks later.
I’d always considered myself an optimistic person, but in lieu of the year prior to Jenise’s death, my self-doubt had begun to override my natural tendencies. After all the political fist-shaking and volunteer work, Bush’s reinstatement left me floored and miserable. Luck seemed to evade me with the new old regime. I turned eighteen kicking and screaming, watched two family members die, totaled my step-mother’s car when my father was worried about buying groceries, got so sick at one point that I almost went deaf, was rejected by my top-choice colleges, my high-school sweetheart broke up with me, and all the while I kept up a generally frustrating day job. By the time Jenise told me she was giving up, devastation and I were two peas in what felt like a very tight, life-less pod. It was unclear then, that Jenise had given me the invaluable gift of perspective. Not that my reaction would have been more eloquent had I seen that at the time. There’s nothing remotely eloquent about death; only the potential in the wake of - poetry or no poetry.
As I concluded, Sarah appeared in my peripheral. She was creeping through the crowd, dodging distant relatives and old friends of her parents’. I grabbed her hand and we hid in the girls’ bathroom before anyone could intercept. It was clear from looking at her that she’d hardly slept, and that her eye make-up had been applied more than once that morning. It was stupid, but I asked her anyway. “Are you okay?”
“Not really,” she said. “But what do you do?”
What do you do? It was a rhetorical question, yet we pursued the answer in the weeks that followed. We went out when the house got too stuffy. We bolted the door to cry together when it wasn’t stuffy enough. And when we found we couldn’t sleep, due to the mountains of chocolate we’d consumed, we danced to Journey songs that, by day, we loathed, and then we laughed the sun up. But it was no great surprise that despite our efforts, Sarah woke up, every morning, feeling empty.
When it was time for her to go back to school, I went with her. At first I didn’t say anything, but her dorm was a wreck. Dirty laundry littered the furniture, her sink had mysterious black growths lining the steel, and when the door was opened to the hall, tumbleweeds compiled of hair strands, remnants of used eraser, dust bunnies, and shrouds of old candy wrappers raced along the cold linoleum, scraping the borders of a very worn, never-vacuumed carpet. Had I dropped seeds on the floor, I’m sure they would have had no problems taking root.
“Hey, Farmer John, when was the last time you cleaned this place?” I asked.
Sarah paused and looked at the ceiling, as if it knew the answer. “Probably the beginning of October…?” she offered, shrugging half-heartedly. It was April now. “It’s not like I have people over a lot, and when mom got sick, I just didn’t have the energy.”
I nodded. It was an understandable scapegoat. We’d spent countless hours on the phone the month before Jenise died. Sarah didn’t feel close enough with the friends she’d made that year to confide in them. Most people our age haven’t had to deal with death, so sympathy is issued on a very basic level, not because it isn’t genuine, but because they’ve yet to experience what it means to mourn. I think it is often assumed that mourning is caused by the death itself, whereas in most cases I’ve witnessed, it’s actually the process of reconfiguring the future without someone you had expected to be there. It takes a lot longer than anyone ever thinks it will.
Knowing all of this, her answer wouldn’t satisfy me. It reminded me of the excuses I’d made throughout the year before, when I had tricked myself on a consistent basis into believing I was the victim of my emotional disposition. In making a habit out of being unheard, people rarely heard me, which only made me feel worse.
When I woke up the next morning, I rolled onto my side. My body itched, watching the tumbleweeds roll toward me, pushed by the gusts of heat erupting from the vent on the opposite wall. If it was possible, the room looked dirtier than before. Something had to be done. I got up and walked to the restroom down the hall to brush my teeth. When I got back, Sarah sat up and yawned.
“Where’s the cleaning fluid?” I asked. I got down on my knees and rolled up the carpet.
“What?”
“The cleaning fluid. And the paper towels.”
“Oh,” said Sarah, confusedly. “I think all that stuff’s behind the dresser. Why?”
I wrapped my arms around the bureau and pulled it toward the center of the room. The utensils behind it looked like they had never been used. I took out the broom. Sarah kept telling me I didn’t have to do it, but I did. For me, personal empowerment often comes disguised as other people. I have learned over time that the amount of responsibility I’ve chosen to take, in whatever situation I’ve found myself, has rippled directly into my self-confidence, hereby affecting whatever other opportunities are presented to me. A big part of growing up has been about making progress in spite of the sticky web my emotions and insecurities weave. It’s been said hundreds of ways, and thousands of times, but we really are the masters of our own fates. And while we may not always be able to laugh in the face of nature, we can do little things in light of it to strengthen ourselves, to grow in spite of challenges we face. I like to think that I’ve matured to a place where I am able to make the most of whatever cards I am dealt. Even if the cards are soiled with bread crumbs, nail clippings, and hair gel.
Eventually, Sarah joined in. The last thing we did was push the beds together to make room for dancing. We cranked up “Don’t Stop Believing” and opened the windows.We were still sad, but we were hopeful - each in our ways.
I had tried to accept reality by way of tears and poetry, but could not. Jenise had died. Every sentence that escaped me torpedoed to the sidewalk, exploding into undefined “proper” and “improper” terms. “She was sick a long time,” I reasoned with myself, who shot back, “Five years could have been six, or seven, or eight. She was one of the strongest women you knew!”
“She was. Was. And now she’s gone.”
“And not gone enough! If she were really gone, you wouldn’t be standing here in black with all of these tissue-mongers on a perfectly sunny day in March, waiting to go inside!”
“True,” I said, “but it’s not like it doesn’t happen all the time. You’ve seen the commercials; ‘One in three women are diagnosed.’ Why would your life be exempt?”
“Because this sort of thing only happens to people in the movies! Where is Celine Dion’s inspirational credit ballad? Where’s the Oscar nomination? And where are your feelings? You’re never numb after somebody dies on-screen! Not like this.” Having no answer for myself, I did what most people do when wit and timing run off to play hide-and-seek, and turned further inward to explore the trenches of my memory, making everything about somebody else. In this case, “somebody else” meant my best friend, Jenise’s daughter Sarah.
Sarah had to be somewhere close by. I could see her father accepting condolences near the temple door, next to a self-portrait Jenise had painted, when she’d had hair, propped up on an easel. It reminded me of the last conversation Jenise and I had had. It was in her car, on route to retrieve Sarah from a salon. Jenise had tied a pretty scarf around her head to hide its starkness. She’d gone bald again from the chemotherapy.
“This last time in the hospital, they couldn’t do anything,” she said.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“They’ve tried everything, but the cancer seems to have grown immune. But you know what?”
“What?”
It was dark outside, but the streetlights lit the car enough to accentuate the shadows her face had accrued in battle. Her chin jutted out from her dry, deflated lips. She looked tired, despite sleeping as much as she had in the weeks Sarah had been home from school. The only normal things about her were the eyebrows she’d drawn on before leaving the house. They were so perfect, they looked like they belonged to somebody else.
“It was the first time I didn’t really care.”
Turning to her positively horrified, she sighed.
“I’ve been fighting a long time and I just think I’m done. I’m too tired. I tried to tell Bruce while we were there, but he couldn’t accept it. He’d just nod and say, ‘You’ll be fine,’ like he has every time,” and she chuckled. “Can’t blame him, really, but it’s true. I am done.”
“You’ve survived this long and you’re getting better,” I stammered. “And that’s hopeful, right? I mean, I don’t know what Sarah would do.”
“I don’t know either,” said Jenise.
On the way back, I remembered listening to them joke from the backseat, and wondering how much longer they’d be able to do that. I romanticized. I thought of Jenise’s white blood cells reclaiming her lymphatic system, of her waking up the following morning to the breasts she’d removed knit back into place, of eons of fat restored to her flaccid cheeks, of her hair-follicles rust-free with blond threads sprouting like it was going out of style, and not once did I think she’d be gone six weeks later.
I’d always considered myself an optimistic person, but in lieu of the year prior to Jenise’s death, my self-doubt had begun to override my natural tendencies. After all the political fist-shaking and volunteer work, Bush’s reinstatement left me floored and miserable. Luck seemed to evade me with the new old regime. I turned eighteen kicking and screaming, watched two family members die, totaled my step-mother’s car when my father was worried about buying groceries, got so sick at one point that I almost went deaf, was rejected by my top-choice colleges, my high-school sweetheart broke up with me, and all the while I kept up a generally frustrating day job. By the time Jenise told me she was giving up, devastation and I were two peas in what felt like a very tight, life-less pod. It was unclear then, that Jenise had given me the invaluable gift of perspective. Not that my reaction would have been more eloquent had I seen that at the time. There’s nothing remotely eloquent about death; only the potential in the wake of - poetry or no poetry.
As I concluded, Sarah appeared in my peripheral. She was creeping through the crowd, dodging distant relatives and old friends of her parents’. I grabbed her hand and we hid in the girls’ bathroom before anyone could intercept. It was clear from looking at her that she’d hardly slept, and that her eye make-up had been applied more than once that morning. It was stupid, but I asked her anyway. “Are you okay?”
“Not really,” she said. “But what do you do?”
What do you do? It was a rhetorical question, yet we pursued the answer in the weeks that followed. We went out when the house got too stuffy. We bolted the door to cry together when it wasn’t stuffy enough. And when we found we couldn’t sleep, due to the mountains of chocolate we’d consumed, we danced to Journey songs that, by day, we loathed, and then we laughed the sun up. But it was no great surprise that despite our efforts, Sarah woke up, every morning, feeling empty.
When it was time for her to go back to school, I went with her. At first I didn’t say anything, but her dorm was a wreck. Dirty laundry littered the furniture, her sink had mysterious black growths lining the steel, and when the door was opened to the hall, tumbleweeds compiled of hair strands, remnants of used eraser, dust bunnies, and shrouds of old candy wrappers raced along the cold linoleum, scraping the borders of a very worn, never-vacuumed carpet. Had I dropped seeds on the floor, I’m sure they would have had no problems taking root.
“Hey, Farmer John, when was the last time you cleaned this place?” I asked.
Sarah paused and looked at the ceiling, as if it knew the answer. “Probably the beginning of October…?” she offered, shrugging half-heartedly. It was April now. “It’s not like I have people over a lot, and when mom got sick, I just didn’t have the energy.”
I nodded. It was an understandable scapegoat. We’d spent countless hours on the phone the month before Jenise died. Sarah didn’t feel close enough with the friends she’d made that year to confide in them. Most people our age haven’t had to deal with death, so sympathy is issued on a very basic level, not because it isn’t genuine, but because they’ve yet to experience what it means to mourn. I think it is often assumed that mourning is caused by the death itself, whereas in most cases I’ve witnessed, it’s actually the process of reconfiguring the future without someone you had expected to be there. It takes a lot longer than anyone ever thinks it will.
Knowing all of this, her answer wouldn’t satisfy me. It reminded me of the excuses I’d made throughout the year before, when I had tricked myself on a consistent basis into believing I was the victim of my emotional disposition. In making a habit out of being unheard, people rarely heard me, which only made me feel worse.
When I woke up the next morning, I rolled onto my side. My body itched, watching the tumbleweeds roll toward me, pushed by the gusts of heat erupting from the vent on the opposite wall. If it was possible, the room looked dirtier than before. Something had to be done. I got up and walked to the restroom down the hall to brush my teeth. When I got back, Sarah sat up and yawned.
“Where’s the cleaning fluid?” I asked. I got down on my knees and rolled up the carpet.
“What?”
“The cleaning fluid. And the paper towels.”
“Oh,” said Sarah, confusedly. “I think all that stuff’s behind the dresser. Why?”
I wrapped my arms around the bureau and pulled it toward the center of the room. The utensils behind it looked like they had never been used. I took out the broom. Sarah kept telling me I didn’t have to do it, but I did. For me, personal empowerment often comes disguised as other people. I have learned over time that the amount of responsibility I’ve chosen to take, in whatever situation I’ve found myself, has rippled directly into my self-confidence, hereby affecting whatever other opportunities are presented to me. A big part of growing up has been about making progress in spite of the sticky web my emotions and insecurities weave. It’s been said hundreds of ways, and thousands of times, but we really are the masters of our own fates. And while we may not always be able to laugh in the face of nature, we can do little things in light of it to strengthen ourselves, to grow in spite of challenges we face. I like to think that I’ve matured to a place where I am able to make the most of whatever cards I am dealt. Even if the cards are soiled with bread crumbs, nail clippings, and hair gel.
Eventually, Sarah joined in. The last thing we did was push the beds together to make room for dancing. We cranked up “Don’t Stop Believing” and opened the windows.We were still sad, but we were hopeful - each in our ways.