Kenny and I got back last night from two nights out at my dad, Ran and Warren’s old camping spot, Rattlesnake Point. Ran took us to show us the history and to make some new memories. This is just outside of Yuma on the Cali side of the river. Ferguson Lake area - outside of Winterhaven. There's a tucked away spot about 45 minutes out on a dirt road, by the river/lake where we had our own peninsula of sorts. Mountains and desert behind us - lots of reeds, mud hens, fishing birds, and lake in front of us--it was very quiet - big expansive sky full of moon and stars at night, and clouds and blue sky in the day - perfect.
Kenny and Ran fished the majority of the time, and I cooked, read, meditated and walked with Rosie.
Kenny (I'm sure) is making my dad smile from ear to ear (wherever his energy floats). The kid caught several fish, baited his own hook, casted his own line, and even cleaned the fish for us to eat. We had quite a feast of Crawpy on our second night ;-).
It's so funny to now have this connection to Ran. There was a time that I thought I might not see him ever again. Then there was some time back when he and my dad and Warren all reconnected, and thank goodness. Ran was so wonderful with Kenny - and really seemed to enjoy him so much. I can't express how wonderful that is, how happy it would make my dad to see Kenny out there fishing. He really seems to enjoy it too - very self motivated about it.
So we spent two nights - Ran and Ken down by the water (kenny dove in a couple times too) and me up on top reading, writing, taking long walks on all the mountain ridges around camp.
Next time -we're going back in December - we're going to take all my dad's crazy floating fishing gear for ken to try out - I'm hoping to get Stephen, Ben, and Sophia in on the gig too - we can take bikes, kayak -whatever.
So a big thanks to "uncle" Ran- I'm so happy to have him in my life. who knew?
It's nice to be away from the depth of my grief now, and on to experiencing come of the happy energy my dad and Warren always put out in the world. Here's to carrying that tradition on.
Hi, Mar: Dave made a slide show of Dan's memorial, the photos taken by Judith. I put it on YouTube so everyone could see it. Unfortunately they wouldn't take the version with the Grateful Dead music on it ;+(.
Stephen (my super wonderful husband) found the following post somewhere online (below) and shared it with me. The way this woman talks about her feelings of her mom reminds me of how I feel lately. Thought I'd share.
(the "new" pic is from Ran - shortly after we lost Warren, but before we knew about Dad - Ran and he had a fun night playing music - Ran said that Dad kept tossing each song as he finished it - that's why there are all sorts of papers lying around- I can so see him doing it. I miss him so much.)
The e-mail was from a publicist with the same first name: Barbara. The name was all that had showed up on the screen.
My mother died of metastatic colorectal cancer sometime before 3 p.m. on Christmas Day. I can't say the exact time, because none of us thought to look at a clock for some time after she stopped breathing. She was in a hospital bed in the living room of my parents' house (now my father's house) in Connecticut with my father, my two younger brothers, and me. She had been unconscious for five days. She opened her eyes only when we moved her, which caused her extreme pain, and so we began to move her less and less, despite cautions from the hospice nurses about bedsores.
For several weeks before her death, my mother had been experiencing some confusion due to ammonia building up in her brain as her liver began to fail. And yet, irrationally, I am confident my mother knew what day it was when she died. I believe she knew we were around her. And I believe she chose to die when she did. Christmas was her favorite day of the year; she loved the morning ritual of walking the dogs, making coffee as we all waited impatiently for her to be ready, then slowly opening presents, drawing the gift-giving out for hours. This year, she couldn't walk the dogs or make coffee, but her bed was in the room where our tree was, and as we opened presents that morning, she made a madrigal of quiet sounds, as if to indicate that she was with us.
Since my mother's death, I have been in grief. I walk down the street; I answer my phone; I brush my hair; I manage, at times, to look like a normal person, but I don't feel normal. I am not surprised to find that it is a lonely life: After all, the person who brought me into the world is gone. But it is more than that. I feel not just that I am but that the world around me is deeply unprepared to deal with grief. Nearly every day I get e-mails from people who write: "I hope you're doing well." It's a kind sentiment, and yet sometimes it angers me. I am not OK. Nor do I find much relief in the well-meant refrain that at least my mother is "no longer suffering." Mainly, I feel one thing: My mother is dead, and I want her back. I really want her back—sometimes so intensely that I don't even want to heal. At least, not yet.
Nothing about the past losses I have experienced prepared me for the loss of my mother. Even knowing that she would die did not prepare me in the least. A mother, after all, is your entry into the world. She is the shell in which you divide and become a life. Waking up in a world without her is like waking up in a world without sky: unimaginable. What makes it worse is that my mother was young: 55. The loss I feel stems partly from feeling robbed of 20 more years with her I'd always imagined having.
I say this knowing it sounds melodramatic. This is part of the complexity of grief: A piece of you recognizes it is an extreme state, an altered state, yet a large part of you is entirely subject to its demands. I am aware that I am one of the lucky ones. I am an adult. My mother had a good life. We had insurance that allowed us to treat her cancer and to keep her as comfortable as possible before she died. And in the past year, I got to know my mother as never before. I went with her to the hospital and bought her lunch while she had chemotherapy, searching for juices that wouldn't sting the sores in her mouth. We went to a spiritual doctor who made her sing and passed crystals over her body. We shopped for new clothes together, standing frankly in our underwear in the changing room after years of being shyly polite with our bodies. I crawled into bed with her and stroked her hair when she cried in frustration that she couldn't go to work. I grew to love my mother in ways I never had. Some of the new intimacy came from finding myself in a caretaking role where, before, I had been the one taken care of. But much of it came from being forced into openness by our sense that time was passing. Every time we had a cup of coffee together (when she was well enough to drink coffee), I thought, against my will: This could be the last time I have coffee with my mother.
Grief is common, as Hamlet's mother Gertrude brusquely reminds him. We know it exists in our midst. But I am suddenly aware of how difficult it is for us to confront it. And to the degree that we do want to confront it, we do so in the form of self-help: We want to heal our grief. We want to achieve an emotional recovery. We want our grief to be teleological, and we've assigned it five tidy stages: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Yet as we've come to frame grief as a psychological process, we've also made it more private. Many Americans don't mourn in public anymore—we don't wear black, we don't beat our chests and wail. We may—I have done it—weep and rail privately, in the middle of the night. But we don't have the rituals of public mourning around which the individual experience of grief were once constellated.
And in the weeks since my mother died, I have felt acutely the lack of these rituals. I was not prepared for how hard I would find it to re-enter the slipstream of contemporary life, our world of constant connectivity and immediacy, so ill-suited to reflection. I envy my Jewish friends the ritual of saying kaddish—a ritual that seems perfectly conceived, with its built-in support group and its ceremonious designation of time each day devoted to remembering the lost person. So I began wondering: What does it mean to grieve in a culture that—for many of us, at least—has few ceremonies for observing it? What is it actually like to grieve? In a series of pieces over the next few weeks, I'll delve into these questions and also look at the literature of grieving, from memoirs to medical texts. I'll be doing so from an intellectual perspective, but also from a personal one: I want to write about grief from the inside out. I will be writing about my grief, of course, and I don't pretend that it is universal. But I hope these pieces will reflect something about the paradox of loss, with its monumental sublimity and microscopic intimacy.
I could fill a novel with my memories of you. As a little girl I loved it when you played “tickle monster” with Danny and me. You’d lie on the ground and we’d try to run past you or hop over you without you grabbing us and tickle us till we almost peed our pants.
I also remember innumerable camping trips. The Albee Creek, Yellowstone, Yosemite, Sierras, Mountains near Julian, Desert, going to Julian for malts and sundaes or malts at the Old Drugstore, taking hikes with you and Warren out in the desert and singing songs.
Our summer road trips, first in the blue Datsun I loved so much, then in our mustard yellow Volkswagen van. No air conditioning, no DVD player, no iPods, not even any Walkmans – we’d sing all the songs we could, play Alphabet with the car signs, listen to the Beatles, Fleetwood Mac, Cat Stephens, James Taylor, and many more I’m sure.
Remember the time that we were going to Colorado and Grandma Pottroff was with us? You were in the back playing cards with Danny and Me, and Mom started asking you for directions and you didn’t answer fast enough. She pulled over and got out of the car to come get you (she was pissed) and you jumped out of the van and ran around – it was very keystone-cop-like. Grandma and I just laughed and laughed – it was so funny.
I also remember coming home from the beach at the end of the day. All sandy, sweaty and sunburned. You’d be hot, but then sort of chilled from being in the sun all day. Those nights afterwards, you’d close your eyes and could still feel yourself among the waves.
I remember bringing friends over for dinner and you and Mom telling all sorts of stories about the antics of your younger days. I always liked bringing people to meet you – still do.
I know you had to deal with more boyfriends than you would have liked, but I’m so glad you got to know and love the one that matters most (even with all his quirks, I know you know he loves his kids and me, and is a good person). I never would have gotten out of that one awful relationship if you hadn’t told me that I could and should do better.
You never overdid your advice giving, you let me learn a lot of life lessons on my own, but when it really counted and you did speak up about something I knew it was important. I think that’s why I started respecting myself, finally finished college, became a safe careful driver, and stuck with Stephen during the rough times.
Growing up, I loved the parties you and mom used to have, potlucks, jam sessions, going to Ran and Diane’s, to Goldie and Warren’s. It seemed like our house was always full of friends and music.
I remember weekends with you gardening and listening to Prairie Home. Playing in the backyard while you were out there working away. The chickens, the pigeons, the cats – Bridget. You were always so patient when I’d bring home yet another hurt bird or lost pet.
When you took me to your work, I was so surprised at how many people would come up and tell me what a great guy you were. I mean, I knew you were the greatest, but I didn’t realize so many other people thought so too. I also remember how you would stay until it was exactly time for your day to be over. I tried to cajole you into leaving early once, but you wouldn’t do it. Mr. Honest.
I also remember one birthday when you gave me Buddha and the Chocolate Box, and we all danced to “Ready” it was so fun – all four of us dancing around the living room. Who does that with their parents?
Then I moved to Pennsylvania – I missed you both so much, but I sure loved the visits and felt like I was able to get to know you and Mom on a whole new adultish level. It was fun going to D.C. and seeing all the museums together. You were always so taken with Sophia (she was a cutie), and accepted her as your own granddaughter instantly.
And of course Ben’s birth. I always think of that as the best gift I ever gave you. It was so special to have you there Dad. You were so cute, walking around afterwards saying “this is so wonderful” over and over. And the years since then, watching you with my boys has been so so wonderful for me, for them, for Stephen, for all of us. Kenny lights up around you, he’s going to miss you so much. I can sure see you in Kenny, he’s definitely a McGinnis! Ben is going to miss you on an even deeper level, you mean so much to him. Both those boys and Sophia love you so much.
You’ve been a wonderful dad, granddad, husband, and friend. I’m so glad we came back home in 2005. I’ve enjoyed every minute of you being here – even when you broke my sliding glass door ;-) (it was my fault). We got to take the boys to the Redwoods, to the Farm, to the desert, to Julian to get malts – just like when I was a kid. They’ll never forget it and neither will I.
This is a long letter, but still just a smattering of my memories of you – I could go on and on, but think I’d better stop here.
I’m going to be okay Dad, but I’m going to miss you so much. I don’t want you to go, but I know you have to – and I don’t want you to hurt, most of all I want you to be at peace. Still, who’s going to recommend books, music, set up camping trips, suggest restaurants, and movies to me? I know I can do it all myself, but I’m sure going to miss doing it all with you. Still, I know you’ll always be close by in my thoughts and memories. I’ll hold them close and cherish every one of them. I know I’ll continue to think “what would Dad do?” when I’m faced with an uncertainty, I’ll try to remember to use your humor, and I’ll draw on your strength, honesty, sincerity, humor and gracefulness and hopefully be able to channel them all so that I’m a better mom, wife, daughter, friend, camper and even pet owner and plant caregiver.
I’ve said it before Dad, you are my favorite person. I loved your parents in a special way, I love Mom, Danny, my husband, Sophia, and my boys – but you are the Scarecrow to my inner Dorothy, and I will miss you most of all.
Please plan on joining us at Mom and Dad's house this coming Saturday at 1PM for a potluck (Dad's request). 6126 Malcolm Drive, San Diego, CA 92115. If you have any questions you can email me at ma.mcginnis@gmail.com, or call my cell 619-248-5557. We're trying to keep this as low key as possible for Mom.
We will have some time for everyone to share memories, or to say a few words about Dad. Our UU minister will be here at 2pm, and we will plan on gathering in a circle around that time and having a short talk and then time to share.
We will provide beverages. If everyone else would bring a dish to share that would be great.
