The Man on the Metro

He didn't look like my dad, not at all, really. He had a full head of white curly hair, no beard or mustache and a completely different style of glasses.

But he was reading a Kindle.

The older kind, like the one I bought for my dad before he got seriously sick but when he was already not well. He needed extra large-print books — hard to find at the library, my mom said, at least the ones he wanted — and even the act of holding up a large heavy hardcover was getting hard on his wrists and hands. So I bought him a Kindle. He was reading it the last time I saw him, or at least the last time I really saw him, before the final sudden and rapid decline. 

The Metro was crowded and I had to lean away from the people standing in the aisle lest I wanted a messenger bag to the face. I glanced over at his Kindle and noticed he also had the text set fairly large. I didn't intend to be nosy but I immediately recognized what he was reading:

Act I, Scene I: Elsinore. A platform before the Castle.

"Hamlet!" I blurted out. 

He looked up, a little startled, then smiled. He hadn't read it in years, but had recently seen a production of it at the Folger Theatre downtown and decided to give it another go. He asked if I'd read much Shakespeare.

I explained that my father had taught Shakespeare for many, many years. So yes. 

"He passed away last year," I added, then paused to silently check my math. Last year? The year before? It feels like forever ago, most days. 

We continued chatting about this and that. Kindles are great, love that you can get the classics for free, etc. He asked if I'd followed in my dad's footsteps and I explained that while I wasn't a teacher, I'd minored in English and was now a writer. 

"Just online," I clarified. A weird compulsion, something I've done ever since a conversation I had with my dad in which he expressed his disappointment that I was wasting my "talents" on the little "web site thing" instead of focusing on getting published for real.

He apologized for that later, admitting that he didn't understand what I was doing at the time. He probably went on to tell me how proud he was of me and my writing accomplishments at least a dozen times, but still. "Just" online. A verbal tic that stuck.

He asked about my children's ages, and if any of them had inherited the knack for English and writing. I immediately boasted about Noah's book about the Scary Teacher from the Black Lagoon, a Frankenstein's monster type villain who frightens his students before being ultimately defeated by a single karate punch. 

I suddenly realized I was openly using this poor man as a stand-in, having a conversation with a surrogate PopPop and expecting a total stranger to be proud of my kid and the funny little book he wrote — but he WROTE it! he's WRITING! he's READING! he's just doing so GREAT, Dad, GREAT! if you could only SEE! — and was seized with a weird sort of panic when I realized we were at our stop. 

It was also his stop. He got up and left the train car. He immediately vanished into the crowd on the platform and I never saw him again.

I started choking back the sobs while still on the escalator. Jason was momentarily confused and then surmised that I'd been reminded of my dad, though I couldn't even dare explain the actual crazy thoughts rushing through my head at that moment — I wanted that man to come back. I wanted to talk to him some more. I wanted him to say goodbye to me. He should at least have said goodbye to me. Instead he just. Got up. And left. He left me. 

Come back. Come back!

He's not coming back. 

I know this. I knew this. But apparently I had to re-learn it on Friday night, through hours of ugly, raw sobbing until I had no tears left, but the grief kept rising and crashing, hitting me harder than even the night I got the phone call. I'd been expecting that phone call. 

I didn't expect to meet a nice older man on the Metro, reading Hamlet on his Kindle.

I didn't expect it to hurt this much, still. 

Wednesday

I said I wanted to go. Even though I didn't really want to go. But I felt like I was supposed to want to go. Or something.

So we went. I drove my mom back to the cemetary, back past the funeral staging area where we waited in our cars for what felt like forever, in the cold and the rain. Where I had stared out the window and told Jason I wanted to be cremated, then stared at my feet and silently regretted my choice of footwear. 

The weather was beautiful this year, so we parked farther away, where the car wouldn't possibly get in the way of any other funeral. We started walking down the grassy aisles and I silently regretted my choice of stroller. I should have brought the sturdier one, not the cheap car seat stroller frame that got stuck on every lump and divot in the ground. The ground that was full of bodies. 

My mom got turned around and confused about the rows. The rows and rows of identical markers, so we marched up one and then had to turn around and the stroller got caught on a bit of raised earth around the corner of a headstone -- a dead stranger's headstone, oh my God, I'm sorry, I'm sorry -- and I felt small, quiet waves of panic and nausea deep within my chest as I pushed my baby back down another narrow row, back over the ground that was full of bodies.

My mom has visited every week -- she says it helps, to see a physical reminder of his life, to feel a connection to his spirit. But today she can't find "him" because we took a different path in, because of the stroller. The flowers she had delivered on Sunday are already gone, so there's nothing to do but check the numbers on the back of the markers and keep counting down the rows. Until we find him. Him.

My mom kisses the headstone and talks to him. She tells him I am there, and Baby Ike is there, and I am fully plunged into a silent internal freak-out because no. No. He is not here. He is not here at all. I am not introducing my baby to a patch of ground and a stone; I am not contemplating what lies beneath us; what lies all around us. Loss, death, decay.

My mom asks if I want to take a picture. I have no idea what I want anymore, or what I'm supposed to want to do. But I take a picture anyway. Then another. Then my phone freezes up and won't take any more pictures. I get annoyed with it on principle, for some reason. 

"I'm not good with cemetaries," I say very quietly, as if this was a Thing, a Quirk, some established known fact about me. Here Lies Amy Corbett Storch: She didn't like the phone, volcanoes, raw onions and cemetaries. 

I'd never set actually foot in a cemetary before. His funeral didn't even count; it was way over there, in a gazebo, away from this field and this ground, this ground full of bodies and everywhere I step I'm doing spatial math about the length of the average casket and whether I'm walking directly above a body. On a body? A body who was someone's loved one and here I am pushing a stroller frame on top of them? I should have used the Ergo, I should have stayed on the pavement until I knew where we were going, I should...

I should not have come here.

This is awful. I feel awful. And not just about the headstones and the ground full of bodies. As I stare at his name etched in marble, he has never felt more...gone. It has never felt so final and complete than it does in this moment. 

"I'm not good with cemetaries" I whisper again. My chest is tight and my breathing is shallow. I want to leave. I want to leave and I don't want to come back. 

My mom understands. She understands completely. She says we can go, so we do. 

***

We stop for breakfast on the way back. Ike eats a plate of scrambled eggs and a bowl of strawberries and bananas. The mess is terrific, but the waitresses don't seem to mind because he's smiling at them in between double-fisted mouthfuls. An old friend calls because she wants to meet the baby; my mother-in-law offers to take him later so my mom and I can go out for dinner together. After that, I set up the Roku I bought her for Christmas and we watch Downton Abbey.

I spend the rest of the day above the ground, where it's easier to breathe. And before I know it, I wake up. And it was Thursday.

Countdown

Wednesday is coming.

Wednesday is coming and with it comes sadness and heaviness and a sense that I will need to say something -- to write something -- and that I should know what that something is by now. But to figure that something out, I would need to be thinking about it, about the sadness and the heaviness, instead of pretending that Wednesday is not coming.

Pretending it doesn't mean as much as it does, this weirdly arbitrary-when-you-think-about-it block of 365 days plus one, for leap day, which makes it feel even stranger, like I should be dreading Tuesday but the Gregorian calendar is dictating that no, thou shalt be sad on Wednesday. 

Pretending that I will not be spending it visiting his grave and comforting my mother and basically powering through the day (C'MON THURSDAY!) as quickly as possible so it doesn't crush me like a gnat and I'm not making any sense here, today, on the Friday before, which doesn't give me much hope for coming up with the right words on Wednesday. 

Ya know? 

Probably not. That's okay. Me neither. 

Here's a video of Ike begging for ice cream while Noah asks for permission to watch Angry Birds videos on "YouToo," (which we rarely let him do anymore after realizing what YouTube considers to be a "related video" to Angry Bird cut scenes), and Ezra was there too but he's busy eating ice cream and anyway, it was a nice dinner together outside in the warm weather and Ike's little mouth makes me smile. A lot. 

Baby Ike Likes Ice Cream from amalah on Vimeo.

That feels right for today, I think.

Parting Shots

I didn't take many pictures of him. Even "before."

I didn't take pictures of him because I kept thinking there was going be a different "after;" a better one than the one we got.  He was always in the hospital, or stuck on the couch, or hooked up to oxygen, or with visible surgery scars, or bedridden upstairs, or in a hospital bed in the living room, or in hospice -- all stages in a process I could rush here and type thousands of words about, but could not bring myself to hold up a camera and snap a photo of. I could not bring myself to document those moments forever as the way things were, right then, because documenting them felt like admitting that things would not get better. That we would not get a chance to eventually take a photo without the hospital bed or the oxygen tank or the thin, pallid skin and bruises.

People told me to take pictures. People told me right here, on this blog, in the comments, to take pictures. Right up until the end: Take pictures. Put the boys around him, put his hands on your belly, and take some damn pictures. 

I didn't take pictures of him because I felt weird about it, intrusive -- like he would know that I was only finally taking pictures because he was dying, even though he WAS dying, but still. Let's not talk about such things. And let's certainly not whip out the camera phone and take pictures of such things. I was confusing denial with optimism, mortality with morbidity.

And I didn't take pictures because I couldn't fathom ever wanting to look at those pictures. They'd be too sad, too awful, too much of a reminder that I missed so many better opportunities when he was sick but still less sick. I wanted to remember him with my minds' eye, I told myself. It was better that way. 

But since people told me to take pictures, I took a couple cheat-y shots at the very end: my pregnant belly at his bedside, his hand holding mine before I said goodbye for the last time. I took them quickly, stealthily, guiltily. His hospice nurse walked in while I was taking the photo of his hand and I was embarassed, like I'd been caught doing something I shouldn't. Something gross and strange. No, no, no, she told me. Keep taking pictures. I shook my head and said I was fine, all good, all done. What was I even taking the pictures for? Myself? My kids? My blog? Facebook? Good God.

A few weeks after he passed, my mom sent me a photo in the mail: The last photo she ever took of him. He's sitting up in a blue chair, oxygen canula in place, and smiling. She took it with her phone, and it shows: It's orange and poorly lit and a bit ghostly. He would be dead just a few days later. I took one quick look at it and shoved it back into the envelope, which I then buried hastily under a pile of papers. It unnerved me. It made my stomach feel twisty and sick. That's why you don't take pictures, I thought. I don't want to look at that, I thought.

***

The first time he ever met Ezra, he was in the hospital, about to undergo triple-bypass surgery. But because it was the first time he ever met Ezra, I reluctantly ignored the less-than-desirable circumstances and took a couple pictures. I'd completely forgotten about them until I finally exceeded my phone's ability to store every single photo I've ever taken and had to get serious about backing up and deleting old photos.

2,546 old photos, to be exact. And these are the only ones I had of him, of my dad.

I backed them up in about four other places, then printed them out. I still didn't delete them off my phone. If I squint, I can pretend that one of those Baby Ezras is actually Baby Ike. 

***

It's almost been a year. And when it came to choosing which photos to display in my office, next to my desk, it was a surprisingly easy decision.

Peace in Brain, Goodwill Toward Self

I can't tell you how many first sentences I have written and deleted in the past couple days. "So here's the thing," I'd start, then be unable to put the thing into words.

Other times I'd try skipping the pointless preamble and just say it, but then would be irritated by the unpoetic obviousness: the well-duh-ness of it.

Then I'd think that I didn't really want to publish anything that might bum people out right before Christmas ANYWAY, so maybe I'll just go do something else until a different, funnier topic occurred to me. And yes, the Star Wars snowflakes were Exhibit A of "doing something else", along with baking. So much baking. I don't even particularly love baking, but I did it anyway. Batch after batch of cookies, until I finally up and ran out of sugar yesterday. 

So it's either finally sit down and post something or vaccuum. 

We're hosting Christmas this year, for the first time ever. This is not the thing, of course, because I'm happy to do it. We bought this particular house with holiday hosting in mind -- albeit that was waaaay back before we went and filled every bedroom with wall-to-wall children and reached a toy-and-baby-gear occupancy level that also is approaching deadly stadium crush levels. I knew my mom wouldn't be able to host Christmas much longer so I figured we could step up and take over at some point. 

That point is now. You know, because my dad's dead.

Aaaand: Pall. Cast. 

And also, I know, right? Holidays are hard after you lose someone! Especially the first holiday! Because that person won't be there and they were an important part of the emotional fabric of that holiday and so the reality of your loss gets to punch you in the chest a little bit more than usual. My goodness, Amy, that's quite an astute observation there. Has science been notified of your shocking findings?

My children are beside themselves with excitement. Presents! Santa! Cookies! Nana and aunts and uncles and COUSINS TO PLAY WITH!  Despite family-wide agreements to not go overboard with the presents, the floor-to-almost-ceiling stack of Amazon boxes in my bedroom suggest that we all pretty much failed spectacularly at not overcompensating and buying our feelings or anything. I'm actually massively relieved that the only traveling expected of us is a couple trips to the train station, and am super excited about Christmas morning and Christmas dinner and omg, the toy parking garage we bought for Ezra is going to MELT HIS FACE OFF. 

And it's Ike's first Christmas! Probably the last "first Christmas" we'll have with a baby. I bought them all ridiculous coordinating Christmas pajamas and I'm going to let them all eat cookies all damn day and watch A Christmas Story 14 times in a row while building Lego sets and it will all be so wonderful, I just know it. 

And yet, oh. I just wish he was here too. 

MOAR BIRTHDAYS

(In Which I Strive To Not Talk About Sad Things During Another Post For The American Cancer Society)

I was looking through stacks of old photos in hopes of finding some inspiration for this entry, something that would FINALLY maybe focus more on the "birthdays" part of ACS' More Birthdays campaign and less about, you know, the "cancer" thing. 

I'm not sure if I found inspiration, exactly, but I definitely found a theme.

And that theme would be: Cake, Pinafores and Unfortunate Bangs.

Oh, I'm kidding. But not about the cake part.

Aaaaaand maybe not so much about the bangs thing, either.

Sometimes I feel guilty about how few photos I manage to ever actually print out. About 99% of my children's childhoods remain solidly in virtual form only (albeit with a robust and slightly paranoid web of backups going on under the hood). There's something nice about sifting through yellowed stacks of photos, never knowing what awkward, poorly lit memory you'll hit on next.

Then again: No timestamps. Perhaps these photos were once labeled in an album, but are now floating loose and out of order, so I have no idea how old I am in the above photo. Five? If I had to guess, based on the handmade dress, which I think I remember from a preschool class photo. My obsession with Snow White burned fast and bright throughout my entire childhood (#1 reason: SHE WASN'T BLOND) and I don't know why the Smurfs seem to be there too. Except to shame the me of 2011 who "accidentally" and "maliciously" deleted my six-year-old's Season Pass to the Smurfs on the TiVo because HOLY GOD THAT SHOW IS ANNOYING AND TERRIBLE.

This photo pretty much sums up every birthday party ever: The "good china" set out at my insistence (including the cups and saucers, from which we would drink our juice). The cardboard crown. The "Happy Birthday" crepe paper that my mom bought exactly one roll of and used for a full 18 years of birthdays, as it unfurled like the loaves and fishes. At least one birthday present infuriatingly wrapped in Christmas paper. Sparse attendance thanks to it being so close to Christmas, save for my friend Laura, who was and always will be prettier than me. 

And my dad, right off to the side, because the birthday girl demoted him from his usual seat at the head of the table. 

Here I acquiesced to paper plates and cups, but please note the fancy candlesticks and cake stand. This makes it okay.

(Birthday crepe paper? Check. Hung upside down? Double check. Laura, looking just like Snow White so much it killed me a little inside? Still and to this day, people. STILL AND TO THIS DAY.)

A rare non-cake-related birthday shot. In fact, the only one I found. My crown says "6" on it so I'm Noah's age here. I think my teacher made me that crown, and I would  like someone to please tell me what the hell happened to my Tomy Fashion Plates set. OH GOD THOSE WERE SO AWESOME. 

Also awesome: Those pants. Purple jersey knit, high-waisted, with a belt. I think there were pleats involved. Definitely tapered ankles that I stuffed into multiple pairs of slouch socks. There is actually a companion photo to this one of me holding that outfit up on Christmas morning, already super excited at the prospect of wearing such a mature-looking ensemble at my birthday party instead of a handmade dress and pinafore. 

Like this one. I wish I still had that dress. I wish I still had all of those people.

My dad, my aunt Betty, my "uncle" Jack who my aunt always insisted was just her good friend but of course we all know better now, like we now know better than that giant ashtray full of cigarette butts right on the table, holy shit. 

I am four years old here. I know because this one is labeled. 

My dad was the one who labeled it.

 

 

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to print out some photos. 

This post is sponsored by the American Cancer Society's More Birthdays campaign.

 

 

In Absentia

I was planning to write some kind of tribute. Something happy. Nostalgic and sentimental. I felt confident I could scan some photos, talk about the good times, tell a funny story or two, anything but more cancer talk. Anything but loss, death, grief, because no. It is his birthday. 

But instead the words are jumbled up inside, trapped within a knotty ball of discomfort somewhere above my heart and below my throat, but the idea of untangling it all seems more likely to result in heaving sobs instead of an eloquently written tribute. 

I just. It hurts so hard. I miss him so much. I want him back. 

I want to send him an Amazon gift certificate and talk to him on the phone. I want to hear about the yellow cake with chocolate frosting, his favorite. I want to visit him this weekend and cook for him or treat him to carryout from a restaurant and apologize for how loud the kids are being and for never knowing what to get him for his birthday besides another lame Amazon gift certificate. 

Because that's what I got him for his last birthday, and the birthday before his last birthday, before "his last birthday" meant something else. 

And yet...no. It wasn't his last birthday, because today is his birthday. And it will be his birthday next November 15th and the November 15th after that. 

Today will always be his birthday. 

Happy birthday, Dad. 

Thank you to the American Cancer Society for sponsoring this post, this day, as part the wonderful, dear-to-my-heart More Birthdays campaign.

Blood Around the Edges

Jason is at a software conference in California all week, and apparently can see Disneyland from his hotel. My mom is in town to help me out with the kids, or at least that's the idea: Please come and save me from my own purposeful decision to have this many children, ay yi fucking yi.

Today is (was? would have been? no, let's stick with is) my parents' wedding anniversary. 

I'm glad she's here. She says she's glad she's here, too. She had flowers and a card delivered to his grave this morning, though. 

Her grief is...still intense. Raw and fresh and liable to bubble over at any second. The kind of grief that can make people uncomfortable because it's just so real and there. 

And then there's me. I'm fine! And good. What's for lunch? I should go to the store. We need cat food. 

Jason says I keep hitting the snooze button on my grief. On grieving. Which I suppose is true, like I keep expecting there to be a time when I can pencil in a good cry and some Deep Thoughts between 11 and 1 next Thursday but oh, crap. I have that call with the people at the place. Then I have pick Ezra up from school and get Noah at the bus and Ike has a doctor's appointment and there's some free time on Saturday but I think I'll schedule a haircut instead. 

I could probably convince you -- and myself -- that I have simply opted to immerse myself in life instead. Life! Which goes on, blah dee blee, and my father would not want me to be sad and weepy at the expense of reveling in my pile of adorable, hilarious children. That happened, and that's all there is to it. The best way through it is through, at full speed, on a train, that's been turbo-boosted with rockets. 

But then: My mom mails me copies of some old photos she's found of him. To add to the huge stack of assorted pictures and yearbooks and newspaper clippings I promised to scan for her ages ago, but have not yet touched. I stare at his face and feel my eyes getting hot. I quickly slap the paper face down on the counter, then cover it up with some catalogs. Then I snap at one of the kids, for absolutely no reason at all. Stop that. Whatever it is you're doing, just stop. 

And then: We're out at lunch, some casual place with a big flatscreen TV up above the bar. We're in a booth across the room but I'm staring at the TV anyway, watching some PSA-type commercial in horror, knowing I should look away, look away, look away...

OH GOD STOP IT NO NO WHAT THE HELL. (<--Click at your eyeballs' own risk.)

I finally manage to look away, but only because I need to turn my face towards the wall while I attempt to get my sobs back under control. I blame postpartum hormones and try to laugh at myself. Jason tries to tell me it's okay but I cut him off and ask him about the state of my mascara.

And then: Father of the Bride comes on TV. Jason and I watch it for the dozenth time for no real reason. I make fun of it a lot, because I have no patience for extravagant weddings and never fail to side with Steve Martin over his poor little spoiled brat daughter who falls asleep reading tips for a BUDGET WEDDING, THE HORROR, SEE WHAT YOU'VE DRIVEN HER TO? SHE'S THINKING OF BAKING HER OWN CAKE, YOU MONSTER.

And then: She calls him on the phone, from the airport, just to say she loves him. My heart shatters into a million pieces and I'm sobbing -- bawling -- because I can't do that, ever again.

And that's how it goes. I stuff it down. I look away. I keep the photos and clippings in the basement. I put his fingerprint back in my jewelry box to protect it from Ike's grabby little fists. I dab at my eye makeup with tissues and laugh at myself and go to the store for cat food during Noah's karate class while Ezra tries to sneak ice cream into our cart and I text my husband to find out if I should pick up some dish detergent too. I'm fine! Really, really fine. 

And then I walk past the Band-Aids and there it is, again, bleeding ever so slightly around the edges.

IN WHICH I COMPLETELY DORK OUT FOR CANCER AWARENESS

Wait! Don't run! This post is not another bummeriffic downer of a weepfest or whatever. I'm totes back to embarrassing myself for fun!

Long- and semi-longtime readers now that I have been partnered with the American Cancer Society's More Birthdays campaign for quite awhile now. At this point, they pretty much say JUMP and I say HOW HIGH AND WOULD IT HELP IF I HIT MY HEAD ON SOMETHING ON THE WAY UP? 

This time they asked me to sing.

Oh my God. You guys.

Yes, Noah is covering his ears the whole time. Yes, Ezra only knows the "YOU TOO, YOU TOO, YOU TOO" part. Yes, poor Baby Ike is flopping around helplessly like a loaf of Wonderbread because I clearly have never held an infant before in my life. 

(This was Take One. Things devolved even further during Take Two, believe me.)

And yes, I am singing and five weeks postpartum and also the whole right side of my shirt is soaking wet because I got trapped outside in a torrential downpour about five minutes before filming this because I am no better at holding umbrellas than I am with babies.

Also: My hair. I know. I KNOW AND I AM SORRY.

But anyway, after you're done laughing at me (s'okay, I know I'm a total dorkball, I deserve it), I would like to encourage you to submit your own 30 Seconds Or So Of YouTubed Humiliation for the More Birthdays campaign and contest. And then you can be all, "HERE'S MY VIDEO" and I will laugh at you for a change. Or maybe I'll just kind of hate you and your beautiful singing voice and fabulous hair and Pillow-Pet-free bookshelves.  

TOGETHER WE CAN OUT-DORK CANCER.

Only In Dreams

I have dreams about him.

In my dreams, he is a composite of himself: He's wearing the ivy style hat and long coat he wore to his teaching job every day of my childhood, but his face is older. He's holding a briefcase, but wearing sneakers. His hair and beard are fully gray, but thicker than it was at the end, after the chemo. The glasses he's wearing are from some fuzzy, unspecific point in between. 

They are not happy dreams: "What are you doing here?" I asked him in the very first one, bubbling over with joy.

"Your mother died," he said simply, and walked away.

W. T. F?

I immediately woke up and texted my mom -- something unrelated and upbeat, just "cuz" -- and then sat in terror as the hours went by without a response and I wondered if I could fake it through a phone call without letting on that OH HI YOUR DEAD HUSBAND TOLD ME IN A DREAM THAT YOU DIED BUT YOU ANSWERED THE PHONE SO I GUESS YOU'RE GOOD OKAY SO NEVERMIND.

Kind of a day-ruiner of a dream, to put it mildly.

Since then, his presence in a dream unsettles me. I'm afraid of what he'll say; I'm afraid that he simply won't say anything and disappear. I'm afraid of waking up because when I wake up I lose him all over again, I once again feel the full weight of he's gone, he's really gone, and I will never see him again.

Except for the glimpses of this mixed-up shadowy phantom. Who even in my dreams I know doesn't exist anymore, doesn't belong there, and who even in my own dreams I cannot seem to go up to and hug and say the one thing that was left so painfully and permanently unsaid. 

"Hi Daddy, I have someone I want you to meet."