The Biggest Sky

It's my last night in New Mexico.  I'm supposed to be keeping a blog about my trip, but I'm not really, not yet.  Because it turns out that my trip is really about you, isn't it?  It's hard to separate anything happening right now from the grief that is still so fresh and so raw.  So acute.  The grief that hits every time I'm alone.

Today I passed through some of the most breathtaking scenery I've ever encountered, it was like driving within a giant snow-globe in a Swiss alpine village with a Costa Rican town nestled inside of the massive domed sky.  It seems that beautiful things make me cry lately; they make me think of you.  And so it came about that I was sobbing while driving along this ribbon road in the bluest of all blue skies.  So many times, I've had to look around in a full 360 -- how can there be that much sky?  Is it really here?  You would know, you would tell me about the sky.

I went to dinner at a lovely restaurant just outside of Taos, it looked like an old farmhouse, and the details of the room I ate in were just perfect -- bright white walls and old lighting fixtures and a grey painted barn-like floor.  It was gentle and welcoming and peaceful and bright.  You would have loved it there.

The way the candle light flickered bothered me a little, but not too badly, and I thought of that last dinner I had with you at the restaurant in Port Jeff -- Old Field.  There were flickering candles and a fire going there, and I had to change my seat twice to try and situate myself so that the flashing and flickering didn't set off a storm in my head.  I started thinking of that dinner, and you, and my waitress was a lovely girl and you would have asked her name and where she was from, and all of the sudden I was overcome.

I was about to become that woman sitting alone in a lovely restaurant bursting into tears, making the other patrons uncomfortable.  I couldn't get you out of my head, and I thought well maybe he didn't die, maybe he just left us for another family and he is going to walk into this restaurant right now with his other wife and his other kids, and I could see you there, in a short-sleeved pink polo shirt tucked into khakis, and I could hear you, hear your voice and your laugh, and see you smile, and you were there, Dad, you were just there.  And I wouldn't have been mad, if it was just that you had left us for another family, I would have been so relieved.

I realized the flood gates were opening and I really had to fight back the tears, I stared at the white wall and I bit my lip and I forced myself to think of anything but you.  But, I couldn't.  I needed to pay the check and get the hell out of there.  It felt like you died right there and then, in that moment, for the very first time.

After paying, I ran out to parking lot, got into my rented car and burst into tears.  Sitting there sobbing in the car and blowing my nose into rough paper napkins, I closed my eyes and was transported back to the parking lot of the hospital in December, sitting there sobbing in my car, snot dripping everywhere.

When I finally pulled myself together, I started driving again.  I just wanted to move, to go anywhere and everywhere.  And the sky was starting to light on fire, and it was just endless sky everywhere you looked, and I wanted to chase the setting sun, and chase the light and the clouds and the burning colors.

So I kept driving, and the turns I made were based on following the light and wanting to drive into the perfection in the sky.  And I wound up on these tiny deserted dirt roads, and everywhere there was sky.  And blue here, and giant fluffy white clouds there, and burning orange circles there, and purple mountains over there.  And I just started talking to you.  I could feel you in that sky, Dad, and I knew you were there with me and I knew you loved it and appreciated it just as much as I did.  You know I'm not much for spirituality.  I don't believe in an afterlife or anything like that...  but you were there with me today, you were there in that sky.  You just were.  I love you so much.

amy

Bleak times

Dad,

I am pretty sure I just said goodbye to Eliot for the last time. I had to hold him still while Marc gave him intravenous fluids. He will barely eat and drink, and it is heartbreaking, and I think Marc's heart is already broken.

After I held him for the fluids, Idriss and I had drive back to Sea Cliff. But I was so upset that I went and sat on the swing on the front porch. I wasn't super confident that it wouldn't break, given how rusty the chains are, but you aren't around to fix it, are you...

Anyway, it was a beautiful, soft evening with a robust and strange Santa Ana-like breeze, and as I sat on the swing with tears rolling down my face, I sought a way to pull myself together, to find a way to be brave for Marc.

I've been watching Longmire lately, which you loved, and I thought of the Native American spiritual ceremonies on the show. So I tried to imagine your spirit in the intense wind flowing every which way. I imagined your strength coming to me, through the breeze, and it helped. I said goodbye to Marc, to Eliot, to Mom, and we left. I know if you were here, you would be a rock throughout - so I'm trying the best I can to be that for Marc, but I'm not you, so there's that.

I love you Dad.

Five long months...

Today is five months, Dad. 

You are everywhere lately. My peach tree is growing actual peaches, and I know that would have just tickled you pink. Every time we discuss how the hydrangea are growing in, what the tomatoes are doing, how the mint is taking over the yard, I know how you would have liked to be a part of that discussion. Bartleby is still my constant gardening assistant and companion, and he loves to lie amongst the strawberries and lettuces (our arugula is growing like a weed!) just after I water. 

Last week we spent the weekend at Mom's, we went to Bloomin Haus and got tons of hibiscus and impatiens, and planted all the planters on the deck. We used the marble chips you got to facilitate drainage in the planters, but where were you, Dad, cutting the circles of screen for extra draining guarantees? We skipped that step - none of us could bear to do it. 

Lately I've been seeing Allium around, blooming in many neighbors' yards. I remember we used to have a few and you were crazy about them; I'm going to plant some bulbs in the fall for you. I have a running list of things to plant that I think you would like, including some fancy tulips, columbine, and so on. 

It's been a mostly warm and lovely May, and it would have been an incredible golf month. My train ride takes me by Glen Head country club daily and I always think of you as a skinny teenager struggling to lug around people's golf clubs. 

The world is definitely still falling apart, Dad, so no changes there. But our world is also a hot mess. Eliot is dying, and so is Mom's friend Paula, and it is a lot of pain and grief all at once. I know you would remind us that life isn't fair as a means of getting through this brutal period, but at the same time, I am not sure that we need life to be rubbing it in quite so much. 

On the plus side, next week is our five year anniversary. We had talked in the fall about having a party, but without you that doesn't feel right. So Idriss and I are going upstate for the long weekend, to the deep countryside, and I am so looking forward to time to relax and reflect and be away from people. 

I love you so much Dad. I miss you so, so much today and always. Love M

Purple Mountain Majesty

I was shooting out in Southern Utah this week, down south of Moab in the desert of Indian Creek.  The scenery was breathtaking, but the shoot was stressful and busy and I didn't have much time to myself.  We were filming a Land Rover commercial, and our "hero" vehicle was a gleaming white Land Rover Discovery.

Because brands are very specific about the way their product is filmed, the car had to be cleaned many times over our three day shoot.  One time, we were all set up and ready to film, but we were waiting on the car to have its bath.  I walked over to JP, the car wrangler (who you would have loved, by the way, a very interesting man from Scotland, thoughtful and knowledgeable and fatherly), and offered to help him clean the car so I could speed things along.

The way he explained to me exactly what had to be done, exactly which cloths to use (there were at least four different shades of blue and each one served a different purpose), the seriousness with which he took this process, it all reminded me of you.  It probably took him longer to explain everything to me than it would have for him to just do the whole thing himself.  And, of course, even after his long explanation he was reluctant to really let me do much -- he was obviously convinced I would get it wrong.

But, finally he told me I could dry off the top of the vehicle.  Standing there perched on the top of the back tire and leaning over the moon roof of this Land Rover with a rag while a crew of 20 people waited for me to finish, I chuckled to myself.  It was a sight you would have loved to have seen, and one in which I would have told you about afterwards and made a joke about how the money you spent on my college education was going to good use.

Afterwards, walking down and away from our set, which was a deserted campground at the top of a pile of rocks, I saw this sight, these mountains bathed in purple, and I just burst into tears.  Where are you, Dad?  Where are you?  Every time I saw those mountains over the next few days at exactly the time of the day when they turn purple in the setting sun, I thought of you and I cried behind my sunglasses.  I crouched behind cars and hid from everyone and just took a minute to cry for you.  God, I miss you so much, Dad.

love amy

Double bow

You taught me to tie my shoes, and you taught me that it is absolutely and completely critical and non-negotiable and just plain foolish and courting disaster to not tie double bows.

You imagined those poor fools who didn't know this out in the world as tripping on their untied shoelaces, falling on their faces and breaking their noses and knocking out teeth as a result. Or falling down an escalator. Or into a ladder and knocking someone else off. Etc. I am sure you had more scenarios than this.

Even now, when I'm trying on, say, sneakers, I put the shoe on, tie a double bow, and walk around the store to see if it fits. I mean...it is a force of habit that cannot be broken.

I was reminded of this yesterday because I have this cute new pair of silver shoes with laces, and the laces are really short. It makes it very hard to tie a double bow, but I realized yesterday that if I can't I'll just need to get new shoelaces for them. No alternatives!

Love M

Beekman Redux

It's funny Megan wrote about the Beekman Towers.  That hotel and that entire area of NYC is imprinted in me, it's my first impression of Manhattan.  Those exciting trips into the city when we rode in taxis laden with shopping bags, where we got dressed up and went to fancy dinners and shows, sometimes even went to the apartments of fancy friends of yours and Mom's. NYC around the UN and the Beekman, that is the NYC of my childhood, the NYC of you and Mom dressed to the nines and treating us like princesses.

One time, you let me go up to the top of the Beekman with you so you could sit at the bar and sip a martini.  I was way too young to be in a bar, and I was thrilled at being up there on top of the world with you, looking out of the skyline from the wrap around balcony.  I can still feel the air in the lobby, in the suites, hear Megan shushing me whenever I made a single noise while she was trying to sleep in our shared sofa bed.

The Beekman is where I learned about good tipping, from you.  Michael the bellhop was your favorite, and he always called you by name (Mr. Dempsey) and you in turn referred to him by name.  I want to say that Michael was actually a cousin or something of the Mendelsohn's, but I can't remember exactly; I just feel like there was some vague connection there.

Anyway, tipping etiquette -- then, as now -- stressed me out immensely.  I've never figured out how to be a smooth tipper, like you were.  I would watch every time Michael or one of the other bellhops did something for us to see how you handled tipping.  One time I noticed you didn't tip when someone brought our bags to the room.  I asked you about it and you told me that you saved all the tips up for the end of the stay, when you would hand a nice big tip to each of the bellhops.  I worried that since they didn't know this was your plan that they might secretly hate us and think you were cheap.  You were not worried about this at all -- I don't know if it was experience, or our history of staying there, or what, but they knew that they'd be well taken care of by the end of our stay.  I've always thought of this, your smoothness with tipping, and never been able to replicate it.  There's not a slick bone in my body!  But you could be really slick sometimes, and picturing you in the Beekman always makes me think of this young, handsome, sharply dressed father, hiding a $20 bill in his hand as he smoothly handed it over to an equally discreet bellhop.

My worldview was shaped so heavily by those trips to the Beekman, those early visits to NYC.  Wandering into that area is like wandering into the past.  Sometimes I can't believe it's the same city I live in, the city from those trips.  What a joy they were, always.

love a

Summertime

Winter is officially gone.  Per usual, there was no gradual transition.  It's cold, so cold you can't imagine what warm sunshine would feel like, and then almost the next instant it's so hot you're running to put your sweaty face in front of an air conditioning vent to cool off.  And despite how quickly it happens, by the time the air is really hot and sticky, winter is such a distant memory that it almost doesn't feel real.

So all traces of winter are gone, and with it your death has receded into the realm of the surreal.  It feels very much as if it never happened, and at the same time as if it happened just one minute ago, as if it is always happening.  I haven't been writing to you lately.  I'm very busy with work again, and when I'm not working I'm migraining.  Usually, I'm doing both at the same time.  My mind is lost in the world of cameras and cranes and red rock deserts and canyons as I prep for a shoot in Utah, and when I have a minute to think, I am consumed by migraine, which erases all thoughts and feelings other than a dull nausea and a general unease.  It's almost impossible to feel any emotion other than misery during a migraine, and it's utterly impossible to envision the past or the future, to imagine what it feels like not to have a migraine.

But in the moments, in the very rare clear moments when I take a pause from my work and I don't have a migraine, I think of you, Dad.  Always of you.  You and your casual, happy demeanor.  Your blue eyes, your gravelly voice, your stoicism.  Don't talk about it, don't think about it.  This was Mom's advice to me a few weeks ago when I burst into tears on the phone with her.  I miss Dad, I had said.  And we are all fighting our own private battles with grief, and for her at that moment she didn't want to let grief overcome her, so she shut down the conversation with "don't think about it, don't talk about it."  If ever there was a motto for our family, that might have been it.  There are so many things you didn't talk about, I wish I could have known more.

But more than that I wish you were here to enjoy the beginning of summer, to be elated by golf season getting back into swing (pun for your benefit).  To work in the garden and open the pool and check the temperature every day.  To seek compliments on how nice the pool and the yard look.  To sit on the back deck, grill steaks and hamburgers on your barbecue.  To ask who wants cheese and who doesn't on their burger, and then to forget and put cheese on all of them.  To come home from a morning of golf and head up for your afternoon nap.  To take drives out east with Mom.  To celebrate Mother's Day with us tomorrow, and Father's Day in June, a day which I am dreading the approach of already.

Miss you, Dad.  More than you know.

amy

The Beekman

The other day, on my way to an appointment, I found myself walking right by the UN. If I had had more time, I would have gone to see the Beekman, the hotel we often stayed in with you and mom when we were kids.

You loved it because it was all suites - so you and mom got the bedroom, if Marc was with us he got a cot, and Amy and I had to share the sofa bed.

When it was just you and mom, you usually went to the Helmsley Palace (now the NY Palace) where I've stayed for work, which is just a lovely place.

We didn't travel too much as a family, but we did spend quite a few long weekends in the city over the holidays.

When we were very little, we spent a few days doing touristy things in the city with the Mendelsohns. We went to the top of the Empire State building. We walked up 5th Ave, and went into the Trump building that had the waterfall in the lobby (or down 1 floor?). Wow! we thought. A waterfall. In. A. Building. That was crazy and I remember how giddy it made me feel.

We visited the Museum of Natural History, and I refused to walk under the giant whale, because I thought it was going to fall on me. I remember going all the way around the perimeter of that giant room with Mom.

And we went out to dinner at Windows on the World, and there was a band, and we actually danced on a Saturday night on Manhattan, you and me, all dressed up, with the city lights spread out before us, and it really felt like we were on top of the world, not just looking at it.

Years later, you let me plan our itineraries when we went into the city - what shows to see, what galleries to stop into, and so on. You got me a membership to the Met, and we also used to see special exhibits at Moma, too, like the Matisse retrospective that was to this day one of the loveliest things I've ever experienced.

I've written on this blog before about how you helped shape my love of music, but I think I was wrong to limit that to music. You helped me feel like it's my place to see beautiful paintings, sculpture, to enjoy a beautiful building or scene. Mom too - of course, nobody has a sense of beauty like she does - but you were a part of that.

It's been a little while since I've written on here last, Dad, but you've been on my mind more than ever. Sometimes I think the less I write the more I think about you. I have a lot more to say, don't you worry.

Love you.
M