Swimming with Sharks

We took the girls to Heavens, just north of Malibu, and found an empty cove. The girls wandered over the rocks to a tide pool while Raf and I read our books, listened to our iPods, observed the random daytripper and shell-seeker. We dreamed about going to Spain and Italy next summer, discussing what the kids would eat, where to stay, lowering our expectations to simply a string of days on foreign beaches interspersed with Gaudi and gladiators. 

A pod of dolphins swam past the rocks. I counted them silently, wondering if the girls noticed them. One... two... three fins! 

"At least they're not sharks," I said to Raf, who took one earphone out and clicked off his iPhone.

"Yeah, I didn't tell you this," he said, squinting under his dark glasses, staring out to sea, "but a surfer got attacked by a shark last week, north of Santa Barbara. Guy my age."

"Attacked?"

Raf doesn't sugarcoat things. "Ate him. He washed up on the shore."

I didn't say anything at first. I blinked under my own dark glasses, searching the horizon for  answers. I wondered aloud if maybe the food supply for sharks has been affected by global warming or some other environmental illness, and maybe that's why we're hearing about more shark attacks closer to the shore.

"It's the first time a shark has killed a surfer in Southern California in 11 years," Raf said.

A few paddle boarders and kayaks sailed by the cove. My life with Raf flashed before me, glorious beach days like this one combined with the future I imagine for us, filled with traveling and surfing and weddings and grandbabies and growing old, really old, together. 

"I haven't told the kids," he said. "They'd never go back in the water."

"Or they wouldn't want you to go back in." I held my tongue though I wanted to add, Please don't get eaten by a shark... please don't get hurt ever...

He laughed. "Like I'd stop surfing because I'm afraid of sharks."

I let some time pass, considered the glint of sunlight on the glassy green surface of the water. "I don't know what I'd do if anything happened to you," I said, trying my best to keep my voice flat, unemotional.

"You'd be okay."

"Yeah, but -- "

"You'd be okay. That's one thing we know, unfortunately. Life goes on." 

I saw the girls rounding the top of the rocks again, waving, pink-brown skin and bikinis, big smiles, beach hair. Max and death and Isaac and sadness and the Great Unknown swirled above them like the banners that soar behind small airplanes over beaches on sunny days. The ocean lulled below them, lapping softly at the barnacles on the rocks. Understanding seeped in, and I let it sit with me.

We swim with sharks.  And life goes on. 

We're All Made of Stars

I hate late night phone calls. There comes a point in your life when late night phone calls aren't drunk-dialing friends or booty calls from your FWB or an alert that your bestie is in labor.  They won't call you after 10 o'clock at night to say you won the lottery or that you have been chosen for Dancing with the Stars. 


On Friday night, I was brushing my teeth when the phone rang. I didn't know the number, so I let it go.  Minutes later, I noticed a voicemail.  Listening, I could hardly comprehend what was going on.


My dear friend is dealing with the "worst case scenario" that all of my married girlfriends fear.  Her husband is going to die. Today.  At 12:30. And she's the one who has to say "yes" so that it will happen.


Here's the thing: he shouldn't be dying.  He's only 50, perfectly healthy, and he went to Saint John's in Santa Monica for a knee replacement surgery last Monday.  It was successful. He went into recovery and spent the next day there, in a lot of pain but doing well, and Bren said good night to him on Tuesday, planning to see him the next morning. He was given an Ambien, on top of pain meds, and went to sleep.  The nurse checked on him at 1:30, then took his break. When he returned at 2, Steve had flatlined.


They revived him, but he never regained consciousness, stuck in a state of paralysis while they assessed the damage to his body (so much brain damage, liver and kidneys shot). Their best guess is that he had a sleep apnea episode, something blocking his airways, then went into cardiac arrest.


That's the physical part of this story.


I spent hours with my friend on Saturday afternoon, watching her smile through sad eyes and talk to her husband lovingly from his bedside while the beeping machines help him breathe and keep him alive.  She's being asked questions like, "Where will the funeral be?" and "What will you do with his stuff?" while she's looking right at him, clinging to his remaining hours on this Earth.  She wants him to wake up and help her navigate the details - they have a will, of course, but it doesn't tell her how to teach her son about astronomy or drumming or how to deal with waiting through the entire weekend until they can take him off the beeping machines and allow him to die in peace.


At one point while I was there, the neurologist told her, "It's best if can start to get on with your life."


A week ago, if she'd been told that, she would have reeled from the insensitivity. But now, she understands. There's only a little of her husband's energy left in his body.  He needs to be let go and she's the only one who can let him go.


Her birthday is next month; she'll be 40. He's only 50. They got together the same night that Raf and I did.  We were college friends, but we also lived next door to each other in Hollywood after that.  On the way out to LACMA on a Friday (a weekly ritual for our apartment "family"), she told me about this guy at work that she'd invited to meet up with us, and then she said, "I know it's crazy, but I think this is the guy I'm gonna marry." And we met up with our neighbors, and her husband-to-be, and Raf was there, and we all went out to the Snake Pit later (where another neighbor looked at me and Raf and pointed to herself and said, "Bridesmaid?").  Clearly, it was the night everything changed for all four of us, the very beginning.  We married, they married, we had kids, they had a beautiful boy.  I always observed how deeply in love they were, how she never had a mean thing to say about him, never complained about their life because she was so happy to have "her guy." 


Steve was an Eagle Scout and an amateur astronomer.  He took a group of us to Joshua Tree in the year before Raf and I got married - the first and only camping trip my husband has been on - and led us on a hike that lasted HOURS in the desert.  It was crazy, hilarious, wondrous, unforgettable. He was a drummer, a rocker, an encyclopedia of rock-n-roll and pop culture.  He knew a little somethin' about everythin'.


And he had a spark. You know what I mean? That twinkle in someone's eye that says, "There's so much more to me than I can ever even tell you."  The thing that makes you say, "Okay, fine, but can I sit down and just listen for a while?"


There's a song by Moby from several years back called "We're All Made of Stars." Thinking of Steve and his connection to the stars, to the world beyond this one, I began to think... Maybe it's true. Maybe we *are* all made of stars, of the same crazy, cosmic energy as every other thing, each of us miracles wrapped in a flesh-and-bone package, suffering through the human condition as we make our way back to the cosmos.


This post doesn't make as much sense as I'd like, but I wanted to write it to affirm that our lives are happening now.  We may not get another chance.  We may not make it to retirement.  We may only get a string of moments to say "I love you" and hold each other tight and lay our heads on each other's chests while watching bad TV at the end of the night. And when that's done, I hope we all make it up to the night sky, linking ourselves together into a constellation that wraps around the universe.

Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush

Last week, when I went to Sherman Oaks to get my hair done, I remembered why I drive so far every few weeks to get my hair (ahem) "back to natural."  My hairstylist, a very pleasant older woman, reminds me very much of Rafael's aunt: caring, nurturing, feeding.  She is impeccably on time and there is never any drama.  When I arrive, she is ready for me and we share a few pleasantries, then it is quiet enough for me to read my book or magazine, and my hair is perfectly colored, trimmed and blown out in an hour.  Plus, she's next door to Starbucks.  All told, it's a delightful experience each and every time.


And so last week, as I waited for my roots to return to a color better than gray, Parvan quietly handed me a cup full of mulberries.  "Just like last year," she said.  "They're back in season."


I took the first bite and I remembered them, all too well.  Last year, I had called her in a panic to please do my hair before Max's funeral.  I didn't know her, but she was conveniently located and highly recommended by a friend.  Grieving, I just went with it, called her, set up an appointment.


While my hair processed, I answered sympathy texts and listened to sad voicemails, but I could hardly talk.  Mostly, I just cried.  Quietly, Parvan came over, humbly offering me a plate of juicy red and purple mulberries from a tree in her yard. I remember that I had to wear sunglasses because my face was so flushed and tear-stained.  "I've never had them," I said, sniffling.  "Are they good?"


She shrugged sweetly.  "Try them," she said, nudging the plate at me.  


Mulberries have small berries along a 3- or 4-inch stem, and they are sweet without being too tart.  Almost like a cross between a sweet red grape and a blueberry, but not as juicy.  I devoured them, even as tears pooled over the plate. I'd sob, and eat another, then sob some more, then eat another.  Even I knew there was nothing more to do.  Just go with it.  Be with this moment.  It will pass.


And somehow a year has passed.  I only know because Parvan's mulberries are back in season and now Max's grave has a headstone.  I find it interesting that my grief has a taste, but it does.

Growing Up

Two very significant things that I have been waiting for – for a long time, each of them – happened this week, within days of each other.  The first is, my birth father found me.  The more important one is, my cat died.

I hadn’t seen or heard from my birth father since I was a baby.  So for all intents and purposes, I really never knew him.  He and my mom were married when she was 20, then she had my brother – BOOM! – and then me a year later – BOOM! BOOM! And by age 23, they were no longer together.  A lot of shit happened in-between and I have surreal memories of him being abusive to my mom.  My mother, who was very young and beautiful even with two very small babies, got remarried when she was 25 and my brother and I were raised by a loving father who gave us everything we ever needed or wanted.  He and my mom are still very happily married. 

It has taken me nearly 40 years (and a lot of therapy and yoga and deep breathing) to excuse my birth father for his absence, although I feel as though I can attribute a great deal of my inner self-loathing and former perfectionist tendencies to his abandonment.  When my dad read me the letter that my birth father had sent to my mom via Facebook, I felt ready to hear it.  I was not destroyed or confused or… anything.  I was very surprised by my reaction, which was kind of a shoulder shrug and head leaning, my eyebrows pinched together as my brain processed it.  Huh.  That’s all I felt at first.  Huh.  It was precisely the same reaction I’d have if someone told me that they’d run into my old boyfriend.  Is that so?  Huh.  Another shoulder shrug, then onto the next thing.

I won’t lie: I also went through a very quick series of feelings that ranged from anger to disbelief to disappointment.  But I didn’t feel like my core was shaken.  If anything, I felt like I was more “me” than I ever had been.  All this time, I’d thought knowing that my birth father was out there or looking for me would do something… I don’t know if I expected unicorns to blow rainbows or bubbles out of their horns or lollipops to rain from the sky, but all I know is that it didn’t.  Instead, I felt like this person I’d become in 39 short years was just a small part nature (the DNA that he and my mom had contributed), a bigger part nurture (the family and environment that I’d grown up in) and the majority was self-evolved and created through hard work and dedication to learning about my own human spirit through the very act of living.  And so this letter, which upset my mother because she thought it would mean he was going to “take us away” (never gonna happen), really had very little impact. 

And so the day ended.  

The next day, however, it became clear that my cat Bootsie may not live through the weekend.  There are medical details and there were sad choices to make – I won’t elaborate on them here because it’s still too fresh and I’m too sad to make sense of it – but I decided it would be best to let my beloved cat go.  She was nearly 19 for god’s sake, much older than many animals ever get to live (too bad I didn’t fall in love with a Galapagos turtle, I suppose).  It was time. 

I sat in the vet’s office this morning before 8 am, knowing that I had to be the one to choose her fate: live uncomfortably or die compassionately.  Be a grown-up, I told myself.  This is what your life is about.  You cannot let this moment be chosen by someone else besides you and Bootsie.  And so I said goodbye to her, hoping she could understand me as I said, Come back to me.  Hoping, of course, that my fairytale of reincarnation is true.

After they took her back to put her to sleep – I couldn't make myself go with her, it was hard enough to know I’d been the one to end her life – it was only about two minutes before they brought her back to me in a box (so that I could take her home to bury her in my yard). They said she hadn't struggled a bit.  They said she seemed like she knew it was time.  

As I took the box, which was still warm on the bottom from the life slowly escaping her body, and slowly walked to my car, I was flooded with memories. I used to, for instance, serve her water in a crystal goblet.  She ate dinner on the table next to me. She came to me the weekend I moved into my first apartment in Hollywood and survived my crazy single girl years, then my marriage, then my kids, then our move (in which she traveled with us from temporary house to temporary house magnificently, even as we grieved over Max, until we arrived home).  She is a part of me and I am (I’m sure of it) a part of her.  She tolerated Raf and the kids and the dog, but she loved me.  Only me.

The point of this missive is merely that we choose the ones that we love.  We don’t have to be obligated to give emotion or power to the people or things that have not nurtured or loved us back.  This week, I learned to call a duck a duck – my birth father will never be my dad, although I am grateful for the part his DNA played in my creation – and I allowed myself the space to impart the ultimate act of kindness and love for my beloved cat. I don’t know if either one is the “right” choice, but they are my choices and I feel like I must be growing up because I feel like I can stand tall next to them.

Four Years

Whenever I travel, especially alone, I bring along the DVD of The Darjeeling Limited.  I sometimes have trouble falling asleep - my mind races and I can't relax - so I like to have a very familiar, sedate movie in the background to lull me to sleep.  It used to be the Meg Ryan/Kevin Kline sleeper French Kiss, but ever since I saw Darjeeling, I knew it was going to be "the one" for a long while.  I love it so much that when I saw a previously viewed copy of it at Blockbuster for $3.99, I bought it... even though I already have one.  And I contemplated buying another, just in case the other two wear out.  I know... weird, right? But it's true and I'm trusting that you won't judge me too harshly.


Raf and I saw this movie about 3 years ago and it struck a chord - three brothers taking a spiritual journey on a train in India, exactly one year after their father's sudden death.  Raf's dad Isaac had died in February and, even though we saw the movie in December, it seemed to open a wound.  There's a deep, painful sadness that sort of hangs over the movie, even in its funny moments. I've found that even though I've seen the movie countless times, I still feel that sad weight on my heart, every single time.


Since I've been in Italy, I've watched the movie repeatedly as I've fallen asleep.  Yesterday, I felt as though I was obsessing over the details - I watched the "behind the scenes" and Googled it and YouTubed it, searching for more more more about the movie.  Hoping, perhaps, to crawl into the story itself and make sense of grief and mourning and learn how to move forward, past the sadness, into a meaningful future in which I don't feel those pangs in my heart every single day.  Even I was a little bewildered by my obsession.  I mean, I love Adrien Brody - his face and green eyes sort of remind me of Raf - but it was borderline teenage girl.


Last night, I was sort of sleepy and fast-forwarded the DVD to one scene, in which the Whitman brothers recall the day of their father's funeral while they are on their way to the funeral of an Indian boy.  Tears streamed down my eyes.  I thought it was the music or the cinematography or the acting or the colors in the Indian sky.  When the scene ended, I fell asleep.


This morning when I checked my email, Raf had forwarded me a beautiful note that his brother Sky had written in honor of the 4th anniversary of their dad's death, which is today. I had forgotten the exact date, but obviously this information was stored deep within me.  


The brain is a mysterious organ.  On one hand, it would seem that we are "in control" of our thoughts, but I'm learning that there is an intelligence within us that doesn't need controlling.  It just moves intuitively, fluidly, guiding us, like a train on tracks that lead us where we need to go.  It may not be where we expected to end up, but it's where we are.

In Dreams They Come

Dreams are tricky things, especially after a loved one has died.


I have believed, for quite some time now, that those you've loved on Earth will visit you in your dreams.  This theory is somewhat common among psychics and mediums, spiritualists and quack-jobs, as well as those who just want to believe something, to hold onto the love that they shared with someone special who has moved beyond Earth.


Lately, I have been dreaming of Max.  Raf does nearly every night - I may have mentioned this before, that it sounds as though his dreamscape is something of a sports lounge for him, his dad and his brother - but it had been a while since I'd dreamed of my brother-in-law, though I think about him nearly every day.  In my dreams, he is generally just in the background somewhere, like in a train station or busy public place, hanging out, watching, not being overly conspicuous.  I just tend to notice him there and continue on in my dream.


The other day, I asked Emme if she ever thinks about Uncle Max.  "Yeah, sometimes," she said.  "But usually I'll just see him in my dreams.  They're never about him, but he's in them, in the background."


I was struck by how similar our dreams were, and that night I had another dream of Max, much more vivid than usual.  He and Raf were sitting side-by-side at a desk, talking low.  I couldn't hear them; so, knowing it was my dream, I moved closer so that I could hear them.  They looked a little perturbed and said something like, "We're talking business here," a phrase my father-in-law used to say to Emmeline when she was a baby.  I wanted to say, "But you're dead, Max, and any time I see you, even in dreams, I want to hear what you have to say, how you are, what your new existence is like!"  More or less, I relented and allowed them space, joyous simply for the chance to spend time with him - dreamworld or not.


I discussed this with Raf the next day on a hike with the dog, explaining that I'm glad I at least get to see Max in dreams.  


"I don't want to see him in dreams," Raf said sharply.  "I want to see him for real."


We walked on, gravel crunching under our shoes.  It is my tendency to try to soften the sharpness.  I would normally have said, "But we have to be grateful for what we get," but I held my tongue.  He's right.  Again and again, we are reminded: he's dead.


Over dinner, he said what I'd been thinking but reluctant to ponder aloud.  "What if we have been holding onto this belief that when we dream of Max and my dad, or your grandmas or whoever, that they are actually visiting us from the 'Great Beyond'... but it's not that at all?"


I'm sure I muddled through some sort of Pollyanna, cockamamie spin on the spiritual side of dreaming, but today I'm still mulling it over. What if, like everything else we dream, these "visits" with Max are merely the result of our subconscious mind mashing up important bits of our lives like an elaborate re-mix?  


There are no answers, and I feel adrift in a sea of questions like this.  The saddest thing is that I had been just as comforted by these dreams as if Max had walked through the door of our home, kissing the mezuzah as he entered, filling the room with his booming laugh.  I had felt that the grief of our regular life without him - the life in which Raf still has the reflex to text or call Max about little stuff every day, sports, business, Marlowe's lost teeth, where Max is no longer the Uncle Buck-like guardian of our children in our will, where we will now set a place for him, like Elijah, at our Passover table - was balanced by the loving presence of Max in our dreams.  


In that last dream, I had said to Max, "Emme says you visit in her dreams, too."


He answered, "Yeah, I don't like to make a big fuss.  I just check in, hang out a little."


In a world with no answers, I will have to accept that answer, even if it's only my own mind helping me cope with the emptiness, an elaborate game of talking to myself. 

Jumping in Spite of the Fear

Last week, I was with a very close friend of mine and we were discussing our last lunch together, in which she had admitted a near-paralyzing fear of death.  This is a vibrant, easy-to-laugh, easier-to-love woman.  She has kids and a loving husband and two very-much-alive parents.  She has more friends who would take a bullet for her than our president does.  She exudes LIFE - all caps - and is the person I go to when I have fears and troubles in my life.


And so, at the first lunch, I'm sure I was talking about Max or Isaac... I do that a lot, as you know... and I'm sure that I must have allowed a few tears to drip down my cheeks... I do that quite often, too.  But my feelings on death have changed dramatically and I have begun to accept it as a part of life, just as important as birth. 


At some point, I looked up and my friend was crying.  She is always empathetic and compassionate, and we joke that all it takes is a kid singing to make us cry happy tears, but this was very different.  She was shaking and could barely talk, but when she did choke out a few words, she was extremely emotional about her fear of dying and leaving behind the people that she loves so dearly, as well as any of them leaving her too early.


As I mentioned, this is someone who I may have pegged as a "life is life, what can you do?" sort of person.  But this fear -- the unknown of death -- had gripped her so hard that the mere thought of death or dying was too difficult to even imagine.  The best I could do was sit with her, listen, breathe along, be grateful for the moment together, hope for many more.


What I'm learning, in talking to her and many more friends who have shared this same fear of death, is just how common it is for us to be attached to and enmeshed in our mortal coils.  I have to admit, I'm damn lucky and I thank Rafael and the skies and earth and moon and sun every day for the life I've got.  But what I've felt since the deaths of these people who were so close to me -- and this includes Max, Isaac, three of my grandparents and a very good childhood friend who passed away when we were 15 -- is that the LOVE that we all carry doesn't end.  Maybe it's the "energy" that mediums talk about or the dreams that are inhabited by these loved ones, but although they've died and shed their physical beings, they still "live" on.


I described it to my friend as feeling like there's a huge -- imagine my arms out wide like a child trying to throw her arms around the world -- blanket or jacket enveloping me, loving me as I go about my day.  No judgment or negative voices, just a beaming light of love warming me.  In our old house, I had the distinct feeling of my father-in-law happily "haunting" the upstairs - not jangling chains or knocking stuff over, but proudly watching, hanging out from time to time, checking in on us.  It didn't feel creepy or weird, just... loving.


Rather consistently, Raf has had dreams in which he's sitting at his dad's beach house, just hanging out and talking sports with his dad and brother.  Sort of the after-death lounge.  Previously, even though I'd often had similar dreams in which I'm sitting with my grandmother in her Covina kitchen, I would have said it was our very optimistic unconscious, helping us ease the pain.  But now... I'm not sure that it's not the energy of the deceased coming back to check in on us.  And, if I'm wrong, I won't know the truth until I'm no longer on the earth.  So this is what I'll choose to believe.


The saddest thing, I suppose, is our very human lack of control over nature. We think we can control our "lives" in the same way that we "control" aging with Botox and fitness... but it's artificial.  Bad things happen to good people.  And good things happen to good people. But we will all experience death at some point - or points - in our lives.  I wish I could encourage you to embrace that fact... and have gratitude for the awareness... but the sad fact is that none of us can truly feel the love of life after death until a death has happened.  And that love keeps me going, and keeps me *living* to the fullest, even though I have no control over what may happen next.


There's no easy way to end this post of rambling, so I will reiterate the title:


Jump in, in spite of the fear.

Expansive Oneness (Joy in the Little Things)

I don't know if this post will make any sense, but I'll give it a go anyway.  A few days ago, I listened to a Ted Talk on my iPhone featuring Jill Bolte-Taylor, a renown neuroscientist who had a stroke several years ago.  It took her 8 years to fully recover her faculties, to walk and speak and be "normal" again. The fascinating part is, here is a woman who made it her life to study the brain and then she had the unique opportunity to study her own brain while it was having a stroke... and, miraculously, lived to tell about it.


She talks about the two sides of the brain: the left one, which is rational and keeps us on schedule and makes sure that our separate uniqueness (I'd even call this the "ego") stands up for itself; and the right one, which is more creative and free-thinking, able to literally think out of the box and sense the energies of all the molecules (people, things) around us.  The right one, to paraphrase her, enables us to be a part of the "expansiveness" of the universe, the connective tissue that binds us to each other and everything.


I got chills when I heard this.  It's as if all the struggling that we do in our lives comes from within, battling between the desire for connection on a cellular or molecular level and the need to keep it all in check so that we can live in the real world and keep gas in the car, pick the kids up on time, have enough savings in our bank accounts.  And it made me think about all the times when I feel like I'm juggling a million things and activities in order to get to a place (a party or an event or even just home for dinner) so that I can simply melt into the experience of the moment.  These moments, strung together, create a life.

Bolte-Tayler talks about the moment when she felt that she was dying, leaving her physical body.  In most circles, I've heard that called an "out of body experience," but she describes it as more of an "in the body" experience, a moment in which she felt so connected with everything else in the universe that the letting go actually enabled her to embrace and expand to her limitless existence.  And she doesn't talk at all about fear or commitments or responsibility.  She talks of love.

I cry at everything, so it will not suprise anyone that tears streamed down my face as I heard Jill Bolte-Taylor's voice crackle when trying to describe the awesome power of that experience.  But my mind had wandered, to Max.  I wondered, if he had taken an Ambien to go to sleep on his final night, had he been conscious enough to experience that Expansive Oneness when he passed away?  If that is the ultimate moment of love and awareness in  life, was he able to enjoy it and feel it and at least float into his next adventure with the knowledge that the love he'd created in this lifetime would continue on after his physical body had stopped working?  Was he able to feel the joy of all of the little things he'd seen/been/done in his life?

And how far did his soul stretch when it was no longer limited by his body?

Ending an Era

Sometimes I think you just can't anticipate how you'll feel about something until it's over, kaput, never gonna come back again.


"I'm sorry, I didn't want to upset you," Raf said on the other end of our conversation.  It had been a 2-way dialogue until I'd choked on my words.  I had, ironically, also been saying the words "I'm sorry."


The beach house is in escrow and, if all goes well, it will close next week and soon it will become another family's getaway and the site of new, happy times.  But for someone else.  Our family's time there is over. 


The beach house was my father-in-law Isaac's playground, the natural extension of his wealth and desire to live a semi-retired lifestyle once he'd "made it."  He had created the other house in Sherman Oaks as his dream home, a place to raise a young family, but Malibu called him back to a fisherman/poet part of his personality.  And so he lived on precarious stilts at the edge of the glittering Pacific, savoring the sun's journey across the sky from Santa Monica to Point Dume through his floor-to-ceiling windows, living out the last of his days with his scruffy dog Alaska, losing the names of his famous neighbors in the translation between his native Hebrew and adopted American English language ("Chuck DuChamp," for instance, turned out to be John Cusack). 


When we got married, he moved back to Malibu from Sherman Oaks and his beach house became the site of every-other-Sunday BBQs, Jewish holidays and family occasions.  After he died and we renovated the house, it became a renewed, modern version of Isaac's legacy and we were all happy to continue to have it in the family as a getaway when it wasn't being rented.  After Max passed away, though, it lost a lot of its sparkle.  It's hard to want to go there now, despite the gorgeous location and the way that Malibu glows when it's sunny. 


I'd wondered how Raf could be so anxious to sell the house immediately after his brother's passing, but his gut reaction was just that.  He couldn't stand to be there, remembering how he'd found his brother, thinking of all the good times we'd had there and how they were now inexplicably, irreversibly gone.  However, now that the end could be merely a few days away and everything is being boxed up and moved out, it's suddenly real and visceral.  I knew I'd be sad, but when Raf admitted his own sadness, I was overcome and unable to speak.


We've said it over and over, but we're now ourselves, Version 2.0.  Without the moorings of the Sherman Oaks house or the Malibu beach house, I don't know that we can still be the "same" as before.  Not that it's bad, it's just different.  I'm just trying to remind myself, over and over, about the Anais Nin quote: And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.

I just hope that blossoming will, eventually, be less painful.

The Sweetness of Friendship

I could tell you a dozen sweet stories about the people who have saved me throughout this very trying week and the reality, slowly setting in, that Max will not be physically near us anymore: S & K have brought us banana bread and taken care of our kids and laughed with us and reminded us that we are still standing up, despite everything; N has picked up my kids and weathered the nasty prods for salacious People Magazine details from busybodies (she had my back) and arranged a spur-of-the-moment breakfast with girlfriends to cheer me up; D offered to bring dinner over; L offered to babysit; B counseled me on Jewish funeral traditions; J texted me daily to remind me that I was not alone and took a few hours off work to attend the service and give me a big hug; my other J, gone for the week, checked in regularly via texting from Yosemite; Raf's childhood friend/spiritual sounding board flew out and was just present with us, running errands and doing what needed to be done intuitively; my mom and dad sent flowers; my sister called and cried; Max's friends texted and emailed and Facebooked, scanning photos and recording their stories of Max. A lot of people brought food. Many people came and sat with us.

Today, we went to the new house to check the mail and say hello to our contractors. After we ran our hands on the new granite and answered a few questions about the paint, I noticed a box in the entryway, addressed to Raf and me. Not remembering if I'd ordered anything for the house in the week prior to Max's death, I opened the box casually and was THRILLED to see a beautiful basket inside. The note, offering love and support from two good friends of mine - one of whom lives in the new neighborhood - accompanied gorgeous fruits and a box of chocolates. The girls and Raf and I grabbed the contents like we hadn't eaten in a week, juice dripping from our chins on the new porch, chocolate smeared at the corners of our mouths. Raf had two pears, one in each hand, each with a bite mark. It was like we couldn't get enough, finally feeling nourished again.

I hope that, when I look back on this time, I will be baffled by the strange mix in my memory of sadness with the taste of ripe nectarines and dark chocolate truffles.

The Best Worst Day Ever

Max's memorial was yesterday. The weather was gorgeous at the beach, truly sparkling. My kids played in the water and got all their clothes wet. Not that it really mattered: my older two wore fancier outfits... the youngest wore what she wanted, which were old grimy jeans under a cheap Target skirt and a small t-shirt... I think the stress and sadness had finally gotten to her and she was like, Fuck it. I'm-a wear what I please. She did the same thing at Raf's dad's funeral, when she was 2 and wore a Snow White costume.

Anyway, it was gorgeous and heartfelt. I thought later that maybe I felt "Max" in the room... like he was there, watching over us, but it's not something I usually believe. My thought is that people don't stick around on the earth immediately after they die... their souls have too much to do, departed loved ones to reconnect with, an afterlife to learn. The funeral is held so soon after death that it is really just a way for us "survivors" to hold each other and love each other through the pain. So maybe it wasn't so much "Max" in there with us as our collective memories and love for him, stitching us together, the quilt of his life.

Over the week, Raf did what he does best: take care of business. In the midst of it, though, he would remember, in fits and starts, that all of this was for Max. Unbelievable, he kept saying to me. I can't get used to it.

When we arrived at the beach house, I was worried about going into the bedroom where Max had died, even though the bed was dismantled immediately and is gone (his mother has it). But when I walked in, his friends were gathered in the corner with a big ol' bud, rolling, and soon the place smelled like Amsterdam, sweet and herbal. It was kind of like the Native American ritual of "smudging," in which you exorcise evil spirits by burning sage. Only it made everyone happier, dreamier, hungrier, more able to enjoy the beautiful day outside the beach house windows.

I'm not saying it was easy. I'm only saying it was beautiful, which felt appropriate.

On the way home, I asked the girls how they were doing, if they had a good time. Serena, barely still awake, sand in her hair, clothes still damp from tumbling in the tide with her sisters and cousin, said, "It was the best worst day ever." And it was.

Only the Good Die Young

This is a picture that I took yesterday, in the middle of the worst day of my husband's life.

The call had been hysterical from my brother-in-law's phone. "Hold on, Maxie," I said, fumbling for my earpiece (I was just leaving a parking lot). "Okay, what's up, Max? Is Raffy there?"

I couldn't understand him at first. Panting, crying. It was my husband. "Is he sick?" I asked. "Did you call 911?"

"Get here now, please. I don't care what else you have now, get here, please. I think he... he might be dead."

I don't know if those were our exact words. I don't remember much. I had a long drive to Malibu in the typical traffic of a sunny Saturday in June, when so many people abandon the city to go to the beach. Convertibles. Tanned teenagers in jeeps. Rusty pickups with surfboards hanging out the back.

I had to call his mother. "Did you call 911?" she asked, still composed, not grasping the scope of the moment. Max had been in the hospital just last week and they had been so close, had had such a warm bond over soup at Jerry's. Max had always been a sick kid, had his appendix out at a very young age. Just in the last few years, his doctor had diagnosed him with a very rare condition that caused his glands to swell up suddenly and his mother had become his champion, calling the insurance company and hospital to be sure that he could have a particular shot -- $4,000, but worth every penny -- available in case he had another episode of swelling. She had been so there with him. It was so special.

"Is he at the hospital? He needs to be at the hospital, I'll meet you there."

"No, um..." I didn't know how to say what you shouldn't have to say to a mother. "Um, he uh, he thinks that he might be... he might be..."

"No! No! Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye!" She called later to demand that they don't move Max. "We must be with him. They cannot move him. We need to be around him."

Here's the irony of the day: before he left our new house, my husband had dropped his iPhone into the pool and had sent me a text from his friend's phone before he went to Malibu alone with just our oldest daughter and her best friend. My husband, the most reachable person in the whole world, was without his phone.

When he reached Max, just as he was realizing that Max wasn't sleeping, Max's phone rang. It was Josh, one of Max's best friends. My husband picked up the phone, unable to really talk. Josh was the one who called 911. After the first call from Max's phone, I got another call, an accidental redial, in which I heard my husband screaming at Max; I thought that maybe Max had pulled a really horrible joke, even though that wouldn't be Max's style. But still, it made me hope that he was still alive, still living large, loving life.

Everyone battled sunny Saturday traffic to get to Max, to be together somehow, near him. It took me an hour to reach my husband, whose grief was so powerful I had nothing to say, no words or wand to take it all away.

Hours later, the coroner arrived and was flanked by two sheriffs, surrounded by Max's mom, sister, best friends, aunt and uncle. I sat on the couch, my husband outside because he just couldn't be in the beach house anymore, and I turned to look out the window. In the path was this image: a beautifully designed home, the sunny waves, and a big blue bong, right in the middle of the coffee table.

It was so like Max to just leave it out there, for all to see. I just had to remember it and save the memory.

We love you, Maxie.

Circle of Life

Life has a way of reminding you that it is a circle, not unlike water flowing up and down a fountain. It may trickle a bit, it may seem like it will actually stop flowing occasionally, and then it will start back up like a flood. But it keeps going and changing.

Today, our family went to the wedding of one of my husband's younger cousins, a darling girl named Kazia. Her new husband, Sharon (pronounced "Sha-row-n"), is clearly besotted with her and it was like watching electricity form between close-moving clouds whenever they were near each other. The love and the magic were palpable.

Between the wedding and the evening reception, we had a few hours to relax, so we went home. As we gathered our things and hustled the kids to get ready for the next event, my cell phone rang.

The voice said, Hello Erin, you don't know me, but I have some sad news to tell you. Do you have a moment?

The news was short: yesterday, my therapist had a heart attack and passed away. I thanked the caller and we ended the conversation quickly, me saying something about how I knew she'd been on vacation and that I was glad she had been somewhere she loved, blah blah.

You are in shock, I'm sure, the caller said. If you need some help processing this information, please don't hesitate to call me.

But I don't want to call her. I want Nancy, who has been my counselor/shaman/Buddhist teacher/Dalai Lama/surrogate mama/champion/no-bullshitter/holder of all my secrets and monsters/intellectual Gandhi for more than 12 years. When I started seeing Nancy, my mother had been hospitalized for schizophrenia; I felt broken, even though I had just met my husband and had so much going for me in other areas of my life. In the ensuing years, I had been in therapy on and off, learning from childhood hurts and reinventing myself as a strong, confident woman, wife and mother. Truth be told, even though I still got a lot out of my bi-weekly conversations with Nancy, I knew that our time together was coming to an end because her insight had led me to such a good place in my life. But I never imagined that she wouldn't be there, if I needed her.

And life goes on. Flowing up and then down again, a marriage here and a death there. The trick, I suppose, is to keep flowing as long as you can, acknowledging the reality that all of us must stop flowing one day.