JANUARY 24

January 24. My mother died ten years ago today. That thought at once leaves me breathless and numb.

Let me say it again: my mother died ten years ago today.

My father's voice blurry through the phone lines. I was drunk. It was almost four in the morning and I was in a strange house in New Jersey. My bare feet were cold on the hardwood floor. It was January. There was snow outside the windows, the phone was pressed hard to my ear, as if to keep myself from swaying. My father's voice. Honey, she's gone. You didn't make it in time. Did he really say that part? You didn't make it in time? Or was that my voice echoing through the phone lines? My mother was dead.

Ten years. I'm going to take the day off, I think. I'm going to call in sick to work, I think. I think I'll stay here at my desk in my little house and I'll drink coffee and I'll write to her. I think I'll go to yoga this afternoon, my favorite class. I'll probably cry during shavasana. I'm not sure what I'll do after that. I don't think I want to go to school tonight. I think I'll take this whole day off.

And then that will be it. Then I'll stop building my life around this shit. Ten years. It's enough. Enough to let go. I was. I am. I will be. Enough. I've had enough. I'm done with these days for a while. These deathdays, these dead parent days. I've exhausted it all in so many ways. It's exhausted me.

Let me insert my favorite Jamaica Kincaid quote here. I've used this so many times I know it by heart.

What to make of it? Why can't everybody just get used to it? People are born and they just can't go on and on, and if they can't go on and on, then they must go, but it is so hard, so hard for the people left behind; it's so hard to see them go, as if it had never happened before, and so hard it could not happen to anyone else, no one but you can survive this kind of loss, seeing someone go, seeing them leave you behind; you don't want to go with them, you only don't want them to go.

It just starts to seem absurd. This happens to all of us. We all lose people. All the time. We will die. All of our parents will die. Our siblings will die. Our best friends will die. Our children will die. Why can't everybody just get used to it? How can it be this huge each time? How can this thing that will happen to all of us, over and over and over again, become this defining moment in our lives? This loss, so hard it could not happen to anyone else, no one but you can survive this kind of loss. It's atonishing and beautiful and terrible.

She has been gone for ten years now. That is lifetimes and breaths and heartbreaks and losses and moves and identities and sky scrapers and palm trees and sighes and baths and soft sounds ago.

Ten years without a mother. Ten years of learning how tear myself apart and put myself back together. Ten years of trying to catch her laugh in mine. Ten years of learning how to cook, how to stand up straight, how to remind myself to be nice to myself. Ten years.

Paul asked me yesterday on the phone if I think I'm doing what my mom would want me to be doing with my life. My breath disappeared. I couldn't answer.

I'll answer now. Yes. Yes, I think I'm doing what my mother would have wanted me to be doing with my life. I'm doing more than she ever would have imagined.

I'm twenty-eight years old and I live in Los Angeles. My whole life is happening right now.

Comments

[Andrew]

Wow. That is quite a load for 10 years.

[Phil]

I'm not your mom, or your dad, or dead, but if I were any two of the three, I'd forsake the comforts of heaven to release you from further veneration, if it would give you peace. You've honored them beautifully in both your writings about them, and your writings not about them, and I'd be the proudest person in St. Peter's bingo parlor.

[Shaw]

I agree with Phil, and all of that is quite a lot for 20, 30, 40, a million years.

I'm still reeling from the loss of my dad, even though it will be almost 6 years now. Its tough, you want them to be there...to talk to them, to be with them, to have them yell at you for doing something stupid...

It will never get any easier thinking about that they're no longer with you. No - I can't bullshit you. It hurts. Death is meant to hurt.

But you still keep them alive in your heart by keeping their memory alive...

[Trixie]

Oh Claire...hearing you write about that time at Westgate Apartments makes me smile nostalgically and cringe at the same time. Did I really say that? About Sexton and Plath? It sounds like something I WOULD say..., but my god! so earnest!

I remember that time in my life in bits and pieces. Both of us with our Mikes. Remember that? And how screwed up we both were. And wine. I think of you everytime I leave a wooden spoon in the sink because you are the one who taught me that it would ruin them.

And do you remember my cat, Rizza? Her reaction to your pregnancy?

Or how you labelled all your plants with their names? I remember Basil who I don't believe WAS Basil, was he? And that huge map of the world above your desk. We could have done so much more with that weird apartment. That huge basement.

And my bed made out of milk crates and a futon. Or that guy Sean who came up from CT when I first moved in with you. How he wouldn't leave...or shower for that matter!

And Applebee's. Ugh! Applebee's.

Or messed up on wine and quaaludes, going to Price Chopper in your Saab (with the cloth ceiling that hung down) during a blizzard, leaning on each other to walk. Stealing a potted plant. What was it? Violets?

And poetry class...were we EVER on time? How did T stand us?

And Colin B.

And our pacts outside by the outhouse at Sunny's.

And almost getting stuck in a mudhole on Marlboro's version of 42nd street in your BMW...

I remember meeting your mother one time. You were walking with her and Daniel K. on the hill near the library. I think she was wearing red lipstick. And you were just coming back from or about to go out to dinner. And I remember how much you looked like her. And I remember how ravishing she was.

I still remember you walking into the Dining Hall your first day at MC. I was sitting on the stage and you in your blue jeans and white men's t-shirt just looked like someone I was going to know.

It was only a couple weeks...maybe days even...before one night, drunk on wine and stumbling the campus I found myself in your dorm room with Christine L. By the time I had left I'd told you I had known I would meet you and that we would become friends. That I had felt drawn to you. And you'd read me from your notebook full of poetry. On the floor near a portable closet. Drunken college kids stumbling into and out of the room.

Oh Claire...you have come so far. You already were an incredible girl, but you've become such an amazing and talented woman...I wish I had half the talent and strength in my whole being that you possess in your pinky toe. I mean it, Claire. You are wonderful.

[Trixie]

Uh...sorry about that long post...it just happens like that sometimes.

[Claire]

Oh Tricia,

Thank you so much for your comment. Makes me sooo nostalgic. God, we were so young...and yes, so earnest.

Really thank you for everything you wrote. I'm so glad that we're still in touch and that we're both still writing. I'm so thrilled for you and feel so privileged that you are sharing your incredible experience with us all...I'm loving the unfolding of Georgia's life!

And thank you, thank you to Phil, Andrew, & Shaw...so nice to have such support and encouragement...

[Tarsha]

What an amazing journey! What an amazing woman! Much love to you always dear.

[Greg]

I didn't think I could respect you any more than I already did... I'm speechless. For once.

[Benjamin]

Dear Claire,
I am 21, living in Australia. I came across your blog because we have an analyse text assignment for my writing class (It was listed as one of the best blogs)
I would just like to say thank you for expressing yourself so beautifully. It was heartbreaking and inspiring, most of all moving. I hope that sooner or later you can breathe in and let go without forgetting.

Find your feet, wherever they may be.

Benjamin.

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