A Place Safe from Fear

There was a thick volume of Grimm’s fairy tales in my hometown library that I read over and over again.  I would pull it down from the shelf and sit on the floor, knees to chest, swept into another place by stories of beauty and horror.  The library was an old building, made of stone and must.  The rooms were cramped and cozy, so packed with books that there was little room to squeeze by.  It was the perfect place to probe my fear.  Where, safe from the real world, I could grapple with death and betrayal.  Where I learned about loyalty and love.  Grimm’s fairy tales were far more gruesome than anything I encountered in suburban life.  They promised that whatever my experience was, it could be worse.  Somehow, I found this reassuring.

Who wouldn’t want their child to know these morally ambiguous tales? These stories open up a conversation, if not with others, in one’s own mind, about right and wrong, darkness and light, fear and love. 

Sophia was only three when I introduced her to my own abridged crumbling copy of Grimm.  I read her a pre-Disney version of Cinderella.  In which, birds on Cinderella’s mother’s grave dress her in finery for the ball—not a fairy Godmother, and the step sisters hack off parts of their foot so that they might squeeze into Cinderella’s slipper, only to be returned as false brides, when they leave a trail of blood as the prince carries them off.  When I finished, Sophie squealed:

“Read me the part with the blood again!”  She loved its gory truth almost as much as I did. 

Here is the great irony:  I go to great lengths to protect Sophia from violent imagery on television—from the news, adult dramas, and cartoons that either horrify or numb one to death and destruction.   These potent images leave nothing to the imagination.  They are what they are.  And they either get stamped on one’s brain (I will never forget the scene in Carrie where the other girls threw sanitary napkins at her in the shower, which, by the way, I found much more frightening than the knives flying into her mother, the blood being poured over her head at the prom, or the hand that reached through the earth at the end.) Or, they are easily forgotten among heaps of expendable bodies. 

But I will let her read these stories.  Stories of which she must conjure the images out of her own dark self.  Stories that take on her fantasy of what is most fearsome.  Or not.  She has control over what she sees.  She becomes its mistress.  Her fear conforms to what she can handle. 

And in turn it makes the world more tolerable.  A place safe from fear. 

“Mommy!  Come look at what I read in the newspaper!” She is excited.  Just a week ago she said, hopefully, “Maybe next year I will read a newspaper!”  Apparently, she has discovered she can. 

“Just a minute Sophie.”  I have just stepped out of the shower.  My hair is dripping down my neck.  My body is still too damp to put on my clothes.  “I have to get dressed.”

It is 7:30.  Sophie is dressed, but she has her polka dot robe knotted tightly over her tutu, “to be cozy.” 

I come into the kitchen, where Sophie is kneeling on a chair, pen in hand.  She has been doodling on the paper.  There are hearts all along the top and a dark underline scribbled beneath one article. 

“Listen to this:  ‘Dr. Kermit Gosnell is charged with killing seven babies born alive.” 

I am horrified.

Sophie, however, is exhilarated.  Her eyes are shining with delight.  “I can read it by myself mom!” 

“Sophie, what do you think about what you just read?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, how does it make you feel?”

She thought for a minute.  “Sad.” 

I nodded.  “Me too.” 

“Why did he kill those babies, mom?” 

“I don’t know.  Some people do terrible things. “  She was still listening.  “But you know, it’s my job to protect you.  It’s my job and daddy’s job to do whatever we can to keep you safe.”

“I know,” Sophie replied.  “And grandma.  And grandpa too.  And my teachers.” 

“That’s right. All those people keep you safe.”  She looked content.  Unperturbed. 

Of course, I was the one who has already seen too many terrible things.  Who could see those babies.  Who wanted to sob at the thought.  For Sophie it was a witch.  A wolf.  A bad guy.    Read about in a safe place to probe her fear.    

What Happens When You Die

Sophia and I are driving along the turnpike. I’m listening to podcasts of NPR in one ear, trying to ignore Horton the Elephant warbling about his ill-fated Who’s with the other, when Sophie suddenly asks, “Mommy?  What happens after people die?”

The question seems to come out of nowhere.  I put the ear bud out of my ear, turn off Suessical, and look at her in the rearview mirror.

“What do you think happens after people die?”  I ask her.  I’m not stalling for time, I really want to know what she thinks.

“Well…we scoop out their blood.”  She ventures.

“What?  Why would we do that?”

“To sell it!”  I shoot her a confused look.

 She gets impatient with me, “Like what you said, with the president.”

Oh.  Right.  Just moments ago I was listening to a story about a vial of Ronald Regan’s blood.   Apparently it was taken from a lab that tested his blood for lead after an assassination attempt in 1981.   The blood was to be auctioned off, but, responding to pressure from Reagan’s family and surgeon, the blood thief decided to withdraw it from the auction and donate the desiccated residue to the Ronald Reagan foundation. 

“Ew,” I silently thought.  My face twisted into an expression of disgust.  Sophie had called from the back seat, “What, Mommy, what?”

“It’s gross.”  I told her.

“Tell me!” the lover of all things gross replied.  And, though I know that I really shouldn’t have, I gave her a modified version of the story.

“Ew.”  She agreed.  “Gross.”

Now, I have to set the story straight.

“Soph, what happened with Reagan is very…unusual.  Most people do not get their blood scooped out and sold at auction.”  She watches me, expectantly, sucking her thumb.  “Any other thought about what happens after we die?” 

She removes her thumb from her mouth. “We get broken.”

“What do you mean?”

“Your body starts to fall apart.”  I am momentarily stunned by her completely unromantic, somewhat scientific conception of death. 

“That’s true.”  I affirm.  “It does.”  I probe her thinking a little deeper, “Do you think we can think anymore after we die?”

“No.”

 “Do you think we can feel anymore after we die?”

“No.”

“Well…lots of people have different ideas about what happens when you die. But many think exactly what you think—that we simply cease to exist.” 

Sophie, fortunately, has had very little experience with death.  A dead mouse we found in a field when we were picking raspberries.  Friends’ grandparents.  My father’s birds, which, horribly, died of starvation because of a miscommunication between my parents.   Though we never said how they died, she tells everyone they flew away.  

I wonder which of these experiences gave her this idea.  What really goes on inside that head of hers. 

“Will I die one day?”  Sophie asks me. 

“Yes, you will.  Eventually, everyone does die.”

“Will Snakey-Pie die?”  She means her beloved 6-foot stuffed snake. 

“Well, the thing about Snakey-Pie is that he’s not alive; he can’t die if he’s not alive.  We could die and Snakey would still be around.”

Sophie bursts out crying.   “But I want to feel him!”  (Sophie “softs” on Snakey, rubbing his fluorescent orange fur while she sucks her thumb.) 

“Well, we just talked about the fact that you wouldn’t be able to feel anymore, so you wouldn’t be able to feel Snakey if you were dead.”  I mean this to be reassuring, but the logic of it escapes her. 

She cries harder. 

“It’s a very sad thought,” I admit. 

“I will close my eyes, suck my thumb and soft on Snakey when I’m dead.”  Sophie decides, confidently rewriting her conceptualization of death—from annihilation to an eternity of comfort.  

I watch the calm return to her face.  I feel no need to disabuse her of this notion.  

Our conversation took us to the very edge of darkness, and after we felt the cold wash over our toes, we ran back for shore, squealing with the thrill of danger.  Relieved to, once again, be safe and feel the warmth of the sun.

Matters of Life and Death

One would think that, having lived through the sudden tragedy of his mother dying from a brain aneurism, my husband would see death lurking behind every corner. The world newly uncertain and unsafe. But Kevin is not that person. He understood it for what it was--a low-incidence (approximately 7 in 100,000 annually) unpredictable event. Awful. Unjust. But not confirmation that we live in a dark and dangerous world.

Kevin maintains we will be alright. When I suffered my third miscarriage, he assured me, we would have a child. When his appendix nearly burst in his body, he didn’t see any reason for me to have to come down to the hospital. When I see a mountain, Kevin smooths it down to a mole hill.

I wish I shared Kevin’s optimism. But I am the person who loses her voice for two weeks and starts to imagine having to speak through an electronic voice synthesizer. Who watches Sophia fail a hearing test and sees her living a soundless future. Who feels a lump in her breast and is already imagining her funeral, Kevin remarrying, and Sophie having some other woman as her mother. I can cry real tears thinking about how, one day, I will disappear from Sophie’s memory and this woman will be the only mom she’ll ever know. I hate her--Sophie’s hypothetical stepmother.

So reading a book about a young pregnant woman whose husband suddenly dies in a freak accident speaks to my deepest fear: anything can happen at any moment. I wish I could say that this fear holds me in the present, fills me with gratitude, makes me wring the most out of every living second.

But it doesn’t. On a daily basis, I take my loved-ones, my healthy body, my safety and security for granted just as much as the next person. It is my morbid flashes that call forth my appreciation for life. While immersed in Signs of Life, I imagined Kevin dying, perhaps from an aneurism, like his mother had. Having to make that awful decision of pulling him off the respirator. Never quite believing that the doctors performed the EEG correctly. Explaining to Sophie what had happened and facing the question of “When is daddy coming back?” Feeling the emptiness of the house, the unbearable silence that only comes with absence, the space left by sounds that once filled the room. My own loneliness, knowing that I will never again feel the comforting spread of his arms around me. Never again see his dimples crease his face. Never again hear him sing our invented goodnight song to Sophie in his best lounge lizard voice.

And, of course, now I’m crying. At once despondant and grateful.

We will probably both live a long time. The odds are in our favor. Kevin, confident that we will make it through, relatively unscathed, and me, ever vigilant, anticipating the worst. Living in the world differently, appreciating it just the same.

During the fifth month of her pregnancy of her first child Natalie Taylor is devastated by the sudden death of her husband. Her journey with grief is chronicled in the memoir Signs of Life. Join From Left to Write on March 29 as we discuss Signs of Life by Natalie Taylor. As a member of From Left to Write, I received a copy of the book. All opinions are my own.

Death-defying Dreams

The other night, I woke from a nightmare. It was so vivid, so real, I had to write it down to purge myself of it so that I could return to sleep:

I was doing therapy in an old, sprawling, Victorian house with a woman going through a divorce. Initially, she was there to share some concerns about her child, but she wound up talking about herself. I had the sense that walking would put her at ease, so we wandering from room to room, still talking.

In the kitchen we encountered her ex-husband. After a brief exchange, he left. The woman and I stayed and talked a bit, until I noticed her ex-husband’s outline through a frosted glass door and realized he was eavesdropping. I was reluctant to leave the space, thinking to myself, "there's something so intimate about kitchens.” But, I wanted to protect her confidentiality, so we walked on. Suddenly, Sophie was in my arms in that inexplicable dream-like way. I carried her as we walked through an area that had a high, slanted, leaded glass ceiling. Golden, fiery balls were falling from the sky, crashing through the roof, shattering the glass all around us, setting the ground aflame. "Oh." I thought, "it's the golden balls of hail," as if recalling a weather report or a prophecy I had previously heard. I shielded Sophie with my body, as I tried to find my way out of the room. Sophie was fascinated by the balls, staring up at them, pointing to one that was aglow with several different colors. I, on the other hand, was terrified. Everywhere there was splintering glass. I had to run, holding Sophie while looking up to avoid being hit. One golden ball of hail grazed her back. I panicked. We, Sophie, my client, and I, headed outside, quickly determining it was safer than being in the glass-ceiling room. Seeking shelter, we headed back towards the front door of the building, dodging the hail as we went. We could hear the screams of other people in the street, wounded, dying. Just as we finally reached the front door, the hail let up. We had made it through. A woman lay on the steps, moaning. There were bits of blood and what looked like brains on the ground. "What happened?" I cried stupidly, alarmed. "She's been hit." said my client, trying to comfort the woman in her last moments. I couldn't shield Sophie from this awful sight. And then, I woke up.

Since the recent earthquake and floods, my dreams have been morbid. Full of death and destruction. Apocalyptic. Now, more than ever, I am acutely aware that my time on this Earth is limited.

Just days later, three-year-old Sophia shared this dream with me:

“I was in grandma’s kitchen, saving a piece of my pizza crust. I leaned back in my chair and fell down. It made a big hole in the floor. Blood came out of my head. It felt like it had wood chunks inside. Grandma put me in bed in my room. Blood came out on the pillow. I sat up. And grandma put a Band-Aid on it. I felt better.” Which is, presumably, when I walked into the room and found her sitting up in bed, bewildered, but calm.

As she recounted the events of her dream, what I found most remarkable about it was how completely unperturbed she was. I listened, hoping my face didn’t betray my shock that this was the stuff of her dreams—violent and sanguinary as my own.

Sophie talks a lot about death, now. Just today, we were looking at a photograph of her classmates from her first year in nursery school. “They’re not dead,” she remarked. “I just don’t see them any more.” Again, I tried not to miss a beat. “That’s right,” I said, “they’re not dead. They’re in kindergarten.”

She’s working on the concept. Trying to make sense of what becomes of the dead. Her first encounter with death occurred a year ago. It was in a field, while we were picking raspberries. A rat lay lifeless on the ground. She stood over it, wondering at his still form. “It’s not alive anymore,” I told her, avoiding the word dead. My explanation seemed to satisfy her. She enjoyed recalling the story, of finding the rat that was no longer alive.

About a month ago, the grandfather of one of her friends died. She caught me off guard with the inevitable question, “What does it mean to be dead?”

“Well,” I replied slowly, “it’s like the rat. His body is no longer alive. He’s not with us anymore. His body stopped working. But even after a person is dead you can keep him alive in your mind, by thinking about him.”

Again, she seemed satisfied. I followed the psychological guideline of discussing difficult subjects…sex…divorce…death…with young ones: when they stop asking, stop offering.

Still, she continues to grapple with the concept of mortality. In Beauty and the Beast, Gaston gives the war whoop, “Kill the beast!” And later, the beast lies dying in Belle’s arms, only to be resurrected by her love. Sophia recycles this storyline over and over again in her play. As if through the enactment, she will gain some mastery over it. “Daddy, you be the beast,” she instructs. “But be a nice beast.” When Kevin treads on delicate ground, baring his teeth and growling at her, she squeals, half fearful/half delighted, “No! Don’t kill me! Be a nice beast!”

Sophie, with her egocentric orientation to the world, is the boss of death.

For me, the impetus to reflect on my mortality (outside of all of the natural disasters of late), is this no-mans-land of middle age. The recognition that my life may, in fact, be half over. Time is now measured in what I have left, not what I have ahead of me. Suddenly it feels short, time borrowed. I am at death’s mercy:

Death is the boss of me.

Last night, I was having dinner with my family at a soda shop that caters to kids. I took a bite of my salad, swallowed, and felt something hard lodge in my chest. I suddenly lost the ability to breathe. Panicked and choking, I stood. A cranberry shot out of me, from somewhere deep within my trachea. I felt it scratch the raw interior of my airway as a cough propelled it out of my body. As I sat back down all I could think was: what if that had been it? In front of my daughter. My husband. And my mother, who had joined us for dinner.

Life is that tenuous. Or at least it seems so to me. My existence is not special. I have an exaggerated sense of self-importance, but I could be taken down by a cranberry. In a soda shop. In front of my kid.

Our dreams can offer us the illusion of control. In my case, not only can I dodge death, but I can shield my daughter from it. In Sophie’s case, she can confront it and emerge the victor. Graceful, but futile attempts at either end of the spectrum to extend our limited time together.

If You Knew Mary Evelyn (1943-2006)

If You Knew Mary Evelyn… is inspired by If You Knew Suzy: A Mother, A Daughter, A Reporter's Notebook by Katherine Rosman, the choice-of-the-month of new online book club, From Left to Write. It was difficult to read this keenly-observed, beautifully-writ memoir without reflecting on my own relationship with my mother. How would I eulogize my mom? What do I treasure and remember about our relationship? What do I know about her and what remains a mystery? I sat down, prepared to write an essay that addressed these questions, but a very different essay poured out of me—a processing of and meditation on the death of my mother-in-law, Mary Evelyn, who died four years ago, on July 5th, 2006. Following the lead of Rosman, I have written a letter to Mary Evelyn that is part eulogy, part a preservation of memory, and part a communication that her legacy lives on.

Four years ago this weekend, my husband’s mother passed away. Though she had suffered from MS for decades, it was ultimately not the MS that stole her, prematurely, from us. She was preparing for a Fourth of July picnic--I can picture her in the kitchen, sitting on her stool, impossibly deep dimples framing her smile as she cooked for the people she loved—when suddenly she got the worst headache of her life. She went to the couch to lie down. Moments later, her husband couldn’t rouse her. He called an ambulance.

The aneurysm in her brain had already ruptured and was hemorrhaging, leaking blood into the surrounding tissue. She did not regain consciousness.

Halfway across the country, we received the call from his father. Still childless, we quickly made the decision to get in the car and drive. I drove all night, not wanting my distraught husband to take the wheel. It rained, making a dark night even darker. Mist, blackened hills, and sadness. We listened to Paul Simon’s Graceland.

Losing love is like a window in your heart.
Everyone sees you’re blown apart.
Everyone hears the wind blow.

And now, I cannot hear that song without thinking of her. Without remembering the feeling of that night, the wind blowing through the hole in my heart. Driving, hoping, fearing. Viscera clenched with anxiety.

When we arrived around 6am, it was already too late. The operation to stop the bleeding—an endovascular coiling—was unsuccessful. Her body was still alive, kept so by a respirator that rose and fell with mechanical breaths beside her, but her brain was not. In the hospital bed, she was a doll-like version of herself, her muscles flaccid, limbs flopped to the side, facial features bland. It was all that I could do to look at her. She was no longer Kevin’s mother. Her life force, her capacity for joy, the light in her eyes was gone.

We wanted proof before we made any decisions. They gave her an EEG and showed us the evidence that Mary Evelyn was gone. “Okay,” I remember saying.

She had made it easy for us, preparing a living will with a do not resuscitate directive. She wanted to be an organ donor. And so, different parts of her were shipped across the country to anonymous recipients. Her body was incinerated, the ashes given to us in a box.

The next day, friends and family members came to spread her ashes over the lush, vibrant gardens she had lovingly cultivated. They reached into the box with their bare hands, scooping out what physically remained of her. I couldn’t do it. I felt sick. I sat on the sidelines and watched, remembering my mother-in-law.


Dear MaryEvelyn,

I remember the first time I came to visit. You showed me every photo, every scrap book, and every video of Kevin that you had recorded and catalogued over the years, thrilled to have found an interested audience at last. I remember how, that first Christmas, you gave me my own stocking, a felt angel. And how I wrote on it, “Melissa, the token Jew.” I remember our talent show, your beautiful, wordless signing of “Morning has Broken,” by Cat Stevens and your completely unselfconscious improvisational dance that you paid for later in pain. I remember driving away and thinking that I felt like I was leaving home. I cried as you waved goodbye.

I remember when you showed me your dissertation. Telling me how you, the child of a dirt famer-turned insurance salesman, a little girl who hunted squirrels with a stick, became a professor of speech and language pathology. I remember when you told me how difficult it was to spend years apart from Kevin, when he was only 11, as you pursued your doctorate in Indiana.

I remember your devotion to Kevin. Your unrelenting desire to know every detail of his life, and the frustration you felt when he painted pictures of his days in wide swathes. I remember how I could bring you such satisfaction, sharing these details, when we talked on the phone.

And I remember all the things Kevin told me about you. How you read him feminist, gender stereotype-free fairy tales. How you dressed him up as a leprechaun on St. Patrick’s Day when he was home sick with the chicken pox—and then took photographs. How the days you spent at home with him when he was young were some of the happiest days of your life.

I remember your voice that sang words more frequently than spoke them. I remember you holding your tongue when agitated, your mouth a thin line. I remember how you could toss of a musical “oh well” with a graceful gesture of your arm. I remember never really knowing how you felt about anything.

I remember your last visit to us in Philly. How you asked me if we were “trying” when I didn’t have wine with dinner. How I lied and said that we weren’t, and that I wasn’t drinking because I was driving. I remember your look that said you didn’t believe me. I hope you didn’t. I wish you had known. I wish I had told you about the miscarriage I had just suffered. I wish you had been there for the two subsequent miscarriages that followed our conversation. And I wish you could know that I did carry a baby to term. And that you now have a grand-daughter, Sophia, who is so much the image of you. She dances, not walks, from point to point. When she smiles, her dimples are holes that go all the way to China. She embodies joy. She speaks with a fluency and clarity that would have made you proud.

I feel a kinship with you as a mother. I sense that what I value as a mother, you valued as a mother (minus the leprechauns). I have wanted to call you—to ask you a question, to share something amazing Sophia just said, to hear the ways in which Sophie reminds you of Kevin at that age. But I can’t.

Nevertheless, you are here with us. Every time Sophie smiles, every time she dances, every time she speaks with a clean Mid-Western dialect, we are reminded of you. And we keep you with us. We tell Sophia she has two grandmas. One who she can see in real life, and one she can only see in pictures. Both of whom are very much a part of who she is.

Love,
Melissa


The book, If You Knew Suzy, was provided to me free of charge by the publisher as part of the former Silicon Valley Moms Group and the new From Left to Write Book Club. I was not paid for this review. See how other moms were inspired by this book here.

No Control

One morning, over coffee, my mother related a dream she had the night before:

You were shot to death and bleeding on the streets of New York. If that
wasn’t upsetting enough, after you were dead, Kevin moved back to his hometown
and took Sophia with him. I realized that he could just make this decision
without me. I had no right to her, and I lost both of you at once.

Sweet, in gruesome kind of way. But she got me wondering: What if I died tomorrow? What would happen? Would Kevin take our baby back to the Midwest to be near his family? Or would he stay here, continuing to live the life that we had begun to build together? It was a timely question, as Kevin and I had decided to do some estate planning and were about to meet with a lawyer to discuss the what-ifs.

Like my mother, I have a very morbid, over-active imagination. I often play deadly dramas in my head—if I see a car start to drift into my lane, I don’t simply worry about Sophia and I being in a car accident. I see our car spin out of control from the impact; I watch us plough into a truck; I feel the impact; I hear myself scream and Sophia’s awful cries. But I am unable to imagine what happens next: life beyond me.

Not to worry. The lawyer delighted in presenting us with worst case scenarios:

Consider this: you and your husband spend a night out on the town in
Atlantic City (already, implausible). Heading back home, you’re in a
terrible car accident and both of you die. When you don’t come home, your
babysitter doesn’t know who to contact and she calls the police. Sophia is
taken into custody by DFYS (I start to cry at this point. Silent tears so
the lawyer can’t hear.) You have a long-term guardian in place, but
he/she’s too far away to swoop down and get her immediately. So Sophia
languishes in a group home until the paperwork goes through and your long term
guardian can finally get her.

(Sold on the document for assigning short-term guardianship.) Okay. That’s if both of us, god-forbid, should be struck down at once. But what if it’s just me?

I ventured to ask the lawyer a question, “Kevin, don’t get offended when I ask Sam* this, but, what if it’s just me who dies…can I leave any directives that Kevin has to follow. Like, that he has to take my daughter to see my mother a certain number of times each year. Or he has to make sure she eats her vegetables every day.”

The lawyer paused (trying to determine whether I was serious) while Kevin had a field day with this, “So you don’t trust me, huh? Well maybe I’ll take her to Mexico! Or no, maybe I’ll force her into child labor!”

“Kevin, STOP it. I’m serious. I want to hear what he has to say.”

The lawyer, I think, thought I was a little nuts. “You can put whatever you want into writing…but, you won’t be able to enforce it.”

Kevin danced around, gleefully. And that’s when it hit me: I have no control after my death. I get no say.

This was a lot for a control freak like myself to digest.

All the things that I believe in, that I do…no tv, meals from scratch, books since birth, Spanish, staying at home, my mother’s nursery school…they might still happen, or they might not. Kevin might stay, or he might go. He might remain single, or he might remarry. Sophia could have another mother, one who, over time, she’d come to know better than me (audible gasp).

This is a very good reason not to die. I suppose there are others. But this one is up there.

I will eat right. I will exercise. I will drive cautiously. And I will parent every day as if it was my last.

Love and Death

Kevin says I’m morbid.

On the first warm, sunny Sunday of the year, I am driving us to the Philadelphia Bookfest. I tell him, “I know that I truly love someone when I become afraid that they are going to die.”

“O that is so you,” says Kevin, “you should blog about that.”

I was afraid that Sophia would die from day one. This terrible possibility visits me, vivid and real, in my dreams. In my most recent nightmare, I am standing on train tracks, swinging Sophia into the air by her ankles. Her squeals of delight suddenly go silent as I hear a snap. “Owie,” she says, grasping her neck, and I realize her head is hanging at an unnatural angle. She does not scream. She does not cry. She simply repeats “owie” as she dies, painfully in my arms. I scream for help and though there are people all around me, no one can do anything. I have killed her.

She hasn’t merely died. She has died at my hand. Because of my neglect. Because of my carelessness. That is a necessary element in my nightmares.

This afternoon we are having a snack in Barnes and Noble with Nancy and the boyfriends. Nancy has a bag of chips and gives one to each of her sons. Wanting to be more lax about what I allow Sophia to eat, I give her one. My back is turned to Sophia as I’m talking with Nan. I see Nancy’s face change before it registers that Sophia is choking, behind me. I turn around, and her face is scarlet. Every one of my cells is drained of its mitochondria. What do I do? I fumble with the five-point restraint on her jog stroller…trying to pull her out…to do what? Hit her on the back? Turn her upside down? Nancy is at my side, calmly pulling her arms through the straps, releasing her. Sophie gasps. She’s breathing. The chip has dislodged. I lift Sophie out…she’s crying now. I clutch her to my body.

Not today. Not now. It’s not going to happen today. But someday it might. And I know it is not something I could ever live with.

Sophie and Melissa Say Goodbye to Max

I had been waiting for a sign from Maxwell that it was time. Though his health has declined significantly in the past year, and his quality of life along with it, he still seemed to take pleasure in our presence and ate with gusto. (Max has been an insulin-dependent diabetic for over three years and this year was diagnosed with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.) I couldn't justify euthanizing him when he didn't seem to be in any pain. What a Catch 22--do you wait until the animal is suffering before making the decision, or do humanely let him go before he reaches that point? Months ago, I had a sad, but beautiful dream. Max's was lying on the hardwood floor of my childhood bedroom, his body had turned to golden sand. The particles were rising in the air, floating away and I was trying to capture them in my hands, blocking his departure. I wasn't ready. Then, last Thursday, Max threw up repeatedly and refused to eat or drink. I sat down next to him on the cold tile floor of the bathroom and petted his oily fur. He managed to work up a purr for me, but his eyes were pleading. What more did I need?

Coincidentally, friends of ours, Ada and Jeff, had come to Philly for a visit. Ada used to be Max's veternerian, before he ws diabetic. On Friday, she gently examined him, gave him some Pepsid-AD and syringe-fed him my mother's chicken soup, leftover from our seder. It's healing powers, however, apparently do not extend to cats. Later that day, Max had thrown up the little food she gave him and his water remained untouched. I was afraid to give him his insulin--I didn't want him to hypo on me. I tried to test his blood, but he was so dehydrated, he wouldn't bleed freely. After three tries, I decided to stop tormenting him. I tried syringe-fed him some water, but he wrestled with me and I don't know how much he actually drank. The next morning, Ada called to check on Max. She reminded me that most vets have saturday hours. In my anxious state, I had completely forgotten the Cat Doctor would be open until 1. I called and they gave me the last appointment of the day.

Before I got there, I made up my mind that this time--no heroic efforts. No tests. No life-extending medicines. It was time to let him go.

Resigned, I strapped Sophia to my body, carried her car seat in one hand and Max in the other. Helen, the receptionist, gave us a room where we could be alone together and brought me a glass of water. I sang to Sophie and Max, trying to soothe both of them at once. In waves, the magnitude of the decision that weighed upon me would hit me, and I'd begin to sob. Sophie looked up at me from her Snugli and laughed, tickled by the sounds I was making, unaware of what I was feeling. Of what was happening. The incongruity of it pained me. After an agonizing 45-minute wait, the doctor arrived and transferred us to a warmer room with a large comfortable chair. She took Max out of his cat carrier. I was ashamed at how filthy he was. Max had long stopped using his litter box and had been urinating and deficating in my bathtub. I would clean it out and sanitize it three times each day, and Kevin and I would give him a bath each week, but his underbelly was still soaked with urine. And he smelled.

I was grateful that the doctor didn't mind and didn't seem to judge me for this. I pet him as she inspected his mouth for signs of dehydration. She tried to take his temperature, but he cried so pitifully that we decided it made little sense to put him through the trial of the examination. She turned to me and said simply, I fully support your decision.

It is a difficult thing knowing where to draw the line. But I had already made up my mind. I nodded, language clogged with tears. She explained what would happen and gave me some time to say goodbye. When she left the room, Maxwell beelined for a corner and crouched down next to a bucket of hazardous waste. I sang taps to him, and hoped that it would not scar Sophie, to whom I sing taps when I put her to bed. (It's not as morbid as it sounds--the words are quite lovely--my father used to sing it to me when I was a child: Day is done, gone the sun, from the lakes, from the hills, from the skies, all is well, safely rest, God is nigh.) The doctor came in and gave him an extra-large dose of Ketamine and Valium to relax him. I asked how we would know it was working. She said that he'd start to put his head down. She left the room and I continued to pet and sing to him. Sophie began to cry for milk, and in the middle of this ordeal, I sat in the large comfortable chair and fed her. The tension around Max's eyes, which held them wide open, relaxed, and he almost looked happy, the way he used to when he would sit with Kevin and me in the livingroom--Kevin on the couch, me on the the chair and a half, and Max perched on the coffee table between us, lording over his people. The doctor returned with the drug that would stop his heart. She placed him on the table. The vet tech took Sophie, and I stroked Maxwell looking deep into his eyes. It's okay, I told him. I love you. I will always love you. You won't hurt anymore. I'm letting you go.

I couldn't tell that he was gone. His eyes remained open, staring into mine. The doctor checked his heart and assured me he had passed. I cried at this reality. They took him away to wrap him in a blanket and duct-taped it closed.

The vet tech placed Max in the trunk and I made the 2-hour drive up to my father's, to bury Max in the yard next to my childhood cats, Patches and Shadow. I stopped half-way in Princeton to feed Sophie. When we finally arrived, Sophie was a mess. We had blown through her morning and afternoon naps. I tried to put her down, but she just screamed and screamed. Dad and I went out to the yard, which was riddled with rocks and roots. We tried a spot next to Patches, then under the lilac bushes, and finally in the abandoned rock garden in the back yard, before being able to break ground. Dad picked at the stone-infested dirt, and I dug up what he loosened. It took a while to dig a shallow Max-sized hole. I want to dig it deeper, I told him. My father thought it was deep enough. What if an animal digs him up, I worried. There's nothing larger than racoons around her, my father replied. We'll put rocks on top. I removed Max from the trunk. Through the blanket I could feel his body, still warm and pliable. Dad took Max out of the blanket and dropped him in the hole. I cried out as his body flopped inanimately and settled. Dad hurried to cover him. Together, we built a pile of rocks over his fresh grave. Standing back, it looked nice. Intentional and artful.

Dad and I returned to the house and spoke for a bit about the funerals we had attended. So much loss these past years. Kevin's mother. The miscarriages. Parents of friends. And now Max. Dad retreated to the television. I fetched the still-miserable Sophia and left, desperately needing some time alone.

Goodbye Max, Mr. Bootles, Max-a-million, Gluteous Maximus, the Notorious C-A-T. Goodbye my companion of 14 years. Goodbye my pet. I love you.