A Farewell

I walked up the hill; up the quiet Cole Valley streets in San Francisco; through the chill of the light, Saturday afternoon fog. Claudia had said she wanted to see me. I dressed quickly and ran out of my apartment, not sure why I was running or if I planned to run the whole mile there. I felt as though there wasn't much time. To defy the sense of urgency running circles around me, I stopped at a corner store and ordered a breakfast sandwich. I ate as I walked to the hospital. I remember thinking the sandwich was surprisingly tasty, and that Claudia was waiting for me, trapped in her immobile body, in a hospital bed and too sick to answer her phone herself. I had so much to tell her.
.
I wasn't expecting the scene I walked into when I got to her room. Instead of a crippled woman, half conscious and lying back in bed, Claudia sat up- her smile as big and bright as it had always been. For a woman dying of cancer, she sure could pull off a bald head strikingly.
.
Relief washed over me. This wouldn't be goodbye. It meant Claudia would live to take more trips around the world, filling up on plateletts along the way, like she was doing now. It meant she would see her 28-year-old son settle into a career, she would meet a future son-in-law if her daughter ever fell in love. It meant she would be around for many more years to share recipes, to have parties and to enjoy and appreciate San Francisco which she was so good at doing.

"Hello," I said as I walked in. 

"Hi, sweetie," she responded. Her best friend, Pat, stood at the end of her bed next to a woman I didn't know. I pulled my bag off and set it on a chair then walked to join the group as they continued the conversation they had been having. 

"Facebook is so evil they won't let you delete your profile completely," Claudia said with a tone of disbelief and anger.

 The woman always loved to bitch. She also always spoke passionately. Nothing and no one was spared from her passion in conversations: an old boss of hers was a "fuck head," her friends were "so lovely. I love love love them," a bottle of wine, a meal, a book, a passing stranger- all of these could easily become targets of her passion. I couldn't help but admire that part of her. Claudia did not lack feeling on many subjects and she was not above emotions.
.
I met the woman standing next to Pat. She had raised her children in the same neighborhood as Claudia. Three of us stood at the large windows, looking out over the city. I tried to point out which roof was mine while a nurse changed some of the many bags of liquids draining in and out of Claudia's body. I noticed Claudia's wrists were smaller than I'd ever seen them, skeleton-esque. Then I returned my eyes back to the mob of roofs.
The door opened and a 6-foot, velvet-covered something came through the door, pushed by Claudia's younger sister, Ellen, followed by Ellen's husband.

"You found one!" Pat exclaimed as Ellen rolled it over by a chair and pulled the cover off to reveal the harp underneath.

 For the next 30 minutes we were hypnotized by the sound of the instrument, by the movement of Ellen's fingers across the strings: graceful, soothing and distracting. Convincing us all of the things we wanted to be convinced of, of the contradictions we couldn't stop. Claudia was dying. But here she was alive. She didn't have much time. But she has been fighting so long, what's to say she won't keep fighting. She is suffering. We will suffer if she dies. She can't die. She's going to. Then what? The harp played on.

"Pretty great, huh, kid?" Claudia winked at me from her bed.

"It's amazing," I gushed.

We opened the door and let the sound float through the dimly lit halls of the hospital. A small weapon against the pain and the unknown hovering over the shiny floors.

"This one is for you, Claudia. You'll know it," Ellen said as she began the next piece.

"Do you actually think I was listening to you practice when we were kids?" Claudia responded.

We burst into laughter. Cancer had not taken away Claudia's right to be an older sister. It had not taken her spunk.
Later, I leaned over Claudia, navigating on her laptop, helping her delete an old e-mail account while she told the story of how she met me.

"I hired Michelle when I met her in a bar," she proudly told the room. "She had been drinking in the park all day," she added. "And she had these big eyes," she said, putting her pointer fingers and thumbs together to make circles then holding them up to her eyes. I turned to look at her and our eyes met only a few inches away. She smiled lovingly and pointed at me, "See!"

"There. It's gone. It only took a minute," I said as I walked back to the window after deleting her account. "How long have you been trying to do that?" I asked Claudia and Pat.

"For a while. We couldn't find the settings button," Pat responded with a chuckle.

"See that," Claudia pointed at me again. "That's why I hired her. Give her something and she'll figure it out," she bragged.

"And because of my big eyes," I laughed.

I had known Claudia for more than a year. We had spent a lot of time together at work when she hired me. And when she fell out of remission shortly after and stopped working, I became a regular visitor, a privileged owner of a copy of her apartment keys, a care-taker for a week when she thought it was the end but it wasn't, and a daughter-like figure in her life. She provided me with many fine bottles of wine, advice, and my favorite: her stories of travel, love, romance, family and anything she wanted to tell, which was often everything.
.
When she said she was getting tired, I volunteered first to leave, wanting her to rest. "When I go home tomorrow," she said, "You're on the short list of people who get to visit me." I walked over to her bed and leaned down to hug her gently, afraid of pulling important tubes or cords. But she held me close and squeezed me tight and I was surprised by how long she hugged me.

"I love you," I said.

"I love you, too," she responded, hugging me tighter before we pulled apart. Making eye contact, her glossy eyes stayed locked on mine. 

"I'll see you in a few days," I said, then waved, turned and walked out.

On my walk back down the hill, I mentally disciplined myself for being so morbid in having thought my visit was going to be a goodbye. Then I thought about all the reasons I would tell her I was thankful for her. The next day, her daughter arrived back in the country from an overseas assignment and a few days later Claudia died peacefully at home.
.
I hadn't gotten to see her again. I hadn't gotten to thank her, hadn't gotten to say the goodbye I thought I would get. But she had. She must have known there would not be another visit.
.
It hurt a lot to lose her. It hurts a lot to write about losing her. But there isn't an ounce of me that doesn't believe Saturday was as perfect as any goodbye could have been. It's one more thing to add to my list of reasons I am grateful to Claudia. If anything, I would have held on to her hug for a few more of those last seconds I had with her.
.
Goodbye, Claudia. I hope wherever you are, you're raising hell in true you fashion.
I love you for always and for everything.

Detroit, Michigan

     We walked across the church parking lot, across the street and through a neighborhood baseball field to the playground. We ascended on the colorful swings like black ants, out of place and carrying sadness in our posture. A young boy and girl played behind us in a sandbox digging holes. The man there with them lounged on a bench while he talked on his cell phone.

 Kyle sat on the picnic table at the corner of the playground, feet on the bench, resting his elbows on his knees, smoking a cigarette while we swung. Kyle had grown up with the boys we were visiting. We met him the night before when we all went out for beers. His blond bangs were flipped to one side, laying across his forehead, forcing him to throw his head back occasionally to move them from his eyes. He had unbuttoned his black over-shirt, revealing his black t-shirt underneath. It was the same shirt from the night before, probably still smelling of smoke and booze; the smell of the pub. The print on the front of his tee resembled a skull and cross bones, but instead of crossbones: bacon, and in place of a skull: a ferocious looking sunny-side-up egg.

He watched us through his sunglasses as we quietly swung. The hems of our cocktail dresses danced around our thighs as we glided up into the air. Pammy swung with her legs out straight in front of her, ankles crossed to help ease the awkwardness of having the hips of a woman on the swing made for a child.
Ashley, having already kicked off her black heels, rocked with her whole body. Her long, straight, brown hair and the ribbon tied around her waist hung down toward the earth while she reclined back in the swing.

While he smoked, while the kids played in the sandbox behind us, while we all waited for Paul and Mike to get back to the church, we swung. The three of us swinging out of unison, leaned back, throwing our feet up, refreshed by the air flowing over our hot, sweating skin.

"I remember when I was in first grade," I started to tell my sisters who swung on either side of me. "At school we would swing high enough to make our butts lift out of the seats."

 I gained speed and height as I spoke, pumping my legs back and forth, faster and with more force. "Then when our butts would slam back into the swing, it would shake the whole playground. We called it goosebumps." By then, I was swinging high enough  to recreated the effect. Pamela and Ashley laughed while telling me to stop as I flew past them; faster and harder and farther from the ground; closer to the sky and farther from the pain of the day, from the heartbreak of the reason we were in Michigan. We hadn't been back there in over a decade, it was like being back in the past, to catch up with the present and mourn the future. Kyle sat on the picnic table, still smoking with a smile.

It was the first time all week I hadn't felt like I would cry. I swung until I was back on the playground in first grade. I swung back 16 years to when we lived on Marengo Drive, to when there were four Crewdson boys living across the street from us. I swung up till I had goosebumps, my body leaving the swing for a moment of weightlessness, like nothing could pull me toward the ground.

Where gravity doesn't exist, neither does sickness or heartbreak or the image of three Crewdson boys, now men, lined up on one side of their youngest brother's casket, carrying it- carrying him.

After Kyle smoked another cigarette, we got off the swings to walk back across the field, through the hot Michigan sun. I turned around when I got off the swing, to see one of the children from the sandbox standing up, watching us. She stared like 6-year-old girls do, while her older brother kept playing in the sand behind her and her dad involved himself in his phone conversation.

I wondered if this would be one of those images she would keep with her until adulthood: four adults, dressed in black, wearing sunglasses and swinging on a red and green swing set. Maybe for the rest of her life she would wonder about that moment, or maybe her mind would discard the image of us, leave it there in the sandbox with the questions she might have had. And maybe she'll never understand the heartbreak we carried across that field with us, the heartbreak we'll always carry for the heartbreak of a family's loss- a loss you can't ever escape. The goosebumps of life, slamming you back into your seat, shaking the whole playground.

Winder, GA

While house-sitting in the foggy mountains in January, I decided to drive into the city my mom grew up in, the city of Dacula, Ga. I wanted to visit my mom’s sister. For 13 years we lived an hour from them, yet managed to see my mom’s side of the family less often than my dad’s family 600 miles closer to Canada.

    Forty-five minutes after asking my aunt, Doreen if I could stop by, I pulled the car into a gravel driveway, unsure if I had found the right one, until I saw the cracked and crusted hole that was once a pond. It was one of my Uncle Glen’s ideas nearly a decade ago. After digging a hole the size of a minivan with a backhoe, he filled it with water and fish. The fishing hole didn’t last long before all the fish died or ate each other and the water evaporated away into the heat  of the humid South.
With a new confidence in having chosen the correct driveway, knowing no one else would have the same swimming hole in their front yard, I drove on and up to the house and parked behind my cousin’s old, green Camry. It used to belong to my sister before my mom gave it to our younger cousin, Dakota, to give him a way to escape from his turbulent home life as often as he needed to. His mom, my Aunt Raye, lives with her lazy boyfriend and without electricity or water most of the time.

I remember that when the radio in the Camry stopped working, my sister drilled two screws into the dashboard and hung a white, Sony radio from them. And when my other sister side swiped a car in our driveway, she Duck-Taped the Camry's side mirror back on and hoped that no one would notice. It took three people to put up the passenger window if anyone ever accidentally hit the button to roll it down.

    Dakota and my Aunt Doreen sat on two bar stools on her narrow front porch that stretched across the middle of the blue, one level house. They were waving as I drove up the driveway.
    An old bathtub leaned against the front of the house, propped up and waiting for use, or waiting to be forgotten. Across the dusty front yard, on the other side of the house, a fenced-in area housed big cages full of gamecocks. It was the most recent project of my uncle’s and had, so far, been a bigger success than the pond.

Other animals also roamed around within the boundaries of the fence. My aunt bought a calf a couple years earlier and two goats. They walked around the yard like a clique of middle school kids, acting as if they were too cool to be friends with anyone else. The goats followed the brown cow around like they wanted to hear everything he had to say while copying everything he did. My aunt loved that cow. She also couldn't wait to eat him.

“Look at you!” my aunt called to me as we met in the driveway. “Aren’t you dressed so California right now,” she said when she gave me a tight hug. Then she took a sip from the beer bottle wrapped in a Koozie she held in her hand. It was the beginning of January and 70 degrees outside, but Doreen still wore a sweatshirt. Living in San Francisco, I missed the Georgia heat and I missed believing any temperature at or below 70 was chilly enough for more than one layer of clothing.

My aunt was in her forties and she had always been a beautiful woman. Every time I saw her, she would be older. Yet, every time I saw her, she’s would be more beautiful. Her hair was dirty blond and straight and her eyes were bright blue. She looked healthier then I remembered her looking when I was a kid.

When we walked back to the porch, I hugged Dakota and asked him how the Camry was treating him. He excitedly told me how great it had been having the car, while he pressed his palms into his knees and shook his head with a smile. He still called it Beethoven, like my sister had. 
Doreen ran in the front door to get me a chair and when she came back, the three of us sat looking out over her front yard and talking like we were close family. It felt right and natural, considering I’ve never known them well and the last time I saw them was six months earlier and before that, it had been years.

I asked Dakota about school and his family. He was 18 and graduating soon and I hoped for him always that he’d get out of that town and go to college. He had always been intelligent and Duke University showed interested in him when he was only in middle school. In a family of loud, angry, unhappy people, Dakota was always the sweet and quiet one. I felt the need to help him- to help him get out and escape the fate of being trapped in a town and a life with no opportunities and constant struggles that no one was in a hurry to put an end to.

“What’s that?” I asked, pointing to a piece of PVC pipe tied to a rope and hanging from the tree twenty feet beyond the porch railing. It had the shape an upside down “T” and it hung seven feet above the ground.

“Oh that? That’s my fun noodle,” my aunt chuckled as she answered. Dakota and I erupted into laughter as she continued explaining, 

“Yeah, I put it up there. I sit on the porch and think about all the cool tricks and things I could do on it while I drink beer.”

          Uncle Glen and my 16-year-old cousin, David came out from the house to join us. I was happy to see them both, even though we were almost strangers. Glen and Doreen have been divorced from each other at least three times over the last couple of decades. I remember being young and hearing my mom talk about the drama of their relationship. By my visit with them in January, they were happily married to each other- again, and had grown up a lot.
           They were a good reminder that we are constantly maturing and learning; we won’t have it all figured out by the time we’re 30. We probably won’t ever have it all figured out.
           Uncle Glen proudly talked about his gamecocks as he shoved a wad of black tobacco in between his bottom lip and teeth before jokingly offering me some. He had the birds separated into different cages depending on their personalities. 
           He had the same sense of humor as my aunt and I was always entertained by their stories. I’ve never met better story tellers than Uncle Glen and Aunt Doreen.
           He told us about a bird he recently bought. When he put her in one of the cages, the other birds attacked her.  “They wanted her to know her place,” he says. 

“but she wasn’t having it. She beat them all up. And then when she was done, she chased them all down and kept kicking their asses.”

           My aunt compared this to when she was in jail and the women tried to intimidate her. When she wasn’t fazed by their threats, they backed off and moved along to pick on the woman who was freaking out in the corner. Doreen had been in and out of jail for a year because of a psycho ex-girlfriend her son had. The girl would call the cops at 2a.m. and say Doreen had driven by waving a gun at her. Twenty minutes later the cops would knock on Doreen's door to wake her up to arrest her. All it takes in a small town is one person to cry, "witch!" and the cops have the stake up and are ready to set it on fire. There was no hope for anyone: the accuser, the innocent, the guilty and the justice system that looks an awful lot like guilty until proven innocent.
           I admired my aunt. She had been through a lot and she’d handled it all as a strong woman. Nothing anyone did to her had made her any weaker or taken anything from her, it had all only made her stronger, made her wiser. Doreen is the gamecock you don’t corner.

After telling stories about the crack-addict woman next door who would run over to bother her all of the time, my aunt asked me to drive her to the store to get more beer and food for dinner. While I drove, I asked about Chris and how was doing. Chris was two years older than me and Doreen’s oldest boy. He had a baby with a sweet girl named Amber who we all liked, who wasn't psycho. As a kid, Chris had humor like his parents and he would always make us laugh. I remember my mom describing him once as a boy who would never hurt a fly.

“Chris is in prison. Did your mom not tell you?” she said as if she were telling me he was in Atlanta or at work.

Dakota, sitting opposite me in the passenger seat laughed as I poured out questions of confusion and shock. “Why?! For how long? Since when? What did he do?! WHAT?”

She told me about how he started drinking heavily and beat Amber one night after too much alcohol.

“He’s doing really well though, Michelle. He knows he messed up and he’s been working out and reading his bible. He’s taking care of himself in there.” Then, as if she is reading my mind, she says, “Amber told me not to worry. She’s not going to ever take little man out of our lives.” She was talking about her grandson, Chris’s boy, Derek Michael.

We ate well that night. Glen made Rib-eye steaks and seasoned them with a sauce I can't find anywhere other than the South. 
Getting fed at home always reminded me how badly I ate when I was on my own. I smiled as I thought about being home, recognizing that felt at home at all in that place, with those people. With my mom’s crazy side of the family. They are my family too, and I’m thankful that they always will be.

While we ate, I asked David how school was going and he told me he was being home schooled. Doreen laughed, explaining that means he dropped out. He was having trouble in school and with the teachers so they pulled him from school.
At the end of the night, they tried to get me to stay, but I had to drive back up to the mountains and They watched me from the porch, laughing as I backed out of the driveway, navigating around rusted campers and dodging dogs. I wanted to stay longer, I wanted to stay long enough to catch up on all the time I missed out on spending with them during the last 15 years. But there will be plenty of time for that in the next 15. I’m looking forward to it.