Due Dates

Ann flies out tomorrow morning for Phoenix where she'll meet up with her younger sister for the 3 1/2 drive to Mexico. There they'll connect up with their mother's much younger boyfriend and they will divide up their mother's ashes.

Genevieve died Monday morning and our house has been about answering phone calls and Skype calls and emails -- from France and Mexico and Madison, Wisconsin. Ann spent all day yesterday in her classroom preparing lesson plans for the week and tonight admitted that she's lost her patience with demanding parents and energetic second graders.

Nothing's really hit her yet. At least, that's my unprofessional assessment. She cried on Monday morning just a bit, but has been focused every day on working, preparing, and making plans to travel to Arizona and then to Mexico. I know she'll cry eventually. She's not the kind who doesn't cry. She hates it when I tell her, but she's not a pretty crier so I can only imagine how ugly it will be when she really opens up and lets herself feel the loss of her mother.

And then when it hits her that her father is gone, too. They'll be a flood.

We're planning a memorial in early December in Phoenix. Ann has asked me to go with her then, but not tomorrow. When we made that decision it seemed like the best one, but now that I think about her in Phoenix and then Mexico absorbing it all and crying in that tight-fisted way she does, I wish I were going to comfort her.

But I don't think there is much comfort to be offered. Her mother died. Unexpectedly, but not necessarily surprisingly. Her mother's health had always been iffy and she was stubborn about her medications and doctor's opinions. You couldn't argue with her. She knew what she was going to do and there was no persuading her otherwise. She'd lived her whole life like that so it makes a kind of ironic sense that she'd die that way clutching her heart that she was convinced was perfectly fine even after all the doctors told her otherwise.

Ann is pragmatic, though. Unlike me, she doesn't hold onto things past their due date. She feels her grief with intensity and commitment, but when she's grieved, she moves on with sensitivity and practicality. I'm not sure I could do the same, but then I'm the person who holds onto way too much stuff long past its due date.

Still, I wish I could be there when the tears come just to hold her, just to listen, just to hand her tissues and remind her to breathe. That's the problem with her crying, really. She holds her breath for what seems like hours. Her face scrunched up and red it's like she'll burst. And then I say, "Breathe" and she laughs just enough to take some air in once, twice, and then holds her breath again and then I wait, nervous about how long it's been since her last breath and I say, "Breathe" and we go through the whole thing again.

Rubin is worried. He sees her packed bag by the front door and all night long he's curled up by her feet, wherever she may be, and sighs these big deep sighs. He's reminding her to breathe too. He wants to be there in Phoenix and in Mexico, but instead, we'll be here waiting for her phone calls, her Skype calls, her emails...waiting for her return.

This is the time of my life, isn't it, when people die? I've been lucky (if luck is really the right word) that not too many people I'm close to have died yet. There have been some, important people, but when I talk to others my age, my death statistics are a mere blip on the screen compared to others. Of course, that might mean that my blip, when it happens, spikes all at once. For now, my grief tank is pretty full compared to so many others.

Compared to Ann's.

Ann comes home on Saturday evening. I'll be there, of course, with open arms and the dog waiting in the car in the airport parking lot. She'll like that, to see the dog and know that she's coming home. She'll talk about the difficulty of it all -- finding the will, bringing home the ashes, seeing her mother's belongings, meeting the boyfriend for the first time. She'll talk about the stories she remembered with her sister and the hot weather in Phoenix and the hotter weather in Mexico. She'll talk about her Dad, remembering his death again. And she'll talk about her mother and the complicated relationship she had with her, they all had with her.

And I'll make potato leek soup again, from her mother's recipe, and bake fresh bread and on Sunday morning, we'll get up and I'll drive to the wonderful French bakery in West Seattle and buy a fresh baguette and some pomme chaussons for us to eat. I'll make her my best latte and rub her feet and later, when Rubin gives us that look, we'll go for a walk down by the lake and look for the turtles who like to bask in the sun.

It's November now. They'll be no turtles. It's too cold, but we'll look anyway. You just never know.