Some Kind of Liminal Space

I’ve been sitting on the couch in my den for over an hour feeling like I need to start writing, but knowing I’m not ready - or I wasn’t until ten seconds ago. There’s a sort of buzzing or a pressure of swirling thoughts, and I need them to form into a phrase I can hold onto in order to begin. The title got me there, though it’s anyone’s guess if it’s the title I’ll end up using by the time I’m done. It’s a thing I just messaged to someone about how I thought it was Thursday when right now as I’m writing, it’s Wednesday.

I’m in some kind of liminal space is what I texted, and that felt accurate and like a decent place to start. You always have to start where you are, even if where you are is between two worlds.

Rufus is napping in the spot where Chewy used to be, which is foreshadowing if you go in for that kind of thing, which I do.

The last few days feel as though they exist outside the regular timeline, and I have the sense that I’m caught between time zones or storylines. I flew into New Jersey Saturday and took a Lyft to my aunt’s house. Last time I was there was in May, I went to have lunch with her. She had slowed down a little from a series of mini-strokes she’d had over the last few years, but I didn’t think it would be the last time we’d be together.

This time when I arrived, my cousin was there with her daughters. They are technically my first cousins once removed, but I call them my “little cousins” even though they are in their thirties and tall and lithe. They live in England - last time I saw all of them together we were in Hyde Park and Aaron Paul was there, randomly. They wanted pictures with him and so did my kids, but we didn’t want to disturb him. I have a collection of pictures with each of them in the foreground and Aaron Paul in the background. There are actually some pictures where you can clearly see it’s Aaron Paul, but I like the ones where you have to take my word for it the best. They make me laugh.

No actors were annoyed in the taking of this photo.

Two of her daughters are identical twins, the same way my aunt and her sister are identical twins. I can tell them apart, though it took me some time, just like it took me some time to learn to tell my aunt and her sister apart. After a while it’s not confusing at all, but in the beginning, and certainly when you’re a kid, it’s a mind-bender. Seeing my aunt’s sister this weekend was heartbreaking.

I don’t know how I feel about open caskets. That’s not it, I do know how I feel, I’m not a fan. But I understand why people have them, I understand the impetus to give loved ones a chance to say goodbye to someone they treasured if they didn’t have a chance to do that in person. I can see how it might help to have the person there, looking as much like they looked in life as it’s possible to make a body look, even after the inhabitant has left the premises.

I was scared, though, because I am still dealing with the trauma of being in the room with my mother when she passed. It’s not so much what happened before I felt her leave her body, though I probably don’t need to say it is a devastating thing to hold your mother’s hand and stroke her hair and tell her not to be afraid when you are scared yourself. I told my mom her mother was waiting for her, and her father, too, and her brother. I said she didn’t have to worry about my stepdad or my brother because I would make sure they were okay. I said a lot of things I hoped were true, and I made promises I have kept.

I knew the moment she was gone because I could feel it when it happened. Her presence was getting weaker in those last hours, it was almost like her soul (her energy, the stuff that made her, her) was hovering half in her body, and half just above it, just over her heart. It doesn’t matter to me if you believe in souls or anything else, I’m just sharing what I felt, and it was as real as her hand in mine. Then I felt her go, and it was only her body there in the bed - what was left of her body after the ALS had ravaged her. The thing is, we say it’s “just” a person’s body, but there’s something sacred about your mother’s hands, her face, the eyes you’ve been looking into your entire life.

I had to wake my brother and my stepdad to give them the news. It was 3:37am when she passed and they’d fallen asleep. When the doctor stated the time of death, he removed the bipap machine and turned it off. The hiss-suck rhythm that had been the constant sound of air being forced into and out of my mother’s lungs suddenly ceased, but that was not the worst of it. The worst of it was the look on her face, and I cannot write about that right now.

The second-worst thing is that I was not prepared to treat my mother’s body with the care and tenderness she deserved. I wish I’d had something beautiful to wrap her in. I wish I’d opened the window to let her soul out, not that I have any fear it was stuck in that room. I wish I’d had a candle to light, or flowers to spread all around her. I wish with my entire heart I’d been ready to create some warmth and beauty in that cold, antiseptic room, but I was not prepared. I had nothing but my hands and my tears and my devastation - and a feeling that was not nearly enough.

So I might not like an open casket, but I like it a lot more than what happened to my mother’s body.

I know this might be hard to read. I’m writing and already wondering if this is too morbid, even though we’re all heading there eventually, and even though I feel so strongly we should talk about these things more. I’m thinking as I’m writing that I’ll probably lose most of these paragraphs, since I’m writing about my mother’s death in all its horrible inglorious detail in the memoir. But maybe I’ll leave it because it’s real and it’s what happened.

After the wake we went out to eat. It wasn’t planned, we were just hungry on the way home. My uncle built the inside of the restaurant where we ate, and they haven’t changed the construction or the decor in forty years. I don’t think they’ve changed the menu, either, though my cousin said the shrimp scampi used to be better. Before we walked in, one of my little cousins pointed across the street. She’d read my essay last week. She knew about the black-and-white cookies, and we just happened to be of course we were right across the street from the pastry shop where my aunt used to buy them for me, so I did what anyone would do.

Yes I bought more than one, and yes I shared.

I saw relatives I haven’t seen in decades. My cousin put a video together of photos I haven’t seen in so long, and some I’d never seen at all. Some of my Nanny, some of my mom, some of me as a kid, and so many of my aunt and uncle. I’m a little obsessed with old photos. My mother kept things really close to the vest. She didn’t have an easy relationship with her dad. He was a cop, and the only photograph I ever saw of him was in his police uniform. That’s the only picture she ever had out in the house.

This weekend I saw pictures of them together, and it made me wish I’d pushed harder to understand their relationship. She just would not talk about the hard things, she was tough that way. But this is my grandfather we’re talking about, my Nanny’s second husband. Her first husband died young, that was my mother’s brother’s dad. Then Nanny met my grandfather and they got married and had my mom when her brother was eleven. Same mom, different dads. Same as me and my brother, and same age difference, too. Sometimes I wonder how much effort we have to exert to break patterns and exercise free will. My grandfather also died young, when my mom was thirteen. Probably not too long after this picture was taken.

I knew my Nanny’s boyfriend Lou, he came along much later. He was a sweet man, and he loved my Nanny. Once when I was down at the Jersey Shore with just my Nanny and Lou, they took me to the amusement park. It was a few blocks from Nanny’s house, so we went there a lot. Usually my cousins would go on the rides with me. That day, Nanny and Lou and I rode on the Ferris Wheel, but then I wanted to go on the Spinning Tea Cups and Nanny couldn’t ride that ride. Lou said he’d take me, and I remember Nanny looked a little worried and I said it was okay, I could go next time, but Lou said not to be silly, Spinning Tea Cups didn’t scare him. So we went. And then poor Lou got off the ride and walked-ran to the nearest garbage can and hurled.

I wear my Nanny’s engagement ring on my right hand. I’ve worn it since my mom died, she used to wear it. One day when I’m not here it will belong to my daughter, that’s the tradition. I wore my mother’s pearls this weekend. I suppose it was my way of trying to bring my Nanny and my mom to be there with me as I said goodbye to my aunt.

So they could be here with me and there with her, wherever there is.

Some kind of liminal space. I sure hope it’s beautiful.

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