When it comes to writing, the hardest part is getting started. Sooooo, now that the tough bit is behind me, we have a lot to catch up on.
This time last year, I was with Charlotte everyday. Managing affairs, coordinating care, and don’t get me started on the paperwork… paperwork, paperwork… ungodly amounts of paperwork. It was disorienting.
I felt like a child finding myself at the bottom of a Matterhorn-sized pile of crispy autumn leaves, swimming and thrashing through the mound, moving one handful out of the way only to have another land on my head. Which way is up? Where’s the light? I know I made the choice to jump in with both feet and I can breathe, but somehow, it still feet like I might be drowning.
It was the sort of season that felt like it would never end. But it did.
I’ve thought about how to go about writing this so many times over the past few months. Turning over in my head all the options. The various means of approach… I really labored over it for a long time.
Then I realized that this attempt to come up with the best way to break the news… dreaming up the perfect words, the meaningful lessons, the history, the humor, the humanity… presenting it to y’all artfully woven into a tidy package that would make delivering it easier, was nothing more than classic avoidance. Sometimes done is better than perfect, so here we go.
Charlotte passed in June.
Her rapid decline was shocking to all of us. Like a snowball becoming an avalanche, the disease cascading through and devastating one bodily system after another. The grim realization that there is no “getting better” from here. All her best days were behind her and to continue in this way would have been nothing short of cruel.
How can something happen slowly and so fast all at once?
Being alive and being able to live your life are two very different things.
It felt good to take the summer off.
I spent my time with loved ones, soaking up fresh air in beautiful places, enjoying radical support while I completed the grief process and caught my breath.
Back in Northern California now, the pace has slowed, the seasons are changing and once more, the trees have begun to shed what that which no longer serves. The leaves have begun to fall.
Why is it that when the seasons change and the natural world responds in kind, flowers budding in spring, blooming in summer and withering in fall, dying back in winter… why is it that we are able to see these changes and understand that there is nothing to fret about? This is the way of things. But when it comes to our lives, we often take a very different position. We easily forget that we are flowers too. Our lives are meant to be enjoyed, experienced fully, appreciated, to brighten the experience of those around… tended to and cared for not because they must last for ever, but precisely because they do not.
This whole experience reminded me of panning for gold.
When you first start, you get a big pile of mud and rock. You put it into your pan and you slosh it around and slosh it around, introducing clean water into the pan with each pass. The lighter, finer material, the mud, the silt, ends up getting filtered out through screens until finally, after your rinsing and washing and rinsing and washing, the mud dissipates, the water becomes clearer, and if you’re skilled and lucky the only thing that’s left in the bottom of the pan when it’s all said and done is the gold.
That’s what’s been going on here. Taking the time to work through the grime yields treasure, but you have to get your hands dirty.
Being in service to Charlotte for the final year of her life was a lot like that. Being responsive to her needs, solving one crisis situation after another, and all of the emotional mud and muck and mess that came along with our history of dysfunction, all being sloshed around, clearing everything up a little bit more each day and a little bit more and a little bit more.
The mud, the loose ends, the mess, the pain, the history, all the muck that was caked on to our relationship and obscuring any treasures that may have been hidden below—all that shit has been washed away now. I cleaned it up.
The gold that was once buried under rock bottom is now firmly in my hand, and I’m going to share it with you. One nugget at a time
There’s so much I want to tell you about this experience, but the idea of trying to cram everything into one letter is daunting, almost as daunting as summing up an entire life in one obituary.
I didn’t think I was qualified to write Charlotte’s obituary. In fact, I thought I was probably the least qualified person for the job, much the same way I thought I was the least qualified person to steward her through what would become the final year of her life.
But I was incorrect.
It’s far easier to paint someone as a villain, trust me I know, than it is to look at them as a human. Just because she wasn’t able to protect, love and connect with me in all the ways I needed, doesn’t mean she wasn’t great to other people and in other ways. The truth is nobody- NOBODY- not you, not me, nobody is ever all one thing. Each and every person we encounter has strengths and weaknesses, places of excellence and room for growth. When I take a step back to look at and appreciate the woman she was, rather than the mother I needed her to be, finding things to celebrate is easy.
I’m glad I took the opportunity to have the final word. With so many ways to tell a story, why not tell it the way I want to? Hit the highlight reel and tell the best truth you can. I did her dirty on accident, though. The marlin was 6 1/2 feet long, not 5.
