goodbye

Living each day as my last.

You’d think I’d be good at this by now. Especially with all of my trips back to the old places I called mine… Brooklyn… Brussels… Aix…

But I’m still not good at it. Not the short, shuffle, shuffle, which cheek do I kiss? and how do I make this end as quickly as possible one. And especially not the start in the garden, continue in the house, and then linger at the doorstep long British farewell that I’ve been learning about.

This was no exception… One for the latter category… The final sentence of a reluctant four year departure from some very lovely winding gardens to the final exit… After fight filled with dignity and humour, my grandma was to be taken off her ventilator.

I whispered the words I wished she could hear. I thought good thoughts. I asked for prayer. And then I got a good kick in the bum. “Go home, call her and say what you need to say. She may not be conscious, but she can hear you,” a woman urged in my church.

I raced home. Sitting on the top of the doubledecker, the words began to drop into place. The thank you’s and I love you’s came easily. But was I to tiptoe around where the door was leading?

I wrote with urgency. I felt that I must call immediately, but must remember everything I thought I could ever want to say.

This living each day as the last day has been mostly silly and frilly. But that day it took all of my strength.

Grandma, the spunky fighter that she is, fought for a bit longer, and passed away last Friday.

No words can express how relieved and appreciative I am to have said this goodbye. And knew that she heard and understood me.

Love you, Grandma!

favourites

Living each day as my last.

I’m sitting here in a towel, just out of my amazing new bathtub, glass of red wine dwindling by my side, and Norah Jones has just begun to croon, “You humble me, Lord.” I didn’t anticipate such a dramatic finish to my experiment, but these things have a way of just working their way out, don’t they?

Are you confused?
Let me explain.

When I began this experiment of living each day as the last, I thought it would be a good way to get me back on track with my daily writing. But I also thought it would stretch me. And truly wondered what life would look like if I lived each day as the last. And so, as I began, I struggled to understand what the motivation was beneath each action. What was the connection between each thing? Indulgence? Being 27? Facing fears? But despite much thought, the very nature of the fiber connecting these ninety plus ventures eluded me.

Until the very end. Until the point that I allowed my index finger to flick down the scroller, paging through it all… three months of words, images, colours, emotions, tastes… All so different… fun, scary, exhilarating, ridiculous, normal, courageous, extraordinary, strange and silly things… each venture made me deeply happy to have done and experienced it. It was as simple as that. I had no regrets, each thing made me happy. Even more than happy. A deep sense of joy. And a big smile as I reread. The exact words came last night when I heard a talk about Philippians 4 and embracing life. Embracing life. This is it.

Amazing, really. I feel humbled (Norah is still singing, so perhaps that’s it) by all that is happening in my life. I’m just off of the phone with my Mom. My grandmother, who has been fighting cancer for four years, had a stroke this weekend and was put on a breathing tube. The doctor said she had hours to live and it would be a miracle for her to go on any further. My mom jumped in the car and drove like hell to make it from Florida to Connecticut (22 hours). She made it there, and my grandmother is now conscious. And communicating with my family. And they’re talking about her rehabilitation plan. Miraculous.

“So what next?” you ask.

I continue this embracing life thing, that’s what. Why not continue doing things like some of my favourite adventures of the past few months…. like:

16. Breaking the RULES and changing my STATUS

15. Saying the magic word: NO

14. All things holiday: THANKSGIVING, CHRISTMAS, REELING in the New Year, being a naughty SANTA

13. Being a ROCKSTAR

12. Weighing POTATOES

11. The naughty bits: WOOBS and KNICKERS

10. An unexpectedly incredible BIRTHDAY

9. OWNERSHIP

8. The FRANKNESS that made me feel so SPECIAL

7. Being CINDERELLA

6. The brutality of HONESTY

5. Being overwhelmed by AWE

4. MASQUERADE and date my MATE!

3. My STYLISTS!!!!

2. The magic of KINDNESS

1. JOY

scenes

9th January: Day 88 of doing one thing as if I was living that day as my last.

I often feel like my life is a movie. Probably because I’m endlessly delighted in the little things. Or more likely, as my family would say, because I’m a bit dramatic.

In either case, this one definitely ranks as a scene…

Two addresses on a post-it. And my intention to write old fashion letters.

But how does one start letters to people they’ve never met before? People who don’t know they exist…

So I began with who they do know… their American cousin, my grandmother. Then the explanation that I’m her granddaughter. Living over here. And that I’d love to meet them, my British family.

I sealed the envelope, a bit incredulous of what seemed like a scene of a fictional character’s life, but nonetheless, in awe of the potential, the possibility, praying that a new adventure will unfold…

alive

yes I am, really.

so very much to say. but running, running, running. or typing, typing, typing, to be honest. too much work, too little living. but it’s big. the event. one week out.

flying out to cannes on saturday. and producing something bigger than i’ve ever produced before. not that i’m actually yet toting a card that has the one big p word on it.

praying that it will all happen. flawlessly. and without too much pain.

and then i can turn back to you all. and finish the tales of my three months. and what’s happened since. including my 27th birthday. moving. royal family. being legally blonde. and another date.

soon.

thanksgiving

27th November: Day 46 of doing one thing as if I was living that day as my last.

What an unexpectedly fantastic Thanksgiving Chez M in Putney! I was treated like part of the family – meaning given a scraper to peal some spuds upon entering the kitchen and when I suggested fishing the seeds out of the orange goop while M’s mom was preparing the pie, I had a bowl of pumpkin thrust in my hands and a hilariously sarcastic Mum telling me to pluck them out myself.

Menu:
Cranberry vodka cocktails
Roasted pumpkin seeds

Turkey
Gravy
Cornbread stuffing
Succotash
Green beans
Carrots
Sweet potato mash
Roasted potatoes
Parsnips
Cranberry sauce
Wine

Pumpkin pie

Tequila and gin shots

water

16th November: Day 35 of doing one thing as if I was living that day as my last.

As Sunday approached, I kept thinking about the story in Matthew.  It’s one about a woman who poured very expensive perfume upon Jesus’s feet.  I had heard numerous sermons about it over the years.  The bit that stayed with me were that this perfume had cost the woman a year’s salary.  The sermons usually left me feeling challenged, but a bit overwhelmed, really.

This weekend I began to see it in another light, though.  I went back to another story – the one about the master that gave out talents to his servents, left for holiday and found varying results upon return.  The bottom line was that a few servants had big returns on their investment, but one had been a little hoarder.  In 2002, I heard a different take than the usual invest your gifts and money moral.  Alternatively, I was challenged to consider if perhaps these talents represent suffering.    Hard earned, they have so much more potential for reaching the silver lining, than if they are swept under the basement rug.

The little aha came just as I prepared for my baptism.  I was to speak beforehand about my story.  It would have been so easy to give a generic plotline.  But I had fluid on the brain, luckily only in a metaphoric sense, and I kept thinking about pouring myself out.  Sharing what I did have, what was more costly than money, the narrative of my year in Brussels.

And so I stood before two hundred people and tipped the pitcher.  I emptied my heart of my story.  I felt the superlative of vulnerable.  But it captured the significance of plunging beneath the water.  And whilst I hesitate to say it, I will anyway.  My outpouring was met.  I saw tears in eyes in the eyes of my friends.  I had twenty-five people come and talk to me afterwards.  And I felt loved.  Supported.  At peace.  That I had done what I was supposed to do.  And that somewhere in the middle of all of this, there was a very shiny dash of silver.

brussels

15th November: Day 34 of doing one thing as if I was living that day as my last.

Here are some of the very, very special ones who sew back my buttons because they know I’ll never do it, bring me tupperwares full of meals when I’m running ragged the week before an event, cry when they watch me have a big moment, and make up part of my family.

But really, these words can not describe their amazing spunk.

So instead, images.

My very best friend, P.

J, my stylist.

Settling in at Cook & Book.

So many choices!

Ahh, Kriek!!

Right side of the table.

And now left.

Do I qualify for human growth hormones?

Playing footsy!

My partner in the lovely swirling s chair for two.

I’m never leaving!!

Just about to have a veritable chocolat chaud.  Seriously, truly hot chocolate.

One of my favorite places in the world.

awe

9th November: Day 28 of doing one thing as if I was living that day as my last.

There are times when I am still and the moment settles upon me. I remain motionless, feeling it wrap around me like a cool breeze on a stifling summer day. Awe and wonder stir deep within me.

Sunday was one of these sticky summer days. Back from the social justice conference, I sliced open the tape of the care package that arrived with the Customs contents Sharpie-ed out and was speechless. It was from one of my amazing adopted families.

In September I received a bubbly email from K that asked three very important questions: “How’s London? Any new menfolk in your life? So today I have my first confirmation class and I have to choose someone to sponsor me when I get confirmed. And I would love to have you do it!!” For some, this may have been a standard question. For me, these three questions, especially the last, made my day. It was all in the history – all of the obstacles before K was born, all of the years of art projects and scavenger hunts as K’s first babysitter, their move to Florida, the move back, the way they nursed me back to health last year after being in the hospital…. and that I was actually on the radar of this fourteen year-old who clearly should be tc for a twenty-six year-old who no longer speaks the language of whatever has now replaced OMG. I had joked with her that she was my adopted little sis, but felt like it’d be too high on the cheese factor to tell her what I really wanted to say: that when all goes pear-shaped and her parents were just hopeless at understanding or she didn’t want them to know, never mind understand, that she could always call me… thus making the sponsor question a really flattering and exciting one…. Even if I couldn’t actually make it to the ceremony itself due to my whirlwind of an event.

Right, back to what’s beneath all of the peanuts… pictures, a postcard from K, a framed photos and a gift…. for me!? And not just any gift. A gift that poked out in robin’s egg blue wrapping from underneath the styrofoam. Inside a necklace… from Tiffany’s!!! But it was the card that did it. M recounted when she met me when I was eight years old, how she has seen my faith grow over time and will share it with K, and concluded with “We are all so lucky to have you in our lives, but it is in my own personal memory of that little earnest girl that I will always treasure.”

This was not the only surprise gift of the weekend. Sunday morning before departing from A’s, she gave me a lovely, lovely green leather journal (fair trade, of course, from Saturday), after hearing me talking about how much I love writing.

What a Sunday… filled with awe and wonder. I kept thinking back to a thank you note my friend R wrote me in high school. He said, “You did all of that for little old me!?”

So, to borrow the words of another dear old friend, thank you, M, K and A for doing all of that for little old me.

AND ONE LAST THING: A big happy birthday to K, now 15!!!

family

5th November: Day 24 of doing one thing as if I was living that day as my last.

I’m a keeper. Less into seasons. More into a lifetime.

The people I keep make it two in my little pea pod. They are the possessors of my next thought. They are the knot in the wood on the opposite wall that my Pilates instructor says to locate as my ankle and knees wobble. They are the ones that say I Love You as a paragraph. They are my family.

My family keeps growing. These golden girls give me massive hugs. They make me feel like I’m not just a little orphan on this side of the lake. They worry about me if they don’t see me. They feed me yummy soup. And then send home the leftovers in a container wrapped with plastic bags so they don’t spill while I bike home.  Like tonight when the flavour was sausage and bean.

Now people are coming to me, rather than me to them. I’m amazed. Especially by the family here that sought me out and said they will be my home to go home to. That there is a bedroom with my name on it whenever I like. That there is always a glass of wine to share with the amazing mom. An audience for the words that tumble out. And a caring voice to answer back.

I don’t do seasons with these people. Or the ones before them. Or them.

wooden legs

It’s only 10:45, but already I think I can go out on a limb and award the most amusing email of the day.  My sis, K, just sent along the following questions from her friend’s early Christmas present of Would You Rather?

would you rather have a lot of permanent crust around your eyes or have permanent white drool crust around your mouth?

would you rather find out on your wedding night that your spouse has a wooden leg or that your spouse has herpes?

would you rather have a ripe pimple on the tip of your nose, concealed with make-up, be discovered when someone’s kiss accidentally pops it or have your hairpiece lift off with a sudden gust of wind?

would you rather have people keep asking you how long you’ve been pregnant when you’re not or asking “goodness, how long have you been ill?”, when you’re not?

Such enticing options… I would have to say: crust, wooden leg, hair piece and ill

And you?