Today marks the second anniversary of Alex’s death. Two years. In the past, I have said that the time since feels like more than it actually has been and also like less. Not anymore. Not really. Today, I am struck mostly by how fresh the grief still feels, how clear the memories remain. I can’t believe two years have passed. Reading back through other posts I have written about our darling girl and the loss we have suffered (here, here, here, here, here), I realize that I have told you all a good deal about her — about her passion for life, her courage, her humor, her keen intelligence, her love for family and friends.
So, I thought today I would share a story from when she was just a toddler. I don’t know why this story has stuck with me so thoroughly over the years, but it has. I think of it often, and it always makes me smile.
Most of you know at this point that I am an avid birdwatcher and have been for most of my life. Starting when Alex was just an infant, I used to point out birds to her, on our feeders, when we took walks, her in her stroller and me walking our dog, or when we went on drives somewhere. I’d point out herons and hawks, chickadees and woodpeckers. Whatever. It was always fun to open her eyes to the beauty of our natural world, and living on the Cumberland Plateau, we could always find plenty to share with her.
When she was about two years old, wonderful friends of ours invited us to spend a week with them on North Carolina’s Outer Banks, in a house they had rented. With Alex being only two — this was within a month or so of her second birthday — we chose to fly, rather than drive the eleven-plus hours it would have taken us to get there. I don’t recall which airport we flew into, and honestly it doesn’t matter. Probably Norfolk? But who knows.
The plan was to pick up our rental car at the airport and then drive to the little town on the Outer Banks where we were staying. But for some reason, the airport in question proved to be frustratingly difficult to navigate. It had already been a long day of travel, and Nancy and I were tired, short-tempered, snappish. And we started bickering about how we were supposed to find our way out of the airport and onto the correct highway to take us where we wanted to go.
We stopped for a red light somewhere on the airport grounds, and, with no one behind us, we just sat there, idling, arguing, getting madder and madder.
At some point, we realized that Alex, in the back seat, strapped into her car seat, was saying something to us, repeating one word over and over again.
We both focused in at the same time and realized she was saying, “Hawk. Hawk. Hawk. Hawk. Hawk.” Turning, we saw that she was also pointing out the window as she said this. And sure enough, above a small pond beside the intersection, an Osprey was hovering. And our little naturalist had recognized it, correctly, as a hawk.
Of course, at that point, we began to laugh, our fight forgotten. “Yes, Sweetie. That’s a hawk. Very good.”
Smiles all around.
So many elements of the story appeal to me — her awareness of the world around her; her ability at age two to recognize a hawk and point it out to us, as we had been pointing them out to her; and most of all, her ability to cut through our silly argument to remind us of the things that truly mattered, namely the existence of that hawk and the reality that she was just too cute for words.
She and Erin have been the joy of our lives for the past thirty years. Yes, we grieve. We miss Alex more than we can express. The pain of losing her was, and still is, overwhelming. But both girls have brought so much light into our world. And we are getting to a place where that light, the golden memories that Nancy, Erin, and I share of our beloved child and sister, bring comfort and beauty and even a bittersweet happiness.
So, rest easy, love. We are doing all right. We miss you every day, and we love you to the moon and back. Always.
Our beloved older daughter would have been thirty years old today.
Later we realized that the name was too small to contain her, too simple to encompass all that she was, all that she would grow to be. She might have been the smallest in her class, but she was smart as hell and personable, with a huge, charismatic personality. She might have been the smallest on her teams, but she was fast and savvy and utterly fearless. On the soccer pitch and in the swimming pool, she was fierce and hard-working. Size didn’t matter. She might have been the smallest on stage, but she danced with passion and joy and grace, and, when appropriate, with a smile that blazed like burning magnesium.
One time, in a soccer match against a hated rival, a player from the other team, a huge athlete nearly twice Alex’s size, grew tired of watching Alex’s back as she sped down the touchline on another break. So she fouled Alex. Hard. Slammed into her and sent her tumbling to the ground. I didn’t have time to worry about my kid. Because Alex bounced up while the ref’s whistle was still sounding, and wagged a finger at the girl. “Oh, no you don’t,” that finger-wag said. “You can’t intimidate me.”
She was effortlessly cool, like her uncle Bill — my oldest brother. And she had a wicked sense of humor. She was brilliant and beautiful. She loved to travel. She loved music and film and literature. She was passionate in her commitment to social justice. She adored her younger sister. And she was without a doubt the most courageous soul I have ever known.
When Alex was three years old, Nancy took a sabbatical semester in Quebec City, at the Université Laval. I stayed in Tennessee, where I was overseeing the construction of what would become our first home. Once Nancy found a place for them to live, I brought Alex up to her and helped the two of them settle in. In part, that meant finding a day-school for Alex so that Nancy could conduct her research. We put her in a Montessori school that seemed very nice, but was entirely French-speaking. The first morning, Alex was in tears, scared of a place she didn’t know, among people she could scarcely understand. But we knew she would love it eventually, and as young parents, we had decided this was best. So we explained to her as best we could that we would be back in a few hours, that the people there would take good care of her, and that this was something we needed for her to do. I will never forget walking away from the school, with tiny Alex standing at the window, tears streaming down her face as she waved goodbye to us. And I remember thinking then, “She is the bravest person I know.” Remember, Alex, all of three years old, didn’t speak a word of French!!
Her dauntlessness served her well on the pitch and in the pool, on stage and in the classroom. It fed an adventuresome spirit that took her to Costa Rica for a semester in high school, to the top of Mount Rainier with a summer outdoor program, to a successful four years at NYU, to Germany for part of her sophomore year in college, to Spain for all of her junior year in college, and on countless side-trips all over Europe.
She was, in short, remarkable. I loved her more than I can possibly say. I also admired her deeply. To this day, I push myself to do things that might make me uncomfortable or afraid by telling myself, “Alex would do it, and she’d want me to do it as well.”
This [see the photo above] will soon be our new home. It is in New York’s Hudson Valley, near Albany, on six-plus acres of beautiful land, complete with gardens, fruit trees, and a small pond. More important, it is maybe twenty minutes from my brother and sister-in-law, is equally close to one of my dearest friends and his partner, and is within easy drives of many other friends and family.
Yes, another post about our daughter and our loss. A part of me shies from this, wonders if I have written about her too much. “Write something upbeat,” I tell myself. “Something funny, something — anything — that isn’t about grief.” But we are grieving. Still. It’s been six months since we lost Alex. A bit more, actually. It seems like so long. It seems like nothing. And that is what my therapist tells me — that really six months is nothing. We remain at the very outset of a long journey, one that will be part of our daily existence for the rest of our lives.
It has now been nearly five months since we lost Alex. I still get the same question — and to be clear, I don’t mind being asked. Not at all. It’s just that I still don’t know how to answer. My friends tell me that five months is nothing, that there is no reason I should have a handle on my emotions already. My therapist says the same. I suppose I should listen to all of them. But I grow impatient with myself. I make my living with words and with emotions. The core of my art is conveying the emotional state of my point of view characters. It’s practically the definition of what a fiction writer does.
My mother would be 102 years old today, which speaks to a) how very old I am, and b) how uncommonly old she was when she and my father had me. I was born at the end of the Baby Boom, when most couples in their early-forties were done having children. Mom always worried that she would be too old to be a good mother to me, whatever that might have meant. She shouldn’t have worried. She was a wonderful mother — caring, involved, just intrusive enough to make me feel loved without being so intrusive that I felt smothered.
At this point, the celebrations of her life are over. Guests from out of town have left. Erin has gone back home. Nancy is starting to work again, and I am gearing up to do the same. We are, I suppose, stepping back into “normal” life. Except there is nothing normal about it, and in ways that truly matter, in ways that will remain with us for the rest of our lives, it will never really be normal at all, ever again.
Graham was incredibly generous, kind, whip-smart, fierce in his devotion to Di and Laura, and one of the funniest people I’ve ever known. He and Di were both school teachers, both utterly devoted to education, to serving their schools and communities. They were active in their unions. They were political. They loved nature, loved good food and good drink. They were, in short, a lot like us. We knew that we wanted to maintain our friendship after our return to the States. And we did. The following summer Graham, Di, and Laura came to the States for their winter holiday (Southern Hemisphere and all that) and stayed with us for several days. Another great visit. We had tons of fun, but Graham and I also spent a good deal of time talking. He had just lost his father, something I went through a decade earlier. I can honestly say that even though we were now living literally half a world apart, our friendship had only deepened.