Gary rustled around in his backpack and pulled out a mysterious cardboard tube. As I stood full of unleashed energy, full of longing, my husband unrolled a banner he’d had made as a surprise for me. “Brittany is here!” was printed boldly in letters two inches tall under a photo of Brittany with me, and another photo of her taken when she was in Peru. As Gary showed me what his love had created, I stood dumbstruck, not moving.
Although tears blinded me, I managed to grab one end of the banner, and we stretched it across the face of the rock. We placed our free hands on the wall, fingers splayed. Carmela discreetly took several photos and simply waited for us to receive what Machu Picchu had to give.
I love you. We are one. You took good care of me, Momma.
Finally, I turned from the wall. Gary released his end of the sign and gave me a big hug. My husband was soaked with sweat from the climb. He trembled as he held my trembling, and I worried that this experience was just too much for him. “Are you all right?” I asked, my face buried in his shoulder. I felt him nod yes.
As we started away from the wall, Carmela approached and said she’d like to show us something else.
“In Peru, we make little cairns like this called apuchettas, meaning ‘little mountains.’ ” She pointed to a pile of balanced stones with leaves strewn on top. “I thought you might like to make an apuchetta in honor of your journey to meet your daughter.”
As I collected stones and balanced them on top of one another, I felt a deep connection with the earth. I could barely see what I was doing through my tears, but I kept placing the rocks on one another with rapt attention until they balanced. I didn’t know it yet, but I was also balancing things inside my soul. There was still a buzz of energy in the air as I balanced stones, engrossed in my task, honoring my daughter. While I built the apuchetta, I came to realize that I was also honoring my journey toward accepting and understanding Brittany’s death. Placing the stones on top of each other, I felt my burden of grief lighten.
Carmela disappeared for a couple of minutes and returned with a pink begonia in her hand. I placed the blossom on top of my rickety hill of rocks.
I wonder if the stones have fallen by now, and if their falling represented a huge breakthrough in terms of my grief. If so, they must have fallen while I was traveling down the mountain on the bus.
Gary, Carmela, and I spent the rest of the afternoon looking at the amazing Lost City Citadel. Here there were more people, tourists, and classes of students doing tours. Even in the midst of tourists, it was impossible to lose the feeling of mystical spirituality. Carmela explained that Machu Picchu means “old mountain” in Quechua, or the “people’s language.” It is a mystery how the Incas were able to drag enormous blocks of stone up the mountainside without using wheels and they lacked strong draft animals. Their engineering brilliance dazzled Gary and me as we walked the beautifully paved and well-drained roads of the citadel, and traced the interlocking patterns of the stones with our fingers, feeling how tightly they fit. These walls had withstood disastrous earthquakes in the region. It was clear that the Incas had built this flawless city to last forever.
There was a feeling of perpetuity, of timelessness, that permeated my thinking as I walked the ancient city. We climbed narrow steps while below the white Urubamba River coiled like a snake at the foot of the mountain. Above us, white clouds against a cerulean blue sky came and went, enshrouding the mountaintops. Sometimes we found ourselves in the midst of a cloud, waiting patiently for white water vapor to reconfigure itself so that we could see enough to proceed.
The Intihuatana stone, or “hitching post of the sun,” was the highest spot in the citadel, up even another seventy steps. It was also the most desired tourist spot. The stone was roped off, and a guard stood watching to make sure no one touched or climbed on the stone.
We were among the last visitors leaving the park, and the bus to take us down the hill was packed. Gary, Carmela, and I had to share seats with other bus passengers.
I sat down in the first available seat, next to a young girl who collected her things quickly as the bus began to move. The bus was careening around corners. This ride was much more nerve-wracking than the ride up.
As we descended the hill, it felt like Brittany was being ripped away from me again. The pain was equivalent to my memories of birthing contractions. I placed one hand over my stomach and bent forward, tears splashing on my knapsack as I dug for Kleenex. It was impossible for those close to me not to know I was crying. I hid behind sunglasses and cradled my knapsack to my chest. I couldn’t stop the tears or the shaking. My mouth soundlessly quivered, chin wobbling and nose running.
This painful process went on for at least half the journey down the hill. The persistent and childish thought I’d had so many times before returned to me. I want her back. I want my daughter back. For some reason, this repetitive line of thinking always undid me completely. It was an emotion that harkened back to memories of mothering Brittany through some spectacular toddler meltdowns. That was how childishly strong my wanting was.
I sat blubbering and sniveling, wishing I could stomp my feet, kick wildly, and throw myself on the floor of the bus. I wanted to scream, as toddler Brittany used to scream, “It isn’t fair.”
Momma, all is as it should be.
I’d heard Brittany’s voice say this twice already in Peru. Once in Lima, looking down from a high-rise at rhythmic gray waves; and earlier today, at the burial site on the mountain. Now I heard it again as I struggled to breathe in the middle of a full-blown anxiety attack. I concentrated on inhaling and exhaling through my mouth, puffing like a pregnant woman in a childbirth class.
We are one. Nothing can separate us. Not spouses. Not friend or foe. You are my forever mother.
I stopped crying because I so badly wanted to understand. “We are one.” I mouthed the words.
Yes. Again, she sounded so happy and gently amused. We are one. We are love.
I thought how very much I loved her . . . how very much I wanted to be with her . . . how much I didn’t want to leave Machu Picchu.
This is a sacred place, and you don’t want to leave. But our love is sacred, too. My love will always be with you.
This statement took me by surprise. It almost sounded religious. It didn’t sound like something Brittany would have said when she was alive. But careening down the muddy road, I suddenly remembered that Brittany had written a similar message to me not long before she died. She had made a site on Shutterfly where she’d placed thousands of photographs as a gift to me. She had also written this message to me on the site:
Live your lives well. Accept the sorrow with the joy, the ineffable grief with the love, humility with accomplishment. Don’t take a single moment for granted. This is it. This moment is all that you have. Don’t squander it. . . . Remember me in the sunset and the sunrise and the birds and salty ocean breeze, and the crisp pines. Remember me in my laughter and in my shadows that dance between the clouds. Remember me in the gentle furrows of your face, archiving the ebb and flow—the beauty and pain—of life through the years. I am you and you are me. We are one. And I will love you beyond this world and into eternity. Quiet your mind and listen for my voice. You will hear me whisper, “I love you and I miss you, precious family” and you will know that it is true. Believe in your heart that I am with you always, and I will never leave you. I will be waiting for you to come one day, far off in the future. I will be waiting with grandma, and my dearest grandpa when it is his time. And one day we will all be together again. . . .
She also wrote on the site:
To my dearest Mother—
Remember to love yourself. Embrace happiness. Pursue your dreams. You are in control of your own future and the people you choose to share your rich and wonderful life with. You are secure in yourself and that is a blessing. Don’t let my death change who you are deep down Inside.
There is no road map to heal from the loss of a child but you should trust your instincts
. No matter how powerful and painful the heartbreak, that breaking is opening up a door to a new life. One that is not better, but different and not necessarily worse, just changed because of this pain. I know your strength because I have seen it, I have felt it, it has changed my life. It will carry you forward on to more greatness in life . . . that is who you are.
All my love always,
Your Daughter Brittany
In my all-consuming grief, I had forgotten about her words. Her beautiful gift of the photographs. I had all of that to read and look at and enjoy because of my daughter’s thoughtfulness. I smiled and swiped my face with the sleeve of my rain slicker.
Love yourself, Momma. When you love yourself, you love me. We are one.
Again, Brittany’s voice was saying things a little foreign to the Brittany I knew, and foreign to my own thinking. We hadn’t been big on daily affirmations, positive thinking, or creative visualization. Brittany and I were doers; we observed problems, and then solved them. Life was a long string of challenges to be met head-on and conquered. Brittany had always felt a sense of urgency, and was more impressed with forthright action than with purposeless discourse about what to do. Using her wit and intelligence, Brittany got things done.
Love yourself, Momma, as I love you.
Brittany had struggled so hard with this very issue: loving herself. She and I were always better at loving others than we were at loving ourselves. How many times had I scrutinized her beautiful face, longing for her to love herself, to be kind to herself?
Loving yourself is the way to get well. Get well, Momma. You have more life to live.
I was infused with a feeling of exhaustion but well-being. I felt things slipping out of the realm of my care, and certainly out of my control.
After months of grieving, it dawned on me that Brittany didn’t remain behind in her ashes. Instead, she was in butterfly-wing kisses as they flitted overhead. Brittany was in the breeze caressing my face. Brittany was in the embrace of a sunny, beautiful day. This knowledge came in a flash, and I felt muscles in my shoulders and neck loosen.
It was so simple. My child—her message, her essence, light, and love—was very much alive and all around me. I felt toxicity, anger, and grief rushing out of me. They no longer had a home in my heart.
You are love.
A smile widened on my tear-soaked face. I had been the best mother I knew how to be. I had given birth to, nurtured, and raised a tempestuous, beautiful soul who tried to make this broken planet a better place to live.
Brittany had gained enough self-worth in life to believe that she didn’t owe anyone pointless suffering. What a brave, bright flame. My child had grabbed all the life she could grasp, and lived—really lived. Then, when faced with sure and torturous death, she had loved herself enough to know that she deserved to die with more peace and dignity than the brain tumor would leave her if she didn’t intervene.
She didn’t just say it; she did it.
As the bus pulled into Aguas Calientes, I pledged to start loving myself more. I promised to live more joyfully, and with less fear. I owed it to my daughter to not waste a second of it. And I vowed to write the book I’d set out to write about mothering Brittany.
As we walked up the hill to the hotel, I felt a cool drop of rain. When I lifted my face to the gray sky, a drop hit me squarely on the forehead. I felt changed, washed clean. Life was hard, but exquisitely beautiful. No one was going to wag a finger in my face, or tell me I was a bad person for supporting my child’s choice about the way she would die. I would not listen to those who told me to be quiet, or that I must keep my daughter in glass slippers as I told the story of her wild and precious life.
Brittany was always more of a hiking boot kind of girl anyway.
Twelve-year-old Brittany on a rafting trip with me in Oregon. (Courtesy of Deborah Ziegler)
Middle school Brittany with me at a friend’s house in Mission Viejo, California. (Courtesy of Keira Connors)
The two of us on a family vacation in Florida. (Courtesy of Charles Allison)
Brittany (far right) poses with two friends before a middle school dance. (Courtesy of Deborah Ziegler)
Brittany comforts her grandfather O. T. Ziegler at a Thanksgiving dinner after he spoke about the shooting death of his jeep driver and his subsequent capture by the German forces in France during WWII. (Courtesy of Deborah Ziegler)
Brittany smiles her megawatt smile prior to a high school dance. (Courtesy of Gary Holmes)
Cousins Brittany and Mary Iris sit on their respective mothers’ (Deborah and Sarah Ziegler) laps in 2004. (Courtesy of Charles Allison)
Brittany, Gary, and I celebrate Gary’s birthday in July 2004. (Courtesy of Gary Holmes)
Brittany posing in my hat in Dieulefit, France, on a family trip in 2008. (Courtesy of Gary Holmes)
Berkeley buddy Jade Wood and Brittany pose at Machu Picchu in 2009 with Huayna Picchu peak in the background. (Courtesy of Jade Wood)
Brittany laughs (my favorite sound in the world) at her wedding in Sonoma, California, 2012. (Courtesy of Charles Allison)
Gary and I visit Machu Picchu on the one-year anniversary of Brittany’s death, as Brittany requested of us. (© by Gary Holmes and Carmen Solis)
Acknowledgments
I’d like to thank my youngest sister, Sarah, for standing by me in a million ways big and small through Brittany’s illness and while I wrote this. I’m grateful to my sister Donna, for her steady encouragement about writing over the years. Thank you to the Holmes clan, who surrounded me with steadfast support and love.
Very special thanks to my agent, Jennifer Gates, for her compassion, vision, and purity of purpose; to my editor, Leslie Wells, who was the best birthing coach a mother could hope for through intense and painful labor as I delivered this book; and to Emily Bestler, the editor in chief of Emily Bestler Books at Atria, who believed in the power of a mother’s story about her wild and precious daughter from the very beginning. For the spare, and elegant, wildness of the cover art, thank you, Albert Tang.
Many thanks to thousands of hardworking advocates who support death-with-dignity laws throughout the world; to the kind and generous men and women who reached out to make a dying young woman’s requests come true at the Grand Canyon, Machu Picchu, and various other places; to clinicians and scientists who continue to look for cures for the terminally ill; and to brave readers who carry on exploring options for a better life and death, even when there isn’t a fairy-tale ending.
I am profoundly grateful to my husband, Gary, who so freely gave my daughter unwavering support and steadfast love and in doing so loved me beyond measure.
Deborah Ziegler was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She received her BA in secondary education and went on to enjoy teaching English and science for fifteen years. She received her MA in science education in California, where she currently lives with her husband, Gary, and their two Cavapoos, Bogie and Bacall. Ziegler started a successful woman-owned engineering company after retiring from her teaching career. Being Brittany’s mother is without a doubt Ziegler’s proudest accomplishment in life. Currently, Deborah speaks on behalf of end-of-life options in the hopes that one day all terminally ill Americans will have the right to aid in dying if they so choose.
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