As we were about to leave the room, everyone turned quiet. “Group hug!” someone said. And then we were outside. It had stopped raining.
I’m barefoot walking through the grass, and when I turn the corner I see everyone seated for the ceremony. The sand is white, the arch is standing, and Dennis is waiting. He has tears in his eyes. I am so happy. My dad walks me down the aisle and squeezes my hand tight. When it’s time for him to go sit down he forgets and stands there with us for the whole ceremony. Dennis is so handsome. For a moment, the sun comes out. I say “I do” with no hesitation.
It’s the happiest day of my life.
let go
13
* * *
ACCEPT
My grandmother is dying. She has been for a long time, but right now, we can all sense that the end is near. Death is on my doorstep once again.
When Mormor was younger, she was tall and lean and always wore skirts. She was alone, but I don’t know if she was lonely. She divorced my grandfather when my mom was only three, and he died before I was born. She never remarried and I don’t remember her ever having a partner or a boyfriend when I was growing up. For the longest time she lived alone in a great apartment in the center of Stockholm. One day she decided it was time for her to go to a retirement community—she didn’t want to be alone anymore. We were all surprised because she managed so well and she was still young in our eyes. My mom and her sisters helped her get a place at a senior living facility outside of Uppsala. It was the kind where you have your own apartment and your own life but there are nurses on staff and a communal area where you can take your meals with your neighbors if you want—assisted living.
Mormor’s next-door neighbor was a gentleman in his late seventies. His name was Sten. Within a week of her moving in, she called my mom to tell her that she and Sten had “struck up a friendship.” They had found love. Mormor told me it was the first time she had ever been in love in her entire life and it happened when she was seventy-five years old. And for the last years of her life, she was happy.
She had been sick for some time; one thing after another, but she “hung in there,” as she said. After breaking her hip she wasn’t able to walk anymore and she’d been in a wheelchair for the last two years. More recently, she’d gotten an infection that wouldn’t go away and she never really recovered. Still, right before we left Aruba for Sweden for the wedding, I was shocked when my mom called to say Mormor was moved to a hospice. “A hospice?” I cried. “But that’s where people die!”
When Dennis and I first landed in Sweden for the wedding, we drove straight there from the airport. When I saw Mormor, my heart dropped. The last time I’d seen her was my previous visit to Sweden and, sure, she was in a wheelchair, but she was herself. She looked good, and she was laughing and making jokes and drank her tea with lots of sugar the way she always had. Now, lying in the big hospice bed, she looked tiny. She must have lost half of her body weight. I barely recognized her. When she saw me her face lit up. “You’re here!” she said. “Rakis. Min älskling.” Rakis was her nickname for me when I was little. “I’m here,” I said, taking her hand. “I’m so happy you are marrying Dennis,” she said. “I have a dress all ready that I’m going to wear. It’s orange. I don’t know where it is. Can you help me find it?” My eyes welled up. The chances of her making it to the wedding were slim. “I’ll help you find it,” I said. She saw Dennis and tried to sit up. “Dennis!” she cried. “Come give me a hug!” Everyone in my family loves Dennis. My grandma especially did. “It’s so nice to see you,” she said in English. “You both take care of each other. Promise me that.”
Leaning back, she closed her eyes. “I have to find my orange dress,” she said, drifting off. I put my head next to hers on her pillow. She opened her eyes briefly. “Promise you will come back,” she said.
“I promise.”
By the time of the wedding, Mormor hadn’t spoken or opened her eyes for days. We decided not to postpone our honeymoon. It felt okay to go and I knew she would hate it if we didn’t.
Before our flight, we return to the hospice to see her. She looks even smaller than the last time. All of my aunts are there, and my mom. They say any day now, and I believe it. We wheel her bed out into the garden and my aunt Stina starts tweezing little hairs from my grandmother’s chin. It makes me smile. We all have them, these little black hairs that grow from our chins. It’s the family curse—all the women are blessed with having to tweeze long man-hairs from our faces by the ripe old age of fourteen. My grandmother used to ask us to pluck them because she couldn’t see them. She wouldn’t want black hairs on her face when she is dying.
Eventually everyone else leaves and it’s just us. I wonder if Mormor’s feet are cold so I wrap my hands around her feet to warm them up. Her feet are big, two sizes bigger than mine. I close my eyes and breathe and through her feet I feel her. She is breathing and alive, but she is in transition. I wrap a blanket around her legs and tuck her in. I take her hand in mine and for a long time, we sit there. I tell her about the wedding and how beautiful it was. I say she would have loved the cake, and that we wish she could have been there, and that her orange dress would have looked so beautiful next to mine. I tell her about the speeches, and the stars above the castle, and the ceremony, and that it started to rain and then it didn’t. I tell her everything and that I’m happy but I’m sad and a little scared. I tell her that I love her and that I am so grateful to have her in my life.
Her breathing is so slow. I try to sync mine up with hers and, after a while, I feel like I’m doing my pranayama, my breathing exercises from yoga. I find the kumbhaka, the pause between each breath. I am intensely present with her breath and mine. She is dying, but she is going somewhere. I feel that. I squeeze her hand and kiss her forehead. This is our good-bye.
• • •
That night Dennis and I left to spend five weeks abroad. We hadn’t planned much. A few days before, we pulled up a world map and decided on Greece. Dennis had never been and I longed for the Mediterranean Sea. I used to go to Greece as a child, my mom and my little brother and I. We’d go island hopping and sleep on big boats under the stars with nothing but our backpacks. As a teenager I’d been back many times—I always felt a special pull toward Greece. I wanted to drink retsina by the sea. We decided on Santorini and two days before we were set to depart, I randomly e-mailed hotels. We booked five nights at a place that looked beautiful online, choosing to not make any further plans than that and just see where the journey takes us. We left Pepper and Ringo at my dad’s place. He lives in the middle of the forest by a lake and there’d be plenty of space for them to roam and squirrels to chase.
We landed in Santorini in the middle of the night. Even at two in the morning, the airport was buzzing. Santorini is a big tourist destination, but we were headed to a hotel at the south end of the island, where it was quiet. When I looked back at the past year, I realized I hadn’t been still for even a second. I traveled and saw amazing places, but I kept going going going. This honeymoon was the first time I was off—not working, not planning for the wedding, not teaching—in more than three years. I needed peace. We pulled into the hotel and it was pitch-black outside—I couldn’t see a thing. But I could hear the ocean, and when we were shown our room I felt like I was in a dream. The walls were brick, the bed was crisp and white, and there was a big Jacuzzi in the middle of the room made of something that looked like cobblestone. Everything was rustic but luxurious with soft, warm lighting. Dennis and I collapsed on the bed. We were tired but in love, and before I drifted off to sleep I thought to myself, Forever doesn’t scare me anymore.
I woke up with the sunrise. Dennis was still sleeping, so I slipped into a dress and quietly stepped outside. I opened the door to the patio and discovered that we were perched on a cliff that dropped hundreds of feet into the ocean. I knew we were by the sea, but I had no idea I would be waking up to this. Vast, sapphire-blue ocean for as far as the eye could see. The sun was
rising on the horizon. The wind was strong. I stepped up on the ledge and looked down. Waves crashed on the pebbled beach far, far below. The sun hit my face and for a moment, everything was quiet. I felt the breath in my lungs, and the slow pace of each inhale and exhale. My heart felt full. Suddenly, I felt the space between my grandmother’s breaths, the way I had when I last sat by her bedside. I closed my eyes and somehow . . . I knew. There was no breath left in her lungs anymore. There was only space now. Mormor was gone. It was July sixth. Her birthday.
I stood there for a long, long time. Not feeling overwhelmed with sadness but crying with knowing. Dennis came outside, holding my phone. “Dushi . . .” he said. “Sweetheart” or “sweetie” in Papiamento, his native language. The look on his face was pained and there was a deep furrow between his brows. “I know,” I said. “It’s okay. I know.” He hugged me. He is so tall. My husband. His arms are so big. I always feel tiny in his arms. I wiped the tears from my face.
When I heard my mother’s voice I could hear her pain. She doesn’t do well with tragedy, with death. She cried, but sounded calm. I asked if I should come home, holding my breath, hoping she would say not to, because if she didn’t, I wouldn’t be able to stay where I was. It was part of our relationship, my wanting to fix her, to save her. It was the part that weighed me down. “No,” she said. “Stay in Greece.” I sighed with relief.
It was our honeymoon and my grandmother had passed away and somehow, I was okay. I had to remind myself that life never gives you anything you cannot handle and that all I could do was trust in both endings and beginnings. In the end isn’t that what we are all here to do? To love and to say good-bye and to love again. To love and let go, love and let go, love and let go . . . It’s the single most important thing we can learn in this lifetime.
love
14
* * *
PRAY
Greece, Italy, Spain, Morocco, France. It had been one hell of a honeymoon. Five weeks abroad. We returned to Stockholm, ready to pick up the dogs and go home. Pepper and Ringo were overjoyed to see us. Pep howled with happiness when he saw our car pull in, and then ran in circles around us on the lawn. Ringo crawled up under my sweater. I love my babies so much.
After dinner with my dad and some of our friends, Dennis and I started packing to go home. I decided to leave our wedding gifts and my wedding dress behind until next time, but still, after hours of careful packing, we had five suitcases. I was really, really looking forward to going home.
We hugged the family good-bye and got on the plane. Pepper lay quietly by my feet. All I could think about was what a good dog he was. Halfway through the flight, the flight attendant asked, “Is he sick?” “No, no,” I said. “He’s just a really good boy.” She scratched his ear and Pepper licked her hand. “He’s just so quiet. I’ve never seen a dog so calm!” An hour or two later she returned to ask if he wanted some water. “No, thank you,” I said. “I give him some every other hour or so.” She looked concerned. “Are you sure he is okay?” Why did she keep asking? I wondered. She was making me anxious. “He is okay, thank you for asking,” I said. When she left, I took Pepper’s face in my hands. “You’re okay, right, buddy?” I looked into his eyes. Actually, he did look tired, more tired than I’d seen him. Why hadn’t I noticed?
Turning to Dennis, I said, “When we get home, we have to take him to the vet again.” Pepper had been to several vets over the previous months because he’d had periods of lethargy and bouts of diarrhea. Nothing serious, we thought. Each veterinarian assured us that all was well. The last vet, right before the wedding, told us he had a stomach flu. “If you want to give him antibiotics you can, but I don’t think it’s necessary,” he’d said. “I’ll leave it up to you.” I remember standing in the hotel room the next day, packing up to head to the castle, holding the antibiotics in my hand. I looked at Pepper. He seemed fine—we had just been on a long walk and his diarrhea had stopped. I didn’t want to give him antibiotics if it wasn’t necessary, worrying it would upset his stomach more. I contemplated it, and decided that since the vet said it wasn’t necessary, let’s not. I put the antibiotics in my toiletry bag. That moment—holding the antibiotics in my hand but choosing to put them away—would come to haunt me for the rest of my life. On the plane, Dennis tried to calm me down. “How many vets do you need telling you he is fine before you’ll believe them?” Dennis said, a little frustrated. “But don’t you think he’s being awfully quiet?” I asked. He paused. “I don’t know. Maybe. No. He’s Pepper! He’s just a good boy. Stop obsessing over bad things happening.” I leaned back in my seat, trying to relax, but thinking, The thing is, I know now that bad things do happen. Two bad things happened this year already. I couldn’t quite shake the nagging feeling that something was wrong.
I was never so happy to get back to Aruba. We’d been away for more than two months. It was late afternoon when we got home and Quila and Laika, our two other dogs, were beside themselves when they saw us. We took them all for a walk, and as we went down our usual path along the north shore, I saw Pepper stumble. Dennis saw it, too. Instead of heading up the pack and running the fastest, the way he always did, he lagged behind a bit. I slowed my pace to walk with him and he pressed up against me and came to a stop. He was panting. “Okay, I believe you,” Dennis said, looking concerned. We decided to take Pepper to the vet the following morning. A part of me wanted to go right then, but only the emergency vet would have been open and that was super expensive. That evening, Pepper ate normally. He found an old toy and played tug-of-war with Quila. I was relieved. All is well, I told myself.
We woke up the next morning with all of the dogs in bed with us, as usual. When I wrapped my arms around Pepper I noticed he was acting strange. He wouldn’t look at me. I took his head in my hands and stroked him and that’s when I saw that one of his eyes had turned blue. “Dennis!” I said. “Look at Pepper’s eye. It’s blue!” Dennis was alarmed. “What does that mean?” he asked. “Can he see?” I couldn’t tell. “We have to go to the vet now,” I said.
As we headed to the car, I thought about my conversation with the flight attendant. I felt a twinge in my heart. What if he is really sick and all this time we’d dismissed his symptoms because the vets didn’t take them seriously? I thought. I tried to not get ahead of myself.
We were the first ones at the veterinary clinic when it opened. The vet examined Pepper and ordered more tests. She asked if any of the previous doctors had tested his blood for tick disease. “Here in Aruba dogs get sick with it all the time,” she said. “It’s always the first thing we check for.” I buried my face in Pepper’s fur. How did I not think of that? Why hadn’t I asked during previous veterinary visits if that test had been done? Had we been so caught up in planning the wedding and the honeymoon that I hadn’t been persistent enough about Pepper’s health?
The vet took a blood sample and returned ten minutes later with a grim look on her face. “This is one of the worst cases I have ever seen,” she said. “His white blood count is so low, I honestly don’t know how he is even standing up right now. And you say he went for a walk last night?” I was frantic. “He ran through the forest with me in Sweden just two days ago!” I cried. “We went paddleboarding last week. He is eating and drinking normally, too.”
The vet said that Pepper had probably contracted the disease long before we went away. “This doesn’t happen overnight,” she said. “He is very, very strong not to have previously shown more symptoms than an upset stomach.” I couldn’t hold back my tears. “What can we do?” I asked. “We give antibiotics,” she said. “It’s all we can do. You have to come in every day for a shot and we’ll see if we can get his blood count up. He needs to rest. No walks. I don’t want to lie to you. This is not good.” I looked at Dennis. His face was pale.
We drove home in silence. I couldn’t believe what was happening. At home, we created a cozy space for Pepper on the couch. I fed him wet food and chopped up liver. He ate, which gave me hope.
On the third day, the vet was a little more optimistic, but Pepper was nowhere near out of the woods, she cautioned. “If things haven’t improved by tomorrow, we can do a blood transfusion.”
That night I took Pepper out into the garden. Just him and me. I tried to imagine what it must be like, suddenly not being able to see. I did this to him, I thought. It’s my fault. We shouldn’t have taken him to Sweden. We should have seen one more vet. I should have asked for more tests. I should have given him the antibiotics. I was consumed with guilt.
I could tell Pepper was scared. We walked a little and he pressed his warm body against mine. I told myself we would overcome this. Lightning strikes once, maybe twice, but three times in just a few months? No way. I squatted down to hug him and he leaned into me. My baby. He trusts me. I’m supposed to take care of him—I’m his mother. How could I have let this happen?
I started to cry. Sitting down in the dirt, I pulled Pepper into my lap and held him, or was it he who held me? I don’t know. I looked up at the moon. Was it half-full, or half-empty? “Please save him,” I said. I was speaking to Andrea. I hadn’t asked anything of her since she died. People kept telling me she was an angel now, and that she’d always be by my side. If that was true, I wanted her to hear me now.
“Andrea,” I said, my voice stern but calm. “I need you to help me. Help Pepper, please. I need him here. If you can hear me, save him. I’m counting on you. You owe me this.” That last sentence sounded foreign to me. I sounded angry when I said it. I realized, I am angry. I needed her to save him. If there is a God, a spirit, anything out there, I will wake up tomorrow and Pepper will be better, I told myself. I was willing the universe to heal him. I felt that if I asked out loud, it would happen.
To Love and Let Go Page 16