Until I Say Good-Bye

by Susan Spencer-Wendel

  Our nephew, Charlie, suffered for years with a rare childhood cancer called neuroblastoma. He died at age seven. He was laid to rest by his parents—John’s sister Karen and her husband Bernie—in a cemetery beside a Jesuit cathedral in Pennsylvania, under a canopy of amber and gold leaves and among the graves of priests and nuns.

  Two sets of grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins, including young children, were there. None of us knew what to say. We all stood paralyzed around the white box.

  Then a swarm of ladybugs landed on it, and the small children ran up to it, laughing, trying to catch them.

  I saw that as God’s sign to us that He was welcoming Charlie. And in the smiles of the children, His reminder that life goes on.

  I thought of that moment as I drew out Mary’s gift, a small crimson-and-black enameled ladybug with rhinestone-edged wings that open to reveal a little box.

  The huge party tent is now disassembled. The dishes cleaned. The coolers emptied. The slushy machines and keg returned.

  The little ladybug sits on my dresser.

  And life goes on.

  The Journey Inward

  May–June

  Scrapbooking

  Photos. I have thousands of my children, of our travels, of our lives. Thousands.

  You know those people who have all their photos squirreled away all tidy in one spot? Each labeled with the date and place?

  Yeah, I am not one of those people.

  I had a digital diaspora and a print disaster. I had for eons thrown pictures in shoe boxes, stowed maxed-out digital photo cards in my desk drawer, downloaded randomly to iPhoto. I was workin’ and livin’ so fast, I just snapped and stowed without a second glance.

  In thirteen years of parenting, I had not made one photo album for any of my three children. All their firsts were buried in boxes or scattered along the information superhighway.

  Oh, the shame!

  After I got sick, I’d lie awake at night, thinking, Holy crap. No one but me can find the photos, much less organize and label them. No one can make photo albums for the children—except me.

  Do it now.

  Right now, Susan, while you still can.

  I put “photo albums” on the bucket list after my diagnosis, along with the trips. A journey not out into the world, but back through my own life.

  A personal photo album for each of the kids, focused on them.

  A slide show of photos of my life, for anyone who wanted them.

  Stories about us. Stories that turned into this book. You are holding my gift to my children. My wish that they have their mother, even after I am gone.

  I started the scrapbooks in autumn, shortly after Wesley’s birthday trip to the zoo. The first task? Thumb through every single picture John and I (and our friends, and even the kids) had ever taken.

  You’ve heard it takes a village to raise children? Yeah, it took my village to make three photo albums.

  My hands and arms were so weak, I could not grasp a pile of pictures or move a box. So I asked friends to help. Day after day, while Mom lay in the hospital and I planned my travels, people came to my house and thumbed through photo boxes as I watched and barked orders.

  If there was one great snap of all three kids, we needed three copies. Of two kids, two copies.

  My friends couldn’t distinguish the boys from one another as babies. “That’s Aubrey!” I’d snap, annoyed at having to say it over and over.

  It was frustrating to explain repeatedly my vision of the end product: an album for each child with every milestone. The first year, each month of miraculous growth, each birthday, each holiday, each school event, and onward.

  We would make an envelope of pictures for each page, dated and labeled. I knew I would be hiring a professional scrapbooker to mount the photos. I couldn’t physically do it myself, not with all the small pieces and fingerwork. So I needed organization and detail. I would give the blueprint and core material to a stranger, and she would build it.

  I envisioned large, elegant leather-bound photo albums, embossed in gold, keepsakes to last my children a lifetime.

  The photo sorting and labeling took months. They were social events, full of laughing, gossiping, chatting. Living while reliving.

  At first, I’d linger over the adorable—the snap of roly-poly Aubrey at five months, naked in the pool, looking like a little Buddha.

  Or Wesley, so chunky we couldn’t button his pants.

  Or Marina looking up at me with those blue eyes, smiling as she suckled at my breast.

  All through Mom’s illness, I lingered there. All through my trip to the Yukon, the photos stayed in their piles.

  After Christmas, I realized that at the rate I was moving, I might be dead before I was done.

  I ramped up the pace. Helpers arrived, and before they’d even sit down, I’d direct them to the floor. “Please spread this picture group out, and I will pick.”

  They would start to linger on images, asking questions.

  “Let’s move on,” I’d say, hopefully with some veneer of politeness.

  For weeks, I did this. Thumbing through memories. Printing the digital past. Blowing through ink cartridges.

  “My God, this year never ends!” Nancy said as she sorted 1997, the year Marina was born.

  Ack! Firstborn Marina had scads of photos, but the number dropped precipitously for each subsequent child. I started controlling for picture parity, too.

  Finally, we were done. The photographs were ready to be mounted on pages, and I knew precisely what I wanted: black background, photos artfully laid out, dates noted.

  I put out the call for a scrapbooker to hire. One who would treat my children’s treasures as if they were her own. A lawyer friend recommended a woman named Carol.

  Now here I must explain something—there is an entire industry in America of scrapbooking. There are stadium-size craft stores, Michael’s being the most famous, which sell a gazillion specialty papers, borders, stamps, and scissors. They have aisle after aisle of intricate stickers of everything you can imagine, barns to bees, skyscrapers to seascapes.

  E-ve-ry-thing.

  Because scrapbookers pride themselves on making “theme” pages. And backgrounds. And designs.

  I realized this when Carol visited with samples. My friend Missy was on hand to help me talk with Carol, since my language was slurred. I urged Missy to emphasize I wanted simple and sophisticated.

  Carol was a sweet, sweet lady, about sixty, passionate about scrapbooking. And, in her mind, the more decorated a page, the better!

  She showed me one theme page with a photo of a child in a black-and-yellow bumblebee costume in the center. The background was black-and-yellow-striped paper. The photo had a scalloped border of black and yellow, and there were bumblebee stickers buzzing about. It was hard to find the child on the page.

  The Fourth of July sample page was even busier. Scads of people dressed in red, white, and blue bordered in red, white, and blue with fireworks and star spangles everywhere.

  I got a mild headache just looking at them. Carol and I were as different in style as Andy Warhol and Claude Monet. Me being Monet.

  “The beauty is the pictures themselves,” I said. “I want plain black pages where photos are the focus.”

  She looked horrified.

  “No color?”

  I harrumphed her with the following draconian edict: “You are not allowed to even GO to Michael’s.”

  I told her I didn’t wanna see one flippin’ flag or bumblebee in the books.

  The color drained from her face. “But I’ve never done it that way,” she said. “Sure I can’t just use a few things?”

  She pulled out an orange background paper with printed black cobwebs. “On the Halloween page?”

  It was a chore to redirect Carol’s design thi
nking. So why not shoo her away then and there?

  Because I saw something in her: the way she gushed over her grandchildren, the way she viewed my children’s pictures and oohed and aaahed at each one.

  I knew she would handle them like the treasures they are.

  A few hours later, after a pep talk from Missy, Carol walked out the door with Wesley and Aubrey’s childhoods under her arm.

  Months later (I had Hungary and a cruise and Chickee hut building to oversee; Carol had surgery) she contacted me. She wanted to show me the work she had done for the boys’ books and to pick up Marina’s photos.

  We made an appointment. Over the next few days, Steph helped me do the final prep of Marina’s pictures. I realized then that I had plowed through the earlier months without feeling. I had stopped to “ooh” and “aah,” but I had held my heart back.

  There was my first baby before me. At two days old. Two months. Two years. Looking so sweet, so joyous. Nothing like the teen she is now, but exactly like her too.

  “This process kills me,” I said, slurring so badly Steph couldn’t understand.

  “I’m sorry. What? Calms you?”

  “Never mind.”

  Carol came. We sat under the Chickee hut. She was nervous, wondering if finicky me would like her work. She sweated a bit.

  “I called my daughter this morning and asked her to wish me luck!” Carol told me, with a worried chuckle.

  It’s odd how a ninety-five-pound disabled woman can be so intimidating.

  But I know why: Carol didn’t want to let me down.

  Carol pulled dozens of completed pages from her roller bag. She had neatly stowed my original photo envelope with each page. I could see the handwriting of the various friends who helped assemble, which delighted me.

  The pages had a black background, with a drop of color. Carol had sparingly bordered each photo in a color that complemented the subject, but did not overpower it. She had neatly labeled in finely cut letters.

  The pages were gorgeous. “I love them,” I said.

  Carol sighed. “I am so relieved.”

  I shall linger for the rest of my days over the finished books, the job done, no longer plowing through.

  I shall relive my children’s childhoods, as I hope they will one day. I hope they will see in front of them what beautiful people they are.

  And how much their mother loved them.

  Stink Pickle

  Monday, June 11, two days after the Mango Madness party, was the day I finally had to ask my husband to wipe me.

  And the day someone offered to publish my book.

  Life is funny like that. Perfect like that.

  I had passed a stink pickle, just like always, when I realized I could no longer reach around and wipe with torpedo accuracy. My right arm, the last one working, was impossible to control at that angle. My hand was too furled to spread out my paper squares.

  “John! Help!”

  Poor John. We’d known this day would come and discussed stink pickle protocol ahead of time. “As long as I don’t have to stare at ’em, I’ll be fine,” John said. “Please flush before you call me in.”

  “Roger.”

  So I flushed, and he came in.

  I crouched, and he leaned me forward, nearly toppling me on my head.

  “Sorry,” he eked out, holding his breath.

  He wiped and wiped and wiped. I finally had to snap: “That’s enough! It’s my ass. I know!”

  Now, we could have despaired at that moment. But I had forsworn despair. And we had far better things to do. Namely, check my e-mail.

  I had been writing ever since my diagnosis. Actually, I had been writing all my life, but I’d been writing about myself since the diagnosis: my triumphs, my falls, my attempt to live with joy and die with joy. I’d been writing the story of my life, as seen through one great year.

  On Christmas Day, the Palm Beach Post had published my article on my Yukon trip with Nancy. In May, they published an article on my trip with John to Hungary. I received some of the best feedback of my career. People wrote to cheer me on. Someone said they hadn’t cried in seventeen years, but they cried when they read about my journey.

  Poor John. Women gushed over his line from the Hungary article: “It’s not a burden. The least I can do for you is everything.”

  “But it’s true,” he said sadly.

  Then, as things do, the hubbub died down. I went back to Chickee huts and friends, planning trips and laughing about Marina’s teenage drama.

  Then an old colleague, Charles Passy, called. He liked my articles and wanted to mention them in his Wall Street Journal blog. It wasn’t a printed article, just a long blog entry on the paper’s website.

  I asked Charles to please include that I hoped to publish the book I was writing.

  The next day an agent called me. He had heard about the blog from a friend, who heard about it from another friend . . . you get the picture.

  An hour later, I was on a call with the agent. We chatted. I liked him. ’Nuff said.

  Peter, ever the agent, started explaining book deals. ’Nuff said, Peter! ’Nuff said.

  “I can barely talk,” I told him. “I can barely walk. I don’t care about the details. You’re hired. Let’s get ’er done.”

  And next thing ya know, I was on conference calls with producers from ABC and Disney, and I had a New York City lawyer, former general counsel of Simon & Schuster.

  Stephanie stood by for the calls, helping clarify my slurred speech. “Drop lotsa F-bombs when ya talk for me so they know I might not be Disney material,” I told her beforehand.

  Soon an offer came from a major publishing house. I was thrilled. Peter wanted to try for more.

  “Go for it!” I said.

  This was Friday. I had a mango party to prepare for the next day. I had a memory to make.

  “This is going nuclear!” Peter wrote me on Monday morning as I sat on the toilet. “A BIG offer is coming.”

  After my stink pickle, I ran to my phone. Okay, okay, John put his hands under my armpits and walked me slowly, step by step, back to the Chickee hut, pausing for a long moment at that pesky step that led down from our pool. But in my mind, I ran.

  No messages.

  “What will come will come,” I told myself. “What is meant to be is meant to be.”

  I put my iPhone down. I sat on the steps of my pool with Stephanie. Spent time with Wesley. Laid in the guest bed to rest, ate a few bites—all I could chew—and watched Law & Order.

  When I returned to my phone, there were a host of missed calls from New York and e-mails with the subject line: “Big offer!!! Where are you??”

  “Light me a cigarette!” I said to Yvette, my helper.

  Breathe.

  I dialed Peter.

  “Are you sitting down?” he asked.

  I was so distracted, I didn’t even think of the snappy comeback: “Yes, dear. I can’t stand up.”

  He told me the offer. It was BIG. Not quite as big as later reported in the newspapers (even my beloved Palm Beach Post), but big enough to send my kids to college. For John to quit his job, if he wanted, and go back to school to become a physician’s assistant. For me to leave my family well off.

  “I think we should go with it,” Peter said.

  “I promise to make you proud,” I told him. “I am confident I can do this. I will write until the day I die.”

  I saw the struggle on John’s face when I told him the news. I knew what he was thinking. I had heard him say it a hundred times, with his words and eyes. “I know you want me to be happy. I know you need me to be happy. But I’m just so sad.”

  He was conflicted. My illness had led to the book. It was my life for financial freedom. A terrible trade.

  “I just want you to be well.”

&n
bsp; “I know.”

  “I’d rather have you than the money.”

  “But it doesn’t work that way,” I said. “This is the best possible outcome of the worst possible scenario. It is my gift to you.”

  That night, I lay beside my husband and marveled anew at the yin and yang of everything. It wasn’t a trade. It was life.

  A day begun in indignity had ended in the extraordinary.

  Perfect.

  My Triathlon

  I started writing full-time the next day.

  I realized immediately that, as with the scrapbooks, my pace had been too slow. I had spent my time wandering through my life, in and out of happy moments, jotting them down casually. I had maybe 10 percent of a book complete—and only a few months of coordination left.

  I took a deep breath.

  I had a triathlon to run.

  But I wasn’t worried.

  I had been training for this most of my adult life. Banging out stories from the courtrooms of Palm Beach County, my front-row seat for the flotsam and jetsam of humanity.

  Stories, too often, about teenage thugs sentenced to life, some without a parent in sight. About victims mowed down by drunk drivers, their families weeping so hard the courtroom benches shook. About husbands hiring hit men to whack wives, and vice versa.

  Sometimes the crimes were so senseless, they made me angry. Sometimes the criminals so neglected I found myself wondering if society was to blame. Sometimes the details so brutal, I went home each night and hugged my children, thanking God we were all right.

  But occasionally, the stories went the other way. I profiled a state supreme court justice, Barbara Pariente, who got breast cancer and kept working, appearing bald on the bench.

  I wrote a long piece on a homeless woman, Angel Gloria Gonzalez, who taught herself the law, represented herself in a federal complaint, and got her eviction overturned on the basis of racial discrimination.

  “This never happens,” I told her straight up. “You are unique.”