This Will All Be Over Soon

by Cecily Strong

  Jack and I change into our suits in Owen’s room. I am hesitant going in, but upon entering, it doesn’t feel as if I’m intruding on a sacred space. It doesn’t seem like it’s been totally redone or totally left alone since Owen passed. It was his room in the country house, and he’s a pretty neat person, and so I don’t think he’d have much of thirty-year-old Owen’s things strewn about. Not like in his home in New York. It’s how I decide to think of it anyway. It’s a bright and friendly room. I point to a big block of carved wood on the wall. It says “Owen Strong” in kind of childlike writing, and I assume he painted that little sign at some point. I smile at it.

  We eat an early dinner because Laurel doesn’t want us to stay too late and have to drive in the dark. I’m probably even more anxious about driving at night around here. All the deer. We have corn with spiced butter and chicken and coleslaw, and it’s all delicious of course. Ed tells me the water jug we are using once belonged to my grandfather Cecil. He would use it to make his old-fashioneds. Leda walks away with Lia for a while. I wonder how she’s doing. I start to feel anxious and I try to get the gears in motion to leave. I explain we have bingo at eight. I tell them all about it.

  I give Leda a dumb little sheet of paper I’ve printed out of the jewelry I sent to her house on Martha’s Vineyard, worried it wouldn’t get to me in time. I wasn’t sure what to get her this year. I didn’t want to try to do something huge and fabulous because that doesn’t feel really appropriate. And I didn’t want to go the generic route and get her some basketball thing. (Every Christmas for years, I’ve gotten gifts related to wine or dogs or both. Like a shirt that says, “I only want to rescue dogs and drink wine.” I haven’t even really been drinking wine for seven years, because I like it too much and I’m always on a mini diet for TV, so I drink vodka or tequila and a lot of soda water. But I’m drinking lots of wine these days.) So I decided to look on my favorite jewelry website. They have a store in Brooklyn, not that I’ve ever gone. But I love to wear big loud jewelry. Everyone that day is asking about my beaded rainbow chain leading to the gold “Lucia” written around my neck. I explain I had it made because Lucia is what I call Lucy when I’m serenading her with my version of the song “Maria” from West Side Story. Everybody just kind of nods as if that makes perfect sense.

  I know there is a bit of a little-sister element in my relationship with Leda. She has bought herself dresses I’ve worn. I know she looks up to me as much as I feel a similarly strong pride in watching over her as her older cousin. And so in that spirit, I bought her some jewelry I think is fun. Some sparkly dangly watermelon-slice earrings. A gold necklace with a hanging rainbow-jeweled “L” pendant. And lastly, a pair of colorful bird earrings. I love the birds.

  I give her just that paper because I went back and forth about a card. I realize how emotionally unprepared I was for this trip. I don’t want to write something short and generic that just feels unimportant or even sort of dismissive. On the other hand, if I wrote her an actual letter, it would be as long as one of these essays, and I don’t want to drop a heavy book into her lap on this nice summer day to celebrate her birthday.

  I go up and change again in Owen’s room. I know I have to go. We’ve got to go while everyone is still smiling. That’s the only way I know how to explain it. It’s Leda’s birthday, and it’s summer, and I want to leave them that way. I kiss my hand and touch the sign. Goodbye, Owen.

  I hug Leda again and kiss her head. I’m happy leaving her in the hands of her wonderful friends. I hug Laurel, and I’m glad she’s got Leda and Leda’s friends to sort of look after. She also has an amazing garden. She offers to give me some planters but I decline eventually because I just bought four more and I can’t go full hoarder in this Airbnb.

  It’s hardest to say goodbye to Ed. It feels like maybe he doesn’t want us to go? I don’t know. He comes out and Jack shows him the “Stang.” That’s how Jack refers to his pride and joy, his 2008 black Mustang GT (and you better believe I had to text Jack to get those details right). I don’t know if Ed likes cars this much, but he’s doing a great job of feigning interest otherwise. It’s sweet. I’m so lucky he’s my uncle. This gentle gentle man seeing me out and being so welcoming to Jack, telling him he hopes to see him again. I hug Ed again and immediately I start to cry. Jack puts his hand on my leg. I can’t explain to him either why I needed to go when I did. I just knew staying meant saying words that were too heavy for me and all of us. The weight of grief in losing a person like Owen. Because every day he isn’t there, it feels like a loss still. It will never be a vacant space. It will always be an active absence.

  I say I hope Leda is okay. I think these markers are always a little superficial, but it’s not just her first birthday without Owen. It’s the first summer. I think about going back to the country house for me. Even though the house is different, that has just marked my first time revisiting a space connected to Owen now that he’s gone. Jack says they all seem a little quiet. I laugh and I say, “Owen was loud. He was the loud one.” And I feel again that’s why I had to leave. I didn’t want to cry in front of them, and I needed to cry. I am so happy we got to smile together and hug and eat good food and enjoy the sunshine. I’m glad they met Jack. I tell Jack I think it matters to them to see me happy. “Meeting you not only lets them know I’m happier but is a way to bring them an energy of life moving forward in nice ways too.”

  I don’t want to ever be stuck in that very sad trap of thinking your happiness lives in your memories now. I want to know that my happiness and the love for Owen we all had and got to experience moves forward with us as well. I slip into the role I think Owen would like when I’m there: Making them smile. Taking care of Leda. Making sure Leda never ever feels like she’s not enough just by not being Owen.

  We are almost home when I tell Jack that it still feels so special and so lucky that I got to tell my cousins as often as I did how much I loved them. That I got to hear it back. That we weren’t afraid to say it to each other, especially after a GBM diagnosis. I had the most wonderful relationship with my two amazing cousins, and it is the most precious gift ever to know I got the opportunity to hug them both often and to send sappy texts letting them know how much I loved them. And I got to hear it back just as often. I’m lucky.

  But it’s hard. It’s still so sad. I’m still crying hard heavy tears today as I write this.

  We get home right around eight. Kevin has bingo all set up. I take a couple minutes to blow my nose and hug and kiss Lucy. As the second game starts, I take Lucy outside for the bathroom and to get some air.

  “You’re two away, though,” says Kevin.

  “It’s fine,” I say. “I never win bingo. Will you just watch my card?”

  I’m outside with Lucy.

  “You’re one away,” he hollers.

  “I’m not going to win,” I holler back. “You know I never do.”

  “You just got bingo!”

  I go back inside and look to see that I have indeed gotten a bingo. I’m the only one. Linda pulls up our Zoom screen. I say, “Hi.” I’m so nervous because I’ve never won. The prize is what she calls “Crazy Cow.” I assume it’s a stuffed animal and it is: a cow with his arms and legs outstretched like he wants a full-body hug or has fallen on his back and needs help up. He’s smiling. The best part is the giant tuft of white hair on his head. Like Doc in Back to the Future.

  Linda does her fun twist where she offers me the cow or whatever is in the mystery bag. Usually people take the mystery bag just to see. I say I want to stick with the cow because I’ve never won bingo and that Crazy Cow is how I won, and I will honor the cow!

  I text Leda that night. I tell her again how much I love her and loved seeing her.

  I also tell her I won bingo for the first time.

  I hope she sees, like I do, that it doesn’t feel like a coincidence, but rather a reminder.

  See Cec. You ARE lucky.

  August 16, 2020

  I haven’t bee
n able to listen to his music since April.

  It’s odd because before I was able to really talk about Owen, I found the best way to share him was sending people his music. Now that I can talk and write about him, I can’t seem to listen to the music.

  Owen was in a band called the Evening Fools. I think I first heard about them while staying in an Airbnb in Maitland, Florida, for my stepsister’s wedding. I got my brother and myself an Airbnb with a pool. The house was funny and kitschy. I remember a lot of those “silly” signs people put up on their walls. Ones that say things like: “Rules for this pool: the bar is always open.” “Don’t do anything that starts with ‘Hey, y’all, watch this.’ ” “Clothing is optional, but not recommended (especially for women).” “We don’t skinny dip, we chunky dunk.” “We don’t swim in your toilet so please don’t pee in our pool.” That kind of thing. Our first Airbnb in the Hudson Valley had a lot of those. “Just breathe and accept the crazy.” The one in my room said, “Always kiss me good night.”

  We were in Maitland for the wedding. One afternoon, my dad and Owen came over for happy-hour drinks at the “always open bar” out back by the pool. We were sitting around chatting and my dad started asking Owen about his music.

  My dad is a big music lover as well. He played guitar in high school, doing a lot of Donovan covers. I remember seeing an old high school yearbook of his, and most of the kids who had signed his book said something about “watching Billy rocking out on his guitar.”

  My dad revisited music not long before he and my mom split up. I add that detail because I think a man starting a country rock cover band in his forties is just such a textbook warning sign that a divorce is probably imminent. His band was called the Clinton Home Band and consisted of my dad and a group of local friends. Most lived on Clinton Avenue (my street) or Home Avenue, which were right next to each other. I used to play Capture the Flag and Cops and Robbers with the kids on Home Avenue because they seemed to always be out. Clinton was less active, except for when my childhood friend’s dad, the man I knew as a “Vietnam vet,” who lived down the street, would scream throughout his house. Mrs. Clark, who lived across the street from us, would be outside smoking a cigarette and say, “This is why you don’t do drugs, kids.” So Home Avenue was much more friendly to kids’ games in the summer.

  The rest of the band was a group of adults I knew in different ways but now watched playing in my dad’s band at block parties. There was my mom’s really close friend Ronda, whom she met at the Episcopal church we all attended until I decided it was not for me around seventh grade. (I tried Unitarianism for a second, but my friend Melissa asked me to stop going to her youth group because she thought a boy she liked was starting to like me. So that ended my being a Unitarian youth.)

  Then there was Mr. Jacobson. I can’t call him by his first name, although he has one, because he was my music teacher for all of elementary school. A patient and gentle man, who at his most frustrated by a rowdy class would start patting his head and snapping his fingers to get us to repeat the sequence of taps and snaps and pats he had just done. He made sure we sang Hanukkah songs, Kwanzaa songs, and Spanish-language songs at the Holiday Sing. Very Oak Park. I still know how to say good night in nine different languages because of him. And he always let me have an easy instrument solo, usually a recorder or Orff instrument, because I of course always wanted a solo. I had to make a pink yarn lanyard for my recorder during our performance of “Go My Son,” which we were told was a Native American song (but who knows). I had to drop my recorder because the song also involved sign language. He directed the sixth graders every year singing “One Tin Soldier” during our Memorial Day program. He had us all sing “This Used to Be My Playground” when they tore down our school playground to build a more modern and safer one. Our playground before then was called “the forts” because it consisted of a number of tall wooden structures meant for kids to climb up and down. But these structures were also laid out so they were separated by just the right amount of space to make kids decide, “I should jump that,” which of course meant that kids were always getting hurt and breaking bones.

  Then I am pretty sure my friend Joan’s dad was in the band. He was another quiet, sweet man, whose son became a full-time real-life musician, according to Facebook, I think.

  And last, on lead guitar (sorry, Dad) was Mike Casey. He was a quiet cowboy-looking man who ran a music shop, Guitar Fun, where he’d also provide lessons. He was in a lot of local bands, always playing at a bar called FitzGerald’s. My dad threw my eighth birthday party there, because a children’s silly country band named Riders in the Sky was playing, and I sobbed in my dad’s arms when they tried to sing to me. (For some reason, I was horribly uncomfortable whenever being serenaded. One of the most popular restaurants in my town growing up, and one my parents especially loved, was a Mexican place called La Majada that featured a nightly mariachi band going table to table to serenade diners. I cringe when I think back on how awkward it must have been singing to our table as child Cecily slid down underneath and sobbed until they left. Luckily, as an adult, I seem to have gotten past whatever that was.)

  Mike Casey never quite looked like he belonged in Oak Park. He didn’t even really look like he belonged in the Midwest. I thought of him more as a Western guy, like someone who might live in Arizona or New Mexico or whatever my brain assumed was “Western” back then. My friend Liz had a closer relationship with him throughout her life, as her whole family was involved in the local music scene. Liz and her sister Laura had some of the best voices I’ve ever heard. There is a recording of Liz singing “Leaving on a Jet Plane” that was particularly poignant after we lost her. And I’ll never forget Laura the night of Liz’s service, getting up to sing “Rhiannon” at a karaoke bar pretty much empty except for this group of sad people drinking together after a long, sad funeral with no casket. Laura closed her eyes and held her head up and hit every note with the pain of seven years of watching her closest friend and little sister battle an impossible addiction leading to the night Liz fell over in her chair in front of her computer, leaving her parents to find her in the morning.

  Mike Casey actually passed away a couple of years ago. I don’t quite know when or how. He was always sort of a folklore figure to me, and not someone too close, so I knew of his passing, but it didn’t affect me the same way. I do remember thinking that for such a quiet person, it was a big loud loss to the local music community. He played with all of them, in so many shows, head down, always there.

  When my dad moved out of the house, he found an apartment pretty quickly at a new complex that had been recently built in Oak Park: the Prairie Home Apartments. The Clinton Home Band played a show there not long after, celebrating the new complex. I remember I was sitting on the metal handrail above the concrete steps leading to the courtyard, with my friend Joan, listening to my dad taking the lead vocals and singing about taking a load off Fanny, or everybody jumping for joy when Quinn the Eskimo gets here, or taking a little trip in 1814 with Colonel Jackson down the mighty Mississip’. Then of course he’d sing the song he wrote in college called “Famous Last Words.” (It was a cheeky song, in that the verse was about someone who died heroically and it would lead into the chorus with something like “and right before the plane hit the ground he said, ‘Oh f—amous last words, echo through history.”) The Clinton Home Band was playing to a pretty crowded group at dusk, and I was swinging my legs on the rail above the steps. At some point, I swung too hard and I fell forward, fast, my face smashing into the concrete. I remember the gritty, almost sandy feeling of pain across my face. In fact, I used to have nightmares where I would dive off a diving board but miss the pool, and I’d feel that sandy hard feeling on my face again.

  I don’t know how long the Clinton Home Band lasted, but not too much longer. I think my dad played on his fiftieth birthday at FitzGerald’s. We had a rough couple of years in high school. I was eighteen then, in my senior year at the academy. I don’t know if
my memory has the timing exactly right, but I am pretty sure that my dad called to talk to me about coming to his party. He said how much it would mean to him for me to be there, and he was sorry for all the times he had hurt me or not been the best dad he could’ve been. I don’t know if I would have gone if not for that talk. I love my dad, my first best friend, but we’ve had a lot of rocky ups and downs, which makes our relationship today all the more special to me.

  So, it’s 2016 in Maitland, Florida, and I’m at this quirky house with a pool with funny signs, and my dad and Owen are hanging out on chairs with me, and my dad says, “Hey, can we hear some of your songs?”

  Owen lights up. I didn’t know he was making music! He says he’s just kind of playing around with a couple of friends. We play his music on the speaker system.

  “Is that you singing?” I ask.

  He smiles shyly and says, “Yeah.”

  Owen is so good.

  I knew various parts of Owen’s life. I knew he was in that a cappella group in college, but I didn’t know of this band. Owen’s band is the Evening Fools. I don’t hear much more about them for a while. Then, on February 15, 2019, he sends me a text.

  Owen: Hey cuz! Check out the new jam on Spotify.

  I already love the illustration accompanying the song. It’s a man in a Panama hat and jeans looking like he’s comfortably snoozing while a giant hand is cradling him. A red bird is flying overhead and there is a lighthouse in the distance. The song is called “Do as It May.”