The Bank Account.

On Feb. 28, 2007, my mom opened a bank account in Michigan. I imagine her sitting down with a bank representative and filling out the paperwork. When it came time to name the death beneficiary on the account, she wrote my name. At that time, she didn't expect that would mean anything. She had other plans for the account. 

Instead, my dad and I now sat across a desk from a bank representative, closing her account. It was a concrete acknowledgement that mom was gone. Over and over again, my dad has had to face this sort of thing, but it was the first for me. It felt horrible to terminate something that was hers, and it was made worse by the fact that it I received some monetary benefit from it.

I wanted to keep things as close to the way Mom had left them as I could, so I transferred the funds to another account at the same bank. Mom's money would stay in Michigan, at her bank, at her branch - where Mom had put it. But it didn't feel like enough. I wanted to use it in some way that Mom would have appreciated. Only one idea felt right: a college fund. Part of Mom's legacy would be the education of her grandchildren. 

As we drove away from the bank, Dad said that Mom had been putting deposits into the account every chance she got. She planned to surprise me with it several years from now. By then, it would have been a great sum of money. When she gave it to me, it might have gotten me out of a bind. It might have given me the courage to change careers. It might have meant the ability to do something exciting for my family. Mom made those trips to the bank, each time adding more to the gift, and imagined what I would do with her gift. She won't see where the gift goes now, and it isn't the gift she had imagined. 

I'm happy that I can put Mom's gift to good use. But it feels strangely empty when I think of her grand plans, left unfinished.

The Shakey Tower.

For thirty-three years, from the first time my heart beat, my parents stood next to me, guiding me and guarding me. For everything that happened to me, every cut and scrape, every test I aced and every one I failed (B-?), ever game winning free-throw I sank and ever team that cut me, every undergrad school that rejected me and every law school that took me, every girlfriend and every breakup, every video I made, every Christmas gift I opened, my parents were there for it. Brick by brick, my life built upon itself into a tall and sturdy tower. Through it all, my parents stood guard over that tower, helping to lay bricks and shore up weaknesses. As I grew, they stepped back and let me build on my own, but they stood ready to jump into action if help was needed.

But in an instant, the confidence I felt about life vanished and the sturdy tower began to wobble and shake.

On my recent trip to Dark Sky Park in The Headlands, I found myself absorbed in the moments I spent with my dad. Whether it was sitting and talking with him by the fire or just hearing him sleep in the bed next to me, I wanted to linger in the comfortable feeling of being with him. Mixed into the feeling of safety, however, was a deep twinge of vulnerability. I've seen too clearly how quickly life can change, and I felt certain that without Dad my tower would crash down, leaving nothing but rubble.

Standing in the face of that vision of destruction are Sanjeet and Nik, friends that are family to me in nearly every way that a person can be family. And there is my wife Annie; the two of us are actively pushing forward in our life together. Yet despite these other key figures, it did nothing to assuage my vision of a broken life looming in the future. An empty seat cannot be filled. Losing someone angrily shakes the foundation of our lives, raging in an attempt to rip everything down.  

As we live, we keep building and striving while what we had built upon is breaking and crumbling. Our lives today will be gone tomorrow. The best we can do is appreciate what we have while we have it.

And so I must now stand guard for my family. My tower cannot stand alone, but together we will protect each other through whatever the future may hold.

A gift from a friend.

My friend sent me the attached excerpt from a book. It has many meanings to her, and the meaning to me is obvious. The work speaks for itself. The full book is available here: http://tinyurl.com/owk6av3.  I haven't read it, but I feel fairly confident it is worthwhile.

The Estate Sale in Hudson.

We had never been to an estate sale before, but everything in Hudson, New York just seemed so cute that we thought it would probably be cute too. 

Try as it might, it wasn't. We walked into a quaint looking building and found a mostly empty room with a few bits of clothing draped over a large cushioned chair. In one corner was a pile of electronic equipment (a router, an old Apple TV and a tangle of cords). In an adjacent room was a rack of dresses and blouses. One row of shoes filled an otherwise empty armoire. The person administering the sale was pitching a couple on a small painting, clearly one of the last items she expected to sell. 

These were the remaining possessions of a person's life, together for the last time before scattering in the wind. Once they dispersed there would be little evidence the woman had lived. I felt her life story unraveling before my eyes. 

I was relieved when we left. Life moves on, but I didn't want to be a part of it. 

From Hospital Bed to Hospital Bed

As I was going through all the photographs of my mom that I could find, it occurred to me that my first experience with Mom and my last experience with Mom during her lifetime were while she was in a hospital bed. 

The difference between those two moments is the distance between soaring joy and the bottomless pit of despair. But despite all of their differences, they add an odd symmetry to the story.

I look at the photo above, and I think about the long road from that day until now. My birth changed my parent's lives. On that day, my mom began her daily, unending task of trying to protect me, teach me, and guide me. She never faltered on my journey from boy to man. She did everything with love. She accomplished her mission. 

So often I feel like my mother's story wasn't finished when it ended. But there are parts of it, at least, that feel satisfying.

Rally.

My experience of my mom's health was different than my dad's. He saw my mom every day, on her good days and her worst. I never got to see the worst days because when I would come home, no matter what had been going on with her, Mom would rally.

When I came home, my mom would do her exercises. She would make cookies. She would go out to shop and eat. When I wasn't home, it took more energy than she had to make it to a doctor's appointment. When I was home, she was up for anything. Moreover, she wanted to do everything. She always asked me what I wanted to do while I was home. Go to a play? Watch the Red Wings? See a movie? It seemed to me that she wanted to make sure I had fun while I was home. I always felt like it would be too difficult for my mom, that she didn't need to entertain me, and that all I wanted was to be home with her and my dad. Looking back now, it feels like a wasted opportunity. My mom gathered up all her strength to spend quality time with me, and we hardly did any of the things she wanted. 

And it also makes me wish I had been able to make it home more often. If I had been there, maybe my mom would have been able to exercise more and would have had more strength. Maybe life would have been easier on both her and my dad. Maybe it would have helped her to be healthier. I wonder what that life path would have looked like.

Avenoir.

The youtube channel Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows (https://www.youtube.com/user/obscuresorrows) crystallizes emotions, desires and thoughts that have passed through our minds for a brief moment before fading. The video above describes Avenior, which is the desire to live your life in reverse, with full knowledge of the things that would happen to you over the course of your life. 

The video shows this theoretical reality ending with life as a baby, nurtured by your parents. As I watched the video, I felt a longing for that relationship with my parents again. A simple life with these two people, who I have known for so long, wrapping me in their love. 

I also though about Mom, and her life as a baby. A little while before I came into existence, my mother herself was a helpless bundle of joy with a world of possibilities before her. When I think about the beginning of her story, it hurts a lot to think that it has ended.