KRIA 2021

 

When my mother died,

I was 3000 miles away

On a teen study trip in England. 

I’d said goodbye to her at the airport and never saw her again. 

They woke me up in the dorm

And told me my mother was sick and I had to go home to New York. 

Part of me knew that this meant she was dead

But as my friends gathered to say goodbye

I complained, to their horror, 

about my mother’s hypochondria and 

how she always was interrupting 

whenever I was having fun. 

The only book I had with me on the plane home was

The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus,

and this was kind of funny even then. 

I mean, really?

My father told me she was dead as I walked in the door and

All I could think about was what I had left behind:

My first boyfriend,

Nigel, 

Who had eyes like a young Martin Landau. 

The house was filled with relatives and people from the Temple. 

I made jokes and refused to cry. 

My mother was 48. 

I was 16. 

When my father announced he was sick

I was 3000 miles away living in the Pacific Northwest. 

It took about a year for him to die. 

I came East for a visit,

We talked about everything except his coming death

Or that I loved him.

I said a normal goodbye as I got into a cab to the airport to go back to Seattle. 

He looked very sad

And I never saw him again. 

I had been planning to move back home in a few months

In time for his last days

But he died in an emergency room a few weeks later. 

I returned for the funeral and cried during the service

And cried at the cemetery 

And I cried when, for the first time in 12 years, I saw my mother’s headstone. 

My father was 61. 

I was 28. 

I remember the sound of the black ribbon 

Ripped apart in shock and grief, each time

By the rabbi

When I think of all the families who watched

As their parents went into the hospital with COVID 

And who never saw them again.