A Late Arrival at DIA

She died on a Tuesday. While I was on a plane, flying home to say goodbye. While my mother waited for me in the airport parking lot.

When I got to the red Durango at passenger pickup, we embraced. Then, my mother said, “We’re too late Courtni.”

“What? What? What? When? No!” but I knew. She was gone. We were too late.

Our tangled, tear-stricken bodies descended to the pavement. The car door remained open, my suitcase unattended. And we cried together on the curb.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” I wailed, and suddenly, I felt I made my mother miss the final moments.

“No,” my mom rejected my apology. “It was what she wanted, she didn't want us there,” she said, and I guess we’ll never know. “I told her to wait until Tuesday; I just didn't give her a time.”

When I boarded, she was alive. When I landed, she wasn't. How come I didn’t see her soul ascend to heaven from 10,000 feet above? I missed her by a little over an hour.

From the airport, we went to the hospice. I became a frightened child in the sterile halls, my hand tightly gripping that of my mother’s, as we went to see the dead body of her own mother.

Each door we passed I cringed, scared and knowing we were getting closer and closer to the name tag “Virginia Mantello.” Closer and closer to realizing she was gone.

Her mouth was open, gaping, her cheeks sunken it. Still, as a picture, we moved slowly around her as if time stopped. All the wrinkles were gone, a face swollen with death. Her hair was combed, parted, wrong, sweet like a silver child angel.

My mother put her head to my Grandma’s shoulder, tears and whispers landing on her mother’s neck. For a moment, I’m taken aback – I can’t help but think about my own probable future – the moment I’ll be hugging my own dead mother’s body, minutes after her soul leaves this world.

It’s one of those moments you grow up a whole lot of bit in just a little bit, realizing one day, your mother will die, realizing today, your mother lost her mother.

We live, we love, we lose, we leave. That is the reality. It’s the price we pay for being human.

Kindred Souls

A poem for Gramma

Taffeta and silk,
Slippers softer than pink.
Baby daisies on Mother’s Day,
Summer’s warm, beautiful light.
Soon, everything will be all right.

Porcelain unicorns,
The nutcracker ballet.
A convertible with its top down,
Can’t you feel the soft breeze?
Soon, it’s whatever you please.

A Victoria Lynn dolly,
Blue Bird orange juice in cans.
Silent Night playing on a violin,
The most touching music plays.
Soon, it’s all wonderful days.

Henry and a swing set,
Your preemie in Cabbage Patch.
Holding the babies of your babies.
Papa reaches his hand out to dance.
Soon, you’ll get the chance.

Bed Knobs and Broomsticks,
Paper dolls with paper clothes.
Charm bracelets linking me to you,
Oh, the love we’ll forever share.
Soon, we’ll be together there.

     In my heart for always,
     Every day and everywhere.

Fury Occupies Wall Street

And there comes the time that the reality you've been telling everyone, even yourself, becomes real. And it’s all so screwed up that people tell you it makes you appreciate life, because it doesn't. And suddenly, you’re ironing, and someone’s late to your house, and it all breaks.

And you run away, but you don’t know where you’re running; you just like the pain on the soles of your feet while you stomp wildly in no direction. And you ignore the crosswalk signs, half because your tears blind you and half because even if the sign says walk or don’t walk, no matter how much you try to follow the rules, life is still going to run you over with a bus.

And there’s no where private enough to scream your lungs out. To scream and scream and scream until nothing else can escape your hoarse throat. New York crowds even anger. There isn't enough space to throw a fit and it’s just too loud for God to hear when you wail, “It’s not fair!”

I want to squeeze something until it explodes, dig my nails into flesh until it bleeds, throw my dishes through my 11th story window and watch the glass shatter on the pavement.

And I’m wearing her shoes, because 1700 miles separate us, and there’s no other way to show that I care. And I’m wearing her shoes, because they remind me it hurts. It’s like pushing on a bruise over and over to remember the pain. I’m wearing her shoes because now, she’s still alive.

And the people in the street keep walking, and someone’s late for work. A vendor sells stolen perfume and lovers eat ice cream on a bench. The clock is ticking and everything is the same – the world is mocking me, pushing us closer and closer to the time.

Two Tear Drops

“What are you thinking about?” he asks me, and the waves hum silently on the shore. Here I am, here I go, I am gone, they say. They tease me with their temporality.

“I was just wondering if my grandma has ever seen the ocean,” I said, and the tears were warm, salty, sudden, like the water.

And I don’t know if she has seen the ocean, if she has breathed New York air, or seen San Francisco’s Haight-Asbury. I don’t know if she has seen the naked bums in Austin, or the Flatirons in Boulder. Does she remember the grandiose of Vegas, and is Chicago still on her mind? Has she experienced the peace in Guatemala or the pain within her own home? Does she know what it’s like to kiss in the rain, and was there something she regrets, early on, that she can never take back? When she remembers life, does she remember salt and pepper scrambled eggs and the Nutcracker Ballet at the Buell Theater? Is she mad at him, or at her, or at us, or at anyone, and does sorry ever cut it, even when you’re dying? I do not know, and for that, I am sorrow-stricken.

She has to be scared of dying.

Where do we go? What is ever after? And she will never go home, they say. I wonder if she ever said goodbye to her pillow, her shoes, and her Cabbage Patch doll telephone. Did she bid farewell to the dishes, dirty in the sink? Or the sewing machines, lining the walls where my mom used to sleep? What about the hard boiled eggs still uneaten and the diet coke cans in the fridge? Who will consume them; will they die along with her? When will we have the heart to throw her crocheted Chap Stick holders in the trash? And are these things still in your mind while you are dying?

And no, a higher voice says from above. You do not think about things, but about the moments. So, I think about an Italian bus driver taking out a young girl that had dreams of becoming a stewardess. And I think about matching Easter dresses, and the momma who made them. The dolls, the costumes – they dance and curtsy, thanking their creator. I think about unicorns, and how real they felt every year with her, and I think about my own mother, crying so hard, because she’s losing the only thing that’s always been constant.

Gramma is dying of lung cancer.

Listen: Steve Wariner, Two Tear Drops

Unfinished New York, Unfinished Me

Scaffolding is a daily part of every New Yorker’s life. For most people, the scaffolding isn’t bothersome, but rather a shelter from the rain, a dry place to enjoy a cigarette. For a person with a mild case of OCD however, the planks and bars scattered among the city are quite troublesome. I search for completion, for consistency, for refinement. I constantly find myself asking, “Will they ever finish New York?”

I understand that New York City’s scaffolding is necessary for the structure they call the Big Apple to repair, improve, to grow. I know I should look at the beauty surrounding the metallic eyesores, that I should patiently await the project’s completion, and then appreciate the final product. But, like my own life, I often focus on the bad parts, living today only for a dream tomorrow. Everything will be better when I finally get the dream job, the dream boy, the dream life. Now doesn't matter and now isn’t all right because I don’t have those things, but when I do, I’ll be living the dream, I reason unreasonably.

What if, like New York, I always have scaffolding? Always have unfinished pieces of myself that prevent me from feeling complete? The thought makes me want to bulldoze down my entire life in a frenzy, makes me wish to be in a place that doesn't require repairs. Unfortunately, that is impossible; I know that the city that is my soul is old, beaten down, and broken.

When I take a step back, am I even trying to fix the parts of me that have lost vibrancy, sturdiness, and appeal? Sometimes, I think I just try to put them in the back of my mind, pretend they match the good parts of me, ignoring my heart’s leaky faucet. Maybe I just don’t know how to repair myself, or maybe I lack the scaffolding to even start.

Today, I was walking down my street, and for the first time, noticed a gorgeous building that I had never seen before, and realized that the glistening white and gold had been covered with scaffolding just a day earlier. I hadn’t known it before, but something beautiful was underneath the area that I previously had thought was hideous. Maybe there’s blocks of hidden pretty inside of me too, I thought. Maybe I just have to assemble the scaffolding and instead of trying to finish myself, maybe I should just try to start.