7A (You-logy)

My upstairs neighbor passed away this morning. The backstory here is deep and the echo of her absence will resonate.  She was a great, strong woman who broke ground as an editor and a fashion executive. When I moved into my apartment she was about the age I am now; I was a young single mother and as the coop Board president, she took me under her political wing.  For over twenty-seven years I felt protected.  As she aged and became a widow, we were just two women sharing stories and inspiration.  I trusted her wisdom. Last week she turned 99-- a milestone for anyone, and for those who think they want to live past 100, well... it's not easy.  Trying to process this today, it is quite a life-- begun in the 1920's, conquering the city, managing a marriage, career and family, and hardest of all-- witnessing one's own decline and deterioration into old age.  I participated in the last quarter of her life; the rest was a narrative I treasured.  

This morning the courtyard pigeons were in a state.  A woman claimed there was a white dove on the roof,  as though escorting her spirit. I'm not sure of these things. For me this day was long and rough.  We dread the absence of certain people... and it comes for all of us, no matter how we resist. We interpret signs, we pray, but we are not certain.  She herself was not religious; in the end I'm not sure what remains of one's spirit aside from the memories we carry. Most of her accomplishments were achievements, not product. There are no grandchildren to take her legacy forward-- no judgment at this moment. 

For several years she handed me down various articles of clothing-- vintage Prada, iconic expired fashion symbols.  Some of them-- the black ones-- I wore onstage until they almost disintegrated.  It occurs I have a pair of her lace-up boots that barely fit; the discomfort of wearing them this week will feel like a hair shirt, like a slightly painful reminder of mourning. She was not sentimental.  

We shared a passion for literature, and of the New York School of painting which she'd witnessed first-hand.  She knew many of the artists whose work I admire and who passed on long before I got here. Recent years robbed her of her sight, and her hearing was challenging. She tried her best to keep up with news and museum developments. The current fashion world had forgotten her nearly entirely; her generation had mostly disappeared, but in her day she was on the A-list of events like the Met Gala. 

Processing the breadth of a life like this is overwhelming. Nearly thirty years behind her, I already sense that I have entered a kind of era of obsolescence. Despite the weight of what I've seen and done and read, my existence has little present impact.  We are daily fading into the past.  Some of us have our wrinkles injected and our skin renewed, and maybe delude ourselves with a kind of narcissism that we are still relevant. Not that simple.

I've had a recurring dream... set in the long corridors of a building like the Vatican... an empty museum or a kind of mausoleum. I wander these temporal hallways--  the abandoned niches in the wall stripped of monuments and medals. I can almost smell a kind of familial dust, as though the air is thick with cremated moments. Where are the people, I am wondering?  Where are the sculpted images and painted altarpieces? The emptiness is palpable; it is like an architectural enigma.

Demonstrations yesterday were comforting in Manhattan.  They were peaceful and the solidarity and diversity of the crowd was reassuring. I felt nostalgic and safe, despite the menacing presence of armed policemen everywhere.  The thousands of handmade signs and messages were creative and passionate and human. If something happened to one or many of us-- well, our lives had a momentary meaning, a mission. I felt lifted and hopeful.  

Back uptown I ran into a woman who confessed how lonely she was; she'd never found a partner, shunned online dating apps, and just felt passed over. I tried my hardest to encourage her-- to volunteer, enlist somehow, not to sit and wait for life to disappoint her.  My aging neighbor was a graphic reminder of how precious our moments can be, how difficult the latter part of one's life.  Rage, rage, I wanted to urge her. But the news of this one sole death seemed devastating today. For each of the plane crash victims-- the Iranian, Israeli and Gaza casualties-- there is a hole in a loved one's heart.  One day soon we will all become the hole in someone's heart... or at least a brief obituary, an alumni memoriam, a Facebook post. 

My neighbor lived in her apartment for over 60 years; she was married here... her children were born and grew here.  Inevitably the place will be stripped of the medical aids and the old books and vinyl-- the furniture, the charming improvements her husband crafted.  It will be emptied and renovated and a new family will move in. I was once a young family here; I've moved up the ranks to become one of the senior tenants. Time moves on, and as I commented in a piece long ago, New York is like a Grand Hotel-- people move in and out, and we can't hold onto our personal geographical souvenirs. 

I suppose the ultimate lesson of death is the value of life.  We get a huge grace, most of us... we waste time, we squabble and complain and pine.  Some of us are gone too soon; some of us linger too long and become the burden of others.  And some of us, like the man in 11A, are granted an epiphany-- a near-miracle. How to solve these things? To live and die more or less of 'old age' is another lucky variation of the plane-crash narrative; we all end up the same.  I know my neighbor loved life enough to hang in through the challenges of aging-- the aches and pains and indignities... I, too, love this life too much.  Just to sit in the park and watch people-- to see the sunset across the reservoir... yesterday's bagel and a home-made coffee-- a library book.  To sense the passage of time and its irreversible cruelties and kindnesses-- it's more than I deserve, I think sometimes, but I'm determined to earn the privilege of staying and not quite ready to leave, God willing.

Jane of Kings

Scrolling through random TV, channel after channel is routinely showing some film or series of extreme violence... pain, human aggression-- terror... blood, injury... death.  Either some scenario or elaborate criminal plot which involves weapons and retaliation...  or war;  science fiction monstrosities with hostility and vicious hatreds. Then there are the natural disaster movies with catastrophic occurrences-- widespread destruction and damage, global tragedies... 

And then there is this unprecedented newsworthy human year: watching images of the Ganges River swollen with corpses, the 23rd psalm came to mind--- the valley of the shadow of death.  Yea though I walk there, the psalm dictates, I shall fear no evil.  

My friend Jane passed away just ten days ago... her 'moment of decease', that is, because for weeks she had been something less than living.  She'd forbidden me, knowing my inclinations to confess and reveal, from mentioning her name in my poetry or blogs.  This was difficult.  Since I was small, I have loved the name Jane as though it were a sheet of prismic glass through which to view the world.  Queen Jane, Bob Dylan wrote... and she was.  Ravaged by a cruel diagnosis, she met her fate with courage and relentless bravery, like a good Catholic.  

Nothing to declare, the hospice priest categorized her, although she tried to muster a few lightweight sins and omissions just for the process... she was true and honest, empathic and observant, smart and acerbic.  Even my son liked her... and he doesn't comment on many people.  At my behest he willingly took her home-baked care packages and always came away with some worthwhile wisdom or TV recommendation.  

The worst part about a long farewell is that the ending overshadows the rest-- at least temporarily.  While we all drudge up past memories and tendernesses, the horror of illness hangs in the air like a low ceiling.  My father died at nearly 97; my mother survived another 16 months without him.  I remember too well the  'old man' claustrophobic smell of the room where they both sat year in and out in their nineties... although they were clean and neatly dressed. When I visited my mother during her last months the air was lighter without him... but I began to realize that she was sitting there not in her own scent but the lingering scent of her husband, like a cloud or a shroud.  She'd befriended death; she was trying to find the doorway. 

While Jane and I had some fun afternoons after her diagnosis, the treatments were erosive and the day ends early for the terminally ill. It is all they can do to go through motions of living while they are being observed.  Being Jane, she fussed and worried over me-- was I eating, did I want a coat-- boots... hats?  These things became important; she lectured me on the merits of make-up and hair arranging since we no longer had our former beauty to conceal our flaws.  She dragged me to shops and stocked up on the junk food she loved despite my protests that she choose healthy options.  We even went to a senior center one day with me shaking my head... she insisted we'd each get a free pair of glasses and she chose some wild blingy glam frames.  The finished pair never materialized.  Later she playfully threatened the staff:  I'll be dead before those glasses appear... and she was.  But it was funny.  She repeated it during her last weeks.  

She was funny.  She was vain and always wore her make-up though she cared more for her birds than herself.  Her things-- her personal treasures-- were copious and carefully selected.  She surrounded herself with a kind of beauty.  But she had no partner... prohibitively selective she'd been... one of a breed of city eccentrics who live this way-- in a sort of community, in a sort of cocoon... knowing neighbors, generations of friends and neighborhood characters... and pets of all kinds, none of whom, save the pair of birds, outlived her.  

She was kind.  She understood things... we talked and laughed on the phone... we'd neglected one another for years until her illness gave us this opportunity for sisterhood.  We shared things-- youtube and films and books... she read my work and gave praise when it was due. She pushed me like a mother. I tried to be uplifting about her diagnosis; there are miracles, I insisted... no one can predict your outcome.  I began to carry her name with me-- like a song-- a prayer-- a constant mantra, as I do... all day... when I walk, when I run, when I clean house or lie awake at night.  Please God or Jesus or Mary... make her well... Jane... I coopted her name like a lyric.  

At the very end I distanced myself a little.  I didn't sit by her bed waiting for the finale.  I sat a couple of times, but I had to separate myself from this Jane-- from the dying Jane.  Then maybe, I thought, she will live.  I sat in churches-- the hospice chapel, St. Patrick's, St. Vincent's...  I talked to birds, to statues of the Virgin... to my ceiling at night... my various crucifixes.  I tried some Hail Mary's.  

And while we try to remember her now.. it's blurry.  I'm not sure to whom I speak, when I conjure her image... I try to erase the scent of death-in-hospice, the stale bedsheet smell, the disinfectant and the coldness of the nurses and aides.  I don't know what death is supposed to be-- the preferred version is that one 'dies peacefully' but I am not certain Jane did not rage a little in poetic fashion.  It is a relief when suffering ends.  I miss her more these days as I miss Alan and many others and walk truly in the shadow of death this year which has altered forever my own heart, my own trajectory.  What I realized today-- like my mother who sat in the room of my father... I walk with her... it became a habit... and while I will add another name to the litany of my private prayer-chain, and I have formally grieved and repented... lit candles, wept, recited... I am left alone with the Prayer of Jane.  

Camera Obscura

When my adorable son was barely three years old, he came upon his first 'little person' on line with us at the supermarket.  After thoughtfully scrutinizing her, he cried out… 'Look, Mom! It's a girl just turning into a lady!' Of course it is difficult for young children to comprehend the phases of life-- the concept that they are going to grow up, that their own parents and Grandparents were once young-- that this is a slow, gradual, continuous process.

Now that I am entering a late phase of life,  I again find it hard to grasp the lessons of time, to accept the harsh losses and assimilate the regrets of my peers who seem oddly unprepared, despite decades of identical 24-hour daily allotments, for their senior years.  Recently I saw my Dad cross over-- cross, with all its meanings, is the appropriate word, because he wore a tough and cantankerous skin over his purple hero's heart, even in death.

My mother, on the other hand, has deteriorated slowly and with a kind of demented grace.  She sits in a chair like a soft throne, with her thinning white hair pulled up in a tight knot, her famous cheekbones still defining her profile, her skin still soft but papery.  It is her eyes that tell the story-- watery, unfocused-- occasionally expressive but progressively less and less present.  Where are you, Mom-- in some honeymoon dream with your handsome decorated lover lifting you over some threshold, standing above the falls with the deafening roar of water rushing you off into another undertow of memory? It is difficult to know whether the sadness I read into her increasingly blank stare is hers or my own.

From her chairside, I facetime my son-- her favorite grandchild, the nurse-companion assures me-- and the three generations share a moment.  He is quite a man now; time has done its work here, too.  I meet his old school friends on the street and some of them have begun to lose their hair and take on that look of premature disappointment men in their 30's and 40's often wear.  The babies I held so recently are adults now-- the young couples I knew are turning grey, losing their religion.  Witnessing these passages is the way I process my own.  I am relatively unchanged, consistent.  I have different expectations.  I gave up on my vow to own a limestone townhouse on East 70th Street; I no longer want one.  I treasure my things, my books---  thank the angels I can still play bass and write songs and poetry.   I ask for little else-- can survive on the barest minimum in this city where I feel rich without money.  Yes, I was fortunate enough to have had the foresight to invest in an apartment when they were oh-so-cheap… exchanged vacations, movies, restaurants-- for a home, 'ant' that I was, having left my 'grasshopper' husband in the UK with the rest.

When I moved into my building it felt palatial.  We'd come from a studio apartment; my son endured his kindergarten friends remarking he slept in a closet; he did.  The head of our new coop was this elegant, intelligent woman who turned out to have been the fashion editor of the New York Times at a time when this was culturally important.  Her husband was a world-renowned Swedish photographer whose fashion photos were spectacularly smart and iconic.  Since I had a Swedish boyfriend, our kinship was sealed.  They took me under their wing, so to speak.  I adored them.  We shared evenings and ideas.  They were perennial attendees at my all-night musical Thanksgivings, and were treasured and wonderful guests.  Gus, the photographer-- also shared my passion for music.  He came to my gigs-- even the difficult solo ones-- critiqued my songwriting with brutal honesty and a sharp POV… gave his opinion freely of my friends, their work, etc.  He came to school events and photographed the children.  He'd knock on my door at night when I was home and sort through cds and art books.  He brought me albums and tapes and taught me so much about jazz.  When I visited Sweden, I'd bring him small things… I even photographed his boyhood home-- the apple trees and the stream running through his memory.  He was like the father I never experienced.  His love for his own children was boundless and unconditional, and somehow he realized I'd missed out, and generously shared a paternal affection.  I was proud of him.  His choice of wife-- stellar.  More than anything-- his decisive modus operandi-- as though he knew exactly what he thought and wanted and laid it out there.  This is rare.  True honesty and a point of view to go with it.  He attended coop meetings and harshly criticized injustices.  He supported me in my crusades and shared my sorrows without pity.  As a couple, they were the emotional roof over my head upstairs.

As he got older, he was a little more cantankerous-- scolded my friends at my own table, announced he disliked people to their face… knocked on my door and demanded that I cook him Swedish meatballs, bake him cookies-- insisted on eating on my sofa where he left stains and spilled wine.  Whatever was on my stereo, he would take it off and put on either Bud Powell or Art Tatum or his very favorite, Slim Gaillard.  He liked a bit of humor with his jazz.  He loved women, beauty in all forms… and knew how to convey a message with an image.  During the last year, he began to pocket small things from my apartment.  I caught him in the act once, and he responded, without remorse,  'You don't NEED this.  You don't even notice it!'  It was as though he was aware our time was a little foreshortened, and he needed some souvenirs.  He was becoming greedy of moments as the sand ran down in his hourglass.  I, too.

Last week he passed away.  My grief is disproportionate; after all, I am not even a relative.  To their children, with whom I am not nearly as intimate, I can only express sympathy and condolences.  To his wife, who somehow understands my attachment, well.. I will cherish the future hours we can hopefully spend together, sharing ideas, like two women.  She is the maternal role model I never had; the enduring, amazing wife-now-widow.  I will listen and learn what I can, while she is here and generous with her evenings.

Recently an aging fashion designer stopped me on the street and asked for them.  They were quite the 'it' couple in their day, he always assures me, and generally accompanies this with an anecdote or two.  This time, for some reason, he graphically described the palpable chemical attraction one could sense between them in their prime.  For some of us, imagining people in their 80's and 90's as the Rihanna or Brad Pitt of their era-- well, it takes imagination… but I have learned now… such is time.  These waves crashing onshore at this moment, the surfers riding this crest, the shells and animals and fossils that we find in their shallow temporary graves at the water's edge-- will be less than memory in mere minutes.  All our selfies and photos-- well, they are just digital sand.

The images Gus left behind-- both photographic and realtime-- are etched in my memory.  The photographs are fortunately ingrained in the internet and in books; he has left a hefty legacy and will not be forgotten.  It is his persona that has left a mark on me-- the in-your-face direct line to his mind-- his affection, his humor-- his laugh, not to mention his gorgeous physical presence and unique style even into his 90's-- his personal fashion and his pride, and his compassion-- his unequivocal appreciation for whatever I had made, and the example he set as a father, a husband… and a friend.  I grieve for selfish reasons, as one does.  Last night, in tribute… I reached for my Slim Gaillard… and it had vanished.  Dearest Gus.