#SOL17: Making Images

What the Lark Knows (M.A. Reilly, Ringwood, NJ, 11/23/2010)

Someone in Australia  just purchased "What The Lark Knows," an art print of mine. I most likely will never know who the art purchaser was and in a few weeks I will receive payment. Meanwhile the art buyer will receive in the mail an art print of an image I made late fall, just a few days after Rob's birthday, when Devon was in 6th grade.  It was a day when there was a glorious fog. Dev and I ended up playing hooky from work and school.

"You want to run around in the fog?" I asked my son early that morning on the way to school and work.
"Sure."
"We'll go out for breakfast after I make a few images." 

We headed to the grounds of the local botanical gardens and Devon would later pose for me and then run through a field as the sun , looking very much like the moon, burned through some of the fog. I was able to capture both moments as photographs (see below).

And then we went out to a local diner and had some breakfast.

The Uncertainty Principle (M.A. Reilly, Ringwood, NJ, 11/23/2010)

Coming through the Rye (M.A. Reilly, Ringwood, NJ, 11/23/2010)

Now and then, I think about the many ways that the Internet helps to connect people with one another and with work that gets shared. I think of this each time I get a notification from Red Bubble, the company that sells reproductions of my work. It's a bit of a kick to think that in a week or so an image I made in 2010 will be hanging on the wall of someone's home in Australia. What a glorious time to be alive.

#SOL17: A Birthday Gift

Devon and Rob --Such Joy.

(In my sleep I dreamed this poem)

Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.

It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift.

 - Mary Oliver, The Uses of Sorrow 

I.

A year ago my son celebrated his 17th birthday alone. By the time I got home from the hospital, the sun was an hour from rising. I showered and returned to the hospital later that morning with Dev. Rob had been moved to a more intensive unit from the oncology floor where he had been so that a nurse could be stationed right outside the door to his room. He was supposed to have received his first immunotherapy earlier that day, but was unable to do so because he spiked a fever. The night of Dev's birthday was the first time I understood that Rob's chances for living were unlikely.  Early that night an attending doctor asked me rather abruptly about Rob's decision concerning the DNR. We had neither discussed nor had he Rob filled one out. He explained that the cause for the spiked fever and pneumonia-like illness that was non-responsive to antibiotics might be caused by a pulmonary embolism and added that Rob might not make it through the night. Should he be resuscitated? And I said, yes.

The CT scan he would have the next day would show there was no embolism. The CT scan he would have early the following week would reveal that the cancer had spread throughout his thoracic and abdominal regions and that his life expectancy was now no more than a few weeks.

II.

A year has passed and Devon has turned 18.  Winter is more than half-way over and though both of us are ill we went to a restaurant last night of his choice joined by my older brother and it was night of relaxing and celebrating this wonderful, young man's life. Devon, like Rob, laughs easily. He is driving now (and quite well his uncle would later say to me) and he is looking forward to attending college next year, and to talking on line with two young women from far away places. He is learning to speak German and plans to add Japanese. He has a world before him--one he is wide-open to experience and perhaps, shape.  Some mornings, like this one, my heart breaks over and over again as I think about our lovely and kind son who is making his way in the world without his dad and all that each has lost. And Rob was surely a super dad at that--one so intimately connected with his child.

One year, a student of Rob's had lost his dad. My husband so cared for this young boy.  After hearing of Rob's death, this mom would write to me and share what a difference that year with Mr. Cohen had made in her son's life.

Death happens and with it comes the unexpected gifts. I loved a man who was so good that many, many others knew his love as well. Rob dearly wanted to live, fought to live with a passion and commitment that framed much of what he loved in life. And no one who knew Rob would ever doubt his unwavering love for his son. One of the things I loved most about my husband was the way he loved our son.

This morning I found myself speaking out loud--speaking to Rob, telling him about Devon and all that has transpired since a year ago. I don't usually talk out loud to Rob, but I so felt a sense of rightness about this.  This is our son.  That bond that rises up, forms so deeply between a husband and a wife finds even deeper roots when that family shifts from two to three. There are words and experiences we shared while raising Devon that belong solely to us.

Even with death, that bond still holds.

#SOL16: Love Unfurls

from my art journal, 9.21.16 (acrylic paint, gesso, pan pastel, stabilo pencil)

I.

Devon was about 8 years old when Darty died. His pet Guinea pig lived for two years in a cage in his bedroom. It was early morning--the second day of spring holiday when I heard him clomp down the steps. He came into the kitchen and told me with a slight tremble in his voice, "I think there's something wrong with Darty. He's not moving." Rob had left an hour earlier to go to work and as I climbed the stairs I wondered what I'd find, hoping it would not be my son's dead pet.

But it was.

And as my face confirmed what Devon had hoped would not be true, he broke down and sobbed. After ushering him out, I closed his bedroom door and held him as he cried. I'm sure I said what I thought was soothing, more than likely something about love, but really at these times it is the sound of comfort, more so than the words spoken, that seem to matter most. Murmurs are Morse code for love.

After a while he settled and I decided it would be best to get us out of the house. So I called Rob to tell him the news and we made a quick plan.  I took Devon for the haircut he was supposed to get, then to a movie, and to a local diner for some lunch. Meanwhile, Rob came home after school, cleared the cage from Devon's room, and placed Darty in a box. It's odd the things you notice at such times.  But when we returned home it was the absence of hay that normally littered the rug in Dev's room that I first noticed was gone. Rob had everything in Dev's room neat and clean.

Like Devon, Rob too had loved Darty. He and Dev would play with Darty most days, letting him out of his cage so he could run around; feeding him bits of carrot. And so that afternoon, it was decided that we would bury Darty out where the woods meet our backyard. That night Devon carved a marker that he wanted to place on the grave. The next day, we held a funeral for Darty. We all stood in the far corner of the yard looking down on the rocks that topped Darty's grave. The marker was round and small and carried the single initial D.  We each told a 'Darty" story and later I recorded Dev's story on a piece of paper and we went back outside and set it on fire. We were quiet as we watched the smoke rise towards heaven, much as we had done two years earlier when Rob's dad had died.

Love and loss are more about relationships, than categories.

II.

Marriages are built on such moments, the foundation that supports those days that surely come when love feels less certain, less sure. I recall the tenderness, the fierce love Rob revealed as he sheltered Devon murmuring words I could not discern as we stood at the grave. I don't know what he said, but the tone carried more that the words as did the strong arm wrapped around my boy's slender shoulders.

Just eight years after that spring passing on a Wednesday afternoon in February, Rob and I waited for my oldest brother to bring our son to the hospital. The hours before anyone else arrived were the most intimate ones I have ever spent with Rob. He was so lucid and when Dev arrived we somehow found the words to tell him that his dad would not be getting better. We told him that the cancer had progressed and that no treatment, not even the immunotherapy could reverse or slow the spread of cancer. We told him that his dad had just a few weeks to live.

The memory of Devon collapsing his six-foot body on the hospital bed across his dad's legs sobbing a too-wounded animal sound that wound down to barely a whimper leaves me feeling sick again. To know such sorrow, such distress is to fully know, for the moment, what human loss is.

Even then, on a day Rob was confronted by his own mortality, his thoughts were of our welfare--Devon's and mine. It was our care he thought of immediately. It was earlier that day when he told me to take care of Devon, to nurture his passions and interest. He told me to live brilliantly and asked only that I get him out of the hospital so he could home to die. A week later he would be transported from the hospital's palliative care center to our home. He had spent the previous 50 days in the hospital and more than 100 days there since September.

III.

On a snowy December morning in the front parlor of Dave's Vermont home, I could not know when I pledged to love and honor Rob all those years ago what such a vow might actually mean. I simply could not know.

Love unfurls across the years; a sail to the wind and it all passes so very quickly.  And though the first flush of love is truly passionate and giddy and feels so good--it is the deep steadiness of love I now miss the most. Loss (re)informs love, allowing for such acute clarity that what matters most is revealed with definition. My husband's deep love for our son fills me with a quiet certainty I now know as a blessing.

#SOL16: Regression

from art journal (M.A. Reilly, 2016)

I.

With grief, regression occurs. No matter what direction forward seems to be there is no straight line to follow in order to wind your way out of grief.

Grief is uncharted.

C.S. Lewis writes that sorrow "needs not a map but a history" (p. 46, A Grief Observed) and I think he's correct. These posts the last several months have been an attempt at crafting a history, to chronicle what I most needed to say and in turn to learn and unlearn what moves me, what frightens me, and what loss feels like. I wanted to know the stink of it. Enduring is cheap and yet tonight enduring is all I can muster. That's the way it is. I know these feelings won't kill me, but the discomfort is significant. I'm reminded how Rob's death has tainted Devon and me, enlightened us, shifted what we think about at home. Earlier tonight while driving with Devon he told me that I study grief.

You study grief and yet no amount of studying will help you overcome it. You have to go through it, my son tells me. 

Is that how you see grief? I ask. 

Yeah. You want to place it under a microscope and find what it is made of.     

I do, I say laughing. If only it could be that easy. I found that book about the stages of  grief to be less than true.   

Stages make no sense, Devon adds. That's far too linear. 

The stages were ones I watched your dad move through during the last three weeks of his life.  But I agree that they make little sense for those surviving the death. 

It's a process we go through.

The one thing I try to remember is that my grief, my sense of loss, is not yours. It's just not the same. I'm not saying that my grief is more profound or more difficult. There's no contest when it comes to sorrow. We each hurt. What I am saying is that the loss is different and trying to understand this immense sorrow helps me to place it in perspective. I write and make art out of necessity. Making things seems to be healing me.   Does that make sense?   

Yeah, it does. Like I said it's a process. After dad's death I realized that I don't fear death. I don't at all. 

How come? I asked, truly interested. 

Death is the one thing we can know with certainty. There's no doubt how we will end. 

Hmm, I hadn't thought of it as that.

You will die. I will die, too, adds Devon. There's nothing to fear given the certainty. It is the one thing we can know for  sure.    

That's true, I tell him thinking how this last year has given rise to a more reflective young man. And I wonder as we drive if the weight of such knowledge at 17 is a weight too heavy to bear.

The one certainty in life is death, my son tells me. And certainty is a comfort. There's no confusion. We can live bolder, make our lives matter more.

Take chances and know risks?

Do what you love. 

II.

For the last several days I have drifted in and out of thoughts about Rob. I can't seem to shake loose this melancholy that dogs my steps as we approach August 20th. That was the day we learned Rob had cancer last year. Unlike so many cases of cancer, the patient goes on to live relatively normal fro several months,my ears. For Rob, he had just 6 days. By that next week, he was undertaking the first of five surgeries. This one would take 7 hours and land him in Intensive Care. He would come home for. The hospital, five days later and require oxygen for the next two weeks.  Our lives began to unravel faster and faster and we were never able to gain a foot hold.

I dread the 20th. I'm not sure why. It's not like something worse is going to happen, but perhaps I fear that as well.

Now, I stumble through life wearing a tattered quilt made from ill-sewn pieces of cloth. I gather it about me,  to keep the coolness of evening from my shoulders now that you are gone and can no longer warm me.


III.

Naomi Shihab Nye opens the poem, Kindness, by writing:

Before you know what kindness really is 

you must lose things, 

feel the future dissolve in a moment 

like salt in a weakened broth.

And I think she is right. It is sorrow that allows kindness to be noticed, wanted, desired beyond the mere benefits that accompany such acts. I know this now in ways a year ago I simply could not recognize.

J

Photo by Rajah Bose/Gonzaga University

"KINDNESS"

by Naomi Shihab Nye

#SOL16: We Were Never Lost

L: my family, C: My dad with Devon, R: Rob and Devon

I. 

I woke up this morning dragged from a dream I was having about fatherhood. Yes, an odd dream at that. I was talking in the dream and it was summer and sunny and yet, still cool as it is in the early morning. I was speaking about what being a father means--how I learned some of this by watching Rob with Devon, some of it by being the daughter of another Robert, my dad.

Fathering isn't a simple act for it defies the boundaries of time. It continues on even after our fathers die.

Years from now, Rob's actions, more than his words, will inform my son's life. His actions will take on new meaning as Devon matures.  Like I recall doing when Devon entered out lives, my thoughts about my mom changed, deepened as I could see her love in new ways that only motherhood could allow. I wish that for Dev.

II. 

Later in the morning I am reading a recent letter by Bonnie and she is relaying a time when she and her beloved husband, Tuvia, were visiting a friend's new farm. Tuvia thought they were lost and Bonnie writes--more for the present moment than the past I suspect--"We were never lost."

I stop reading as I let the last line sink in.  The words pull me back hard to earth and I realize what it means to feel my feet beneath me, feel the hardness of the ground, feel the here and now.

We were never lost. 

III.

And isn't that the center space of love--to hold in the moment the profound understanding that love anchors us? It anchors all of us and does so without effort.

I never felt lost on this planet when I was alongside Rob. Even when the road we were on literally was one we did not know, had trouble navigating, we were anchored to this earth by love.  I felt this as a child. I can recall being in Manhattan and holding on to my dad's hand as we walked down a midtown street on the West side and the towering buildings, the shuffle of people alongside us, coming at us, and the pails and pails of garbage some spilling into the street (yes, this was Manhattan in the late 1960s) could have overwhelmed a child, but it didn't.  I was anchored to the earth, learning from my dad how to trust. 

The world is mostly good his hand holding mine taught. I learned early that fear is more the absence of love than anything else. A father's love is a grand gift that we carry across the steps we make.

And isn't that sense of centeredness at the heart of what my son carries with him now?  He has been truly loved by his dad and perhaps that is what Devon was telling me a month ago when he said that we carry Rob with us--that Rob formed us. 

At first I thought that last statement was more true for him than me. For did I not come to this marriage a whole person?  But love is no mathematical proposition. It negates the logic of equivalency.  There is no equivalency in the love a father has for his child or a husband's profound love for his wife.

IV.

Rob did form us and that presence continues on. There was a consistency about my husband who had his moral compass aimed true north, much like my own dad. 

Do no harm. 
Love best what is other.
Be kind to yourself, too.
Live brilliantly. Don't hide.

No, even after Rob's death, Devon and I are never lost. 
Overwhelmed? Yes. 
But lost? No. 

#SOL16: Amid the Stars

Mountains (M.A. Reilly, 2016)

I.

Some days the world is grey as if all the color, the very brightness of life had been bled out.

Think carcass. That's the body of grief.

It's a heaviness that wears, like on those days when you first hear with sheer disbelief of another mass killing. At those times, the weight of loss that the parents, wives, sisters will be feeling--feeling after the shock has worn a bit, I feel too. The impossible road before those who survive, I am making as I walk. I feel the weak beat of hearts and claim their sadness as my own.

And it feels important to acknowledge that it is not Rob's death alone that amps the empathy I feel for those who grieve. But rather, it is his death, alongside the one month of uncertainty and shock followed by five months of terror that framed most days.

I hadn't named the terror before. I felt mostly a deepening void. I had no language to represent that daily pulse of life. But now I know that is was terror I largely felt.

Blinding terror.
Paralyzing terror.

Days passed into weeks with no ease of tension and finally a respite appeared and then quickly returned to more terror.

II.

Love bears witness to what we find most unspeakable. Beneath the grey, love lingers with a patience we hardly knew we might possess.

Strong love.
Resilient love.
Necessary, like breathing.

It's odd. After the death of my husband, I would have thought that love would have fled--hid itself, as Yeats suggested, amid a crowd of stars. But Yeats was wrong about love hiding its face. It does not retreat. It does not flee. Not to mountains. Not to fields. Not to stars above.

Rather, love grows stronger, finding expression in strength. Finding expression in memory. Finding expression in the vulnerability that most makes us most human.

III.

At the beginning of the summer, Devon and I were talking one night about Rob. I shared how much I missed his dad as I tried to stem the tears. It had been an impossibly long grey day spent in the town where Devon had first had gone to school. Everywhere I looked, every place I passed was a memory of a time when we were so impossibly young, when the promise of life--a long life, seemed written as truth. There was the movie theater where we held Devon's eighth birthday and I remember how Rob  and I sat in the very back row, holding hands throughout the movie while Devon and his friends ate popcorn and laughed. There was the candy store we took him to every now and then as a treat. And I recalled  how Rob and I met at Dev's school and waited on the sidewalk so we could watch him and his classmates parade around the school in their Halloween costumes. We were so in love and all I knew as I drove from that town, from our past, was that I wanted my husband back. I had grown so weary and knowing I would not be able to even touch him again was slaying. I knew by this time that my grief was not my son's and when Devon looked at me a bit confused I thought it was the raw emotion he was witnessing that caused him to pause.

It was not. Rather he waited a moment and then said that his dad had not left us.

We carry him in us. He's who we are. He formed us.


IV.

It's been five months since Rob died and nearly a year since we first were told that he had lung cancer.

There are moments when the world feels cruel, when terror beats so loudly, so insistently, that the drumming of love is dim.

But love does not fail. Rob's death has taught me this.

It is the constant that beats beneath, alongside, and above our intentions and selves, cradling all that is fragile within. Love remains beyond our bodies, beyond the limitations of mortal touch.

#SOL16: What Love Makes

I.

In Elizabeth Alexander's memoir, The Light of the World, she chronicles the death of her husband and the aftermath. She observes, "In all marriages there is struggle and ours was no different in that regard. But we always came to the other shore, dusted off, and said, There you are, my love" (p. 76). That resonated with me as so many people comment that Rob and I had such a wonderful marriage and we did.  But it was not a marriage without struggle, nor was it one in which we did not seek that other shore. There's a blessing to seeking the other shore so repeatedly. I realize now that Rob helped me to know love--a love that was so generous as it was flawed. It is that knowledge of love and the love itself that heals me today.

Feeling love does not mean that I am not without sorrow. Sorrow is its own animal and it too resides within. Yesterday, I was reminded of the depth of sorrow I feel.  I was in the town where Devon went to elementary school--years that seem so far away now.  We were all so impossibly young and there were so many memories of the three of us. As I drove home I felt pain, realizing that by the time Devon would leave elementary school, Rob would have less than 7 years left to live. 7 years seems cruel. By the time I arrived home I felt cried out as if I simply had exhausted all the tears my eyes could produce and sorrow caped me like day-after hangover.  Devon asked how I was and I told him I was missing his dad.

It hurts so that he isn't here anymore, I said to him. We are making new memories without him. Like you driving. He didn't see that and he would have wanted to.

But Dad's in us. Wherever we go, wherever we are he's here because we will always carry a part of him. How could we not?

You sound like him now.  He would have said something similar.

II.

Contemplative (CitraSolv, NY Times Magazine, pencil, digital remix)

After Rob died, it felt as if a part of me was gone, vanished, no more. It felt like a giant hole that would never heal, never close.  Perspectives matter so and perhaps that is what time best gives us--the capacity to see other, to recast the present, to understand our lives differently. What once was a hollow place is now more window--allowing me to experience the world in ways I simply had not the means to do before.  For how could I be hollow?  I realized my son is correct. We do carry his dad within us, for he helped to form each of us. He did so simply by loving us and sharing himself with us.

III.

Last night I was working with CitraSolv to dissolve a few pages from  an old New York Times magazine. I wanted to see what might be revealed as the ink bled across the pages and as I manipulated the ink. As I studied the pages, one caught my eye. I began to see a scene emerge of a village of houses and a space one might walk to and through--a contemplative space.  I played with the ink, before photographing it and digitally remixing it further. I worked for several hours and throughout it all I had a sense of Rob's presence. So often he would observe me while I worked and he would want to know not only what I was working on, but also how I was making the piece of art. Show me how to do that, he would ask.

IV.

Today the house smells like oranges--a result of my use of CitraSolv. If Rob were here the smell of espresso might also be in the air.  For nearly 29 years, Rob Cohen helped me to make a life--a life we shared so deeply. And though he is gone from the Earth, he is still present in my life through his son and the countless memories I have of the times we were together. I see him in most everything Dev and I do. I hear him in the quiet logic of his son's words, the laughter of a friend, an inquiry from a neighbor. I feel him each time the lone cardinal who seems to have taken up residence wings across our yard. There you are my love. There you are.

#SOL16: Fire

Rob in the Redwood Forest (Devon took picture)

 I.

Last Saturday night my dreams were filled with flames and soot, crackling timber and unbearable heat.  I dreamed about a wild fire burning out of control in what I think might have been the Redwood Forest in California. I kept trying to get to Rob who was caught in the forest too and each time I thought I would surely fail to reach him, the scene would reset.

I thought the dream was my attempt to save my husband.  Now I suspect I was saving myself.

II.

Years ago, Rob, Devon and I spent a late December day in the Redwood Forest. None of us had been there before. It was few days after Christmas and Devon must have received a camera and throughout the rather cold and somewhat rainy day, Rob continued to show Devon how to use the camera.  He did this with not only patience, but an odd joy. And we posed
ever so often for Dev to snap a picture. It was such an ordinary day. It had been our 17th wedding anniversary.


III.

All day long, the scent of fire stayed with me, an odd companion at that.

#SOL16: The Promise of a Red Rose Boutonniere

Devon at 14.

This afternoon, I took my son clothes shopping.  This is a very unusual situation as I can count on a single hand the number of times we have shopped for clothing since Devon became a teen. But these new clothes are for a prom he'll attend at the end of the month.

While we were at the store and later, I thought of Rob. To die a quarter of a century too early is a definition of loss. I thought of all my husband will never see and it makes me so sad.

Devon in a new suit.
New dress shirt.
New shoes.
New belt.
New tie.

The promise of a red rose boutonniere.

How you would have laughed, Rob and taken such joy in our son who has grown taller than both of us and holds on dearly to all those lessons of love you taught. Thank you for that and more than I can say here.

#SOL16: Driving Permit

Devon getting ready to drive...

Dear Rob,


Today was so bittersweet. I finally took our son to take his driving permit test--the test you had planned to take him to last August before you became ill.  We arrived before the agency opened only to have to return home because I forgot the 6-points of identification. My mind these days is a bit vacant. When we returned to the motor vehicle agency, we waited on several lines for a couple of hours and finally Devon was issued a permit and was then ready to take the written test. I know how proud you would have been of him. He passed the test, had his permit stamped, and on the way home I found a large abandoned parking lot for him to practice driving. I held my breath a lot and only once had to yell, "Break!" No worries the concrete wall was at least 5 inches away (I kid you not). I so tried to channel your calmness as I sat in the passenger seat.

So you know, I don't hide how I am feeling from Devon. To say we have been devastated by your death is to understate the obvious. Today though, I did.  Although Devon mentioned you and how the day brought up your absence, I checked my tears as I didn't want to mar the excitement he was showing. Our son deserves a few light hours and days given the last 7 months. After dinner tonight (homemade tacos to celebrate), Devon practiced driving some more and he seemed to be picking up the feel of the steering wheel and breaking a bit more smoothly.  I know you would be glad that both of Devon's uncles reached out to congratulate him on his permit. So many people have stepped in trying to fill the holes your passing has left.

Tomorrow, I'll contact a driving school. Tonight, I'll cry a bit for all you are missing and for the holes that just can't be filled.

I love you,
Mary Ann

#SOL16:Lucas Films and Disney--Thank You

Coming through the Rye. This is an image I made of Devon years ago. I asked him to run through the field like he was in a Star Wars film. 

I. 

On December 19, Devon and I went to see the 10 a.m. showing of the latest Star Wars film, The Force Awakens. Devon and Rob had hoped that he would be well enough to come to the theater too,  but it simply was not the case. From the time Devon was 6, he was fascinated, like his dad, with Star Wars. I can remember filming Devon as he made his own Star Wars film in our home and showing the film to him. He and Rob watched and rewatched all of the films. They built Star War Legos. And so it was not a surprise that they had spent the better part of 2015 talking about the release of the film and making plans to see it together.

As Rob's prognosis grew worse, Devon said to me, "I hope Dad can see the Star Wars film with me. I just want us to see it together."

"When is it being released?"

"Digital downloads are supposed to be released March 15."

II.

By this time Rob was in palliative care at the hospital and a week away from coming home. I did not think he would be able to hold on until the 15th of March and actually be able to understand what he was seeing. So I decided to write to Lucas Films requesting permission to purchase a DVD early.

Three days later, Cara, from Lucas Films publicity sent me a touching email explaining that the DVD could not be released due to piracy issues, but promising that she would reach out to Disney to see if someone could travel to New Jersey to show the film to us. In her email to me, she wrote:

Please know that Rob is in the hearts of all of us at Lucas film, and that he is always a part of our Star Wars family.   Thank you again for reaching out, our thoughts are with you during this impossibly difficult time.

I  didn't think much more about this as Rob came home two days later and Hospice care began and our world closed in as we supported Rob as he prepared to die. On the afternoon of February 26, I received  a phone call from the Disney Corporation. I'm sorry that I can't recall the woman's name who I spoke with, but she was calling to say that they were able to arrange a person from the Disney Corporation to come to our home and show Rob and his family the film. I was so grateful for their kindness and actions and so sorry that I had to decline their offer.  By that time, Rob was more in another world than here and he would not have been alert enough to even see the film, let alone understand what was being shown.

This was a  time when only family and very close friends were present in our home. Ten days later, almost to the minute, Rob died.

It has been on my mind  to thank Lucas Films and Disney for their responsiveness to my initial email and for working so hard to fulfill a son's desire. We were both so touched by their gesture. Devon and I were truly grateful for their offer and talked about it as we sat down last week to watch The Force Awakens. 

#SOL16: The New Normal

Downtown Columbus, OH (M.A. Reilly, iPhone, 2016)

Devon and I were in Ohio this past weekend, attending a Counter Strike tournament which sported a $1,000,000 prize purse and had teams from around the world competing. I know almost nothing about the game or the teams that competed. Devon began schooling me last week as we watched a few matches at home and I quickly began to get a handle on the teams, the objectives, and some of the strategies. E-sports are big in our home and before Rob died he told me that I needed to step in and support Devon in his interest in this computer game like he would have.

At the Tournament

Months ago this tournament was announced and it was the first time a Counter Strike major tournament was being held in the United States. Devon plays on a team and competes and so he was excited about it being relatively close to home. Unfortunately with Rob sick at the time we couldn't commit to going and though Devon is 17, he is too young to rent a hotel room. Like most things, Devon understood all of this and said it wasn't a big deal, but Rob and I each knew differently. With all that was going on with Rob, he and I forgot about the tournament and Devon didn't bring it up again.

A couple of weeks after Rob died I asked Devon about the tournament and if it had happened. He told me it was happening the first week of April and I asked him whether he still wanted to go. He was able to secure two tickets and we made the trip here. At that time when we were having these discussions most everything scared me. Losing Rob undermined my capacity to make simple decisions and to take almost any initiative. Even as I felt paralyzed, I recognized the need to act nonetheless. I have traveled all over the world with and at times without Rob. Traveling from the east coast to Ohio was hardly a sojourn. It felt important to do this and be here for Devon and so I booked the flight, arranged the hotel, and actually had a very good time with my son. It has been a long time since we were able to get away and though I had a few weepy moments thinking about how much Rob would have enjoyed this with his son, overall the long weekend went well.

This is the new normal. In getting on with living, Devon and I need to create new rituals, new memories. Nothing is harder and yet, nothing feels more necessary.  And though it may not seem like a big deal, going to Ohio this weekend was a start.

#SOL16: A Son and the Word of God

The New Fire Truck 

I.

When I think of the many ways that Rob loved his son, I am reminded of a line from Cormac McCarthy's The Road. At the beginning of the novel, the father is speaking about his son and says, "He knew only that his child was his warrant. He said: If he is not the word of God God never spoke."

The word of God. Yes, that is how complete and full Rob's love for Devon was. But now and again I wonder if Devon will really remember his dad.  He is just 17. Will he be able to still hear the sound of his dad's voice? Will he recall the many car trips? Will he recall watching each episode of Stars Wars with him multiple times save the most recent one that his dad could not see? Will he remember how his dad smelled? How he walked? The sound of his laugh? The way he ran his hands through his loose hair gathering the strands into a pony tale? How he looked you in the eyes so directly when you spoke?

My mom and me

What memories will remain after a year?
Ten years?
Forty years?
What will he most remember about his Dad?

II.

On the bureau in our bedroom is a photograph of my mom and me. I am most likely 12, just a few years younger than Devon is now.  When I look at the photo, I realize that I can't recall much of anything from that time--and certainly nothing related to how I was feeling or the way my mom was. That time is quite lost. I'm astounded by what I can't recall. Viewing the image has me wondering how much of the time Dev spent with his dad will he really remember as the decades march by.

#SOL16: Dichotomies

self portrait (M.A. Reilly, 2016)

I.

It's the way he tucks her arm through his with such delicate care that catches my heart and holds my attention.  I notice the older couple, most likely in their late 80s or early 90s, seated opposite me at the local diner.  The couple sits next to one another on the same side of a booth. Opposite them is another gentleman, not quite as old.  The husband stands and he waits for his wife to zip her jacket and then holds a hand out to help her stand, before moving her arm through his. This is practiced love, I think.

Dev at a restaurant, checking out a camera (2015)

Devon and I have come for breakfast on a Saturday morning--a local place that when Rob was alive he frequented most mornings. It's an old haunt and we are all known by our first names.

"We'll see you next week, Michele," the man calls to the waitress. And then he laughs and adds, "if the good Lord makes it so."

I'm quiet until they pass.

"When I thought about the future, I always imagined that your dad and I would be just like that," I say to Devon, using the napkin to carefully wipe away a few tears. "I never doubted that your dad and I would grow old together. Nothing gained by doubting."

One of the interesting things about my son is he knows how to gather silence around him. And so he doesn't rush in to say something.

"You okay?" he asks a minute or two later.
I nod and then say, "I'm not crying because I'm sad." He smiles and I add on, "It's just they are so beautiful. So careful with one another. You know?"

II.

The last 24 hours have been tough on both of us. Yesterday morning I finally got my hair cut, after 8 months and on the way out people expressed condolences and also wished me a happy holiday. On the way home I stopped at a wine shop so I could bring some wine to my cousin as we will be eating Easter dinner with them tomorrow. Easter has never been a big holiday at our house. And though Rob was Jewish, we celebrated Easter with usually just my brothers or sometimes friends. I didn't expect the holiday to matter and find it does. At the wine shop as I am checking out, the cashier told me, "Have a happy Easter." Later I ran into a grocery store and the clerk at the check out said, "Have a great holiday tomorrow."

In the early afternoon, I took Devon for his driver's test only to find out Motor Vehicle was closed. Rob was supposed to take Devon last August after his friends who had visited with us went home. Rob became sick and Devon being who he is told us both to not worry about it.  "I'm not in any hurry," he would say. Rob and I appreciated his patience.

"How about we go to Cheesecake Factory and you can get that burger you like?" I asked him knowing we were just a few miles from the restaurant.
"Sounds good," he said.

After lunch we stopped off to look for a kitchen table and chairs.
"I want to do this with you so you can sit in the chair.  It needs to be comfortable," I explained and I laughed a bit at the look my son gave me. I imagined him thinking, We really need to do this now? He is not a shopper.

Last February, in order to make room for Rob's hospital bed, Devon and I got rid of a round table that had been in our kitchen for the last 14 years. It had seen better days and Rob and I had been looking to replace it last summer but never got it done. Now the room is empty and Devon and I keep hitting our heads on a low hanging light fixture.  We finally settled on a table and four chairs and as we leave the store I turned and said to Dev, "I can't recall buying any furniture for the last couple of decades without Rob. This feels so strange to buy this without him."

III.

Last night a little after 10 p.m. Devon came in and sat on the bed.  This is a signal that he wants to talk.
"What's up?"
"Nothing much," he said and his face held a sadness that tugged at me.
I waited a bit hoping he'd talk but he remained silent. "You okay?" I asked.
"Just a hard day," he told me and was quiet again.
I keep the quiet with him.
"Kept thinking about the restaurant and all the times I went there with dad."
"Yeah, you both loved it there. Your dad was always stealing a French fry or two."
We both laughed a bit thinking of Rob, thinking of us together.
"Good burgers," Dev said.
"Good memories, too."

It was their kind of place, I think. Love is so difficult, so effortless, so tenacious. We are nothing if we are not equally complex and simple.

These dichotomies define grief as well.

For it is both the small imperceptible ordinary happenings and the larger already known events that trip us up--let us know that we have loved so profoundly and lost equally so.

#SOL16: What A Year Brings

Boston (2015)

A year ago, Rob, Devon, and I were in Boston. The city was frigid and snow was piled 5 feet high on the side of the streets. We had gone to attend a Pax East convention. It was a delightful extended weekend. There we got to know some of Devon's friends from school and from Virginia and Connecticut and their families. We were able to meet old friends who now live in New Hampshire for lunch. We were so glad we made the time to take the trip.

What we could not know was it would be the last family trip we would take and that now a mere year later, Devon and I would be watching Rob die. As I write this, Devon is curled up in the chair next to his dad's bed. He has fallen asleep. Quiet time for him to be with his dad.

Dev and his dad (3.7.16)

GoFundMe: Rob's Wish

You can access the site here.  

Dear friends,

Friends of ours have set up a GoFundMe site to help fulfill Rob's most important wish--Devon's future education. With medical bills wiping out our savings, Rob's care becoming increasingly expensive, and me not working so that I can take care of him at home--any donation you could give would be appreciated. 

Dev and I thank you,
Mary Ann

#SOL16: Heartbreaking Commonplace

Rob and Devon asleep at the hospital. (Feb. 2016) 

"I know that the thing I want is exactly the thing I can never get. The old life, the jokes, the drinks, the arguments, the lovemaking, the tiny, heartbreaking commonplace" (C.S.Lewis, A Grief Observed, p. 25).

Rob and Devon (1999)

It isn't the big things that trip me up, but rather the millions and millions of small, commonplace artifacts that trigger wave after wave of loss. Even now the loss is crippling and the one soothing grace is I can still touch him, talk to him, revel in the brief, fleeting moments when he is somewhat present.

The other day I watched as my son sat cross-legged in a chair next to his father's hospital bed and fell asleep resting on Rob's left shoulder. He slept like that for a couple of hours.

When I watch Dev with his dad, he always rubs one of his shoulders. The other day I asked him why and at first he said he didn't know. A while later he told me that it's because he's still warm there.

"His arms and hands are so cold."

There are millions and millions of stories we have made together. We are making stories now--ones Devon and I will carry with us to remember Rob.