Chocolate prune cake

Alisha's turning 1 on Sunday. I had it in my mind that I would summon the presence of my mother by baking a chocolate prune cake. It's the one recipe I have in my possession that is written in her handwriting probably from when I was not much older than 1, and probably not tasted since I was in my single digits. It was a perplexing cake - rich, moist, chocolatey, yet also high in fiber.

However, my oven is broken. So I'll probably end up at Whole Foods picking out an expensive pre-made cake, with no dried plums, no trip back in time to 1979 when my mother was roughly my age.

When someone is clearly dying - their body visibly declining in a more or less natural manner after a life of children, grandchildren and years battling a deadly disease - you begin to want to know how the process ends. No, of course I don't mean want them to be gone, but the person they've become bears so little resemblance to the one you remember that you have to remind yourself of the person they used to be. Where the process of watching them die becomes stressful and the anticipation of the final event eats at you, wondering what you'll be able to say or do to comfort them, what questions you need to ask while they can still answer them. What will it feel like when they're gone for real?

And then it happens. Followed by awkward emptiness. Where's the person who used to nag me because I never called? Where are the magazine clippings that used to arrive in the mail that I often forgot to read?

Was the last conversation I had with her really one in which I started complaining about Josh's garage project because I had run out of other things to say? And did I really go to Storyland the last afternoon she was alive? How is this possible?

My stepfather, Terry, called me, I'm not sure when, but shared that he thought she was slipping away. I asked if I should head down there. I had always hoped I could be there with her in the end, to help her pass in peace, I guess. Then Terry said she went to the cafeteria for lunch. This confused me. A woman on her deathbed doesn't go to the cafeteria for lunch. Right? Nonetheless I didn't want to take chances - I needed at least to speak to her.

She didn't have the energy to talk and the cell phone connection sucked. I was in North Conway, NH. Terry's phone didn't work so well either and the regular phone in her room didn't have a speaker option. But when he called, I walked outside the Muddy Moose restaurant to try and say something nice. I suspected this might be the last time I talked to her. I think I told her we were in North Conway, hoping it would trigger happy memories of trips we took together - this was my favorite place on earth when I was 7, after all - and that I loved her. I have no idea if she heard me.

Then I went inside, finished my crappy taco salad, collected my children and spent the afternoon standing in lines at Storyland. Fucking Storyland. My sister, Sarah, and her family, however, were at that moment on their way to see her, which eased my mind slightly.

Looking back I have trouble connecting these dots on my personal timeline with that call, and the one I got at 9 am the following morning after a hotel breakfast. I was on my way back to the room for diapers and felt instantly trapped by the ridiculous decision to head north for this weekend. It was the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend. Zach was expecting to spend the day back and Storyland, not driving for 15 hours south.

After my last visit with her, just 2 weeks earlier, I came home perplexed. I had to dig out old albums to remind myself what she used to look like. She had changed so much physically in her last months that she was hard to recognize.

That was the process. I know now how it ends. Going back for a re-do is not an option, though of course there are things I wish I had done differently. Of course I carry her with me. Among other things, I carry the 38-year-old woman who baked chocolate prune cake, though I'm sure folks thought it was weird - even in the 70s. And of course, I miss being nagged for not calling.

And yes, we'll make that cake one of these days, even if the oven is broken this weekend.

The last normal weekend (7/4/11)

I happened on these photos the other day when looking for...something. I was shocked and confused as to how this could be in the same July where so so many lives changed. This was the 4th. Canoeing with the friends we've adopted as our local family, with our kids. Zach was crying because the plastic cup he'd been playing with had dropped into the water. These were the things we got upset about.

 I had to do a bit of math to figure out that this was just a few days before Jenn went into the hospital that same July.

Everything seems to be measured relative to this.

 

 

Flashback

Driving down the Jersey Turnpike on Tuesday, with the kids asleep in the back seat, and I'm suddenly launched back in time over a year to the previous July. 

The moment was when I stood under a large oak tree with Zach in the evening light, in his tractor pj bottoms at the NJ Turnpike's Molly Pitcher rest stop - along this same route. I had to tell him why we were making this trip south after just having flown down and back 2 days earlier, not sure he even knows what "death" means. Understanding that the only memory he would have of his Aunt Jenni will have been caught in the lens of his 3-year-old perception. Telling him that she was about to die - we knew this for sure - but that she wasn't yet departed.

Then the moment passes, I'm back in the car driving south for Thanksgiving, for the first time in 3 years. I ask Josh if he ever gets these sorts of flashbacks, he says yes, but we don't talk more about it. My eyes sting but I try not to wipe them.

On death and pregnancy

I guessed before I even was pregnant with my second that I would be entering a 2-year period of chaos. Well, I hope it's better after 2 years…

Things with my first had started to become manageable. We had just gotten through a long, boring period of house hunting, packing and moving, followed immediately by a couple months of unpacking and raking leaves. I rather enjoyed the freedom to rake for hours by myself with occasional company in the unfamiliar new lawn. I got pregnant first in January 2010, and enjoyed breaking the news to a few close friends and family. My in-laws - Andy, Estee and sister-in-law Jenn, and her daughters came to visit shortly after we found out. I was able to watch the kids play in the snow and then nap in the afternoon - with Zach and Sarah in relative peace. Zach still napped in those days.

I miscarried during a blizzard at 7 weeks. If my doctor's office had been open it would have been a non-event but due to the weather I spent 3 hours driving around to get myself to a hospital, dropping Zach off in Malden along the way, as Josh was in California. This was followed by weeks of blood tests - routine but inconvenient. Then a trip to Key West, where I came home pregnant again. Happy news, of course, except for her poorly-planned December due date.

Pregnancy with a 3-year-old was definitely less relaxing than pregnancy with no children. The pains were greater than the first time, I got fatter faster, and received no sympathy from the small person who still wanted me running after and carrying him around.

Then Jenn died. With only about 10 days notice. I mostly forgot I was pregnant during those long days - at least forgot the discomfort, but used the long hours in the hospital to try and think up a name, not daring to think about the possibility of using hers. That was July. I had fully come to understand why pregnant women didn't like long car trips but continued taking them.

In September my mother became irrational -- she started calling me at work asking how to log into her email account, and not understanding any of the instructions I gave her -- and in October her doctor pronounced her as done with cancer treatments - ready for hospice care. Thanksgiving came and I was too pregnant to go anywhere, too pregnant to enjoy the time off, waiting to just be done, and having panic attacks at the thought of being left home alone with a newborn plus Zach, who didn't entertain himself for more than 15 minute intervals.

Alisha came, thankfully induced on a Friday, when Sharona could watch Zach followed by 2 weekend days with the Wades. And yes, she was named after Jennifer - her Hebrew name. Home for just over a week, then packed up all our baby stuff and family and headed to Maryland and Virginia for Christmas week. The rest of my maternity leave was long and not relaxing at all. I backed my car into a truck parked in the driveway and toured preschools for Zach, and kept myself covered up nursing at home due to the parade of contractors who were on site building Josh's garage. I went back to work earlier than planned. 

Alisha and I traveled twice together to Virginia to see my mother, plus 2 more road trips south with Josh and Zach before she lost her fight, Memorial Day weekend. Of course, it was on the day that I had decided we needed a break for a more normal family trip - north, to Storyland in New Hampshire. Terry called after we'd finished breakfast and then I made Josh break the news to Zach, that we weren't going to Storyland, Grandma Marjorie had died and we were going to be driving 15 hours south.

Terry and Tim have reminded me that I need to make sure I die before the rest of my family now.  I'm not sure how you recover from the sort of a loss they - or Sydney, Sarah, Estee or Andy have endured.

But Zach has just learned to take care of himself. He can put on his own shoes and sweatshirt now without a fight. And manage his toilet needs by himself. So, no more urgent wails interrupting my quiet moments nursing Alisha because he's pooped. This really is a big deal, trust me. And we've had time together to take on making noodles from scratch, paper mache jelly fish, and he has just been allowed to pick up his sister and carry her around the house.

Alisha used to smell like baby soap and old milk. Now she smells like pie crust and pizza. She used to swat at my head gently, now she yanks my glasses from my face and uses them as a weapon. But then she giggles and says "mamama." Soon enough she'll be walking and won't need me to carry her everywhere. She'll be 1 in just a few weeks.

I take pictures of them in the brief moments of calm, and find I can stretch out the calm for a long time by staring at these photos, even if they really only lasted a second or two. 

We're making progress. I think.