The Invisible Years

For the first time ever, I am a clean slate. It makes me feel both afraid and admittedly, a little excited. My dangling feet struggle to stand on something solid, my stomach tickles sickly like on a carnival ride. Nothing is comfortable or the same. Memories of the past fade away aggressively sanitized by the present. Not even an err thumb print is left to represent my former self. I am once again an amateur in the art of my life. I wake up like an amnesiac blinking my eyes to end a dream. Every day is feels like an identity hangover just another Groundhog day wasting away the last two invisible years.

The last couple years have been a complete shit show. The world was suddenly ending while I sheltered in my 500 sqft third floor walk up apartment in Queens. On a random Monday in March life’s every waterway abruptly became uncharted. The world was snatching up headlines trying to make sense of the nonsensical. New York City no longer was able to ignore COVID. My business shuttered and I drank lots of craft beer while waiting online to get a FreshDirect appointment. I suffered panic attacks while walking around the block or trying to get toilet paper. Being single and living alone I shriveled without human contact. Life was crazy, scary, and unwritten.

In the background my family was back in Sunny Southern California navigating the pandemic like it was an earthquake- just a little shaking with the slight anxiety that this could be the BIG ONE. My Mom was having some health issues that begun in 2019 and after a push for doctors visits and tests things were looking less hopeful. I remember the day when my Mom finally received her diagnosis. She had just come out of surgery in California and still tipsy with Propothal, she confidently declared to me all was well over my happy hour beer. Imagine my dismay when the following week the doctor revealed the accurate results- she had Stage 4 Pancreatic Cancer.

Defying the odds, she lived for a little over a year and even traveled to South America during a break from chemo. Instead of spending the time tackling her bucket list we fought. About me moving home, her treatment, her lack of eating, her being alone. Eventually the pandemic killed any hope she had living what was left of her life outside of her home. I took an empty plane flight from an even emptier airport West when it was time for her to discontinue treatment. She stayed up late the night I arrived, watched a movie and ordered pizza- a last ditch attempt at being human after which she seldom got out of bed again. Staying in my Mom’s home, in my childhood bedroom where I once snuck out of the window to meet a boy, I was physically sick with the stress of caretaking. Exhausted I waded through my Mom’s papers and unopened bills, administered medication all night, and gave in to giving her ice cream three meals a day. After two months after becoming a caretaker, I had the pleasure to be in attendance when she transitioned out of life like unnoticeable wink. Only an empty receptacle left in my her place.

This is the thing with grief, you don’t realize something is gone until it actually is. This is grief in its very essence. You can make the effort to prepare yourself, read the books, attend the seminars but grief is slippery. Never have I felt so vacant yet preoccupied with sorrow. In those first months back in NYC after she died I had no stamina or ability to tackle life’s tasks other than sleeping and feeding myself. When you have a job where you have to actively benefit others, work becomes impractical. In the end weeks turned into months, into almost a year. I gave refunds. I lost clients. I was only my grief.

Facing mortality sure sobered me up to my petty little life. My risks piled up like bills to be paid. Suddenly building anything seemed petty. Mending things seemed hopeless. My inheritance paid for business bad decisions. After years owning a brick and mortar business I sold off my hard earned equipment. Each piece special enough to be given a name. In the same way I felt relieved when my Mom died, the death of my Pilates studio came with relief. I felt like I had permission to start over. I packed up my 13 years of evolution into a New Yorker in boxes for movers to schlep across the country in the back of a Mac truck.

These days clean slates feel diminished, dirty before they even got a chance to get clean. I live in a sunshine fortress complete with a pool and 1600 sq feet. I have a gardener, a pool guy, and TWO guest bedrooms. I pay association fees and try to avoid talking about politics when I’m out at dinner. I survive on the crumbs of my Pilates teaching business which I do mostly via zoom at my dining room table. Back in Mom’s home I clean out her closets one a year and wade through her life in paper inspecting each one in case I find her beloved Elvis autograph. I’m flush with time and silence is unlimited. Days disappear like stops outside an express train window. I miss her. I miss the life in built NYC. I miss purpose. The gift of being reminded of your mortality, experiencing unending grief, and surviving a worldwide pandemic is that there are no longer rules to be followed.

This year I am 45 and my Mom would have been 75. As my Mom’s only child, it was always she and me. She was my partner in crime, the angel to the devil on my shoulder. She gave me my hands, my smile, my laugh. She taught me to balance my checkbook to the penny and how to be a boss lady. Now in death she has given me a home and a life that I could never have supplied on my own. Living in her home is simultaneously therapeutic and painful. I still feel her presence in every corner. I am flooded with memories with every turn. I like to think that she sends me butterflies and repeating numbers on my cellphone to remind me of her. Each day I slowly reconstruct what was my Mom’s into my own and erect my life like a Phoenix out of the ashes. I plan on being as present as possible to the days, weeks, months, and years that follow. I am less interested in checking boxes and more into unpacking them. This time I plan to write down my new identity so it can be recorded, albeit in permanent marker.