Today, I am seated on the same blue couch I sat on a year ago, looking out of the same picture windows at the same spot on the Oregon Coast. I remember the story I wrote that day, moved by what I had seen earlier at the beach. The story has stayed with me and become far more relevant and meaningful over the past few months than it was the day I wrote it.
I had witnessed a small gathering of people standing shoulder to shoulder at the water’s edge, their faces and attention all turned towards the sea. I was drawn to their stillness and connection to something I couldn’t see but could feel. As I got closer, close enough to see the individuals in the group, while respectfully maintaining my distance, I saw someone seated in front of the group who appeared to be younger than those standing. She wore a yellow raincoat. The person at the end of the group moved next to the girl, squatted down, put his hand on her back, and handed her a box. The girl held the box to her chest, then returned it to the man, picked up a stick, and began carving something into the sand. When she was finished, the man returned the box to her, and the group slowly walked away from the water in a single file, with the girl in the yellow raincoat trailing behind. I had walked away from the group, not wanting to intrude, and when I returned, I saw the letters MA carved into the sand. The tide may have erased the first part of the word, or maybe that was all she wrote. Was it MA? Or were they the last two letters of MAMA? I wasn’t sure, but the image drawn beside it was unmistakable—a heart.
I may not have gotten the details right, and that didn’t matter, but what I did get right was the witnessing of love that the line-up of people had for someone who was no longer with them. It made me think of my three children and what they would look like had it been me who they were honoring and mourning. A year later, that is not the story I’m telling. Instead, it is my two sons and I who are metaphorically standing at the water’s edge, mourning the passing of my sons’ only sister and my only daughter. It’s not the order of life we expected, and we still grapple with the reality that it happened. My daughter, Emery, who was not even as old as I was when I gave birth to her, is no longer with us. Of course, Emery’s metaphorical lineup at the water’s edge would be much larger than just me and her two brothers and would include her father, her husband, her two children, and her two sisters-in-law, for starters.
Emery was always my first text after I’d post a new blog. She’d praise my words, noting specific parts that moved her or made her laugh, indicating that she had read the piece and wasn’t just giving me a quick “ I loved it!” acknowledgment. I remember her text after I posted my story of the lineup of people on the beach, and I could quote her exact words if I felt brave enough emotionally to scroll through her texts, but I don’t. She later told me she could see herself and her brothers doing exactly what I said in the piece…“Talking over each other and interrupting with stories about Mom because there had been so many, but she should be here telling them because she was the storyteller.” I won’t get her response to this post.
Witnessing what I did that morning had me thinking about my death and how my family would react. It’s not something that I think of often, but after seeing the group of people mourning someone they loved and leaning into each other in sorrow, thoughts of my death were softened by the love that has woven us together as a family. I never thought it would be the youngest family member we would be saying goodbye to first.
This morning, a year later, I thought about the girl in the yellow raincoat, who I guessed to be a young teen. She was the one I related to, especially after seeing the letters MA and the heart carved into the sand. As a Mama who said goodbye to her daughter, who was also a Mama, I became the girl in the yellow raincoat. The oldest and the Mom in our family of five made an unlikely connection with the youngest in the lineup of people on the beach because of a heart drawn in the sand and two letters that I have turned into the word Mama for the story’s sake. She missed her Mama, and I am a Mama who misses her child. We have a connection.
Back in the mid-70s, when I was getting my pilot’s license, I became close friends with Leigh, who was also in her late teens, working on her pilot’s license. Leigh and I connected with our experiences, enjoying each other’s stories far more than anyone else would. Several times a week, we’d return to the fixed base operation at the small regional airport where I worked after closing. She’d park her car at the edge of the tarmac, and we’d lay on the car’s roof, looking at the stars and watching the lights of the planes as they descended onto the runway while passing a bottle of Cold Duck back and forth. It was a rich environment for sharing dreams, most of them in the skies. Our conversations were punctuated by “this will be something we will tell our grandkids” because we thought it would be our role as grandmas to share stories that would have our grandchildren on the edge of their seats. It became our tagline and our push to do things that scared us — more stories for our grandchildren. I had no idea at the time that the stories I would be telling two of my grandchildren would not be about my flying escapades but rather would be stories about their Mama, some that only I could tell them. I will tell them the stories their Mama won’t be able to tell them. I will be the one to tell them that she loved red shoes as a little girl, twirly skirts, and that she could French braid her hair when she was in kindergarten. I will tell them she had a deathly fear of silverfish, and it had nothing to do with the holes they made in coveted sweaters. I will tell them that for many years, she would only eat yogurt if it had goldfish crackers in it, and so that’s how I prepared it for her. I will tell them I sang to her at night until she was old enough to sing along, and it became a nightly show rather than a peaceful transition to slumber.
In the same way, I would sit with my Dad in his last few years and ask for more stories, so afraid he would die before I had them all, I need to make sure Arlo and Muna have all the stories I can remember about their Mama. It will be healing for me and information for them. I will feel Emery’s presence as I ramble on to Arlo and Muna with stories about their Mama. I will feel her beside me, nodding and smirking, then saying, “Well, that’s not exactly how it happened…”. And I’ll look back at her with raised brows, and she will correct herself and say, “You’re right and some exaggeration is OK because you’re the storyteller and you have a captive audience.” At least, that’s what I imagine. In telling my daughter’s stories, the edges of the missing part of my heart will soften. Salve to my heart will become information for Arlo and Muna. I thought about the “stories we will tell our grandchildren” while walking on a beach a short drive from where I’m staying. A few minutes later, I noticed I had missed a call from Leigh. We hadn’t talked in over 15 years. I sat on a rock to listen to her message and saw a heart-shaped rock in the sand, directly in front of my boot. I looked up, half expecting to also see a red-tailed hawk, but only saw a seagull. Emery is with me, and she’s making sure I know it.
As I returned to my car, a couple reading the trailhead map at the edge of the parking lot stopped me and asked me if it was a hard hike down to the beach. “Hard? No, not at all. It’s very easy and quite lovely.” They thanked me and left. I paused, wondering why I had done what I had done, and responded to their question with the information they wanted, but with a definite British accent. I don’t normally respond to people I don’t know with a British accent. Actually, I’ve never done that before in my life, but there are many things I’m doing now that I’ve never done before as I navigate an unpredictable path. The only explanation I could come up with is that during these heavy days of sadness and grief, I don’t always want to be who I am. I don’t want to be a Mom who has endured something that no Mom should ever have to endure. Instead, I became a British woman, perhaps on holiday, enjoying a short hike and an afternoon at the beach. Maybe someday, that will be added to the long line-up of stories I’ll tell Arlo and Muna. The story of grief being so difficult to maneuver that their Laudie pretended to be someone else and spoke with a British accent.
Many of the stories I will share with Arlo and Muna were recorded in journals and essays I’ve written and collected since the day I found out I was pregnant with their Mama. As I sit here today, on the same blue couch, looking out of the same picture window to a part of the country I’ve come to love, I think about the girl in the yellow raincoat. I wonder if, a year later, the raw edges of her grief have been softened, and if she asks the others who were with her that day to tell her more stories, because when there is a finite number, they hold more weight and importance than ever imagined. The words I write today, tomorrow, and for the rest of my life, will be the stories I tell my grandchildren when the time is right. They are words inspired by my beautiful girl, Emery, written by the one she called Mom while in the throes of grief that I never could have anticipated.
“Once upon a time, your Mama…” I’ll say, and Arlo and Muna will lean in, holding onto every word, then will carry them as their own.
