The last couple of weeks I’ve had some Facebook memories that have come up. They are memories of that time my stepson got sick. He described it as a horrible mutant disease that he didn’t wish on anybody. He then landed in the hospital. His oxygen level dropped and they had to immediately put him on a ventilator. He was in ICU and in a coma for 11 days. I was going out of my mind. Was he going to be okay? I began asking my family and friends on Facebook and off to pray for him. Every couple of days I would update everyone. It was one of the hardest times in my life. That was 2018. He got sick with pneumonia and the flu. But slowly, he recovered. During this time we found out he had an issue with his heart.

Fast forward to 2021, he contracts COVID and it seems that 2018 is repeating itself. ICU, vent, coma. Before he was in the coma, we were communicating through texts. Unfortunately, they wouldn’t let anyone in and I just had my entire basement flooded for the second time in a matter of weeks. The second time it was Hurricane Ida. It wiped out my entire basement. It was such a horrible time, but he was texting me. He said he was feeling better. I didn’t get to see him until the day before he passed. I feel so guilty that I didn’t go to see him sooner. That I didn’t go before he went into a coma. Trying to deal with everything going on at home and the fact that he was texting me made me believe that he was going to be okay. He survived in 2018, he was going to survive in 2021, right? What was I thinking?

Although I’m thankful that I got to see him and talk to him and pray over him (I didn’t get that chance with my brother in 2020), I will never stop feeling guilty. Those memories will not only be forever on FB, but will forever be etched in my mind and in my heart. I’m so sorry, Al.

If you were younger and in another era, your stone would be a cut stump, no branches outflung to beg the air and the clouds for more life, for a longer reach. Snuffed of life anywhere within the wood, anything porous or magnetic or hopeful. Perhaps the stone you have should depict a book with the last pages torn out, or rewritten for you, or labeled by a totalitarian censor, or trailing off like the words I last heard you spoke on the phone. You didn’t know the name of your hospital, even, other than it began with an M. “Methodeez? That’s what I heard the workers say.”

“You mean Maimonides,” I asked your soft voice carefully, “Or Methodist?” Maimonides was the epicenter of it all where my love died alone. Methodist was closer to you, down the street from where you and I last met up in Park Slope. But you had no answer.

Long before we took seats in each other’s lives, my first trip to New York was in the theater district. Broadway had managed to craft a musical out of Charles Dickens’ last unfinished novel. Like yours, it was a mystery. The Broadway show’s ending, I guess, was up to interpretation. Like each weekly women writer’s workshop of ours. You never finished your mystery that I know of. You slacked off and then began to share chapters of a whole new story.

At the Zoom shiva, your boyfriend mentioned finding your novel spread out in your apartment. I have learned nothing of any subsequent publication; neither your boyfriend nor your brothers contacted me when the unveiling of your stone took place. I’ll never know how the mystery ended or who killed the victim or stole the painting. Maybe the mystery is the ending. Maybe the unfinishing is the completion. Maybe the uncountered questions are their own answer. Maybe the end of your story is a whole new one that thinks of something else now.

I will ask it: How, in the 21st Century, does someone die in the hospital of a virus they didn’t have when they entered?

They had protocols. They had the usual pandemic measures. Only one loved one could enter the facility at a time and could not re-enter for the day once they exited. My Googling showed that Methodist’s ICU was 80% Covid patients when you were there.

My questions ramify. They cry from the ground. However they extend or whatever they do or do not reach, I shall not let them be cut off. They will stand and grow roots beneath them. Something somehow will not lie forever unknown.

Like many of us, I couldn’t wait to finally turn 21. What an exciting feeling to finally have that drivers license flip from vertical to horizontal by the stroke of midnight. Being that I’m a January baby, it’s unpredictable when the snow will throw a wrench in your plans. Unfortunately, my 21st birthday was just that … my college courses were cancelled for the day and I was left bummed out thinking I would have nothing to do on my big day.

My dad worked nights so that morning he suggested we get ourselves ready and drive to the DMV for my new license. Driving to the DMV ever so slowly, we got there with no line in sight, a true dream. We got iced coffees right after and sat in the car watching the snow fall with my brand new license in hand. My dad put in all his effort just to make his little girl’s snowy 21st birthday special.

I truly wish the tragedies of over a million Covid- 19 deaths in our country will motivate us to be more prepared for future Pandemics. We must not look away from all our failures but learn from them so we can do better. The deaths, sufferings and pain must not be forgotten. We owe it to all the people, my brother being one of so many who lost their lives, to demand accountability and more responsible leadership. We need to be more prepared by electing officials who prioritize public health by securing funding, enacting critical legislation and carrying out international cooperation. I am concerned that our current federal leadership will not keep us safe. Otherwise we have only our state and local governments to protect us from a likely national or global pandemic.

Five.

Five years since I held you through what will be one of the single most heart shattering moments of my life. Carrying you to the very gates of heaven alongside Alec and Brad.

Courage for this impossible morning which could only have come from being your daughter, knowing what pain and grief you carried in your own life, to endure such pain because I knew we both wanted you to stay. You were nowhere near finished with your life on earth. You expected and deserved more. We all needed you so much longer.

In the canyons of your absence, I am aware of the entirety of your essence. Your steadiness and excitement, your tuned in emotional ability to see how others’ hearts were arranged, and what hopes percolated inside of them. Your gaze missed nothing. You would pause and ask follow up questions when you felt someone needed more, needed to be seen, had something further inside for discussion or consideration. Dismissiveness was not a part of your genetic makeup.

One of the most enduring parts of your life is EFFORT. Effort. Care. Energy. Time. Whimsicality. Paying attention to the details which light up others’ hearts, and finding a way to include those things. Perhaps the seeds for this kind of care were planted when you were a “small boy” as you would say – moments your parents and your grandparents poured into you. You could remember making cookies, working on science kits, having long conversations with your family as the only child and light of their lives – picturing you this way as “Stevie” (you have a namesake Stevie now, Spencer and Marissa’s beautiful son) utterly warms and overflows my heart. And when I see gleams of you in Luka I wonder if I am being treated to a heavenly visit from you right then. The exquisite arc of a storyline: you as the grandfather you loved so much with Brayden, Makayla, Annabelle, Amelia, and Luka. You dove in with board games, books, puzzles, all kinds of wheeled toys, puppet shows, and numerous concerts with a plastic drum set and a dog shaped guitar.

Perhaps much of the detail noticing was finely honed by your painstaking work in patent law – where you shared that even the most minute shards of information signified the discerning part of the job. Or maybe more rooted in commercial prowess – you juggled understanding the overarching goals of large corporate projects and tasks meshed alongside the lower stakes but still significant challenges, routines, preferences which must first be untangled to proceed.

You were not afraid of mistakes. I can see you at the piano, playing deftly, occasionally a single key off, then a beat where you closed your eyes and silently resolved what the fix would be, and put fingers back to keys to move forward, missteps a part of the bigger story. You let us know in our schooling, our sports, our careers, our relationships, our choices, our pursuits as we grew: mistakes are natural, expected, and a sign of learning and adapting. I was not afraid to fail, because your candor was authentic and true and it arrived as support and encouragement. Some of our deepest conversations in the years between Mom’s death-Amelia’s birth-your death involved reviewing major relationships and decisions, and considering how we handled them, and if different paths would have been better or produced a different end result. This ability to see the wholeness of a situation and not wear blinders of confirmation bias has guided me forward every day of my life since.

When you did not know enough about something, you ensured you would learn more. You read voraciously and researched thoroughly – you knew data was key to decision making, and you didn’t shy away from taking the time to become informed before arriving at a conclusion. You were the living example of being able to change your mind on a topic with changing information and facts. You sent thoughtful articles and asked questions, and so many of our conversations around my kitchen table made me think as we wondered and learned together.

The higher standard to which you held yourself is what gave me a sense of safety in everything we shared. How you piloted. How you listened without judgement and helped formulate solutions. One could only hope to be so lucky as the ones who were given Steve Wright’s handwritten paragraphs of ideas and mentorship, suggested newsy bullet points of steps with variable choices and suggested timelines paired with bursts of encouragement scribbled as edits in the margins (“you’re a natural at this!” “the work will be worth it!”). Daddy, you’re the one who suggested career shifts, marriage counseling, real estate considerations, business propositions. I have saved every one of these, because each word you wrote was with a purpose: helping others.

Amelia and Luka saw the loving, silly, comforting, encouraging, steadiest elements of you. You cared for them so generously, and they sensed how dearly you loved them. It provided a bedrock which will serve them for the rest of their entire lives. I saw these things you gave to them (and to us as parents) and even more: I saw your resolve and intent and deep, abiding promise to yourself and to Mom within every interaction you had with your grandchildren.

When I think about the courage it took for us to hold you as you left this earth – a day and a moment I could never have fully accepted even knowing grief and the inevitable earthly end as deeply as I do – I am struck by the likelihood that it took courage for you, too, to let go aware of how badly we needed you and how shattered we would be without you here – and move to Mama’s side, letting go of the grip on an earthside existence where you were so loved, fulfilled, and still so possible.

For many months after your death, I only drove your car; we took that red Lexus everywhere. To Florida and back. To Mississippi to get Trixie and back. It was a comfort to be in the vehicle synonymous with you for the kids, for plenty of our adventures together. I wasn’t able to listen to anything else in the car except your Jan & Dean CD already in the CD player which you loved to play for the kids, and especially for Luka on his tough mornings before preschool. You’d institute a car dance session to surf songs and that always erased his grumpiness as you two bobbed and clapped and sang and grinned. I heard the lyrics to “Ride The Wild Surf” in those weeks after you died and they landed as I processed them and leveled me:

Lined up and waiting for that next big set outside /
Nothing can stop it ’cause you’ve just gotta ride, ride, ride, ride, ride /
The heavies at the pipeline are okay /
But they can’t match the savage surf at Waimea Bay /
It takes a lot of skill and courage unknown /
To catch the last wave and ride it in alone /
Ride ride ride the wild surf /
Ride ride ride the wild surf /
Ride ride ride the wild surf /
Gotta take that one last /
Gotta take that one last ride

The last wave you caught from life to afterlife you had to do completely alone, even with us cradling you earthside, the letting go and trusting in what was next was all yours to endure. You were so brave. You were courageous. You worked so hard to be able to trust yourself, and I am aware you infused that trust and potential in your family. Whatever I have to endure, I can take that ride.

I love and miss you without end, Daddy. I am forever changed and better for our love. Marc is. The kids are. Brad and Kristyna and their kids are. Alec is too. We are shattered but we are brimming over with resolve and the wish to preserve and celebrate and carry forward your legacy. Honoring you today and forever. CAVU, and hold Mama tightly for us.