The Distance Between Us

The Distance Between Us

On Christmas Day when I was 10, the only Christmas tree I saw was the air freshener dangling from the rearview mirror of my mom’s minivan as we left the only home I’d ever known.  It’s piney fresh scent hung heavy in the air as we loaded the last of our things onto the truck and drove away from our home on Lea Avenue. We said a silent goodbye to the backyard pool and magnificent gardens my mom had worked over a decade on, and turned our sights to some vague, distant body of land called North Carolina. I hated every forest green street sign we passed on the highway bearing the unfamiliar names of unimportant towns.

As the years passed, I would often think of those signs and the names of the towns that separated me from the rest of my family. I resented every one of those metallic green boards; but, after a while, every holiday I missed seemed to get easier.  I had adjusted to life in the South, with its sundresses, long summers, lemonade on the porch, and southern hospitality. Without realizing it, Christmas time became less painful when there wasn’t a place set for me at the table during all of the holiday gatherings. But the year my Pepere died, that changed.

My mom heard news of his rapidly declining health late one night during our family vacation at the beach. She hopped on a plane to Boston at a small airport nearby and made it to the hospital in time to say goodbye. My dad, sister and I drove up the next day to be by her side. We held her hands her during the funeral and hugged her all we could, trying to somehow sink our strength into her shaking, distraught body. I don’t remember shedding a tear, not even when my mom had called us from the hospital in hysterics to gasp out that Pepere had closed his eyes for good. I didn’t cry during the service, or the limo ride behind the hearse or even as we laid roses on his casket, or as I watched my Memere nearly collapse from the emotional strain. Perhaps youth and naivety prevented me from understanding the enormity of it, but I couldn’t shake the sense of detachment to his death, something akin to the loss of an acquaintance. The hurt and grief was evident on everybody’s face as he was lowered into the ground; everybody’s face except mine. It had been nearly a year since I had seen him last, and my life seemed to have adjusted to his absence.

Years later, I learned about him. Now his memories are shared and passed around fondly during holidays and weddings. His memory is still toasted to, his absence is still acknowledged, and his kids still joke about the things they managed to pull over on Dad. I still sit quietly, listening and absorbing as all of my cousins, aunts and uncles regale us with stories of his humor and of riddles he left unsolved. I have nothing to contribute, no scintillating memory or hilarious punch line he dazzled and humored me with once.  I hadn’t realized what I had been missing during all those weekly Sunday brunches and visits to mow Mem and Pep’s lawn. To me, his signature simply vanished off of the birthday and Christmas cards, and the smell of tobacco smoke hung less heavily in Memere’s den, though it lingered until the day she sold that house.

Mom, on the other hand, couldn’t stop crying – heart wrenching, guttural sobs that wracked her tiny frame every night for months after Pepere’s death. She spent most of her time grieving, struggling to acknowledge the void her father’s absence left. All that time she spent with her brother and sisters meant I was allotted time to hang out with my cousins, play video games with them, and – most importantly – get to know them. My sister and I were all smiles every time we visited, and often cried childishly and hid to avoid the inevitable departure. It was time more precious than any gem and we milked it as long as we could, despite the circumstances that brought us together. As for my older cousins, aunts and uncles, a distance still remained between us; I knew nothing about the people I loved except their cooking and fondness for wine.

With the dawn of social media and cell phones, distance became less of an impediment with the tech-savvy members of the family. Memere, though, was a different story. At Christmas one year, my mom and aunts and uncle bought her a computer. When she opened the power strip my aunt had bought her, she thought it was a “new-fangled” cell phone and tried putting it up to her ear. She was even more astounded when she opened the monitor; she thought it was some sort of tiny television set.

When Memere began showing signs of dementia, my mom became more involved in her mother’s life, coordinating with her siblings to get Memere into a proper, safe retirement home. Around this time was the first time I began to have a relationship with Memere and learned that she had a sharp, witty sense of humor and tenacity about life that I admire. Though her memory was rapidly dissipating, she took it in stride. I started to see the old woman, whose sole purpose I thought was to scold me and make pumpkin bread, as a vibrant human being.  In a way, these were the days when I finally met my grandmother. Then she got worse.

Though I knew what the effects of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease were, it didn’t make it hurt any less when Memere struggled to remember my name or simply called me the wrong one. When I visited, her face stopped smiling with recognition and would instead scrunch up as she searched for my name in the depths of her weary brain. I was scared to talk to her. Her age and frailty terrified me; the woman, who has always been a part of the scene, adding to our family background, was fading. Her mortality was bared on her hollowed cheeks, delicate, pale skin and brittle bones. At the last wedding she attended, when I asked what she had been doing, she laughed out, “I have no idea! But I’m having a great time.” In the last few months of her life, she seemed to acknowledge her memory loss amicably and taking it on in stride.  Her loved ones, myself included, lacked her fortitude.

We had time to prepare for her death. When Pepere died, it was sudden and swift. We knew Memere was waning and my mom had a week to spend by her side. Goodbyes were drawn out until one day, a simple phone call let me know it was over. I called out of work, met my sister and dad at the airport, and we flew up to Boston to step back into place by my mom’s side.

As I sat in the pew in the musky, cavernous church, I was dry-eyed and distracted. There was no excuse this time – I was 20 years old, I knew what death meant. I knew who I was losing and what it should mean, how it should devastate me. My cell phone vibrating angrily, desperate for attention, as I tried to focus on what the priest was saying. I watched my cousin fidget next to me with a thread that had wiggled its way out of her skirt hem. A baby wailed in the back of the church, and in the quiet you could hear its mother hushing it back into silence. My cousin Amy walked down the aisle to the podium to give a speech on behalf of the grandchildren, heeled footsteps splashing off the walls like drops from a faucet. In her speech, she spoke of memories collected days before at a dinner my sister and I couldn’t attend because we hadn’t flown back home yet. She told stories I never heard, memories I wasn’t a part of, jokes I had never been in on and smiles I hadn’t shared. Somewhere in the middle of all her words, I started to cry.