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Friday September 13th

It’s gonna be a GREAT day! I love Friday the 13th’s!

I am lying in bed, hues of gold and green stream in through the open window. I’ve stared at the crisping leaves for so long, that some of the office windows just beyond are starting to light up! There’s a light breeze and the leaves dance to their own music composed by their movement. Gently the leaves quiet, as though with the rising of the day, they’ve paused to watch.

With the gravity of Jupiter inside me yesterday, I notice that I hop out of bed today feeling lighter.

I shower and get ready for the day and write all morning – until Stas and Pauline ring me for lunch! 

In French restaurants you pick an entree and a plat or a plat and a dessert.  No dessert today, the sweetness of being in their presence is enough for me! First we eat a piece of quiche with a petite salad, and now I am already quite full. Then, we are presented with our plat.  An artistic masterpiece placed before me:  Skate laid out like a Japanese fan, cascading down from what look like mashed potatoes, but are actually buttery mashed cauliflower, almost as sweet as honey. Nestled next to the skate, marinated capers the size of beans.  

The restaurant is bustling with conversation, Pauline and I sit facing out with a view of the whole place. A stone wall, dark wood beams, wooden chairs and tables, a long bar up front facing the generous windows to the street. The place is brimming with warmth.

We talk of politics, the death of our parents, the legal debates around death and dying, and the hole that has been left in deaths wake.  Stas made the point that our first true love is our Mom, and that nothing can replace that whole.  (Okay, so, that was a typo I choose to keep.)

I agree with Keats, touch has a memory. I think the hardest piece of letting go, is the reality that I can no longer touch, nor take comfort in her warmth. I have struggled so, with my reality that we seem kinder to our pets in the dying process that we are to our loved ones. Our Moms had very similar struggles in their final months. They were filled with so much pain.  Absorbing the intense love Stas has for his Mom, it seems that his mother’s pain may have freed him up to let go.  Like Stas’ Mom, my Mom so badly wanted to be relieved of her body.  When her time came, there was this intense joy stirred into my sadness. I think that piece lightens the burdens of our loss. 

In contrast, I was so angry with the dying process for my Dad. It was so prolonged. I now know, I was struggling with reality, it was – what was happening. So many people said there is such depth and growth during this time. I could see none of it. This strong, funny intelligent man was losing himself by day. I could see, that he could see; and his anger at the loss of control, the loss of his vibrancy drained us both of want and light. The only thing I was eternally thankful for, for all of my parents, dad, mom and mother-in-law, was that I was willing and able to physically crawl in bed with each of them. “Oh the touch, has a memory”. Unlike Keats, I do not want to “kill it and be free”.  With my dad, I was handed the gift of time, alone, in the room with my Mom and Dad. Everyone else had gone to dinner, she was at the foot of his bed, and I sat next to him. My dad had been struggling so, I guessed he was having trouble leaving, letting us go.  I crawled in bed and lay next to him and rocked him to sleep, humming the lullaby I always hummed to my kids to lull them to sleep. Perhaps it’s the song my Mom had hummed to me? It replays in my head and drifts out into my room as I type.  As he began to die I let go, and my brother and sisters came back into the room, we were all there. He was consumed in love.

My mom and I never talked about that time, and yet I believe she must have been grateful. It was tough for her to show public affection. If I could go back, the only thing I would do over: I would have asked her to join us that evening; to lay down beside her lover.

Wow how do you go from there to strolling on the Seine? Well I’m doing it!  The pinks and purples of the sunset were phenomenal.  I  went back earlier to take more pictures of the bikes and scooters fished from the Seine!  Stas thought it would be a great photo exhibit. I thought I’d call it “Death at the Seine”.  Well I guess my theme does continue! Hahahahaha

After that, it was a long walk back and I was soaking up the joy clouds hovering on either side of the Seine.  Pods of people everywhere, scattered like confetti and rice on the stairs of a church, celebrating love! It wasn’t until I got to one of the last bridges near the Tuileries Gardens, it’s the “love bridge” with all the locks, that I noticed the moon.  I climbed up the bridge’s peak, and as I turned to look out, there she was, a full moon rising! I was spellbound, stuck on that bridge for hours. Watching love, watching boats, watching the Seine flow.  Watching the moon watch us! 

The Eiffel Tower sparkled its hourly dance, in a silent jealous rage.
It shouted to everyone, look at me! But everyone had turned their backs on her for a far more spectacular view!

In contrast to yesterday, there was a lightness of being.  Timeless – weightless under this spell of the Parisienne moon.

I would learn later that the next time a harvest moon will land on a Friday the 13th will be 2049.

Hmmm, wonder what I’ll be doing? I’ll be 89, 10 days away from my 90th birthday? Will I be dancing back on the bridge of love over the Seine, or will I be on the moon or a twinkle in the milky way?

Goodnight Paris!