The Beginning I Saw in the End

Grandpa and me

I was speaking about my accident this morning, and about how my Grandpa Riddle came to me just before I woke in the hospital ICU. And I thought about how it’s almost the day he died. I always think of that when spring first comes, because that comes next. And I wanted to revisit this post, as it’s timely.

My Grandfather's Crossing Over

It’s been fourteen years since I sat in the hospital room with my Grandfather, watching him dance with death. There is no winning in the dancing, just an end of the music, the last pulling of strings humming in the air, becoming vibration with no sound, and then… memory. Waiting with my Grandfather, my heart was already heavy with the loss of my grandmother, three years gone. I could tap my grief out for you in my own soft shoe, but we all know the face grief wears, and the mask grievers don.

This story is not about the darkness of the waiting and unknowing. I saw the light in the death. I saw the mystery of the unknowing. I saw the hope in the grief.

He was struggling to breathe. We were painted in the room, separate tableaus across the same canvas. What happened to me did not happen to them. I was not ready to say goodbye to him, our rock, but I was ready for his suffering to end. I didn’t think he would be better off without us but I was ready for him to be free. I was ready to deal with my grief on my own time, not his. Being ready to accept the death made all the difference for me. In that room, with the clicks and the whirrs of the equipment and the slow, low rattling of his lungs, I was prepared to wait.

I was praying in my head, words my heart couldn’t bear to speak, telling him it was okay, that we would be okay. I don’t know how I knew he wasn’t going to wake up. I think we all did. But we hoped. Sometimes when death comes, hope is a dangerous blade. The fact was we were there because he had decided he was ready. Cancer may have claimed him, but his death was on his terms.

We never really talked about death as a family, as a neighborhood, or as a culture when I grew up. Someone died and everyone put their funeral outfit on and we were sad and gave those grieving some space and then life went on. It tells a lot about my family that they allowed the soft chanting from the corner of the room where I sat. Music helps me move through emotion more easily and we were all doing what we needed to do in those moments.

When it happened it was quick. One second. It felt as if someone opened a door in the wall beside me, soft wind rushing in, and that second stretched into season as winter welcomed in spring and spring turned to summer and the smell of tilled earth, warm with worms, tomatoes and cucumbers, filled the air around us. I was ready for what was coming. I felt the shift as it happened.

One person turned away. One person died and one person cried out. I was aware of two realities. The air in the room stopped moving and I heard the sound of a toe tapping as a green light stepped into the room through the wall beside me. I held my breath, afraid to shatter the moment. On the bed, my grandfather smiled and lifted out of his body. Whatever you want or need to call it, his spirit, his anima, his soul leapt towards the light that smelled like my childhood summers and blinked away.

I was back in the room and the warmth that held us there was gone. He was gone. The sudden cold sterility of the room was disarming. So quickly, the heat from his body was dissipating. I stood apart from the moment and the grieving. I wanted to stand in sorrow but I was left in wonder.

When I remember that moment, what I remember was that it was not awful for me, but left me full of awe for my experience and the gift I was given amid such a welling of sadness. Somewhere in the universe, in the ether, in the springtime around me, the energy I saw leave that room still lives, whether transformed, absorbed, scattered or inhaled, and the warmth of the man I loved became something new.

[Original post published March 23, 2011.]

My Mother's Irish Ancestors

The birds are singing their spring songs outside, despite the snow, and St. Patrick's Day marks our turning towards the equinox. The days are lengthening and in my little garden, the tiger lilies are thinking about peeking out of the earth with their bright green shoots. And I am thinking about my Irish heritage. I was surprised to discover recently that all of my known Irish ancestors are found in my mother's family tree.

The first to step on American soil was my 7x great-grandfather David Calhoun, born in Dongeal in 1690. He settled and died in Connecticut. I feel I have to admit that David's grandfather was from Scotland, so his family blood was Scotch-Irish.

Thomas Riddle, also found spelled Ridel, was born in Ireland in 1739. He was my 6x great-grandfather. He hailed from Tyrone County, where he appears on a 1796 list for Irish flax growers. He fought for the colonies in the Revolutionary War as a Private in 1775.

My 6x great-grandparents John Berry, born in 1762, and Nancy Matchet, born in 1767, came to America from Ireland and settled in a small town called Mayfield, in New York. There are still Berrys in Mayfield.

My other Irish ancestors all immigrated to New York, where the Erie Canal was being planned. The unknown parents of my 3x great-grandfather Thomas Burke came to America via Canada, where Thomas was born in 1832. He is listed as living in Lockport in 1855 with his widowed mother Ann. He was employed in "boating."

My 4x great-grandfather Barney Dowd came over from Ireland with his daughters and their families, including my 3x great-grandmother Mary Dowd, born about 1837 in Ireland, as was her husband, David Conners, my ancestor, too.

My Lockportian ancestors all lived in the areas of Lowertown where the Irish who worked on the canal had set up their homes. So in honor of St. Patty's day, I'll set out a bowl of warm honey and milk over sodabread and I'll pour a pint of ale for them. I'll honor those who left their homelands for a country that treated them like vermin. I honor that Irish spirit that allowed them to persevere and plant roots.



[Originally posted March 16, 2016.]

Our Attachments to the Things That Belonged to Them

Today we put our couch to the curb to make way for a beloved piano. Our apartment is small. We’ve lived in it for over fifteen years so wall space is hard to come by. Letting go of the couch was my immediate thought when we were trying to decide if we could take the piano or not. We only had a couple weeks to decide.

Easy peasey. Couch out. Piano in.

It's an old couch. It was once white with pink and teal slashes of color, an overstuffed beast. I remember when my grandparents first got it. It was when I was in my early teens and it was like sitting on a cloud.

When my grandpa died in 2004, a few years after my grandma had passed, my brother and I carried the couch and matching loveseat out the sliding glass doors and into his van. They came home with me.

Over the years the couch has sagged. The cats attempted to tunnel through it. I sewed patches of fleece on it as it dried out and frayed so that they couldn’t. It’s pink and teal slashes paled. It has been so hard to get off of since my accident, and so low to the ground, that I didn’t use it anymore.

Today we put it to the curb.

For a moment, for just a moment, I felt like I was putting my grandparents to the curb.

I just wanted to note that. Of course I did. I didn’t let it stop me from doing what needed to be done. I let myself cry as our friends dragged it to the curb. Just for a moment. The sudden emptiness in the living room reflected the emptiness I still feel in my heart for them. And I always will.

Help Me Thank My Skin Donor

I can’t stop thinking about the man who helped save my life.

On October 31, 2015 I was in a freak accident. I was severely burned from the waist down and in a coma in the Burn ICU at Syracuse Upstate Hospital. The surgeon used cadaver skin to cover my legs which allowed my vascular system to heal and regenerate allowing me the best possible outcome for my graft surgeries.

It did. And my grafts have healed amazingly well.

I can’t stop thinking about him.

I know he was a biker. I’m guessing he died shortly before my accident. I don’t know how long cadaver skin’s shelf life lasts. I’m assuming he died near to Syracuse in a motorcycle accident. From the amount of donor skin they had I am assuming he was a large man. I have been told that the skin bore tattoos and that his tattoos wrapped around my legs for a while. They saved me.

His skin bought me time. Time enough to harvest my own to replace what the fire took from me. And I don’t know his name.

More than anything, I want to say thank you.

If he was your family, your husband, your father, your ex, your beloved friend, and you are open to speaking to someone whose life he saved in his death, I want to say thank you. And if nothing else, I want you to know that something more came of his life after his death, if there can be comfort in that for you.

I can’t stop thinking about the man who helped save my life. And what a gift he left behind. Or how his life touched mine without our ever meeting. I will not take it for granted.

Looking at Great-Grandma Hattie's Diary

In the square space that was once the small bedroom my sister and I shared, that is now his office, my dad has an old metal toolbox which holds my great-grandpa Royal Levant Eaton’s wallet, a true leather billfold. Inside that wallet, I found a small scrap of paper folded up. It was a page from “Our America Engagement Calendar for 1956”. On the other side of it was a brief holiday journal written out in green ink by my great-grandma Hattie Eva Smith.

By the end of 1956, Hattie had been widowed for twenty-five years. My great-grandpa Roy was a prison guard. His son, my grandpa Mark, was sixteen years old was his father was injured during a prison riot and later died. Hattie was left with three children- Helen, Dorothy, and Mark- and had to get a job. She went to school for nursing.

In the journal bit she tucked away, it was Christmas time for her and it is Christmas time again. I corrected her major spelling and grammar errors, but otherwise, I’d like you to meet my great-grandma Hattie, in her own words. She mentions her daughter Helen, who shared an apartment with her.

December, Sunday 25: Snow all gone and it is Christmas day. Went to Mark’s for the day. Had a good time. Phil’s so cute (that’s my dad!). They sure had a nice Christmas, so glad. They deserve it. Robert and Laura were there for dinner. Mr. and Mrs. Rauson [Ransom, Mark's boss] came in to call.

December, Monday 26: Dorothy came after us and we went down there and had a lovely time. Jack sure had a good time. I know I did. Helen did too and looked better in a short while after we got there.

December, Tuesday 27: Cold day. Helen went to library. Very quiet here. Looked over my xmas presents. Read. Took a nap. Washed a few clothes. They are like boards they froze so stiff. A bit tired today. So much excitement!

December, Wednesday 28: Lovely day. Dorothy came for a little while. Bertha wanted time to go to the movies. We went to Bob’s for evening and had a good time. They sure had a big Christmas. Wish I could do for mine

December, Thursday 29: Went to the movies to see Heidi also Vanishing American. Helen was mad when she found out Bertha paid for it. She wasn’t too nice about it but so it goes. She is so sore at life.

December, Friday 30: Cold. A snow squall this morning. My check came this morning. Will pay the rent 46.00 tonight. Church $10. Also $8 for Miss Schafer for underclothes; slips. Helen’s so depressed over (?)el(?)(?).

December, Saturday 31: This is the end of the year. Hope next year will not be so hard. Have done the best I could. What more can anyone do? Good bye, old year. We hope for better times.

It’s worth noting that long before this journaling, Helen was in an extremely abusive marriage. When he discovered it, my Grandpa Mark and his brother-in-law drove to her farm and packed Helen and her children up. They never returned. My dad says his Aunt Helen never seemed to recover from it.

           After I read the small diary to my father, he talked fondly of her and described the layout of her small apartment to me. I live in my own fading apartment and have spent a year barely getting by, trying to focus on the joy that we are still getting by. I feel a kinship with this woman. Her spirit stood to the left side of my ICU bed while I was in the hospital. I was never alone.

            But it’s been a hard two years since then.

In difficult times, the love of the people in my life is my sunshine. I wonder if it was the same for Grandma Hattie. Because in that respect I am fully blessed. So I’ll borrow her words, her silent prayer, as I greet 2018. This prayer is for me, for my family, and for the world around me.

“Good bye, old year. We hope for better times.”




[Originally posted December 31, 2014.]

I Believe in Santa Claus

Six years ago, my wife flew into the house, cheeks rosy and eyes bright, shouting that she had seen Santa Claus in the grocery store (insert childlike exclamation marks). I smiled while she elatedly described him to me, an old man with snow white hair and beard in a red sweater, slowly walking the aisles. He had candy canes and oranges in his cart and when she looked him in the eye, he winked at her. I felt the giddy welling in my own belly and wished I had been there to see him, too.

I would have said, thank you.

Whether you call him Santa Claus, Kris Kringle, Saint Nicholas, Sinter Klaus, Father Christmas or Pere Noel, the spirit of the myth that was once a man has lived for centuries in the hearts of people everywhere. Bishop Nicholas of Smyrna lived in the 4th century. He was the son of a wealthy family who used his money for the welfare and good of his people, performing miracles for those who might otherwise have been left destitute. He brought hope and light to the world. He was a real man before his spirit was blessed with immortality. In the passing of time and telling of stories a holy man became something greater.

He became a season of giving and a myth with many faces.

It is the legend of the immortal gift-giver and toymaker that most of us grew up with. I still remember my love of the “jolly old elf” as a child. I remember because I still carry that love in my heart. My favorite version of his mythology comes from the fictional work The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus by Frank L. Baum. A babe left in the woods was raised in magic by the fairy folk and gifted the Cloak of Immortality for all of the joy he brought to an otherwise bleak human world, so that he might continue his good works forever. I like the idea that long after I am dead and gone, the spirit of the man called Claus will continue. Our world needs magic in it.

Our world is made of magic.

I wish that the joy and spirit of the holiday season could stretch out and blanket all of the calendar days, so I try to drink it in while I can, syrupy sappy happiness and all. I love baking cookies and delicacies and crafting presents for loved ones. I love the lengths people will go to in order to make a little Christmas magic happen. I learned that from Santa… and the spirit of him that lives in the heart of my mother and father.

How can belief in him be a bad thing? Santa Claus wants us to be good to each other. He promotes charity and compassion as well as candy canes and hot cocoa. I was the child who vehemently defended his existence far beyond what I should have, for as smart a child as I was. I’d done the math. I knew how much the presents we got from Santa Claus cost. Times that amount by three children. There was no way my parents could afford to spend that much on us.

I was adamant, fighting with friends on Grand Street on the way home from school and stomping home angrily because they didn’t believe me. They didn’t believe in Santa, when he was so good to us. I really wish I could remember how old I was then.

I remember sitting on my dad’s lap, in his father’s rocking chair when I was a bit older. He mentioned how important it was that I not ruin Santa for my younger sister, or other young children. I was bright for my age and always a bit ahead of putting pieces together. He assumed I had already figured it out and knew I was the kind of child who liked to share what knowledge I had. I will never forget the way his face drained of color when he saw the look on mine – when he realized that not only had I not put it together yet, but I had not even suspected the truth.

My poor father.

I had been a warrior for the Northern Elf for years and now my dad was saying that man was a figment, just an idea. I’m not embarrassed to admit to how long I believed in Sinter Klaus. If you know me you know that the magic and wonder of the holiday is a light that lives in me. It always has. My father’s admission did not take the magic away. I was not entirely sure that my father was right.

Santa had to be more than an idea. My eyes opened wider in the wake of that moment. I understood that the mall Santa was like the priest at church, speaking for a man who could not possibly be everywhere at once. I didn’t negotiate much beyond that until I realized something about my parents. They never bought things for themselves. All year, I watched my mom not buy herself anything and realized she was squirreling money away so that they could make Christmas the most magical day for us.

My parents sacrificed to gift us magic out of love. Because they remembered their joy as children, waiting for the sounds of sleigh bells in the night sky. It was a legacy they went to lengths to pass on. Isn’t that magic, too?

I remember well my days as a young girl, waking in my flannel nightgown, waiting until we were allowed to run into my parents’ room and throw open their east-facing window curtains. I remember every year, our mornings around the tree unwrapping presents. Those mornings opened a window into the child that lived in the heart of my parents and my grandparents. I understood that they were once children my age, excitedly opening gifts with their parents.

In my mind’s eye I can see the tree changing backwards into homemade ornaments and popcorn strands, paper chains and nuts strung. Rugs become rag wool become wood floor become dirt and straw… Always there is a child beneath the tree whose blood is part of me.

Always there is a child whose blood is part of me, back past Christmas, into Yule, into Modranight, into whatever group gathered together against the longest night.

The real Santa Claus lives inside all of us, like the divine energy does. We all have a santa and a scrooge, a light and a dark side. At holiday time, we find it easier to feed our inner Santa. We feel the desire to give gifts of magic to children around us and fight hard to help him defeat our stressed-scrooge inside.

Like the Native American story, we have a choice to continue to feed our inner Kringle and spread the joy and light of love, compassion and charity throughout all of our days. Whatever you believe, whatever you practice, whoever you love, take the best of the holiday season with you into world, through the long winter, well after the snows have melted.

An old Cherokee Indian was speaking to his grandson:

"A fight is going on inside me," he said to the boy. "It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil- he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority and ego. The other is good- he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith. This same fight is going on inside you and inside every other person, too."

The grandson thought about it for a long minute. "Which wolf will win?"

The old Cherokee simply replied, "The one I feed."

[Originally posted December 14, 2011.]

Calling Grandma Ruth into Christmas Kolachkis

My father’s mother died of cervical cancer when he was five years old. Her name was Ruth Emma Ruston and she was only forty-two. This year I turned forty-one. The closer I get to that age myself, the more I find myself thinking about her. At this age, what would it be like to know that I might have to leave behind my husband and four sons?

My dad has this picture of her at a family party in this fabulous red dress, a bit out of place for a Sunday afternoon get-together. She is looking at the camera with a big smile on her face. My dad said that she went into the hospital the week after that very party, and she knew she wasn’t coming out. That dress was her favorite dress.

I’ve been focusing on reaching out to her, trying to build traditions with her that we were never able to have together. In that spirit, I made kolachki cookies, for the first time, with Grandma Ruth in my butter-yellow kitchen.

As I’ve been doing our genealogy and family history, I find that my family resemblance is to her line of the family, the Ruston line with its Polish heritage. It wasn’t a leap to try to connect with her over a Polish cookie. I am not historically talented in the kitchen, something I’ve been working on as well. So my offering to her spirit was the attempt to make something that was a bit more complicated.

The dough was prepared the night before and chilled in the fridge. The black walnut filling was mixed and beat into submission. And then I pressed the dough out between two layers of wax paper until it was paper thin, almost translucent.

As I rolled the dough out, firmly and repeatedly, I thought about my Grandma Ruth. I thought about the line of Rustons, who come through Wickers and Whitchers, Whitchers and DeLoziers, Loziers and Zabriskis, Zabriskis and Terhunes, Zabriskis and Van Der Lindes, back into Poland. And I rolled the dough thin and smooth.

It felt as if dozens of women stood in the kitchen with me, cutting out three inch squares, dolloping golden filling on them, and folding opposite corners in over each other. The warmth from the oven made fingers and dough supple and inside they went to cook. My folding skills need work. They’re not all pretty. But they are delicate and flaky, and delicious.

I wish my father could have better known his mother. I wish that I could have known her. I’m not sure if she ever made kolachkis or if her family ever had, but in my heart I made them to honor my unknown Grandmother and all who came before her, so that I could be here, with hands in warm dough, and heart full of love, peace and wonder. 

Grandpa Mark and Grandma Ruth, cooking in the backyard.

[Original post published December 25, 2013, as Kolachkis for Grandma Ruth.]