Lilies for Susan
Pink lilies were my mom's favorite, the tried and true go-to for any occasion involving her, special or not. Their bold and fragrant blooms met the tall task of matching her boisterous essence. Whether for her birthday, Valentine's, or just to butter her up, seeing them on our dinner table never failed to open my mom's heart and brighten her mood.
A few weeks ago I stumbled upon this stand of lilies. I decided to step out from my mom's apartment into a cloudy day, my head already fogged. I had been deep into sorting the material she amassed and left there after 45 years. Now, like many moments before and after, I needed to clear my head. In an instant, I found myself down at a familiar sliver of park wedged between tranquil Sutton Place and the hushed rush of the FDR drive.
These lilies were first to welcome me, also the first of their kind I could recall growing outside rather than sitting cut in a florist's display. In only the last few years had I noticed and stopped more often to smell the lilies and other plentiful flora of this city. Walking down the same quiet and busy streets of my past, winding through well-worn memory paths, I wandered around my hometown watching through novel spectra.
A solo bloom spread her petals wide as if to embrace me and beckon her stem sisters to follow suit. The greeting jogged more memories of my mom like so many reminiscences of late. This time the memories were sweet, nature playing its finest role — restoration.
———
The four months after returning to mourn my mother stretched my perception of time beyond what I've known. After the intense, immediate proceedings of funerary rituals, I road-tripped south to see family and friends, to get an quick spirit lift while cherishing old bonds. The joy of this two-week escape merged with recent explorations into the esoteric, leading me into an illusion that I had the grieving process sorted.
Predictibly, the submerged pain from my loss and a weighty history waited patiently to rise into consciousness upon my return. One month after my mom passed I gained entry back into her apartment, the place I'd known as ‘home’ for all my thirty five years. The state of the space and the sights I encountered sent me into a dizzied emotional jumble before sending me out the door after ninety or so minutes.
A dank, damp day followed and brought me an uncharacteristic migraine. Nausea, pain and fatigue descended in waves, keeping me horizontal on the sofa at my aunt and uncle's apartment. Somehow I didn't connect the two days until later.
Triggers sprung from varied sources as plentifully as the spring and summer flowers bursting from every direction. Slowly, I worked up the fortitude to revisit and then settle into living at the apartment. I knew it was time to leave the warm embrace of my aunt and uncle's after two healing months there.
Some important decisions sat before me. Should I press my case to keep the apartment with a rare rent-stablized lease? Otherwise, I'd have to sort my mom's things, then leave my home for good, jettisoning -- however adeptly -- an elephant of an attachment.
While these and others questions about the apartment bounced through my head, the mountain of material possessions there weighed heavily on my mind. I took a family friend's referral for a consultation on how to tackle this tall task. The result: a recommendation to let nearly all of it go. I could save some treasured, sentimental items, but the rest would collect dust as a storage company collected my money. Most people often never return to these units containing things that were never theirs.
Receiving a release valve for the situation offered psychic relief; when I was ready, one call could summon a crew to wipe the place clean. Yet while I knew I had the support of my father, family and friends, taking on this task was extremely isolating and "lonlifying." This feeling persisted throughout the process of sorting my mom's stuff.
The next step: putting my hands on every item within the apartment, keeping only what was sentimentally essential. Several people told me this wouldn't amount to much over time. But even with the above relief and support, a subtle sense of dread wound itself around the loneliness to then weave through me.
I took over a week to relax and not face the disassembly of the apartment. Building subtle momentum, I settled into my new mission. Some despair-filled mornings languished like they would never let noon arrive. Yet somehow those days passed, and others followed with less anguish and more moments of progress.
I found troves of old photos taken with all kinds of cameras, these physical manifestations of moments so rare today. Many brought joyful reminiscences of childhood and adolescence. Even more brought sour, mixed emoitions. Psychic pains and patterns, developed in the time of those snapshots, now sharpened and filled with vibrant colors in my mind.
Quickly, new revelations surfaced as I uncovered old scenes I'd never beheld. In so many moments I wanted my mom present, if only to explain who a person was, where and when the shots were taken, how she was feeling, and why she kept them.
———
My aunt connected me with a real estate lawyer who believed I would eventually lose a case to keep the apartment's rent controls since I had nearly none of the evidence required by the law and landlord. I didn't care to ask the landlord what the market rate would be, much less sign a lease accepting it. With that conversation, I started accepting the proposition that I would have to relinquish my home. My mom's lease ended in October, but I felt pulled to vacate earlier.
With the knowledge of this impending departure, I grew keenly aware of my sensorial relationship to the apartment, perhaps my way of capturing its essence in my memory. The familiar smell of a long-lived space greeted me on each entry; subconsciously orienting me, it consistently recalled impressions of my mom, dad and my early years. On the right wall of the short foyer hung a large rectangular frame holding twelve black and white shots of my mom's guru. I laugh trying to imagine how many times I've passed and peered into Baba's quizzical, sternly curious eyes.
The front door often shook with the slightest breeze, the locks rattling softly in the door jam. Hearing their clanging from the dinner table or couch subconsciously spurred me to prepare for my mom's entry, not a pleasant feeling recently, sadly.
Some other sounds I would never hear again: The kitchen sink singing a shrill cry as it sent out water. The fridge compressor clicking on after an artic blast whooshed from the freezer door. Ice trays I'd filled since childhood cracking familiarly when I twisted out the cubes, shards spilling and shattering over the highly-faux-marble linoleum floor. The clicking ignition of the burners heating old pans that screeched as they moved across black metal grates.
How many breakfasts and dinners had I made myself and my family on that stove, as well as the Thanksgiving dinners and Hannukah parties my mom loved to host? I can still smell the oil hanging in the air and see the piles of paper towels I used to clean the aftermath of all the potato latkes I fried.
These sensory signals brought simultaneous understandings of how much I'd miss this place and how much it was time to move beyond it. All of the items making this apartment the home I'd known over decades would soon be gone. In their place, blank slates for someone to live a new life there and for me outside of it.
———
The raging midsummer heat joined a fire building inside me to move on and out. My attention to the task merged with my intention to finish by the end of July. A powerful solstice and equally fierce heat wave fueled extra motivation to burn through my resistances forestalling the job's completion.
The push through the final weeks was exhausting. My to-do list seemingly never shortened, gaining at least one item for every one ticked off. Fears surfaced of not keeping enough of my mom's stuff, thereby losing family memories forever. Restless and thought-filled nights left me haggard. I boxed up photos and memorobilia, breaking down briefly on occasion. My dad helped me move material to a storage unit in Jersey City a week before the final move. The last nights in the apartment were more sleepless than any before.
At last, it was time to call in the clean-up crew. I woke up early on move day and had the first of too many coffees, caffeine a certain crutch these past months. I set about separating the last items I would keep from the movers' hands before they cleared everything out at breakneck speed.
My lifelong procrastination habit came to unnecessarily complicate this day. While I was bringing boxes to the storage unit, the movers packed away jewlery I wished to keep but hadn't set aside in my rush through the morning. Then, a misunderstanding between the boss and me spiked my cortisol levels at a most inopportune time. My emotions and thoughts had made me hectic enough. I didn't have time or bandwith to let difficulty break me now. I recalled a measure of mindfulness, breathing consciously and communicating clearly and kindly to sort our issue amicably.
A beautiful sunset and balmy evening arrived at the end of the move, bringing me closer to my final departure. I hadn't eaten all day, so I treated myself to a feast of Zabar's Nova and other treats. I said thank you and goodbye to my aunt after borrowing their car, taxiing back to my eerily empty and soon-to-be former home.
All that remained when I entered were belongings to aid my next step. The carrot at the end of this long stick had been a return to backpacking through Europe, stopping first in Cape Cod to visit my great aunt and cousins.
July was ending along with my time in the now mostly-vacant space. Although it was my last night here, I showered and left to meet a dear friend visiting the city, knowing I was meant to see her if only for a few minutes. Our rendezvous confirmed a resolution I had made months earlier to attend my first Burning Man a month later. Everything was aligned to send me on the next part of my journey.
I returned from the meeting to sit in the courtyard downstairs for a final evening. I looked up to my apartment, then went up to walk around the queerly bare space. I absorbed the immensity of the moment, knowing I would walk away from here forever tomorrow. I peered from the kitchen into the living room, holding only those possessions I could carry on my back.
Standing in the tiny passage between the living room and the bedroom, I gazed down at the floor where my mom's bed once laid alongside her crowded possessions. The floor where her body laid until she left it four long months before.
I broke down, the seeming solidity of my mind crumbling. There's no way nor need to compare how hard I cried against the many times that preceded it. The force with which these sobs shook me was rare. Deep heaving roiled through my chest and throat while my mind struggled for purchase to steady itself, to make meaning in the thrashing sea of emotion. Quickly it admitted futility and gave way to vulnerability, pure sorrow seeping in, around and through my body.
An instinct surfaced within to recite the Mourner's Kaddish, the simple yet profound Jewish prayer. My throat choked the words I read from the funeral chapel's prayer book. I felt overwhelmed by my mom's spirit while reciting words I'd listened to many others say, especially my mom mourning her dad. The power of those verses now invigorated me, a healthy pride filling my being: of my mom, of her life, of my life, of my lineage.
Shattered yet restored, I lit a candle in the window, snapped a few final shots of the all-too-familiar view from the window and of myself in the empty space, then went to sleep for the last time in apartment 11D.
I woke early to wrap several loose ends I could've tied earlier but by nature saved for my final hours in the city. Rushing to stores and shipping items, I biked hastily on little rest, barely maintaining sanity and civil discourse. After a goodbye to my dear long-time super, Juan, I jumped on a Citibike and just made a bus to visit my aunt in Cape Cod.
The weekend with my family restored my body and mind and lifted my spirit, giving me strength for my jaunt to Spain and Amsterdam, two special places in my heart from my previous travels. Once a locus of terrible persecution & then eviction for my Jewish ancestors, Spain now offered me refuge from the previous chapter of turmoil. The north of Spain is rightly famed for the gorgeous but testing rite of passage, El Camino de Santiago. Now it provided the start to my next pilgrimage of healing and growth.
———
I've relinquished a major foundation of my former life, the veritable soil of my roots. I'm back on the vagabond trail that I've walked for over three and a half years. All my possessions on my back, my task to seek the next adventure and lesson (and bed to sleep).
Before this recent loss, grief and transition, I learned from my nomadic life that all you ever truly need is within you. Now that my mom has left this earth, she's beside me whenever I call on her; or, just like when she was alive, whenever she wants to make her presence known.
Finishing this piece long after I intended, I thought to ask someone important to me what they knew about lilies. He said in his experience, lilies are tough to grow when you force them into spots they don't want to be in. They're fickle. But they can grow in hard and strange environments, finding them in places you might never expect.
In one of countless moments on this journey I was blown away by synchronicity. I smiled at the perfection of this metaphor for my mom and her life. She lived through hard experiences, forced into a world too small or ill-suited for her larger-than-life, ever-blossoming being.
Freed from the constraints of this earthly realm, I know my mom is flourishing where she belongs. Her brightness is always with me to behold, cherish, and shine light on my path, especially when I stumble on an unexpected lily on the side of the road.
———
This post was written over the course of a few months as I processed this process. References to dates or general timelines are mentioned in the order they were written. In the vein of how this process affected my perception of time, I kept the post's timeline essentially as I wrote it as an experiment to play with this experience of time dilation and contraction.