If I had my way, this newsletter would work like our old MySpace profile pages, and a song would automatically play once you opened the email or link. And that song would be Take Me Home by Phil Collins.
I love his music, and this song, and I’ve been thinking about the concept of home for some time now. I’ve also been thinking about writing a post like this since July, but it hasn’t happened until now.
Malinda handed me the paper sacks from Central Market as we stood in front of my home, both masked, trying to keep a distance one Saturday this past July. Our family had just learned Mom’s cancer had spread to her brain – being overachieving, as only 5 percent of colon cancer does that – and needed radiation. Malinda and her husband were in town for the weekend, so they kindly brought us food. And standing on my front walk in the summer heat, I had one of those experiences where you flash to a different scene in your life, like you’re above your body and viewing your past self and current self, both struggling, both near the same spot.
Twenty years ago this week, Malinda had stopped by my house on Saturday, Nov. 18. She found me in my parents’ bedroom, exiting the master bath. In her letter jacket, she had tears in her eyes, and we held each other in front of the vanity. Our best friend, Katie, a girl we loved fiercely and worried about endlessly, had been killed in a car accident. She was 16. Friends and their parents were gathering at my house to try to make sense of the senseless.
At 16, I lived here as a child, under my parents’ roof and rules. At 36, I’m back and running most things, first as my mother’s caretaker, and now as my father’s as we work on his mobility and other disabilities. Malinda and I were kids looking into each other’s eyes in 2000; in 2020, we were women, and she with children of her own. But really, no time had passed at all.
I was struck by the moment – by the look on her face, as she wanted to hug me, and visit with me, but was afraid to because of the pandemic and the possibility of spreading a virus to my family. That look was older, and wiser – perhaps less scared, but no less worried or caring. We’ve seen more now, but we have a friendship forged through shared loss. We can look at each other and not have to say anything at all.
My mother died in September a few feet from where Malinda and I hugged two decades ago. She was 65.
In March 2015, when I was back living in my old bedroom – which I am now back in for the third time in my life – I woke one Monday morning to a text message that my good friend, Jeff, had died from cancer and other complications brought on by AIDS. He was 30. I went and told my parents in the living room, a few feet from the spot where my Mom had told me about Katie. Mom followed me back down the hall and hugged me.
Fascinating, the things you learn in the same rooms, the same square feet. The things you have to endure and the things you can’t unsee. The deaths are all connected for me, perhaps because I’ve now spent half my life grieving, most of that time untreated. All three deaths were so absurd, so unfair, the kind that make you wonder why it was them and not you, as I remember wondering that next day after Katie’s death, standing outside our church building. Why couldn’t it have been me? I was the boring one. She was the star with so much promise. She was the one you gravitated toward. Jeff, whom Malinda and I met our first week in college, was the same way.
And Mom? Well, she was amazing.
All I know is that if any two people deserved a second chance, it was my young friends. And if anyone deserved time to finally rest with her family, after spending so many years working herself to the bone to care for them, it was my mother.
All I know is that I’m sitting in my room – the same room – wondering about the past two decades. I’m still here. I’m home, and I’m still trying to figure out what that means.
You are AMAZING too!