Chapter 1
Pivotal Moments. 

Did all of that really need to be thrown away?

 

For just a moment I forgot. I woke up out of my sleep, remembering the times I had no car and how I was a college student with a baby about to be pregnant for the second time, and got a job at Kmart in Syosset. There was no train. I had no transportation, but I had a job. and I really needed the money. And Aunt Carol took me back-and-forth to work every single shift. She totally committed to making sure I got there on time. And I thought for a moment about the level of complexity to make that happen. There were a lot of factors to consider. She did not work; she was on disability for minère's disease. And to be fair, there were times where she was not able to drive me because she was dizzy or too sick. But the majority of the time I was good to go. In the car ride over we would listen to Van Morrison or the Doors. She kept Windex in the front seat and often sprayed the window. I wonder if I ever gave her gas money. Sometimes we would talk sometimes we just listen to music. Aunt Carol was really much more like a sister to me than an aunt. She's the one I called when I stole the car and drove to Levittown and the car broke down and I needed a ride home at 3 AM. She was a night owl. She was usually always awake. She had long blonde hair and even in the 80s and 90s felt like a hippie with her bellbottoms and rebellious spirit. I just loved her, she was cool. And we just totally vibed together. She would tell me favorite books to read and help me get where I needed to go. She moved me back-and-forth to college and even made my birthdays play out. At 16, I wanted to go to the Statue of Liberty. She's the one who made it all happen. At 17, I wanted to go to the Central Park Zoo. Again, she's the one who made it all happen. When I had Westley, she helped plan the baby shower. She was supportive of my life and didn't judge… I want to just stay in this moment of remember how good it was.

 

But then, and I know she mentioned it a few times, but in passing not with urgency, I needed to come and get the stuff out of the basement. When my mom had gotten sick and moved back in with my grandmother, her whole life moved in with her. And my mom had carted everything she owned from house to house for a while, which eventually ended up in my grandmother's basement. People didn't do storage units back in the day lol

 

I'm quite sure I was dismissive because I didn't understand that it was important, but I remember the reason being something about spraying for termites? Is that a thing? Now nobody really went into the basement, it used to be where I lived, my room was down there. I’d painted it purple when my mom kicked me out and I moved in with Grandma. And I didn't live there anymore and so the entire space was filled with boxes of my mom's life. This seemed harmless and out of the way enough. In all fairness, the washer and dryer were down there, but on the other side of the basement so it wasn't exactly bothering anybody, or so I thought.

 

One night when my brother had asked me, “the next time you're in Oyster Bay do you mind picking up my PlayStation from grandma's house, I need it to plug in the DVD player”, and I had dropped off their dad at a bar or something downtown then went by my grandmother's house to go pick up the PlayStation. It was like 9 pm, and just a regular day to me up until that moment. And what a good thing it was that Eddie needed a PlayStation or their dad needed to go to the bar, because everything changed. As I approached her house driving down the narrow lane I could see boxes of things lining the street ready for trash pickup in the morning. I mean seriously like 50 boxes just all over the place. I had this little brown Chevy Chevette and I pulled into the end of her driveway and started to look into the boxes to see what was in there. And it was all of my mom's things. The first box were items that my dad's mom had which my mom eventually inherited. It was gold jewelry that said Julia on it, who would throw that away? There was also a teapot and some other decorative style things. Moving down to the next box more stuff. I started shaking. Why was my mother’s stuff out at the trash?

 

I went into my grandmother's house. I always felt loved. I always felt like it was home even in this moment it was my home.

 

My grandmother met me at the door and said Carol put everything at the curb because blah blah blah. I think they had to spray for termites or something and I just started screaming “Carol Carol!” And she started walking down the steps and I started walking up the steps and at the same time we met in the middle, and I don't even know exactly what came out of my mouth. The rage of loss. I know I was red. I felt the steam coming off the top of my head literally. I am picturing it now as if I’d left my body and floated above watching from a different perspective where the voices are fuzzy but the explosion of two strong women differing in the stair case alters history. I know she was wearing a long bed shirt and she said “I told you to come get the stuff” And I said, “really and then you put everything my mother owned to the street? Who does that? You couldn’t even call me to come get it? WHY!!! What else went out there?” And this is the shift. Apparently there was another load that had already been taken to the trash, which had already been picked up. Gone.

 

That night I took everything out of my grandmother's basement that I could ever possibly want even though my grandmother insisted I didn't have to take it that night. I don't remember how many trips I made back-and-forth from Glen Head to Oyster Bay probably five or six loading everything into the hatch of my little Chevy Chevette and loading up the entire car to be sure I had everything. I was so angry.

 

What was lost in the mix were my journals. And a book that I had written when I didn't go to school for a year, I stayed at home for junior year and just wrote a book. During my dad’s battle with cancer I had turned to writing and poetry. I had some real issues and was working it all out on paper. In High School, my creative writing teacher, Mr. Garrone assigned us all journals, and I’d write for the entire day. He’d take the journals home and make notes in the margins. He told me I should publish them all one day. I planned to.

 

When I realized my journals were gone, my heart ached. In fact, when I woke up tonight and I was thinking about those drives back-and-forth to Kmart, wondering if I’d ever really said thank you, I thought I'm 100% sure that everything was written down because at that time in my life, I journaled everything. And then I remembered that they were all put out to the trash. I have no journals.

 

When my grandmother realized she insisted we call the trash compactor and see if there was any way we could get them. I argued with her that they were already in a heap somewhere, and she said, maybe not trying to find some hope, but of course when I came over the next day to make those calls, it confirmed what I already thought, there was no way to go get them. They don’t allow people to go onto the premises to look for lost items and there is no retrieving anything taken.

 

Carol and I never recovered from that moment.

 

So strange how there could be a moment in time with a choice that someone makes that seemingly feels justified and yet it can be such a kick in the stomach to someone else.

 

I had literally slept in Carol's bed for probably a year, and also when I came home from college, after the semester for breaks. She didn't want me to sleep down in the basement. In all fairness a lot of times I just slept on my grandmother's couch, but she had always invited me up. We’d watch a movie and I’d fall asleep, with the window cracked to let out the cigarette smoke.

 

I do believe she loved me.

She showed up for me.

 

After all of that, I didn't even speak to her for a very long time, maybe a year or more. The breaking point was when my grandmother got sick, and she called me to tell me that grandma had pneumonia. By this time, I lived down in Florida, and I was very grateful that she called, and I caught a flight up to New York, which was delayed at the airport. It was like a 12-hour delay! I don't remember who picked me up from the airport, but I remember getting to my grandmother's house, she was in the hospital and my family who drove up was there just a few hours after I’d arrived lol

 

When I got to the house, Carol and I hugged, and I felt the anger literally settle. I thought I had it in me to move on.

 

These weeks before my grandmother died are another pivotal moment of life that

redefined life. I can barely describe the intensity of this time frame, but since it seems to be waking me up tonight, and since I still dream of my grandmother's house, at least a few nights a week, I will revisit the moment. I still dream of my grandmother and see her face often. I don't usually dream of aunt Carol But lately I have been.

 

I have to lay here and smile, knowing that the story that lives inside of me is going to sound absolutely insane to some people, but it's all true, and that life is full of many characters. In the bigger picture of things I wouldn't change a single person, I learned a lot from each of them along the way. We had some shake your head crazy stories, some there's no way stories, but I 1000% know a few things very specifically which anchor me to peace.

 

One of my anchors is the fact that while my mom has been gone since 1996, I was 21 when she passed - after being her caretaker for two years - my mom loved me. I've heard the story so many times from her, my grandmother, and I think every family member. She had had two miscarriages before I was born, and she prayed for me. And I was her angel. All she wanted was to be a mommy. And then I showed up. And the joke in the family was that I was her mommy. She was a good mom. I remember the first years of my life her reading to me and teaching me how to write. She loved to read and would usually be deep in a Steven King book, later it would be the bible, and Concordance. She was extremely attentive and took me on play dates where her best friends Jeanie and Marilyn would hang out with their kids and we would all just run around and be kids. All the moms would smoke and drink tea, and all of us kids would do what ever we wanted. Those golden years really did set the stage of my life. She was a single mom, unmarried, which was a bit taboo at the time, but I don't think anyone cared. She’d tell me with an emphasis on how much she wanted me and mentioned a few times she fought for me. I wonder who she fought?

 

Because the other biggest factor was my grandmother. Now, my grandmother and my mother didn't necessarily always see either eye or get along, but my grandmother loved me. When I say she loved me, I mean that woman was crazy about me. Her face lit up when I walked into the room. She made no bones about me being her favorite person. And me and Gram just hung out for years. I went to work with her as a housekeeper when I was little, and my mom went to work. Gram took me to church on Sundays and I grew up in the first pew sitting right under the Catholic Church roof doing all of the things. We were so Catholic that we stole the mass book and took it home so we could practice the songs and the prayers for the next week lol

 

Sorry, God, lol, in fact, I specifically remember my grandmother saying he won't mind.

 

I want to say my grandmother taught me everything I ever really knew but in reality it's because she taught me the most important things. How to follow her around and run a household. And I did follow her around. When she went to wash the dishes, she propped me up on a little stool and I washed dishes too. When she went to watch the news, I sat in the chair next to her and watched the news. And she would talk to me. About everything under the sun. We said good night to the moon before I went to sleep at night. Then we would say good night to the man on the moon lol we would say our prayers. We would literally kneel down before we got into bed and say our prayers and pray for everybody. Often she would sing me to sleep. She just made-up songs, but I still remember them. In fact, I sing them now to my own grandbaby.

 

When Gram got older, I would come over and put curlers in her hair for her. Maybe once a week or so and sometimes when I'd come, she'd say I was waiting for you. There's not another person on the planet who had the strength and resolve that my grandmother had, but the biggest thing about her was her faith. You didn't play with God. She had a statue of Jesus on top of her TV and she would kiss his feet every night before she went to bed. She told me that the reason she never quit smoking was because one day when she was praying about it, God told her not to worry about it. They had learned that cigarettes caused cancer, after that generation had grown up, believing it was the cool thing to do. She struggled with having to stop, I will say she never got cancer! She did eventually quit smoking, and she lived to be 88. Which in my opinion wasn't nearly long enough.

 

My brother was graduating from High School. We were in NY. Gram was in the hospital. We’d had a trip planned to the Poconos, Mount Laurel to celebrate. I got the call from Aunt Gail that I’d better hurry and get to the hospital, it didn’t seem like she was going to make it. I drove 100 miles an hour straight to Glen Cove Hospital in less than 2 hours. As my grandmother passed, we surrounded her bedside and prayed for her (the rosary) as her soul left her body. She had written the word free on a paper as a note. Her eyes were so blue. Awe gram you were so needed. I needed more time.

 

I always knew that I would lose my mom. I knew that she wasn't going to live very long. As I would sit in the front row of church often playing or drawing, and talking to God as a child he told me all kinds of things. One of the things he told me was I would lose my mother. She wasn't healthy and she had lost her will to live. And he told me it was not my fault. And I told him “well do I get to keep my grandmother?”, and I thought that we had a deal. You know I never heard a response to my question. I thought the deal was she would be around to make sure everything was OK after. My grandmother passed away just two years after my mom. I didn't see it coming because I thought God and I had a deal, and I wasn't worried that she was not going to make it. I had seen her in the hospital, and she was more concerned about me seeing her like that, than having any conversations we could've been having. She wanted to wait until she got home to talk more. She just wanted to get out of the hospital.

 

But the crazy thing about my grandmother was, she had walked me all around the house and told me all of the things that would happen when she died. She told me all the pictures in the house were mine, and that she had written my name on the back of them. I had asked her for all kinds of random things, “can I have this:? She’d say, “I’ll leave it to you when I die”…Turns out that was just something cute that she said, she had no will, and they were definitely no names written on the back of anything.

 

Which turns out to mean that Aunt Carol, who lived in my grandmother's house, and couldn't work and couldn't financially support herself or the upkeep of the home, who apparently had a different Faith than I did and a different set of plans, had been preparing for this moment for quite a while. So once my grandmother passed, she had a list made of items she would take care of, and she wasted no time. Grief and morning are vicious. I don't think that you know how vicious they are until you just don't know how to swallow.

 

No one can tell you anything in that moment or make sense of the world, and here I was at odds once again with Aunt Carol who was taking it upon herself to sell things, try to hurry up and secure the next chapter - while I couldn't breathe. Luckily Aunt Gail and Uncle Bill stepped in at this time. There’s a whole other piece of life happening meanwhile which is me having two children in a sick situation, where I’d taken  custody of my sister to ensure she would be okay after losing our mom and I was working, and fighting the world to try and keep it all going.

 

My uncle and his wife, who generally kept to their own business and tried to avoid the north shore of Long Island, determined at this time it was necessary for them to manage. In all fairness, my uncle was the oldest living child at that point. He became the administrator of the Estate. All the legalities. And probably the most rational because he had a home and a life. And my uncle loved my grandmother, and she loved him dearly. You know how you can tell certain people just have no fuzziness of life between them? Like that. My grandmother loved all her kids, she was blessed with one son and two daughters and as her first grandchild, I noticed a few things growing up, which was it seems like her daughter's were very dependent on her, but her son was very independent. And as much as she loved her daughters, it didn't seem like they were particularly helpful to her. My grandmother loved “helping” but also I think she wanted to see them be prosperous, but it didn't seem that her advice was ever taken. And she gave advice, although not very forcefully. She was like a wise old sage that would drop a one liner and then most people (her girls) would just walk by it. Sometimes they'd walk by it with a mumble under their breath or a witty response back. I wish I had a book of all her one liners. She had some really good ones! I seriously thought she was the smartest person in the world for like a good 20 years of my life. As a kid you just see a lot of things. Noticing it all.

 

Well, moving right along not to get stuck in the moment, but also to acknowledge the gravity of what happened when we lost my grandmother, I think the term nuclear fallout is pretty appropriate. Maybe it was more like an implosion. And at the heart of it all was my wrestling with God. Why did you take her from me? I needed her.

 

What's crazy is when I was really mad at God, I felt him the most. He didn’t leave me alone although I was clearly in an angry whirlwind. There was still this connection which I had and maybe it grew stronger in losing her. After getting back home to Florida and walking in my house and slamming the door to my room and locking myself in to cry, I saw my grandmothers face materialize in front of me. She was smiling. I saw it so clearly, I was trying to call someone else In The room to see it with me. I got up and went to the door not taking my eyes off her, and opened it to call for someone. Then it cleared away. But it was for me. She was still there. Smiling.

 

Later in my life I find the actual Bible and step away from the Catholic Church and understand that we aren't really supposed to talk to (or see) dead spirits. But in my family, it is so common it's just referred to as "that Irish thing" sometimes they say it's a curse and other times they say it's a blessing, but it seems to "run in the family". It gets a little more interesting. So Aunt Carol was a practicing witch. Which is kind of ironic because while my grandmother is kissing Jesus's feet downstairs my aunt is upstairs taking calls from the psychic hot line in the 90s she's reading all the books about spells and harnessing power. And sometimes I'm downstairs with my grandmother and sometimes I'm upstairs with my aunt and I think I'm just picking up a little bit of all of this along the way. To be very honest, even as a three- or four-year-old when I would walk up the stairs, I would see a person in the corner of the stairwell, and I later believe that person was my grandmother's mother Agnes, who had passed away in the house before I was born. I would also sometimes see a person standing at the bottom of the stairs. I always kind of just associated that with being my grandfather, who passed away when I was nine months old And I learned to walk at his funeral. Apparently, I stole the show or something.

 

Another big thing is dreaming. I've always had the most very vivid dreams. I mean dreams that you can touch, I remember them for years as if they really happened although I know they were dreams. I had a dream when I was three or four years old, that woke me up out of my dead sleep, and I ran downstairs and told everybody about it who were all up drinking and smoking around the kitchen table. I dreamt that there were witches outside in the birdbath mixing a potion, I had been walking around the back of grandma's garden, and I saw them back there, and I was trying to sneak by, but I stepped on a branch which cracked and the witches looked up and saw me. And it scared me and I woke up, and I ran downstairs and told my family and it was that weird. everybody kind of looked at each other response, which is maybe why I still remember the dream to this day, and they made me a cup of tea and had me sit down and drink it before I went back to bed lol. Like hey, there’s a witch at the house and she’s watching you… lol, my goodness! And it was just life.

 

So, I guess part of the thing between my mom and grandmother was that my grandmother was of the generation that believed you put a little whiskey in the baby bottle to get the baby to sleep. And apparently, I wouldn't sleep. Now I've heard all kinds of stories over the years but have no memories of it myself, so I'll just note here that I'll go into all of that more later. Weather or not they put whiskey in my bottle is an old tale, or maybe my mom would let me drink a beer because they thought it was funny, but also the mom I remember probably was not in favor of that… who knows. More on that later…

 

Tonight as I have written for a couple of hours and think back to those chapters I think triggered by the recent passing of my cousin John and some of the struggles of my daughter raising her two babies, I am reflecting on the how did we get here really, surprised that my kids say things like “you made it look so easy”, (WTF? No, I didn’t) and “how did you do it?” (Duh – barely you watched the struggle – shit I still struggle!) and my constant response is always, “I prayed a lot” because literally prayer is the only thing that got me through some of the darkest chapters, because God has literally given me light that did NOT come from the world, or myself, or many of the places people reference when denying the existence of diving intervention. And more on that to come as well. But suffice to say that in this moment, I am sound, calm, grateful, reflective, appreciative, full, and positive.

 

1/15/25.