A look back at 2024
Nostalgia . . . that feeling that is like both a warm hug and a bittersweet tug at your heart. It's a word that evokes contradictory emotions, both pleasurable and unwelcome. It's also a word I've been thinking about a lot lately. As 2024 comes to a close, I realize I've been living in a state of nostalgia for quite awhile. The holidays have only heightened that sense of longing and wistful yearning for what's past, particularly after the year I've had.
To say 2024 was a challenging year would be an understatement.
When I think back to where I was a year ago, it seems more like a lifetime. So much has changed in such a short period of time, and I've faced many fears ranging from my often-paralyzing phobia of illness (I had Covid . . . TWICE . . . this year, as well as a nasty stomach bug) to my consuming fear of death. My anxiety ramped up as a result, as did my battle with OCD. I found myself wanting to stay home more, making excuses not to go out. I took comfort in my work while at the same time feeling burdened by what I read and reported on in the world. I longed for the chance to write my own stories, yet when I was given that opportunity, I often stared at a blank screen. I rejoiced in my daughters' accomplishments as they ventured into their adult lives, while at the same time missing the sweet young girls who used to need me so much. I celebrated my 50th birthday one week with a glorious surprise party thrown by my amazing husband (he spoils me rotten) and surrounded by all my friends, then the next week I held my father's hand, his sickness palpable in the air around us, for the last time. Like the word "nostalgia," 2024 was a year of contradictions.
My 50th birthday surprise, organized by my amazing husband!
Me with my mom, aunt, and dad in 2021, and me holding my dad's hand this year, never wanting to let go.
As a child, my parents were the most important people in my life. They were my protectors, my unwavering supporters. Their arms were always a soft place to fall, and their unconditional love was always present. The "bubble" of love and security that surrounded my brother and I sustained me throughout my childhood and my many awkward years of adolescent uncertainty. It gave me strength during my failures and gave me space to spread my wings. The idea of a life without my parents in it was just . . . unacceptable.
One day when I was driving with my family, the topic of death came up. I don't know why, but I do remember exactly where we were and how we were sitting in the car: I was behind my mother and my brother sat next to me, behind my father. We were on the highway passing my old junior high school. I remember feeling a cold sense of dread trickle into the pit of my stomach when my dad said, "You know, no one lives forever. It is the natural course of life for parents to die before their children."
"I don't want to think about it," I'd said at the time, choosing instead to live in denial. It's not that I thought us invincible, but more that death was something so far in the distant future as to not apply to me or my family in that moment.
"You don't have to think about it for a long time," my mother assured me, and my dad added, "Hopefully when the time comes that something happens to one of us, you won't need us like you do now. Hopefully, you'll have a family of your own."
With age also comes wisdom. I know now, at 50, that growing old isn't a guarantee for anyone. I know that life is unfair, and even the luckiest among us will have to face loss. This is the year that I was touched by loss. It crept up on me, slowly gaining momentum. In 2017, our sweet dog Chloe left us unexpectedly. The memory of her lying on the bed at the vet, staring up at my husband and I, unable even to lift her head, her barely-wagging tail the only part of her body that was able to show her pleasure that we were there, still breaks my heart. We mourned her.
In 2020, my father's mother succumbed to years of dementia-related illness. We mourned her. Also in 2020, my mother's mother slipped away peacefully in her home, a home that had always been one of my favorite places to visit, a month before her 99th birthday. We mourned her.
I believed that, since both my grandmothers had lived to be almost 100, I would have my parents in my life well into their '90s. But in August of 2023, my aunt, my mom's sister, a woman who was like a second mother to me, passed away after a year's battle with brain cancer. Her decline was so rapid it took my breath away. It was like she was there one minute, then gone the next. It left a hole in my heart.
And then, only 7 months later, my father was gone. My father, a man who was always so proactive about his health, who educated himself on any subject he found interesting, who had a zest for life, left us this year in the most unfair way. In his absence, I am no longer the same person I was.
Watching my father slip away before his body gave up was one of the hardest things I've ever had to experience. He was my hero: I idolized him, I turned to him for help, whether financial or emotional, I looked to him for guidance in all things. He had been an aerospace engineer before taking over the family business and growing it to the successful business it is today. Now, he was reduced to a child.
There were moments over the course of almost two years when we thought, "This is the end," but he always rallied . . . though never quite as strong as before. He lost his ability to speak. He fell and broke his hip (a memory of that day will forever be seared in my brain). He became bedridden. He had bouts of pneumonia due to aspiration. When he entered hospice, we took turns sitting at his side, holding his hand. We thought he had days left at that time. He lived another five months. During that time, I talked to him. I talked and talked. I included him in every way I could, telling him the mundane happenings of my day, telling him all about the girls and what they were doing, telling him about my story ideas and what I read in the news and what movies or TV shows Stef and I were watching and what we had for dinner. We watched musicals together and old movies I knew he liked. He didn't respond, but I believed he was still "there."
There were some beautiful moments of clarity, like when we were watching Les Miserable and I was singing and he began to swing his hands in time to the music and he smiled at me, even shaking his head as if thinking, "There goes Melissa, singing again." I never once thought he didn't know who I was. His eyes lit up when I came in the room, and he always stared at me, his eyes following me, expressive even when the rest of him was unable to emote.
But it was also the fear I saw in those eyes when he would cough and not be able to stop, or the defeat I saw on his face when he was still aware yet couldn't control his body and would murmur "I'm done, I'm done," that totally shattered me.
Then there was my mom's diagnosis with breast cancer right before he passed away, and the phone call we received the day after we buried my father that her lumpectomy hadn't removed the cells and she would need a mastectomy. I don't know where my brain was during that time. I was running on pure adrenaline.
My saving grace was having my husband and my daughters to come home to. I often felt guilty leaving my parents' condo and knowing I could put the sight of all the medical supplies and hospital equipment and the constant presence of the aides and the sound of the crime shows they liked to watch aside for a time. Whenever that thought came over me, I felt terrible, because it was such a departure from the days when all I wanted was to be with my parents. And, I knew my mother couldn't escape that reality. It was her reality day in and day out. But within the walls of my home, I had peace and love. I even had laughter. The memory of the conversation I'd had with my parents that long ago day echoed somewhere in my subconscious and I knew they had been right. I was now the wife and mother, and those were my primary roles, and I found comfort and joy in those roles, even as I mourned as a daughter.
I will write eventually about the day my dad left us for good, but I'm not ready to do that now. I will say that the days that followed were like a dream, a blur, my memories of that time incomplete. I know I cried, but I don't remember how much or for how long. I know I slept, something I didn't think I would be able to do. I know I welcomed those who came to the funeral and to my mother's house for Shiva with a smile as though I were a hostess. The love we felt as a family during that time from all our friends was immense, and I will forever be grateful to all those who showed up, whether they sent meals or flowers, or just sent a quick message. It meant so much to us.
This has also been a year of milestones. Going into 2024, we joked that it was going to be "The Year of the Hunters." My husband and I both turned 50 this year. We celebrated our 25 wedding anniversary. My daughters both graduated . . . my oldest from college, my youngest from high school. Over the summer, we took the girls to Rhode Island and showed them where we first fell in love. We walked the campus of URI, where we had our first apartment, an efficiency in the attic of an old building that had once been a frat house. My mother cried the first time she saw it (We have video footage! The quality is broken up but I can still here my dad's voice behind the camera, telling us we will appreciate the video when we look back on it in five years . . . now it's been almost 30!). But we loved it there.
We took the girls to Narragansett Beach, where Stefan and I later lived in an apartment across from the ocean. In the winter months, when the days were short and the vacationers were gone, Stefan and I often had the beach to ourselves. We walked the empty stretch of sand gloved hand in gloved hand, gray skies overhead and a steel ocean spread out before us, the foaming surf crashing against the shore. This was the same beach where we had picnicked on my first trip to Rhode Island, where we ate turkey and brie cheese sandwiches sitting on the wall that curved around the beach, then fell asleep on a towel under the warm August sun in each other's arms, seagulls circling over us in a clear blue sky.
Now, we sat on that beach with our girls. I watched while they braved the icy Atlantic waters. We ate at Aunt Carries, the small cottage restaurant that sold stuffed clams and lobster rolls, and that night we dined at Spain, the fancier restaurant we loved that served calamari and paella. We took them to Newport to see the mansions and walk the old cobblestoned streets. We stared out at the vista of ocean, dotted with sailboats and lighthouses, as we crossed the Newport Bridge.
Our trip to Rhode Island
Comments