The Circle of Life

Can sadness and happiness coexist?  When Mark was diagnosed with a terminal illness, it was during one of the happiest times of our lives. It felt as if I was living a nightmare that I could not wake up from. I was overwhelmed with panic. I had never had anything so devastating happen to me. A little ominous voice in my head was saying over and over again, “well, looks like your luck ran out.” 

Two years ago, my life was full of joy and dreams realized. We were on a cruise with our whole family celebrating my retirement, Lindsay’s 40th birthday and Kim and Dave’s engagement. We were also planning Kim’s wedding, five months away, which I wanted to make spectacular because we were so ecstatic that she found the love of her life. 

As a mother, I never leave anything up to fate; I always feel that I need to put something out into the universe that will push things along. Coincidentally, when I was working in Las Vegas, I saw these beautiful trees of life made out of crystals at a stand in the strip mall outside of my hotel. The lady who worked at the stand told me that the crystals had a special energy and each tree comes with a piece of paper in the shape of a hamsa.  She explained that I should write something that I wanted to happen on the hamsa and put it under the tree and it would come true. She carefully instructed me to write it as if I would see it in the future. I bought it. I figured,  what have I got to lose?  

I was living in North Carolina at the time and Kim was still living and working in New York City. I missed her terribly. After I carefully drafted the words in my head, I wrote on the hamsa, “Kim is living and working in NC.” I still had some space left so, I added,  “and in love and getting married.”  I secretly put the hamsa under the crystal tree of life and put it on a shelf on my etagere. Soon after, Kim quit her job and moved to NC, where she landed a job in her field almost immediately in an extremely prestigious university. A couple of years later she met Dave. Mark and I decided to move to Florida in the summer of 2021. Kim moved in with Dave. My tree of life with the hamsa sitting underneath and my carefully constructed words came with me to Florida and sat on a new floating shelf in my villa. In July of 2022, Dave proposed to Kim. And to this day,  I have no doubt that my little tree and that hamsa had something to do with all this. 

There are two specific things I will always remember from that cruise that foreshadowed good and bad events in my life.  One was when Dave and I were in the fitness area getting a smoothie and he turned to me and said, “Give me three months after this wedding and I’m going to make your daughter so pregnant.”  The other was on December 23, 2022. We were at our last port in Labadee, Haiti.  As we got off the boat and walked to the beach, Mark turned to me and said, “I have something I want to tell you. I haven’t been feeling well. I’ve been getting very short of breath lately.”  That moment, those words will always be the beginning of the end of my love story..  

In those two years since December 23, 2022, my daughter married the love of her life and I lost the love of mine. My children lost their father and my grandchildren lost their papa. My family navigated our individual and collective journeys through profound grief. When one of your immediate family members is no longer with you, it’s like a permanent fracture, like a tear in the fabric of your life that is irreparable. I had a hard enough time dealing with my grief but when I saw the pain in my children and grandchildren’s eyes, it was sometimes more than I could bear. And yet, even through the sadness, I realized, this pain originated from love. Love is the only way we can keep our loved ones who’ve passed alive.  

I grew up without a living grandfather.  I always considered my children and grandchildren blessed because they grew up with both grandfathers and grandmothers.  My paternal grandfather was a legend. Like Mark, he was sick the day my mom got married but he walked her down the aisle and died months afterwards.  He lived to see 13 of his 18 grandchildren and then he lived within his wife, children and grandchildren.  My grandma, my mom, my aunts and uncles, and my cousins brought him back to life in the stories about him that they kept alive, stories I have told to my own children and grandchildren.  Because of this, I genuinely felt that I knew him. I knew he was a handsome, compassionate, loving, and funny man. I want my future grandchildren to learn about their papa the way I learned about my grandpa.    

My birthday this year was tinged with sadness because it was the first one without Mark.  However, when I got a facetime call from Kim and Dave showing me a positive pregnancy test, I was happy beyond words.  And I didn’t even put this part on my hamsa. Luckily, Kim’s pregnancy was uneventful and went by very fast.  Exactly two years following Mark’s foreboding news on December 23, 2022, Kim told me that she was experiencing stronger contractions than the Braxton Hicks ones she had been experiencing.  She had her weekly doctor’s appointment at 10:45am and when the doctor examined her she was four centimeters and 80% effaced. The doctor told us to stay close to the hospital (right next door to the doctor’s office) and time the contractions.  We went to breakfast and then walked around the supermarket and then went to get coffee. The contractions got stronger and when we returned to the doctor, her water broke, right in the public bathroom.  This was at 1:54pm.  Unfortunately, even though Kim was 8 centimeters dilated, the doctor determined the baby had flipped and was breech. She had to perform an emergency c-section. They delivered a healthy 5 lb. 12 oz. baby boy at 4:19pm, named Julian Mark.  Mother and baby are fine and arrived home on Christmas day.  Welcome to our world, my tiny magnificent grandson. You will always be my most treasured Hanukkah/Christmas gift.  

Julian’s timing was absolutely perfect. December 23 will now be one of the happiest days of my life. Yes, sadness and happiness can coexist, as long as we focus on what we have rather than what we miss and instead of being bitter about what we’ve lost, be grateful for what we’ve gained. Julian will know he is named after his Papa Mark and he will “know” him from all the photos, videos, and stories that will bring him to life as we tell them over and over again, just like I got to know my grandpa. No one really completely dies when their memory is carried on through those who loved them. 

Happy New Year, dear readers. I don’t have Mark but I do happen to have a date with this very adorable, albeit toothless, little man, who cries a lot and poops his pants. Still, he fills my heart with so much joy.