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In A Day
By Stephanie Kemp

Isn’t it funny?

Amazing?
Paralyzing?
Impossible?

All that can happen in a day?

In an hour?
In a head?
In the world?

The big one,
The one on your street,
The one you keep trying to make,

In the life you (get to) live?

________


It is a Monday morning. MLK day.  There is no school, many places are closed, my neighbor calls it a Gift Day.

I sit at the dining room table while the water boils and wonder what my two daughters actually know about Martin Luther King.

What their mom actually knows about Martin Luther King.

Beyond the movement, the speeches, the lessons in school, the life, the death.

The Dream….

What else do we know?

(See what I mean about all that can happen in a head, even in 2 minutes?)

________

When I sat down and typed January 16, 2023, I didn’t even realize it was MLK day.

I just wanted to mark my mother and father-in-law coming over for dinner last night in the wild California rain.

The udon soup my husband made.

The new chopsticks that are too slippery to grab a fucking noodle.

The way my daughters looked sitting at our dining room table now, as the young women they have become, listening to gM and Poppa talk about their upcoming trip to Africa, rather than exploding teenage stories of their own onto the dinner table conversation:

Boys.
Girls.
Stolen Sky Writing.
College.
Rock Band (or not).
Alex G.
Bobby (the song, not the cousin)
PARIS…(although the cute waiter did get a mention).

But then the teenager who still lives inside of me whispered (just between the two of us):  

Why would they want to talk about any of these things with their parents and grandparents?

(But we should have at least talked a little bit about the catacombs!)

________

Did I mention we are lucky?
________

It is also my best friend’s birthday. I wanted to mark that, too.

It is her first birthday since her sister died. I miss her. My friend, and her sister, whom I hadn’t seen in over 20 years.

When I think of this sister, I think of chocolate chip cookies, car keys, and a Weight Watchers daily tracker sitting next to each other on the kitchen counter one day after school (even though I never knew who made the cookies or was on WW, except me, later).  

This sister was a nurse. She was already a grown up while my friend and I were stuck on the other side of the fence (literally - the one behind their house) in middle school.

I thought this sister could steer the universe.

I also thought hers was an awesome way to live:

Deliciousness and adventure, accompanied by accountability and (mostly) good food choices.

And taking care of people.

Plus I thought she looked like Caroline Kennedy.

She was beautiful.

________

The other Caroline Kennedy popped into my head this morning for a different reason (stay with me):

Lisa Marie Presley died.

After the Golden Globes.

Where a boy/man who played her father in a new movie won an award, reminding the world, through a kind(er) lens - once again - about Elvis.

I remember reading an article that Caroline Kennedy wrote in Rolling Stone about Elvis’s funeral.

I thought it was mean.

I was 10.
Lisa Marie was 9.

I thought Caroline Kennedy was judging Elvis. His lifestyle. His roots. I felt protective of him, even though I was more of a Beatles girl and didn’t come to appreciate his music until I heard Suspicious Minds in college and then became obsessed with the Sun Sessions in my twenties.

(I will have to track down the Rolling Stone article on the interweb, to see if this assessment is correct. At 55, I don’t like to misrepresent things or lie, unless necessary.)

Mostly I remember thinking, at the time, how relieved I was that Lisa Marie was only 9 and that she probably wouldn’t even read the article.

________

Lisa Marie died last week, after going into cardiac arrest at home, even though her ex-husband did CPR until the ambulance arrived.

She had quietly lived with this ex-husband since their son died by suicide 3 years ago.

Her son was 27.
She was 54.

You can die of heartbreak, even if they call it cardiac arrest.

Still the mind wanders….(I will let it - as today is a gift).

________

I remember hearing that Lisa Marie’s daughter became a certified death doula after her brother’s suicide, to help her through her grief. This stuck with me because I had never heard of a death doula until my mom died, after her amazing hospice nurses helped me and my sisters get through that (potentially only) devastating time.

This daughter is beautiful. I notice, in every picture (she is an actress) how much she looks like her mom.  And how she picked up the smile that her mom had to put down, at age 9, when her dad died.

I hope this daughter can hold on to it.

________

Her smile reminds me and takes me backwards in time to my friend, N.

N was also a death doula (or en route to becoming one), before she died of cancer.  (She was also a healer, in every sense of the word.) I didn’t know these things at the time because she was a new friend. But I got to see that she wasn’t afraid to die. She was a whole person, fully intact, until the very end. Her sense of self and wicked humor were in charge at her funeral. (The humor played in and through the heartbreak, not in competition or in place of it).

I was heartbroken for N’s sons and husband, but her very real presence and residual strength alleviated some of the weight of this - for me - in that moment. I could see a path for them to be ok, somehow, someday. She had paved it.

I didn’t, however, see this path for her mom, who was at a very different funeral.

Her heartbreak was raw.

She was the first and last person to kiss N’s cheek in this life.

She had no room for humor, but plenty of space for the rage that she would feel every Tuesday at 7pm for the rest of her life as she relived her daughter taking her last breath.

Where is her path?
What is her path?

Breathe, Stephanie………

________

During a soup sipping break in conversation at last night’s dinner, I brought up the idea of learning more about death doulas. (I didn’t mention that I had looked up the school* that Lisa Marie’s daughter went to to get her certification.)  When I think about all the different things I (still) want to do, death doula-ing consistently pops up. My mother-in-law said she could think of nothing worse. I noted (in the moment) that her dismissal didn’t bother me in the least. (Nor did it bother me when she confessed that she couldn’t stand funny tv shows or humorous personal essays!)

Undeterred, I went on to share that I also think I might want to become a phlebotomist, as we moved on to Canter’s desserts and tea, everyone grateful to be done with the chopstick portion of the evening.

Still having a genuinely good time, we all agreed that I would be a good doctor. (My father-in-law is a doctor. He knows that I would only be good at the bedside manner part, but was kind enough not to point this out in the moment. I would also be terrible at the the actual art of phlebotomy.)

________

Did I mention that we are lucky?

________

I am not afraid of death, at least my own. (But I reserve the right to take this back, at any time, under any circumstances, wherever, whenever, forever.)

I am interested in death. In helping people (myself included) not be afraid of it.

This could be because:

I learned early about death (my cousin died, when I was 12).
I lost a son (stillborn at 7 months).
I lost my dad one week after I was told, for the first time, that  he had cancer.
I had cancer (real enough to terrify me, kind enough to come with clear margins).
I lost my mom in slow motion, over the course of several years and illnesses and mindsets and tears and laughs.

Or it could be because I listen/ed to the grown ups:

“In this world…..nothing is certain but death and taxes.”

I am (still) a believer in listening to the grown ups, especially if you are lucky enough to (still) have them.

(I am also lucky that my husband does our taxes…and that I read Amy Bloom’s beautiful book, In Love, so I know about both dignity and Dignitas, as viable - and possible - end of life options.)

________

Just before dinner last night I went on a rainy walk on the top of our little mountain and listened to a podcast with Anne Lamott and Kelly Corrigan (two of my favorite writers, when I’m not mad at them for writing all the books I wish I had written, but mostly Bird by Bird and The Middle Place).

They talked about faith, why are we here, being present, paying attention.

As I listened to their words while I walked, my umbrella and I got to:

• sneak in a loop at the Self Realization Fellowship after hours (the gate was still open and I turned off the podcast - I don’t break rules when it comes to self realization).

• pass an old friend’s house (still grateful that his son was ok after that scary field trip to Disney Hall - separate essay).

• see that someone is renovating another old friend’s house (a friend who passed away during the pandemic, several years after our daughters performed magic tricks together at the 4th grade talent show).

• spit over the white fence at Kite Hill, which has become a ritual, since the first time I did it with yet another friend whose dad died after leaving her (and her brother, sister and mom) for a new wife and family.  I think of this friend (and spit) every time I take this walk, while also thinking of her dad (and mine), remembering that there is another certainty in this world:

Every life is complicated.

________

I wish I could keep writing (this is true!), but now I have to:

• make breakfasts for my teenagers (and by have to, I mean want to)

• call my friend and wish her a happy birthday and see how she is doing on this (and every) day without her sister even though I know she will be somewhere out in nature with her (other) best friends, drinking champagne

• re-read the poem that my father-in-law brought me last night (Incident of the French Camp, by Robert Browning). Maybe I will tell him my secret (that I don’t like most poems), but I doubt it. Especially because this was his way of letting France be part of our dinner conversation. (He knows teenagers too, as he also still has one living inside of him.)

• buy new chopsticks

• find Caroline Kennedy’s article and see if it was mean

• write down these words from Anne and Kelly’s podcast:  

    “I am not here to be a human do-ing.”

This will remind me that this is (I am) enough.

(And that Today is a Gift!)

……..But then, I will be reminded (by MLK. Jr.) that:

    “This is no time for apathy or complacency. This is a time for vigorous and positive action.”

________

Shit.

See what I mean about what can happen in a day?

Hour?

Head?

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to head out into the world and be of service.

And then I am taking my inner teenager (and any other teenager that wants to go) for a bike ride.

We will listen to music.

________

*Sacred Crossings Institute, Los Angeles



Photo courtesy of Bobby and Alex G.