Stream of Consciousness

Oingo Boingo is playing on 101.1. I’m driving home from work and it’s either very late at night or very early in the morning. It is not a natural time to be driving home from work, but I like that. I like the empty streets, I feel like I’m cheating all the cogs in the wheel jammed together on a freeway while the sun melts away in their rear view mirrors. Everyone alone, following one another, doing precisely the same thing.

I don’t like to do the same things as everyone else. This has been a hard thing to realize about myself. Because it calls in a lot of judgement from others. And if you let all the others in, it can feel lonely, sometimes even break your spirit. But it shouldn’t. All judgement is, is a confession originated from personal history. It had nothing to do with you and everything to do with the person making the judgements.

“Hi Aunt Donna,” I say into the humid night air. All my windows are down and I can see the moon- the one bright light in the dark sky. Even if city lights drown out the stars, they never can dim the moon really. Or maybe they can but I’ve never paid attention to that. I’ve only been paying attention to when the moon is on full display, far far away from us all, but watching us all the same. It’s a good position to be in, I think- far enough away to not have to participate, but able to observe and shine light. I would love to be the moon.

“Did you want to be the moon too Aunt Donna?” I ask her. I’m not crazy for talking to her. I think we all need to talk to those who have become memories, because truly in my heart, in the marrow of my bones, I believe they are listening. They never truly leave us. Not in a haunting way, but in the way that provides proof that there is more to who we are and why we are here. They are showing us, hoping we listen- hoping we see. One day we all will be up there with the moon, watching the ones we’ve left behind, sending them messages, giving them hope, reminding them.

A month before Noah was born, my Aunt Donna hung herself from a swing set in her beautiful backyard. She had one of those ever expansive yards with windy paths around different gardens, flowers, vegetables, a view of the mountains, a yard you could be in and just experience quiet. In the hospital, laboring, I thought of this. Of her garden. Of her deciding to do it, of gathering the materials, of wrapping rope around her neck. Was she calm? Did she cry? It’s all her secret. She chose such a brutal way in such a beautiful space. We will never truly know why.

Alone in the hospital (because of Covid) I thought of her in between the waves of pain as Noah was preparing to enter the world and begin his life. I think there is some saying that we enter this world alone and we leave this world alone, but that is simply not true. Every soul enters the world with their mother, and every soul leaves this world having gained a life, having been someone to someone, we always leave this world with a lot, even if we leave too early.

I kept thinking of Nunu, my grandfather and my Aunt’s Dad. He had passed years and years ago, and thank God because Aunt Donna’s death would have killed him. Nunu was a man of faith, he stayed married to his wife who is kind of a terror (sorry grandma sorry!) for his whole life and sometimes I wonder what he could have been had he not married her, who my grandma might have been. Aunt Donna may not have even existed. None of us would, including me. Or what would his life look like had my grandma and him separated at one point? What great love stories they both may have lost out on.

I wonder why some love stories are meant to last forever while some only exist for a certain amount of time, and why others are meant to transform and change into different types of love- what that transmutation is supposed to teach us about love and its powers.

I wonder why my grandparents love story was meant to last. Maybe for all of us to exist in exactly the way we do in this moment in time. Are we all supposed to be doing something spectacular? Meaningful? Are we fulfilling the prophecy? Are we doing it? When he passed, our whole family realized the house was dark now, there was no light in the rooms helping us to see one another clearly.

The juxtaposition of new life and the abrupt ending of one’s own life stirred something deep deep within me and it started in that hospital room. I would never be the same and it wasn’t because I was becoming a mother. It’s most likely not something you are really supposed to be thinking about when you are becoming a parent- what if they become so hopeless and sad that they want to kill themselves? Could there be no other greater failure as a parent?

There are two sides to me, one that lives in the dark house and one where I am the light in the house. There are very few people who can understand how that can possibly be. I know if my mom had been in that labor room with me she would have known. And I think that’s why she wasn’t there.

Silvio grew up without his father. It’s a deep wound he would rather not explore, he knows what to say to sound evolved and healed, but I see Noah truly healing him- filling up empty spaces with love and second chances. I see what God did.

Nothing is random given enough time. Even absence.

Being so overwhelmed with sadness and shock while having to deliver Noah into the world and begin my life as his mother was like finally having the physical proof of the dark and the light that I constantly see, that I constantly am studying.

Nunu was not a failure as a father- furthest thing from it. And Aunt Donna’s death was not proof that life is tragic but more proof of its fragility. And Noah? Noah is my hope.

Life is not a game. It’s not something to play, it’s something to be felt. I think once you start wanting life to end is when you think you’re losing the game somehow, not just simply feeling all of it.

And death is not to be feared- that is if you are truly living.

In August of 2023, my cousin Eric died of an overdose. Another child, my Aunt and Uncle’s child, my cousins brother and best friend, taken away too soon.

Anger can live dormant inside of you without detection for awhile. It emerges in different ways, but until you face what’s making you angry, it will always just live there, inside of you, waiting to sabotage things. I can’t imagine anything will be more important to me than Noah, and the absence of the celebration of it all (because of COVID), combined with the experience of inconceivable loss and incredible gain simultaneously left me angry. It left me lost. As if I had traveled to a part of the world no one I knew had discovered yet, there was no one with a map that could guide me back. Except there were, I just hadn’t found them yet.

I wonder what Aunt Donna would be doing right now if she had fought just one more day for her life, what Eric would be doing if he had given up the things that helped him escape- if he had been able to find peace another way. Who they would have met. I think of who they did not get a chance to meet. Who doesn’t exist because they don’t anymore. The endless possibilities they had stretched out in front of them like the ocean. The uncertainty that got in their way. The hope they lost faith in.

But maybe their lives never really ended, as long as we are all still here. As long as I am driving home on an empty freeway, listening to my Aunt’s favorite band, talking to her, asking her things I wish I had asked her when she could have answered and then realizing she is answering because her song came on the radio, and I still remember her.

Maybe we are here to remember.

Even though Noah will never meet her, he will still know her, through me. She is still apart of his story. She will always exist in our universe.

I park and walk to my apartment underneath the big round mysterious moon, at peace with the uncertainty of it all, ok with only having a map of the past and not one to follow into the future, leaving room for divine intervention, for miracles. Understanding that I’ll never understand it all, ok with feeling it all. Knowing that to survive is to begin again tomorrow with hope. I unlock the door and walk through my apartment, sometimes, in the darkness, stepping on a toy Noah absentmindedly left out, or misjudging space and bumping into the corner of a table, sometimes walking a clear path without being able to see, and I turn on a light.