Honoring Molly (15 Years)

With each passing year, these birthday/anniversary of your death letters/blog entries seem get harder to write. I know that I don’t have to continue with them and if I ever choose to stop or take a break that would be okay.

Life feels really heavy and hard right now. As with every age and stage of life (that you sadly have not gotten to experience), in many ways, being in my late 40s is not how imagined or anticipated. There are plenty of things I love about who and where I am on my journey and it helps for me to remind myself often that more than one thing can be true at the same time.

I am not sure what I was expecting and navigating parenting two teenagers (one in college and one in middle school), serving as one of my mom’s/your Grandma Jacquie’s care partners, being a bereaved daughter/mother/niece/friend, working FT again in the traditional workforce (after 18 years as a SAHM) and continuing to adjust to our new home/living in Evanston is difficult.

As M. Scott Peck taught me a long time ago in the opening of his book, The Road Less Traveled, “Life is difficult.” I get it and I am often overwhelmed by the extent to which it feels difficult lately. I am grateful that your dad and I continue to grow and evolve together. That alone makes taking each plot twist as it comes much more manageable.

I am also proud of how I continue to grow and evolve on my own, unlearning things that I was taught, conditioned and/or socialized to believe throughout my life. It is both a liberating and draining experience.

My new therapist has been a working with me on finding more space for me on my plate and letting go of feeling responsible for so many things and people in my life and the world. In recent days and in small ways that looks like me taking a weekly adult Hip Hop class with Gail’s teacher at the studio where they dance, which brings me so much joy and challenges my comfort zone. It also shows up when I reclaim time that I used to feel like belonged to or was owed to others. An example of this being when I choose to read a book on the couch in our sunroom at night sometimes, instead of sitting next to your dad in our living room and watching TV. I have always appreciated simple pleasures in life and continue to see how important they are to my well-being.

Recently I read or heard (I listen to so many audiobooks and podcasts it can be confusing to recall when or where) and was reminded that one of the best things we can do when loved ones are struggling is to take good care of ourselves. In doing this we are able to remain more stable, which gives us the energy to better support our loved ones in healthy ways, as opposed to being enmeshed with them and absorbing/taking their behavior personally or believing it is a reflection on us. I know that writing really helps me to make sense of/find meaning in/process life and I want to prioritize doing that more.

When we moved last year we felt overwhelmed by getting settled into our new home and trying to care for our big and beautiful front, back and side yards. We opted to hire a landscaping/lawn maintence service to help stay on top of everything. We were explicit about wanting them to help tend to the small magnolia plant/tree that we got in May of 2020 in your honor and memory, which appeared to be dying after we transplanted it in front of our kitchen window, to the left of our driveway, near the stone bench in our front yard. However, late fall/early winter last year, I was heartbroken to discover that it was gone. This photo, from about a week before Halloween, is one of the last photos we have when we know for sure that it was still there (albeit without any leaves and looking dormant). I actually didn’t notice it was gone until it had snowed for the first time in late December, which I felt bad about (not realizing sooner).

Our best guess is that when they came to do their “fall clean up,” whomever was working that day didn’t get the memo not to remove it and thought it was a weed/dead branches, so they pulled it up/out, not realizing how important it was to our family and especially your mom/me. I was very angry at the time and even though your magnolia likely would not have survived the winter, I wanted to be there if/when the call was made to uproot it and would’ve liked to be able to save some or all of the branches.

The plan had been to do what we and they could for it, including adding additional fertilizer and watering it, in the hope that it would “come back” this spring. Sadly, it never got the chance to even try. We may get a new one, likely bigger/more mature, someday to plant somewhere around our new home here in Evanston, however, we haven’t decided where would be a good spot yet.

We are not sure that we want to plant a new magnolia in the same place, though I love the idea of the one we lost having shared the same soil and contributed to future nourishment. In some ways it is similar to my carrying you before I carried Gail and how in that way you helped prepare the space where they grew and thrived before being born. Also, since we have decided to save money and care for our property ourselves this year, which is a big undertaking, we are focusing on getting a handle on that first.

As I’ve shared in recent years, your place in my mind/thoughts isn’t what it is used to be and I know that’s okay. 15 years is a long time and though I have learned to live without you and will never forget you, your death doesn’t weigh me down as much as it did early on.

It’s still very bittersweet for me to imagine who you would be today — a 9th grader/freshman in high school. If you had lived longer would that have changed our family’s trajectory? Pondering such questions can certainly be a mind bending exercise. Would we still have moved to E-town sooner or later and you’d be at ETHS or might we have stayed in Chicago, were you’d have found a high school there that was a good fit for you?

What would you be passionate about? What types of extracurricular activities might you choose to participate in? How would you identify in this time when (thankfully) many in our culture are embracing a wider range of options/vocabulary to help people express who they are?

This year we celebrated you during Sean and Gail’s Spring/Easter Breaks in a number of ways over a few days, instead of choosing one “Molly Day.” This made sense to us, especially with Sean being away at Marquette in their freshman year of college. We all agreed you’d have enjoyed the musical and the play that we went to see: The Book of Mormon and A Soldier’s Play, as well as as our visit to the Art Institute (though Sean and Gail were tired by the time we got there) and most of all our first time having dinner at Ed DeBevic’s since they reopened in their new location in downtown Chicago! We celebrated some of our early “Molly Days” at the old Ed’s restaurant, which was always a favorite of mine (especially when I was a teenager).

We also flew a kite near your grave at the cemetery for the first time, which was fun. Your dad and I found a beautiful orange butterfly shaped/designed kite at a grocery store, which seemed like a nice addition for our visit close to the time of your your birthday/the 15th anniversary of your death this year. It reminded me some of when we used to release balloons, before we knew about how they can harm the environment/animals and stopped.

I think you’d enjoy the games our family plays — some of our favs being Catan, Monopoly, Hearts and Poker, as well as the TV series and movies that we like to watch together — from Ted Lasso to Rock the Block (on HGTV) and many more. I also believe you’d be a musical theater super fan, as Sean, Gail and I are, and would’ve loved finally getting to see Jagged Little Pill last week (which Grandma Jacquie, Gail and I were supposed to see on Broadway in July 2020, during our NYC trip that got cancelled).

You Oughta Know that Gail and I were Head Over Feet to get to experience it again last night! Thank U, Broadway in Chicago Ticket Lottery. We were definitely Smiling and it wasn’t Ironic! Your Grandpa Kevin would love my word-play there and I was pretty proud of myself coming up with a similar caption (incorporating Alanis Morissette’s song titles) when I shared some photos on social media of Gail and my arrival at the Nederlander Theater.

15 years later, you continue hold a special place in my heart. When I allow myself to really think about your short life and death, it is still painful and hard for me to wrap my brain around. I have always found comfort and validation through listening to music and some of my favorite artists are those who can capture the human experience in powerful and relatable ways, including the Indigo Girls, Sara Bareilles and Ed Sheeran, as well as more recently Taylor Swift. This song, “Bigger Than the Whole Sky,” from her most recent album, Midnights (3am Edition), resonates with me: