When I was very young I picked up a dead bird.
I don't really know why I picked up a dead bird.
I can speculate as to why I picked up a dead bird. I saw it there near this big patch of rocks by my driveway which I had cleverly called "the rock pond." I was playing a game I called "Rebecca" in which you pretend you are a girl named Rebecca and essentially that is how you play the game "Rebecca."
I digress.
So I'm playing the game "Rebecca" and Rebecca notices a stark black "thing" at the edge of the rock pond near the telephone pole (near a telephone pole no less!)
NOTE: I am going back to first person now. I just want it to be clear that I am Rebecca and Rebecca is me and we are one and the same according to the rules of Rebecca.
So yeah, I notice this black thing and just casually make my way over to it and realize it is this big ole black crow totally frozen with rigor-mortis, belly up.
Disgusting right? Well nothing is too disgusting for Rebecca. Who is me.
I'd never seen anything dead before, and don't think I actually knew what "dead" meant. The word didnt exist to me yet...but this bird...I knew it wasn't fake...a Halloween decoration or a toy. To me it was just a bird that was no longer living. I dunno what it was doing.
I had no concept of death at this point in my life. To me this crow was not dead. It was just not alive. It was not breathing or cawing or flying or being actively ugly rather than passively ugly.
For whatever reason, I knew I had to pick it up. I brought it up the steps of the porch to show my dad who I instinctively knew would yell at me. But I strutted down the breezeway like I was hot shit and shouted for my dad to "come look at the stick I found!"
Oh yeah. A stick. Real smooth.
He came to the door and looked at me like I was bleeding out or something, shouting for me to put it down and carrying me to the sink to SCRUB my hands.
He, of course, explained to me that this was not a stick (which I'm pretty sure we both knew I was aware of before) and that it was dead.
Dead.
Now I knew "dead". You could be alive and you could be dead. Simple enough. Thanks, Dad!
This memory comes back to me a lot. I've thought of it more and more since my spin in the cancer boat. With all of the death I had going on around me, I had to approach my thoughts about death in a different way. Especially because until this point, it wasn't really something I had to think about too often with regards to my own death.
These were kids dying around me. Kids I was sitting beside one moment and then...gone.
The idea of a "higher power" putting people through this and then making them "dead" didnt make sense to me. I dont know what I believe in...but if there is a higher power, then I couldn't accept that he (or she) was just making them "cease to exist." So I started reminding myself that I just don't know what happens-what the opposite of "alive" truly entails. My coping mechanism has been to stop thinking of them as "dead" when all I really know about their state of being is that they are not alive.
Like the crow...brilliant right, see how I tied it all together?
I write this post from a pancake house in Virginia at 6:15 am. I am sitting next to a guy named Chip and jot down these thoughts in a composition notebook covered in Strawberry Shortkake glitter stickers. (You'll have to forgive me friends. I'm currently reading Lena Dunham's memoir and she is a huge fan of random, quirky details that don't necessarily contribute importance but do make the sentence unnecessarily long. Love you Lena. Yes, I am jealous). I came to the pancake house right when it opened at six, following the news that my Godfather passed away just around 4:15. My uncle Harry. Lovingly referred to as simply Harry.
I hadn't been sleeping anyway because I knew that this news was short on it's way. I'm on a six week contract in the middle of what feels like nowhere without a single person to cry on or to, so what else would I do but write over French toast next to Chip? Thinking about dead crows that aren't dead...or are they?
I don't friggin know.
My Godfather and I go way back. Yes, all the way to my baptism back, but also to a day that in my mind was an even bigger moment for me both because I actually remembered it and because it was Spice Girls related.
I was very young--somewhere in my Rebecca and the crow days. I was at the mall with my parents, my aunt,
and with Harry, when I happened upon a pink and white Spice Girls watch with an elastic wristband. I had lived long enough to know that I was probably gonna grow up to be Scary, Baby, Ginger, or Poshy (yeah, I insisted on calling her Poshy for awhile until she cut her hair and then for some reason something changed in me). But I would obviously need this watch to be whoever it was I was supposed to become and fulfill my platform boot destiny (oh yeah I was very philosophical in those days).
My parents, cruel as they are, told me that it was too close to Christmas for little gifts like this, and that I'd have to wait. But I knew in my heart that the watch wouldn't wait. It'd be gone. So I cried and sulked the rest of the outing while frantically humming "Saturday Night Divas" as a means of calming myself down (I had Spice Girl schizophrenia).
When it came time for us to part ways with Harry and my aunt, Harry grabbed my hand and pressed the watch into it. He grunted, "here."
It was a Spicy miracle.
But what it really, truly did was set the tone for our relationship. I was his Goddaughter, and that
made me special, he was my godfather and that made him special. There was a smile and twinkling of the eyes that was reserved only for me. This was something we always shared.
One year ago, we came to share another thing.
We shared cancer.
Of course, everyone's battle is their own, and no two could ever really be alike, but just as my baptism linked us, our cancers linked us.
It's tricky though. Being a 23 year old whose been around the block with cancer before, to then encounter someone older than you being diagnosed--let alone a family member you look up to. You dont know how to be. You want to say, "hey I can kind of relate to some of the things that you are going through, but I'm not going to tell you that because why would you want to hear from a stupid twenty-something how she relates to what you're going through"?
But the first time he saw me after his diagnosis, he called me over and said "hey, I need a hug from YOU." And I knew that that's how our odd similarity would be acknowledged. I'd take my cues from him.
Our "cancer talk" was always very hush hush. Our chemo banter very staccato and quick:
"Head gets cold."
"Yup."
"Fingers are tingly."
"Oh yeah."
"Can't taste cake."
"Nope."
"The ice tastes like--"
"Metal."
"Yeah."
That was all. That was all it took.
I've been feeling so guilty about how happy these conversations made me feel. Over the years our family has gotten bigger, Harry has grandchildren now, and I know that goddaughters and granddaughters are very different. Not to say I was no longer important--but you know what I mean.
I wish the content of the conversations was a bit cheerier but it made me really happy in a sorts that my having had cancer before gave us those little conversations. They were quick and brief but made me feel helpful in a way that I don't really understand but am actually grateful for. They're some of my last conversations with him.
People talk about survivors guilt. Yeah it exists but I didn't feel that with Harry. I felt glad that we could have the connection. And maybe a little guilt.
Because its there somewhere inside you. The guilt exists. I sometimes wake up, and touch my cheekbones with the flats of my hand and say, "you still here?"
I'm still here.
Minus one.
Minus a crow.
Minus a watch.
Rebecca taught me that just because something is no longer living that doesnt make it dead.
Words of a Spice Girls schizo...but still...
Ps. Harry--may your head be warm, your fingers untingly, may the cake taste sweet and the ice cubes fresh as a fountain. I love you.
