This week I went to Cabaret at The Kit Kat Club. a vibrant kaleidoscope of color and sound, performance and intimacy, hatred and love, playfulness and grief. A depiction of a sliver of bright light at the end of the world, the cast of characters, unknowingly, are dancing on a grave. Bursting into song and drinking champagne in the last remaining sliver of light and humanity in impending darkness. At the Kit Kat Club: "Life is beautiful."
Two years ago today my father died. At this very moment 24 months ago, I didn’t know the end of the world was nigh. I was laughing, in fact, doubled over in the hallway of Centennial High School with some of my oldest and dearest friends. My world was technicolor. At least, that’s what my memory tells me.
Last night I dreamed of my father. He was speaking to me, but I couldn’t hear what he was saying to me. I kept asking him to repeat it, and he would, but I still couldn’t hear. The moment replayed over and over until I woke up, a fly buzzing around my face like I was stuck in an Emily Dickenson poem.
This is a recurring dream for the last year. I never can hear what he’s saying, and I fear this is an indication I am forgetting him. Memory is everything to me: a poet, a magician, a cheeky yet well-meaning historian. And while I know the science of memory warns with each retelling we recreate a new version, I still cling to these memories as more fact than fiction, as precious, fragile artifacts. If I let them crumble what will remain?
Lately, last meals intrigue me.
Many last meals include champagne. Princess Diana dined on dover Sole, vegetable tempura, french omelet and champagne. Not too shabby.
I remember my grandmother's last meal. As I was the resident cook in her final days. She was in palliative care in our home, my mother was officially her caretaker, I the caretaker of the caretaker, a significant, albeit nameless role.
There wasn't an official cancer diagnosis until the day after she died. Her brief, mysterious stint in the hospital resulted in her discharging herself against doctor’s wishes. Her reason: “That young man was disrespectful to me.” That young man she was referring to was her Oncologist. Why did she have an Oncologist? None of us knew. Doctor/Patient Confidentiality is tricky when the patient is lucid enough to be both secretive and petulant. The law permitted her the right to privacy, yet now, my mother and I were tasked with changing her bed pan and administering sponge baths. I suppose, in our last days, we are guaranteed our privacy but not our dignity.
Weeks prior Nana was the active, accessorized matriarch at the epicenter of our family. Although, perhaps this too is a false memory. I remember that winter how she offhandedly mentioned experiencing recurring stomach aches. Said all she could keep down was stewed chicken and tomatoes she ate standing up over the sink.
I mistook these comments as the bitter aftertaste of grief not the early signs of an ugly cancer brewing in a woman with little will to live. This was my first experience observing a person grieve with such a raw vulnerability. She shared her sadness with anyone who would listen- a gaping, tender wound she couldn’t bear to bandage. Perhaps merely listening to sadness is not all that is required of us tasked with comforting those in grief.
Winter blossomed into a sleepless spring and as summer rose from her slumber, I helped care for my grandmother intent to cherish each moment. A week passed since she requested food, the last three days of which she slept in extended morphine induced stretches. I sat with her reading aloud passages from her favorite novels and dabbing her cracked lips with a wet pink sponge, my mother upstairs sleeping off her shift.
One day, she awoke alert, a twinkle in her eyes.
She pressed the button to raise herself to an incline and asked me for chicken soup and a snickerdoodle. She declared she needed to see the sun. My father, who was always particularly tender with her, rolled the hospital bed toward the bay windows overlooking the garden. She asked to watch a movie with my mom, Pride and Prejudice.
The one with her boyfriend, Colin Firth. They encouraged me to join, but I quickly felt an outsider watching the two of them more than the film. My mom curled herself up in the hospice bed with my grandmother, her stature shrunken so that now, it was the mother who resembled the child. This rite of passage, distinctly theirs, bookended their relationship as mother and child.
When I returned, my grandmother, exhausted from her field trip, laid in her sick room waiting for her meal. I ladeled a small portion of the broth into a mug, and using one of my daughter’s toddler spoons, I slipped broth between her trembling lips. She smiled, her eyes brimmed with nostalgia.
“You are a wonder! This tastes just like Campbells,” she said. Because I loved her I told her I never received a better compliment.
Instinctively, she reached to pick up the small snickerdoodle off the tray. “Oh, it’s so heavy,” she said. “Yes, this batch came out very heavy. How silly of me. Let me help you.”
Her mouth parted. I broke off a crumb of the cookie and placed it on her tongue. Her lips closed into a small smile and those lapis eyes danced amid tears. “Darlin, these are the best cookies I have ever tasted.”
I remained there with her in the nurses chair holding her hand while she drifted to sleep. A deep sleep from which she never returned. While she didn’t die that night, it was the last time she lived: the last time she spoke to me, the last time her eyes sparkled with light and warmth.
A Gallant Gentleman
My father’s last meal was lasagna, so I’m told. I’m thrilled his last meal was decadent and filling, cheesy and indulgent. They say anger is a stage of grief, but I prefer to think of these stages as waves. And today, the waves of anger and sadness I wade through are that I didn’t share his last meal with him. He was on a dinner date with his wife, and I’m happy that this memory is hers.
But selfishly, I feel a distinct loss that I wasn’t sitting next to him. That our wine glasses didn’t clink in a toast to his health and happiness. That my fingers didn’t twitch in playful pretense toward the bill knowing full well no woman paid for a meal in the presence of Stan Isaacs. In this way, and countless others, he was a gallant gentleman.
Tonight, I’m going to tuck myself into bed and dream that daddy and I are rushing down Broadway and 52nd street arm and arm. We’re laughing at how much money we just splurged on last minute tickets to Cabaret. So silly, the two of us are. In the lounge of the August Wilson Theater, green lights twinkle in the periphery. "So foolish," we giggle, toasting our champagne flutes to future fiscal responsibility.
But you must understand. “Life is disappointing. But here there are no troubles. At the Kit Kat Club. Life. IS Beautiful!”
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