Dear Julia -- if it’s any consolation, and I suspect it isn’t-- i eulogized my wife Fran on Friday. All the words were said between us and feelings expressed, with honesty, humor, anger and directness. And she died at home--everyone’s dream but hers. She wanted more life. That’s all.
But the pain of loss is brutal. Whether “late” or “anticipated” or “pre-planned” or in “fucking retrospect”.
When I retrieve them, I’m hoping that scattering her ashes in a ocean she loved and in which she swam and gamboled like a fish in will be right on time. I hope you find peace. I hope I find peace.
Thank you for these kind words and I am so very sorry for your loss. I have other essays in The Mortality Shot that involve the more anticipated kinds of death as well. The collection this comes from is about grief and loss of all kinds, awareness of mortality from youth to getting older...be well and yes grief is a long road. I wish you well on it.
Julia— I received a very flowery Jacquie Lawson card yesterday that simply said “Dear Irwin, You are on a very long”. No matter how many times I reopened it, that’s all it said. I thought it was either fucking profound or the missing word was “leash”. As a result, i issued an edict that henceforth all cards from that originator be referred to as “Jackie Mason” cards and read through his “lens”. Thanks for the referrals to essays about other forms of grief. I’m deep into this one.
Thank you Sari. I am flooded with memories, many of them of her suffering for 30 years with 4 cancers and every conceivable treatment. I hope those wash away like sand in a in a kid’s beach sieve and what remains will beautiful shells and ocean-polished glass and the occasional skittle of a tiny crab. That will be her.
We were right there with you. Recalling the things unsaid. The true reverence never or inadequately expressed. For me it is especially about the ‘real’ dad, the one who mattered. Thanks for laying it out here and sharing the grappling. We now revere your David dad. And as a photographer I love the portrait of the two of you. Both so clearly comfortable with each other.
Isn't it always that way? I lost my younger brother, with whom, to euphemize, I had a sibling rivalry, though it wasn't till after he died that I reckoned how much I had loved him, at least most of the time. How the hell did I not see that more cleartly? Then the aneurysm. Then my remembering some of the things I fought about with him and thinking, "God! How important was THAT?" And then no way to make restitution, except to his kids, beloved niece and nephew. Beautifully rendered. Thank you!
Thank you so much for your kind and honest reply. It is amazing these moments when we see so clearly and it is in this world too late. But yes the amends living can be made as you are doing. As I try to do. And hoping that it is known in other realms and can heal. Be well. 🧡
Okay now I am in tears. The love, the self-awareness (even if acquired too late) is blinding.
If there is one thing I know it's that he KNOWS. The light that we are is never lost. It only transforms and once out of and past its human focus takes all that it has learned and all that it has to share and wraps it around us like an old, comforting blanket.
This is not a religious thing - it is simply what I have come to feel and know through my own experiences (yes a long story). But I believe that if you are quiet and present and willing to simply "be" you will feel it too. It's clear to me that you are writing with the help of that love and awareness already. Thank you for sharing. It was a gift.
Thank you for sharing this essay. It gutted me, revealing the gulf between me and my father and the foundational truth that despite everything, he deeply loves me.
Sending love to you. It's a lot. I know. I have written elsewhere and in other parts of this book about losing my biological father, which was gut wrenching even tho we barely knew each other. These relationships run so deep. 🧡
I hope you can forgive yourself -- I am sure David loved you so much and -- perhaps he didnt see fatherhood as a zero-sum game after all? Sending peace, R
Yes, it’s gotten me this far. Fran’s been in hand to hand battle with cancer for 30 years. I’ve been privileged to be in the trenches with her. And in between battles we traveled, made lasting friendships all over the world, did meaningful work and raised but didn’t co-produce 3 wonderful humans. I am grieving but still feel lucky. Is that one of your categories? Either way, I’d prefer not to communicate via Substack if you’d like. I have a new book “Men as Friends” (Koehler) also about loss and also funny. Targeted to men but discerning women have loved it as well. Humor is the only way I could ever manage. <iepstein@hunter.cuny.edu>🤷🏼♂️🙏🏻🪷
Thanks also for the reminder that the clock is ticking and the grains of sand through the hourglass are falling all too quickly.
Amends. Unfinished business between siblings who do not speak. Me, mine. Alcoholism is the equal opportunity destroyer. Not my issue personally but it's a family diss-ease and the insanity tore us all apart. We were all good kids brilliant kids beautiful kids shining funny creative genius kids who deserved to be loved properly and kept safe. We weren't. And four traumatized wounded geniuses entered the world Stage Left and instead of rising to their potential, sank to depths of self loathing and despair.
How will I feel if I get the phone call that my favorite brother has died and I never had a chance to say I was sorry for that one unspeakably bad thing I did when we were kids that hurt him. It would tear me apart and I don't think I would ever get over it pain would be so great. We were always so close. (Even though he became a vicious, mean spirited alcoholic in his later years ~ his sweet juicy heart swallowed up by the hard boozing, dominating, lowlife red neck rascist bimbo he took up with when he suddenly left L.A. that he loved and moved to Florida where his viper girlfriend with ties to the mob lived ~ and he became someone we don't know~ very different from the fun, hysterically funny life of the party who kept us all in stiches he once had been) It was one of the things that broke my heart. Losing John.
I have to find a way now. I just have to break the ice of this frozen wall of tundra that separates us and reach his heart with my heart. I owe him that gift and I owe it to myself so I don't have to carry it anymore.
It's so hard. Alcoholism is a horror. I am 36 years sober and so grateful for that. I started in Al Anon which has helped me with my relationships to other alcoholics. It's a long road to true forgiveness and it's fraught with peril. Sometimes spiritual bypass (pretending one has forgiven someone), sometimes putting oneself in danger in a zeal to forgive. A friend wisely said "you can't forgive anyone you are still afraid of" and I think she is right. I have to ensure my own safety before venturing this and sometimes amends means cutting ties for a time anyway. All the forgiveness that has come to me has been a gift from doing the hard spiritual work of coming into my own reality and feeling All the feelings. I doubt I am telling you anything you don't already know. Just sharing back as generously as you have shared. Be well. 🧡
Julia, you are really something! The something David knew that you were. I loved reading this. As I sip my morning Yorkshire Gold, I feel the fierce fire of your spirit burning through all that is not true to reveal a huge, true, pulsing shining heart of pure gold that says,
I LOVE!!! DON'T MESS WITH ME!!!!
Thank you for finding and sharing your true voice with us. Many things I read bore me. You didn't. This because you speak authentically from your bones. So thanks for that. I remember the Vineyard before the McMansions and my little magic cottage I paid 400 a month for. So I get it. Just losing that cottage was tragedy enough not to mention all the human losses - too many to count. In the past decade, all the people who loved me died. Too many hits to my good heart. Then AFIB set in and my health and my energy and my life as I had known it collapsed. and nobody came and nobody seemed to care. Not really.
A lot of sympathetic lip service but not the kind of love that comes right to where you are and scoops you up and hold you in their arms and makes you soup and holds you. And puts you in the car to come stay with them until you're stronger. The kind of love that really shows up for you because they adore you. Those people all died. And I was left with a person, a three-year-old running around in circles scared and confused who didn't have a clue how to love me - in charge of my healing. So that has been my biggest learning curve. Loving me the way my parents should have and couldn't. It's a lifelong mission. A process not an event. I was half dead and sinking for several years until this week and now it appears that I am winning. Yay. And all because I sang my song. I recorded a song sitting naked in my bed.. and it was good! I sent it to Scott and he threw on on a whole arrangement with guitar bass and cascading background vocals! Next thing you know I recorded another one!
I sent it out and it saved someone's life!
Despite all the hurt and trauma and pain, I've got a gift to give and a light to shine.
And so do you and you're shining it!
You didn't miss anything; not really. They've just slipped into another room. They can hear us !!
"It's the Truth that sets you free" as Jesus said. You found it!
Wow, thank you, Martha. And yeah I remember the Vineyard too before The Great Gentrification. It's astonishing what has happened to these little scruffy outposts...
Love this, all the intensity comes through - to love be loved and of course the loss. Especially true - the missing that this father not your father really fills that role. Thanks for this!
Dear Julia -- if it’s any consolation, and I suspect it isn’t-- i eulogized my wife Fran on Friday. All the words were said between us and feelings expressed, with honesty, humor, anger and directness. And she died at home--everyone’s dream but hers. She wanted more life. That’s all.
But the pain of loss is brutal. Whether “late” or “anticipated” or “pre-planned” or in “fucking retrospect”.
When I retrieve them, I’m hoping that scattering her ashes in a ocean she loved and in which she swam and gamboled like a fish in will be right on time. I hope you find peace. I hope I find peace.
Oh, Irwin. I'm so sorry to hear of Fran's passing. Condolences to you and yours. May her memory be a blessing. Sounds like it already is. <3
Thank you for these kind words and I am so very sorry for your loss. I have other essays in The Mortality Shot that involve the more anticipated kinds of death as well. The collection this comes from is about grief and loss of all kinds, awareness of mortality from youth to getting older...be well and yes grief is a long road. I wish you well on it.
Julia— I received a very flowery Jacquie Lawson card yesterday that simply said “Dear Irwin, You are on a very long”. No matter how many times I reopened it, that’s all it said. I thought it was either fucking profound or the missing word was “leash”. As a result, i issued an edict that henceforth all cards from that originator be referred to as “Jackie Mason” cards and read through his “lens”. Thanks for the referrals to essays about other forms of grief. I’m deep into this one.
Your dark humor will carry you far. (I mean that.) But yes it's a long deep journey. Be in touch any time.
💞
Thank you Sari. I am flooded with memories, many of them of her suffering for 30 years with 4 cancers and every conceivable treatment. I hope those wash away like sand in a in a kid’s beach sieve and what remains will beautiful shells and ocean-polished glass and the occasional skittle of a tiny crab. That will be her.
💝
There's nothing like the run-on sentence of a true stylist. This was gorgeous and very moving.
Bless you. You made me laugh. 😂🧡
Haha
I do it all the time. My passion is a runaway train of talking!!
He knew that you knew. I'm so happy you had each other.
<3
Thank you. 🧡
We were right there with you. Recalling the things unsaid. The true reverence never or inadequately expressed. For me it is especially about the ‘real’ dad, the one who mattered. Thanks for laying it out here and sharing the grappling. We now revere your David dad. And as a photographer I love the portrait of the two of you. Both so clearly comfortable with each other.
Thank you so much. 🧡
Ps The photo was taken by my (third) husband. (The family multiple marriage thing appears to be genetic)
Ha. Well maybe it takes a few sometimes to get it right. ☺️
Good lord Julia, thanks for this excellent reminder to give credit to the right people! Appreciate the passion and insight in this piece.
Thank you so much, Alicia. 🧡
Isn't it always that way? I lost my younger brother, with whom, to euphemize, I had a sibling rivalry, though it wasn't till after he died that I reckoned how much I had loved him, at least most of the time. How the hell did I not see that more cleartly? Then the aneurysm. Then my remembering some of the things I fought about with him and thinking, "God! How important was THAT?" And then no way to make restitution, except to his kids, beloved niece and nephew. Beautifully rendered. Thank you!
Thank you so much for your kind and honest reply. It is amazing these moments when we see so clearly and it is in this world too late. But yes the amends living can be made as you are doing. As I try to do. And hoping that it is known in other realms and can heal. Be well. 🧡
It IS! ✨✨✨
Okay now I am in tears. The love, the self-awareness (even if acquired too late) is blinding.
If there is one thing I know it's that he KNOWS. The light that we are is never lost. It only transforms and once out of and past its human focus takes all that it has learned and all that it has to share and wraps it around us like an old, comforting blanket.
This is not a religious thing - it is simply what I have come to feel and know through my own experiences (yes a long story). But I believe that if you are quiet and present and willing to simply "be" you will feel it too. It's clear to me that you are writing with the help of that love and awareness already. Thank you for sharing. It was a gift.
Thank you so much for these kind words. And yes I do agree and understand. 🧡
Sending virtual hugs (it's my thing).
Thank you! 🧡
Truth is vibrational & my soul sings reading this, many thanks I know self destruction & I know the grace of Love. Namaste. My thanks.
- paje foster
Thank you for these kind words. They mean a lot.
Thank you for sharing this essay. It gutted me, revealing the gulf between me and my father and the foundational truth that despite everything, he deeply loves me.
Sending love to you. It's a lot. I know. I have written elsewhere and in other parts of this book about losing my biological father, which was gut wrenching even tho we barely knew each other. These relationships run so deep. 🧡
I hope you can forgive yourself -- I am sure David loved you so much and -- perhaps he didnt see fatherhood as a zero-sum game after all? Sending peace, R
Thank you.
Yes, it’s gotten me this far. Fran’s been in hand to hand battle with cancer for 30 years. I’ve been privileged to be in the trenches with her. And in between battles we traveled, made lasting friendships all over the world, did meaningful work and raised but didn’t co-produce 3 wonderful humans. I am grieving but still feel lucky. Is that one of your categories? Either way, I’d prefer not to communicate via Substack if you’d like. I have a new book “Men as Friends” (Koehler) also about loss and also funny. Targeted to men but discerning women have loved it as well. Humor is the only way I could ever manage. <iepstein@hunter.cuny.edu>🤷🏼♂️🙏🏻🪷
Thanks also for the reminder that the clock is ticking and the grains of sand through the hourglass are falling all too quickly.
Amends. Unfinished business between siblings who do not speak. Me, mine. Alcoholism is the equal opportunity destroyer. Not my issue personally but it's a family diss-ease and the insanity tore us all apart. We were all good kids brilliant kids beautiful kids shining funny creative genius kids who deserved to be loved properly and kept safe. We weren't. And four traumatized wounded geniuses entered the world Stage Left and instead of rising to their potential, sank to depths of self loathing and despair.
How will I feel if I get the phone call that my favorite brother has died and I never had a chance to say I was sorry for that one unspeakably bad thing I did when we were kids that hurt him. It would tear me apart and I don't think I would ever get over it pain would be so great. We were always so close. (Even though he became a vicious, mean spirited alcoholic in his later years ~ his sweet juicy heart swallowed up by the hard boozing, dominating, lowlife red neck rascist bimbo he took up with when he suddenly left L.A. that he loved and moved to Florida where his viper girlfriend with ties to the mob lived ~ and he became someone we don't know~ very different from the fun, hysterically funny life of the party who kept us all in stiches he once had been) It was one of the things that broke my heart. Losing John.
I have to find a way now. I just have to break the ice of this frozen wall of tundra that separates us and reach his heart with my heart. I owe him that gift and I owe it to myself so I don't have to carry it anymore.
Thank you Julia.🙏
It's so hard. Alcoholism is a horror. I am 36 years sober and so grateful for that. I started in Al Anon which has helped me with my relationships to other alcoholics. It's a long road to true forgiveness and it's fraught with peril. Sometimes spiritual bypass (pretending one has forgiven someone), sometimes putting oneself in danger in a zeal to forgive. A friend wisely said "you can't forgive anyone you are still afraid of" and I think she is right. I have to ensure my own safety before venturing this and sometimes amends means cutting ties for a time anyway. All the forgiveness that has come to me has been a gift from doing the hard spiritual work of coming into my own reality and feeling All the feelings. I doubt I am telling you anything you don't already know. Just sharing back as generously as you have shared. Be well. 🧡
❤️❤️
💖💖
Julia, you are really something! The something David knew that you were. I loved reading this. As I sip my morning Yorkshire Gold, I feel the fierce fire of your spirit burning through all that is not true to reveal a huge, true, pulsing shining heart of pure gold that says,
I LOVE!!! DON'T MESS WITH ME!!!!
Thank you for finding and sharing your true voice with us. Many things I read bore me. You didn't. This because you speak authentically from your bones. So thanks for that. I remember the Vineyard before the McMansions and my little magic cottage I paid 400 a month for. So I get it. Just losing that cottage was tragedy enough not to mention all the human losses - too many to count. In the past decade, all the people who loved me died. Too many hits to my good heart. Then AFIB set in and my health and my energy and my life as I had known it collapsed. and nobody came and nobody seemed to care. Not really.
A lot of sympathetic lip service but not the kind of love that comes right to where you are and scoops you up and hold you in their arms and makes you soup and holds you. And puts you in the car to come stay with them until you're stronger. The kind of love that really shows up for you because they adore you. Those people all died. And I was left with a person, a three-year-old running around in circles scared and confused who didn't have a clue how to love me - in charge of my healing. So that has been my biggest learning curve. Loving me the way my parents should have and couldn't. It's a lifelong mission. A process not an event. I was half dead and sinking for several years until this week and now it appears that I am winning. Yay. And all because I sang my song. I recorded a song sitting naked in my bed.. and it was good! I sent it to Scott and he threw on on a whole arrangement with guitar bass and cascading background vocals! Next thing you know I recorded another one!
I sent it out and it saved someone's life!
Despite all the hurt and trauma and pain, I've got a gift to give and a light to shine.
And so do you and you're shining it!
You didn't miss anything; not really. They've just slipped into another room. They can hear us !!
"It's the Truth that sets you free" as Jesus said. You found it!
Love, Martha
Wow, thank you, Martha. And yeah I remember the Vineyard too before The Great Gentrification. It's astonishing what has happened to these little scruffy outposts...
I only wish I had bought real estate!!!
Love this, all the intensity comes through - to love be loved and of course the loss. Especially true - the missing that this father not your father really fills that role. Thanks for this!
Thank you so much!
thank you
Thank you. 🧡