You Can't Take It With You

It was a truth simply too mammoth for a child to bear. Yet somehow I did bear it. We all did. There was no other choice if survival was the prayer.

When I was very little, my mother would say, Be careful what you pray for.

She meant that asking for grace might induce a soul-crushing hardship requiring perseverance. If you want strength, circumstances might beat you with a meat tenderizer and expect you to carry on despite. You’re never just given the gift, she said.

Last week I saw a play (Just Another Day) where the character joked that God needed a break from his people. He was so tired of their nagging, he asked his assistant for a little help. So the assistant created religion. Now no one can get to God, the assistant quipped. It’s all peace and quiet up in here!

As a child, I was taught to pray. For years my mother sat bedside, our hands clasped, eyes closed while I recited my blessings. If I droned on with an exhaustive list of everyone I’d ever met, she’d shake my hands with a tight little sigh, a signal to hurry up. (Maybe at some point in her life she’d asked for patience. Poof! You’re a parent.) Like with many childhood rituals, the practice eventually fell apart and away.

We used to pray over nightly meals, then just Sunday dinners, and then only on holidays, but that too eventually dissolved. I can’t even remember when. I only know we went to church and then we didn’t. Thankfully the didn’t came before all the trouble with the deacon that winked at me (along with a lot of other little girls). I will never forget the electricity of his stare, the radiation of twisted pleasure of seeing me see him. I clamped my eyes shut tight, tried to concentrate on the repeat-after-me Sunday School words. Maybe we went for Christmas once or twice after that, and then nothing. Pray on your own. If you want. Or don’t. Life carries on regardless.

Three days after my last Substack, my beloved aunt suddenly died. I didn’t find out for a few days, but that entire week I was an unexplained wreck. Everything made me cry. My heart ached. I felt overwhelmed and flattened out. Life feels that way sometimes. When my cousin called, it all made sense. Our hearts know. The mind works overtime to assign meaning, to fabricate the illusion of control, but the heart has a language all its own, divinely plugged into a higher frequency.

She was the last living link to my father, and with her passing I felt his loss all over again. My grief for her was immediate and deep, a step into a bottomless pool of dark water, the light dissolving overhead as I submerged. But then I remembered, almost immediately, that in this metaphor I know how to swim. (In life, not so much.)

Some metaphors are tired and should be retired. Perhaps water for grief is one. 

I used to feel so angry about my relationship with loss. WTF, God/Goddess/Universe? Seriously, what gives? But I’ve come to a new understanding of my lived experience. No one gets out of this world alive, my father would say, which will forever remind me of the first play I ever worked on in high school - an experience that both traumatized and obsessed me - You Can’t Take It With You. I know this truth intimately.

I have never told this to anyone. When I was a teenager, there was an afternoon, one of countless spent riding my bike up and down our street in the blistering sun, that I told God a secret. I’m ready, I said. You can take him.

I was referring to my father. We’d been through so much at this point, with so, so much more to go through. I had no idea what I was saying, what was to come. I loved him beyond reason, and was simultaneously coming into an awareness of our family’s legacy of abuse. I was beginning to understand that our suffering stemmed from his. My brother’s drug addiction. My mother’s retreat further and further into her work. I was doing my best in school, losing myself in theatre (Never Never Land for misfits), trying to make perfect grades (AP Calculus and Chemistry? Forget it.) and maintain friends while also being a good, obedient daughter. These goals should not have been in conflict, but so often they were. I was always failing at something, always being yelled at for something. At least that was my perception. The seed for my anxiety was planted early.

I even failed trying to get help. More than once I tried to tell a friend (never an adult) what was happening at home, after which they typically stopped speaking to me. Looking back I understand that it was a truth simply too mammoth for a child to bear. We were still at that cultural point where dirty laundry was expected to stay hidden. Yet somehow I did bear it. We all did. There was no other choice if survival was the prayer. Help me get out of here, I whispered into my pillow, eyes squeezed tight. Take me to Hollywood. Send me to New York. Convince someone to fucking fall in love with me and sweep me off into a happily everafter. Quick!

Like most little girls I’d been culturally conditioned into believing that escaping one man meant being rescued by another. While I did marry a prince of a guy, all the rescuing I needed would be entirely up to me.

I used to dream of running away, and was immediately homesick. I wrote an impassioned email to a schoolmate describing all the ways I wished I was a bird, a horse, a wolf - some creature of freedom defined by lack of boundaries. My father found it in the sent folder and we had a huge fight about why I wasn’t happy as a human child. So stupid. Such a dreamer. How dare I tell another person anything so personal. The irony is that he too also wished to be a free thing.

Decades later I understand his pain, his terror, his mental and emotional distress, his severe alcoholism and all the resulting violence was very likely some form of undiagnosed mental illness. It’s not an excuse but an explanation.

My father was our primary caregiver, a sometimes tyrant of unpredictable moods, from contagious hilarity to poisoned melancholy. He was often brutal, taking wild swipes at our minds, our bodies, at inanimate objects, be they walls with fists or tabletops with knives. There are truths about bruises, about crushed psyches that I can share now that my aunt is gone. I’ve written about what happened before but only in private documentation. How much should I reveal now? Are my words a betrayal? Can they exist alongside how deeply, fervently, I adored him, adore him still? Hard to know, but what I am sure of is this: I want you to know, if you have been struck by someone you love who loves you, you are not alone.  

You are not alone.

You are not alone.

You are not alone.

I’ve been seeking this sense of community my entire life, trying desperately to find some way to tell my story not because I want the attention but because I want to know that I belong, am not a freak, not accountable for what happened, or its aftermath - though what you do in the aftermath, how you respond, how you seek healing or don’t, that is the responsibility.  

I have been on a healing journey for a long, long time. Talking to you is part of that journey, and I hope that in some small way I can be part of yours. No one gets out of this life alive or unscathed. To be human is to be scarred. 

She loved you so much, said my cousin, and my mother echoed the sentiment as did my husband. Sweet but weird, was all I could think. How do they know? The heart, remember? Theirs recognized hers, even from the sidelines. I do think they were right. I felt loved and I loved her in return.

My father took us away from her when I was a very young adult, and I didn’t manage to reconnect until 14 years later. Our time from that point forward was beautiful albeit brief. I saw her a handful of times when visiting Texas. Mostly we emailed and texted. My aunt loved pictures. Send me everything! she would say. I want to see your adorable house in all seasons.

I managed to send her fall, winter, and summer.

She read this Substack religiously, always sending me a note after. Hello Sweet Girl, she would write, and then she would tell me what she loved. Your latest post Ours, is I think, one of the best pieces you’ve written. I enjoyed it very much. 💚💚 Love Always, Aunt Ren.

Love Always.

Love Always.

Love Always.

Our time in this life is both long and short. I remember thinking I would NEVER be an adult, and now I blink by months. I used to tell my therapist in NYC of my meltdowns, It’s like I’ve entered a time warp. Not even “zero to sixty” describes the speed of my transition from ok to hell is loose. Can you please help me slow down time? Just enough to make a decision other than shattering a dinner plate against the wall?

It took years of practice but I did learn how to step from the tornadic story of my mind into the stillness of the present moment. How to pause, even if only infinitesimally, to take a single breath and in that breath a universe may unfold. Now I only think about shattering the plate (mostly) and instead channel my rage through running, by beating the bed with a pool noodle, through ecstatic shaking, through writing, through making art. Also, dogs help.

There is so much more I could tell you, but I will save some for another time. Between this moment and that one, I Ieave for you a living meditation, a sprinkle of thoughts that have soothed my soul, and that is what I wish for you, in whatever form best suits.

Take care of your body, relish movement and fresh air, and also eat the cake. You were put here for bliss, not deprivation. Get plenty of sleep, put yourself to bed as you would a darling child, and also stay awake for the stars, drink the bottle of wine, talk deep into the night with your best friend. Make your home your sanctuary, a recess from the wild world. Stay in to recharge guilt-free and also say yes to the invitation - you can always leave the party early. Work hard but not so hard that it defines your whole life. It is your work, not your identity. Treasure all you have while remembering that most of it matters very little. Put away for a rainy day and also buy the T Swift tickets. You will cherish without regret the experiences that give your life meaning. Say, I love you. One day it will be the last time, and you may not get to mark the occasion. And always remember, you will leave this world the way you came in, because at the end of it all, you can’t take it with you.

Dearest friends, thanks for reading. Right now it’s pouring rain the Berkshires - an early morning tempest - and I hope it’s approval for sharing this with you. It’s not easy, but it feels necessary. Leave a comment. Share on social. Forward to someone you love if you feel moved to do so. And as always, be well, embrace bliss, love and be loved in return.