All What It Is For Antonio

All What it is Monica Rose
All What it is
a memoir
by Monica Rose
1
SEPTEMBER
“Trying to understand how the universe works is like the

body trying to know how the brain is made.”
Alan Watts, The Watercourse Way
It’s like Jon used to say about how the tip of a finger can never touch itself.
But still… I try.
2
Week One
On the deck of the Staten Island Ferry, warm wind whipped my hair and moist air slapped
my face. I leaned forward, holding fast to the handrail, as if I could steer the ship and control its
landing. What will today be like? I wondered. Will Antonio be okay? Rocking forward through the
Hudson River, its water sloshed against the boat’s blood-orange hull. Closing my eyes, I breathed in
the wet polluted air, grateful that I could gulp down as much as I wanted.
It was five days since Antonio’s brain hemorrhage and I was on my way to visit him in the
ICU. Back inside the ferry, I walked down the stairs and past the bar where he and I often bought
Coronas. We’d sit in the snack area and push lemon wedges through the necks of our beers, half-
watching the other passengers half-watch the Statue of Liberty. Antonio would point out those he’d
gotten to know, commuting from Staten Island to his furniture-making job in the Brooklyn Navy
Yard, and tell me their stories. I always marveled at how strangers opened up to him so easily. Did he
know any of the passengers on the ferry that day? Did they notice that he hadn’t been commuting
for the past week? Did they wonder why?
It had been one crisis after another since mid-summer. One friend’s mother died from
cancer. A second friend lost her sister. A third friend was watching his girlfriend die. I knew that this
was part of life—the suffering and dying part of it. What I did not know was that I did not have to
suffer along with others in order to be there for them.
3
How could I know, massaging Antonio’s body, that I was playing out a piece of ancestral
kharma that had me, yet again, giving my energy away to someone who could give me nothing back?
How could I not massage him? I thought. After all he has been through? And so, I pushed through the
revulsion, poured more almond oil onto my palms, and rubbed his sick scaly skin.
“Does that feel okay?”
“Mm,” he moaned from the ICU bed where he lay, curled into a fetal position.
“Don’t tire yourself out,” Antonio said, when I paused to rub more oil into my hands. “Stop
when you’re tired. I know what it means to push yourself too hard,” he laughed. “I always knew I
had a messed-up brain.” His laugh was just as high-pitched, full-bellied and infectious as it always
was.
“We all did,” I said, laughing with him. “There was never any secret about that.” I massaged
his arms all the way down to his hands, spending time with each finger. Antonio and I had massaged
one another before. Ours was an affectionate friendship with a healthy amount of sexual tension
that only mildly slipped past platonic. Antonio was attractive, but not classically so. He kept his
thinning hair shaved, and knew how to shape his facial hair—not too much and always neatly
trimmed. He had style, though was not into fashion. His wardrobe consisted of white Mexican shirts
and blue jeans smeared with oil paint. Though he owned nothing formal, and disliked ties with a
passion, he loved hats. Preferring to wear ones that had belonged to others first, he made them his
own by sticking a single feather into the brim. Antonio was not tall, but that skinny body knew how
to move. Anyone who can make someone that can’t dance very well (like me) feel like they can, is
sexy in my book. All that said, what attracted me the most to Antonio was his sensuality. I could tell
4
that he would be a wonderful lover by the way he used to hold hands with Leah. I had watched how
he touched her skin, really feeling her. But his intensity was too obsessive for me. There was
something about the attention he put into his relationships with women and with his artwork, that I
sensed came from a place of darkness I no longer wished to go to with a lover.
“You pull some pretty mean tricks getting me in here to put my hands all over you like this,”
I said. He smiled and his eyes glinted that teasing look I knew they would. The flirting helped me to
avoid thinking about how not sensual massaging his blotchy, bed-ridden skin was. Once I got into it,
it wasn’t so bad. And while I gave his every muscle my attention, Antonio told me what happened to
him, filling in the blanks from what our friend Dana had explained.
“He had a headache,” she had told me. “He said his head felt crazy. But I thought it was his
allergies. His sinuses had been blocked up.” She left the home they shared in Staten Island for the
Park Slope Food Co-op, thinking little of it. It was late Monday morning and Dana’s husband Marsh
had already gone to work in Manhattan. Alice and Marigold, their two girls, were at nursery school
and kindergarten. Antonio’s head got worse and worse again. He texted Dana that he thought he
should go to the hospital. Fortunately, Richmond University Medical Center was only a ten-minute
walk up Bard Avenue from the house. Dana was a trained doula and certified nurse, and when he
explained how extreme the pain had gotten, she told him to get to the hospital, pronto.
Antonio had no recollection of having reached out to Dana. He only remembered that he
had gone across the street to find a cemetery. “I was riding my bike up the street whistling, and then
I got a headache. But it wasn’t a normal headache. I thought I was gonna die, so I went lookin’ for
the cemetery. I thought, If I’m gonna die, what better place than a cemetery?” Having lived across
the street from Walker Park for five years, Antonio knew there was no cemetery there, but when his
brain was in the middle of exploding, it convinced him that there was a cemetery there. “I walked up
5
the road, lookin’,” he said, while I massaged his other hand. “I just wanted to lie down on the grass.”
At some point it became clear that looking for a cemetery was not what he needed to be doing.
Whether it was a text from Dana or a sharper pressure in his head, Antonio got it together to turn
back up Bard. “I knew I had to get to the hospital, but I had a lot to do and I had to do it fast, and I
wasn’t able to do it fast enough. I kept repeating things what I had to do, but I couldn’t do them. I
wanted to call you. I knew I had to call you, but I couldn’t. I had to call you and Dana and Leah. I
kept saying out loud what that I needed, walkin’ up that hill. ‘Monica. Dana. Leah. Marsh. Sage.
Hospital. Hospital.’ I saw a black man with one of those black hats, you know like the one that I
have. I went up to him and said, ‘Man, help me. I need to get to the hospital.’ The man looked at me
and said, ‘Don’t be afraid,’ he said. ‘I’ll get you there.’ And he got me here and I went in and the
receptionist looked up and said, ‘Yeah? Can I do somethin’ for ya?’” Antonio’s impression of her
loud Staten Island accent made had me picturing a woman filing long painted nails and snapping her
gum. “And I said,” he continued, “‘Well you’re gonna have to.’ And then I passed out on the floor!”
He looked at me like he couldn’t believe it himself. My imaginary receptionist stood up and peered
over her desk at him, her gum snapping echoing throughout the foyer.
“I’m so glad you got yourself here,” I said. He nodded. I massaged. After a while, a blond-
haired nurse in a blue uniform came in to check on him. She took his pulse, pricked his skin,
checked his chart, and twiddled with knobs. Antonio smiled at me and rolled his eyes. All the fuss. I
was glad he didn’t mind, but to me it felt like an intrusion. I was not prepared for this lack of
privacy. Her presence reminded me that I wasn’t just listening to another one of Antonio’s
magnificent tales. He had been in danger, before. But this was happening right now. This was real.
Determined to lighten the heaviness, I said,
“I’ll bet you love the attention from all these pretty nurses.” The nurse smiled.
6
“Oh, we all love our new patient. He’s keeping us busy,” she said.
“What’s the weather like?” he asked me. It was a gorgeous September day—blue sky, birds
singing, hot but not too hot.
“It’s shit out,” I said. “A real nightmare. Rain, sleet. It’s freezing. In fact there is a blizzard
outside. You’re much better off in here.” Antonio grinned. The nurse looked at me funny, not
getting our humor. When she left, I could go back to ignoring those flashing lights and beeping
machines at the head of his bed that I hadn’t been able to take in yet. Instead, I looked over to
where a large television hung near a curtain that offered what little privacy a patient was given in a
door-less room that said “Trauma” over its entrance. There was a baseball game on. Antonio never
watched baseball.
“Catching up on your sports?” I asked.
“The kids’ game that was on before was much better,” he said. “I liked watchin’ those kids
play.” The wistfulness in his voice made me want to cry. Instead, I clenched my teeth. Antonio was
recovering from something most people die of, and he was not out of the woods yet. The possibility
that he might never again watch kids play baseball, or watch his own son who had just started the
soccer season, or that he himself might never run fast and fearless, was too much to think about. I
chose to believe that he was through the worst and on the mend.
Antonio’s eyes drifted back to the TV set. After a while, he said, “I’ve been having dreams.”
He looked at me in a way that made me stop rubbing his foot. With wide eyes, as if remembering
while telling, he said, “I had a dream about you. Yesterday. You were here, moving around my bed. It
was your shadow. Your body. I recognized the shape of your body.” I understood this to mean that
he had seen an apparition of me. Letting go of his foot, I took a breath.
7
The previous morning, when Antonio had seen my shadow by his bed, my sangha
(meditation community) performed a Well-Being Ceremony for him at the Brooklyn Zen Center.
During the chant for prolonging life, I hit the mokugyo (wooden drum). And as if Avalokitesvara, the
Bodhisattva of compassion, heard our invocation, my body had tingled with a visceral connection to
Antonio.
After that ceremony, a couple of friends walked to Prospect Park with me. We sat on a
blanket. Greg absorbed himself in Nietzsche. I watched an Ultimate Frisbee game. Yoko lay back
and placed her hands on her pregnant belly. After a while, she said, “There’s little black dots
squirming in the sky.”
“Those are in your eyes,” I said. “They’re not in the sky.”
“That’s an optical illusion,” Greg, who had recently been ordained as a Zen priest, said. “And
it’s a great metaphor for our thoughts, which we often see as life itself. But, of course, they’re not.”
I was massaging Antonio’s feet when he said, “You know those black squiggly dots we see in
front of our eyes? When the hemorrhage was happening, they all became red.”
When visiting hours were over, I walked down Bard Avenue thinking that it had been five
days since the brain hemorrhage. Five days from when I awoke from a dream in which I was in the
hospital. In the dream, Jon and I had just broken up.
“Why are you so sad?” I ask him.

“Because you’re still the kind of girl I’d want to write a card to,” he says,
which makes me cry. We watch an image of my face on a hospital monitor, where
a cursor indicates red spots on my neck, pointing out—Measles. Jon sits beside
me while I cry, but he doesn’t comfort me like I want him to. I am confused by the
strength of our connection juxtaposed with the care he is unable to give.
Like that finger trying to touch itself, the more I reached for something more tangible from
Jon, the more elusive he became.
8
I had just seen him in Ireland, a few weeks before Antonio’s hemorrhage. It was my first trip
back in four years. I had lived in Galway for nine years and had met Jon there. Four years ago, we
had moved to New York. And one year ago, he had gone back to Galway, without me.
At the start of my month-long visit to Ireland, Jon and I met for coffee at a café overlooking
the Corrib River. It was painful to sit outside at a café drinking cappuccinos, like we had hundreds of
times before in cities all over Europe. It almost felt like everything was back to normal. But it was
not. Jon asked me if I had been dating. I told him, not really, and he said the same. He was upset
when I told him that I didn’t want him to come to a party that our friends were hosting in honor of
my return. Partly, this was because I was not yet ready to hang out with Jon in a social setting,
pretending that things were okay. But mostly because I knew that once the music kicked up, I
wouldn’t be able to bear watching him play the guitar. Surely, he’d play his songs, the ones I used to
sing backup to, once upon a time. What would I do if he nodded for me to come in at the chorus?
So yes, at the beginning of my trip, I had set clear boundaries and had declined his invitation
to visit him in his cottage in County Clare. But that day of the party, driving with mutual friends, we
saw Jon on the outskirts of Galway City. His guitar slung over his back swung like a tail dragging
beneath a shunned dog’s legs. He was walking around a cul-de-sac, where he’d catch a bus or hitch a
lift back to Clare. I wanted to swing the car around and pick him up, tell him it was okay, that he
could come to the party. The strength of this urge was telling, and when I held myself back, the
energy changed to guilt. This was my childhood. Number One: Put others before yourself. Number
Two: If you refuse to do so, you will feel immense guilt. Look how sad Jon is with his head hung like that.
You can make this better. But, I knew that I could no longer take care of Jon. It was time for me to look
after myself.
9
Why then, at the end of my four weeks abroad, did I relent to visit him in his cottage in
Clare? Because I still hoped. Jon said that he was my friend and, after all that we had done and been
together, I wanted to believe him. So, I went to his home overlooking the karstic countryside of the
Burren. We had driven countless miles through this topography that had been created as its layers
had dissolved over time. How I had loved walking on that limestone rock when it glowed purple
with the setting sun, and wildflowers burst from crags and fissures where faeries were said to haunt.
We broke the wishbone from our wedding turkey that I had saved for five years, waiting for
the right time to break it. I won and made a wish for the future of our friendship. Jon made me a
meal of pasta using techniques we had learned together in Italy. And he repeated his promise to help
me pay back the loan we took out so that we could live in Italy. The loan that made it easy for him to
argue that our breakup was only about the money, no matter how much I insisted it was about
commitment and responsibility. I had once depended on Jon for his rock-solid strength, and I made
myself believe that I could depend on him still. When it was time to go, he walked me outside. I
gazed out at the grey bedrock of the Burren that seemed to vibrate in the sun’s strong glare. I
hugged Jon goodbye and turned toward my waiting friend. On our drive to Kinvara, where I would
spend my last couple of nights, I could feel something creep into my system. Whether it was guilt or
sadness, regret or grief, by the time we got to her house, I was sick and spent the last two days of my
trip in bed. I didn’t imagine that my time in the Burren with Jon, and my insistence in believing in
our friendship, had worn away a layer of my strength. I wanted so badly to trust the relief I felt
when he reassured me that I wouldn’t have to shoulder the loan by myself anymore. The relief that
was about Jon coming through as a friend. We had accepted that our paths had taken different
directions. But after seven years together, it was essential to remain friends. Of course, this
assumption that Jon would or could follow through on his word this time was just more of me
10
wanting something solid from him—as if it were all up to him to make things better between us. I
had not yet admitted that my clinging to expectation was what was causing the pain.
When I returned to the hospital the next day, Antonio had an oxygen mask on his face. I
didn’t think much of this, maybe because he was smiling through it.
“I had some of Dana’s soup,” he said, all proud of himself.
“You did?” I hugged him. “That’s great!”
“I think I’ll have some more.” Moving his bed to a half-sitting position, putting my arm
around his shoulders and easing him toward the thermos, I wondered how he felt having to be
helped like this. Antonio, always happy to lend someone else a hand, never asked for help. I hoped
he didn’t mind. He moved the oxygen mask—which was held over his mouth and nose by a rubber
band—to his cheek so he could take a sip of soup.
“This is much better than what they have on the menu, here,” I said, glancing at the dinner
tray. A cup of tea in Dunkin’ Donuts Styrofoam, and a plate of untouched crap: blocks of Jell-O—
the color of bitter berries—apple sauce in a plastic container with a tinfoil lid, some gloppy gray
stuff that must have been mashed potatoes, and cardboard chicken fillets. None of it smelled like
anything. Even Dana’s soup stock, made that morning from an organic, free-range chicken she had
bought at the food co-op, couldn’t penetrate the stale, antiseptic, medicinal, ICU stench. Antonio
swallowed and leaned back into his pillow. I noted the effort it took for that one sip. After a couple
minutes rest, I eased him toward the thermos for a second sip, and he leaned back with a pleased
grin. Just then, the machine above his left shoulder started beeping loudly enough to be heard
throughout the trauma ward. The blond-haired nurse rushed in and I wanted her to rush right back
out. Whether or not she was just doing her job and looking out for my friend, this was my time with
11
him. He was fine. Look at what a good mood he was in. He just ate some soup! Nobody here had
been able to get him to eat anything for a whole week. I was cheering him up. He was fine.
“This needs to stay on,” she said, referring to the mask and pointing out the machine’s
number—a digital ‘81’ and dropping—explaining that it had to be above eighty-four. “When he isn’t
breathing deeply enough into the mask,” she said, “the red number flashes and the beeping sounds.”
I didn’t want to know about red numbers and beeping flashes, or about how Antonio might not be
breathing as well as they wanted him to. But the nurse adjusted the mask back over his nose and
mouth with full authority and fidgeted with the knobs on machines and the tubes coming out of his
body. I squeezed Antonio’s hand.
“It’s hard to remember to breathe,” he said in a tone that a child might use to apologize for
having forgotten to clean his room or do his homework. The significance of his having to
remember such a simple thing as breathing stunned me. It shocks me even now. After seventeen
years of a mediation practice, I still find it difficult to focus on each breath when I sit. For Antonio
to have had to remember to breathe as deeply as he could with each inhalation, as a matter of life
and death? I pushed the severity of this thought away and asked the nurse if she could at least turn
the machine’s volume down.
“We need to keep those numbers up,” she said, ignoring my request. “Remember, we have a
little pneumonia now, so we need to be careful.” Antonio has pneumonia? I couldn’t push that away. My
mind scrambled to comprehend what was happening. I thought he was recovering. They had said he
was getting better. He was supposed to be out in a week or so. Isn’t pneumonia the worst thing that can
possibly happen at a time like this? Isn’t catching pneumonia in the ICU something that kills people? I didn’t want
to ask these questions in front of him. I’ll talk to someone on my way out, I told myself, knowing
that I wouldn’t. I didn’t want to hear what they had to say. I didn’t want to have a conversation about
12
Antonio’s condition with someone who could only shrug and say they couldn’t say for sure. My job
was to be there with him. So, we hung. He asked me about my friend, Stacy.
“She’s pregnant,” I told him.
“That guy from Ecuador?” he asked. I nodded.
“Remember meeting him at the solstice party?” Stacy’s lover was visiting on a fiancé VISA
for three months. After he went back, she told me, “He left a memory of himself behind.”
“Yeah. That was a fun party.” Antonio looked thoughtful. Was he thinking about Leah, who
came to that party after a year of them not speaking? I met Leah when Jon and I lived with Antonio,
Marsh and Dana at One o One Bard. I had watched the intensity of their connection move from
passionate intimacy—which had made me long for the same in my relationship with Jon—to fervent
fights—which reminded me all too well of me and Jon.
“So Stacy’s pregnant,” he said. “She gonna be a single Mom?”
“Yeah. She asked me to be her birth partner,” I said. “I finally get to witness a birth.”
Antonio smiled. He knew how disappointed I was to have slept through the birth of Alice.
Everyone knew. She was a homebirth and Dana had asked me to be Marigold’s caretaker through
the delivery. But when she went into labor early in the morning, the baby came out fast. By the time
I woke up, Alice was safely in the world.
After a few shallow but focused breaths, eyeing the red number which was now ‘85’ and
rising, Antonio turned to me and asked,
“How was Ireland?” Good question. I sighed.
“Ireland was many things. I’m still processing. One nice thing is that everything was just as I
left it. I swear it’s like Brigadoon. I can visit in one hundred years and it will be the same. Kinda
comforting, actually.” I didn’t mention Jon. Antonio, tactfully, did not bring him up.
13
I changed the subject. “Hey, your birthday is on Friday.”
“I’m gonna be forty-nine,” he said. “Hope I make it.”
“Of course you’re gonna make it.”
“Right. I gotta watch my kids grow up.” He meant Sage, of course, who was seventeen. But
he also meant Dana and Marsh’s girls, Marigold and Alice. Antonio had been like an uncle to them.
“I’m so grateful for everything that’s happened in that house,” he said. “I’m so grateful.” I nodded,
also grateful. One o One Bard Avenue in Staten Island had been a saving grace for me, too. The
more I have thought about this over the years, the more I believe that it would have been even more
disastrous, when things fell apart with Jon, if he and I had been living, just the two of us, without
the buffer of other people. But there in the hospital room, I shook such thoughts away. Stay in the
moment, Mon. Focus on your breath. Let go of your thoughts. Jon is in Ireland. Ireland is over.
“What’s up with this pneumonia?” I asked, wanting to know if he understood what was
going on.
“Yeah. It’s ‘cause I’ve been lying in this bed for a week with not moving,” he said. “The
lungs need to be exercised and mine have been doing nothing. That’s all what it is.” He seemed
casual enough about it and his lack of fear put me at ease. Maybe it really was nothing. He’ll be fine,
I told myself. Like the nurse said, it’s just a little pneumonia. Instead, I focused on how I was holding
myself back from correcting his grammar. I had grown fond of his phrase—“That’s all what it is”—
though each time he said it, the ESL teacher in me kicked in. I would make other corrections with
his grammar because he liked me to, but left this phrase alone. “That’s all what it is” was just so
Antonio.
For the next hour, I held his hand, finding it difficult to pry myself away, especially when he
snuggled into my arm like a child and said, “It’s so comforting to have people here.” But it was
14
getting late and I had to catch the ferry back to the city. Before leaving, I remembered to give him a
hug from Leah. “Do you have a message for her?”
“Tell her I’m not gonna die, goddamit!” he exclaimed in his loud Antonio voice, grinning
that goddam Antonio grin. All white teeth. Eyes shining. Full of life.
Jon and I moved into Marsh and Dana’s house three weeks after Antonio did, in May of
2005. I hadn’t lived in the States for nearly a decade and had had no plans to move back. But in the
spring of 2005, Jon and I were looking for another country to move to. We had driven around
Europe in a camper van for three years. We called her the Snow Goose because, as Jon told me,
when snow geese land on the ground they get along with the other snow geese, no matter where in
the world they are. And so, we were sure to get along with the people of whatever country we
landed in, which at that point was Italy.
Italy was wonderful because Italy is wonderful, but it was a tough time for us. I didn’t speak
Italian, which made me feel an isolation that was accentuated by the dark hole of misery Jon had
spiraled down into after his mother’s sudden death. I’m certain that he and I are the only people in
recent history who moved from Italy to Staten Island. And who moves to Italy at the end of
summertime and leaves in the spring just after the snow has melted? But our plan to buy a place to
renovate was not working out and neither of us wanted to return to Ireland.
I had been back to the States that winter to meet the first of my brother Matthew’s three
sons. During my visit, I had met Marsh and Dana in their house in Staten Island. I fell in love at
once with the house and with its people. Marsh told me, “If you ever move back to this part of the
world, you can always rent a room here.” I filed his offer away in the back of my head and returned
to Italy.
15
Come Easter, when all of Italy were ecstatically welcoming Pope Benedict XVI, Jon and I
were frantically trying to figure out what to do with our lives. We were low on energy and we were
low on funds. We needed a fallback plan and we did not have one.
A couple years before, we had moved to Spain on a whim. Our plan: To find a hacienda in
the sun with enough land to build an artist commune that all of our friends could be a part of. Only
problem: We needed money. So we hoofed it back to Ireland with a five-year plan to make enough
to realize our dream. All systems were go. We found the perfect place to live, where Jon could make
his album and I could expand my food business. But: Three months after settling in, Jon’s mother
Kath died. Her legacy was oil paintings and thousands of books. Wanting to help us out, Jon’s father
found a way to get an advance from Granny’s estate (Jon’s paternal grandmother). This inheritance
matched the amount of money we thought we would need, though it was only to be used for a piece
of property. Fair enough. I took out a loan from the credit union to fund the next seven months on
the road. Destination: Italy. Jon had lived there before, knew the language, loved the culture, and
wanted to introduce these things to me. What neither of us knew was how profoundly Kath’s death
had affected Jon. He and I were flying blind. We created what appeared to be the perfect romance.
We drove to Italy, ate good food, lived in the sun, picked olives, visited vineyards and bottled our
own wine, all while looking for a casa colonica to renovate. Wasn’t this everybody’s dream? Movies
were being made out of such adventures.
These were the thoughts that we clung to as if they were life itself, and which, of course,
they were not. Movies are as fictional as the black dots we think we see in the sky. It might appear
romantic to live in a camper van and travel around Europe. But when this becomes your life, then
that’s all what it is, just life—and not an easy one. Jon had been traveling since he was fifteen years
old. I had taken off on my first solo travels when I was twenty, returned to the States to finish
16
college, and then split again. Both of us had things we needed to leave behind, and traveling makes
avoiding possible. Avoiding dealing with a family that’s too difficult to deal with. Avoiding what’s not
working in a relationship. Avoiding the pain of the death of a parent. But you can be sure that these
things haunted our travels, darkened our sunshine-filled adventure, lurked beneath the surface, and
dragged us ever so slowly, down.
We knew how to dream, though, and we knew how to take risks. We also knew how to pick
up and move on when things got too hard. When we were out of steam in Italy and needed a way
out, we fantasized about where to go next. For three hours, we sat on the couch in the small
apartment we had rented that winter, drank wine, and went around the globe considering this
country and that country. We didn’t want to go back to Ireland. We had already tried Spain. We spent
enough time in Germany and France to know we didn’t want to live there, permanently. Australia?
Too far. Holland? Possible. We both loved Amsterdam. Canada? Also possible. We liked their
politics. But these places were both cold in the wintertime. Asia was too foreign. The tropics? Our
dismal experience in the Canary Islands colored that idea. The United States did not enter into this
conversation. I had no intention of moving back in the foreseeable future. Jon had lived in San
Francisco for a couple of years. He had a great time, but he had since grown to hate the politics here
so much that he wouldn’t even come with me when I visited friends and family in New York and
New Jersey. We ran out of places to consider and ran out of the wine. The conversation was over.
We got up from the couch. When I mentioned the house in Staten Island, it was more flippant than
anything. I had almost forgotten about Marsh’s comment about living at Bard Avenue if I ever
moved back to that part of the world. But it came into my head at that moment, and I said to Jon,
“Well, there’s always that house in Staten Island.”
“What house?” he asked.
17
“Remember, where I stayed last Christmas? Here, I took some pictures.” I showed him the
shots, and within minutes, Jon decided that he wanted to live in New York. This was the last thing I
expected. But the more we talked about it, the more exciting it became, until we had concocted
another whim of a plan that was just as wild as leaving Ireland for Spain, and then for Italy was. This
time, we’d move to New York! Who wanted to spend all of their time renovating a house, anyway?
We were artists, after all. We had our callings. What better place to make a splash than New York?
Jon would play music and make albums, and I would write books. Best of all, New York meant
getting married! After months of Jon being walled up in grief, emotionally unavailable and distant,
he wanted to marry me (even if it was just for a green card). To make things even more exciting, we
decided not to tell anyone. The only people who would know were Jon’s family, and the One O One
Bard family, who had emailed right back that there was indeed a room available. Ten days later, we
drove to England and got hitched. Jon’s family threw us a small wedding, and then we took the ferry
to Ireland.
“How’s house hunting in Italy?” friends asked.
“Just got married! Off to New York!” We had fun telling everyone and watching the
surprised looks on their faces. More than anything, this seemed to lift Jon out of his darkness. Three
weeks later, we were living at One o One Bard Avenue in Staten Island, ready to take on New York.
We’ll give it two years, we said. We were back! So I thought.
18
Week Two
The next day, one week since Antonio’s bleed, I was on a break at work when Dana called to
tell me that he wasn’t strong enough to breathe on his own. “His lungs weren’t able to catch up to
his brain,” she said, whatever that meant. “So they sedated him and put him on a respirator.”
“For how long?”
“They say a week.” Her answer sounded as far away as Antonio suddenly felt. I slumped into
a chair in the staff room, thankful the other teachers weren’t around. A whole week? I thought
ahead to when I would tell Antonio that he not only missed an entire week of his life but that he
missed his birthday. He wouldn’t believe it. Dana’s voice sliced through the fog of my thoughts like
lightening. “They couldn’t tell me if he’d live or die,” she said.
19
“But I just saw him. He was fine. I mean, he was awake and talking about getting out. What’s
going on?”
“I don’t know, Mon.” I had to get back to work, but my chest felt as if a large hand with
splayed fingers was pushing into me with great force, not allowing me up from the chair, not letting
me breathe. Dana’s words echoed in my head.
His lungs weren’t able to catch up to his brain.
Poor Antonio, lying there hooked up to all those machines. But he was awake when I saw
him, I kept thinking. Awake and animated. Just last night. He said he wasn’t going to die.
They couldn’t tell me if he’d live or die.
I was angry at the doctors for putting him under. To sedate him was like taking him away
from us. Being able to communicate with him seemed vital. The last time I had a friend on a
respirator, he may as well have been a million miles away. I’ll never forget watching this friend, Jim,
lie in a hospital bed with a machine breathing for him. There was nothing that I could do.
But the previous night, I had helped Antonio drink soup. He told me it meant a lot that I
was there. He said he was feeling better. How did it happen that he wasn’t strong enough to breathe
on his own? And why did he have pneumonia when he went in with a hemorrhage? Wasn’t the
hospital supposed to be healing him? The nurse said the number needed to stay about ‘84’. How far
below ‘84’ had the number gone? I pictured that red number dropping and Antonio lying there
forgetting to breathe, falling asleep and drifting further and further away.
With much effort, I dragged myself up from the chair in the staff room. I had to go back to
my students. But I couldn’t possibly stand in front of them and teach. Walking into the classroom, I
heard myself tell them to look up fifteen words of their choice from chapter two of Like Water for
Chocolate. My voice sounded surprisingly calm. Good, I thought. They won’t be able to tell. For a
20
while I was able to mark some essays, but everything felt slowed down and heavy. My breathing was
shallow and my stomach tight. I put my pen down and placed both feet on the floor in front of me.
A quick survey of the room revealed that my students were absorbed. I closed my eyes and breathed
in. Antonio’s feeble face flashed through my mind—his heroic smile from beneath the oxygen mask.
My eyes pricked with tears. I pulled my breath in more deeply, and then used the out breath to push
the fear down and suck the tears back. I couldn’t fall apart at work. Sharpen your focus, I told
myself. Get these papers done. Pull yourself together, girl. Keep breathing. Remember to breathe.
But I couldn’t push away Antonio’s apologetic eyes.
It’s so hard to remember to breathe.
And there was the red ‘84’ slipping down as Antonio drifted away. What number was it,
exactly, when it was clear that he wasn’t breathing deeply enough? When did the machines start
beeping in the ICU? Was he conscious when the staff rushed in to save him?
I’m not gonna die, goddamit.
That second weekend of Antonio’s time in the ICU, I was not looking forward to visiting
Staten Island. The Victorian house on Bard Avenue, with its rustic wooden plaque nailed to the
front door that has the words “One o One” carved into it, had been in Marsh’s family since the
nineteen thirties. Unfortunately, as Marsh always joked, “No one cool wants to live on Staten
Island,” so it was never easy for him to find housemates that were down with his and Dana’s hip,
California, let’s-share-a-house-and-be-all-sorts-of-communal vibe. Though many of my east coast
friends—who were happy to hop on a plane to visit me in Ireland—wouldn’t cross the Hudson to
set foot on Staten Island, I still loved visiting One o One Bard, with its chickens and vegetable
21
garden and friendly neighbor who let us use her swimming pool. But mostly it was Dana and
Marsh’s “Welcome home,” hugs, that gave the home its safe-haven status.
When I arrived that weekend though, a thick tension hung over the house like some gloomy
willow, with sad branches drooping over the windows blocking out any sunlight. Leaving my shoes
in the entryway, I let myself in and stepped into the enormous hallway, where the large bookcases
that reach all the way up to the ceiling felt oppressive, as if they would fall over on top of me. In the
living room the two out-of-tune pianos—an upright and a baby grand—made of thick dark wood,
seemed bigger than usual, too heavy for their small curved legs. Moving out of these antique
shadows, I was relieved to find that sunlight streamed through the sitting room windows where
Dana’s plants burst with different shades of green, making a statement that—Yes, there is life in this
house! There is hope. I was further relieved to see the girls playing on the floor like two little angels
of light. Alice, who was then three, and Marigold, who was five, appeared to be unaffected by the
adults’ heightened panic. They were rooting through a pile of clothes strewn beside their costume
trunk, trying things on. Marigold, whose golden locks had earned her my nickname, Marigoldilocks,
spun in circles for me, showing off a purple leotard and fairy wings. She twirled faster and faster
until she lost her balance, dropping to the floor all giggles. Alice, with her shorter darker hair and
brown teasing eyes, strutted past me tossing a red boa over her shoulder. Dana came in from the
kitchen wiping her hands on a dishtowel. Her long brown hair hung loose and uncombed. She
smiled, but it was a tired smile. Her eyes glinted green with relief at seeing me, but there was fear
there too. Is she reflecting what she sees in me? Or am I projecting what I feel onto her? We hugged for a long
time without saying anything, without wanting to let go.
22
In between hospital visits, Dana and I made food while Marsh put the girls to bed. I flipped
through The New Yorker to a Shouts and Murmurs article called “Fibrillations” by Bruce McCall. It
was a satire about the health care system. I read aloud to Dana:
Q. & A. of the Month

Q: My current statement lists two hundred and thirty-one charges for
“brain surgery,” even though I have had no brain surgery. How can I
rectify this?
A: Invalid question. Brain surgery is not covered under your plan.
“This is timely,” I said. “We’re gonna find some things out about how health insurance
works and doesn’t work, over the next couple of months.” Flicking the magazine onto the chopping
block that took up the middle of the kitchen, I placed a corn tortilla in a heated skillet and sliced
open a ripe avocado.
“I know,” Dana said, opening a bag of frozen ginger root. “Antonio just said to me that this
was going to cost a fortune.” She held up a piece of ginger. “Do you think this is still good?” I took
the root and squeezed it.
“It feels kind of squishy.”
“I know, but it smells fine and looks alright, doesn’t it?” I smelled it. It was cold and old and
I wondered why she didn’t just use fresh ginger.
“Maybe just for tea,” I said, looking at her tired face. Poor Dana was exhausted and on the
edge of getting sick. She had been to the hospital nursing Antonio from day one. Thankfully, he had
had the presence of mind to sign her as his health care proxy before he went under.
“I heard that Medicaid will pick up hospital bills if someone doesn’t have property or
anything for the insurance companies to take,” she said, slicing the ginger. I flipped the tortilla and
opened a package of goat cheese. “Antonio read somewhere that if something like this happened to
23
an illegal immigrant, they’d be deported back to their country of origin as soon as they got out of
the hospital.”
“But Antonio’s legal, right?” I asked, sliding the tortilla onto a plate, spreading cheese and
scooping avocado onto it.
“I think so,” Dana said, plopping pieces of ginger into a pot of boiling water. “Take one of
those tomatoes if you want. They’re from the garden.” I turned to where the fruit and vegetables
lived on top of the counter. In Antonio’s Mexican bowl were a bunch of tomatoes—red, yellow and
green. Another bowl overflowed with onions, garlic and potatoes. And there was a basket filled with
summer and winter squashes—patty-pan, roly-poly—and a selection of gourds. A few ears of dried
corn, whose paper-thin husks had been pulled up to reveal the red and yellow kernels, lay on the
counter between bowls.
I have always loved early autumn with its lead-up to my favorite holiday, Halloween, and
Antonio’s, Dia de los Muertos. He had thrown such a party the previous year, with endless bowls of
salsa verde that he made by pounding tomatillos in a molcajete with a tejolote (Mexican mortar and
pestle). Choosing a soft tomato, I sliced through it with a sharp knife. Dana picked up The New
Yorker and studied McCall’s article. Had Antonio ever renewed his green card when it lapsed a few
years ago? He had told me he didn’t have the few hundred dollars it cost to renew it. I told Marsh
and Marsh lent him the money. Nothing was said after that.
“We’re gonna find some things out about Antonio’s legal status over the next couple of
months as well,” I said, biting into my tortilla. Dana sipped her tea and read.
“Listen to this,” she said:
Helpful Tips
—Planning your next major illness for off-peak times (see “Early Bird
Bargains”) can save you money. Example: Visiting the E.R. with a
24
cerebral hemorrhage between 3 A.M and 6 A. M. on holiday-weekend

Mondays can save up to two hundred hours of waiting time.
We took down the wall calendar and figured out that Antonio’s hemorrhage happened the holiday-
weekend Monday before Rosh Hashanah. A week or more on the respirator meant he would be
unconscious through his birthday, September 25 th. Hopefully, he’d be awake by the holiday-weekend
Monday of Yom Kippur on the 28 th of September, and out by the holiday-weekend Monday of
Columbus Day, October 12th. That’s three holiday Monday weekends. Five hundred and four hours
of waiting time, for him and for us. “Never mind saving money,” Dana said. “Just save Antonio.”
After an hour of phone calls, recorded messages, being put on hold and handed off from
person to person, we found out that Antonio’s first week in ICU—which included five hours of
surgery, CAT scans, all sorts of crazy meds, and twenty-four-seven care—would not be covered by
his health insurance. His boss’s business had gone bankrupt the previous fall, in 2008, when so many
other businesses collapsed. The furniture business started up again in the spring, but the insurance
wouldn’t kick in until six months subsequent to their start-up date, which happened to be September
21st, one week after the hemorrhage. “We’ll have to apply for Medicaid to cover that first week.
Otherwise,” Dana said, shrugging her shoulders, “he’ll have to declare bankruptcy.” He had nothing
for the insurance companies to take anyway. The only thing that Antonio owned, besides canvases,
oil paints and books, was his beloved Stella Scooter.
“The day after Antonio’s hemorrhage,” I told Dana, “I brought my students to see “Food
Inc.”
“Was it good?” she asked, absently flipping through the rest of the magazine. We had moved
into the living room and were sitting on the couch, gearing up for another hospital visit.
“Excellent. Disturbing, but good. Lots of information. To prepare for the film, we read a
couple articles that Michael Pollan wrote about the film and the present condition of our health care
25
system.” Now I had her full attention. “In one of these critiques he responded to Obama’s speech
where Joe Wilson shouted out, ‘You lie!’”
“Why did he say that, again?”
“In response to what Obama said about how illegal immigrants would not be covered under
his proposed plan.” I thought about what Antonio told Dana about illegal immigrants getting kicked
out of the country after being released from the hospital.
“I’m sure Antonio is legal,” Dana said.
On September 25th, Antonio’s forty-ninth birthday, I walked around Park Slope, looking for
a Botanica. It was a busy Friday. People shopping, cycling, vying for parking spaces, living their
normal Brooklyn lives. The weather had the beginnings of that fall crispness I so love. But that fall
of 2009, there was death all around me. I could taste it in the air. I saw it in those leaves already
curling their edges under like little fists trying to hold on.
I found a Botanica on Fifth avenue and went in to find my boy a birthday present. Like me,
Antonio was obsessed with tragedy. And, like me, his fixation with suffering came from a Catholic
upbringing. Unlike me, Antonio didn’t believe in God from the start.
“Part of the problem is that since I was little I was forced to go to church every single
freakin Sunday,” he had told me.
“Yeah, me too,” I had said.
“And after church, I was forced to go to Sunday School.”
“Me too.”
26
“So it was church first and then Sunday School, or Bible school, whatever that was. And I
was never happy with that idea.”
“Why not?”
“I hated it.”
“How old were you?”
“Like five.”
“See this is interesting, cause when I was five and I was forced to go, I liked it because I
believed what they told me. I thought that I should like it and so I liked it. It’s interesting that at five,
you were already like, no. No fucking way.”
“Oh yes, I was totally convinced that I didn’t want to go.”
“You must have sensed some kind of hypocrisy even at a young age.”
“Okay, look,” he said. “This is one thing that I clearly remember. One day, I was like five
years old, and I remember that we all went to church. It was a Sunday. My mom, my dad, my uncle,
his wife, their kids. We all went to church. And it was quite impressive because… I mean one thing
that the Catholic Church has is that their rituals are intense. They’re very intense. They’re bloody…”
“They are bloody,” I said, thinking about the Eucharist.
“And I do appreciate that,” Antonio said. I nodded. I had seen his artwork. “So, just coming
out of church, I was in the mood of, you know... I was feeling the presence of God, I think, that day.
So we all went home. We had dinner, I remember. Or lunch. And after lunch, my aunt and her
husband came in. And my aunt’s face was bloody, and it just looked like a boxers face after a big
match.
“Why?” I asked, though I could guess the answer. “What happened?”
27
“Her husband beat the shit out of her. They guy who always told me that I was a bad person
because I didn’t believe in God, and that I was an immoral person because I didn’t believe in God.
So, after church, he goes home and beats the shit out of his wife. And I was feeling good that day,
coming out of the church. And then that happened. And it just screws the whole thing.”
Much of my childhood was spent my childhood in Catholic churches, where images of
agony appeared everywhere. Stained-glass windows glowed with unearthly light that refracted
stunning colors across the pews I passed on my way to receive Holy Communion. I can still feel my
father’s hand on my shoulder, leading him down the aisle, and I can still feel so many eyes on us.
And all around the church, those pieces of glass arranged in New Testament images that looked
down upon the congregation. It was a lot for a little girl to absorb. As much as I loved my dad, it was
embarrassing being stared out as we walked to receive the Body of Christ, whose stained-glass eyes
looked down from his cross with such sadness. I was told that Jesus died for me, a sinner. His
sacrifice was unconditional love, but I was responsible for all that pain.
I scanned the Botanica shelves until I saw a tall, red, votive candle with the head of Christ,
eyes pleading up to heaven. There was the obligatory crown of thorns crammed into his scalp, with
the added touch of small red droplets of blood running down his face. Antonio will love this, I
thought. I chose another one, a yellow candle with words—Health, Peace, Money, Success, Courage,
Love, Strength, Fertility, Protection—surrounded by white clouds meant to look, I assumed, like
they were floating around the candle. In the center of the candle was a cross, and over this cross was
a horseshoe pointing downward, with lightning-like bolts directed at the cross. What kitch. Perfect
for Antonio. Looking for a third candle, I found one that said “La Cruz De Caravaca,” with a note
28
that explained its use for making wishes. Antonio’s last name is Cruz. Well, Cruz for short. Cruz
Zavaletta for long. Also perfect. While waiting for the man to wrap the first two candles in
newspaper, I read the “Prayer to Divine Saviour” on the back of the red one and knew he’d like this
one the best:
May the greatness of God save me: may the strength of my faith in
Jesus Christ accompany me; may I remain pure. May my enemy’s
fortitude be destroyed by the consistory of the Holy Trinity, so that
neither I, nor my children, nor my benefactors, may be harmed. Oh
Jesus, Divine Saviour, Redeemer of the world, because of your suffering
on the cross at Calvary; defeat my enemies. (State your petition.)
Amen.
My religious upbringing was fundamentalist Catholic with a Born Again Christian twist. Both
of my parents are strict Catholics, but my mother has always craved more passion than she was able
to find at mass. When I was in the second grade, my older brother and I were pulled out of Saint
Mary’s Catholic School because we weren’t getting enough of the Bible, and sent to a Baptist School.
My father insisted we complete the catechisms, while our mother brought us to Assembly of God
churches where people raised their hands in praise, spoke in tongues, and fainted in frenzies. There
was even a faith healer. My father has been blind since he was twelve years old. He had a tumor in
his brain that had pushed against his eye nerves, damaging them. My mother, despite wanting to join
a convent and become a nun, fell in love with him and had seven children. In their early days, she
made it her mission to get God to grant Dad his sight. And so, we were dragged to a faith healer in a
marquee tent in the countryside. I was five or six years old. People of all ages lined up to be healed. I
watched as a young boy (apparently) got his hearing back, and ran up to my dad saying, “Why don’t
you go up too? Maybe he can heal your eyes?” But my father did not stand in that long line in which
29
person after person passed out when the healer placed his palm on their foreheads. Maybe he knew
better, but what he told me was,
“God told me he’d give my eyesight back, someday.” This satisfied me. It also fueled my
belief that this would indeed occur, someday. Only recently did my father reveal to me that he had
told me that only to appease me.
My parents made sure that all seven of their children were well shielded from the rest of the
world. Like any child who believes in Santa Claus, simply because they are taught that he exists, I
believed in Jesus. I believed as hard as I could. But just because we believe in something, that doesn’t
make it real—like my mother’s faith that my dad would see; like my trust in Jon’s promises; like the
Bard community’s hopes for Antonio’s quick recovery; and like all of our fleeting thoughts that
flicker like little black dots in the sky, but that move away when we try to look directly at them—like
that finger trying to touch itself.
When I got home from the Botanica, I unwrapped the candles, lit the La Cruz one, made a
wish for Antonio to get well soon, and reread the “Prayer to the Divine Savior.” It was easy to
imagine the conversation Antonio and I would have about this prayer. The drama of it. The fact that
people take these things seriously. ‘Ah, Catholicism,” he would say. “The religion that loves to
suffer.” I could just hear his laugh. Again and again, I yearned to hear his laugh.
Once, I asked Antonio if he felt any connection to religion at all. “No. I don’t. I don’t,” he
said. “If I had to chose, which I don’t, but if I had to chose and say what I am, I would say,
Catholic.”
“Why?” I asked, surprised.
“Because Catholics are hypocrites,” he said.
30
“And you identify with that?”
“Yes, I do. They just solve everything so easily. What I mean is that if there is trouble, that’s
because it’s the will of God.”
“Go on…”
“Well, it’s not their fault. It’s God’s will. It doesn’t matter what happened. It’s God’s will. So
it’s never their fault. I like that.
“You like that?”
“Yes, I do. It’s very friggin convenient!”
“But why do you think you’re a hypocrite?”
“Why? Well, because I have the luxury of not believing in something that the majority of
people do. That gives me a lot of freedom. And by not believing, then sometimes, only sometimes, I
can say – ‘Oh, God!’ – not believing. But I can say it.”
“But that’s just an expression. It doesn’t mean anything.”
“It is, but I can say it without feeling guilt.”
“That doesn’t make you a hypocrite.”
“Well, I think it does.”
“Why?”
“Well, because I’m sayin’ it without sayin’ it.”
“You’re saying it without saying it?”
“Yes. I just say it because everybody does. But not so I feel it. That makes me a hypocrite. I
mean, I have said it so many times. And every time I say it, I do think behind my head, the thought
of ‘Why am I saying this?’ But still, I say it. And I don’t feel guilty.”
“But that’s because you don’t believe in God.”
31
“Right.”
“There’s nothing to feel guilty about.”
“Right.”
“So you’re a hypocrite just for saying it?”
“I do think so.”
“That’s very interesting that that makes you feel Catholic.”
“Yeah!”
“But also, you’re obsessed with suffering.”
“I am. I am.”
“Why?”
“Because it feels good.”
“That’s ironic.”
“Why?”
“To be obsessed with something that makes you feel bad because it makes you feel good…
It’s very masochistic.”
Well, yes!”
“How does it make you feel good to be obsessed with suffering?”
“Well, one thing that I learned is that suffering makes me feel alive.”
“How so?”
“Cause it hurts. If it hurts, I am alive. If it doesn’t hurt, I might be dead. And I don’t want
that.”
32
I was floored the next time I saw Antonio. No matter that I had sat beside my friend Jim a
couple years back, when he was on a respirator. Nothing prepared me for this. Because the fluids in
Antonio’s body were all messed up, he was bloated from head to foot. Just one week ago he was full
of life, but now he was being kept alive by machines. Because of the tube down his throat, his
mouth couldn’t shut, and because he was on a paralytic and sedative and who knows what else, his
tongue lolled and bubbles gurgled out the side of his mouth. When I tried to wipe them away, long
strands of saliva streamed down his chin.
Is this enough suffering for you, Antonio? Do you feel alive enough, now?
A nurse with the nametag, James, came in and suctioned him. But minutes later when the
bubbles and drool were back, Dana and I just looked at each other. A respirator breathed for him
with a Darth Vader sucking sound of mechanical breathing, which made this even more frightening.
There was also the continual “beep… beep… beep” from the life-support machine. Fighting
feelings of faintness, I held fast to the guardrail. I wanted to scream. That’s not fucking Antonio! It was
a shell of Antonio. The one thing that comforted me was that he didn’t know how dehumanizing
this was. Then, I remembered part of a sutra that Thich Nhat Hanh explains in his book,
Transformation and Healing.
O bhikkhus… the practitioner meditates on his very own body from the
soles of the feet upwards and then from the hair on top of the head
downwards, a body contained inside the skin and full of all the
impurities which belong to the body: ‘Here is the hair of the head, the
hairs on the body, the nails, teeth skin, flesh, sinews, bones, bone
marrow, kidneys, heart, liver, diaphragm, spleen, lungs, intestines,
bowels, excrement, bile, phlegm, pus, blood, sweat, fat, tears, grease,
saliva, mucus, synovic fluid, urine.’
And I faced the reality that what Antonio was going through was wholly human.
While I stood staring, Dana took charge and opened the canister of essential oils she had
brought, selected some lavender and tea tree, and poured a few drops into an carrier oil. The smells
33
revived me. I snapped out of the shock, took some oil and massaged Antonio’s hand. Dana took the
other hand. There is no handbook for what to do when you’re watching a friend exist at the edge of
life like this, not knowing if he’s slipping away or hanging on. The only thing to do, it seems, is
something. Anything. Working through our fears, we were desperately trying to save his life, as if it
were up to us. If we used the right oils, touched him at the correct acupuncture points, thought the
right thoughts, he would be okay. Right?
When Dana started with Reiki, I was hesitant. Reiki is a healing system that was founded in
Japan in the early 1900’s by Mikao Usui (who, ironically, died of a stroke). Reiki practitioners act as
vehicles through which universal healing energy flows. I dabbled in Reiki when living in Ireland.
Shortly before I met Jon, I had been attuned to the second level. In the first level, they say you can
treat yourself and close family or friends. In the second level, you can put your hands on other
people, as well as heal from a distance by visualizing sacred symbols derived from Sanskrit. The third
level means you are a Reiki Master and can attune others. I was told that I had a talent for Reiki so
gave it a shot, but it didn’t resonate with me. Though I appreciated the intuitive idea of putting my
hands on someone to make them feel better, using symbols as keys to open doors to higher levels of
consciousness seemed presumptuous to me. What gave me the right to use such symbols if they
were so sacred, and why would the Reiki Master who had first attuned me just give them to me? Was
it because of the money I paid her? And what was the difference between Reiki and a faith healer in
a tent?
But Dana didn’t look like she was doing anything hokey or religious. What I saw was one
friend lovingly placing her hands over another sick friend. With or without symbols and levels of
attunements, anyone can transmit the healing energy of love. But I was too aware of the lack of
privacy and didn’t feel comfortable putting my hands on Antonio like that. Besides, too many nurses
34
buzzed in and out, pricking and prodding and suctioning. Maybe later, when I’m alone with him, I
thought.
Needing another activity to occupy myself, I took out the birthday candles and set them on
the bedside table. No matter which way I arranged them—amidst the clutter of CDs, coffee cups
and essential oils—I couldn’t make the candles look right. Maybe if I tied a red ribbon in a bow just
over Christ’s crown of thorns. “What do you think, Antonio?” The question sounded as hollow as it
felt. “This sucks,” I said to Dana, who gave me a weak smile. I asked her for a lighter.
“You can’t light them in here, Mon,” she said, nodding toward the oxygen machine. So I sat
there and watched Dana transmit loving energy to our boy. For someone who loved women’s hands
on his body, Antonio’s face was incredibly still. But for someone who likes suffering so much, he
certainly looked the part. I glanced at the Christ candle and thought about the time I asked Antonio
if he felt there were any positive aspects to religion.
“I don’t,” he had said. “I don’t. However. One thing that I have to recognize is that at least,
at the very least, Catholicism and Buddhism have produced a good deal of art and music. Good
quality. No shit.”
“Like?”
“Actually, when I was very young, about fifteen years old, I remember going to a church and
having in my hands a copy of a song. The song was the Ave María of Schubert. And I had the copy
in my hands. When I entered the church, a guys just started singing it. And while he was singing it, I
was reading it. And I thought to myself, ‘Damn. This has gotta be the best song ever written to a
woman.’”
“Why?”
“Because it was beautiful. It’s a beautiful song.”
35
“I’ve only ever sung it in Latin. What’s it about?”
“It is based on a story. What it is, is that it says, ‘Ave María gratia plena. ‘Ave’ is something
like ‘holy’. ‘Gratia plena means ‘full of grace’. And so on. So, it’s basically saying, ‘You holy shit. You
beautiful thing.’ You know, I thought it was beautiful. Yeah. And I thought it was so beautiful that I
went almost every day at the same hour just to hear this song.”
I flipped through the CDs we had brought to the ICU, thinking I’d have to get Schubert’s
Ave María for next time. Maybe there was something else to play for his birthday week. I found the
mix I had made of Mexican music, but the respiratory nurse walked in. “What’s that smell?” she
snapped. Dana was mixing essential oils into a base lotion.
“It’s some oils we’re massaging on him,” she said.
“I don’t like that smell. What is that, that eucalyptus stuff ? I’m allergic to eucalyptus,” she
said, coughing a forced kind of cough that didn’t seem necessary.
“It’s just lavender."
“It smells like that eucalyptus,” the nurse coughed. “I don’t like that stuff. It’s not good for
me.”
“We’re doing this for him,” I said. “It’s good for him.” I refrained from asking her how a
respiratory specialist could be so against eucalyptus oil. When she left, I laid my hands over Antonio.
Who cares what anyone thinks of me, I thought. All that matters is bringing my friend back and
getting him out of this terrible place with these uncaring professionals. Dana and I stayed in his
room for hours giving Reiki, massaging, crying, hoping, hugging, watching, waiting… and feeling
utterly helpless.
That night, lying on the futon on the living room floor, I channeled energy to Antonio. If
there was anything to those Reiki attunements, I was going to tap in. I put my hands over my lungs
36
and breathed into Antonio’s lungs. I told myself that I needed to be stronger. The day before, I was
bleak. I ate what I wanted at a friend’s barbeque, thinking—who cares if I’m allergic to sugar or
wheat? What did it matter? I drank wine, got stoned and smoked cigarettes, even though it felt
wrong breathing tobacco and tar into my lungs when Antonio’s lungs were failing. Dana also took a
drag. We were scared. But there, on the futon, I breathed deeply into my lungs—visualizing
Antonio’s lungs, pink and healthy—and sent whatever universal healing energy I was capable of
sending, while I listened to the pounding rain, like tears falling, all of our tears, lashing across the
roof.
In my dream, we are around Antonio’s bed—me, Dana, Leah, Marsh and

Sage—watching him being kept alive, his chest moving in and out in the
unnatural, too-perfect rhythm of the respirator. Suddenly, he turns over. We
look at each other, marveling that he can turn over by himself when he’s
supposed to be sedated. Next thing, he sits up and smiles.
I woke to a note from Marsh telling me that he was at church with the girls and that Sage
and his stepfather, Brett, were at the hospital with Dana. I poured myself a large mug of strong,
black coffee, and I mused over my dream. Was it was a sign?
Dana came in the front door, and I was ready to get her thoughts on my dream. But she
walked into the kitchen right over to me, put her head on my shoulder and started sobbing. “It’s just
hard to see him like this,” she said. I led her to the living room. We sat down on the couch. She put
her head in my lap and cried. “This was when Antonio and I would hang out. Marsh and the girls
would be at church and Antonio and I would just do something together.”
“What kinds of things would you do?” I asked, running my fingers through her long, dark
hair, pulling out the tangles.
37
“We’d go get tacos and walk around Mexico Town, or just talk.” I held her, fighting back the
grimness I had vowed not to feel that day. I told her about my dream, trying to make us both believe
that it meant he would wake up soon.
Soon, Sage and Brett had returned. We asked them how their visit went. Brett explained that
one of the nurses said he’d seen three miracles in his day, suggesting this would take another one.
“If things keep up like this, some decisions are gonna have to be made,” Brett said to the
room. But we weren’t ready to think about that. I went upstairs, away from the activity in the
kitchen, and closed myself in the bathroom, where I had my first meltdown. With my forehead
against the wall, I cried, “C’mon, Antonio.” I kept picturing his bloated body, drooling mouth, eyes
closed tight. It isn’t right, I thought. He needs to come back to us. He has to. The last time I was this
distressed was when Jon’s mother died. I had called my parents from Ireland, wanting to speak to my
own mother, for comfort I suppose. It had been good to hear her voice at that time.
I pulled myself together, left the bathroom, went back downstairs and called home. I
updated my mother on Antonio’s condition and she said, “Sounds like you’re not gonna get him
back.” I wanted to rage. How could she say such a thing? I should have known better than to expect
a certain kind of support. I learned over the years not to take my mother’s pessimism personally. But
sometimes it seemed like she was afraid of everything. When I went sailing to the Canary Islands, she
was afraid of pirates. When my sister was camping in Alaska, she was afraid of bears. When I drank
out of the same cup as a gay friend of mine, she was afraid of AIDS. He didn’t even have AIDS. I
couldn’t let this kind of paranoia enter Antonio’s situation. Everything had to be positive or Antonio
might die.
“I don’t really want to talk to you if you’re going to say things like that,” was my controlled
response.
38
“I’m just responding to what I was told,” she said.
After the sunset, I went outside and called out again to Antonio. I hollered into the darkness.
“C’mon, Antonio. Come back. I know how you love all that Christ martyrdom stuff. This is your
chance to pull a Jesus and come back from the dead. C’mon. This is your backyard. I feel you here.
Come back to us. We’ll help you and look after you and nurture you and love you back to health.” I
didn’t know if I should be making such promises. But I made them anyway. Anything to get him
back. “Just c’mon back to us,” I repeated like a mantra, “Come back,” and circled the yew tree three
times, clockwise.
The chickens liked to climb this tree they weren’t put into their house early enough. We
could never figure out why, but once the sun started to set, the chickens would start to climb. But
they were not able to climb down. And if they stayed in the tree all night, then the raccoon who
lived in the silver maple at the far end of the backyard would eat well that night. Marsh would have
to come out and climb the tree to take them down, one at a time. We did not know that the yews are
poisonous and that it is known as the Death Tree, but this explains why the chickens all died off one
summer. Some believe that Jesus was crucified on a yew tree. An ancient ballad goes,
And they went down into yonder town

and sat in the Gallery,
And there they saw sweet Jesus Christ
Hanging from a big Yew tree.
I was not aware that our yew had been symbolic of death, sorrow and sadness since Egyptian times.
What I was aware of was how familiar my ritual of circling trees or monuments with sage sticks and
wishes had become. I had performed a similar ritual in this very yard last year during Antonio’s Dia
de Los Muertos party, when I was dressed as an Egyptian Snake Goddess. Hadn’t I circled this very
tree three times, convinced that the universe was on my side? Was the universe on Antonio’s side?
39
Did my mother think God was on her side when she tried to get my father his eyesight back? Had I
inherited her faith that if only we believe hard enough in something, it will come true? One winter
solstice, Jon and I drove through England, on our way to Spain. There, we had climbed to the top of
the holy hill of Glastonbury Tor, home to Gwyn ap Nudd, King of the Fairies. I lit a smudge stick
and got Jon to walk around that ancient site with me, asking the universe to grant us a place in the
sun—a hacienda, where I could live my life on one side and he could live his on the other. We would
meet in the middle for glasses of wine. Such was our fairy tale plan. Was my mother as let down as I
was? If she was, her faith remained as strong as mine still was.
As I circled the yew tree, the branches high up in an oak tree next-door swayed in a sudden
breeze. Later, I would learn that about the Druids’ belief in the power of the oak helping to renew
strength, and that it is considered a symbol of health and good luck. At the time, I just wondered if
the wind in the oak branches was calling Antonio, too. Or was the breeze Antonio, answering? Was
he telling me he’d be okay? I imagined standing out there with Dana and Marsh, holding hands and
looking up at the bright crescent moon, calling as loudly as we could—ANTONIO!
When Dana came down from putting the girls to bed, I came in all wide-eyed tripping, and
told her, “We have to go outside and call Antonio as loud as we can. You and me and Marsh.”
“We do?” she asked, spooning salsa and plain yogurt into her mouth with a blue corn chip.
She looked worn out. I had overheard her on the phone earlier telling a friend that she was in and
out of shock.
We did not go out and invoke Antonio. Instead, we talked about what if? We faced it as a
possibility since you never really do know. But I didn’t want to think about what if? I preferred to
cling to fantasies of the future. Because outside in the dark, in that invigorating wind, I had
viscerally felt that Antonio was coming back to us. I had clearly pictured him in the future, sitting on
40
the back steps. I’d be standing over near the white chairs and barbeque. He’d catch my eye and I’d
walk over, look at him and say, “I’m really glad you’re here, man.” We’d clink bottles of Corona.
He’d look up at me like, “I know.”
I’ve witnessed other people I love coming back from near-death. In fact, I was Antonio’s
roommate at One o One Bard when my brother Matthew collapsed one day at a bus stop on his way
to work. As Matthew put it, after the fact:
I got out of bed on a pleasant sunny morning, yawned, and then rolled snake-eyes
as though God not only plays dice but loads them. Behind door number one, a
“non-aneurismal subarachnoid hemorrhage” of indefinite origin—a brain bleed
from who knows where or why.
Sitting with me on the side porch, smoking in silence, Antonio had offered friendship of the simple
unimposing kind. Me, all wound up with stress, trying to keep the fear at bay. Him, rolling me
cigarette after cigarette. I kept a candle burning on the wooden dresser in the hallway outside our
bedrooms for the entire long week that Matthew was in ICU in Seattle. That was more than three
years ago. Since then, Matthew has had a second son, finished building a house with his bare hands,
divorced his first wife, met Julieta, married Julieta, and is about to have a third son. Life goes on...
for some.
The first time I ever heard of someone dying suddenly from a brain bleed was my third year
in college. Mark Bradley was a twenty-four-year-old musician and chef. I didn’t know him well but
friends of mine did The fact of a brain hemorrhage shocked me. That someone could just die like
that. Years later, in Ireland, a young man from my community walked up the stairs at work, got to
the top step and fell over, dying instantly from a brain hemorrhage. He left behind a wife and little
girl. Then, in 2003, Jon’s mother Kath. We had just talked to her on Christmas Day. She was
perfectly fine. A few days later she was visiting her daughter in Bath, getting ready to go shopping,
41
when the aortic artery that ran up her leg unzipped and ruptured. Kath was dead in less than half an
hour. She was fifty-seven. I knew all too well on what a precarious edge Antonio was teetering. Was
he balancing or was he slipping?
Antonio was also a good friend to me when my friend Jim almost died from a staph-
infection. His system had gone into septic shock causing five major organs to shut down, one after
the other, in the space of twenty minutes. Following a harrowing weekend in New Jersey— ICU
visits, “cautiously optimistic” prognosis, helping Jim’s wife deal with things like laundry, meals, and
their four-year-old—I drove back to Staten Island. That night, Antonio turned to me at the dinner
table and said, “This has taken a lot out of you. Take it really easy over the next few days.” I
remember my surprise that he was tuned in to my distress. Especially since Jon was unable to be
there for me.
I hadn’t realized I was in a state of shock the entire weekend (beginning the moment I saw
Jim’s laid-out body, eyes closed tight, a respirator breathing for him) until I got back home, sat in our
bed, smoked a joint and started sobbing. Jon was in the room with me and I wanted him to take me
in his arms, tell me everything was okay and make love to me. After being face-to-face with death, I
craved an emotional release by way of intense human contact. Instead, I was left alone with the
painful slow leak of tears. I had not yet accepted, after five years together, that Jon was unable to go
there with me. His reaction to strong emotions from others was to withdraw. Lying there crying, I
watched Jon’s tensed back as he tapped away on his laptop. How like my father. To this day, he sits
beside his radio, his back to the rest of the family, absorbed, cut off, unavailable. When Jon finally
got up, he turned to me with a sheepish expression and a shrug and left to go outside with the joint
he had just rolled.
42
It would take me another two years to move on from this man, because I remained confused
by the depth of the connection we shared. We were soul mates, or ‘kindred spirits,’ as Matthew once
called us. Matthew knew how things were between me and Jon before Kath died. Matthew had come
to Amsterdam when Jon and I were steering boats through its canals and riding bikes over the city’s
cobblestone streets. Way back, when the romance of our adventures was still intact. But when
tragedy struck, it all went “pear-shaped”, to use Jon’s own expression. Would things have been
different in New York if Kath hadn’t died? Would Jon have had the energy to turn to me that day
and give me an iota of what I needed? I had convinced myself that things would change after he got
over her death. Then, he’d have the energy for me again. I still believed what he told me when we
fell in love. “I’ll be here for you from now on,” he had said, holding me around the waist, both of us
looking out across green fields at the setting sun. No one had ever told me that before. I held on to
Jon’s promises, and for years I held on tight. But promises, like thoughts, are just words we try to
hold onto. And when actions don’t make them solid, they dissolve over time like layers of limestone.
Week Three
It was Yom Kippur. Bruce McCall’s Helpful Tips from The New Yorker had stated that,
“Visiting the E.R. with a cerebral hemorrhage between 3 A.M and 6 A. M. on holiday-weekend
Mondays can save up to two hundred hours of waiting time.” How many hours of waiting time had
we saved? Had it only been a week ago when Dana and I sat in the kitchen reading that article?
There I was again, another holiday Monday in Staten Island. At least I didn’t have to work, so I
43
spent the day at the hospital and pressed the parts of Antonio’s feet connected with his lung points.
I pushed my thumb into the ball of one foot at a time. Was I pressing hard enough? Was I waiting
well enough? Was I doing this right?
“Does that feel good, Antonio?”
No response.
“Dana had another dream about you,” I said. “Do you wanna hear it?”
Nothing.
I told him that she dreamed about how negative the hospital staff were being. I did not tell
him that if we hadn’t been coming every day, it was clear he would be ignored. Not ignored outright.
The doctors checked on his lack of progress because it was their job. The nurses followed their
routine and gave the required care. Maybe one or two nurses were sympathetic to our situation. But
not much extra effort seemed to occur in the I.C.U. Trauma Ward at Richmond University Medical
Center in Staten Island. The other patients were old and dying. Their visitors were few and far
between compared to the ongoing rotation of our Bard Avenue crew. None of Antonio’s doctors or
nurses thought he was going to get better. They didn’t let us believe we were doing any good
spending hours, days, and weeks by his side. They put up with our comings and goings and seemed
resigned to our quirky ways, but no one reassured us that he’d be fine. Maybe they were touched by
our efforts. Possibly they were amused by us weirdoes with our essential oils and Reiki.
“Can you hear what they’re saying around your bed?” I asked, wondering if he heard the
nurse who told Dana that he was the sickest person in the ICU. Then, I remembered that this was
said prior to his being put on the respirator. Antonio was the sickest person there even before the
pneumonia. Did he know this? Was this information something that a person in an induced coma
44
could hear? Was he aware when that nurse told Brett, “I’ve seen three miracles in my day”? What did
Antonio know? What was this experience like for him? How could I reach him?
I picked up his copy of The Way of Chuang Tzu that he had said (two weeks ago when he was
awake) that I could borrow, and read to him about the Tao.
Starlight asked Non-Being: “Master, are you? Or are you not?”

Since he received no answer whatever, Starlight set him-
self to watch for Non-Being. He waited to see if Non-Being
would put in an appearance.
He kept his gaze fixed on the deep Void, hoping to catch
a glimpse of Non-Being.
All day long he looked, and he saw nothing. He listened,
but heard nothing. He reached out to grasp, and grasped
nothing.
Then, Starlight exclaimed at last: “This is IT!”
I can comprehend the absence of Being
But who can comprehend the absence of Nothing?
If now, on top of all this, Non-Being IS,
Who can comprehend it?”
Could I comprehend the absence of Being that Antonio personified? His body lay in the room with
me, but where was the rest of him? Where was he behind those closed eyes, that face still as death?
He was obviously not here. Where was he? Where are you, Antonio?
I closed the book and set it on the dresser beside the red votive candle with its Christ
looking desperately up to heaven, droplets of blood crying down his face. My God, my God, why has
thou forsaken me? “There’s a contrast in mindsets for you,” I said. If Antonio were awake we could
have philosophized about the differences between these two mindsets. I might have pointed out that
in Taoism there is nothing to grasp, therefore nothing to be abandoned by. Antonio might have
countered that having nothing to hold onto would probably make some feel as desperate as Christ-
on-a-candle looked. In Catholicism, we would agree, people grasped at their Saviour. We would
further agree that this could create an illusion of trust.
45
But there was no back-and-forth, and there would not be any time soon. Would there ever
be again? Was I living in an illusion of trust grasping at the belief that Antonio would wake up? Was
I visiting the hospital solely for Antonio? Or, was I there for myself ? I was there for Antonio, of
course, I told myself. If I didn’t show up… If Dana and Marsh and Sage and Leah and I didn’t
come, who would? Antonio was well loved and many of his friends had visited over these past few
weeks. But they weren’t there every weekend, every day, keeping vigil like we were. We would not
forsake Antonio. Like Starlight, I would set to watch, to see if Antonio might put in an appearance.
Kissing my friend’s bloated cheek I left him with the machines, nurses and doctors, and so
many unanswered questions. On my way past the nurses’ station, I walked past a man who looked
nervous and out of place, like I must have looked two weeks ago. I heard a nurse tell him that
visiting hours were over. As the ICU door swung open, I heard the nurse ask, “Did you say a cousin
of Mr. Cruz?” I turned around, walked over to this man, and introduced myself. He said his name
was Dago and that he was married to Elvia, Antonio’s cousin who lived in Queens. He has a cousin in
Queens? Another piece to the Antonio puzzle. Dago explained that Antonio had lived with them four
years ago, but that one day, he up and vanished and they had no idea where he went. They just found
out he was in the hospital through family in Mexico. The nurse, who overheard this exchange,
permitted Dago to get his wife, who was in the waiting room with their three young children.
I went with Elvia and Dago into Antonio’s room and watched the blood drain from their
faces. Nobody moved and in this pause the sounds from the machines seemed to grow louder.
Finally Elvia forced herself forward and spoke to her cousin in Spanish. At first, her words came out
halting and stilted, but I was impressed that they came out at all. Dago stood back taking in the
machines, the tubes, and the plastic bags containing liquids being pumped into Antonio to keep him
alive.
46
Antonio’s story for coming to New York City did not include cousins in Queens. In fact, he
had said he was homeless on the streets of Manhattan. He first came to the country on an artist
VISA, and ended up moving to upstate New York to be with Christy. There, they had Sage. For ten
years, Antonio lived upstate doing art and public speaking about art. He told me these things that
first summer we when lived in Staten Island. He and Jon and I would sit outside on the porch, where
I’d be entertained by Antonio’s stories and Jon’s guitar. One day, he told us about what brought him
to New York City.
“I was having every year a very popular exhibit,” he said. “The Day of the Dead exhibit. it
was more like a multi-media exhibit, where as my subjects I put food, dance and art. And it
happened every year, and it was really popular.”
“Was it popular?” Jon asked.
“Shh,” I said. “Go on, Antonio.”
“I even brought musicians from Mexico. Yeah, I brought musicians and artists from
Mexico,” he said, pausing to pull on his rollie. Jon strummed a few chords. Antonio continued. “And
that gig gave me every year enough money to live for at least another year. Yes, it was well paid. And
the last one, it was like really cool. Everybody was having fun. Everybody was dancing. And during
the dance, a guy just came in and stabbed another guy.”
“What?” I said, leaning forward in my chair.
“He didn’t kill him. But he was stabbed right there in front of everyone.”
“That’s crazy,” I said.
“Yeah. And then, he ran away and I caught him.”
“You caught him?”
47
“I did.”
“What did he do?”
“Well, he tried to stab me too. But I was quicker, so I got him and hold him until the police
came, and then he was taken away.”
“What was it all about?” I asked.
“For what I was told, it was something about a girl. I didn’t know if he was okay. I didn’t
know anything about it until months later. I didn’t know if he was dead or what.”
“What did that have to do with you coming to New York?” I asked.
“Well, that event messed up everything. I had been living on artist grants, and they stopped
the grants.”
“Why?” I said.
“Figures,” Jon said.
“Somebody was almost killed in my exhibit. And I was pretty much responsible for whatever
happened during my exhibit,” Antonio said. Jon shook his head and set down his guitar.
“But it wasn’t your fault,” I insisted.
“Yeah, but it was my exhibit, and it was called The Day of the Dead,” he said, emphasizing
the word, dead. “So all the grants were stopped. I was pretty much banned from the scene.”
“What a crazy ending,” I said.
“Very exciting though!” Antonio laughed.
“Dramatic, anyway,” I said.
“That’s how things happen with my life. I’m a drama queen!”
“Is that why you chose to live on the streets of New York?” I asked.
“Probably,” He said.
48
“What was it like?” I asked.
“It was crazy.”
“Where did you sleep?”
“I slept in Union Square. Central Park. Ah, what else? Washington Square… In the parks.”
“I slept in the parks all over Europe,” Jon said, by way of a boast. Antonio nodded and
leaned in to light Jon’s joint. When I first met Jon, he practically seduced me with his tales of
survival. There was one story about a night in Perugia when his knapsack was stolen. He was using it
as a pillow and someone lifted his head, ever-so-gently, pulled out the bag, and set his head on the
ground. Jon kept his eyes closed and feigned sleep. He was only fifteen, and who knew if the thief
had a knife. I couldn’t get enough of these living on the edge stories
“What season was it?” I asked Antonio.
“It was winter.”
“Of course it was,” I laughed. “How did you eat?”
“I had a job.”
“You had a job, but you lived on the streets?” Jon asked.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I think it was one of those crazy artist things, where you have to experience things. You
know?”
“Actually, I do.” Jon said.
“What was your job?” I asked.
“I was making furniture. That’s when I met my boss, Scott.”
“Did you try to get into the art scene, here?”
49
“I did not.”
“Why not?” Jon asked.
“Well, it’s New York city. It’s a huge city.”
“I’m starting to understand that, myself,” Jon said. He had been having a tough time with the
music scene. In Ireland, any musician can join in at a pub. In New York, that tradition held, but the
musicians hired for the night would be miked, so no one else could be heard. This frustrated Jon to
no end. A few times, he had walked into sessions where they were playing songs had written, but
when he sat down to play, unless it was his gig, his guitar couldn’t even be heard. The music scene
was not was he expected. And though many of my friends were musicians, Jon could not understand
why no one pulled out their instruments at the parties I took him to. It was no wonder Antonio was
overwhelmed coming down from a small community where everyone knew everyone.
“New York intimidated you, too?” I asked.
“It was huge! And I was just a little Mexican! I think that I was overwhelmed by the size of
it. That is a busy city. I totally loved it,” he said. “It was quite cool sleeping in the parks. I did make
friends.”
“Well, how did you end up in Staten Island, of all places?”
“One night, it was really freakin’ cold. And so I went to stay in a homeless shelter. I stayed
there for a couple of weeks. And it was obvious that I was the only one working. I always left at the
same time and came back at the same time. One day, I believe it was payday, I was assaulted. The
problem is homeless shelters are most exclusively for drug addicts and criminals. And everybody
that leaves the social system ends up in a homeless shelter. And so on that day, these two men took
me into the elevator and they beat the shit out of me. I ended up in the hospital.”
“Talk about drama,” I said.
50
“I know! And when I came out of the hospital, Scott let me sleep on a mattress in his office.
And he put it upon himself to find me a safer place. And that’s when I met Bard.”
“Craigslist?”
“Yeah, Craigslist. And that’s when I found my girls.”
“Your girls?”
“Well, Alice wasn’t born yet. But the first day that I got to Staten Island, it was so cool. Well,
Marigold was a little thingy. Oh, man. Marigold just threw her arms at me. And I hold her until I
left. It was so sweet.”
“Love at first sight, huh?”
“I did, I did. Damn, yes. And it was so cool.”
My thoughts were silenced by a loud beeping. Elvia let go of Antonio’s limp hand. Dago
shifted his weight. They looked from their cousin to me, eyes scared wide. James, the kindest of the
nurses who had told us to call him Jimmy, came in and adjusted a few things. He reassured Antonio,
talking as if he were sure our boy could hear him. “Everything’s okay, Mr. Cruz. You’re going to be
fine. You’ll get your strength back in no time.” Was he being this optimistic for Dago and Elvia’s
benefit? Apart from Sage, this was the first of Antonio’s family to visit. Pressing my lips together, I
nodded to James, grateful for his care. He bowed his head and left. I encouraged Elvia to go back to
whatever she was telling Antonio. Dago moved closer and spoke to him as well. Did the Non-Being
of Antonio note that he was being spoken to in Spanish? Would his native language rouse him even
just a bit? I couldn’t understand their Spanish and didn’t know what to do with myself, so I wrote
down the names on the tags wrapped around the tubes coming out of Antonio, as if capturing their
names would tell me something about how they were helping him: Norcuron, Versed, Fentaryl,
51
Levophed. One machine said, “High Alert.” His blood pressure went from 133/85 to 139/90. Was
that significant? His oxygen was at 98. There were bags of things to inject into him like Magnesium
Sulfate and Sodium Chloride. The radio was set at 96.3. Could he even hear it?
When they were ready to go, Elvia, Dago, their three young children followed me down the
road to One o One. My familiarity with this stretch of Bard hit me while walking with five others
who had never been on this street before. At the house, I introduced them all to Dana and the girls.
Marigoldilocks, who had been wanting her hair to grow faster, was entranced by the Elvia’s
daughter’s thick, black, long hair.
“Can I touch your hair?” she asked.
“Sure,” the older sister said, tossing her head back.
Leaving the kids to play in the living room, the adults gathered around the chopping block in
the kitchen. But Dana pulled me aside to tell me that she had received a letter from Antonio’s doctor
to fax to the Oaxacan consulate so that his mother could get a VISA interview. I was amazed at how
complicated and huge this was becoming.
Dago and Elvia left for the ferry before I had a chance to ask for answers to any questions
about when Antonio had stayed with them in Queens. Like, did they know he had been living on the
streets? Had he told them of the stabbing incident and loss of grants? Was there more to these
stories? Maybe next time I see them, I thought… But, I never saw them again.
Later that night, before getting a ferry myself, I sat in the backyard watching it get dark,
smoking a cigarette. I knew I shouldn’t be smoking, but it had been a long weekend. I thought about
how Antonio had landed at One o One while Jon and I were in Italy brainstorming about where to
go next. Somehow, we three all decided to move to Staten Island around the same moment in time.
52
For that whole summer of 2005, Jon and Antonio and I hung out on the side porch with its
bamboo tree shade, each of us pondering what brought us there. When I caught Jon’s eye, our
shared thoughts were apparent: What are we doing in Staten Island? New York was a crazy whim, a
two-year plan that had sounded exciting when it was a fantasy in far-off in Italy. But now, there we
were, rolling cigarettes and passing joints, gazing through bamboo branches at this charming
suburban street, with its tennis courts and park, conservative but friendly neighbors, and just-so
lawns that immigrants manicured. Jon played the odd tune, Antonio told tales, and I wrote in my
journal, trying to understand what fate had brought me back home.
Perplexing as it was, after three years on the road, it was grounding for me to be in New
York. I not only understood the language, but I understood the culture. I had old friends and my
family nearby. And, though I had been gone for nine years, I had no trouble finding teaching work
and navigating the system. What a relief, after the baffling Italian bureaucracy. There, I could get a
tax ID number just by asking for one. I could buy a car, which I did. I could buy and drive a Vespa,
which I also did. I could even buy and live in a house. But I couldn’t get my car insured unless I had
a piece of paper proving the validity of another piece of paper, which I couldn’t get because I didn’t
have a permanent address. So in order to drive my car, I had to buy a house, first. The cramped
quarters of the Snow Goose had gotten old, so Jon and I rented a room in an apartment complex
one block from the Adriatic coast, in San Benedetto del Tronto. It was not beach weather, though,
and the building was full of prostitutes and drug dealers. Though we lived there for several months,
this did not qualify as an address. We were told that, in situations such as these, the way to move
forward was to pay someone off. In Italy, laws are created so that other laws can be legally broken.
Without fluency in the language, and a good lawyer, it was not an easy place to move to.
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So, in many ways, it was a relief to be in that huge Victorian Staten Island home, with its
eclectic cast of characters who helped distance me from Jon’s depression. Every day when I came
home from work, Marigold would come running into our bedroom to jump on the bed. I’d hold her
hands and lift her higher and higher with each jump. Her spunk even woke Jon from his darkness
for fleeting respites. And of course there was Marsh’s unconditional welcome to whoever crossed
his threshold. And there was Dana’s mothering that (though it was focused on her girls) seeped
inevitably into the rest of us. There was also something about the house itself.
Generations of the Greene family were immortalized in the fabric of One o One Bard. The
third floor, falling apart and uninhabitable, stored generations of furniture, clothing, books, board
games, and countless other items that were shoved into boxes and stacked beneath layers of dust.
Even the livable part of the house were like a museum. Its every surface was covered with
memorabilia dating back two centuries. The stairwell was lined with photographs of mothers and
fathers, children, uncles, aunts, cousins, grandparents, great-grandparents—which one couldn’t help
but pause to look at on their way up and down.
I didn’t grow up with this sort of family connection. I know only a few of my cousins and
aunts and uncles. My mother’s father died a week after I was born. He was SCUBA diving when he
had a stroke. His wife died shortly thereafter. I have a memory of seeing my father’s father. I was
taken into his room where he lay sick in bed. I remember the word “cancer” and being told that he
was dying. I was two-years-old. This may be my first memory. My father’s mother was the only
grandparent I knew as a child, but she never seemed to take too much of an interest in me or my
siblings. I never understood why this was. When I was in the eighth grade and received the
catechism of confirmation, I chose this grandmother to be my sponsor as a way of including her
more in my life. Though she lived forty-five minutes away, she was unable to attend. Of the few
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memories I have of my grandmother is when I was a little girl and we were watching TV at her
house. She told me we could only watch channels that the Virgin Mary, who stood atop the set in
white porcelain, approved of. She must have trained her children well, because my parents laid down
that same rule throughout my childhood. Davey and Goliath were okay, and so was Mister Rogers
and Captain Kangaroo, because these were all Christian-based programs. But the Electric Company
was out since they supported abortion rights.
There was no ancestral memorabilia to speak of in my parents’ house. To me, Marsh’s home
was like a museum. One o One Bard was filled with antique furniture, instruments, tall glass cases
concealing porcelain trinkets and china glasses, a roll top desk with age-old items still tucked into its
tiny compartments, and a sagging sofa that Marsh refused to replace because, “It was my
grandmother’s.” The rooms breathed with Greene ghosts. It was an auspicious space for three
vagrants, who had left their own families to travel and live in distant countries, only to end up thrust
together under the safety of this roof.
I lit another cigarette and looked at the back of the house. Lights were on in the upstairs
bathroom and Marsh and Dana’s room. Maybe Marsh was reading the girls a book, or giving them a
bath. Dana was probably cleaning up in the kitchen. Antonio’s room was empty, but life filled the
house just the same. A warmth emanated from the windows of One o One that provided a sense of
home I had not known as a child.
Dana and Marigold came out just as it began to drizzle. The chickens followed Dana to their
house. Marigold played over by a bike that leaned on a chair about ten feet away. The bike’s back
light began blinking red like the one’s on the ICU machines.
55
“That’s funny,” I said. “The light on that bike is flashing.” Dana looked back from where she
was walking the chickens through their gate.
“That’s Antonio’s bike,” she said.
“Marigold, did you turn the light on?” I asked.
“No,” she said. But she must have. She started towards me and was several feet away from
the bike when the flashing stopped.
“That’s strange,” I said. “It stopped.” Marigold looked back. Then, it started blinking again. I
got up from my chair, dropped my unfinished cigarette onto the ground and walked over to the bike.
The red light would not go off when I pressed the button. “Oh, my god,” I said. “It’s Antonio. He’s
trying to communicate with us.” I was only half-joking. Things had become so surreal of late. Like
the wind in the trees last week that might have been Antonio. Delighted, Marigold grabbed the light,
yanked it off the bike, held it up to her mouth and yelled into it like it was a microphone.
“Antonio! Can you hear me?” She laughed. I took the light from her.
“Come in, Antonio,” I said, feeling giddy. Had Elvia and Dago’s visit awakened Antonio on
some level? Was the non-being of Antonio putting in an appearance?
“What’s going on?” Dana asked, shutting the chicken’s gate behind her.
“Antonio’s in the light!” Marigold said, looking up with eyes so blue I could see them in the
fading twilight.
“Dana,” I said, “nobody turned that light on. It started flashing on its own. It’s Antonio’s
bike light and it won’t shut off.” Dana pushed the button to no effect.
“Maybe it is Antonio.” She shrugged. At that point, anything seemed possible. We stood
there, three witches in the rain, speaking into a flashing red bicycle light, allowing the lapse in sanity
and choosing to believe that Antonio was indeed signaling to us. The light stopped flashing and then
56
started up again, having nothing to do with whether we pressed the button or not. We decided that
Antonio must have been telling us that he’d be okay. I faced the direction of the hospital and
screamed,
“We hear you! We hear you, Antonio.” I was aware that I had become a bit hysterical, but I
didn’t care. I grabbed Dana and Marigold’s hands. “C’mon. Let’s scream Antonio’s name as loud as
we can. On the count of three. Ready?” Dana squeezed my hand. Marigold grabbed my other one,
staring at me, her eyes wild.
“One!” she began.
“Two!” Dana and I joined in.
“Three!” The three of us yelled.
“ANTONIO!”
“Again!” I said, sure that something was happening.
“ANTONIO!”
“Come back, Antonio!” I hollered solo as loud as I could into the dark and drizzle. “Come
back to us! Please, come back.”
I dream that I jump off a cliff that is so high up I am scared to look down.
Standing at the top with me is another woman, who bets I won’t jump. But I do
and she follows. Feeling good about myself, I brag about winning the bet, until I
find out that the other woman died from the fall. Then, there is only guilt.
This had been my second cliff-dream since Antonio’s hospitalization. The other dream
occurred two days after his hemorrhage, but one day before I was told about it…
I dream that my brother Matthew comes close to falling off the edge of a
thousand-foot-high cliff. Losing his balance, he teeters on the brink. He saves
57
himself with sheer will by throwing his body back at the last second. It was so
close that I can hardly comprehend what almost happened. In my relief, I tell
Matthew that he didn’t fall because he was not supposed to die, yet. When I go to
those cliffs, I tell myself in the dream, I won’t go anywhere near the edge.
That dream was so vivid that I woke with an urgency to call Matthew and yell at him for
taking such a risk. The cliff he nearly fell from reminded me of the Cliff ’s of Moher that rise high
above the Atlantic coast in the west of Ireland. Seven hundred feet up, I could barely crawl on my
hands and knees to look over the edge at the waves crashing white foam below
A year after Jon and I moved to New York, I stood at the edge of a forty-foot rock face in
Negril, Jamaica. That summer, we had been apartment hunting in Brooklyn. But during those few
days in the Caribbean, I realized that I needed space. Being away from him allowed me to feel myself
again. Divorce was not in my head. I only hoped that a year living apart would bring us both to a
better place where we could be together afresh.
Absorbing these realizations, along with much sunshine, I stood at the edge of a forty-foot
cliff over Jamaica’s west coast and stared down at the blue-green water of the Caribbean Sea. I had
been diving from a ten-foot cliff nearby, swimming in the water that others were making the forty-
foot leap into. Each time someone braved the higher jump, I applauded their courage. I did not
intend to jump from such a height, but became curious enough to stand at the top to see if it was as
high up from there as it seemed from below. In fact, it was so high that I was amazed anyone would
dare to jump. I went back to my friends, who were sipping cocktails at Rick’s, a café that sat atop
Jamaica’s West End Cliff, where hundreds of visitors came each night to watch the sunset. My
friends sat mere paces from the edge. I sipped my own drink and took in the last of the sun’s rays,
but something kept pulling me back to that precipice. Again and again, I went from lounging with a
58
cocktail and laughing with my friends to staring straight down off the brink of what both terrified
and thrilled me. Eventually, the lifeguard asked if I was going to jump or not. “I’m off-duty in five
minutes, so if you’re going to do it mon, you better go now.”
“Oh, no. I’m just looking,” I said turning back to my friends.
“Are you gonna jump?” they asked.
“No way,” I said.
“C’mon,” they said. “Jump!” As I have always been one to take on a dare, I started to think
that maybe I would do it. I went back to the edge again to feel this out, but the drop hadn’t gotten
any smaller.
“That’s where I dive from,” the lifeguard said, pointing to a small wooden platform nailed
into a tree at least thirty feet above us.
“You jump from up there?”
“You just missed the show,” he said. “Every night at sunset we dive and do flips from that
plank.” Looking all the way up to the top of that tree and then all the way back down to the water
below, the place I stood suddenly seemed doable. The lifeguard was putting his shirt on. “It’s now or
never,” he said. There I was in Jamaica, standing at the top of a cliff with an opportunity to do
something that seemed absolutely insane, while perfectly possible. When would I ever have this
chance again?
“What do I do?” I asked the lifeguard.
“You jump out, hold both arms like this,” he said, putting his arms in a ‘T’, “and just before
you hit the water, bring your arms down to your side,” he said, flapping his arms shut. “And trust
me, you’ll come up smiling and want to do it again.”
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“Okay. I’ll do it,” I said, still unsure but now committed. I knew from standing on the high-
dive as a child that it would be best to do it quickly to get it over with. The longer I stood looking
down, the more hesitant I would become. I rocked forward on one leg, ready to hop off, but
couldn’t. Common sense pulled me back to where my feet stayed on solid ground. A second time, I
rocked forward to jump but couldn’t make myself go over the edge. I did this again and again; until I
thought, If I just did it that last time I’d be in the air by now. With that, I pitched forward and pushed off
with my foot, leaped into the air and plunged down, down, down, arms out as instructed. Just before
hitting, I pulled my arms in and splashed deep into delicious water. I came up smiling for sure and
with an adrenaline rush that lasted the rest of the night.
When I got back to New York, I told Jon I would be moving to Brooklyn without him.
On that fourth week of Antonio’s hemorrhage, when I woke up from the second cliff-dream
in which the other woman died, I did not make the connection to the Jamaica jump or to my first
dream about Matthew nearly falling from a cliff. But I did wonder what my psyche was trying to tell
me. The dream work I had been doing in therapy had me thinking how everything in a dream could
represent a different aspect of the self. I found it interesting that the self in the dream who won the
bet was “me,” while the self who died was “another woman.” Curious also was the sense of guilt
from the me who won. But I couldn’t figure out the part about being afraid to look. Which part of me
is scared, and what am I afraid to look at? It did not then occur to me that my fear of seeing what was
down there might have to do with my father being blind. My father whose name, incidentally, is
Cliff.
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Having been raised by a blind father, I learned caretaking at an early age. My whole family
took care of my father in ways taken for granted. It became habitual to swipe toys out of his path so
he didn’t trip over them. Leading him down the street meant telling him when to step up or down at
curbs, or when to duck to avoid low tree branches. At dinnertime, we told him where the food on
his plate was as if the plate were a clock. “Your potatoes are at three-o-clock. Your meatloaf is at
six.” But my father lived an otherwise typical middle-class life. He went to college and graduate
school and earned several degrees. He was a faithful husband and responsible father who worked
nine to five as a computer programmer, walking the three miles to and from work with his seeing-
eye dog. He cheered us all on at team sporting events and came to my plays and recitals. He even
coached little league. My father was the one who told my mother what was happening in these
games. He was the one who gave her directions to places we drove, or explained what was going on
in the movies they watched. This was all a part of my childhood that I didn’t question.
It was when I looked into my father’s eyes, needing some connection, that his blindness
struck me. The darkness reflected back was often chilling. As a little girl, I had watched Mary Ingalls
lose her sight on “Little House on the Prairie,” and had cried. After the episode where she and
Adam, also blind, feel one another’s faces with their hands for the first time, I asked my father if he
had ever done that with my mother. He seemed uncomfortable with the question and didn’t
respond. I could hardly ask him why he had never touched my face to see what I looked like. Not
since I remembered, anyway. I had never witnessed my father be physically intimate with anybody.
There were rote hugs and pecks on the cheek, but nothing more. He rarely pet his seeing eye dogs.
Every night, when he came to tuck me in and say my prayers with me, I would ask God,
“Please give my Daddy his eyesight back, someday.” After all, he had told me, in that tent with the
faith healer, that God had promised his eyesight would return. Remembering those healers my
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mother had dragged him to (as if he had only been temporarily blinded like Paul was on the road to
Damascus) I realize that I must have been told to pray for my father’s eyesight to return. After all, I
had been trained how to pray. I was taught to thank God for Mom and Dad and all my brother’s and
my sister (when I finally got one) and to ask forgiveness for anything bad I had done that day, and
for help to do better, tomorrow. Had my mother told me to add at the very end, “And please give
Daddy his sight back, someday,” or was that something I came up with by myself ? My father would
stand next to the edge of my bed and listen to my prayers, then kiss me goodnight. What must it
have been like for him to hear his children pray for his eyesight to return, night after night?
Either way, this wish for my father to be healed, as if I might have something to do with it
by the simple act of prayer, created an early tendency toward caretaking and magical thinking. And
these feelings were muddled with pity—that same pity that I later hoped to transform into
compassion. When I was a little girl, those times that I experienced pity toward my father were times
when an adult should have been more concerned with what I needed than with what he did.
My father has since apologized for the rages he would often fly into, and how he would take
out his anger on his children. With my mother (whom I’ve also made peace with) it was different. It
was easier to run from her. But when a blind man is chasing you, and that blind man is your father,
and he’s flailing his arms about the room demanding that you come to him, there is only fear and
guilt and pity. It wouldn’t take much of this before I would feel compelled to go to where my father
could find and give me the beating he thought I deserved. His face might have been red and
seething, and he might have been yelling things like, “You rotten kid,” and “When I get my hands on
you…” But against all of my survival instincts, I would force myself to move directly to the brink of
his wrath and face being thrown to the ground.
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Pondering the dream about the woman who had died from falling, I got out of bed and, on
my way to the bathroom, paused at my altar. In between Antonio’s white votive candle and a small
statue of the Buddha there was a card (that I still keep in the same place) with a Zen saying: “Leap
and the net will appear.” This had been a favorite quote of mine ever since I risked moving to
Ireland, where everything that I needed had fallen into place so serendipitously it made it easy to
believe in faith. I looked from this card to a photograph of Antonio, smiling. His smile was what
made me choose that particular picture to place beside the continually burning votive candle. It was
the happiest I had seen him, and that grin I had been missing so much smeared across his face. He
was holding Alice in a black and white Mexican sling, hours after Dana had given birth to her.
Antonio had helped with the home delivery, while I slept in a nearby room, dreaming magical-
realism scenes in which I was a woman samurai. This photograph of Antonio, holding one just
born, had been taken when he was full of life. As I stood there looking at it, Antonio was barely
alive at all. Did the Antonio in the photograph exist anymore? Had he died while another Antonio
waited in limbo, not knowing if his shell of a body would come back from the verge of death? And
who was the Monica who died in the dream compared to the me who survived leaping from that
precipice? What limbo state was I waiting to wake up from?
Antonio once told me, “I don’t want to die a boring death. I don’t want a car to run me
down and kill me. That’s not exciting. If I have to do, I wanna die fighting. Like, I don’t know, put a
lion in front of me. Let the freaking lion kill me. Because I want to fight with it. I don’t want to die a
freakin boring death. No, no, no no no. I’m too much of a drama queen to die quietly. Yeah, it has
to be noisy.”
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“So, when you were jumping out of planes in the Mexican military, did you feel like that
would be a good way to die, or that would be a boring death?” I had asked him.
“No, that would be a good way.”
“Cause it’s so dramatic?”
“Yes. Yes. That was intense. That was intense.”
“What was that like?” I asked. We were in the kitchen sitting on stools around the chopping
block. Marsh came in the back door with Marigold. It must have been a Sunday, when we were all
home and there was time to sit around telling stories in the kitchen.
“Intense. Very intense,” Antonio said.
“What was intense?” Marsh asked. Antonio put his beer down and got a wild look in his
eyes.
“I remember this first one,” he said. “The first jump.” Dana, who had been nursing Alice in
that same black and white sling from the photograph, came in from the living room. She pulled
herself up on a stool and took a sip from the beer Marsh had just opened.
“Well,” Antonio said, looking from one of us to the next. “I have been always loud. Right
Marigold?” He jumped off the stool, right in front of her. She leaned back in surprise. We all
laughed. Antonio kissed Marigold on the forehead and got back on the stool. “Well, that day, after
months and months of training, the day for jumping out of a plane came. And we were a group of
probably fifty, sixty, maybe a hundred people. If not more. So we all got into this huge airplane. So
we sat down, waiting for the time for the airplane to take flight. While we were waiting, I was joking
with all of them. I was saying things, stupid things like, ‘Hey, you’re gonna die. Can you give me your
mom’s phone number? Or your sister’s phone number?’ Or, ‘Give me your girlfriend’s phone
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number. I’ll call them. Nobody’s gonna miss you. I’ll be there for them.’ I was saying stupid things
like that. And everybody was taking it seriously. Everybody was praying. And I was just saying shit.”
Marsh picked Marigold up and propped her on his hip. She loved Antonio’s stories more
than anyone and stared with wide blue eyes, her golden locks falling around her face.
“So, the airplane took flight. And there is a red light that turns on when it’s time to jump. So
we were, by that moment, we all were joking. Everybody just started joking and laughing and saying
stupid things. Because it was imminent. It was the moment to jump. Very soon we were jumping…
and probably dying. Some of us, anyway. So we were just joking.” Jon came down at that point and
Marsh motioned towards the six-pack on the counter. Jon took one out, flipped the lid off with his
lighter, and swung his arm around my shoulder.
Antonio went on. “So the light, the red light turns on. And everybody just shut up. It was
complete silence. Complete silence. There was not a pip. And then, the commander in charge started
just yelling, “Jump! Jump! Jump! Jump!” So, everybody started jumping. And I was probably the last
one.”
“Really?” Marsh asked.
“Yes. I was probably the last one, yes. I don’t know if by purpose or by chance. But I was the
last one. So, I walked slowly to the gate, and once I reached the gate, I hold to it. Like kinda sticker.”
He grabbed Marigold’s waist as if it were the gate. “And I just didn’t let go!” She laughed and tried
to push his hands off. “I was there like a sticker. Like a freakin tattoo! Until somebody kicked me in
the ass.” And he let go of Marigold and threw his arms in the air. “And then I went down. And all
the way down, I just sweared, really loudly. All the swearing that I knew in that moment, it just came
out of my mouth like a river. I did swear so much and so loudly!” We were all laughing at the image
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of skinny little Antonio falling through the air and cursing like a madman. “So I finally hit the
ground. As soon as I hit the ground, I fell asleep.”
“Wow,” Dana said.
“Yeah,” Antonio said.
“So, you had a safe landing?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
“Did some people die?” Marigold wanted to know.
“Not. Not that day.”
“Other days?” She said.
“Other days, yes. The day that I had my accident, three or four people died.”
“What accident?” Marsh asked.
“Well, my jumping accident,” he said, like we were all supposed to know about it.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Well, what happened is that, it was really windy. So we jumped. When I hit the ground, it
was so windy that the parachute just caught a lot of air, and it dragged me for… it felt like ten miles.
It was probably a couple yards, but I thought it was like ten miles. In that dragging me, I passed
through rocks. And that was bad. I broke around probably six ribs. A leg. An arm. I had punctures
everywhere. Yeah.”
“And people died from that fall?” I asked.
“Yeah, about four people died.”
“How many people jumped?” Jon asked.
“About a hundred-and-fifty.”
“And did you jump again after that” Dana asked. “Or was that your last time?”
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“No. I probably jumped a thousand times more.”
“A thousand times you jumped?” I said.
“Yes.”
“And did you ever enjoy it?” Marsh asked.
“Ah, yeah, but remember that suffering is my form of enjoyment,” he winked at me.
“So you loved the fear of it. It was the adrenaline,” Marsh said.
“Yes. I did, yes.”
“Was it fun?” I asked. “It must have been fun after you were able to trust that everything
was gonna be okay.”
“It was, it was, it was. Yeah, the first three times, it was awful. After the third time, it was just
something that I needed to do. I even paid people to let me jump, after the military.
“How old were you?” Jon asked.
“I was eighteen.”
“Eighteen?” Dana said. Alice stirred. Dana gave her a breast and she snuggled back to sleep.
“That’s the one thing I never want to do,” I said. “And I want to do most things in life. But I
can’t imagine jumping out of an airplane.”
“I can,” Marsh said.
“What if the parachute didn’t open?” I asked.
“What if ?” Jon said, sliding his arm around my waist.”
67
OCTOBER
“If you are not happy here and now, you never will be.” Taisen Deshimaru
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On the first day of the October that Antonio slept like Lazarus in the ICU, I woke with a
sore neck, a dark feeling in my chest and a tightness in my stomach. Dragging myself out of bed, I
glanced around at my unkempt apartment. Looking in the mirror, I noticed the circles beneath my
eyes. Pull yourself together, Mon. You’ve had your time of feeling sorry for Antonio. For yourself. How hard life can
be. I did not want to be depressed, lethargic, stoned or angry in the midst of life’s difficulties. I
wanted to be strong, clear, graceful and helpful. In order to be there for Antonio though, I had to be
there for myself.
A couple months earlier, in Ireland, I went for lunch with my friend Juliette. She was the
friend whose mother had just died from cancer. We took her children, Jules and Fia (my
goddaughter) to Da Tang Noodle House in Galway. The owner had taught me Chinese painting
years ago, and his wife recognized me. She asked if I’d been meditating. Said there was a light around
me. That I was glowing. This was a summer that had started with a detox, cleanse, juice-fast, and
five-day sesshin (meditation retreat). I was buzzing by the time it was August and I got to Ireland.
That was before meeting up with Jon. Before drinking all that Guinness with all that wheat that I’m
allergic to. Smoking all that hash. That was all mere weeks before Antonio’s head exploded. And
before I reverted to taking hits from my pipe every day after work. I wanted to feel clear again, to
drink up and appreciate the life I naturally embrace when I consistently meditate, exercise and eat
healthily. I wanted to shake off the negativity.
Foregoing the acidic coffee I craved, I sat down on the living room floor with a cup of yerba
mate and the Natalie Goldberg memoir I hadn’t picked up for weeks, Long Quiet Highway. I read,
“Tibetan Buddhists say that a person should never get rid of their negative energy, that negative
energy transformed is the energy of enlightenment.” Inspired, I put the book down and sat zazen
(sitting meditation), focusing on how each in-breath filled me. With each out breath I let go of the
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self-judgment. Then, I let go of the fear about Antonio. The darkness lightened a little. Allowing the
emotions to be. They didn’t feel “not good” anymore. There on my living room floor, this simple
shift in awareness already began to transform what a minute ago I had labeled as negative energy.
Now, there was not positive or negative. I was just sitting there on the cushion on the floor, which I
noticed was rather comfortable. I heard clinks of glass outside my building and pictured what the
recycling people were doing on the street. Then, the truck lumbered away and it was quiet. Out the
window a slight breeze danced through the branches of a tree across the street. Then, there was no
breeze. In the white sky the gray clouds did not move. There was a stillness. A sense of waiting.
After a yoga class that same day, I came home to piles of dirty laundry, plants that needed
watering and an empty fridge. And I still had a stack of essays to read before work that evening.
Compared to when I woke up, though, it felt good to take stock and deal with my needs. It was
actually a relief to stay home folding laundry, appreciating the simplicity of freshly washed clothes,
grammar mistakes and shopping lists. When I changed loads, the laundromat radio was playing
“Staying Alive.” A good omen. I sang along with The Bee Gees, “You know it’s alright. It’s ok. / I’ll
live to see another day.”
Later, when I went back to put the clothes in the dryer, James Taylor was singing “Fire and
Rain,” which knocked the good omen on its head. “Just yesterday morning they let me know you
were gone,” he sang, “I always thought that I’d see you again.” To that, I did not sing; rather I bit my
lower lip. Did one bad and one good omen cancel each other out?
Taking a break from the essays, I met Greg for lunch. “This heightened reality of where you
are right now—this face-to-face-ness with death, is really what life is.”
“It reminds me of what someone once told me after reading that book, Pure Heart,
Enlightened Mind. You know it? Maura Soshin O’Halloran?” I asked.
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“I love that book.”
“Yeah, those journals changed my life.”
“Really?”
“They led me to Zen practice. Anyway, my friend said that Maura lived her life as if it were a
near-death experience.”
“That’s a very apt way to put it. When one is enlightened, that’s what life is. To live each
moment as if it were the last.”
Maura O’Halloran was twenty-four when she traveled to Japan and joined a Zen monastery,
where she wrote of her experience. When I was twenty-four, a friend’s mother gave me those
journals on a hunch. The first thing I read, in the introduction, was that I shared a birthday with
Maura. I identified with Maura in many other ways as well. The second was the fact that she had
lived part of her life on the east coast of the States and part of it in Ireland, as I was destined to.
And reading about Maura’s time in Japan had me fantasizing about running off to join a monastery.
I had just started meditating and heard about different kinds of sitting practices, like transcendental
and mantra meditation. But something told me to just sit, focus on my breathing and let go of my
thoughts. Reading Maura’s journals, I found that zazen was the form of meditation I had been
doing.
Around that time, the Irish citizenship papers my mother had applied for years ago arrived
in the mail. This was random, as she had applied in 1986, when it was still possible to get dual
citizenship through a great-grandparent. After ’86, it had to be a grandparent. There was much red
tape in the changeover of the new legislation and our applications were held up for nearly a decade.
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My great-grandmother, Mary Carroll, was born in County Mayo, on the west coast of
Ireland, north of County Galway. In the late 1800’s, at the age of sixteen, she left Kiltumagh and
came to America by herself. I would be the first one in the family to complete the circle and move
back, also by myself. Tempting as Japan was, my fate was to run off to Ireland and hope to find a
zendo, there.
I left everything. My apartment, job, friends, boyfriend, family. I left my whole life and went
to live where I knew no one and where no one knew me. I needed to figure myself out far far away
from what had shaped me. And so I left, and I shaved off the waist-length hair I used to hide my
face behind. I had no plan other than to trust my intuition. I did, however, have three goals. Find a
zendo. Work on my writing. Get a motorcycle. I bought a year open-ended plane ticket, and hopped
on a plane with one thousand dollars and Irish citizenship papers.
Soon enough, I was wandering Galway’s cobblestone streets looking for a job. There was a
Hostess Wanted sign in a restaurant window. It turned out the hostess was moving back to New
York. I told her of my plan to live in Galway, and the chef who overheard told me there was a room
going in his house. The next day, I met chef Jerome at his house in Salthill, a small sea town one
mile down the coast road from the city. Jerome showed me around and told me about the other
housemates. One was called Seamus. He rode a motorcycle and practiced aikido. Another, a Parisian,
was in France for the summer, at a temple.
“What kind of temple?” I asked.
“A Buddhist temple. He’s a Zen priest.”
“You’re kidding. I was actually hoping to find a place to learn meditation, here.”
“Well, he has a dojo in Galway.” I nearly fell over. I later learned that this monk had come
from France, from the Taisen Deshimaru, Soto Zen lineage, and had started (what was at that time)
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the only Zen Buddhist dojo in the Republic of Ireland. I had landed. This was the beginning of my
formal practice.
The day after I moved to Salthill, I got a job working for a novelist, who would become my
first writing teacher and eventually help me get into graduate school. My new friend, Ruth, from
Shannon, a red head with hair down to her waist, smiled and told me that the sun shone on me with
the luck of the Irish. Common sense told me not to push this luck by fulfilling a motorcycle fantasy
on Ireland’s wet and winding roads.
I didn’t tell Greg my whole Maura story at lunch that day, but having him understand what I
was going through with Antonio helped me to feel better.
Laundry neatly folded and put away, I sat in a sunny spot on my couch with Goldberg’s
memoir and read about the fatal stabbing of Chris Pirsig, right outside the San Francisco Zen
Center. Chris was the son of Robert Pirsig, who wrote Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. He
was only twenty-three years old when he was killed. I thought of the stabbing at Antonio’s art
exhibit. Reading on, Goldberg told of the dharma talk that followed Pirsig’s murder. Her teacher,
Katagiri Roshi, told the sangha, “Human beings have an idea they are very fond of: that we die in
old age. This is just an idea. We don’t know when our death will come. Chris Pirsig’s death has come
now. It is a great teaching in impermanence.”
Maura’s writings are another great teaching in impermanence:
Of late I feel ridiculously happy. No reason. Just bursting with joy. I remember
when I was young, deciding to commit suicide at 26. Once one hit 30 one was
over the hill, so 26 was far enough to live. I reckoned that if I hadn’t got done by
then whatever there was to be done, I never would, so I might as well end it. Now
I’m 26 and I feel as if I’ve lived my life. Strange sensation. Almost as if I’m
close to death. Any desires, ambitions, hopes I may have had have either been
fulfilled or spontaneously dissipated. I’m totally content. Of course, I want to get
deeper, see clearer, but even if I could only have this paltry, shallow awakening,
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I’d be quite satisfied. Facing into a long, cold winter is not only fine, but I know
I’ll enjoy it. Everything seems wonderful. Even undesirable, painful conditions
have a poignant beauty and exaltation. So in a sense I feel I have died; for myself
there is nothing else to strive after, nothing more to make my life worthwhile or to
justify it. At 26, a living corpse and such a life!
One year later, Maura was killed on the road to Chiang Mai, when the driver of her bus fell asleep at
the wheel. She was twenty-seven.
In 2007, shortly after I moved from Staten Island to Park Slope, my first spring in six years
without Jon, it felt prudent to find a sangha. I had not sat with others for years, and Jon, who was
supposed to be getting his life together, according to me, was caught in the downward spiral of an
emotional whirlpool. Even living apart from him, I remained drenched from those waters we had
both swum, and that I had leaped out of. I had only begun to plant my feet on the ground. It took
everything I had not to continue trying to bring Jon back to the surface. I knew I would slip back in
with him. He was unable to pay his own rent, left Staten Island, and couch-surfed from one bad
situation to another. The winter of 2007 found him isolated in the Catskill Mountains in a half-
renovated dump of a farmhouse with no heat. From there, he moved to a couch where a heroin
addict, who got off on showing Jon his gun, lived in the Bronx. Eventually, Jon got himself a dive in
Greenwich Village and part-time work bartending. I, in the meantime, continued to cling like crazy
to the hope that we were destined to continue life as partners. This hope was not conducive to
shaking off the water that Jon was still drowning in. My fantasy was far off in some imagined future
in which Jon was the man I was sure he would be if he could only get his shit together. This desire
clouded the stark reality of who and where Jon was in the moment. Looking back, I feel that I must
have known, on some unconscious level that our time together was dwindling to its inevitable end
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because I was making choices about taking care of myself—like moving away from him, and like
finding the support of a sangha.
That spring, I Googled “Zen + Brooklyn” and found the Brooklyn Zen Center just blocks
from my apartment, in a small basement-space near Prospect Park. Greg, his partner, Laura, and
their friend Ian, had founded this zendo in 2005, three months after I had moved back to the States.
It felt good to sit with others and perform the rituals I had grown to love at the Galway Zen Dojo. I
had missed the chanting and service, the incense and the candles. But mostly, it was heartening to sit
in silence with others. There was a warmth from these practitioners that I came to trust. I soon
began sitting there, regularly. A teacher, though, was not in my plan. Apart from Maura Soshin
O’Halloran , I had never felt a mentor-like connection from a spiritual guide, and I was not seeking
one.
This is when I met the woman who was to become my first teacher. She lived in San
Francisco, where her teacher, Shunryu Suzuki Roshi had come from Japan, in 1959, to begin the
Soto Zen lineage (just like Deshimaru had done in Europe). Suzuki Roshi died the same year I was
born, and thirty-six years later, his student started coming to New York regularly to give talks and
lead sesshins in Brooklyn. That summer, this Zen Master came to lead a day-sit. In her dharma talk,
she spoke about relationships, and described how her own past suffering was from clinging to desire.
She told us that she had been in relationships with men and with women. That surprised me. I sat
up straighter on my cushion and looked at this androgynous-looking woman, with her short curly
hair and priest robes. Her voice was soft and gentle and she was smaller than Antonio, but her
presence filled the room. It was such a relief to find, not only strong female leadership at this zendo,
but also openly bisexual women. Laura had shared with me that, before she got together with Greg,
she had been with a woman for years. Finally, a community with this shared understanding.
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In Ireland, the monk from Paris once complained to me about how prevalent
homosexuality was in America. Without hesitation, I told him that I slept with women as well as
men. The next day, he made a weak attempt to erase what he had said by telling me how many
lesbian friends his girlfriend had in Germany.
Years later, when I went to Deshimaru’s temple for a ten-day sesshin, the new arrivals were
given an orientation. During the Q & A, I had asked the head monk why men sat on one side of the
zendo, while women sat on the other. His translator told him my question in French. He replied,
laughing, but I didn’t know why until the translator explained that he had said,
“I don’t know about women, but men get fantasies in their heads that can be distracting
while they are meditating.”
“That presupposes a heterosexual atmosphere,” I said. The translator paused to take this in,
as if she herself had never thought about it that way. His response,
“You shouldn’t ask too many questions. Next thing you’ll be asking why we enter the zendo
with our left foot instead of our right.” But my question had merit, and was nothing at all like asking
about which foot we enter the zendo with. I already knew that we entered with our left foot in order
to awaken our right mind. So, in Brooklyn, it meant something to me that there was an openness
towards sexual preference.
There was something I trusted about this woman, who spoke about those things that
prevent us from being in the now—sloth, restlessness, doubt and desire. The Master gave examples
through stories. One was from her childhood. “I used to look at other families and assume they all
knew how to do things in the right way. Dress right. Get along right. Be what my family could never
be.” She looked around the room. “We all feel that way, don’t we? We walk down the street thinking
everyone else has it together. But they don’t. I guarantee that each family you pass has their own
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worlds of disappointment and expectation. Something’s happening that they’re thinking about at this
very moment, that’s worrying them.”
I knew what she meant, and couldn’t help feeling a little proud at the work I had done. I had
to appreciate the work my parents had done as well. I used to envy other families all the time. In
fact, I had once searched through my mother’s personal files, hoping to find adoption papers. And
I’m sure my parents wondered where I came from. It must have been hard for them to have children
who rebelled against the way they were brought up. My parents had their beliefs and tried to pass
them on to their children, like always parents do. I knew my parents had done their best. But
growing up in that house on Evelyn Place was stifling to say the least.
When I got to college, I went to one Gay Pride march too many, before my mother finally
caught on and accused me of “having more than an academic interest in the gay community.” I
didn’t expect them to support my lifestyle, but when they wouldn’t allow my younger siblings to visit
me—those same siblings whom I had looked after, changed their diapers, sang them to sleep—
because I was a bad influence, was too much for me. That’s when I went into therapy and started
meditating. I was having continual panic attacks which resulted in having to drop classes at college.
The only way that I could think to maintain any semblance of emotional equilibrium was to cut
from my parents. For two years, I did not speak to them. And for two years, I my sister was not
allowed to visit me. Shortly after that time, I moved to Ireland. There, I slept with a lot of people—
men and women. And there, I did a lot of mushrooms, smoked a lot of hash and dropped a bit of
ecstasy. I had a lot of fun, hurt a lot of people, made mistakes and suffered.
Thankfully, it was also there that I started to consistently grounded myself on a zafu
(meditation cushion).
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The next time this Master came to Brooklyn was the December of 2007, when the Zen
Center held its first Rohatsu sesshin. Buddhist lineages around the world sit at the beginning of
December to celebrate the commemoration of Buddha’s enlightenment. She was coming to lead this
Rohatsu and give private practice discussions called dokusan. She asked sesshin participants to have
an intention or question in mind to engage with while sitting. I decided to focus on my caretaking
patterns. I wanted to understand how to cut from Jon, yet feel compassionate toward him, without
sacrificing myself. I decided to ask her for guidance around this. I also wished to tell her that I
wanted to be lay-ordained. Since I had committed to this sangha and had been practicing for many
years, I figured it was time to take formal vows to uphold the Buddhist precepts.
When it was my turn for dokusan, I went into a private room (a bedroom beside that
basement zendo) that had been transformed into a makeshift dokusan room). I had been instructed
to enter, bow, sit down, and ask my question. There was a wooden desk chair directly in front of me
when I walked through the door. As directed, I bowed to the Master, who was sitting on the floor,
and sat on the chair. She looked at me for a second, then got up, came over, and sat on the bed
beside my chair. Something felt awkward about the setup, but it was just an improvised dokusan
space and I didn’t think to question it. Turning to her, I asked about becoming lay-ordained by
taking precept vows. She looked genuinely surprised.
“What for?”
“To show my commitment to the sangha,” I said.
“Why do you have to be ordained to do that?” she asked. Now, I was surprised.
“That’s what serious students at the Deshimaru dojo in Ireland were expected to do.”
“That’s very Deshimaru-ish,” she said. “Maybe you can find a Deshimaru place in New
York.”
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“No, I’m not looking for that,” I said, confused. “Won’t taking the precepts deepen my
practice?”
“You don’t need to take the precepts to have a deep practice.” This actually validated my
reasons for not taking vows in Ireland. There, where everyone was getting ordained, I hadn’t thought
I needed to prove my commitment, like I didn’t think people needed to get married in order to
prove their love. Also, I did not want to label myself as a Buddhist. When I was younger and took
the sacrament of confession, I didn’t understand why I had to confess my sins through a priest. Why
did I need to go through someone else to show I was repentant? My experience with religious
leaders had always been that I needed to prove something. This was the first time a religious teacher
was telling me that I didn’t need to do anything extra to demonstrate my commitment. I only needed
to show up and sit. With relief, I moved on to my next concern.
“How do I practice compassion and giving of myself completely to a situation or person,
without being swallowed by the need of the situation or person?”
“That’s a wonderful question,” the Master said. “Compassion is intelligent. Don’t practice
stupid compassion. First, be compassionate with yourself. Then, give what you’re able to. When
you’re not able anymore, then stop.” I was impressed by her directness. I thanked her and bowed.
She got off the bed, gestured to where she had been sitting and said,
“And thank you for giving me a chance to stretch my legs.” That was when I saw that there
were two zafus on the floor—the one she had been sitting on and another one directly in front of it.
I laughed.
“I’m sorry. I was told to sit down, and when I walked in the first thing I saw was this chair!”
She laughed, bowed and sat back on the floor.
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Years later, I realized the significance of what my soon-to-be Teacher had done. Instead of
telling me I sat in the wrong place and correcting me, she came over to where I was. Ever since that
initial interaction, She consistently met me where I was.
The following May in 2008—exactly one year after I first walked down the stairs to that
humble little basement zendo—the sangha, having outgrown this small space, moved into the living
room of Greg and Laura’s 9th Street apartment. In the middle of that summer’s sesshin, over twenty
people sat in the intimacy of another space we would soon outgrow and move on from. At this
sesshin, the Master told a story about how her friend’s boyfriend continually left his socks on the
floor. Her friend would get incredibly irritated, always complaining about the socks. The boyfriend
would continually apologize, but his habit did not change. She paused, looked out at us and
shrugged.
“He leaves his socks on the floor because he can’t pick them up. If he could pick them up
from the floor he would, but something keeps him from being able to do so, so he can’t pick them
up.” Sensible as this sounded, my internal defensive voice argued—That’s no excuse. He can’t pick up the
socks because he tells himself he can’t. If he told himself he could pick up the socks, he would. But she continued,
“That’s the reality of the situation. We need to accept where other people are, even when we don’t
like it. In any given moment, things can’t be any different than they are.”
I knew the strength of my reaction was equal to the truth of what she said. But I wasn’t
ready to accept that Jon couldn’t pick up the metaphorical socks. The Jon I had fallen in love with
was stronger than that.
Every Saturday since Antonio had been in into the ICU, I had gone to Staten Island to sit
beside his bed and hope that my presence mattered. But that first Saturday in October, I came home
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from the Zen Center and texted Dana: “I’m taking a nap. Will call when I get up.” I decided to stay
home and regroup. Skip the hospital. Get some writing done. Study Spanish. Avoid going out in the
rain. I turned off my phone.
When I got up and turned my phone back on, there was a text from Dana, “Eyes open! call
wn u cn.” Leaping out of bed, I packed a bag and ran to the subway station. I didn’t think to call
Dana until I was at the ferry terminal. That’s when she told me that they had taken Antonio off the
muscle paralytic and the respirator, and had given him a tracheotomy.
“He still can’t breathe on his own,” she said. “So the tracheotomy means the breathing tube
goes in his neck rather than down his throat. They couldn’t try to wake him up with a tube down his
throat ‘cause he’d just gag. Now, hopefully, they can wake him.” I found it difficult to absorb this
information. What did she mean hopefully?
“But you texted that his eyes were open. Doesn’t that mean he is awake?”
“I’m not sure what it means,” Dana said, not sounding as excited as I thought this was.
“They say they’ll wean him off the rest of the drugs, bit by bit. But they still can’t say for sure that
he’ll be okay.” I didn’t know what to say. Passengers were pushing around me toward the opening
door for the ferry. “I’m sorry, Mon,” Dana said. “I didn’t mean to get your hopes up.” I no longer
wanted to go to Staten Island and spend hours watching Antonio just lie there. But I didn’t have the
energy to turn and push my way back through the flow of passengers. Boarding the ferry, a red-
orange succulent sun slipped behind a silhouette of Ellis Island. The rain had stopped and there
were clouds with glowing pink borders that wisped on up into a freshly cleared sky. Outside, the
breeze was soft, as were the water and view and mood on the boat. A light blue-gray duskiness
seemed to penetrate everything. Sometimes, I thought, New York responds perfectly.
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Seeing Antonio without the tube down his throat shook me. He looked more human,
breathing from a hole in his throat, than he had looked with that unnaturally steady rhythm of the
Darth Vader respirator. Now, his chest moved up and down in an erratic way that made it look like
he was trying very hard. It was better than that god-awful tube down his throat, but it was still god-
awful the way his body struggled with each breath. “…a body contained inside the skin…,” Thich Nhat
Hanh’s sutra echoed. He was at once beautifully vulnerable and frighteningly feeble. I did not realize
how much I had taken the respirator for granted; how accustomed I had become to knowing exactly
when he would breathe in and then out again. Without that dependable regularity, Antonio seemed
much more fragile. It’s so hard to remember to breathe…, he had said a lifetime ago when he was awake.
Finally, I looked away and took in Dana and Christy, who were there by his bed as well. And
there was Sage, holding his father’s hand, caressing it like one might pet the head of a newborn
kitten. I looked at Christy and smiled, wanting to give her a feeling of warmth. She and Antonio had
not been on good terms for years and there was no way to know what it must have been like for her
to be in that room with us. It was an unfortunate place to meet, but she gracefully shook my hand
and then moved to the side to let me and Dana take turns holding Antonio’s other hand. I wanted to
speak to him and say encouraging things like I did when I was last in the room alone with him. But it
felt different with people there. Trying to reach Antonio was intimate and private. I didn’t want to
talk to him in front of anybody else. But the nurse told us that we should be telling him where he
was, and that we should explain to him that he needed to breathe for himself.
“This is the time to try and reach him,” Dana said. So she and I talked to Antonio. I wanted
to call him back again and tell him how much I missed him, speak to him from my heart. Instead,
everything came out stilted and contrived. I said light-hearted encouraging things that sounded
shallow.
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“Antonio, your hair is growing in grayer than it used to be. If you don’t come out of this my
hair will go gray, too. We can’t have that now, can we?” I instantly regretted saying anything about
the possibility of him not coming out of this in front of his son. But Sage’s face was fixed on his
father’s as he obsessively stroked that limp hand. Christy appeared overwhelmed watching her son
stare at his dad like that. I looked from Sage to his mother to his father, and tried to imagine that
once upon a time they were a family. There were glimpses of both parents in Sage. His smile was
like his dad’s in that it lit up an otherwise reticent face, and his pale skin was definitely Christy’s, but
his light hair belonged to neither of them. Christy, who was taller than Antonio, had dark curly hair,
strong cheekbones and penetrating eyes. Antonio’s shaved head, dark skin and petite body made him
look like Gandhi. I wondered where Sage got his open yet quiet energy. There was something
innocent and curious behind his reserve. Now, however, he just looked sad.
While taking all this in, something startling happened. Antonio opened his eyes. “Look! His
eyes are open,” I said. But when the others didn’t react, I realized they must have seen this already
and it must not mean what I wanted it to. I noticed that Antonio’s eyes weren’t at all focused. Is he
awake? Isn’t this meaningful? I searched like crazy for a connection, wanting him to meet my gaze, but
could only look into his blank glazed stare. This was so familiar to me. But Antonio was not blind. I
had spent my whole life looking into the eyes of my father, wishing like crazy that he could look
back. And all the time I knew we would never connect in that way. But Antonio was somewhere in
those open eyes. If he wasn’t aware that I was here, I was sure that somehow the penetrating energy
of my stare might enter through his eyes into his consciousness.
When my friend Jim almost died from a staph-infection, and he was being kept alive by a
respirator, he and I had connected through eye contact. Although he didn’t remember later, he did
see me in that moment, and he had squeezed my hand to acknowledge this. With Antonio, there was
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no sign of a connection. His eyes were open, but he was not there in them. They may as well have
been closed. Reaching him would have to happen in ways of Reiki and dreams, spontaneous and
random magic. Bike lights flashing. Tree branches swaying. Sage sticks burning.
Back at the house, Dana pushed herself to make cookies for the girls—oatmeal, banana and
chocolate chip. She didn’t really want to make cookies. Dana didn’t want to do anything. I honestly
did not know how she was holding up; spending hours every single day at the hospital, watching
Antonio lie there. If he were in the kitchen with us, he’d have been helping with the baking. He’d be
drinking Coronas, telling stories, making jokes, laughing with his mouth open and head thrown back
so you could see all his teeth. Cookies in the oven, Dana and I went out back and spread a tent flat
on the earth. We lay beneath a harvest moon, held hands, and talked about what the next few
months might look like. Antonio was going to be in the hospital for a long time, even if he woke up
tomorrow, which was not likely. Whenever he did finally come out, he’d be convalescing for many
more months.
“I feel numb,” Dana said, staring straight up at the moon.
“I know,” I said. “All this waiting and uncertainty and lack of response is beyond
frustrating.”
“I’m afraid to think about his recovery and what that will be like,” she said.
“Conserving energy and pacing ourselves is going to be key.” I said, pretending to know
what I was talking about. Dana was quiet. The night was still. The bare moon shone down into our
open eyes. When she spoke again, her voice was small.
“What if he’s a vegetable?”
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That night, I stayed up late writing in the Bard Avenue living room, sitting on Marsh’s
grandmother’s sagging couch. When I finally lay down on the futon, I couldn’t sleep, as I often can’t
when the moon is full. Sage got up for a midnight snack of rice crispies and I joined him in the
kitchen.
“Pour me a bowl?” I asked.
“You can’t sleep either?”
“No, and I’m exhausted.”
“Me too. I fell asleep in school the other day.”
“What subject?”
“Math.”
“Well…” I said, smiling. Sage smiled back. His father’s smile. “What else is going on with
you?”
“I quit the soccer team.”
“Why?”
“Just couldn’t make practices.”
“I’m sorry, Sage. How’s the rest of school going?”
“I did a presentation in my Spanish History class.”
“What on?”
“Spaniards’ machismo. I drew a picture of a woman on the board, and then I drew a man
with his arm going around her. But the class didn’t think it was an arm.” He started laughing. “And
the teacher got really mad at me, but I didn’t know what was wrong, so I drew the same thing again.
A man with this really long arm reaching for the woman.”
“Oh no,” I laughed.
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“Yeah. The class was cracking up and I had no idea why, and my teacher got more and more
mad.”
“That’s hysterical,” I said. “What happened next?”
“My teacher asked me to stay after class. She wouldn’t believe me when I told her it was
supposed to be an arm. I had to go to see the counselor.”
“That’s really funny.”
“I know.”
“Your dad would love that story,” I said.
“I know,” Sage said. “I can’t wait to tell him about that.”
Our cereal had gone soggy, so Sage poured us each a bit more. I added milk and we ate in
silence, save the crackling of the rice crispies and the ticking of the clock.
The next morning, a harvest moon Sunday, Dana and I were having breakfast in the kitchen
with Christy, who looked up from her eggs to tell us,
“I dreamed about Antonio, last night.”
“You did?” Dana asked. “What happened?”
“He gets out of bed and puts on his stripy sweater and comes into the room where a bunch
of us are waiting. And I’m like, ‘Are you coming back, or are you leaving?’”
“That gives me the shivers,” I said.
After breakfast, I sat in the sun on the side porch steps. It was a beautiful autumn morning.
The ground sparkled with dew, and drops from last night’s rainfall dripped from the gutter. Steam
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rose from the top of the small boat that had been leaning up against that fence forever. Dana came
out on her way to the back of the yard to feed the chickens.
“Mmm. The mist reminds me of New Zealand,” she said.
“Hey, that reminds me. Have you heard from Helz?” I asked. Helz used to live at One o One
Bard when she was on the New York stint of her travels. She had left at the beginning of that past
summer to get some more countries in before heading home to New Zealand.
“Just got an email from her. She’s giving Antonio an hour of long-distance Reiki every day.”
“She’s in South America, right?”
“Paraguay, I think.” Dana said and went to let the chickens out. I leaned against the wooden
railing. The sun felt strong and warm, but there was a light coolness in the breeze. A flock of geese
flew overhead, pointing their way to warmer climates. Their distant honking contrasted with the
morning chirps of hungry house birds and the steady rhythm of crickets. It felt it would be a good
day. Birdie the cat slinked by, already on the prowl. Marigold, wearing a pretty, red sundress, scooted
up beside me and asked what I was writing. I read my description of the morning, and she asked to
add her commentary:
“The grass waves in the breeze,” she said. “The sun shines down on my back, and I hear the
chickens scratching.” Her shoulder rubbed against my arm and the softness of her youth felt so
tender. She said, “It’s just really good to have your nice cold arm rub against my nice hot arm.” And
her curly blonde hair swept over my nice cold arm.
Back at the hospital Antonio was awake! This time, he was there in those eyes, connecting
with slight, but HUGE, eye contact and hand squeezing. I did not know what he could see or how
much he could comprehend, but his eyes were focused and alert.
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“It’s so good to see your eyes open and feel life in your hand,” I told him. “You’re doing
really great, Antonio.” Is he really hearing me? “We love and miss you so much. We’re here and we’re
taking care of you. Last night, Sage was here. He held your hand for hours. And Christy too. She
helped massage your feet. We’re taking really good care of you.” Antonio could only keep his eyes
focused in one place, so I had to lean over him in order to bring my eyes to meet his. When my back
began to ache from the awkwardness of holding myself like that, I didn’t care. What was my hurting
back compared to what he was going through? I wondered what else I could tell him? “Oh, I talked
to Leah on the phone and she says to say hi, and sends her love.” At this, he noticeably moved his
hand and squeezed mine.
“I feel that, Antonio. I feel you,” I said, rejoicing. I told him about the beautiful morning and
that Christy dreamed he woke up.” Now, I was convinced her dream meant that he was coming back
to us. When I couldn’t think of anything else to tell Antonio, I asked him if he wanted me to read to
him. He squeezed my hand again. It was so subtle, but so there. I opened The Way of Chuang Tzu at
random, to a section called “Perfect Joy”:
I cannot tell if what the world considers “happiness” is happiness or

not. All I know is that when I consider the way they go about attaining
it, I see them carried away headlong, grim and obsessed, in the general
onrush of the human herd, unable to stop themselves or to just change
their direction. All the while they claim to be just on the point of
happiness… My opinion is that you never find happiness until you stop
looking for it… Contentment and well-being at once become possible the
moment you cease to act with them in view, and if you practice non-doing
(wu-wei), you will have both happiness and well-being… Here is how I
sum it up:
Heaven does nothing: Its non-doing is its serenity.

Earth does nothing: Its non-doing is its rest.
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“That’s it, Antonio,” I said. “All you have to do is practice non-doing. Just breathe and get
your strength back. Breathe and do nothing else. Everything past breathing is being taken care of for
you.”
I called Leah on the way back to One o One and she squealed at the news of eye contact.
She spoke of champagne and celebrating. At the house, Dana was more wary. She was worried
about the next day’s CAT scan, and what that might reveal.
On the ferry, the lights of the Verrazano Bridge, which connect Staten Island to Brooklyn,
reflected in the mirrored waters of the Hudson River. In the dark of night, the stretching arch of
suspension cables seemed like tenuous threads of connection, strong and thin as silk. And the full
white moon that followed us reflected brightly in calm water that shimmered with glimmers of
hope.
The next weekend, I took New Jersey Transit, from Penn Station New York to Penn Station
Newark, for a family event in Nutley, my hometown. Once settled in a seat, I called my mother.
“I’m on the train,” I told her. “I just made it. We’ll be leaving in a few minutes, so I should
be there by 3:15-3:20.” I made sure my tone was light and positive, showing her my good intention
around arriving on time. Hoping she wouldn’t ask me to take the shuttle to Belleville when I get in.
“Are you gonna get the shuttle when you get in?” she asked. That sinking feeling was so
much less than it used to be, but there was still a slight twinge. The disappointment was partly
around the aggravation at an extended leg to my journey. More though, what bothered me was that
she this didn’t feel very welcoming.
“I thought someone was picking me up in Newark,” I said. “Aren’t there lots of cars and
people who can—?”
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“But the food will be here at 3:40 and I want to make sure we’re all here for when the food
arrives.” That familiar frantic tightness to her voice, and her incessant need to control, made me
instantly defensive. Plus, she was getting it backwards.
“Mom,” I said, trying to keep the edge out of my voice. “If I take the shuttle, it’ll take
longer. If you want me there by the time the food arrives, it’ll be faster if someone gets me in
Newark.”
“Oh. Right. Here comes your brother down the stairs, now. He’ll get you in my car.”
I hung up and looked out the train window as we cut through the Secaucus and Harrison
station wetlands. Despite a rainy forecast, the sun shone and glistened on the marshy water. Behind
all that industry, a perfect October sky lifted my spirits. I had my mother in me, I knew. That same
urge to control that could only lead to unnecessary anxiety.
Driving with my brother down those familiar roads into Nutley, past houses I used to deliver
the Star Ledger to, I no longer got the panicked feeling I used to get. After years of therapy and
meditation, learning to forgive and accept, I was finally able to feel good about coming home. This
was the first time in my life in which there were those first inclinations towards using the word,
“home.”
By the time the summer sesshin of 2009 rolled around, I had been trained in the role of
doan. During service, there are precise moments for hitting the bell that follow the lead of the priest
or doshi. The first bell happens when the doshi bows at the bowing mat, before approaching the altar
to offer incense; the second bell is after she offers incense and steps back to bow again. Then there
is a roll-down, all on the same high-pitched bell. Roll downs are fun to do, but the timing is tricky.
The doan hits the bell once when the doshi steps around the bowing mat on her way back from
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offering incense. The bell is hit a second time when the priest reaches the front of the bowing mat,
and each time after that the bell is hit at half the time it was hit previously, which means the gongs
are shorter and shorter in duration, accumulating speed until they come to an end. All the while, the
doshi unfolds a zagu to do full prostrations on. The roll-down needs to end at the precise moment
that the doshi lets go of her zagu onto the bowing mat. Then, everyone does three full-prostrations
that all receive one bell each. On the last prostration the bell is struck a fourth time when the doshi’s
head touches the floor. The larger bell with the lower pitch repeats the same sequence, but there is
no roll down. There is a different way of hitting the bell when the sutras are announced and there
are internal bells during the chanting. When done mindfully, the synchronicity between doan and
doshi is elegant and dancelike.
I had been practicing the bell pattern during our weekly services throughout the previous
months. But this was my first time being doan with a Zen master and I was nervous. During zazen
in that period just before service, I went over the bells again and again in my head like an actress
going over her lines: Hit the bell for the first and third bows, but not for the second or fourth. The
small bell is first, followed by the big bell. Do not hit the bell until the doshi bows. Greg said she
doesn’t always bow at the same time just to make sure the doan is paying attention. What if I hit the
wrong bell at the wrong time?
I was completely in my head, very far away from being in the moment, in my body, and with
my breathing. My sense of responsibility towards hitting the bells just right had to do with feelings
of self-worth. If I messed up, what would people think? But if I did it correctly, wouldn’t they all be
so impressed? I wanted her to be proud of me in the same way a child wants approval from a
parent. Many times I had heard Buddhist teachers talk about how we can heal the twisted karma of
our ancestors, but I had never fully got what this meant until that moment in front of those bells.
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This understanding made me think of how my mother’s anxiety often lead to irrational panic.
Wait… Didn’t her mother, my grandmother—Rose, whom I’m named after—die from high blood pressure? That
slight shift in consciousness was all it took for the anxiety to dissipate. This goes beyond me and has
nothing to do with this moment. I don’t have to hold on to this conditioning. And with that, there I sat, simply
breathing. Service went fine after all. I may have hit a wrong bell, but it was hardly a big deal in the
end.
My turn for dokusan came shortly after service. Sitting across from the Master, I shared my
anxiety with the bells and my understanding around ancestral karma.
“The questions of self-worth weren’t even coming from me, personally,” I explained. “They
were coming from beyond me—from my mother and her mother.”
“And so on,” she said. “In fact, they had nothing to do with you. Are you with me?” I
nodded. “Until such insecurities are processed, they will continue to arise in your body when
circumstances trigger them.”
“Well, I’m going to make sure that this ancestral suffering ends with me,” I said, meaning it.
Her grin was radiant, just like Antonio’s. All white teeth.
“You’re determined!”
“I am,” I said, smiling back at her. Then, unplanned, I said, “And I want to know if I can
study the precepts with you.” In essence, I was asking her to be my teacher. I had no idea what
studying the precepts formally entailed, but this was a way in to working with this Master and I
wanted in. She asked me if I could attend the weekly precepts class.
“It’s on a weeknight,” I said. “I teach weeknights.”
“Every semester?”
“Well, I could ask to teach during the days, but I prefer to teach nights.”
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“I’m asking the Monica who is determined,” she said, challenging me.
After sesshin, I invited the Master for tea in the garden beside my apartment. Having had
time to process what she wanted alongside what I wanted, I concluded that changing my schedule
did not suit my present lifestyle. I needed her to recognize that this decision did not make me any
less determined. We sat beneath a grape vine that grew over and down a wooden trellis on top of
which were fastened solar panels. As I poured her a cup of jasmine tea, the sun came out and
powered up the solar panels so that the little stream beside us bubbled.
“I’m not on the fence about this,” I said. “There isn’t a Monica who is determined and one
who is not. There is only the me who is determined. I want to know if you’ll study the precepts
with me even if I don’t change my schedule for the precepts class.” I told her I had never had a
teacher or searched out a guru. That has not been my way. “But here you are,” I said. “And I have
developed a trust in you.” The sun was shining and the little brook bubbled. We sipped tea and ate
cookies. It was a perfect summer day. All around us flowers and vegetables grew in community plots.
I hadn’t thought through why I wanted to study with this Master so badly. I only knew that I did.
What made this knowing so fierce, making me determined enough to declare my position so
strongly to her, was something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Truth is something you just know
in your body—when you’re paying attention. There is no need to understand intellectually. It’s like
the fingertip trying to touch itself, or the body trying to know how the brain is made.
“I see your intention,” she said, looking directly at me with eyes clear as the cloudless sky.
“And it deserves to be met.” This was all I needed to hear. She was taking me on as a student.
Walking her back to the zendo, I asked if she remembered the anecdote she once gave about
how her friend’s boyfriend continually left his socks on the floor. We were on Sixth Avenue, and my
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Teacher paused to watch a group of schoolchildren pass. She simply stopped and stood there,
staring at them, completely in the moment, smiling. I was impatient because I was asked to have her
back by a certain time, but one does not rush a Zen master. So I watched the kids with her. Groups
of schoolchildren always walk down Sixth Avenue in Park Slope. I had taken this for granted. But
how wonderful to take them in. All of those little people in their bright colors, with such innocent
and playful energy lightening the space around us. They were holding hands, walking in pairs—girls
with boys, Asian kids and white, African Americans and Latinos. Here, she was teaching me a lesson
about being in reality. How could we not stop and watch these kids for the few seconds it took for
them to pass?
When she resumed our pace and told me that she remembered telling the sock story, I said,
“Well, let’s say the friend is me, and I told my partner I didn’t mind if he left socks on the floor. In
fact, I even told him I’d pick them up, that it was no big deal. I didn’t notice that every day he was
leaving more and more socks on the floor, until there was a great big pile of smelly socks on the
living room. When I finally mentioned it to him, he assured me that he’d pick them up. He seemed
to mean it, and I fully believed that he would get to it. He just couldn’t do it that day, or the next.
But soon he would. Eventually, the sock-pile became so large and smelly that I couldn’t be in that
room anymore. So, I went to another room in the house and hung out there. I pretended the sock
room didn’t exist.” I paused and looked at my Teacher to see if she was taking this in. She had
sunglasses on so I couldn’t see her eyes, but she was quiet and I could tell that I had her full
attention. I continued. “This went on for years, until the smell of old socks seeped into the other
rooms of the house and I could no longer ignore it. Finally, I opened the door to the sock room,
pointed to the socks, and told my partner to clean them up. He was busy doing other things, though.
I got upset and insisted that he help. I told him the smell was too much. It was unhealthy. It was
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hurting me. He said he would get to it, sooner or later, if I would just be patient. But I got angry and
demanded that he clean up the socks, now. I would even help him. He got angry back and told me he
was not able to deal right now, and why couldn’t I just understand. He had very good reasons for not
being able to pick up his socks. I was the one, after all, who had told him he could leave them there.
In fact, I had told him I’d pick them up myself. What’s more, he told me, is that I shouldn’t believe
every little thing he says. He claimed it was unfair of me to put what he said months or years ago on
him, now. I was just being needy. Why couldn’t I simply go on ignoring that room? Anyway, if I just
left him alone, he’d deal with it—someday. But after all those years of waiting, I had lost faith. I
faced the fact that the room was destroyed and that he would do nothing to help me fix it. The
decay of that room would surely destabilize the structure of the whole house, and if the house fell
apart where would I live? I had no other choice but to ask him to leave. And then, I started the
painstaking process of taking the socks from the pile, one by one. By myself.”
She looked at me, waiting for the punch line. “This sums up part of my relationship with
Jon,” I said. “It’s a metaphor for the financial debt he left me with. I realize he is not doing anything
to help me because he believes that he can’t. I know I probably need to forgive him and move on.
But, it’s really hard for me to accept the reality that Jon can’t pick up the socks, because I think the
only reason he can’t is because he’s convinced himself of this. I have no respect for that. And I feel
so overwhelmed with the responsibility of this. Anyway, I’m trying to let go of my anger and
wanting him to deal, since he flat out refuses. I’m going to Ireland next month and Jon is there. He
wants to see me. He says he still loves me and I guess I’m nervous about seeing him. I don’t know
how it’s going to go.”
She stopped walking, took off her sunglasses, looked me straight in the eyes and said,
“What’s missing from all you just said?” I paused, confused. “I’ll tell you what’s missing,” she said.
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“Where is your own sense of self-worth? Why are you going to see him in Ireland? For me, not
seeing Jon is a no-brainer. Forgiveness and understanding are all fine and good, but you need to
protect yourself.” I didn’t know what to say to this. I knew that I would see Jon when I went to
Ireland. We have mutual friends. There’s a particular scene. How could I not see him? Besides, I was
curious. She continued to look at me with razor-sharp, blue eyes. “In every situation that arises in the
future,” she said, “I want you to ask yourself, ‘Where is my self-worth in this moment?’”
This conversation was a turning point in my practice. And it was the beginning of my
journey with my first teacher.
My Teacher and I had our first formal interaction as teacher and student the day of
Antonio’s CAT scan. But since she lived in California at that time, dokusan with her east-coast
students happened via telephone. I sat for half an hour before picking up the phone. When she
answered, I jumped right in and told her about Antonio. “Last week was really hard.” I explained
that I smoked pot every day and didn’t meditate at all. She asked me why I smoked pot. “I guess I
get in these cynical moods, sometimes. I don’t want to give a shit so I do things that I know aren’t
good for me and don’t serve me.” What I didn’t say was that I liked how marijuana blurred the
intensity of what was happening with Antonio. And it helped keep at bay those things I was not
ready to believe about Jon.
I wanted to tell her about the CAT scan being done that very day. I wanted to ask what I
would do if he had another stroke, or if he didn’t wake up, or if he became a vegetable. These fears
battered around my head while I gripped the phone. But such questions were too huge to fit into a
telephone conversation with someone I was still just getting to know. “Sometimes, it’s just easier to
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smoke,” was all I could think to say. She asked me to think about how I wanted to take care of
myself.
“Be clear about that. It’s up to you,” she said. “When you feel like you need to smoke, notice
what’s coming up for you. Trust awareness.” I was relieved she wasn’t telling me to stop smoking.
Though part of me felt the need to hear this, the fact that she didn’t tell me what to do made me
respect her more. When I changed the subject to talk about the writing group I wanted to lead at the
Zen Center, she advised that I start each class with sitting. “It’s just another way to practice
mindfulness and to think about silence, wholeness, oneness. And remind the group that you are not
creating art based on the ego.” Again, she told me to “Be clear in your self.” And then she said,
“There’s one thing more. I have a caveat.”
“About the writing group?”
“About the writing group.”
“Greg told me you would,” I said. She laughed.
“Did he tell you what it would be?”
“No. Just that you’d have one.”
“He must really know me,” she said. “Are you ready?”
“I am.”
“If you’re going to lead a writing group based on mindfulness for the Zen Center, you have
to have a clear, un-intoxicated mind.” There was a pause. I knew exactly what she meant. When she
continued, it was with a gentleness and skill that floored me. “Maybe you want to start the group
after this business with your friend,” she said.
As soon as we hung up, I composted the little bit of grass that I had. Then, I found that
piece of wishbone Jon and I had broken together when I was in Ireland that past August. I had won
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the wish, and in one last effort for the magic that had once been between us to work it’s power, I
had closed my eyes and hoped as hard as I could for everything to be okay for us. But everything
was not okay, because he was unable to pick up those damn socks, and I was unable to accept this.
I composted that piece of wishbone with the weed. I could only make things okay for me. I had to
clean the mess up all by myself. I needed to take on those loans completely and stop hoping for help
or friendship from Jon. Lastly, I took out the earring Jon had put into my ear on the day we were
married, when we exchanged earrings instead of rings.
Hot, salty tears burned down my face while I sat zazen, and it hurt like a part of me had
died. That night, I cried myself to sleep and dreamed that I was back in the emotional turmoil
embroiling our breakup.
I allow myself feel how painful it is to want to be with him, and how much it
hurts to love him so severely. There are photographs in a room that I almost shut
the door on. But I stop and make myself look. I face the shots of this beautiful
man I can’t have, and feel my heart ripping. The wanting to be with him conflicts
terribly with the knowing that he can’t give me what I needed.
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Week Four
Leah called while I was at work running off copies from a supplemental reading for Like
Water For Chocolate, about San Antonio, Texas. I heard her say the words CAT scan and stroke, and
that stroke apparently meant brain damage. But there was no way of knowing where, exactly, or how
much, until he woke up.
“How are you doing dealing with all of this, Monica?” she asked. “Do you have a good
support system?” I stood there holding the phone to my ear, watching collated pages turn out of the
photocopier in orderly stapled sections with the title “San Antonio” slapped across the tops. I heard
Leah tell me how isolated she’s been feeling, and how she’s way too busy with her new job to be able
to take this all in or just cry when she needs to. I heard myself say something about how I didn’t
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know how much longer I’d have the energy to go to Staten Island every weekend. We voiced
concerns about the future, and the care Antonio would need when and if he came out of this.
“What will that look like?” Leah asked. I collected the handouts and, phone to my ear, walked down
the long hallway—not that different from a hospital corridor with its dirty gray tiles and pastel pink
walls—vaguely aware of students streaming past me, on their way back to various classrooms,
talking in foreign languages that I wouldn’t have understood if they had been speaking English. I
suggested something to Leah about how when we knew more, and a sort of rhythm developed, we
should make up a care-taking schedule. But when would he be out of the woods? We both
wondered. And will he be? And how does a rhythm get developed? And what will caretaking consist
of ? And poor Dana is taking on the brunt of this. How can we support her? I was supposed to have
the answer to Leah’s questions. She was looking to me. People were expecting me to know what to
do. I had to figure this out. So I rattled off words of encouragement that sounded good and seemed
to satisfy the both of us. Then, I hung up the phone, opened the door to my classroom, distributed
the handouts and somehow managed to help my students through the reading about San Antonio.
When I got home, I texted Dana who replied that she had a migraine and asked if we could
talk tomorrow. So, I tried to tuck into my Spanish homework. “Trying” being exactly how I found
the process of learning Spanish to be. I truly respected what my students had gone through to move
to a new country and grasp another language. Despite all the traveling I had done, languages did not
come to me with ease. When living in Spain, I had spent most of my time there interacting with
Germans in English. I did manage to work through those initial intimidations around asking where a
bathroom was, ordering coffee, getting directions, and making hash deals. By the time I got to Italy, I
was ready to take on Italian and did break through the beginner barriers, just starting to absorb
casual conversation, when I left the country for New York. When my Spanish kept coming out in
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Italian, I was proud of my efforts. I was the lowest-level student in the level B class that I barely had
time to get to every Wednesday morning for three hours, let alone do the homework and studying it
required. I toyed with the idea of dropping the class. But how could I consider dropping a class
learning Antonio’s native language at a time like this? Maybe I could use it to feel closer to him. I
told myself that I’d practice on him at the hospital, and that he’d come out of it just to shut me up
and tell me the correct way habla Español.
I slept without dreams that night. The next morning, pulling up my bamboo shades, there
was something fresh and full of possibility in that sound, like water trickling over smooth stones.
Then, I remembered about the stroke, and sadness wrapped around me like it was painted onto my
skin, and like the paint had stiffened in its drying, and I couldn’t peel it off. I checked my phone and
there was a voice mail from Leah:
Hey Monica, it’s Leah. Um, I just left the hospital. So, I mean he’s
much, much better. It’s a scary thing too, but it’s like he can look you
in the eye. His face doesn’t show much emotion, but he can look you
in the eye and respond. And he was touching me and squeezing my
hand and reaching for things and touching his face a little, with one
hand. One side of the body is not moving… Um, we don’t know
what that means yet… Uh, wow. But it was so awesome to feel a
connection after these weeks of no connection. So, that’s my report.
Call me back if you want to…
What did that mean? He’s awake now? I thought that the stroke meant things were worse. But
Leah says he’s “much much better.” But that he might not be able to move one side of his body. I
was so confused. Trying to get Dana on the phone was a challenge, and when I finally did get her,
she had to go right away even though I had more questions. I cried when she hung up, feeling so
helpless in this waiting game.
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A man on the subway, decently dressed and well groomed, with a mini-computer on his lap
and long hair pulled back into a rubber band, had four teardrops tattooed in black ink down the left
side of his face. They’d been there for a long time; I could tell by the graying of the ink.
Aesthetically, I thought, one teardrop would do. Or, would that be too mime-like? I couldn’t help but
stare. Perhaps he lost four children or four friends all at the same time. I knew someone who had
these gigantic Chinese characters tattooed on both shoulders. They begged questioning and each
time someone asked him what they meant, he told of their connection to his best friend who had
died. He always ended the story by saying, “That’s why I got these tattoos, so people would ask and I
would tell this story. I always want to remember him.” I have since researched tear tattoos, and
understand they originally meant that their wearer had killed someone. They have also come to
symbolize, as I suspected, the loss of a loved one. I imagined the emotional pain the man must have
felt at the time of making the decision to color permanent tears into his skin, and was struck by his
desire to be reminded, not only each time he glanced into a mirror, but every time he looked into the
eyes of another person, who could only reflect their reaction to his tears. Besides the tears, the man
on the subway didn’t appear to be weighed down. He was just doing his thing on the subway like
everyone else.
Greg told me that in New York City there are 100,000 known genocide and torture
survivors. This could mean that every subway car has at least one survivor on it. That man with the
tear tattoos chose to have his sorrow displayed where all could see, but how can we know the
suffering others hide? When I was twenty-three, a bassist in a band I knew, died. Kevin was the first
person I knew who died, and I remember the shock of it. Walking down the street, going shopping,
interacting with customers at the bookstore I managed, I wanted to scream—How could you not know
what just happened in my world? And how could anyone on the subway know that I was on my way to
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visit a friend who might die? The person who just pushed past me in order to get the seat I wanted
might have any number of understandable reasons to be less aware than I would have preferred. We
just don’t know what’s going on with people. How can we not be compassionate towards those we
meet on a daily basis?
Antonio was asleep when I arrived, so I sat beside his bed and watched his weak body just
lying there. When he woke and tried to open his eyes, it looked like a hell of a lot of effort. And it
didn’t seem like the fact of being able to open his eyes had anything to do with him waking up or
getting better. The unfairness of what he was reduced to overwhelmed me. The nurse who
eventually came in looked so fresh and chipper compared with the energy I felt in the room. I didn’t
bother wiping the tears from my face, and was glad when she didn’t look me in the eyes. “How is he
doing?” I asked.
“He’s showing signs of progress,” she said while checking the monitors around Antonio’s
bed, jotting the odd note down onto his chart. “He’s breathing mostly for himself now, and every
day we’ll try to take him off the ventilator.” Is she trying to cheer me up? “The tracheotomy is better for
trying to take him off the vent,” she explained, referring to the trach tube at the base of his throat
that could be screwed on or unscrewed off. “If he’s not ready to breathe, we can easily pop it back
in,” she said. Like the lifeline keeping Antonio alive was something as simple as a dislocated
shoulder.
I hoped Dana would have more information, but she wasn’t home when I arrived at One o
One Bard, so I hung out in Antonio’s bedroom, which had become my guest room. It had been
cleaned up, somewhat; meaning Dana or Marsh had picked up the strewn clothes, washed the used
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dishes, dumped the overflowing ashtrays, and swept the dust from the floor. But there was still a
smell of oil paint, and there were still canvases in all states of completion propped against the wall.
There was my favorite painting that Antonio had started when we were roommates. “That one’s for
me, right?” I’d say each time I saw him working on it. He’d smile, non-committal, insisting it wasn’t
finished. The background was midnight blues and tropical greens, on top of which he painted petals
—blooming bits of yellows, whites, reds and oranges—as if someone had tossed a handful of
flowers onto a stormy sea. Tears streamed down my face as I stared at all that life bursting from
those colors. I hadn’t stopped crying since the hospital, and being in his bedroom with all his things
was surreal. The Antonio in the hospital, the one who lived here, and the professional artist who had
come to the country on an artist VISA… How did these people connect? On one of Antonio’s
shelves, there was a photograph of Leah as a young girl in a leotard doing a plié. Leah told me that
when he lived in Rochester, where they met, Antonio shared an old, abandoned shoe factory with
other artists.
He had lived on the fifth floor, between a young sculptor and her skinny boyfriend, and a
quiet pale writer. The apartment was one huge room with high ceilings and concrete walls and
floors. Antonio had painted three of the walls one vivid color each—yellow, orange, and red. The
only wall not painted was lined with a stove, fridge and counter. His gigantic paintings hung on the
colored walls. The painting on the red wall, above his queen-sized bed, was of a flaming dark red,
Mexican heart. Another painting was of a bleeding heart. In one corner, he had built a miniature
wooden house for when Sage, then a young child, stayed with him. Inside, there were lamps, a bed,
and little boy things. From inside the little house, Sage could look out the little window at the fifty or
so plants all over that studio and hanging from the ceiling. Every day, Antonio snipped dead leaves
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and moved the plants around so each one would get light. Strewn across the floor were machine
parts, antique keys, rusty scissors, sculptures of the Virgen de Guadalupe, candlesticks covered in
melted and hardened glass, and wooden boxes of various shapes and sizes. There were tubes of
paint everywhere. Some empty, some almost empty, all contorted into different shapes from his
effort to squeeze out as much paint as possible. There was a lot of sunlight, and there was the smell
of oil paint. In the basement he had a studio with concrete walls that were covered in small paintings
and canvases in varying stages of being prepped or painted.
Antonio had come to the United States at the age of thirty. The way he had explained it was
that, after serving for three years in the Mexican military, he was back in Oaxaca. He had a big
studio. “I had the most popular studio in Oaxaca. Everybody used to hang out there. Everyone. It
was like a freakin amusement park. It was! Yeah, I had shit all over the place. I had artwork. I had
religious images. I had a whole bunch of shit there. So I was in that studio, and everybody was in
there. And one of those big parties that I used to have, a woman came, and she said, ‘Do you want
to come and exhibit your work in California?’ And I said, ‘Yes.’ So very soon after I was in
California.”
Maybe it was being in his room with his personal things, but I could clearly hear his voice in
my head, telling me about when he came to America. “I was just living the good life,” he had said.
We were probably sitting out on the side porch smoking cigarettes when he was telling me this. “I
lived in this totally opulent house. The gallerist who was supporting me was a really rich man, and
his house was like totally a California house. It was so weird,” he said, shaking his head. After that,
he had gone to Texas for a couple of months, also on an artist invitation. He didn’t like it there,
though. “Too many Mexicans.” Then, he worked at a college in Missoula, Montana, which he
described as “cold as hell.”
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“When it came time for me to move on,” Antonio had told me, “Christy was already here in
New York, and I had an invitation to come around.”
“You knew her, before coming to the States?” I asked.
“I met her in Oaxaca,” he explained. “I think she was just arriving from India. Yea, she was
on the hunt for a good-looking Mexican. Never found it, though!” I could picture him pausing to
light another rollie, think a bit, and then continue.
“We had a mad love affair. It was actually really cool. We had it good for about two years.
And then we got married, and that was a big mistake. We didn’t have to get married, the way I see it.
I entered legally. My VISA was as an artist, so… But we did have to get married because she was
pregnant by that time. So, she was pregnant, I was Mexican, and then we lived in a very small
conservative town. So yeah, we had to get married, unless I wanted to get shot.”
“It was that conservative?” I asked.
“This was in a little town called Jamestown,” he said. “I was assaulted and covered in glue
and then sawdust on top of it. White guys did it.”
“What happened?”
“They stripped me and covered my whole body. Four of them.”
“Did you know them?”
“Yes. I did. I broke one of them’s arms. I saw him like probably a week after, and he was
totally like laughing about it. And I got pissed, and I was so pissed that without thinking about it I
just went and broke his arm.”
“What did he do?”
“He cried.”
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I couldn’t know if Antonio really broke this man’s arm, but I’m certain he wanted to. I
scanned his bookcase and picked up one of the volumes in a set called Sex, Violence and Nature.
Antonio was not a violent person, deep down. But he was raised in a violent atmosphere and he had
a hot temper, a lot of energy, and an obsessive personality. On another shelf, there were some of his
Mexican dishes. I was living at Bard when he brought them back from a visit to Sage. He was glad to
get them back from Christy and had taken them out of their box with a care. There were tall ceramic
glasses and large, heavy plates and bowls painted light and dark blue, with red streaks and thick
curving black designs.
“So, Christy got pregnant in Jamestown,” his story continued. “And then Sage was born in
Jamestown. We lived for probably a year in Jamestown. And then I found a job at the college in
Brockport. Basically, what I was doing was, I was educating the poor. Up there is a big migrant
population of migrant workers. Migrant farm workers. And they don’t receive services. So when I
came, I was hired by the college. In the college there is this thing that is called The Research
Foundation of the State University of New York. The Research Foundation provides educational
services to farm workers and their families. So when I came, I was teaching English, math, all the
subjects that kids will have in school.”
“You were teaching English?” I remember laughing. “Where were your students from?”
“Yes!” he laughed. “Most of them were from Mexico. They were from probably three or
four years olds to forty, fifty, sixty years olds. The ones that I worked with were mainly kids, K-12.”
“How long did you do that for? Did you like it?”
“That job went on for 8 years. I did like it, yes.”
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Whether it was the same conversation or not, the same afternoon on the side porch or a
different one, Antonio’s story was coming back to me as if he were narrating it telepathically from
up the street in his hospital bed.
“After the first year, everything with Christy just started coming down.” Maybe he was
rolling me another cigarette. I could have smoked and listened to his stories all day. “So I was
working there, and there I was novelty. I was an artist. I was Mexican. I was brown. I was crazy. And
I was doing exhibits all over the place, all around there. I was kind of famous. I was on TV. I was in
the newspapers. Everybody knew me. Because of it, I was quite popular. So I had my groupies…”
“And, Christy?”
“Christy did not like that.”
I could see why some women would feel threatened by this. But when Jon and I were
together in Ireland, where he was kind of famous, I didn’t mind. In fact, I loved it. Jon was well
known in the music scene all over Galway and Dublin, and he had played with world famous
musicians. He certainly had his groupies, and when we travelled together it was easy to meet people
wherever we went. All over Europe people insisted that Jon was the best live guitarist they had ever
seen. Jon attracted other musicians and there were sessions every night. I had high-quality music
around me all the time, and Jon included me in his limelight. I sometimes sang backup with him, but
it was more than that. Jon celebrated our relationship. His love and appreciation for me were
apparent in the way he looked at and listened to me. I never worried that I didn’t have his love, until
Kath died. Then, his love grew further and further out of reach, like that fingertip trying to touch
itself. I reached, though, and I reached. For years and years, I reached.
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Some of Antonio’s dishes were chipped or cracked from wear. They were placed
haphazardly on various shelves, as were the rest of his things. There were paintbrushes scattered like
spattered streaks of paint. Some had dried oil paint caked to the bristles. And there were pieces of
miniature plastic mannequins and doll’s heads. He called them his Decapitated Virgins. An electrical
cord straggled over a bunch of Spanish music CD’s and CD covers, most of which were not in their
correct cases. The mishmash way things were strewn across his shelves reminded me of when
Antonio had helped me move from Staten Island to Park Slope. He had come out of my bathroom
laughing at how neatly everything was placed in my medicine cabinet. He was doubled over with his
hands on his belly, and when he threw his head, I could see all those white teeth.
From Antonio’s shelf, I picked up the pack of Macanudos I had left at Helz’s going-away
party last May, and opened it to find three left. The cigarillos looked lonely in the pack all by
themselves, stuffed amongst so many strange objects on the shelf in a room that nobody lived in
anymore.
Out the bedroom window, there was Helz coming up the walk. I hadn’t seen her since that
party. She had gone off traveling around Canada and South America, and showed up last week,
unannounced. I pulled myself together, went downstairs and peeked into her room to see her typing
on her laptop.
“Did you come from the hospital?” she asked, getting up. If Antonio’s room had seemed
surreal, standing face to face with Helz, who had come all the way from Paraguay just to help with
Antonio, blew my mind. I couldn’t hold in the tears and didn’t bother to try. This started her off as
well. We just stood there holding each other, crying.
“It’s the first time I’ve cried,” she said. I pulled back and looked at her smiling through the
tears. “It’s good to see you.”
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“I’ll make coffee,” I said. She gave me the thumbs-up and went back to her laptop. When the
coffee was ready, we sat in the kitchen and shared an emotional meltdown.
“Thanks for starting the waterworks,” she said.
Walking back to the hospital, I realized I was rushing up Bard Avenue, as if something
depended on my getting there sooner rather than later. I slowed down and breathed. The sky was
growing dark. It was dusk. Twilight. Gloaming. The witching hour. That transition between day and
night that creates an atmosphere of suspension. In a couple more weeks the seasons would
transform from summer to winter. A mysterious time that I loved, when the separation of the
worlds of the living and the dead become blurred. A magical time when, according to various
religions and spiritual practices, communication with the spirit world is possible.
Antonio was still sleeping when I arrived. Or did he wake up and then go back to sleep since
my earlier visit? They told us he’d been having trouble sleeping, so I quietly sat down and took his
hand. There were those Catholic candles with Christ and crosses still unlit on the stand beside the
bed. I wanted to tell him how great they’d look on his shelf next to the Decapitated Virgins.
In Rochester, Antonio had been invited to be a member of the Evolutionary Girls Club, “an
INCLUSIVE group of artists, scholars and activists with a focus of sharing voice, access and
opportunity between its members and within the communities we live in and visit… Anyone who is
interested in art and activism can join.”
His self-written bio for the website states:
Painter and Activist

Antonio Cruz Zavaleta is a Mexican in denial of his Craziness, who
hates being titled "artist" but doesn’t mind when people assume he's gay.
He lives and works in Rochester, New York, but the majority of his
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pieces are inspired by the politics and culture of Mexico. He is

fascinated with cheesiness and loves red hearts and cheap plastic Catholic
paraphernalia. His latest passion has been what he considers the
extreme cheese of Rochester - the Horses on Parade statues. In response
Cruz created "Cheesy Horses on Parade." The installation covered his
car in dime store plastic horses, which were coated in real Velveeta
cheese. Cruz hates writing bios and promises that the next bio will be
better as he will have a bottle of high quality mezcal on hand.
I loved Antonio’s artist activism like I loved Jon’s musician anarchism. But it’s easier to love
someone’s ideals when they are contributing to the rent and the bills. I admired Jon’s refusal to play
music, any way except for his way, much more before he moved in with me. Jon would never play a
song to please the crowd, or sell his music just to make money. It always had to come from him.
Antonio’s ethics around art was the same. I could only imagine what that meant to Christy, who
raised their son. It was easy for me to admire Antonio’s ethics since we were just good friends. While
I held his hand, his side porch stories continued with a voice so clear, I could almost swear the man
lying there was speaking.
“A long time ago,” I remembered him telling me, “there was a project in Rochester that it
was called, Horses on Parade. And what happened is that a whole bunch of fiberglass horses forms.
And then the city hired artists to decorate them and put ‘em all over the city. And they were freakin’
awful. But it was the same idea than these stupid palm trees they wanted me to put all over the city.
It was as cheesy as that. So they hired me to be part of the painters. And me and another guy,
another artist. We decided that it was just stupid. So we were totally against it, but we didn’t have any
power. But we were well-known artists. The money, the people with the money, decided that they
wanted the project. And money talks. So they distributed hundreds of these ugly mother-fucking
horses, all over the city. They were awful. Just fiberglass horses painted with flowers, with US flags,
you know. The whole deal. Yeah, the whole God Bless America. Yes! So as a way of making fun of
them, I decided to do my own horse project. So I went to the dollar store. And at the dollar store, I
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found plastic horses. Twelve inches long. They were ugly. Just ugly plastic Made in China horses. So,
I glue all of the horses on top of my car. It was a little Toyota, sport looking. And then I covered the
whole thing with Velveeta cheese and drove around. It was cheesy, and I called my car the Cheesy
Horses on Parade. Oh, people went crazy! People would stop me on the street just to take pictures
of it.”
“That’s disgusting,” I said, laughing. “What happened with all that cheese?”
“I just let the cheese melt.”
“That’s disgusting.”
“I know!”
Antonio began to jerk around a bit. Which one of us was dreaming? I could not reconcile
the Antonio in my memories, so full of attitude, with this sick creature whose hand I held. He
opened his eyes and I looked into them, searching for a connection. I had nothing to say, so I said
nothing. We just looked at one another, but I couldn’t tell what, if anything, he could see. He started
to cough, or started to try to cough. The effort looked painful. Is he choking? Nervous, I ran out to
get a nurse, but I didn’t know which one to ask. They all appeared to be having a meeting behind the
big U-shaped desk. So, I said to everyone, “I think Antonio’s having trouble coughing. He seems to
be choking or something. Is he alright?”
“We’ll be there in a minute,” a short stout nurse with the glasses said, without looking at me.
I took her at her word and went back.
“They’re gonna sort you out, Antonio,” I told him. “They’re sending someone in.” He was
still trying to cough, like he had something stuck in his throat. But he was not able to cough. It
seemed like he was unable to get in enough air to expel. Then, he started convulsing. I was sure he
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was having trouble breathing. He looked frightened. How could there be all these tubes and
machines keeping him alive when he was lying there choking right in front of me? I ran out again.
“I’m sorry, but he’s really choking,” I said.
“We’ll be right there,” the same nurse snapped. I went back and took his hand, attempting to
appear calm for his benefit, but inside I was panicking. Finally, Nurse Jimmy came in.
“You might want to leave the room if you get squeamish,” he said.
“I’ll stay.” How could I leave? If Antonio had to go through some uncomfortable procedure,
the least I could do is hold his hand and give him supportive eye contact so he wouldn’t have to be
afraid or face this alone. “I’m right here, Antonio. Don’t worry. They’re gonna take care of you.” I
figured Jimmy was going to have to suction the mucous from the hole in his neck, like they had to
do from his mouth when the tube was down his throat. I can deal with that, I thought. Jimmy pulled
the trach-tube out of Antonio’s neck enough to swab mucous away from his throat. He then
inserted dry gauze around the tube. Every adjustment had Antonio reeling and gasping for breath.
He arched his head back, making these horrifying gasping sounds. It was like watching a caught fish
flap on dry land. Only, this was my friend and I was afraid that he was scared he might die. What does
it feel like to try to breathe in desperate gulps when no air is going in? I gripped his hand and maintained eye
contact, unable to move. I was repulsed, determined, mesmerized. The only thing that allowed me to
keep a semblance of calm was the methodical way Jimmy handled everything. He was obviously
used to the sorts of reactions Antonio was giving, so I assumed this was a normal procedure and I
tried not to be alarmed. When Jimmy took a long cotton swab and stuck it in the tube to clear more
mucous, a long strand strung away like snot. I did not allow myself to look away. I kept telling
Antonio how great he was doing and he kept his eyes locked on mine.
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“I’m sorry about this, Mr. Cruz,” Jimmy said. Then, came the part all the rest had been mere
preparation for. He inserted a thin tubular contraption up the long plastic hose that was connected
to the trach-tube, and pulled back on it, suctioning streams of mucous out. Antonio reared his head
back. He couldn’t breathe because his air supply had been cut off so that all that thick liquid could
be pulled out of his throat. His eyes bulged and he gasped and wheezed. Agonizing seconds took an
eternity. I was frozen with the thought of how Antonio had to go through this several times a day,
and it hit me anew how painful and long his recovery was going to be. Now that he was somewhat
seeming to come out of the initial scare, he would eventually start to be aware of what was
happening and have to deal with that. He’d be in pain and have to deal with that, too. He might not
have the same working body he used to, and he would also have to deal with that. This was all far
too huge to comprehend. Another nurse—or was it still Jimmy? I couldn’t tell anymore. The nurses
were blending—took Antonio’s left hand and said, “Can you squeeze my hand, Mr. Cruz?” I hated
that they kept calling him Mr. Cruz. I wanted to yell, His name is Antonio! And I did not want our boy
to know he might not be able to squeeze his left hand. Did he know about the stroke? I didn’t want
him to be freaked out about not being able to squeeze the nurse’s hand.
“But you can squeeze my hand, can’t you, Antonio?” I asked. I was holding his right hand
and he squeezed it. “I feel that. You’re doing great!” I repeated. The nurse left, which was good
because I was not doing well at all. Dizzy, I put my head down on the bed, until the light touch of
Antonio’s fingers rubbing my head, pushed me over the edge. The fact that he might be trying to
comfort me was too much. I doubled over and put my head on my knees. But when I thought I
might fall off the chair, I put my head back on the bed. I didn’t know where to put my head. The
faintness was not passing. Suddenly, all of the food from my stomach moved into my bowels in one
sudden lurch. I couldn’t stay there in that state, but I could hardly stand up. I had to pull myself
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together. I pushed up onto wobbly legs and told Antonio that I had to go to the bathroom and
would be back in five minutes. I held up five fingers. I ran into the hallway and made it to an empty
gurney pushed against the wall as if waiting for me. I collapsed onto it so I wouldn’t pass out. I was
aware that I was having a physical reaction to something emotional. It was like a bad trip, in which I
was conscious of what was happening, and knew that it would eventually pass and that things would
be okay again soon, but in the moment I was taken over and could do nothing about it. I didn’t want
anyone to see me that way so I pulled myself up and stumbled down the hall, fighting a blackout. By
the time I made it to the bathroom door, everything had gone dark. I pushed the door handle but it
wouldn’t go down. It’s locked. Someone’s in there! What am I going to do? But I tried again and this time the
handle went down and the door opened. I was so surprised that it opened that I let go and the door
shut again. Was I mistaken? Was someone in there? Was the door locked? Why couldn’t I push the
handle down again? It had opened a second ago. Maybe if I pushed on the door at the same time as
I pressed the handle. It was like trying to run in slow motion in a dream. Finally, I got the door open
and fumbled for the light. Everything was black but I could feel the wall. I knew where the light was
so I reached higher until I found it. I was in. I made it to the toilet just in time. I stayed there for a
long time, holding my head in my hands, catching my breath. And I faced the reality that what I was
going through was, actually, completely human. The sutra that Thich Nhat Hanh wrote about—and
that, weeks ago, I had connected with Antonio’s physical vulnerability—now mirrored my own state.
Further, the practitioner meditates on his very own body… Here is

the intestines, bowels, excrement, bile, phlegm, pus, blood, sweat, fat,
tears, grease, saliva, mucus, synovic fluid, urine.
I wanted to flee the hospital and run back to the house and have another meltdown with Helz where
it was safe and someone could give me the support I needed. Instead, I went back for more. I sat
with Antonio for another hour. The rest of the visit consisted of me rubbing his right leg and foot.
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Anytime I stopped, he wiggled it, indicating, I was certain, that he wanted me to continue. I could
hardly believe how much thinner he was since they had stopped pumping him with so many fluids.
And I was shocked that I could touch my forefinger to my thumb around his ankle. “I didn’t think it
was possible for you to get any skinnier,” I said. I told him how once he got out of there and we got
him home we’d fatten him up and have our way with him. How we’d all massage and take care of
him. “We’ll make tamales,” I said. Ever so slightly, he nodded. “And drink Coronas, and tequila.
What’s that kind you like? Mezcal? We’ll get a bottle. One of those really expensive ones.” I told him
how much I missed his laugh, and how much I loved him. I blathered on and on. When he scratched
his stubble, I put lotion around his mouth, grateful to see him rub his face with normal Antonio
gestures. I asked if he wanted me to read to him, but when I reached for the book he shook his leg.
“Okay, okay. Forget the book. I’ll rub your foot some more.” But that didn’t seem to make help
either. He kept opening his mouth as wide as he could, and pulling his lips back over his teeth. Was
he trying to cough again? Or yawn? Maybe he was trying to tell me something. “I’m sorry you can’t
speak, Antonio. It must be so frustrating not to be able to tell us what you’re thinking and feeling.
But you’ve been communicating with us on other levels. I want you to know that I know that. I had
two dreams where you sat up in bed and were okay again. And Helz had a dream about you and so
did Christy.” I hesitated, wondering if I should tell him about the bike light, but noticed he was
pulling my hand to his lips. When he moved his lips lightly against my knuckle, I realized he was
kissing me. He gets what I’m saying! I’m so grateful. “I love you, Antonio. I know you’re coming back.
You take your time. We’re all here for you.”
When I was informed that visiting hours were over, I was relieved. I sobbed the whole way
back down Bard Avenue. No tears. Just shocked, deep-breathing, gulping-air sobbing.
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Week Five
When Dana and I went to see him the next day, Antonio was off the ventilator. For the first
time in three weeks, he was breathing completely on his own. The trach-tube was disconnected from
the vent and if it stayed that way, he might be able to talk when he woke up more.
But because of the stroke, he might not be able to speak properly for a while.
He might have to relearn everything.
Unless the stroke took away use of things, permanently.
He might, this.
He could that.
If this,
then that.
Now, he only needed to breathe. Just breathe. It was all about the breath.
In between hospital visits, I played with Alice, who hid in the living room when two
deliverymen brought a new stove into One o One.
“I don’t like workmen. Let’s hide!” she said and declared us a family of monkeys. I was the
momma monkey and she was the big sister monkey. Marigold was in the kitchen helping Dana pick
out relics that had been lost for years beneath the old stove. One of these treasures was a “to do
list” Marsh’s mother had made years before. It was dated on my birthday, May 24 th. Mine and Maura
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Soshin O’Halloran’s birthday. Marsh’s mother had died of cancer. Her illness was what prompted his
move back to the east coast from California. He helped take care of her in that last year of her life,
but he didn’t talk much about it. Marsh’s way was to smile and move forward, leaving the past in the
past, not needing to uncover the dark stuff. He didn’t look back, pry, poke around, turn things over
and try to figure them out like I tended to do.
Alice—making monkey noises and digging her fingers into her armpits—brought me out of
my head and into the moment.
“Who are you the big sister to?” I asked, thinking she might want to include Marigold in our
game. I was exhausted from the hospital and didn’t have the energy to be the only other monkey in
this game.
“I don’t know,” she said, thinking about the question. “Like a doll or something. Yes, a doll,”
she nodded. Antonio would laugh at her cuteness. Why wasn’t he there playing monkey family with
us? Everything that happened in this house seemed wrong without Antonio. “You’re so cute, I hate
you,” he’d say to Alice. “I’m gonna take a bite right out of your butt. I’m gonna eat you right up.
You’re so cuuute, I can’t stand it!” It was true. Antonio could hardly deal with how much love Alice
and Marigold elicited from him. He didn’t know what to do with it. This kind of paradox was what
made Antonio so compelling. It was the same with his obsession for the Catholic Church. He deeply
resented the guilt, yet was utterly seduced by the suffering. Resented. Was seduced. The realization
that I was thinking about Antonio in the past tense, as if he didn’t love or hate or resent anymore,
startled me. But, how could he when he wasn’t even there? Where is Antonio? I thought. Where is he?
“C’mon!” Alice said, bringing me back, again. “Play!”
“I’m sorry, Alice,” I said. “C’mere.” I pulled her onto my lap. “I was just thinking about
Antonio. Your monkey game reminds me of one of his stories. Wanna hear it?”
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“Okay,” she said, snuggling in. I leaned back against the wall and recalled the story Antonio
had told me of when he walked from Oaxaca to Guatemala. He was fifteen years old and had been
thrown out of his house. I didn’t tell Alice about the fight Antonio had with his brother.
“I had a fight with my older brother, Filaberto.”
“The policeman?” I asked.
“No. Carlos is the younger one, the policeman. So I had a fight with my older brother, Filaberto.
During this fight, and while we were having it, my mother comes in. And I was on fire. She comes to
me and says, ‘Get out. Get out. I don’t want to see you again.’ And I said, ‘Okay,’ and I left.”
“What were you fighting about?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know.”
“Why did she say that to you?”
“Well, Filaberto has been always her favorite son.”
“How much older is he?”
“He’s one year older than me. He was the first one. The way she put it once is that—He
made her discover motherhood. Yeah.”
“And she just couldn’t deal with you?”
“No. Because, I mean, I was the one who didn’t believe in what she did.”
“That was the big reason?”
“Yeah, that was basically the main reason. Yes.”
Antonio was always the victim in his stories. Like Jon was in his. And like I had been known
to be in mine. I used to blame everything on my past, until that time in college, when a friend who
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had a schizophrenic mother told me, “We can’t keep blaming our upbringing for everything that’s
wrong. At some point, we have to take responsibility for ourselves and grow up.”
When I was fifteen, I couldn’t wait to leave my parents’ house, but I never would have
considered running away, let alone leaving the country. I was taught that girls who left home that
young ended up selling their bodies on the streets. I thought of Jon’s story about getting thrown out
of home, also at fifteen. Like Antonio, Jon was artistically gifted and strong-willed.
He had come from two dark horses, as he called his parents, who tore each other apart in
court over custody of him and Emma, when they were four and three. Kath won custody, but then
thought of her children as “baggage” from a past gone wrong. She remarried when Jon was ten, and
her new man couldn’t stand Jon. By the time Jon was fifteen, his stepfather told him to leave. His
mother begged Jon not to make her chose between her husband and him. And so Jon took his guitar
and hit the road. He travelled all over Europe, Turkey and Greece, walking, hitching, and stealing his
way onto trains and ferries, until he ended up in Italy, where he stayed long enough to learn the
language. He became a proficient guitarist as a means of survival, and people stopped to listen. With
his girlfriend on flute, they made a cute couple, busking for money on the streets of Perugia and
Roma. On a map, Jon traced his journeys and told me about sleeping in parks and under bridges at
the ages of fifteen and sixteen years old. He told me how hard it became when his flute-player left
and he was just another guy with a guitar. I was mesmerized.
But it was the story of when he was seventeen and went back to England that astonished me
the most and pulled the hardest at my caretaking strings. On Christmas Eve, Jon returned to his
mother’s house for the first time in two years. It was a snowy cold night when he knocked on the
door of Kath’s home. Dave answered and told Jon, “You’re not welcome here.” Jon told me how
Kath stood in the background, crying. He had been gone for two years and no one knew where he
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had been. Still, he was turned away a second time. On Christmas Eve, in the cold, with Kath crying
in the background, but doing nothing about it. So, Jon left a second time. He went back on the road,
eventually ending up in Ireland, where he became one of the best guitarists in the traditional music
scene. But in order to cope, he had repressed what happened that Christmas Eve. By the time he
talked with Emma about it, years later, the story in his head had become:
“Remember when I came back two years later and knocked on the door? But, you had all
moved and someone else lived there? They answered the door and didn’t know who I was?” Jon said
to Emma some five years later.
“That’s not what happened, Jon,” she said, enlightening him as to what had really gone down
—the truth that was too painful to fit in his head.
“I think I drilled a metaphorical hole in my head for things to filter out,” Jon once told me.
What was it about men at rock bottom that compelled me so? Thinking back, my first
boyfriend was an artist who was suicidal. Shortly after, I dated a musician, also suicidal. Then there
was the rock-n-roller I fell for while watching him drunkenly throw himself on the floor, screaming
about being “Alive” into a microphone. There was also darkness around the women I loved. My first
woman lover was depressed, and another was a sadist. I wanted to pick up the pieces for these lovers
like I picked up objects from the floor so my blind father would not trip over them and fall. I
wanted to take care of others like I was raised to take care of my siblings.
My mother was pregnant and breastfeeding until I was fifteen-years-old. The second oldest
of seven children, and the only girl up until the sixth-born, it was my job to babysit, heat bottles,
feed, burp, change diapers, wring the poopy ones out in the toilet, and sing my siblings to sleep.
Caretaking was in my blood. It was expected from me. I expected it from myself.
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“Mo-ni-ca!” Alice was shaking me. “Wake up!” I opened my eyes and looked into her
frowning face.
“I’m sorry, sweetie. I must have dozed off. What was I telling you?”
“About Antonio’s story.”
“What story?” Marigold said, coming in from the kitchen.
“The monkey story,” Alice said.
“The one about the birthing hut,” I said.
“I love that story!” Marigold said, and plopped herself on the floor beside us.
“Well, you can help me tell it, then.”
“Once upon a time,” Marigold began.
“Antonio was walking from Oaxaca to Guatemala,” I said.
“Where’s that?” Alice asked.
“Far away in another country, where Antonio was born. That’s where he started his journey.
It took him one month to walk to another country. He was fifteen years old.”
“That’s old,” Alice said.
“Maybe,” I said. “But it’s a bit young to be walking to whole ‘nother country. Anyway, he
walked along the river so that he could find banana plantations. You see, he ate only bananas for a
whole month.”
“Bananas for a whole month?” said Alice. “Yum!”
“Bananas and coconuts, and sometimes he would catch crawfish,” Marigold said.
“That’s right,” I said. “And so, one day he was cooking his crawfish in a can, and he heard
someone crying. But it wasn’t a cry like people have when they’re sad. It was more than that. So
Antonio became alarmed and started walking in the direction of the crying.” Alice looked up at me
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with her wide brown eyes, and Marigold put her head on my lap. “He walked into the jungle and
followed the sound of crying until he came upon a little hut. And the crying was so loud, he
thought, ‘I gotta do something.’ So in he went, and do you know what he saw?”
“What?” Alice asked. Marigold picked her head up and said,
“There was a woman giving birth.”
“Exactly,” I said. “She was holding herself up from a pole that ran from one side of the hut
to the other side.”
“Why was she doing that?” Alice asked.
“It helped so that she could squat and push the baby out,” Dana said, leaving the workmen
to attach the new stove, and joining us on the floor.
“Like you did with me?” Alice asked her.
“Yep. Just like I did with you. Remember, Marigold?”
“Yeah. Antonio was with me while you pushed out Alice,” she said. “And Monica was
sleeping!” she said, laughing up at me.
“I know, I know,” I laughed. “Do you wanna hear this story, or not?”
“Okay, shh,” Alice said with a finger to her lips.
“So the woman was squatting with the help of the pole. And then when Antonio entered,
she spoke to him in Spanish and said something like, ‘The baby’s coming.’ And he said, ‘Okay!’ And
he took out his book.”
“What kind of book?” Alice asked.
“It was like a Boy Scouts book. It helped you know what to do in emergencies. It told what
to do if you got cut or a broken bone, things like that. So because Antonio was young and a little bit
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silly, he thought would find any answer in that book. He flipped through the pages trying to find a
chapter on how to help a woman giving birth to a child.”
“But there wasn’t one,” Marigold said.
“No, there wasn’t. But fortunately, this was not that woman’s first birth, so she knew pretty
much what to do. All that Antonio did was provide her with support and make sure that she was
okay. He followed her directions through the birth, and by the end of the day, he killed and prepared
a chicken for her.
“Did he catch the baby like Daddy caught me?” Alice asked.
“He did,” I said.
“Was it a boy or a girl?” Alice asked.
“Well, this is what made me think of this story. Antonio said that he couldn’t tell what it was.
At that moment, he thought it was a monkey!”
“A monkey?” Alice laughed.
“That’s what he thought,” I said. “And since then, every time he sees a new baby, he always
makes that joke.”
“Did he think I looked like a monkey?” Alice asked.
“Yes, but he thought you looked like the most beautiful monkey in the world,” Dana said.
“Uh-uh,” Marigold said. “Sage was his most beautiful monkey. He told me.”
“I was his most beautiful girl monkey,” Alice said.
Dana took my hand. I put my head back against the wall and closed my eyes.
Antonio’s mother, Lucha, received permission to travel to the United States. From what we
knew, she had never been outside of Mexico and didn’t speak a word of English. I wondered what
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she would be like. Christy was nothing like the monster Antonio had painted her out to be. Would
Lucha be a vicious, self-righteous woman, who became angry around non-believers? If so, she
wouldn’t last long at One o One Bard. Nervous as we were, we were excited that her visit came at a
time when her boy was doing a little better. We hoped that her presence would snap him the rest of
the way out of bed and out of the ICU. Then, of course, there was his recovery to think about. We
needed to be prepared.
Email from Leah to me and Dana:
wow, what a month, eh?
when i was talking to monica a little while ago, she mentioned the idea of meeting as
a group to talk about how we are doing and how we can plan together for antonio's
recovery. i think this is a great idea and definitely want to be a part of it.
love you both so much and i feel blessed to have such amazing women with whom
to share this terrifying, pinché shitty experience.
besos
My Reply All:
Hi. Thanks for emailing this Leah. I think the 24th is a good idea. Since Antonio’s
mother is coming next weekend and all, that seems like a lot already. The extra week
will give us time to organize this with other people who might want to join us. I'll
stick that night in my calendar, now.
Dana, Stacy said she's willing to come with me any weekend and help
communicating in Spanish to Lucha.
Lots of love to you both,

Monica
Dana’s Reply All:
I'm down for the 24th......his progress is really awesome, off the vent all the time,
they discontinued central line on right arm, he's practically tubeless....today he
unmistakably told helz and i that we were crazy, twirled a finger next to his ear
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....pointed to us! we laughed, was bliss. they have started physical therapy with him
also, i think they are sick of him in the icu ha ha! i want to do interpretive dance and
primal scream therapy when we do our round table. and i want to do more than
one! miss you both and eternally grateful to have stroooooonnnnggggg women in
my life. xoxo dana
Leah’s Reply All:
i love that he made you laugh even from his underwater/buried state! amazing.
all amazing news. what a rollercoaster.

round table eve of the 24th is on. i'm down for releasing and screaming. maybe
gonna freak lucha out, or maybe not.
love you both

leah
Helz also emailed, adding to Dana’s report that Antonio was doing better every day. They
started doing speech therapy. He said his name and counted up to three. These rudimentary victories
were so precious. He was able to bend his leg and move his left arm a bit. Hooray!
The next morning, instead of sitting, I exercised my own legs. They were sore when I woke
so I tended to them. This led to taking care of other things that need tending to. How many times
had I looked at the dead plant on the kitchen table and thought, “I’ll compost that later”? And how
long had I planned to strain the sand in my incense bowls or wash the toothpaste off the medicine
cabinet mirror? All of these things, I did that morning. Then, when I finally did sit, I was more
settled in the moment. I was aware, both of the lashing rain outside and the thoughts appearing and
disappearing in my head.
But the following day, while sitting, I found that no matter how much I tried not to take my
breath for granted, my mind did its thing and my thoughts were one on top of the other. I noticed
that I could be in a breath, fully aware, yet even as I exhaled that breath, I was thinking and planning
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towards how much more focused and in the moment my next breath would be. It was like Joseph
Goldstein talked about in “The Body, Abiding in Mindfulness:”
Have you noticed how often the mind leans into the next moment of experience,
as if somehow the next breath or the next sensation of the next moment will
resolve everything for us—will bring us to completion—instead of this one? It’s
really an energetic leaning into the next moment. The sense of being pulled
forward into the next moment of existence is what the Buddha called “the process
of becoming.” So, even as we use different objects of experience as ways of
developing mindfulness and concentration, we need to remind ourselves, repeatedly,
that the process of liberation is about not holding on, rather than about getting.
We’re not sitting here in order to get something. We’re practicing the not holding
on to whatever is arising.
Later, in the kitchen, I caught myself doing this kind of forward thinking. While preparing a
snack of goat’s cheese and tamari seaweed crackers, I was not actually preparing the snack. I was in
my mind leaping ahead to all that I had to do that week. Planning, planning, planning. Likewise, later
that afternoon, cycling to work, I also embodied what Goldstein meant about getting something. I was
trying to get somewhere because I was in a hurry. I was late for class. But the whole while, I kept
thinking I should be more in the moment. Even though I slowed down at lights and took the time it
takes a New York City cyclist to be extra careful on the road, the adrenaline rush that came from my
own impatience with other cyclists, cars, and streetlights, made me feel less calm than I wanted to feel.
Because I was anxious, I thought I was not being present enough. I had an idea that being present
meant being content and calm, so I tried to make myself feel something different than what I was
feeling. Being present, however, simply means being present. If I was anxious, then being present
meant being with my anxiousness. I was aware of all of this while it was happening, but my
awareness was an intellectual one.
That night, after work, when I sat, my thoughts skipped like stones skimming the surface.
One or two breaths sank below the surface into a more expansive and deep space, until my mind
threw another stone-like thought.
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With days to go before Lucha’s arrival, Antonio stopped responding. There went those
fantasies about him waking up when she walked into his room. How could he have been doing so
well—breathing on his own, bending his leg, counting up to three, and kissing my hand—and then,
nothing?
When I went to see him with Helz and Dana, I psyched myself up, not wanting to bring my
fear into the ICU. Taking a deep breath, I stepped into his room, but when I saw him I was
instantly deflated, like someone had punched the air out of me in one quick strike to the stomach.
He was scary-thin, like Gandhi in those photos during his hunger strike. Irene, the neurology
physician’s assistant, showed us the x-ray of Antonio’s skull, and the results of his CAT scan. She
pointed to the stroke Antonio had on the right side and explained that this would affect the left side
of his body. She pointed out the metal clamp in his head that made a firework effect on the CAT
scan.
“That was the first surgery I attended in thirteen years,” she said, “where I saw the incision
go in at the eyebrow area.” Is that bad? I wanted to know. But I didn’t want to know enough to ask.
Apparently, things were bad enough that Antonio was still at risk for another stroke. As far as
recovery, Irene said, she’d seen people recover in three months or one year. “It’s entirely up to
him.” She told us that he had every chance to regain up to ninety percent of himself. What
happened to the other ten percent? Another question I kept to myself. “For now,” she explained,
“his sodium levels are down, and that’s why he’s so lethargic. We’ll do some blood tests and know
more later.” I wanted a copy of his skull so we could put it up in his room for Dia de los Muertos. I
knew he’d appreciate having his own skeleton as artwork of the Dead. If he were awake, he’d use
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the x-ray as a canvas. But I refrained from asking because that might be pushing the edge of
morbidity too far. Dana and Helz would be down, but the nurses would think we’re more nuts than
they probably already did.
I stared at Antonio and wondered if he’d ever wake up. I had planned on my next visit
being like Dana’s and Helz recent ones where he was communicating. Where he was there. Now, he
was gone again and he felt farther away than ever. His face was very still, but something was
different about him. What was it? It was the mustache. Normally, the nurses would shave his whole
face, but for some reason they gave him a moustache. Was this laziness on their part, or did they
like it better? Were they trying to make him look more Mexican? Because he did look more
Mexican. For the first time since I’d known him, there was a bit of a Latin look about his face.
Normally, Antonio looked Middle Eastern. He always got such a kick out of the fact that no one
ever believed he was Mexican, especially other Mexicans. They were always telling him how good
his Spanish was. “I’m from Oaxaca, man!” he’d laugh, but they wouldn’t believe him.
But he wasn’t laughing when he got mistaken for a Muslim after the London Underground
bombing in the summer of 2005, just after I moved to New York with Jon. The New York MTA
went crazy with police and dogs everywhere. Antonio got stopped three times in two days on his
commute from Staten Island to Brooklyn. I was in the kitchen with Jon and Dana, when Antonio
came home from work, badly shaken.
“This old lady on the ferry started pointing at me and making the sign of the cross,” he
said. She looked really scared about me and ran to get a cop. The cop came over with four more
cops. ‘Open your bag. Lift up your shirt!’ they yelled. And so I did. And they didn’t find anything.
What’s going on, man? Do they think I’m a Muslim, or something?”
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“Even if you were,” Jon said. “Bastard cops.”
This was the closest I ever saw Antonio come to crying. What upset him the most was that
an old woman would think he would want to hurt people. I don’t think her sign of the cross helped
much either
I once asked him what he thought the most negative aspect of religion was. “Religion
itself ” he said. “I think that the worse part of it is how people just submerge themselves in it and
refuse to take their head out of the water to walk around. I hate that fucking fact.”
“Because they can’t see anything else?” I asked. “And you can’t have a dialogue with them?”
“No, you can’t. And if you do, one thing that you are risking is your life.”
“What do you mean?”
“There are Talibans. They will kill you if you don’t believe in what they believe. I mean
that’s why my brother hit me in the face. Because I don’t believe in that shit.”
“Did you ever feel like your life was at risk?”
“Yes, I mean my brother’s a policeman. A Mexican one. Yeah,” Antonio paused. And then
he said, “It’s a good thing that I’m not there anymore.”
“I think that the reason that people can’t pull their heads out of the water is because of
fear,” I said.
“Well, yes. Yes. I agree with this. I has to do a lot with it. Yes.
“And fear of death, ultimately. Right?”
“Well, yeah. I mean that idea of hell and heaven, it’s just so ingrained into them. Just the
idea of going to hell, and eternal suffering. I mean they way they picture it, it’s awful to think about.
I mean they are very graphic when they talk about it. Like they tell me very often that I’m gonna
burn in hell. For eternity.”
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“You’ve been told this your whole life by your family?”
“Yes. Right. They did.”
“How old were you when that began?” I asked, thinking of my own prying away from the
church in my teens.
“I was five.”
“Only five?”
“Yes. I was five. And my mother was the one in charge of taking me to church and keeping
me there, because I was a rebel. I would go for five minutes and leave, so she was in charge of taking
me there and making sure that I stayed there. However, during that time, there were more than one
time when she’ll beat the shit out of me, because I was talking about me not believing in God.”
“Your mother beat you up for that?”
“My mother, yes. She’ll throw me to the ground and kick me.”
“What would she say?”
“Oh, things like, “Evil. Devil. Communist.”
“To a five year old?”
“Yes! Yeah. And to finish, to put the cherry on the cake, one day, we went in a church trip.
We went to the beach. As soon as the bus stopped near the beach, everybody just went down and
started running to the water. So, I did too. And as soon as I got to the water, I jumped in and almost
drowned.
“Cause you didn’t know how to swim?”
“No, because that damned thing! Some stupid ass made it salty! And I just couldn’t believe
that. I mean who would be so stupid to make that beautiful thing salty. I mean, come on. Come on!
That’s dumb. That’s stupid. So I externalized all my anger to the priest. The one who took us there.
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So he asked me about God, and I said, ‘I don’t believe in God.’ ‘Why?’ ‘Because nobody can make
this much water salty. That’s no good. That’s stupid!’”
“That’s really funny,” I said, laughing. “That’s brilliant. You were five?”
“I was five. I totally remember that.”
“What did the priest say?”
“He kick me.”
“Really? Like, hard?”
“Yes. He kicked me and told my mother.”
“Okay, and then what happened?”
“Oh, my mother hit me.”
Looking at him with his quiet mustached face, I wanted to cry. Poor Antonio. “You crazy
Mexican,” I said. “You look so Mexican with that mustache. All you need is a sombrero. Maybe
we’ll get you one for Halloween.” Lucha would be here by then. Despite Antonio’s stories, I
believed her presence would be good for him. I had similar fights with my parents over religion, but
that was all in the past. Certainly, if I were close to dying in a hospital, I would want them by my
side. And, like Antonio’s mother, I knew mine would also get themselves VISA’s if need be.
When Marsh and Helz and I went back to the hospital, Antonio woke up to cough. They
told us that it was good for him to keep coughing up mucus, but I found it hard to watch. Phlegm
spurted out of the trach-tube, splattering on his chest and neck. Helz told us how it landed on her
shirt the other day. “Good one, Tono,” she laughingly told us she had said. “You reached all the way
to my shirt that time.” I couldn’t summon up a smile at this. There was nothing funny about it.
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Marsh adjusted the towel under his chin so that it would absorb more of the phlegm that came out
of Antonio’s throat. Nurse Gladys came in and said that he had been getting better every day, up
until that day. I asked her about the blood test they took to check his sodium levels, but I didn’t
understand her answer. I got that he was on a new antibiotic and that the 102 fever he had the
other day has come down to 99. He just looked so weak. His hand was totally limp. Marsh rubbed
Antonio’s left arm.
“He’s got no muscle tone at all,” he said, looking at me with worried eyes. Marsh rarely
looked worried about anything. Gladys told Helz how to make a water and mouthwash solution and
dip into it a sponge that is on the end of a stick.
“Do you want some mint water, Tono?” Helz asked. “To wet your lips and freshen your
breath?” His nod was barely perceptible, but it was there. When she put the small, rectangular
sponge to his lips, he opened his mouth and bit down on it. Marsh was delighted.
“He bit it. Look, he bit it!” When Antonio won’t let it go, they both laughed. It was
obviously nervous laughter, but I couldn’t keep from being annoyed that they were acting like this
was cute. I glanced over at the Christ votive candle, at that pained look of suffering, and thought of
the vinegar offered to Christ on a sponge when he was being crucified. Jesus did not accept this
vinegar solution because it would have eased his suffering and our redemption would not have been
complete. Another conversation I would have loved to have with Antonio. He’d like the
comparison to Christ refusing sips from a sponge filled with vinegar water. But if he could speak,
would Antonio also say, “It is finished”?
I kept my thoughts to myself and held his limp hand, trying to make myself believe that he
was aware of my fingers stroking his. Then, I remembered what Alice told me to say when I asked
her if she had a message for him. “Antonio’s favorite colors are red, yellow, and blue,” she said,
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“cause he’s that kind of guy.” And then, later, she came up to me and said, “Tell Antonio this – ‘I
love you, An-ton-i-o Cruz- Za-va-le-tta!’” I told Antonio all of this and then just sat and stared at
his lack of response. Marsh finally left and when Helz said she was ready, I looked at the clock and
saw that we’d been here for an hour and a half. Sitting and watching him so still was like going into
a trance. Time slipped on by. Or was it more like being completely present, breathing with him
moment by moment, while time stopped?
Back at the house Helz, Dana and I watched home videos of Antonio making tamales,
dancing with Alice, head thrown back laughing. There were also some photos of me and him last
May at my birthday party when we smoked those Macanudos. I was surprised that the videos and
photographs made me feel better rather than worse. Dana wondered out loud if Antonio was going
to stay like he was, “All floppy and not here, long-term.”
What would Lucha think when she saw her son? How could this lifeless limp being be the
same manic hyper-crazy artist? I thought about what Christy told us that Sage had said, and
couldn’t agree more: “I want my dad and that’s not my dad.”
After Kath died, Jon and I flew to the south of England. She had been visiting her
daughter, Emma, in Bath when the aneurysm snapped her life closed like the unfinished book that
it was. Her body, which was to be cremated up north where she lived in Newcastle, had been at a
morgue in Bristol. The plane ride from Shannon was abysmal. Wintertime weather-patterns of
thick fog made it impossible for the plane to land. We circled over Bristol in a holding pattern for
more than half an hour. The pilot came on the intercom in a failed attempt to lighten things up.
“We have twenty more minutes of landing fuel left, so… fingers crossed!” Jon and I held hands
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and hoped nothing bad would happen. Because the plane landed late, we couldn’t go to the morgue
that day. And the next day was Sunday, so we had to wait until Monday. Jon’s stepdad, who was with
her when she died, and had seen her body since, went with us for one last goodbye. When Kath
was alive, she was the life of the party. At trad sessions, the musicians played for her. She was
vibrant and sexy and she knew it. For someone who had not lived a quiet life, Kath looked
especially small laid out in the coffin. She was draped in white that nearly breathed with the
otherworldliness of the recently deceased. This covering splayed out like a baby’s christening dress,
and attached at the sides of the coffin so that only her head was visible. Her face looked all wrong.
I had expected her to be made up in the doll-like way they dress those who are going to be viewed.
But there would be no viewing of Kath, so no special touches were taken with her complexion. She
had been dead for over a week and by the time we saw her, her mouth was drawn down at the sides
from gravity pulling at the skin. The area around her mouth was grey. Her eyes appeared restful
alright, but it was plain that Kath was not behind those closed lids.
When Emma had called with the news, the day after Christmas, she told Jon, “It’s Kath.
She’s died.” Jon told me that when he heard this, it sounded to him like it was something that Kath
had done. She had gone and died. Like she had taken control over everything else in her life, it
seemed, at first, that she had taken control of her death.
The first time I met Kath, we had watched the sun set over the jagged peaks of the Coolin
Mountains on the Isle of Skye, in the Scottish Highlands. She had gazed out at the darkening sky,
all orange and pink, like she wanted to be or somehow already was a part of it. (At this very spot,
her husband would later pour her ashes into Loch Eishort.) It was her eyes that held her essence—
at once wizened and teasing, full of empathy and humor. But, it was her laughter that best
expressed this essence. Our last conversation on Christmas Day was more laughing than words, and
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somehow it had felt like we both knew exactly what was so funny. Life was. The unpredictable
ironies that can be both wonderful and terrible. In Kath’s presence there had been a connectedness
that was about looking one another in the eye and meaning it. Shrugging your shoulders at the
impossibility of it all. Throwing your head back and just laughing. Her humor was twisted at times.
Her final message to Jon came in a Christmas card illustrated by Edward Monkton. It had a simple
drawing of a squat little penguin with a sun shining behind it. Above the penguin were the words:
The PENGUIN of DEATH
Beneath the penguin it said:
Things you Need to Know
1. He is strangely attractive because of his enigmatic smile.
2. He can kill you in any 1 of 412 different ways.
This had been funny, until Kath died. Then, the card became like the Death card in the
tarot deck, and Jon became convinced it had been a warning. Had Kath been able to react to this
coincidence, no doubt she would have raised an eyebrow and smiled.
There was nothing to smile about in that room in the morgue, where Kath’s humor had
gone from those eyes. What did remain of Kath was her henna-red hair, which I touched to brush
from her forehead. Jon stood away from the coffin, horrified and in shock.
“She never would’ve wanted to be seen like this,” he said and ran out sobbing. This was
true. Kath always had herself well put together. But there she lay—no makeup, no curves of her
body, just her head sticking out of the frilly-white coffin covers, vulnerable and defenseless. Jon
found no comfort whatsoever in seeing his mother laid out like this. He was right. She would never
have wanted to be seen in such a way. That wasn’t Kath. That wasn’t Jon’s mum.
I want my mum and that’s not my mum.
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After the funeral in Newcastle, I was invited to go through Kath’s things with Emma and
her two half-sisters. We took what we liked, knowing how much Kath would have wanted her
things to be used. And that was how I came to inherit some of her things cookbooks, jewelry,
clothes, scarves, soaps, and henna. She had good taste, and I told myself that Kath would want me
to have fun with those things that she had fun with. It was a way to honor her. So I dressed in her
things, bathed in her soaps, washed my hair in her henna, adorned myself with her earrings, tossed
her feather boas over my shoulder, walked around in her scent, and cooked meals for Jon from her
cookbooks.
Jon might not have a mother anymore, but I would mother Jon.
Week Six
I was born on a new moon and they tend to give me energy. So that night of the new
moon, when I slept in Antonio’s bedroom, I had a hard time falling asleep. Had it only been two
weeks before, when Dana and I lay in the backyard beneath a harvest moon thinking ahead to what
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it would be like when Antonio got out of the hospital? That seemed a very long time ago, and our
boy was still in the I.C.U. Still so far from getting out. His stillness was such a contrast to the alive
hyper Antonio who reminded me of Tigger. Of all of the stories he had told, my favorite had him
streaking through the jungle, butt-naked. He was walking back to Oaxaca from Guatemala at the
age of sixteen, and was in a place called Veracruz.
“In my way back to Mexico, I passed by this place. It’s near Oaxaca, but Oaxaca is in the
Pacific, and this place was on the Gulf. So anyway, I stopped because it was hot. It is freaking hot.
And I was carrying a bundle of bananas. I was carrying a whole bunch of bananas, and bananas
were very heavy. So, I remember seeing the river and thinking to myself, ‘Oh, I know where I’m
going.’ So I went to the river, and I just spend there probably five, six hours. In doing that, I
decided to climb a tree and get some fruit from that tree. And I was naked. So, in walking around
the tree, I just heard a bull behind me. And by instinct, only by instinct, I decided to run. And as
soon as I started running, this freakin thing comes behind me. And there I go. I run like crazy that
day.
“Where did you run to?” I asked.
“Well, I didn’t know what to do. One thing was to jump into the water. But it was a big
river. So I decided not to jump into the water. And I have seen before, bulls swim. So that wasn’t an
option. So I kept running. And I saw a tree. And in no time, I was in the very top of the tree. Have
you seen those cartoons? Cartoons where something will happen, like in a second? Yeah, it was like
that.”
“That’s how fast you went up the tree?”
“Yes. That freakin bull didn’t see shit of me.”
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“So did the bull try to do anything to the tree?”
“Yes!”
“What happened?”
“Yes. He tried to get me down by bumping the tree with his head.”
“For how long?”
“Probably an hour.”
“Wow. You must have been so scared.”
“I was. I was.”
“So what did you do? Did you just hold on really tight and pray?”
“Really tight? I was welded into that friggin tree. I was melted into it. The tree and I were
one. Oh yeah!”
“And then what happened? The bull went away?”
“It went away, yes. The bull went away. I waited for about another thirty minutes. And then,
I came down the tree, really slowly. Slowly, slowly. Freakin slowly. No shit. No, I didn’t make a
noise. Not a pip. None. I don’t think I even breathed. I just hold my breath until I saw the bull far
away, and then I run again. And then I run and run and run and run, until I just couldn’t run
anymore.”
“Was the bull still chasing you?”
“Not. No, but I had to be sure.”
“Where did you end up?”
“Well, I just end up on top of a bridge. A hanging bridge from where I could see the bull
far away, and the river underneath me. And I just stayed there and took a nap.”
“And how did you get your clothes back?”
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“I didn’t.”
“So how did you get clothes after that?”
“Oh, so I walk all along the river because the food was there. So I found a pair of trousers,
I think.”
“You just found a pair of trousers?”
“Yes.”
“That’s lucky.”
“Yes, of course. Yeah, that and a hat. A really old hat. Just sitting there.”
Antonio’s stories might sound farfetched, but I had my own crazy tales, so who was I to
doubt the truth of his? After he told his story of being chased by a bull, I told him my story of
when I was in Cambodia, and a pack of wild dogs came tearing towards me…
“No shit!” Antonio said. “What happened?”
“Well, I had been traveling around Southeast Asia with my friend Ken. My doctor friend,
who had been there when Jim was in the hospital. Remember?”
“Yes.” Antonio nodded.
“We had split up in Phnom Penh, and met up again at the temples of Angkor.”
“I’ve heard of them,” Antonio said.
These temples, part of UNESCO's World Heritage Sites, are considered one of the most
important archeological sites in Southeast Asia. They were built between the ninth and fifth
centuries, during the Khmer Empire, by kings who thought themselves to be gods. Each king tried
to outdo the last one’s temple, which accounts for the awesomeness and intricacies of design. There
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are thousands of temples, and in my five days in Siem Reap, I only saw the popular ones that my
motorcycle driver recommended. The way tourists visit these temples is that they have a driver, who
is usually from the guesthouse they’re staying at, and this guy comes to pick their tourist up
whenever they want, and take them wherever they want.
One evening, Ken and I asked our drivers to take us to a temple known for its sunset views.
We were let off at the bottom of a steep hill, and our drivers pointed to the top, indicating we had
to climb. This was obvious because of all the people going up and coming down. It was not an easy
climb and took about twenty minutes. We had to use our hands and knees at times. On the way were
people with blown-off limbs, begging. They were a reminder of those signs I had seen around the
forests that warned people not to venture into certain places that had not been cleared of landmines.
There are still four to six million landmines littered across Cambodia because of decades of war.
Most of these mines were supplied to the Khmer Rouge by the United States. It was heartbreaking
to see that some of the beggars were young children, who had innocently wandered down wrong
paths only to lose an arm or leg.
When Ken and I made it to the top of that hill, the ground leveled out, and past the crowds
of tourists, vendors and mangy flea-bitten dogs, stood the temple. The steps of the Angkor temples
were tall and thin, meaning one had to step very high up, but there was hardly any space to place
your foot. I had no idea how the Khmer royalty had proceeded up and down such steps, gracefully.
This particular temple slanted up like a pyramid for about four or five tiers. There was a series of
steps, and then a level, more steps, and another level, up, up, until reaching the top, where there was
a view of all of Angkor. Ken and I snapped shots of the view, but it was so busy with tourists, it was
hard to appreciate the temple in all its glory.
“I’m coming back at sunrise,” I told Ken. “I want be here when no one else is here.”
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Ken appreciated where I was coming from, but he wasn’t getting up at 5 a.m. So, I got up
and went by myself. When I pointed on the map to the temple I wanted my driver to take me to, he
tried to change my mind. He didn’t speak English, but it was clear he did not want to take me back
to that temple. I have since wondered if his reason had to do with what I found when I reached the
top of that steep hill. But I will never know his reasons, and as I was paying him, I insisted that he
take me there. And so, he drove me through the jungle, back to the bottom of the steep hill. I
climbed it quicker without all the beggars and tourists. And when I got the top, I walked forward
and took in the awesomeness of that temple I had all to myself. The sky was getting light, and my
plan was to walk all the way to the top and meditate while the sun came all the way up.
The sound of barking stopped me short and I froze. From the top of the temple, a pack of
dogs raced down the first tier. I knew without a doubt that they were coming for me. I had entered
their territory and they were not happy. I was by myself. It was 5:30 a.m., and I was in the middle of
Cambodia. I could not communicate with my driver all the way down at the bottom of the hill. I did
not have a cell phone. Ken was sleeping miles away. It was just me and those dogs. My first thought
was to scramble back down the hill. But that would be dangerous. For one thing, the dogs would
probably catch up to me. And even if I made it, it would be a mad chase and I was likely to fall and
hurt myself. This was not a good option. So I looked around and saw that there was a small tree I
could climb if need be. I did not want to have to climb this tree, however, because who knew how
long I’d be stuck up there, waiting for the dogs to go away? I did not want to be trembling at the top
of those skinny branches, hoping they held my weight, while a pack of wild dogs barked and pawed
at the trunk. The only other option was to stand my ground.
Of all things to come into my head was a Bugs Bunny misquote of William Congreve, who
wrote that, "Music hath charms to soothe a savage breast, to soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak." Bugs Bunny
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came to me on that hill, as that pack of dogs raced down the next tier of steps, and then the next. In
“Hurdy-Gurdy Hare,” Bugs spots a violin when running from an angry gorilla monster, and says,
“Ah, they say that music calms the savage beast.” He plays a tune and the beast is soothed.
I was aware that dogs could smell fear. The first thing to do was to block all fear. The only
way to do this was to be fully present, confident and calm. As the dogs raced closer and closer, I
started to sing a lullaby. I made it up as I went along and have no memory of how it went. There
were no words. Only sweet soothing music that came out in a tone I had so often used to sing my
siblings to sleep. Closer and closer the dogs came, but I would not emanate fear. I would only sing
and believe with my whole being that they would be soothed. As the pack reached the bottom of the
temple and leaped onto the ground, I stood and sang as they ran toward me. Several feet away, they
stopped. I sang and they stood, pawing the dirt and growling, staring at me with fierce eyes, but
coming no closer. One by one, they started to sniff at the ground and walk away. I did not stop
singing while, ever so slowly, I backed away toward the top of that steep hill, and continued singing
while climbing down to my waiting motorcycle driver.
When I awoke in Antonio’s bedroom on the day of the new moon, an independent film
crew that were paying Marsh and Dana over a thousand bucks for the use of the house for a day,
were in the process of taking over One o One. The last time a film crew had been on Bard Avenue,
New Line Cinema’s “Little Children” was being filmed in the house next door and in the park
across the street; the same park Antonio had stumbled to on the day of his hemorrhage, when he
went to look for a cemetery to lie down in and die. In this park, Kate Winslet’s character, Sarah
Pierce, ran screaming, “Lucy!” And she frantically searched for her little girl, afraid that a pedophile
had abducted her. Though it was next to impossible to see into the park during filming, Jon caught
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a glimpse of Kate running through the park calling out Lucy’s name. There was much excitement
around our house that week. Antonio and I plotted to sneak photos of Kate and sell them to
magazines for major bucks, but of course respected her privacy too much to follow through.
This independent film crew that woke me on the day of the new moon pissed me off. How
could I be excited with no Antonio to scheme with, or complain to about the strangers invading the
upstairs hallway? And how was I supposed to center myself for dokusan with my Teacher? We had
a phone meeting planned for that morning. How could I possibly have an intimate conversation
with the hullabaloo of heavy-booted footsteps and banging equipment? Not to mention the walkie-
talkie static and yelling up and down the stairs. Sitting for twenty minutes helped clear my head
somewhat, and I gathered the thoughts I wanted to bring to my conversation with my Teacher. I
was prepared with notes I had taken on the particular precept she had asked me to focus on. I tried
to block out the frenetic energy outside Antonio’s door, took a deep breath and dialed.
First, I told her that my friend was still in the ICU, but I didn’t tell her how hard it had been
to see him, yesterday. How could I get someone in California to grasp what was happening in an
ICU in Staten Island, when I could hardly grasp it myself ? The hugeness of what I was going
through was too overwhelming to broach over a phone. My way of dealing with my own needs,
when they were so big, was to withdraw. I did not yet understand that she was there to support me.
I was approaching her as someone I had to prove myself to. What could I possibly say to her about
the lack of life in Antonio’s eyes, and how afraid I was of losing him? Should I tell her that I was in
his bedroom, now, and that there was a film crew outside the door stressing me out? I figured that
shouldn’t matter, and that I should be centered enough that such disturbances wouldn’t phase me. I
was relieved when she asked about the writing group I wanted to start. That was something I could
talk about. I told her a few people had signed up.
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“How is the not smoking pot going?” she asked.
“Fine,” I was able to reply.
“I’ve got another caveat,” she said. “Are you ready?”
“I am.” Anything to take the pressure off trying to think of what to say. Opening up tom
someone, without eye contact and other visual feedback, was frustrating. I wondered if this phone
dokusan thing was a mistake. But I listened as best I could as she advised me to talk to John High
—a lay-ordained sangha member and professor of poetry at Long Island University—about my
ideas for the writing group. She told me that John had taught many classes in creative writing
through mindfulness. I knew that I needed to talk to John. I was the one who had told her this in
the first place. It was clear she had forgotten. So what? I told myself. What did it matter? It was
only my ego wanting her to notice that I had already figured this out for myself.
But then she went on to explain that an offer to the public had to come from a real mindful
foundation. Did she consider me a beginner to Zen practice? My ego feathers ruffled. But I kept
these thoughts to myself and accepted what she said. I could still show her that I was serious with
my practice and that I was farther along than she thought. Attempting to bring the conversation
back to the precepts, I told her I wanted to learn how she, specifically, worked with them—the ones
she’d asked me to read about in Diane Rizzetto’s book, Waking Up to What You Do.
“I’m on chapter five,” I said, certain that this was something, since she’d only asked me to read the
first few chapters.
“Go back to the first chapter,” she said. “The one on ‘Process.’ And when we talk next
time, be ready with a list of examples.” I looked down at the prepared examples in my journal and
wanted to remind her that she had told me this the last time, and that I had examples. The
defensiveness banged around in my head much louder than the racket in the hallway. She doesn’t
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think I’m ready. She doesn’t think I’m good enough. She thinks I’m just a beginner. But saying any of this to
her seemed trivial and childish. And I was exhausted from hospital visits. I could not muster up the
energy to explain myself to my Teacher. What I wrote about in my journal was too personal,
anyway. It was easier just to get off the phone. Then, the phrase, “Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind”
flashed in my head. This title of one of Suzuki Roshi’s books, reminded me that I was in fact a
beginner. No matter what stage I was at with my practice, it would always be a sort of beginning.
So I dropped the egoistic defenses. I would go back to Chapter One and do this her way and. We
hung up and I felt deflated. But I knew that what was really going on was my assumption that she
was not seeing me, or that she was seeing me in the wrong may, and though that was painful, it was
something I was used to.
Coming from a large family, it was easy to feel invisible. Negative attention, though, was
easy to come by, and my siblings and I managed to come by it often. My parents were not shy to
use a hand, fist, belt, ruler, hairbrush, shoe, or spatula to demand the respect they believed we
rightfully owed them. My way into a more positive light was to help my mother with the younger
children. This, however, was taken for granted because I was the girl. The boys would be outside
playing ball in the street while I was inside changing another dirty diaper. Though I was a tomboy
and got right in there with my brothers’ ball games, creek wading and fishing, I was not allowed to
play tackle football, only touch. I was also not expected to do well academically, but was encouraged
to take courses like stenography and typing, while my brothers excelled in classes with names that
intimidated me, like trigonometry and calculus. I shrank to the back of the classes, assuming I was
just not smart. Nobody told me any different. My self-confidence dipped into the negatives, which
made me an easy target for school bullies.
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But stupid or not, I could sing and I could act and I could play the piano. I found my way
onto the stage, where it became possible to be seen and appreciated. I established myself in my
town as someone with talent and potential. Everyone told me they’d see my name in lights,
someday. They’d all see me on Broadway, someday. I practiced the piano for hours a day, knowing
my father was standing out of sight, listening from the hallway. I played the Moonlight Sonata
because it was my mother’s favorite. I perfected the first movement when I was ten-years-old, and
then taught myself the second movement. I played Mozart, Grieg and Bach, and I read
Shakespeare, Tennessee Williams, and Arthur Miller. In college I majored in music and acting, and
my parents came to everything I was in.
In high school, no one had kept an eye on the academic classes I should have been taking
to get into college. So when it came time to apply it turned out that, not only did I not have the
grades, but I hadn’t been taking the right classes. Stenography, typing, singing, photography, art,
acting, and literature classes were not enough. But I had my voice and was able to sneak into a state
college, hidden away in the New Jersey Pine Barrens, by impressing the musical theater department
with an audition. Going away to college provided the first taste of a world I did not know existed—
one that did not consist of conservative middle-class suburban values, a chaotic family, and
fundamentalist religious beliefs. Wary of this, my parents made me promise three things: The first
two, to I would go to church every Sunday and find a youth group on campus, I happily agreed to
because I still thought I believed. The third promise was that I would not have boys in my dorm
room.
That first Christmas I came home, my mother found and read my journal. The Lord, she
told me, led her to the page I wrote about my first kiss with my boyfriend, which happened in my
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bed. It was a descriptive passage, and when I came home from the midnight service at Brookdale
Baptist Church, my parents were sitting at the kitchen table waiting for me.
“Sit down,” I was told. My mother avoided eye contact and my father’s head was lowered. I
sat down with a terrible sense of dread, and was told about the journal. “Your father and I have
talked and prayed about this all night,” my mother said. “We have decided that you will transfer to
Montclair State and live at home next semester.” There was nothing to argue about. Her backup of
the Lord leading her to read that page made it impossible for me to accuse her of anything.
The next morning, I was called down for presents. I sat watching my siblings rip open their
gifts with Christmas morning cheer. I was handed my presents and expected to open them and say
thank you. After presents and breakfast and prayers, I was excused and went to my room. I lay in
bed for hours, overwhelmed by a darkness I had never know before. That’s when I wrote what I
came to call the “Eight-Page-Lie.” This letter to my parents was my first successful attempt at
fiction. In it, I told them anything and everything I thought they needed to hear that might
persuade them to let me go back to college away from home. The thought of transferring was
beyond crushing. I desperately needed to be away from my parents. That sweet little college tucked
away in the Pine Barrens was the first place I had ever felt appreciated, where I made friends, where
I discovered that I was actually intelligent—I was on the Dean’s List! My American Literature
professor had copied my essay as an example for the rest of the class. My psychology professor
spoke about my paper in a lecture. My writing teacher copied a poem I had written on the board. I
was smart, I was popular, and for the first time in my life I was pretty. I looked like Uma Thurman.
Everybody said so. I received love letters, phone calls, was asked out on dates. I had my first
boyfriend. Best of all, I had risen to the top of the performance scene. I was to be the female lead
in the main stage production, and was due to start rehearsals a few days after Christmas. I would do
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anything to go back. And so, I lied. I wrote them how sorry I was; that I knew I had sinned against
God. I told them that my boyfriend (the atheist) and I had both prayed about it and had begged
God’s forgiveness. On and on, I lied. When the letter was perfected, I gave it to my mother, who
read it and made me read it to my father. What could I do but push the guilt away? And this piece
of fiction then became my finest performance as an actress. I made my mother believe what she
read and I made my father believe what he heard. They relented. I went back to college and
performed in the musical. But I was paranoid. I became convinced that my mother had hired a
detective to follow me around campus, and started to look over my shoulder.
That spring, I starred in an August Strindberg one-act. My parents came. We went out to a
diner afterwards. I left my backpack in their car. Another journal was found and read. My lies were
discovered and this time, I lost the fight. As my parents were loaning me money for tuition, they
made the decisions. And so I moved back home, where I could commute to college from their
house—the place I refused to call home—so they could keep an eye on me. I had a 10:00 p.m.
curfew my second year in college. I felt like I was in jail. That’s when I stopped singing, acting, and
playing the piano. At the time, I didn’t see the connection; all I knew was that it didn’t feel good to
perform anymore. In fact, it hurt.
I got straight A’s at Montclair State, where I switched my major to English Literature. I
applied for and received financial aid, transferred to Rutgers University, and moved into an
apartment with my older brother and my friend, Stacy. But that wasn’t enough. I needed to get
farther away. My junior year, I did six months in England. And after college, I left the country
completely. Forget about being seen. No one would even know where I was.
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Antonio was sitting up at an angle when Dana and I arrived. It was the first time I’d seen
the bed raised in a month. A month. His head lolled to one side and saliva ran in a stream out the
side of his mouth. How can they just leave him like that? Don’t any of the nurses care? Why couldn’t they have
adjusted him? I pulled his body into a more upright position while Dana got some towels. By this
point, we knew where things were stored and had stopped asking for them. Dana went into the
towel cabinet and came back with three. I rolled them each and propped his head into a more
comfy position while reminding him what Alice had said about his favorite colors. I also told him
that Sage said he wanted his daddy back. Could he hear this? Did it make a difference? Dana told
him that a big event was coming up on Friday.
“Your mother’s coming, Antonio.” Did he hear that? Did he know? Would his mother be
able to bring him back? Would her presence help? When Dana left to meet Helz and Alice in the
waiting room, I stuck in the CD of Cuban lullabies I had borrowed from the library at Spanish
school. The first song was “Drume Negrita.” Antonio once told me that he used to go to the
seaside in Mexico when the sun was setting. He’d sit on the rocks close enough to hear a man sing
this song to his little girl. Every night when the sun was setting, Antonio would go and sit close
enough to listen to this lullaby. “Sleep my little black baby/And I will buy for you a new baby crib.”
The song played through the I.C.U. and a tear fell from Antonio’s closed eye. Was that a tear of
emotion, or just a secretion? Did he hear the song? Was he remembering? There were no answers
to my questions. I could not know what Antonio heard or remembered. I could only continue to
give him my energy and hoped that helped. So, I massaged his right foot and made myself rub the
left one as well. I’d been avoiding his left side because that was the questionable side—the side he
hadn’t been responding with. It was unnerving to massage a limb that might be paralyzed. After a
while, I became too sad to go on. I held his hand, rested my head on his legs and stared up into his
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dark open, blank, eyes. I couldn’t even know if all the massage and handholding might be painful to
someone who had been bed-ridden for five weeks. I eased the pressure on his hand to an easy, light,
but firm and connected touch. Was that movement? I picked up my head. Did he just move his
fingers? I didn’t know what any of this meant. What if he had moved his finger? So what?
Helz came in while Dana waited with the girls. This time, when she joked with him, I was
grateful. He needed people who could make this lighter than it was. When she wet a towel and
gently wiped his face around each eye, over his lips, his brow, and the area on his head where the
stitches were, with so much care and love, I openly wept.
Dana dropped me at the ferry, and I found a sunny spot where I could soak up the glaring
sparkles of light that shimmered as far away as the Verrazano Bridge. I thought about Dana’s
conversation with the speech therapist, who said that Antonio was “totally with it and able to
follow simple commands very well.” How come he didn’t follow simple commands when I was
there? But the therapist had also said that, “the process of speech returning will take a long time.”
He can’t ingest food through his mouth, yet.
First, they’d give him a liquid solution to drink.
Then, they’d test how much went down.
And then… maybe… if he responded…
Slow, slow, slow, slow, slow. Goddamit.
Passengers around me ate sandwiches and bagels and drank coffee. Some took photos.
Others read the paper or books. Had anyone else has come from the hospital? What pain and
suffering were these people dealing with? I wanted to holler, “Look!” I wanted to shake them and
tell them about how beautiful the sun shining on the Hudson was. Let’s not waste time, people! I
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wanted to yell. We need to appreciate every moment, even the painful ones. Wasn’t it the fact of
suffering that made me so in love with that sunlight that glared right through me, burning? How
come no one else saw it? Why weren’t they looking? Like Emily in Act III of “Our Town,” I
couldn’t look hard enough. “It goes so fast,” Emily says from beyond the grave. “It goes so fast we
don’t have time to look at one another. I didn’t realize.” And then she says goodbye to her town
and her parents.
Good-bye to clocks ticking.... and Mama's sunflowers. And food and

coffee. And new-ironed dresses and hot baths.... and sleeping and
waking up. Oh, earth, you are too wonderful for anybody to realize
you. Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it--every,
every minute?
Would Antonio know food and coffee, again? Hot baths and sunflowers? Would he ever, ever wake
up?
By the time I got back to Park Slope, I had shaken off the intensity of Staten Island. The
living of life isn’t difficult, I thought, it’s the feeling of it that’s not so easy. My days weren’t
pressure-filled; they were just emotionally exhausting. Walking home from the subway in the pre-
Halloween dusk, I passed a brownstone with a tacky display. There was a recorded sinister laugh
hidden amongst a mess of cobwebs and plastic ghosts. Instead of it annoying me, like silly holiday
crap and plastic lawn ornaments normally did, I smiled. How simple. How silly, life. Compared with
what was happening to Antonio, everything else was effortless. Dokusan with my Teacher wasn’t
what I thought it would be, but it never was. It was okay that I didn’t get into anything too deep
with her. I was fine to start at the beginning because I knew this would help me develop a stronger,
clearer and more firm foundation. Not wasting time was one thing; being in a hurry was another. I
was in no rush.
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The next morning, there was an email from Leah:
hi dear,
got your message this evening, long after you left it. thanks so much for the update.
it's so frustrating that antonio is not improving at lightning speed. this is such
unfamiliar terrain... i guess it is like the first time you do anything totally new and you
lose the ability to imagine into the future because you realize that you just don't have
enough information.
arg, i miss him.
i love the idea of getting some wine and chatting. i don't know if i can go to staten
island on nov. 1st. this coming weekend may be a better time to visit, even if it
means that i would then have to miss the gathering of people that love antonio,
which i would really hate to miss…
miss you! wish our paths crossed more easily during all of this…
til soon
xo
Hey Leah,
Well, I don't think you'd be missing a gathering of people who love Antonio if you
go this weekend. It will just be a different gathering. Lucha and Sage will be there,
and Dana and Helz, etc. If it's not possible to come on the 1st, don't worry. We can
still put our heads together and be supportive and figure out a rehabilitation
schedule.
As for me, I'm thinking I need a weekend off. I think I'd like to get out of the city
and clear my head. It's so intense and so hard to see Antonio so helpless in his body.
Lightning speed? I'd be happy for a slow limp!
If you can swing it, Saturday evening would be perfect for me.
In the meantime, let's keep emailing. It's good to be in touch with you.
Lots of love and light, Leah.

Monica
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hi dear,
it's true; every weekend is an antonio love-fest these days, so i can't really go wrong. i
think the weekend of nov. 1st would be tough for me, so i will probably run over this
weekend. i would also like to be a part of welcoming lucha and making sure she
knows that there will be a few people available that speak spanish, in addition to lots
of people who don't speak too much spanish but are dying to get to know her :)
i've been thinking over and over about antonio reaching out to us, literally, with his
hand from his weak, exhausted body, and i am touched deeply. i have moments of
thinking that the state he is in, while painful, is not really worse than the state any of
us are in; it's just different. this crisis sometimes seems like such a huge
PROBLEM... for him, for his dreams, for his loved ones, for his future, but then
when i think of his hand moving towards us and when i imagine him learning to
move again, i think maybe there could be something incredibly beautiful ahead. at
least, i think there may be some beautiful moments.
this doesn't mean i won't be crying and hating what has happened to him, by the
way!
i hope you got a chance to enjoy the sun a little today.

much love to you,
leah
Wow, Leah.
I'm deeply touched by your words. What amazing insight. It's true that we
understand so little of why this happened, and what may come of it. “What doesn't
kill us makes us stronger” - and there is definitely so much possibility for amazing
things to happen through this for Antonio and for the rest of us. Even this real life
connecting that has been happening among his support group is so wonderful.
Are you thinking of going Saturday evening and staying overnight? Or, coming back
that same night. If you come back, I'd consider joining you. I worked out a day trip
to the Catskills for Sunday as I so need to clear my head and have a day away from all
this. I wonder if it would be too much to have so many people there - at the house,
and at the hospital - or if it would be a good thing. What do you think?
Lots of love, sweetie.

Monica
hi there,
yes, there must good things that will come with this. it becomes hard to tell what is
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good and what is bad when life feels extreme, eh?
i will definitely be coming back saturday night. i will probably leave brooklyn around
5 and come home late. you are welcome to come with me (i'll be driving this
weekend). i'd love to have you. i also understand if you need a weekend off-- it was
important for me last weekend to have a little time away from the intensity. i still felt
intensely about the whole thing, but i was able to process in a different way. just let
me know.
back to the rugrats,

love
leah
From Dana to me and Leah:
because i don't have time to grab my journal: dreamed that antonio was lurching
around, skinny and left half weak, but himself, drinking beer with half his mouth,
wearing his jeans and sweater and glasses, helping us move shit around with one
arm. he was up for it. then i dreamed someone from the hospital said to me "he's
wide awake right now." this was at 6a.m i wish i could've gone up in the early
morning. love yous
dana
Dana,
That's the best dream EVER! Thanks so much for sharing. I've been wondering how
things are going. Have his sodium levels increased? Is he more responsive than last
weekend?
Leah said she's driving there on Saturday at like 5pm, and then driving back later that
night. I was gonna take a weekend off, but since it'll be easy to come and go, I'd like
to come with her for the quick visit.
What do you think?
Big LOVE.
Monica
Dana to me:
come...we're gonna need all the love we can get to support lucha and sage.....xoxo
he's kinda more responsive, and i heard his voice today for the first time in a month!
he had the trach blocked on purpose to let him use his voice...he could copy me in a
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slurred whisper, better then nuttin'

loveyou
d
Email from me to Dana:
Wow. So intense, everything. I had a long talk with Leah tonight, and am continually
amazed by how this has brought us all so close. I feel SO much for Sage and Lucha.
Yes, I'm coming. This is so scary, Dana. So HUGE. So REAL. It's LIFE.
So, I'm thinking to let Stacy come on November 1st, as planned. She can be our
Spanish speaking person.
I'd love to make food that Antonio loves that day. Hopefully, Lucha will think this is
a good idea and want to make food with us. That can be so healing.
I hope you are coping okay this week, Dana. Please call if you want to talk or cry or
vent or laugh or whatever.
I love you.
Phone message from Leah:
Hey, Monica. It’s Leah. Um, I just wanted to talk for a minute. I um, I don’t know. I
just talked to Dana and feeling frustrated with Antonio’s progress and I guess a little
scared about it, and… I don’t know. You know how it goes. Um, so I’m really glad
that you’re gonna come on Saturday. That’ll be great. If you get a chance, call me
tonight… Okay, I hope you’re well. Bye
Did these emails and phone calls really happen ALL in one day?
Stacy texted: “It’s a boy.” I smiled walking to the subway in the seventy-degree heat of a
glorious October day, my favorite autumn weather—the sky all blue with puffy cloud-speckles that
flattened thick and gray near the horizon, before melting into clear blue. What a welcome relief to
have news of life in the midst of all this heaviness. Trees were changing color. Some trees had
turned completely yellow, while others held onto their green. A few had yellow leaves that turned
burgundy at their tips, like fingers of fire. Magnolia, the restaurant down the street from my flat, had
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painted their storefront the most beautiful, bright, brick red. Everywhere I turned the color was so
vivid that I couldn’t look hard enough. Oh, earth, you are too wonderful for anybody to realize you. My eyes
teared up because Antonio couldn’t experience this day. I would have to realize the wonder of the
earth for him. My sadness was balanced by Stacy’s news—a reminder that life bubbled beneath the
surface.
Email from Leah to me and Dana:
love to you both and good morning,
last night antonio showed up in my dream in drag. not as moving as dana's dream,
but i thought i'd share it :)
Me to Leah:
I love it. So many images come to mind. We played dress up in that house more
times than is probably healthy, and Antonio tried on every wig! On a more analytical
note - maybe him being in drag had to do with him being himself, but different. In a
different skin, so to speak... A different body. What did he look like?
Leah to me:
he looked like himself, like the Antonio that we are used to. pre-ICU.
oh, antonio in wigs.... i miss it!!
see you very soon hope evening was good send the info for that documentary when
you have it
leah
Me to Leah:
I mean in drag. What was he wearing?
Check out this film:

http://www.lifesupportmusic.org/
http://www.pbs.org/pov/lifesupportmusic/film_description.php
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Leah to me:
haha, i don't remember details, i only know there was a skirt involved.
will be in touch tomorrow.... thanks for the links. let's watch this together sometime.
love
leah
Dana to me:
great ideas esp making antonios foods. i'm feeling completely crazy today, i might call
right now. so unable to deal with anything. ick.
xo
dana
I got this last email and ran to my phone, which was already ringing. Dana was having a
meltdown. She was worried about Lucha coming and felt bad that she didn’t have the energy to
clean the house. Dana knew she should call the therapist someone gave her a number for, but she
was too lethargic to make the call. We went through each of her worries. I told her she was doing
great. Urged her to call the therapist right away. Assured her that I loved her. I hung up and was
overcome with emotion.
Before work, I put some energy into the fund-raising auction I was organizing for BZC.
After a while, I looked at the time. Lucha should have arrived. I wondered how Dana was doing. I
got my work things together and stopped to look at Antonio’s photo beside the white votive candle
that still burned on the altar. I had grown so used to that candle that I barely even noticed in,
anymore. It hit me that all this grieving and missing and not knowing had gone on long enough to
become a state of being.
The next weekend, Leah picked me up and we drove to Staten Island to meet Lucha.
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“I’m nervous to meet her,” Leah said.
“It’s really intense that she’s here,” I said.
“I just keep wondering what Antonio would think. I mean, I know he loves her, but he also
had a really hard time with her.”
“But that was a long time ago,” I said, thinking of my own hard times with my mother.
“Surely, he’s moved on from all that anger.”
“He hasn’t visited in years.”
“He hasn’t had much money.”
“Wow. I just keep wondering what he would think if he woke up and saw us all standing
around his bed,” Leah said.
“I know. Christy will be there today, too. Right?”
“Shit, I forgot. Now I’m really nervous!”
“It’ll be fine. Christy’s great. She’s nothing like Antonio painted her out to be.”
“So then, Lucha might be great, too.”
“Exactly. I mean, remember all those care packages she sent over the years?”
“That’s true. Homemade Oaxacan breads and things.”
“Antonio was always so happy to get those.”
“Okay. I’m sure it will be fine. It’s just all so weird. I mean, we’re gonna be hanging around
Antonio’s bed with his mom and ex-wife, and he won’t even know about it!”
“Maybe you and I should make out in front of him. That should wake him up!”
“I’ll try anything,” Leah said. “But not while Lucha and Christy are there!”
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We walked into Antonio’s room and there she was—a small, somewhat stocky woman with
short, old-lady hair. She had her son’s same smile. It was uncanny to have her grin up at me with
Antonio’s big white teeth. Despite the classes I had been taking, my Spanish was rudimentary, and
Lucha’s English was nada, so we could not speak. Still, there was a mutual warmth. We hugged as if
we had known one another for a long time. I could tell, by how she looked at Antonio and rubbed
lotion onto his face, that she was a kind, good-hearted woman who loved her son. And of course
she appreciated my having been there with him all these weeks; this was clear from the way she
gripped my hand. What was the most palpable, though, was the tacit fear and hope that we shared
through eye contact.
Christy, Leah, Lucha and I sat silently around Antonio’s bed. We held has hands, rubbed
lotion on his feet, legs, arms, and gave each other weak smiles that were meant to be encouraging. I
thought about how unfair this whole situation was to Antonio. Not only did he have no control over
his body, but he had no control over how the people in his life had come together and were
interacting. As beautiful and powerful as I thought all of us meeting together around his bed was, he
might not have liked or wanted it. There were probably things he didn’t want talked about. What
secrets might be revealed? What private stories (or lies) might be uncovered? My overall feeling was
—who cares? None of it mattered, and neither did the bullshit, the anger or the fights.
On one of Antonio’s shelves in his bedroom, in between chipped dishes and decapitated
heads, there was a framed sepia-colored print of his father wearing a military uniform. His father,
who had been the only family member who did not give Antonio a hard time for his atheism, had
died from a triple-bypass operation at the age of seventy-one. Antonio was around thirty-five, and
had to leave Christy and Sage in New York to spend three weeks watching his father die in a hospital
in Mexico City.
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“The day that he passed away,” Antonio had told me, “I lifted the body and brought it to
Oaxaca City from Mexico City. And then, in Oaxaca, funeral are quite long. A funeral takes about
two weeks.” I figured he was going to tell me about the funeral, but his story took a turn. “Being
there, somebody from New York sees me in the street, and she goes like, ‘I know you’. So, okay, ‘So
who am I?’ And she tells me everything about me.”
“One of your groupies?”
“Yes. Well, it turns out that she knew me really well, even though I didn’t know anything
about her. That was the first time I ever saw her. She was too excited to see me.”
“Uh-oh. And then, what happened.”
“And then, everything that happened, happened.”
“Christy found out?”
“Christy found it. I did not tell her. But Christy had been obsessed for a long while with me
being so popular. Well, she was always looking for clues. I mean you have to understand, I was very
popular.”
“I understand,” I laughed. “You were popular.”
“And I had tons of opportunities, although I never took one. But that time in Oaxaca, I was
really depressed. My father had just died the night before. So in any case, the instinct came in, and
mixed with my depression, it just did whatever it had to do.”
“What happened when you came back?”
“So I came back after probably a month of being there. When I came back, in my office at
the college, there was a package.”
“What was it?”
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“It was a book that she had written about our affair. I don’t even remember the name
anymore because the book that I got, Christy destroyed it. She found it in my car. She found it in the
car and then she beat the shit out of me and destroyed the book. And that was that.”
The fact that Antonio hadn’t been back to Mexico in years, or that he and Christy were on
terrible terms, or that he and Leah had just made amends, this was all minimized by the reality that
they had all risen to the occasion and had come together because of, or despite, how they felt.
There might still be differences later, when our boy got out and recovered. But now, we were all
together to help him. Christy might have been in that hospital room primarily for Sage, and out of
respect to his grandmother who needed the emotional support and Spanish translation, but she
massaged Antonio’s feet with the same gusto as I did. And when she opened up about how worried
she was about Sage, I cried with her and we held each other, glad for the real-life connection and
support from another woman who was a mere stranger a month ago.
A month ago that very day, Antonio had turned forty-nine. Five weeks ago, I couldn’t wait
for the week on the respirator to be over so I could talk to him about how weird missing a birthday
must be. I remember how shocked I had been, then, to think that he would be unconscious on a
respirator for a whole week. That was so long ago. So inconsequential. A month ago—more than a
month ago—Christy was a person Antonio would vent about. His ex, who had given him such a
hard time about their son. Now, she was a woman I respected, who was doing her best with the
hand life dealt her.
After the hospital, we all sat on stools around the butcher block in the kitchen. Me and Leah,
Christy and Brett, Lucha, Dana and Marsh. Christy translated Lucha’s concerns to us.
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“How did you learn to speak Spanish so well?” I asked Christy.
“Having to defend myself in fights with Antonio!” she said and we all laughed, even Lucha,
who didn’t even know why we were laughing. We laughed, so she laughed. But then, her laugher
turned to sorrow and she had a well-composed meltdown. Because she was one of us, she did not
hide her pain.
“Él sufre tanto,” she said. He’s suffering so much. Sitting upright, shoulders back, head high,
Lucha cried. Marsh hugged her and started to cry as well.
“She reminds me of my mother,” he said to us. “Having Lucha here is like having my
mother back.” I had never seen Marsh cry before.
I heated up the soup that I made—carrot, sweet potato, onion, ginger, coconut milk, and
curry powder—and it was quickly devoured. Marsh, Brett and Christy stayed in the kitchen with
Lucha and made plans for church in the morning. Dana and Leah and I moved into the living room
and entwined ourselves on the couch, like only old friends (or new friends thrust together by
tragedy) can do. Sitting between them, I took Dana’s hand, hooked one leg over her knee and one
arm over Leah’s neck, pulling her into a hug. Leah wrapped her arm around the fronts of me and
Dana, who crossed her other leg across my lap and Leah’s, and we three touched heads feeling each
others’ energies. In our physical entangle, that surely represented how scared and snarled our
emotions were, we grasped at control by fantasizing spells and divinations, imagining what we could
do to heal Antonio. In this heightened reality—which had started with panic and had stretched into
strained anxiety—we continued to convince ourselves that Antonio’s life depended on what we did.
But we were worn out.
“I just don’t know how much longer I can take this.” Leah said. “I mean, what if Antonio
doesn’t wake up?”
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“I can’t think about that,” Dana said. It was clear we needed something more grounded than
casting spells. I suggested Friends in Deed, a support group someone from the Zen Center had told
me about.
“It’s for people who have life-threatening illnesses, and their families and caregivers. We’re
Antonio’s caregivers.”
“We’re his family,” Dana said.
“And now, his mother is here. She’s gonna need support too,” I said. We heard Lucha’s brave
laugh from the kitchen, where it seemed like she’d always been, fitting right in to the warmth of One
o One Bard. In the kitchen, the Christians made plans for church the next morning, while in the
living room, the three witches talked about spells. Was there any difference?
In the car, Leah and I shared our sexual lives regarding the past, present, and Antonio. I
admitted to her that the one moment I regretted with Antonio is sending him home the night there
was the possibility of a threesome.
“What?” Leah asked. “Tell me more!”
“He and I went drinking at that lesbian club that used to be in Park Slope,” I began.
“Cattyshack?”
“Right. And at the end of the night, we were good and hammered, and out of nowhere, this
beautiful woman is sitting next to me, real close, and staring right at me. So, I lean over and start
kissing her. Antonio, who had gone for more beers, comes back, sees us and starts laughing his crazy
laugh. ‘I’m so happy for you!’ he said, handing me a Corona. Antonio was well aware how much I
had been wanting to meet a woman. This woman had no idea I was with anyone, not that I was with
Antonio, but she didn’t seem to mind him tagging along when she took me back to her place. I
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remember it being an extremely cold night, but we walked all the way to Prospect Park Southwest,
ducking in doorways every so often. Me, to get stoned. But the woman—can you believe I don’t
even know what her name is?—had cocaine. She had been snorting all night, which explains both
the intense way she was looking at me in the bar, as well as her concocted story that I had stared at
her first, from across the dance floor. She told me that she came up to me because she liked the way
that I had looked at her. Coke is such a narcissistic drug. I don’t like it so stuck to smoking grass.
Antonio, though, tried a line. Anyway, we were all high and the sexual vibe was palpable. When we
got to her apartment, we went straight for her bed.”
“Go on,” Leah said.
“Well, it soon became clear that she preferred to have me all to herself. I don’t think she was
comfortable with a guy there. But she was willing to let him stay if I wanted him to. Antonio
definitely wanted to stay.”
“Of course he did!”
“But I hadn’t been with a woman in such a long time, and really wanted to experience that.
Antonio understood completely. So he gracefully bowed out. Now, though,” I said to Leah, “I wish I
had asked him to stay.”
“Why?” she asked, eyes smiling, loving to gossip with me about him.
“Because sex for him is so much a part of his vitality. His life spirit. And now, since we don’t
know if he’ll be back, or in what way, or if he’ll have that part of him, I wish I had experienced him
more fully.”
“I understand,” Leah said, looking out the window.
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I took the next weekend off from Staten Island. Lucha was there now, so I could feel okay
about taking some space for myself. Sometimes, when we give and give and give, we seem to have so
much energy, but when we stop and refocus on ourselves, we realize how spent we are. That
weekend, I was so depressed that I nearly called my friend, Brandt, to cancel our plans for a day trip.
I had really been wanting to get out of the city and up into the mountains. I knew it would be good
for me in the end, so dragged myself out of bed. I yearned for the open space, the fresh air and
autumn colors. And I wanted to feel the speed of freedom, zooming on the back of a motorcycle.
I took the ‘A’ train to Washington Heights, and got off at 168 th Street, where a busker played
harmonica and sang a sad and lonely Latino folksong. I thought about what Christy had told me of
how Antonio suffered from depression.
“I don’t mean to be extreme,” she told me, “but I think the house saved him.”
“I don’t think that’s extreme,” I said, “I think it really did.” Good ole One o One.
Brandt was not home when I got to his apartment, so I sat in the park across from his
building. The sun beat down, and my legs burned in the black leather pants I wore for the
motorcycle ride. The autumn trees were stunning enough there that it was worth the subway ride just
to sit in that park. Squirrels scurried through dried, yellow leaves. People walked dogs. Children
played on swings. A young boy rode up to me on a pink girl’s bike.
“Miss, you wanna buy this bike?” he asked. I told him no thanks and he rode over to ask
someone else. I took an apple out of my backpack, and paid attention to its sweetness and the sticky
juice it left on my lips and the tip of my nose. Over at the jungle gym kids ran around playing. Lucha
told us about how passionate Antonio had been as a child. She smiled his smile and said how when
he was happy, he was really happy. When he was angry, he was really angry. So it seemed that when
Antonio suffered, he really suffered.
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I had refrained from explaining to Lucha that Antonio had learned to embrace suffering.
What good would that do her? She might say that he brought this all upon himself. Maybe that’s
what she was already thinking. I could not explain to her that, although Antonio did not have a
religious belief system, he had a connection to nature, and that his passion for art came from his
religious upbringing.
“We used to make a trip every year with my family and a whole bunch of people,” Antonio
once told me. “We went to a sacred place where people goes to this church to see a virgin. Which
according to them is, you go there and all your wishes will be granted. Miracles happen there. We
went every year. And to go there, you have to walk about three or four days.”
“A pilgrimage?” I asked.
“Yes. A three or four days walk. A beautiful one. Yeah,” he said, remembering. “Yeah. It’s
through the woods, all the way. And it’s just up and down. Rivers and towns and wild life. And it is
really cool. I was actually waiting for it to happen every year.”
“Because you loved the walk?”
“Yes. I loved that thing.”
“So maybe that’s where your love of walking started,” I said, laughing.
“Probably, yes,” Antonio said and smiled.
“So, all of these people were making this pilgrimage to get to a place that was important to
them. But for you, it was the walk that was important.”
“It was the walk. Yes. It was the walk. And not only that. That town was covered with
religious images. All over the place. There was not one inch wasn’t covered with religious images.
And everything was so cheesy, and gold. And I was fascinated by it. It was so cool to see.”
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“Why were you fascinated by it?” I asked. I had been to the Knock Shrine in County May,
and didn’t at all appreciate the religious imagery, everywhere. What bothered me the most about it
was that it was all for sale – rosary beads, medals, posters, pins and plates, holy water, and porcelain
statues of Our Lady of Knock – and all that money was going to the Catholic Church.
“I don’t know,” Antonio said. “Everything was so gold. Everything was just the color of
gold. It was… I mean images of people without eyes. Or, there was this virgin with her eyes in one
hand and flowers in the other. And that’s cool. I mean that’s cool. There was another one of a lady
burning in hell. Flames all over the place, and all what you can see was her face in the middle of the
flames. I mean, that shit is cool.” I had not seen anything like this at Knock.
“What was the expression on her face?” I wanted to know.
“Terror,” Antonio said. “I mean, that’s cool shit.”
“So, when you started painting, you were playing around with these images?” I asked.
“I did, yes. I mean, you saw my decapitated virgins, right?”
“I dig the decapitated virgins,” I said.
In college, I had posed in the nude for art classes and professional photographers. Not a
visual artist myself, this was a way I could contribute to the art world. I became good at sitting still.
No matter how uncomfortable I was, I would not move because someone might be drawing the part
of my body that I needed to move in order to scratch an itch. I had not started meditating yet, and
when I sat for artists, I went deep into my thoughts, brooding over all the drama that would take me
years to let go of. Physically, though, all that sitting still for hours at a time in art classes was great
preparation for sitting zazen for days at a time. Teachers at Manhattan’s Art Students’ League would
praise me. “Look at what you bring out of these painters,” one teacher with a white beard told me.
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Many of the models posed for the money. But for me, besides this being my small contribution to
the art world, it was also as means of self-expression. I had a lifetime of fundamentalist
indoctrination to shed. Discarding layers of clothing until my bare skin was exposed became my
artistic expression.
As Antonio and I became closer friends and trust was established, we collaborated on
several nude photo sessions. I loved listening to him talk about his past projects and was thrilled to
find a way to connect with him through his art. The photos he took of me were works in progress
saved on his laptop, which I searched through when he was under, hoping to find more examples of
his work. There were some, but most of his work had been sold or was left behind. I dug that about
him, too – the ability to leave everything behind.
I also admired Jon for doing this more than once on his travels. All he needed were his
rucksack and his guitar. In fact, after we split up, that’s all he left New York with.
When Jon and I first left Ireland for Spain, I got rid of most everything I owned. There were
a few boxes of memorabilia in my mother’s attic in New Jersey, and we stored a few more boxes of
personal things at Jon’s mum’s house. All of our combined possessions fit into the Snow Goose, and
we drove it all to the North of England. From Newcastle, we continued north to join Kath on
another of her annual holiday trips to the Isle of Skye. Her husband, who had always maintained his
edge toward Jon, wasn’t thrilled about us storing so many boxes in his house. But Kath was cool
with it.
“It won’t eat much,” she said, smiling.
To get to Spain, Jon and I drove through the Pyrénées Mountains. On the French side, in the
foothills, sits the holy shrine of Lourdes. We would not have gone out of our way to visit a shrine,
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but when we started seeing signs for Lourdes, we thought what the hell. The signs led up, up, up
winding mountainous roads that grew colder and snowier the higher we climbed. We didn’t think it
would be so far, and hours later when we neared what seemed to be the top of the final peak, there
was a roadblock and a sign. Jon had some French, but could not make out what the sign said. A
hundred yards away was a mountain restaurant that looked closed. We were surprised to find the
door open, and the proprietor was equally surprised to see us. He was able to make Jon understand
that the snow on the other side of the pass was so bad that the roads were not drivable. Apparently,
there were signs on our road as well, but we hadn’t been able to read them.
So, no Lourdes. But what a view!
Jon was agnostic and believed in a non-religious divine energy. One could not play the guitar
how Jon played the guitar and not have a strong sense of spirituality. But Jon’s feelings towards
religion can be summed up in the story he told me and Antonio one day on the side porch of One o
One Bard, during the summer of 2005.
Antonio and I were trying to outdo one another with church memories. I was explaining
how the friends in my youth group lost no time in judging me for the combat boots and hippie
skirts I started wearing and the rock and roll music I discovered all-to-late in my youth.
“I remember when I was a little girl, maybe seven or eight,” I said. “We were driving home
from church. Dad was in the front and a few of us were in the back. We passed a billboard that said,
‘The Beatles are Bigger Than Jesus!’ I asked my mom what The Beatles were. She barked at us to
cover our eyes and look away. Her eyes glared beady-mean through the rearview mirror, making sure
we averted our eyes.”
“That’s funny,” Antonio said. Jon stopped playing, set his guitar down and leaned forward.
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“Neither of you will top this one,” he said and proceeded to tell us how, when he was
thirteen years old, he and his mates had just seen “Ghostbusters” in the cinema and were walking
around whatever English town Jon lived in at that time, wired. They passed by a church. It was a
Sunday evening and the parking lot was full of cars. On a dare, Jon opened the side door and
screamed “Christians!” at the congregation. Shutting the door before noting anyone’s reaction, he
ran back to his friends—two girls and one boy—who were sitting on a wall in the parking lot. They
laughed about it for a minute but sat there for another minute too long. A huge man with a shaved
head and military physique burst out of the church’s front door, ran down the steps right up to the
boys, and pummeled them to the ground. One of the girls protested and he punched her in the face,
which sent both girls running. This guy went at the boys until they were crying and bleeding, yanked
them up, and dragged them into the church. He marched them to the front row and sat them down,
one on either side of him.
“The other parishioners pretended nothing was going on and the service went on as usual.
When it came time for a song…” Jon said, pausing long enough for me to ask,
“What? What happened?”
“Everybody stood and this guy jerked us up by our collars and hissed, ‘Now, sing!’”
“And did you?” Antonio asked.
“We kinda sobbed our way through. We could barely stand. Our bodies were bruised all over
and there were tears and blood and snot streaming down our faces.”
“What did the minister do?” I asked.
“Not a goddamned thing. The next day, Kath called the church and they denied any such
incident.”
“That’s a crazy fuckin’ story,” Antonio said.
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“Okay, you win,” I told Jon. “That’s the worst story I’ve heard in a long time.”
“You were one of those holier than thous,” Jon said, teasing me.
“Yes, but I didn’t know any better. I just believed what I was told like any kid does. There’s
Santa Claus and there’s Jesus.”
“I believed in Santa,” Jon said.
“See?” I said. “I never believed in Santa. Which is worse?”
“Jesus,” Jon and Antonio said, simultaneously.
“Okay, but I have to say that now, in a way, I’m glad I had the upbringing that I did.”
“Why’s that?” Antonio asked, picking up his pack of rolling tobacco.
“Well, because it makes me have some kind of understanding towards people with
fundamentalist mindsets. They just really believe. I remember that feeling. I used to witness to
people in high school because I thought they would go to hell if they didn’t accept Jesus Christ into
the hearts as their personal savior. I thought it was my responsibility to help save them.”
“Jesus Christ,” Jon said, shaking his head.
“Exactly!” I said. “But, if I wasn’t raised into this mindset—”
“Brainwashed into it,” Jon interrupted me.
“—I might have the same prejudices you do.” I said.
“Most people don’t shake that shit off,” Jon said.
“I fucking shook that shit off!” Antonio said, jumping up and wiping his hands down his
arms as if brushing off a layer of dirt. “See! I’m still shaking it off!” After the laughter died down,
Antonio handed me a rollie, but Jon beat him with the lighter. I smiled at him while inhaling that
first drag, enjoying the light-headed feeling the tobacco gave me. Sitting back in the wicker chair, I
thought for a minute and then said,
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“Ya know, my parents are good people. They’re really good people. They love me and have
done lots of amazing things with their lives, like bring up seven children. I mean, look at my dad, for
Chrissakes! He’s one of the most inspirational people I know. And my mother is one of the most
forgiving people I know. She taught me what I needed to know about forgiveness in order to be able
to forgive her.”
“There’s irony for you,” Jon said.
“I have to stand back in awe when I think about all they’ve done. So I can’t lump Christians
or Catholics, or any group for that matter, into some shortsighted category. People are not one-
dimensional.”
“Are you calling me short-sighted?” Jon asked, grinning with that look he gets in his eyes
when he wants to keep the debate going.
“Yes, I am,” I said, up for it. Antonio threw his head back and laughed, relishing this. “I love
my parents and if they didn’t raise me the way they did, I probably be as closed-minded as you are.”
“There’s more irony for you,” said Antonio.
“Your parents don’t accept your bisexuality,” Jon said, going for the jugular. But I could play
that way too.
“Your mother let your step-father kick you out of the house when you were only fifteen, and
then wouldn’t take you back when you showed up on Christmas Eve, two years later,” I said, to
which Antonio shouted,
“Touché!”
“And don’t even get me started on your father,” to which Jon picked up his guitar and started
strumming—a tactic that always worked when he wanted others to listen to him. In Ireland, at many
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a party when Jon would get on one, and annoy people with his inability to censor his argumentative
self, people would say, “Jon Hicks. Stop talking shite and play your goddamned guitar.’
My reminiscences were interrupted when Brandt arrived. He and I drove up to Storm King
Sculpture Park. We talked about teaching English composition, and he told me stories of his
students. But I was off in my head thinking about how I had never seen any of Antonio’s sculptures.
“There were many times,” he had told me and Jon, “that people will offer me a lot of money
to do things that they wanted me to do.”
“Like what?” Jon asked. I got the sense that Jon didn’t believe half of Antonio’s stories. But
I didn’t care whether they were true. I was riveted. I could listen to his stories all day, like I could
listen to Jon’s music. Lucky me got to listen to them both on that side porch in Staten Island.
“For instance,” Antonio answered Jon’s challenge. “There was an organization here in
Rochester, it was Puerto Ricans with city money, and they wanted to give me a lot of money to build
them an art installation on their terms, being that they did not know anything about art. Nothing.
Zero. Zilch. Nothing. And they wanted something like really cheesy. And it’s not that I don’t like
cheesy. I love cheesy. Just not stupid-cheesy.
“What did they want you to build?” I asked.
“Palm trees.”
“Palm trees?” I asked, laughing.
“Palm trees.”
“Why palm trees?” Jon asked, also amused.
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“Because they’re from Puerto Rico. Palm trees. Puerto Rico palm trees. Or bananas. I think it
was a symbolic thing to say, ‘Puerto Ricans are here’.”
“Why did they want to have that image?” I asked.
“Well, Puerto Ricans are loud. And they need lots and lots of attention. I could understand
their motives, but in the case of me doing such a thing, I for sure would include a ton of melted
cheese covering the whole thing. For doing that I would very probably have taken the job, but as
expected the idea did not fly with them. That could of been fun to do though! And it also explains
why artists like myself remain poor!”
“Did you take on any of the jobs the city paid you to do?” I asked.
“You know,” he said. “I was just working. I was painting signs. You know those, let me see,
those big bad-lit Wendy’s signs?”
“The plastic ones?”
“Yes. I did all of those. I painted them. It was horrible. I guess that’s why I never never tried a
freakin hamburger again!” We all three laughed. And then Antonio and I listened to Jon play.
It was a cold ride back on Brandt’s bike. The sky turned to dusk and dark while we motored
to the city. On the way up the Palisades that morning, the trees and sky were breathtaking. I kept
thinking about what Katagiri Roshi had told Natalie Goldberg when he saw her suffering from the
freezing Minnesota winter.
“Eat the cold,” he had said.
“Eat life,” I thought, riding with my helmet visor up so I could see the blazing trees. “Eat
color,” I thought. “Eat beauty.”
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On the way back down the Palisades, with the moon’s sliver resting on its back in the
darkening sky, it was all about eating the cold. I had no fear on the back of Brandt’s bike. I trusted
him, sure. But more, I trusted life. I breathed and, with my arms tight around his waist, he sang
David Bowie and Billie Bragg. There was safety and happiness, and there was being alive.
Brandt had stopped sleeping together over a year ago. He had withdrawn from me saying he
wasn’t ready for a relationship. “I’d just be another Jon,” he said. “Another guy with Mommy-issues
who hasn’t gotten his own shit together.” Brandt’s ex-girlfriend had broken his heart and, when we
met, he was still hooked on her. Poor Brandt, I had thought. He was a good man. A good son who
had taken care of both of his parents when they were dying. He gave too much, I decided, and his
ex couldn’t see his worth. He told me story after story of how others took advantage of his
generous nature.
“I’m like Charlie Brown, when he goes to kick the football out of Lucy’s hand,” he said,
shaking his head and laughing at his own gullibility. “Every time, he knows she’s going to pull the
ball away, because that’s what she does every time. But she promises she won’t do it this time. So what
does he do?”
But I wouldn’t pull the ball away. I fantasized about buying Brandt a football for his birthday.
We’d go to Prospect Park and I would hold it for him to kick. I would hold it steady and let him kick
it far. He would know he could trust me. He would appreciate that I was a devoted girlfriend. And
he would love me.
Just like Jon was supposed to love me when I stayed by his side after Kath died. When I put
aside my desires to have a child—because how could I want anything from a man grieving for his
mother? And so I channeled these nurturing tendencies into mothering Jon. Of course I wasn’t
aware how Oedipal this was at the time. Nor was I aware of the irony when, the spring before
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Antonio’s hemorrhage, I had left a relationship with a woman precisely because she smothered me
with this same kind of supposedly unconditional, co-dependent, projected love. A massage therapist
and very generous woman, she wanted to make up for all that Jon wasn’t able to give me. But there
was something about her need to give that drove me away. It mirrored my own patterns too much.
These were the only people I had been with since Jon. Three months with a man and three
months with a woman. The man withdrew when I played out my pattern of giving with him. The
woman, I pulled away from when she played out a similar pattern on me.
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Week Seven
At 3 am, I woke up and could not get back to sleep. I read Chuang Tzu for a while, and then
researched Friends in Deed. Their online mission statement was: “To provide pragmatic emotional
and spiritual support for all those affected by life-threatening illness, care giving and grief.” I thought
of Mojie Crigler, a friend I made in January 2006.
I was a graduate assistant at the Vermont College of Fine Arts winter residency, when Mojie
was beginning her master’s degree, in the 2008. We discovered that both of us nearly lost brothers
due to brain bleeds, which established an immediate and intimate connection between us. She went
with me to see Kate Winslet’s movie, “Little Children,” the one that was filmed on Bard Avenue.
Afterwards, we went for a meal, and she told me about the book she was writing about what
happened with Jason. His tragedy had developed into a ongoing crisis that changed her family’s life.
The night of his hemorrhage, the doctors had told them that if Jason lived, he would probably be a
vegetable for the rest of his life. The Crigler’s refused to accept this diagnosis. And, although Jason
doesn’t remember a year and a half of his life, with the help of those who loved him, he made a
miraculous recovery.
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The story was made into a documentary called “Life.Support.Music.” And I attended the
film’s opening on the Lower East Side the spring before Antonio’s crisis. Her family was there,
including Jason, but I didn’t stick around to meet him because the movie had shaken me so deeply
that I needed to be by myself afterwards.
In the first segment of the film, Jason’s family and friends explain what happened the night
of his bleed. First, though, there is a prologue. It begins with a home video that Jason made of
himself in the spring of 2004. He was thirty-four years old, the same age as my brother Matthew
was when he had his brain bled. In the video Jason explains that this is a direct message for himself,
twenty years into the future, to receive in the year 2024.
“Who loves you, Jason?” the person holding the camera asks.
“I love everyone,” Jason replies right away, looking straight at the camera with intent, warm
eyes.
“But who loves you?”
“Who loves me?” he asks, shifting his eyes up and diagonal, like we do when we’re thinking
about something. He turns his head and looks at the passersby on the street. “Well, maybe some of
these people around me.” The cameraperson zooms toward these people on the street, and then the
camera turns upside down and circles around Jason’s head.
“Thirty-five days later,” the movie’s narrator explains, “on a warm August evening, Jason’s
world stopped spinning.”
Onscreen everything goes black. Then, Jason’s wife Monica appears in a small box on the left
side of the screen. “So the night it happened…” she begins. My mind went directly to the day it
happened to Matthew, and I started to cry. When Monica explains that she had been sitting at the
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bar watching Jason play, I thought about how Matthew had simply been standing at a bus stop. Jason
was going about his life, playing music. Matthew was waiting for a bus, on his way to work. I felt
self-conscious crying like this at Jason’s movie. Everyone else was there because of what had
happened to Jason. I didn’t even know Jason. I felt like an intruder, there for my own reasons, using
the drama of one story to feel the emotions of another.
Then, Monica’s image freezes and a second box appears to the right of hers showing Jason’s
drummer, Mike. Mike says that they were playing their first or second tune when he saw Jason put
his hand up to his face. Mike covers the right side of his own face and his image freezes there. A
third box emerges in the row, with Jason’s friend, Laura, who had been watching the gig from far
back in the audience. She talks about the confusion on stage and how she couldn’t tell what was
happening, but saw Jason bend over. “And then he was just gone,” she says. Her face freezes but the
word “gone” in my head. A fourth and final box appears in the row of frozen images, this time with
Sandy, the singer. She explains that Jason bent down as if fiddling with his pedals and how she
assumed he had a problem with the sound of his guitar. When her face freezes, Mike’s comes back
to life.
“Next time I looked over, he put his guitar down and was just rushing straight off the stage
towards Monica.” Mike assumes that some guy’s messing with her and Jason’s going to straighten
him out. When Mike freezes, Monica continues. She thinks Jason has bolted off the stage to go yell
at the sound guy. “He must be really pissed,” she says.
Everyone around Jason is trying to fit what’s happening into their own minds’ experiences of
normality. It isn’t until Jason gets to Monica and tells her that he needs help that the seriousness of
what’s happening explodes. She takes him outside to get some air. “He couldn’t really stand up,” she
explains, “so he gently got down on the ground and lay down, and I called an ambulance right away.
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While we were waiting for them, he kept saying that he couldn’t hear and that I sounded so far away.
And he said, ‘Mon, what’s wrong with me? Am I ever gonna play again?’ Monica freezes again and
Jason’s mother, Carol, replaces Mike’s image. Carol tells about arriving at St. Vincent’s emergency
room where Jason was complaining of a “terrible, terrible headache.” She freezes and Laura’s image
is replaced with Mojie, who tells that when she arrived at the entrance to the hospital, her mother
and sister-in-law draped their arms around her, sobbing, which made Mojie ask, “Is he dead?”
Sandy’s image is replaced by Jason’s father, Lynn, who explains the tense atmosphere at the hospital,
the hugging and the waiting. Monica picks up that at 5 a. m. Jason’s doctor came out to explain that
there had been a bleed and “they had done a ventriculostomy to relieve the pressure, and that it
didn’t look good. And they didn’t know if he would live, and if he did, he really didn’t know what
would be left of the Jason we know.”
Carol continues: “They told us that the bleeding in the brain was quite severe and that Jason
had very little brain function left.”
Lynn: “We did have a doctor come out and basically give us the worst case scenario in terms
of saying that he didn’t think Jason was gonna… that it was quite possible that Jason wouldn’t make
it, that is wouldn’t live. And I lost it. That’s when I just broke down completely.”
Carol: “I remember immediately that Lynn started crying and I wanted to stop him from
crying. And my response was to say, No, out loud—to stop this thing that was happening, the events
that were happening.”
Mojie: “Up until then I was keeping it together but at that I really lost it because somebody
is saying, ‘Your brother is either gonna die or he’s gonna be a vegetable.’”
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Monica: “And I remember feeling like everything completely stopped. I forgot all about the
pregnancy… I think I left my body or something. And I remember thinking this cannot be true. I
cannot go on without Jason.
The movie goes on describing Jason’s life from childhood until the “night it happened” and
shows home videos of him through all of those normal things that happen in a life, until it all goes
pear-shaped. The day after the hemorrhage, Mojie writes in her journal, “Half of me denies this is
happening... Don’t let your mind run wild because fear shoots fast and far. The world looks entirely
different when one’s brother is in the ICU.” Mojie continues with her journaling through the fall
months and into the winter, during which time Jason, like Antonio, lay in limbo.
“I wonder how it is for Jason,” she writes, forty-one days later, “floating in the netherworld.
Asleep, asleep, asleep. Darkness or dreams?”
On day seventy-nine: “Jason is out of the ICU and in the respiratory care unit. I never knew
gratitude until now.”
In Marie Howe’s poem “For Three Days,” that I first read exactly one year after Matthew’s
hemorrhage, on the summer solstice of 2006, she writes:
For three days now I've been trying to think of another word for
gratitude
because my brother could have died and didn't,
“A dream last night,” Mojie writes on the ninety-ninth day. “Jason was talking. Nothing
special, just normal. I looked up at him. He was giant. I was incredulous at his human spirit and the
ability to endure.”
And I am incredulous by how important those things which are “just normal” become when
you don’t know if someone will live or die or be a vegetable for the rest of his life. If only we could
appreciate what’s normal all of the time.
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Mojie continues: “Sometimes you have to sign the Waiver of Assumptions which reads:
Acknowledge that for better or for worse anything can be and anything can happen.”
One hundred and nine days after the bleed: “Jason was awake and alert today, though not
responsive. Trapped inside? Paralyzed? Patience, patience…” Mojie reads out loud from a chair in
the hospital corridor down which the word “patience” echoes.
It’s as if, last spring when I saw this documentary, that word “patience” was echoing still,
pulsing beneath the surface like a heartbeat. Patience, patience, patience.
Hey Dana.
I've been awake for the past 2 hours. It's 5am and I can't sleep so I decided to look
up this place, Friends in Deed. I can go to the Monday or Tuesday daytime group. I
think this will be a good thing, Dana. Let me know what you think. And remind me
to tell you about a documentary called “Life.Support.Music.”
Brandt and I took a spin up to the Catskills on his motorcycle, yesterday. It was
stunning. I felt like I was eating life. I couldn't look hard enough at the trees and sky.
It made me simultaneously happy and sad. I'm starting to feel a bit of anger or
annoyance about what's happening with Antonio. I want to feel my life without this
tragic undercurrent. I wonder if that's possible -- to separate -- to see this as HIS
thing. But, it's become OUR thing. MY thing.
How did Sage's visit go on Sunday morning?
Call me when you can.

Monica
PS – Please take that Christ candle out of Antonio’s room. The irony is not funny,
anymore.
I turned off my computer and sat zazen, but was too tired to focus. I realized that I had not
been accepting where Antonio was. I had not signed the Waiver of Assumptions. For the first few
weeks, I thought he’d get better and be back to himself, like those who recover from illness do. But
it had been six weeks and Antonio was as weak as ever. What was his body doing? And why? Would
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this go on and on like it did with Jason? Unanswerable questions led to self-judgments. I started to
judge my sitting and was determined to stay in a half-lotus until I could let go of everything. But
sensibility kicked in and I said, out loud, “Go to bed, Monica.”
In the morning there was a response from Dana:
Hi Mon.
i used to have those wake up at 2:30 am nights, sometimes productive, sometimes
horrific. anything in the daytime is challenging cause of alice, but can see that i know
i need to do SOMETHING and i am stalling...why? feeling same annoyance with
antonio and diffusion of boundaries, still sometimes thinking (self-centeredly) my
FAULT cause i wanted him and was having that whole drama... we took the candle
out of the room, maybe i can just ditch the silly guilt. glad you had a good ride up
north. Lucha is amazing OH and one more medical miracle, he DOES have an
infection in his spinal fluid... pseudomonas, a common nosocomial
(getitinthehospital) infection. treating with antibiotics... could be the final piece
before????? what? we are requesting a family meeting with the doctor. i'll keep you
posted of when would love for you to be there. xo d
I did not understand how an infection in the spinal fluid was a miracle. Maybe she meant
that it was a miracle they found the infection. Sounded serious, common as it might be.
hey monica,
lovely to see you saturday night. how was the rest of your weekend? i wrote a long
paper sunday and drank 6 cups of green tea.
would you mind sending me sage's email address? i'd like to say hi to him once in a
while. he seemed like he was withdrawing quite a bit on saturday night, eh?
xoxo
leah
Greg knew that I had been on the lookout for an aikido dojo. He walked past Brooklyn
Aikikai on his way home from the new space we were building out for the Zen Center and picked
me up a flier. I had told him that I wanted to practice aikido ever since I was in college, when my
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friend Jim (who almost died from a staph infection) had showed me a video of an awards ceremony
at his karate school. There was something about the ceremony and ritual that resonated with me. I
tried out Jim’s karate school, but the teacher was psychotic and Jim had a falling out with him. This
was when I managed a bookstore and came across my first books on Taoism and Buddhism. And
this was how I discovered that aikido was a martial art associated with Taoism. It was the only
completely defensive martial art form, having to do with harmonizing with the energy of your
attacker. Forget about karate. I wanted to learn aikido.
In Galway, I had gone with my housemate, the aikido practitioner with a motorcycle, to what
was, at that time, the only aikido dojo in the city. And again, there was an uncomfortable vibe with
the teacher. Eventually, a tai chi teacher moved into my house in Salthill. We became good friends
and I practiced with him for four years. For another year and a half, I tried out capoeira, which was
fun. But aikido continued to call. I would have searched out an aikido dojo when I first moved to
New York, if it hadn’t been for a swimming accident at Jones Beach.
It had been years since I swam in the Atlantic, where it meets the United States’ east coast. I
had swum in the Atlantic off the west coast of Ireland three times in the nine years I lived there.
Though the tropical current sweeps up the Irish coast making for some of the best diving in the
world, and there are palm trees in Galway, I refused to go back into that cold water. So I was excited
that particular sunny, end-of-summer, September day in New York, when Jon and I drove to Jones
Beach with our friends. While some sat smoking on the dunes, I went to the water’s edge. These
were the shores of my childhood, where I would spend hours playing in the waves, jumping into
their cresting lifts, and diving over their foaming breaks. It was exhilarating to be tumbled so badly
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that salt water rushed up my nose and down my throat. Sometimes, I’d come up choking, sea water
running out my nose. Not to be outdone by a mere wave, I would always go back in for more.
Though I was no longer a child, I was excited to play in the waves like one. The ocean was
rough in a fun sort of way, keeping me on my toes, literally, as I felt for the right moments to leap.
All went well until I dove into a wave that picked me up and slammed me. With slingshot force my
body flipped into a back handspring, only I didn’t land on my hands. One moment, I was playing in
the waves with childlike delight, and the next my body was contorted as fast as the catch on a
mousetrap. Snap. I landed backwards on my head. Slam. Right onto the ocean floor. Later, I was told
that Jones Beach was known for its riptides. At the time, I stood up and was too dazed from the sun,
waves, and sudden concussion (not to mention the weed I had smoked) to know that I was hurt. My
childhood instinct was to go back in for more, not to be outdone. But a second wave tripped me up,
and pushed me towards the shore. It was as if the sea had chewed me up and spat me out. I
stumbled over the dunes until I found the others, and when I sat down on the sand, it became clear
that I was hurt. I lay back with my head in Jon’s lap, while the others covered my legs with sand, for I
was shivering and my body had gone cold with shock. Jon tried his best to comfort me, but the way
he stroked my hair, like one would absent-mindedly pet a dog, frustrated me. Why couldn’t he be
more gentle, knowing and nurturing? I tried to tell him what I needed, but his hands felt unsure and
he just wasn’t doing it right. I started to cry, and everyone thought the tears were from the injury. It’s
true that my head was ringing from the accident, but my heart was breaking from the realization that
I was no longer in love with this man. For, when it came down to it, when I really needed to be
taken care of, Jon did not know what to do for me.
For years after that day at Jones Beach, my neck seized in the same spot whenever I was
emotionally upset. Brandt took to calling this my “Jon spot.” Emotional or not, the physical pain
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meant that aikido was out of the question. Iyengar yoga and deep-tissue massage helped, but it
would be four years after that riptide until I was finally ready to take on martial arts again.
It was all in my Measles dream, when I had red spots on my neck and Jon was unable to
comfort me. There were signs everywhere, telling me to let go of this man. It was in Yoko’s
metaphor, when she saw black spots in the sky that were really in her eyes, like our thoughts that we
think are real, but aren’t. Like how I wanted Jon to be somebody that he wasn’t. What I desired was
simply not there, like that finger reaching to touch itself, reaching and reaching until it was out of
reach.
The fall that Antonio lay unconscious in the ICU, and I was snipping those Jon strings, I was
finally ready to take on aikido. I went to Brooklyn Aikikai to observe a class and loved the space as
soon as I walked in. It was open, calm, and had minimalist Japanese décor. There were the obligatory
calligraphy wall hangings that I had seen on all zendo and temple walls. But I had never seen a wall
with swords neatly fastened in rows, or an altar with a massive set of antlers as a centerpiece. The
students all wore gis. The senior students wore hakamas. They lined up in a horizontal row, facing the
kamiza. The class began with three bells, just like in zazen. The teacher faced the students and
bowed. They bowed back and shouted something in Japanese. There was only one woman in the
class and her presence made a big difference to me. Could this be it, I wondered? A senior student
named Baisho was teaching the class because the teacher, Robert Savoca Sensei, was at a funeral.
Another omen?
Hi Monica!
Feels like a long time since we last checked in. This week was nuts. How are
you doing? How has the week been?
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I'm doing okay this week, although way too busy as usual. I'm dying for
Thanksgiving break. I'm actually going to spend Thanksgiving at 101 Bard
and try to spend some quality time with Antonio. Lately it feels I just come
and go so quickly from Staten Island but it's also hard to find time for a more
extended, relaxed stay.
I'm wondering a lot how Antonio is feeling, how his heart is doing, and what
he wants.
Hope to talk soon. I'll be home tonight after 9:30 if you want to chat.
Leah
I only just saw Leah last week, and had emailed her after that. The fact that she said it had
been a long time spoke to the intensity of how closely we’d been in contact since September.
I slept well and dreamed hard, got up, went to yoga class, then cleaned my flat. Cycling home
from work, I was glad to be coming back to a tidy apartment. I was feeling clear and strong again.
Just in time, too. Dana called having another meltdown.
“I just want something of him back,” she cried. “Anything.”
Halloween Day
Finally, the doctor scheduled a family meeting with us to discuss Antonio’s situation. It took
place on Halloween day.
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I took the crossing standing strong at the prow of the Staten Island Ferry and faced into the
wind, breathing into the moment with the water, sky, seagulls, industry and bridges. There was no
way to prepare myself for another hospital visit and what the doctor might say, except by
remembering my breath. It’s so hard to remember to breathe.
Dana, Marsh, Helz and I paced Antonio’s room for forty-five minutes waiting for the
Spanish interpreter, who never showed, and wondering where in hell the neurosurgeon was. Lucha
sat in a chair doing her cross-stitch. By the time Doctor Chang arrived, I was all geared up to
complain about, not only waiting that day for nearly an hour, but having to wait seven whole weeks
to even get this appointment. When we entered the meeting room, a simple room in the I.C.U. with
a table and chairs that took up most of the floor space, and I reached to shake his hand, the way
Antonio’s surgeon grasped mine was at once strong, solid and full of warmth. I held my tongue and
sat around the table with the others. Dr. Chang was patient and clear, with no air of rushing us, or
any kind of pretense, which further dissipated my anger. When I asked him if Antonio was in any
pain, he looked directly at me and answered with reassuring calm, “No, he isn’t in any pain.” Dana
jumped in,
“But when I asked him on a scale of one to ten to tell me how much his head hurt, he
clearly held up all five fingers on one hand.” This surprised me. How come I didn’t get such
responses from Antonio?
“The way he is experiencing pain is different from how pain is measured by us,” Dr. Chang
explained, “which is by indications of high blood pressure and increased heart rate, neither of which
he has. And although his condition is serious, he’s been through much worse. His situation can
return to critical at any moment—now, or at any time in the next year. The major problem at the
present is the cerebral infection. I’m not an infection specialist, but until the infection clears, he
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won’t be able to wake up properly.” He informed us that they’d been regularly inducing him in order
to deal with the infection. How come they didn’t inform us of these sedations? I had thought
Antonio wasn’t awake because he couldn’t wake up. Now, they were telling us he had been in and out
of an induced coma all along. Further, Dr. Chang explained that the supposed depression we’d been
convinced he must have been feeling was all in our minds. “He doesn’t have the same sense of reality
and time that you do,” Dr. Chang told us. “He doesn’t know how long he’s been here. He hasn’t
been laying there for the whole seven weeks thinking about the fact that he’s been laying there for
seven weeks. It’s likely he won’t remember most of this. So, it’s not a good idea to tell him things
about his condition and how long he’s been here. He shouldn’t be challenged right now.”
“That will only confuse him?” I asked.
“Just hold his hand and tell him who you are. That’s enough for now. He’s not in the twenty-
four-seven realm.” Antonio was not in the strained and stressed-out world of time that the rest of
us were operating in. He was in and out. Induced and not induced.
“That’s a relief,” Marsh said.
“The reason for one complication after another is because of the type of hemorrhage that
he had. It produced a cascade of effects.”
“Will it affect him cognitively?” Helz asked.
“Probably in subtle ways that his family will notice. There will be personality differences, but
mostly it will affect his motor skills.”
Lucha smiled, looking from one of us to the other, understanding only what was loosely
translated. We had no way of knowing how much she understood. What did she think, sitting there
watching us talk to the doctor who had operated for five hours on her son’s brain? Was she
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comforted by the fact that he was talking to us at all? Did she feel relieved that our little group had
taken charge? Did she trust us?
Dr. Chang came back to Antonio’s room with me and Dana, and was impressed to see him
moving his left leg. This was the first time he’d moved the left side of his body since the stroke. Did
Antonio know about the big meeting we had? Was he trying to show us that he was improving? Did
Antonio know that it was Halloween? This was his favorite time of year. Tomorrow the curtain
would slide apart and the spirits would have access to the realm of the living. Antonio had been
existing at the edge of this realm. Was this movement of his left side a sign that more of him would
be joining us, tomorrow?
By the time Doctor Change left, we were all feeling much better. Dana whispered, “Don’t
you think Doctor Chang is sexy? He’s hot in a ‘Lust Caution’ sort of way.” I had not seen “Lust
Caution,” but went along with Dana. We looked at Antonio, who had not looked sexy in some time.
But he looked so much better. There was color in his face, and a life-force glow emanated from him.
“His chi is strong,” Dana said.
Back at the house, I helped Marsh figure out Marigold’s Red Riding Hood cape. Alice took a
nap, which gave Dana a chance to create her Lorax costume. She had talked about being the Lorax
for Halloween for months. I was glad that she was pushing herself to follow through. Though
Halloween has always been my favorite holiday, I was not in the least inspired to design a costume.
The previous year, Antonio threw a Dia de los Muertos party that he had prepared for days and that
lasted for days. He made salsa verde and tamales. Some of those tamales were filled with the rooster
that used to run around the back garden. When I arrived at the party last year, my snake goddess
costume was almost finished. Marsh took the six-foot-long rubber cobra I found at a Halloween
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shop on Broadway into the basement and affixed it to a long piece of bamboo that I had cut from
the side porch area. Viola—I had my staff. To make this costume fit the Dead theme, I chose the
Egyptian Snake Goddess because in Egyptian mythology snakes guard the underworld. I spent
hours making a head dress with fabric and beads I had bought in the garment district. Lastly,
Antonio spent an hour painting my face with the Eye of Horus, but never got around to doing his
own makeup. He put so much energy into creating a successful party, but forgot to eat let alone get a
costume together. Then, he drank so much tequila on an empty stomach that he passed out on
Marsh’s grandmother’s sofa in the middle of everything.
The most marvelous part of that party was the altar room. When guests entered the house,
the first thing they noticed was the smell of burning copal. The altar room was the one next to the
front door. Most friends honored the request to bring a significant reminder of dead loved ones. As
the party progressed, the altar filled with photographs, letters, stones, candles, and other
memorabilia that surrounded the a blue skull centerpiece. My offering was a piece of slate from the
ruins of the thatched-roof cottage my great-grandmother grew up in, in Mayo, Ireland. I slept the
whole weekend in that altar room with its palpable energy of so many honored spirits.
Such memories made it impossible to get into the mood to celebrate Halloween without
Antonio. I put the photograph of me and Dana from last year’s party on the computer’s desktop in
the kitchen. She and I—Mother Earth and Egyptian Snake Goddess—smiled at the camera. Happy.
Sisters. Ready for whatever was next.
“Remember the next day?” Dana asked me. We were sitting on the living room floor and I
was watching her cut yellow felt for the Lorax’s moustache.
“What happened the next day?”
“You, me and Antonio went for a walk to Snug Harbor.”
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“We did?”
“And it felt like we were tripping.” Oh, yeah.
“Wow, Dana. I totally forgot about that.” It was November 2nd and the sacred Day of the
Dead energy had been strong. The sun shone and the three of us sat on the stage of the empty band
shell. I don’t remember whose head was on whose lap, or who was holding whose hand, but we
three were connected in silence and sunshine for a long while, completely unaware of such a thing as
time.
Dana worked her way around a piece of black felt now, cutting out eyeholes. “I’ve been
pissed off at Antonio, lately,” I admitted.
“Me too!” she said, looking up at me.
“I’ve been angry at him all week. It’s the first time I felt this way.”
“Me too!” She pointed the scissors at me. “I’ve been wanting to get him alone and tell him
I’ve had enough.”
“Yeah! I’ve been hoping to get him alone for five minutes so I can take him by the shoulders,
shake him and tell him, ‘Wake the fuck up! We’ve had enough’. Leah told me that when she and
Antonio were having a hard time about something, she would say, ‘This is not the time to withdraw,
Antonio. You need to be communicating with me through this.’ But he would shut down anyway. So,
I’m choosing to think that Antonio is being stubborn and willfully depressed. It’s easier than
believing that he really can’t wake up.”
“I’ve even been asking him if he wants to be here at all,” Dana said. “I was sure he must
want to die.”
“I’m so glad about what Dr. Chang told us, about how he doesn’t know he’s been laying
there for seven weeks,” I said.
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“What a lesson this is,” Dana said. Here, we’ve all been projecting onto a man who is simply
lying there with his hand on his head. Nothing more. What an amazing Buddhist teacher he is.”
Later that day, I read on the couch while Dana cut a jack-o-lantern on the side porch. I
looked through the open door, where I could see her determined face frown down as she jabbed
into the pumpkin’s soft flesh. You go girl, I thought. When the lanterns were ready, Dana brought
them onto the front porch and set tea lights inside. She put the Lorax costume over her head and we
walked up Bard Avenue and around the corner to find Red, the Woodcutter, and Kitty Cat
(Marigold, Marsh, and Alice). On the way, I quizzed Dana on what exactly the deal with the
infection was.
“And what is this shunt thing the doctor kept talking about? Why, in a worst-case scenario,
might they have to give him a permanent one?” She explained how serious it was that Antonio had
an infection in his cerebral fluid.
“It’s like having meningitis,” she said. “Because there’s an infection, there is a build-up of
cerebral fluid.
“Where does this fluid go?”
“In the brain are two reservoir-like areas that hold this fluid. The catheter in his head is there
in order to drain this fluid into the area around the abdominal organs, called the paritoneum.” Dana
told me that the shunt scares her. “I’m sure Antonio would prefer to die than to have to walk around
for the rest of his life with a permanent shunt in his body.”
When we got back to the house, I sat on the front porch with Marigold and we handed out
candy to trick-or-treaters. I thought of the competitions my siblings and I would have, racing around
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the neighborhood with pillowcases until they were filled to the brim. Then, we’d go into the
basement and dump our loot into piles on the floor, at which point a serious trading game would
commence. “I’ll give you my Blow Pop for two Mary Jane’s.” Somehow, the oldest of us seven
would always end up with a pile double in size to the rest of ours.
“Trick-or-treat,” a little boy dressed up as the grim reaper held up a UNICEF box. Marigold
dropped in a few coins and we watched him walk away, his tall homemade cane wobbling at the top.
When I was in the sixth grade, my teacher, Mrs. Reddington, had passed around UNICEF boxes to
our class. I didn’t know what UNICEF was, but understood I was meant to take the box trick-or-
treating with me. When I brought mine home, my mother made me throw it out. I remembered how
confused and embarrassed I was when I went back to school and explained to my teacher that I
wasn’t allowed to collect for UNICEF since they supported killing babies. That was around the same
year I went on my first march in Washington D.C. My mother had painted a Bible verse on a banner,
which my older brother and I held up as we walked for the March for Life. Years later, when I was in
college and marched in D.C. for the second time, it was for Gay Rights.
“What are you thinking about?” Marigold asked me, looking into my face with inquisitive
blue eyes. “Just about how lucky you are,” I said, putting my arm around her and pulling her close.
Marigold and Alice have an older sister, Juna, who lives in Seattle with her two mom’s. Marsh is
Juna’s biological dad, and the families get together every summer for vacation. Antonio and I would
often marvel at the open-minded and progressive upbringing Marsh’s three girls had. Dana planned
to homeschool Marigold after her year at kindergarten was over.
Antonio had told me about his experience at school when he was eight-years-old.
“There was a teacher. His name was Geraldo. This teacher was a very religious guy. And he
wanted me to paint a Christ, and I refused. So, he calls my mom. My mom comes. And I remember
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hearing this guy tell my mom that I didn’t believe in God. ‘How is that possible?’ he asked her. So, he
wanted me out of his school because I was a bad influence on the kids. Yes, I was the only one
didn’t believe in God. Not only that. I was open about it.”
“When I was eight, I had my first full year at a Baptist Christian School. We sat around
singing Jesus songs and learning Bible verses,” I told Antonio. “But I was thoroughly brainwashed. It
didn’t occur to me to doubt any of it. I wasn’t considered a bad influence on kids until I was in
college and my mother found out I slept with women. Then, she didn’t want me around my two
youngest siblings.”
“Well, I always knew it was shit,” Antonio said. “And so that teacher… I remember that day.
That day, I was the one in charge of reciting a poem. Once I finished with the poem, the teacher,
who was in a fighting mood, asked me,
‘Antonio, do you believe in God?’ And I said,
‘No, I do not.’
‘Why?’ He challenged me. ‘So, why you don’t believe in God?’
‘Because I don’t.’ I think that I said, ‘I don’t see it. I don’t see why. I just don’t.’ And then he
said to me,
‘Who gave you the right to not believe in God?’ And I said to him,
‘The same one that gave you the right to believe.’ And he gets really pissed. Yeah, I was never
permitted go back to that school again.”
“You were kicked out of school at eight-years-old?”
“Yeah.”
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Back at the hospital, they had moved Antonio to a new ICU room with a window that
looked out onto the parking lot. The hope was that sunlight might help. I noticed that the oxygen
mask had been removed from over the trach and a Passy-Muir valve was in place. This valve meant
that Antonio would be able to speak when he was ready. When he started coughing, I recognized,
for the first time since September 21 st, an Antonio sound. It was weak, but it was his cough. A purple
sign above his bed said, “WARNING: tracheotomy tube cuff must be completely deflated before
placing the Passy-Muir Valve (PMV ). Patient will be unable to breathe if cuff is not completely
deflated.” The whiteboard that told the date and attending RN, MD, and NA, also had a Goals
section. It had said, “Wean from vent,” forever. Then, it said, “Less sedation.” More recently,
“Awake. Less sedation.” Then, “R. O. M.” for range of movement. Now, it said, “Normal temp.”
The machine stated that his body temperature was 100.8. There had been so many medical changes
with Antonio. I rarely bothered to read the whiteboard, or ask for the information Dana was able to
decipher, because to me the reality was that he was lying there, asleep. Before I left, he coughed
again and drew his legs up, turning toward his side. This movement was so much more human than
the flat-on-the-back version we’d had for so long.
“Can you open your eyes, Antonio?” He cracked the left one open with what seemed like
great effort. Could he see me? His eye did not seem focused. “If you can, squeeze my hand,” I said,
hoping. “If you can, try to say something. Hi. Antonio. Monkia.” (Monkia is what Marigold used to
call me before she could say my name, and it had become a nickname for me at the house.) But
Antonio said nada. He drifted off, again. “Hasta maňana,” I told him. “En el Dia de los Muertos.”
Jon and I met at a Halloween party that Juliette and her partner had thrown at their house in
the year 2000. I knew Juliette from working on the Galway market. Jon knew Derek from the music
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scene. Leading up to that party, friends had been joking that I was a witch, because I had been
making homemade herbal tinctures and all-natural body products, bottling them and selling them on
my market stall. I’d spend hours at the stove stirring oils into beeswax. This was around the time that
I got attuned in Reiki. I also met with so-called healers who sold me crystals and did past-life
regressions. I was told, among other things, that I had been tortured for being a witch. Well, I had
never dressed as a witch for Halloween, and thought it would be amusing to play out the whole
thing. I found a “Sexy Witch” outfit at the costume shop, complete with long black wig, and short
leopard-print skirt. I applied black eyeliner, blue lipstick, and brought a stick of sage as a prop to the
party. There was a full moon that night. Mushroom tea and tablets of ecstasy were passed around.
The magic kicked in when I lit the sage. Juliette walked into the room, where a bunch of us sat
before a fire.
“I want to be smudged!” she declared. Standing there with her gorgeous shaved head and
long white gown, she looked like a goddess.
“You deserve to be smudged,” I said, and went around her three times with the stick of sage.
Next thing I knew, there was a queue of tripping people wanting to be smudged. Derek came in,
took in the scene, and invited me into the music room across the hallway. I followed him through
the door and into a small smoke-filled room that had a hopping Irish session happening. Ten or
fifteen musicians were jamming away, but when I stepped in with my sexy witch costume and smoky
stick of sage, they all looked my way. Embarrassed by all that attention, I stepped back into the
hallway. A minute later, Derek followed me out, walked me toward the front door with his arm
around me, and whispered into my ear.
“Are you casting a spell on my party?” He was serious. I stopped and looked at him. “You
did something in that room,” he said.
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“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Before you went in there, it was really smoky from all the fags, but no one let me open a
window cause it’s so cold out. But you came in with all that sage smoke, and when you left they
opened the window. The smoke went out the window, and the energy shifted. The music changed
and everyone got happier. So what I want to know is, are you casting a spell on my party?”
“I guess I am,” I said. “But I didn’t mean to.”
“Is it a good spell or a bad spell?” I thought of when Dorothy asked Glinda if she were a
good witch or a bad witch.
“A good one, of course,” I smiled.
“That’s all I wanted to know,” he said. “Now, I think you should smudge the front doorway
cause someone’s coming.” And so I did. And that’s when Jon arrived. Next thing, I heard someone
say,
“There’s Jon Hicks with a joint,” and I looked to see this man leaning against the doorframe,
a long white joint dangling from the corner of his mouth. He was looking at me, clearly amused.
“What are you burning?” he asked.
“Sage,” I said.
“Are you one?” he asked. Next thing, we were sitting in the hallway and I was telling him all
about the past-life stuff. He shared his joint and listened to my babble on and on. We talked all night
long and didn’t stop talking for many years. Jon called me his witch, and when he introduced me to
people, he would tell them I had cast a spell on him.
Past midnight on Halloween night, on the Day of the Dead morning, when the veil between
the living and the dead began to thin, I lay on a guest bed in last year’s altar room and remembered
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that Halloween I had met Jon, nine years before. If there was anything to my having any ability to
cast spells, now was the time to tap into that energy. I asked the spirits of health and abundance to
come, guide, protect, and bring their power and life-giving breath into that night and on through the
morning. We all needed a day of feeling like everything was moving forward with our boy. I yearned
for this, but reminded myself to let go and remember that what was happening now was perfect.
This was the only way I would be able to grow into acceptance and gratefulness towards what was to
be.
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NOVEMBER
“I stroke my mother’s poor head and concentrate: everything

depends on me now. If I don’t move, and pray hard, I can make the
pain go away.”
Isabelle Allende, Paula
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Dia de Los Muertos
Hey Sage.
I’m in Staten Island. I saw Antonio, yesterday, and he looked

better than I’ve seen him. There was color in his face and he
was moving around a lot — he even moved his left leg for the
first time! We met with his doctor, who told us that as soon as
they can get rid of the infection, then he will be more awake
and can start to rehabilitate. He informed us that they’ve been
sedating him periodically for the past couple of weeks, which
explains why he’s been sleeping so much and not responsive.
Why they don’t tell us (or at least Dana) these things is
beyond me. It was a big relief to hear that there’s a reason for
his lethargy.
I haven’t been to see him yet, today. We’ve set up a Dia de los
Muertos altar and Lucha is making yummy Mexican soup and
mole. It’s great to have her here. If only I spoke Spanish!
I hope you are doing okay.
Lots of love,
Monica
Dana and Marsh brought Alice and Marigold into the ICU to see Antonio, after some of the
nurses said they would turn a blind eye. Marigold went in first, Dana told me. Because she had never
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even seen Antonio asleep, she and was fascinated by the idea. Dana had a hope that her daughters’
laughter and lightheartedness would be good for Antonio. As if, upon hearing the songs he used to
sing with them, he’d snap out of it. Antonio had taken care of Marigold while she watched her
mother give birth to Alice. Marigold had not been sheltered from life’s intensities. But when she
walked into the ICU trauma ward and took one look at Antonio lying there so still and small, she
became still and small, herself.
“He’s just sleeping,” she whimpered, hiding behind Marsh. “Can we go home now?”
Alice’s visit was much easier. The difference in age between three and five is vast when it
comes to comprehending the gravity of certain situations. Marigold was too close to understanding
how serious things were. Alice was naïve enough to have no qualms about singing Antonio her
favorite song, and then playing her grabbing game with Antonio’s hand. In this game, she would put
her hand close to his face and then pull it away, shrieking in delight when he would try to grab it. In
the ICU, on Dia de los Muertos, Dana held Alice near Antonio’s foot, where Alice grabbed his big
toe. Then, Dana brought Alice up to where she could reach his hand, shoulder, and his chest. When
Alice’s hand was near his chin, Dana said, “Better be careful or he’s gonna getchoo!” Quick as
anything Antonio snapped his hand over Alice’s. His eyes stayed closed and his face remained
expressionless, but this spontaneous instinctive movement was enough for us to be even more
convinced that—Yes, he is in there!
Lucha cooked traditional Oaxan dishes all day long, and Dana, Alice and I went shopping in
Port Richmond to find ingredients for the mole, salsa verde and maize soup. We had nicknamed this
area of Staten Island, “Mexico Town,” because of its strip of Mexican restaurants and tiendas. I had
been looking forward to making Antonio-food, partly because I wanted to feel closer to him and
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partly because I knew he would appreciate it. If he were awake, he’d be making the tamales, drinking
Coronas, dancing to Mexican music. Instead of cheering me up, though, it was hard to be in Mexico
Town without him. Last time I was there, he had treated me to a Mexican dinner that was served by
a waiter who was surprised that I could take the heat of the red salsa, and surprised that Antonio
was Mexican. Antonio laughed so hard.
“See?” he said. “They never believe that I’m Mexican. It’s because I don’t look Mexican.
That’s all what it is,” he laughed.
Mexico Town was a ghost town without that laugh. And I couldn’t escape a dreaded sense
that Antonio was dead and we were shopping for his funeral. We went into a bakery and Dana
ordered pan de muertos, the traditional bread for the dead. Alice and I window-shopped the
fluorescent-colored pastries and sugar skulls. “I want that one,” Alice said, pointing to a pumpkin-
shaped cookie slathered in orange icing. “But I’m not allowed to eat it.” I marveled at her ability to
simultaneously acknowledge her desires and understand her restrictions. She was only three and had
not eaten much cake or candy. Halloween night, she came home with a bag filled with chocolate and
quite happily explained to me that she knew she couldn’t eat most of it. Holding Alice’s hand, we
walked along the dessert display.
“If you could get anything here that you wanted, and were allowed to eat it,” I said, “what
would it be?” She smiled up at me and drew her finger down the glass case past the cookies and
cupcakes, finally pointing to a skeleton cookie.
“That one!” she said licking her lips, but then pointing to another cookie. “No, that one!
And that one, and that one, and that one!”
“I would eat that one,” I said, pointing to a Big Bird cupcake.
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“I would eat that one,” she said, pointing to an éclair. We played our game until Dana came
with the bread. The tacit glance she and I exchanged said how much shopping in Mexico Town
without Antonio sucked.
That afternoon, Lucha, Dana, Helz, and I went to visit Antonio. We walked into his room
and, without saying a word, went straight to his bed and lay our hands over his body. I remember
being happy that Lucha participated. I had no idea if she had done this sort of thing before. I knew
she was devoutly Catholic, so wondered if she was acting out of total desperation. Or maybe this
was how devout Catholics acted too. What was the difference between something called Reiki, and
the simple act of placing your hands on a loved one? I was beyond caring about what the hospital
staff or anyone else thought of us crazy hippy witches performing magic rituals around the crazy
Mexican’s bed. This had become our territory. Last week, Dana had marched past security after
visiting hours, and when they called out that visiting hours were over, she kept right on going and
said, “I’ve got special privileges at this hospital.” That’s right. We had ceased abiding by hospital
rules. We came and went when we wanted, and for the most part nobody got in our way. Dana and
Helz had even taken to turning down the loud beeping machines and suctioning Antonio when the
mucous in his throat built up.
After nearly an hour of transmitting universal loving energy through our hands, Lucha sat
down in her chair with her cross-stitch. Dana massaged Antonio’s right leg and I rubbed some
lotion onto his face. When Dana went to get something on the nightstand, he started pumping his
leg up and down.
“Dana, he’s moving his leg,” I said. “He wants you to keep massaging him.” She smiled at
me like, Yeah, right. Our boy had become such a blackboard for our projections. Still, I was certain
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that he wanted his leg massaged, so I massaged it and talked to him. Dana took the pulse detector
off his left middle finger so she could rub his hand. We all knew that he didn’t like that thing
snapped onto his finger. But whenever we took it off, a machine would beep and nurses would
come running in. Dana put the detector on her finger to prevent the beeping, but the machine
started up anyway.
“Dana’s messing with the machines again, Antonio,” I said.
“Which one?” he asked in a small clear voice. I stared. Did he just speak? I thought he wasn’t
able to use his vocal chords without the trach attachment. My brain scrambled to understand what
happening, which meant resorting to logic. How could Antonio possibly speak without the PUV
attachment? Was I hearing things?
“He just said, ‘Which one,’” I said. Dana and Helz came closer and we gawked at him. He
parted his lips and opened his mouth as if to say more, but nothing came out. “I’ll get the nurse to
put the attachment on. I think he wants to talk to us.” I ran to find Valerie, who came right in and
screwed the piece of plastic into the tube, and put the air tubes up his nose.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Cruz, but you’ll need some oxygen going in you,” she said.
“He pulled them out last time I was here and he was fine,” Helz whispered to me. Dana
leaned over Antonio and asked him a question. He responded in Spanish—another small but
distinct phrase.
“Yes!” Dana answered. She was holding both of his shoulders and smiling at him.
“What did he ask you?” I asked.
“I have no idea,” Dana said. “But whatever it was, I agree with him one-hundred percent!”
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We motioned Lucha over, and she lost no time talking to him. From the fragments I could
understand, I got that she was telling him about the Skype conversation she had just had with his
brothers and sister. His eyes were closed, but he was nodding.
“Antonio,” Dana asked, “do you want me to put a wet cloth on your forehead?” He
nodded. “Say, ‘si’,” she commanded.
“Si,” he whispered.
“Say, ‘no’,” she said.
“No,” he whispered.
“Say, ‘Happy Dia de los Muertos,’” she said. Nothing. “Say, ‘I’m gonna get out of here’.”
More nothing.
“Say, ‘Shut the fuck up with your telling me what to say, Dana,’” I said. We were all
laughing, giddy as hell. Somehow, Antonio made it clear that he wanted to have his back rubbed.
It’s hard to explain how we knew what he wanted, because communication at that level is so subtle.
But we had developed an intuitive understanding and knew, by the way he moved his shoulder and
head to the side, like a baby trying to turn onto his stomach, that he wanted his back rubbed. So I
rubbed his back and Helz and Lucha worked his legs. But if anyone let a leg go, he shook it until it
was being massaged again. Suddenly, he shot his right leg straight up in the air and started
scratching it. How incredibly uncomfortable it must have been for him to start to wake after being
bed-ridden for a month and a half. But how delighted we were at his discomfort! Antonio was
coming to life, remembering how to move. When he moved his left arm and squeezed Dana’s
fingers with his left hand, we were ecstatic. Dana dipped a sponge-stick in water and instructed him
to put it into his mouth, but not to swallow.
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“Remember the last time when you swallowed water and then started choking? You’re not
ready to swallow anything, but you can wet your lips and mouth on the sponge. Okay?” He stuck it
into his mouth and sucked like a starving infant. Dana tried to pull it away, but he clenched his
teeth. Expertly, Dana got the sponge out of his mouth before too much water went down his
throat.
I looked at the clock. Two hours had gone by. Stacy was due on the next ferry and I
promised to pick her up.
“I have to go now, Antonio,” I explained. “I have to meet Stacy at the ferry. But I’ll be back
later, okay? I love you.”
“I uh ooh ooh,” he said. I love you too. At that, I literally hung my head and cried. I walked
out of that ICU trauma ward stunned, too overwhelmed to feel as happy as I knew I was.
When I got home, there was an email from Helz with an attachment of the
photograph taken at the hospital that weekend.
hey girl,
here’s the photo from the hospital.

hope the ferry was a sweet ride. See ya next
weekend.
love love, helz xxx
A nurse had taken our photo with Antonio, after the meeting with Dr. Chang. It was the
only photograph taken of Antonio’s time in ICU. It never felt right to take pictures, but it seemed
necessary to document our boy on his favorite holiday weekend. It’s an odd photograph. Antonio
could be on his deathbed, or he could be dead. His face is turned away from the camera. We’re
standing around him smiling, like hospital tourists. That was how normal the crisis had become.
The picture, however surreal, does capture something of how we acted around Antonio’s bed. The
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ICU had become our hangout, and in that, we did what people do when they hang. We gossiped,
joked, laughed, and reminisced. That photograph summed up how distanced we had to make
ourselves in order to keep going.
I remember when I visited Jim in the ICU that time, before he was given the green light
from having had five major organs shut down, when the doctors were still feeling “cautiously
optimistic.” I was in a mild state of shock at the sight of my dear friend hooked up with all those
machines breathing for him. Our friend, Ken, who was in medical school at the time, introduced
himself to the doctor and explained that he was doing his residency. I remember how I bristled
when the doctor shook Ken’s hand directly over Jim’s body, as if he weren’t even there. I suppose
that’s what happens. People become distanced in order to deal.
Week Eight
And then it all stopped. Again. That first week in November there was nothing more from
Antonio. It was like he woke up to… to what? Had the magic of the spirit world allowed the
breakthrough on that ominous day between summer and winter to show us that he was still there?
Or, had it allowed him say goodbye? Would that be it from Antonio?
These questions haunted my sleep every night that week. I continued to hold onto the last
thing he told me. The last thing he told any of us before he started slipping away:
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I’m not gonna die, goddamit!
I dream that Antonio is walking around, still connected to hospital apparatus.

He’s asking serious, deliberate and practical questions about his situation.
That week, I had another phone dokusan with my Teacher. Another phone conversation
with no eye contact or gestures that might reflect information about what she thought about what I
told her. I sat zazen to ready myself for another stilted interaction. I tried to convince myself that
the phone was better than being face to face because I could practice being aware of how my
projections came from what I perceived to be uncomfortable silences. She thinks this or that of me.
I’m boring her. She’s had enough of me.
I called my Teacher and I tried. This time, I shared with her the examples I had written
about the precept connected with meeting others on equal ground. The recurring feeling at the root
continued to be, I’m not good enough. I investigated this with her, telling her, “If I give enough to
Antonio, I’ll appear to be a good person. If I pull off a successful auction for the Zen Center,
people will see that I’m committed. There is a constant feeling that I need to place myself above
others, even above my own self. I need to do more than I have the energy for.”
“Where do these feelings come from?” she asked.
“From a childhood of being made to feel like I wasn’t doing enough, or wasn’t doing things
right.”
“How does that make you feel now, in the examples you’ve given me?”
“I feel a restriction in my chest. A tightness.”
“A constriction around your heart?”
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“In my chest area, so I guess so. I wasn’t thinking about it that way, but my heart’s in my
chest.” She didn’t respond for a moment. Did she notice the edginess in my voice? Why was this so
difficult?
“Anything else?” she finally asked. I tried to think of something else but emitted a small,
“No.” I’d done this exercise a million times in therapy. I knew the process. I was aware of where my
stuff came from. Why, though, had I just said, “No” in the voice of a hurt little girl?
“Well, can you allow yourself to feel that restriction?”
“Yes.” It was hard to ignore.
“Does anything come up for you around that when it’s happening?” I didn’t have an answer.
I didn’t think anything else was coming up. I did feel resistance, but since I was sure she sensed it, it
didn’t need to be said. There was silence. She gave me nothing. I missed my therapist. I got more
work done with her. She felt more with me. I didn’t know what she was driving at. What did she
mean about anything else coming up, anyway?
“What do you mean?” I asked, trying to keep my voice even.
“Can you open up to the feeling of restriction while it’s happening?”
I thought of all those times I had consciously pulled my shoulders back and drawn my hands
along my collar bone from my breast plate out, like I had learned in yoga, to help an opening occur.
I worked so hard at those things all the time.
“Yes,” I managed.
“And can you allow yourself to be with those feelings of ‘not good enough’ and the
restriction?”
“I can,” I said. Where was this going? Was she getting frustrated with me? Or was the
frustration coming from me? I wanted to get off the phone.
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“Well, what comes up for you? What other feelings arise?” she asked, pressing me.
“I’ll have to focus on that one,” I said, trying to worm out while trying not to sound
sarcastic. Another uncomfortable silence. I changed the subject, determined to say something she
would appreciate.
“I’m going to go the zendo to sit during the week, with Theresa. She’s been sitting all day
on Tuesdays and Thursdays,” I said, sure that my willingness to bring my home practice to support
someone else—a beginning student— was honorable.
“Great,” she said. “Sitting with Theresa can help you with your home practice.”
“I already sit at home,” I mumbled. I had told her about my home practice—that I sit
practically every day and have been for years. Had she forgotten? Did she take me for someone else?
I tried a different tactic. Maybe if I told her that I’d spoken with John High and Greg about the
writing group, then she’d see my effort.
“I’m not in a hurry to start the writing group,” was her response. “I’d like you to strengthen
your practice.” But my practice was strong! Why was she not seeing or getting me? Then, she asked
if I was still off marijuana, and I said I was, wondering if she believed me.
“Keep paying attention to what’s coming up around that,” she said.
“I will,” I said. Nothing had been coming up around that.
“Carry on,” she told me, and that was that. When we hung up, I brooded on how she didn’t
seem to have any idea how long I’d been practicing or how serious I was about my practice. I’d
been meditating for more than fifteen years, but still I was made to feel like I was not good enough.
Part of me was also aware that my Teacher was merely meeting me where I was at. She was
getting to know me and could only go with what I presented to her. It was just so hard to be my
true self over the phone. Maybe if this were face to face, I told myself, it would be easier. I need eye
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contact. Communicating without eye contact was like talking to my father. How many times had I
looked into his eyes, begging to be understood, pleading for compassion. Yearning for him to see
that I was trying as hard as I could to be good. This was all so familiar. How could I synthesize so
many emotions into a phone conversation that could possibly show her my understanding as well
as my confusion? How could I communicate my fear about Antonio and regret about Jon? How
could I convince her of my commitment to my practice when I wanted to throw the phone across
the room? I could so easily picture her looking at her watch and drumming her fingers on the table.
And then, I felt it. It was there all along—that restrictive feeling in my chest. The insidious
doubt—She doesn’t get me. She doesn’t know how hard I’ve been working through these things for years. She
doesn’t think I have a strong practice. These feelings were so much a part of me that I nearly overlooked
a golden moment of opportunity to pay attention to how self-destructive they were. There in my
chair, I sat with the doubt. I breathed into it and investigated.
I’m not good enough? Where exactly is this feeling?
In my chest.
What other feelings are there?
Sadness. Grief.
My eyes filled with tears as the emotions slid down from my chest and settled in my
stomach, into a deep and familiar pit of despondency and self-judgment.
You didn’t do well enough in the phone exchange. You didn’t answer the right way. It’s your fault she doesn’t
get you.
Breathing more deeply into that pain, I allowed it in. I watched how fast my pattern of
avoidance tried to pull it right back out. I fantasized that maybe I could make myself feel better by
telling myself that I was good enough. But the affirmation didn’t ring true. I watched the self-pity
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that accompanied the reminders of where this all came from. I allowed the questions that
maintained this state of mind:
Did my father tell me I was a stupid kid one time too many? Was my mother’s distance too great for me to
have any confidence in myself? Would I ever clear away those old pieces of my past that continued to haunt me?
And then I watched the defenses:
But I’ve come so far, as have my parents, and we have a good relationship, now. She has no idea how hard
I’ve worked.
The resentment:
She’s not even paying attention to where I’m at. I tell her things that she forgets. Maybe she’s the wrong
teacher for me… My parents will never really get me. Jon can’t be the man I want him to be.
The confusion:
Why do I need her to know so badly? Why this ancient need for understanding?
I wanted to curl up in bed and wait until the emotions went away. But instead, I tucked into a
half lotus and sat with them until they dissolved.
After a forty-minute lesson on food names in Spanish class on the Wednesday of that first
week in November, I was starving and in desperate need of a coffee. I had given a presentation on
Mexican food, explaining to the class how I had bought mole por la arroz y ingredientes por el guacamole a
felicidad de Días de los Muertos fíneme semana. It then made sense to go across the street from the
Spanish school to the Mexican restaurant. I asked the host to seat me in what turned out to be the
most awkward table in the place. But it was near the only window and I wanted sunlight. We
squeezed through a tight long row of back-to-back seats. When I finally got to my table and sat
down, there was a severe draft of cold air coming from the window. I looked around the restaurant.
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The table to my left seated a party of sixteen; eight down each side. They were drinking margaritas
and cocktails trimmed with fruit, and were having a good time in a lunch-party sort of way. At the
other tables, I noted that most of the patrons wore suits and all appeared to be on lunch from
nearby offices. Hungry as I was, I entertained a thought about pretending to go to the bathroom
and just walking out. But I took a breath and reprimanded myself. Just order some food and eat. You’re
here, now. Don’t draw attention to yourself. Don’t be so fussy. But no one had arrived with a menu yet, and
everyone in the restaurant was way too jovial. Then, I noticed the lima bean-green paint clinging to
the walls like terminally ill paste. The draft blew more cold air in. That was it. I dug my phone out
of my bag, made as if to read a new text, puzzled my brow to show that the message was
important, stood up and squeezed myself past the happy table and toward the exit. When I reach
the door, I told the host, “I’m sorry but I have a phone call I have to take.” I knew I was being
ridiculous, play-acting a role that nobody else was interested in or even knew about. It was doubtful
anyone saw me look at my phone and narrow my eyebrows and why would anyone care, anyway? I
knew all of this, but continued with my drama until I was out on the street. Walking past more
people in suits, I passed a restaurant and peered through the windows to see a waiter serve a whole
lobster on a large platter to a woman who didn’t even look at it when he set it down in front of her.
The crustacean lay there, absorbing the space in between her and another woman, who was
listening with her eyelids slit and head tilted slightly back, just enough to be looking down her nose
at her companion, who gesticulated over the lobster with no clue how boring her story must have
been. A caffeine headache was coming on. I needed water and a good meal and a coffee. But I
needed those things in the right setting. I took the ‘6’ to Bleeker, transferred to the ‘V’, got out in
the East Village, ending up at Caravan of Dreams. There, I sat sipping a strong hot black coffee.
The staff were genuine and friendly. Patrons conversed in an easy-going, lively way. A cute waiter
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brought me my side of guac and blue corn tortillas, and I relaxed against a wooden bench listening
to Radiohead. The décor was of dark wood and brick, lit with tasteful low-hanging lights. Much,
much better. My phone rang. Marsh.
“Hey, Marsh,” I said, digging guac onto a tortilla.
“Hi, Monica.”
“You sound like you’re in a good mood.”
“Yeah, I just came from the hospital and it was a good visit.”
“Tell me more.”
“Well, it was really great. Antonio squeezed my hand.”
“He did? What happened?” I picked up my cup.
“He just squeezed my hand. He knew it was me. It was the first contact I’ve had from him
in seven weeks.” I put down my cup. Seven fucking weeks.
“Wow, Marsh. That’s amazing,” I said. It was amazing that Antonio made contact with
Marsh, and it was astounding that a simple hand squeeze could be that amazing.
“I know. It felt really good,” Marsh said. The hopes I had been pushing down willingly flew
up again. I couldn’t wait for the weekend when I would be able to get back to Staten Island. Please
stay awake for me, Antonio.
“Any more signs of talking?” I asked.
“No,” Marsh said, and we had one of those phone pauses where it was clear that both
people were thinking the same thing, so there was no point in speaking. What we were thinking was
that we didn’t want to focus on the no-more-talking issue. We would prefer instead to think about
the hand-squeezing progress. We were willing to take what we could get.
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“How are the girls,” I asked, ever the expert on changing the subject after phone silences.
We chatted about Marigold and Alice, while I watched the two Latino chefs in their t-shirts and
baseball caps put live-food dishes out and ding the bell. Finally, my ginger stir-fry with tempeh over
brown rice arrived.
“Did you hear about what happened with the respiratory specialist?” Marsh asked.
“No… what?”
“Helz got him taken out of the ward.”
“She did? Why? What happened?”
“Apparently, he was really rough with Antonio and one of the nurses suggested that she
write a letter, so she did.”
“What do you mean, rough? What did he do?”
“He came in to check on him and was just really insensitive. He put a mask on Antonio’s
face and the rubber band snapped over his bad eye.”
“What’s wrong with his eye?”
“It’s the right one, just beneath the incision they made for the surgery. It’s been bothering
him. Dana thinks it’s infected.”
“Is that why he’s always rubbing it?” I asked.
“I guess so. Anyway, when the rubber band snapped over his eye, the nurse didn’t notice or
do anything to move it. Helz was too upset and shocked to even say anything.”
“What is wrong with people?”
“I guess they think they can take their shit out on unconscious patients.”
“That’s just really cruel.”
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“Well, anyway, Helz wrote a letter to the head of the building and the guy was taken out of
that ward immediately.”
“That’s good. I wish we could take Antonio out of the ward. It’s such a horrible place. It’s
draining him.” They saved his life, sure, but now they were sucking back it out of him. Was he ever
going to wake up? I looked past a plethora of plants around the door of the restaurant, out onto a
bright fall day. Please let him wake up.
There was still nothing from Antonio by Thursday of the first week in November, the day I
started aikido training. Nervous as I was to go to a new place and start at the beginning, I was
excited. I put on my gi, which felt extra white and stiff compared to the worn-in ones the others
sported. The woman who had been in the class I had observed showed me how to tie the belt and
fold the left lapel over the right. I had folded the right over the left which, I learned, is done only
when a person is dead. I was told to take out my nose ring, earrings and necklace, and to tie my hair
up in a ponytail. She showed me the ritual when entering the dojo, how each student gets on their
knees in the traditional Japanese posture called seiza, and bows once to the kamiza and once to the
entire space. There were about six other students. A couple of minutes before class was due to
start, we all sat seiza in a line, facing the kamiza. A senior student looked back at the clock, got up
and walked to the dojo entrance, knelt in front of a large bell, bowed, and took the mallet from its
slot. When he hit the bell, the sound reverberated and my adrenaline pumped. He hit the bell a
second time, and a third. Then, returned the mallet, bowed to the bell and came back to join us in
line. In a moment, Sensei appeared. His head was freshly shaven. The swiftness and intensity with
which he carried himself both intrigued and intimidated me. He walked to the center of the room,
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knelt directly in front of the kamiza with his back to us. When he bowed, we bowed with him.
Then, he turned to face us and bowed again, with us. “Onegai Shimasu!” everyone shouted.
The class was a blur. I did my best to keep up, but was surprised by how rigorous the
training was. I knew it would be hard, but not this hard. Soon, I was sweating. I rarely sweat. But
after class, I was surprised that it was possible to feel that good inside my body. It had been a long
time. The other students were supportive, taking me right in with warmth, affection and
encouragement. I knew that I had found another community I could connect with that felt like
home. I had not felt that since discovering the Brooklyn Zen Center.
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Week Nine
The next time I called my Teacher, I told her how I felt like she was not getting me. I
jumped right in and explained how much I had been doing. I said I supported the sangha all the
time, reminded her about the fund-raising auction I was hosting, about being on the kitchen
committee for the center’s build-out of the new space. I told her I had been supporting Theresa in
her practice, and went through my list of not-being-seen moments.
“What does that mean for you?” she asked.
“It makes me feel like I’m not good enough.” Hearing myself say this, I realized more fully
—with my heart, not just my intellect—that this was not about my Teahcer. This was about me.
This was old. Ancient. This was my karma. This was from my mother and her mother; my father
and his father. Back and back went the ancient twisted karma of my ancestors, which I had told her
would end with me.
“I’ll be that person for you to project onto around not feeling good enough, if it will help
you to work through this,” she said, offering me an immense gift. “Let’s work through it,” she said,
pushing me. “How do you relate to the thought of ‘not being good enough’?” I didn’t know how to
answer that. There was a silence. I let there be a silence. It didn’t have to be uncomfortable. When I
spoke, I was completely truthful.
“Well, when we hung up last time, and I felt not good enough, I told myself that I am good
enough.”
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“Don’t separate from the idea of ‘I’m not good enough’,” she advised. “Don’t fill in the
space with ‘I am good enough.’ Watch how your body changes with the thought of ‘not being good
enough’ being unable to maintain itself. Self-acceptance will arise from seeing yourself as ‘not good
enough.’ Accept yourself as you are, even if it’s not good enough, without continuing and reifying
thought with other thought. Allow the feeling to pass. Study how the self comes up. Buddhism is
about being awake,” she said, “not about feeling better. Look. Gather information.” I was gathering
information. This was all information. “How a person responds to a situation is their
responsibility,” she said. “That doesn’t mean how you think things is wrong. You just need to fully
take on your part. Are you avoiding feelings of not good enough? Are places of not good enough
coming up for you?” Were these rhetorical questions? I waited. She continued. “There is a
difference between discernment and judgment. Discernment is, ‘The color is blue.’ Judgment is, ‘It’s
not the right blue. It’s not red.’ You need to have an awareness of differences between reifying the
story and doing mindfulness. Be clear about the foundation. Be clear in your own practice so you
can be mindful of when others slip into a story.” My Teacher met me where I was at; as she always
had in the short time we’d known one another. I wondered about what story I had been slipping
her into.
Hey monica sorry i didnt see your message sooner but it's good to hear from you, i
just came back from seeing my dad this weekend and i left feeling a lot better each
day. i was with helz in the hospital and she said that he was opening his eyes and
moved his left leg the most so far that she's ever seen. yeah i hope that the infection
goes away so he can start focusing on moving cuz i think that be good for him he'll
be a lot happier. im not sure exectly the next time im coning up but it shouldn’t be
more than two weeks so hopefuly i see you!
sage
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The fact that Sage was able to remain positive in an email about his Dad filled me with
admiration for this young man who had to enter adulthood in this fierce way. Christy told us that his
classes at school were suffering. He was so far away that he couldn’t come every weekend. And then,
to get to Staten Island, Sage had to take the train more than three hundred and thirty miles, all the
way from Rochester. And here I had been feeling exhausted by subway and ferry rides.
I had not seen Antonio since Dia de los Muertos, the day he told me he loved me, more than
a week ago. Since then, he had done little more besides opening his eyes and moving his legs. What
happened to the progress on the first of November? Hadn’t that meant something? This back and
forth was too difficult. One day, he was awake. Then, he was not awake. He was making eye contact,
squeezing hands, saying his name. Then, he stopped responding. Sage saw him move his left leg and
open his eyes. It was so hard to maintain that memory of when he had made contact. It was so hard
to focus on Antonio waking up.
Let go, a voice in my head said.
I slept a hard nine hours and woke up gently—like in yoga class, after chanting “Om” three
times, when we would be asked to crack our eyes open, slowly, and let the room fall into our gaze,
little by little. Laying in bed, mulling over all of this training, a big fat leaf dropped from the tall
plant beside my bed, and plopped onto the floor. Impermanence.
At my second aikido class, Sensei told me that I had jumped right into the fire. I was getting
amazing energy from class. Would it last? I had had to clean blood from my uniform. No big deal.
Just mat burns on my elbows from dragging my own dead weight across the floor with my
forearms. This conditioning exercise seemed harder than anything having to do with aikido
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techniques. We were told to lay on our stomachs, reach our arms out in front of us, push our
forearms down into the mat and pull our weight forward. I was able to keep up with the others at
first, until Sensei told me to stop using my toes to help push me along. He emphasized pressing
down into my pinkies as I pulled, which felt futile. I was better at sitting seiza, which I was
practicing for at least thirty minutes every evening. The pain points were different than in zazen. In
zazen, my thighs and knees would get sore. With seiza, my heels would hurt and then go numb.
In my next aikido class, a senior student, Baisho pulled my arm into a position that was
meant to spin me down on the floor flat onto my stomach. But I didn’t know which way I was
supposed to move. Left? Right? I tried to remember the technique Sensei had demonstrated, but
Baisho was putting painful pressure on my shoulder.
“Which way do I go?” I called out. Instead of lessening his hold and telling me, he
increased the pressure and said,
“Away from the pain,” which shot through my shoulder blade. And he kept turning. In my
heightened state of fear and determination, I heard his instruction and felt for a spot to move
towards that didn’t resist. It was ever so subtle, almost imperceptible. But when I eased in the
direction of this point of non-resistance, there was an opening. Without hesitation, I twisted myself
down flat and hit the mat with my hand—the signal to stop.
The founder of Aikido, Morihei Ueshiba, said that one “must be willing to receive ninety-
nine percent of an opponent’s attack and stare death in the face.” Having just received what felt like
ninety-nine percent of Baisho’s attack, I understood this, intellectually. But I had much to learn
about the spiritual aspect that connects with the Taoist philosophy behind this martial art form. In
Japanese, Aikido means “Way of harmony with the fundamental force of the universe.” Just like my
Teacher said about feeling my own resistance. In so doing, the space can emerge through which to
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move towards, away from the pain. But we have to face the pain. Face death. Stare it in the face.
Like Antonio was doing.
That week, the ninth week in November, Dana came into Brooklyn to get a divination by a
spiritual guide from Burkina Faso, named Malidoma. This guide, who brought ancient wisdom and
practices from West Africa to the west, was costly, but well reputed. Antonio had been asleep since
September fourteenth. Dana went down her path for help, and I went down mine. I invited her to
go to a dharma talk with me that Norman Fischer was giving that night at the Zen Center. When
we talked afterwards, Dana told me that what resonated the most for her was when Norman said
how foolish it was for people to continue a fantasy about wanting something they knew they
couldn’t have. “I felt like he said that just for me,” she said, referring to her feelings for Antonio.
But it was a reminder for me as well. If only I had accepted where Jon was truly at, rather than
projecting my ideas of where I thought he should or could be.
Dana spent the night at my flat and got up early for her divination. We parted ways and
planned to touch base at the co-op, where she needed to do a shop and I needed to do a shift. My
job at the co-op that day was to walk people to their cars and wheel their shopping carts back. This
gave me a chance to talk to Dana, who had to wait for the guys at the parking garage to bring her
car down. There in the garage, next to a full grocery cart, she shared that the experience was as
wonderful as she had thought it would be. “Melidoma told me that there is a future for Antonio
and that, in fact, part of his healing process has to do with me. He instructed me to pour salt water
over Antonio’s feet and hands and then pour it into the earth.”
“Did you talk about your feelings for Antonio?”
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“Not really, but I realize that I can’t want him. I need to redirect that energy into his healing
process.” The guy came with the car, and I helped Dana put boxes of produce into the trunk.
Then, we hugged goodbye and I walked her cart back to the co-op. On my way down Union Street,
I stopped to take in the weather. It was cold, rainy and windy. One of those autumn winds that
blew off those leaves still hanging on like little fists. A wind that shook them from their trees,
forcing them to let go.
I woke the next morning and stretched into some warm-up yoga postures, did thirty-five
pushups, and ten back rolls into leg lifts. Then, I put my gi on and sat seiza for half an hour, and
then I sat zazen for another half an hour. This, while at my aikido dojo, the students did
Ichimando. Ichimando is back-to-back Zen and misogi training. At that very moment, Sensei and
his wife Kate were training in misogi at Ichikukai Dojo in Japan. Misogi is a traditional Shinto, mind,
body, and spirit purification done through the practice of rigorous breathing and chanting exercises.
Something compelled me to connect with Kate and Sensei in Japan, and those at the Brooklyn dojo
down the road, all training simultaneously to support one another—from a monastery in Japan, to a
dojo in Gowanus, and into my humble Park Slope apartment. As I sat, I became aware of so much
life in the garden just below my open window. Community gardeners were preparing for a workday
to get the garden ready for winter. I loved the voices I heard, and the birdsong, and the sun that
streamed over me in my white uniform like a blessing. With full concentration I became my breath.
I was the voices in the garden and they were me. Then, my breath was not my breath anymore. It
was the pulse of life. I was in the Big Mind rhythm—more, I was Big Mind—yet also aware of my
self. My body. How good I felt. How proud Sensei or my Zen Teacher might be of my effort. A thought! My
ego seeped so easily in with that old habit around needing validation, even when I did not need
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validation. I watched the thought drift off like a cloud in the sky, and I smiled. There was so much
space around my breath. I knew that my connection with my breath, opening up to all—whether in
the garden, the dojo, or a temple in Japan— would continue even after I get up. It was true. Later, I
went into the garden with such positivity that others’ boundaries did not knock me down. It was all
smiles and good energy. I cleared out and helped organize the shed with two other gardeners. What
had been a dreaded project became a fun group effort on that warm beautiful day with its lovely fall
feel.
Two weeks slipped by since I had seen Antonio, and there had been no more contact worth
getting excited about. Fleeting reports of a bit of eye contact here and a hand squeeze there,
stopped getting my hopes up. We needed something more substantial. I wanted something more
substantial. Two weeks had been the longest I’d been away from the hospital since the whole mess
started. I didn’t want to go back to see him just lying there. It was more encouraging to hold on to
the last visit I had when Antonio woke up and told me that he loved me too. But I felt strengthened
by my morning meditation, gardening, and connecting with my various communities. I gathered
myself and got back on the ferry over the Hudson to Staten Island.
When I walked into the ICU, Lucha was already there standing back by the window smiling
that Antonio smile at me. Her son opened his eyes when I entered the room. Oh good, I thought,
this is better than nothing. But then, I noticed that he didn’t seem to be looking at me or anything
else. Well, at least I could look at his eyes. I tried to convince myself that this was a good thing. He
squirmed his legs around like they were itchy.
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“Do you want me to rub your feet, Antonio?” I asked. Nothing. His eyes were no longer
open, but he kept squirming. Then, he was scratching his face. “Do you want me to put some
lotion on your face, Antonio?” More nothing. I put lotion on his face, hoping my caress was
soothing. I looked up at Lucha and we held eye contact and sighed. What could I say? Even if I
could speak Spanish, what could I possibly say to her? Lucha could think of things to say, though.
She started jabbering away as if I could understand, so I strained for the odd word.
“La cabeza…” she said. Something about his head. She went on, about what I had no idea.
Her eyes were wide and she looked serious. Had something happened to Antonio’s head? Then
something about “Dana… la casa?” It sounded like a question. Something about Dana. Dana’s at
the house? Is she telling me this? Or, is she asking me if I saw Dana at the house.
“Si, Dana es en la casa,” I tried, still rubbing lotion into Antonio’s face. Lucha was staring at
me. “I mean, no. I didn’t see her, yet. I mean…” What do you mean? What are you saying? Goddamit. I
couldn’t understand this woman, and I couldn’t understand if I was doing the right thing for her
son.
Back at the house I helped with dinner while Dana folded the laundry. “Antonio’s eyes were
open when we arrived,” I said.
“They were?” She put a shirt back down in the basket and looked at me.
“Yeah, but I don’t think he was really seeing anything. He was pretty squirmy, moving his
legs around and scratching his face. I feel like this discomfort is a good sign that he’s more aware of
his body.” Dana looked down and went back to the shirt she was folding. She didn’t say anything
more.
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At the dinner table, Alice was adorable drinking water out of a bowl and calling it soup. I
thought of how involved Antonio used to be with her. It just was not right that he was not there.
After we cleared the table, Lucha poured shots of tequila for herself, Dana and me. We clinked
glasses and knocked it back. Then, Antonio’s brother Filaberto Skyped from Oaxaca, but I couldn’t
join in the Spanish conversation so remained at the dining room table. Looking over at the stairs, I
was hit with a wave of grief knowing Antonio was not gonna come bounding down all full of life.
It felt like he had died and was not coming back. Yet his whole family was in the kitchen. So
fucking strange. I went down into the basement and smoked a cigarette, but really wanted to smoke
a joint. I wanted to alter how I was feeling because this limbo space of not knowing was such a
strain. I resisted smoking weed, though, and stayed with the heavy feeling in my body. I stayed with
the desire to get up and run away, until I realized that I actually lacked the energy get up and run
anywhere.
The next day they would be putting a permanent shunt into Antonio’s body. Dana was
nervous about this until I found out from my mother that my father had had a permanent shunt
put into his head when he was twelve. How odd that I never knew that. I also never knew that, after
the tumor was removed from his brain, my dad had to relearn how to walk, and had dragged
himself around his house with his forearms for weeks. How interesting that the forearm drag in
aikido had become the challenge I felt the most determined to overcome.
When I went back up into the kitchen, Dana was on the phone with the doctor, saying, in a
weary voice “He’s been in ICU for so long and I can’t get anyone to tell me that he’s either gonna
come back, or this is all you’re gonna get.” I didn’t know what the response was, and I was aware
how little it mattered anymore what the doctors had to say. I wondered if Leah knew about the
shunt. Should I call her? But the feeling of necessity around constantly communicating and
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supporting—making sure one another was always okay, always in the loop—was diminishing. Dana
hadn’t even told me that Antonio didn’t have a cerebral infection anymore. I found out from a
nurse. What was the use of knowing what might be going on anymore when we didn’t know what
any of it meant?
I had told Antonio that I’d see him later, fully intending to go back to the hospital after
dinner. “Vuelvo luego,” I said. “See, I’m learning Spanish.” But, I didn’t want to go back. I didn’t
want to sit and stare at him and feel helpless.
Since Helz was staying in Antonio’s room, I went to sleep in the downstairs room that had
been last year’s altar room. I lay there remember that amazing morning and afternoon I had had,
before coming to Staten Island. Meditating in the sunlight, feeling connected to the aikido
community, then helping the garden workday group. I was very glad to have a full life outside of
the hospital drama. But then, I told myself, the hospital drama was a part of everything else. The
strength I gained that morning, through acknowledged connections, was what enabled me to come
to the ICU and give Antonio some of that energy. Everything really is connected. I closed my eyes to
sleep in this room that I hadn’t slept in since last year, on Dia de los Muertos weekend, when this
was the altar room and I had slept with the spirits of the dead.
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Week Ten
On our way to a “Friends in Deed” group meeting, Dana and I sat on the side of the ferry
facing the Verrazano, where it was a bit less crowded than the more touristy Statue of Liberty side.
We created a list of problems we might bring up at the meeting:
- Communication issue with Lucha

- 2+ months of waiting
- Strained energy
o Sometimes it feels like the norm.
o Sometimes it seems as if he’s dead.
- Really missing him (Dana underlined this on my list and added an exclamation point.)
- Worried about Dana as main person/proxy (Dana added, “Say more” on this point.)
- How to organize, when it’s time to do so:
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o Food
o Childcare
o Drivers
o Translators
- What is my role?
- What do I do when he isn’t responding?
- Am I massaging him too hard?
- Should I keep talking shit to him, just to talk?
- How can I best be there for Dana, Lucha, Sage?
- Where is the best rehab?
o Where best care is
o Where more friends can visit
- Am I talking about him too much to others? Being too heavy?
- I feel like smoking pot sometimes to disassociate.
- Don’t want to go to a dark place again, when the rest of my life is so rich and
wonderful.
- Do I have to go to Staten Island every weekend?
-
The coordinator for the Big Group Meeting said helpful things like, “The quality of life is
not determined by the circumstances.” And, “We’re not falling apart; we’re falling together.” And,
“I’m not crazy; this is just a mess.” He compared the soul’s journey (where Antonio was) to the ego
plane (my missing him). I felt comforted by his words, and moved by those who offered their
personal experiences. One woman had brain cancer and had been given three weeks to a year to
live. Another told that one of his four brothers had just died. A man I will call Edward was in a
coma for two months, and they had told his wife that he wouldn’t come out of it.
Dana raised her hand. “It’s my first time here and I figure I might as well jump in, so here
goes.” She offered a small glimpse of the situation, and the coordinator turned toward her and
listened with his full attention. When he responded, he spoke to her, but opened his posture to the
rest of the group. All of the questions and answers were for all of us. I raised my hand. I cried and
even whined a little, complaining about the difficulty of communicating with Lucha.
“We have Spanish-speaking staff,” he offered. “You can always call with a translation issue.”
I felt safe, held, and supported by such an engaged and dynamic group leader. Afterwards, there
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was a light lunch and some of the others told me and Dana how good it was for us to speak out.
There was empathy here, and encouragement.
“I don’t know whose situation is worse,” the woman with brain cancer said, “mine or
yours.” I looked at her. The answer was obvious, but I didn’t want to tell her how terrible it must be
to know she was going to die so soon.
“They’re both crap,” I said.
The Friends in Deed session made me want to reach out further. It was time to email Mojie,
the friend had I made at the Vermont College graduate school residency, the woman I connected
with because both of our brothers could have died from hemorrhages, but didn’t.
Hey, Mojie.
I’ve been thinking about you, lately. Something pretty crazy happened that I wanted
to share with you that prompted me to buy “Life. Support. Music.” I want to show it
to some friends of mine as we have all come together to form a support group for a
dear friend of ours. I never knew brain hemorrhages were as prevalent as this, but
they seem to happen to more people I know.
My very close friend, Antonio, had a brain hemorrhage. He survived, but it led to
pneumonia, then stroke, then cerebral infection. He’s been in ICU since September
14th and had a permanent shunt put in this week. Dana, his proxy, and I went to a
meeting with Friends in Deed this week. Do you know them? A wonderful support
network for people, family, and caregivers of those with life-threatening illnesses.
What amazes me is that despite how awful things are with Antonio, such incredible
things have been happening because of his situation. The support group that has
come together is something else. I’m reminded by how your family came together
when your brother Jason had his stroke, and am so inspired. My friends are really
looking forward to watching the movie with me this coming weekend.
I’m glad I met you, Mojie, and learned of your story. I do hope we can meet for
coffee someday. It would be great to see you. I hope you’re doing well and are
writing!
All my best,
Monica
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Hey Monica,
Great to hear from you. I am sorry to hear about your friend Antonio but glad to
hear that there are bright spots in the dark times... It’s a marathon... Please feel free
to forward my email to your friends, if they want to get in touch for any reason.
Friends in Deed sounds familiar. That is great to find a support network—it is
crucial…
I’ve been passing through New York this fall… I’d love to see you...you around this
weekend by any chance? Sunday?
Thanks for getting in touch.
Best,
Mojie
Hi, Mojie.
I’d love to see you on Sunday. I’m actually going to Staten Island in the afternoon
because that’s where the hospital is. But, I’ll be around in the morning and early
afternoon. Would you like to do brunch in Park Slope?
It will be good to see you,

Monica
Hey Mojie,
I spoke with my friend Dana after I left you a message. She’s really stressed because
the hospital gave her a list of rehabs on Friday and told her to let them know on
Monday which one they should send Antonio to. We had planned to go around
looking at them all and researching, but they are piling on the pressure. This is so
crazy. The hospital has offered NO counseling services or social worker to help us
through this. There has been NO translator for our friend’s mother, who must be
feeling so isolated, having come up from Oaxaca to be with her son.
I’m heading to Staten Island on Tuesday to visit my friend and watch your film with
Dana. I think that will help a lot for her to see.
I would like to talk to you about how you dealt with this part of the process. Maybe
you have some words of wisdom, ideas, or guidance about the best way to go about
this.
Thanks Mojie. I’m glad to be in touch with you.
Monica
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Monica,
Sorry to miss your call earlier. Yes, let’s make a plan for next Sunday. I am looking
forward to seeing you and catching up.
But I did want to get back to you on the rehabilitation issue, especially as the hospital
is pressuring Dana. That was a tricky situation for us. Basically, Jason had moved
from the neuro-ICU to the rehabilitation unit at Mt. Sinai. The ICU was great; the
rehab unit sucked. It was wimpy and really hampered by nurses union rules. But we
didn’t know any better. Slowly but surely Jason made progress. It was sssllloooww,
though. Then one day out of the blue his physiatrist (doc in charge of rehabilitation)
said, Check out this nursing home in Queens. It was a shock to hear that the doctors
were so pessimistic about Jason’s chances for recovery—but in a way, it was a good
thing, because my family and I realized that no one was going to help Jason but us.
That is the most important thing to know—no one cares about the patient as much
as his family and friends.
At this point, Jason had maxxed out on his private health insurance and was
medicaid-pending, which made looking at rehab hospitals difficult. We checked out
Gaylord in CT, Ruske in NY, Kessler in NJ and Spaulding in Boston. Ultimately,
Spaulding made the most sense because my sister-in-law was pregnant and her family
is all in the Boston area. Plus, I visited Spaulding and was totally blown away by the
place. Still—Spaulding wouldn’t admit Jason at first because of the insurance
situation. But Monica (my sister-in-law) left a voicemail message for a woman at
Spaulding—she’d been randomly transferred to her machine. That woman listened to
the message—in which Monica basically said, I know you can’t do anything, but can
you offer some advice—and said, “I’m going to help these people.” So tell Dana:
don’t take no for an answer. Keep calling. We had to promise Spaulding that if Jason
were denied medicaid in Mass. We would cough up the dough (to make that promise,
we in turn went to some friends with deep pockets, to back us up, just in case).
Fortunately, the medicaid went through, he spent 6 months at Spaulding and it
turned out ok.
If there’s no geographic necessity, like we had, I would say go to US News and

World Report’s listing for the top rehab hospitals. You can look at Ruske, Kessler
(where Christopher Reeve was for a while), Gaylord (where the Central Park Jogger
recovered) and Spaulding. They’re close enough. Then, start making phone calls. Let
the hospital where Antonio is know that you’re doing this—it may help buy him
some more time.
My heart goes out to you, not just for the injury itself but for the red tape of
insurance and hospitals... But hang in there. It’s worth it. It’s blindingly difficult
sometimes to make all those calls. But a good rehabilitation hospital makes all the
difference. Let me know if you’re considering Spaulding and I will be happy to do
what I can to put Dana in touch with people over there.
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Hope that helps. Feel free to call or write with any other questions. I’ll keep Antonio
and all of you in my prayers.
Best,
Mojie
This last email had my head spinning. I couldn’t absorb all this. I had been assuming that
once Antonio woke up the worst would be over for all of us. Being a dedicated hospital visitor was
one thing, but taking on the kinds of considerations Mojie’s family had to for Jason was a whole
other story. I did not feel qualified to research rehab centers, let alone choose one. When could I
visit them? How could I organize this with Dana and Marsh who were more burnt out than I was? I
found the idea of making such phone calls daunting, let alone dealing with the red tape of
insurance. At the same time, I felt responsible. I had signed up for this and had committed myself. I
couldn’t back out now. What, and leave it all to Dana and Marsh?
I noticed that my breathing was shallow, and I knew it would help to sit zazen, but I would
have rather smoked a cigarette. My Teacher would tell me to accept where I was at and forgive
myself for not being able to do more. Instead, I was riddled with guilt. It had just never occurred to
me to think ahead and plan for how things might proceed after the ICU chapter of the Antonio
story. Every time Dana had brought this up, I told her to be in the moment and deal what was
happening, now. I didn’t want us to drain ourselves worrying about the future. Was that naïve? There
were no answers to these questions, but the one question that I felt certain would haunt me if I
didn’t follow through was, What will happen to Antonio if I don’t help?
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Week Eleven
On my way to the hospital, I called Dana, who was also feeling helpless. “I hardly got any
response, today,” she said. “A small hand squeeze and then he went to sleep. Nothing more.”
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Antonio was sleeping when I arrived. Because if this, and because of what Dana said, a
sadness welled up and spilled through tears that fell and fell. I held his hand and cried. “Where are
you, Antonio? C’mon man. Come on. Wake up for me, will you?” Nothing. I stared at his
profoundly still and sleeping face, then glanced over at the machine with its green lit-up number–
104. But I had lost track of which machine measured what. Was that the one that was supposed to
stay below a certain number? When it went up too high, the nurses would come in and tell us that
we were exciting him too much. Yet now they were saying he wasn’t responsive enough for an acute
rehab center recommendation. And those nurses with their loud, Staten Island accents. “Calm
down, Mr. Cruz. Relax, Mr. Cruz. Mr. Cruz? Can you hear me, Mr. Cruz?”
I watched the green number on the machine drop to 103. The graph above the number
showed a measure of something or other. The green waves seemed regular enough but how did I
know what regular was? What if the green patterns changed? What if it flat lined while I was there?
What if Antonio died?
For the first time since arriving in the ICU, I looked over at Lucha. She sat so quietly in her
son’s room, day after day, pulling thread through a needlework hoop of flowers. Busy-work. I
closed my eyes. It felt good to let the tears just fall. After a while, I gave Antonio Reiki. I envisioned
white energy coming in through my head and out my hands into Antonio’s body. Healing. Healing.
I opened my eyes. Was it working? Nothing. I closed my eyes and trusted. When I let go to blew my
nose, he stirred. He was waking up! I leaned over and kissed him on his stubbly cheek.
“Antonio? It’s Monica. Are you waking up, babe?” He started coughing that Darth Vader
sound and phlegm sprayed through the trach, out his neck and onto his chest.
“Mmmm,” I said. “Makes me wanna have a cigarette.” He smiled. I’d broken through! “Hey.
You’re awake. Can you squeeze my hand?” I was going to milk as much of a response as I could
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get. But nothing. “C’mon. I’ll tell you what. If you squeeze my hand, I’ll rub your feet for you.”
That did it—he squeezed! I stayed for an hour, massaging and bending and straightening his legs.
“What would you like to listen to, Antonio? Miles Davis?” I talked to him about whatever came to
mind. I told him that there were some things he needed to know. “You have to respond more.” I
warned him. “Or they’re gonna stick you in a nursing home. You don’t want that, do you?” Small
head shake. “But if you respond more, they’ll recommend a better rehab place. Then, we’ll be able
to help you more. Do you understand, Antonio? You need to wake up out of this.” Nothing.
When I told him I had to go, he moved his head in what I took to be a nod. Lucha and I
walked down Bard Ave together, and I wished like hell I could talk to her. We walked down the
quiet dark street, and I breathed.
Later at the house, I was in the kitchen having a snack when Marsh showed up. I told him
how I got a response from Antonio.
“You did?” Marsh said, putting both hands on the counter. “Well, I was just there and when
I walked in, he opened his eyes real wide—like this—and for a second he looked at me as if in
surprise. And then, he closed his eyes and turned his head away and that was it.” I was surprised to
see Marsh angry. “He’s gotta wake up,” he said gripping the counter’s edges. “He doesn’t have the
luxury of not responding anymore. This is a pivotal point and I’m really worried. I mean, if he
doesn’t start responding to the doctors, he’s fucked. It’s all well and good that he smiles for you and
says full sentences for Dana, but Antonio’s way of not dealing with parts of society that he doesn’t
want to deal with aren’t gonna help him, now. Or us.” I had never seen Marsh rant or vent. But he
was having to bear the brunt of the responsibility for all of this. He was a good provider for his
family and worked hard managing a steel company in Manhattan, but Antonio had been costing
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him money. Marsh was Antonio’s friend, but he was also paying a mortgage on One o One, and
rented rooms to help cover this. Antonio’s room had sat vacant for two months, and he already
owed Marsh back rent, not to mention the few hundred bucks for the Green Card renewal years
ago, and everything else in between. Marsh would not expect to see this money, but he didn’t have
the resources to keep up like this. Now, he was faced with the possibility of having to put Lucha up
in a hotel room nearby the rehab for the next month. We were all starting to freak out a bit about
where things were headed. How long could we keep this up? With the talk of Antonio being
moved, things were kicking up a notch and energies were already very strained. “This part of the
whole thing is much worse,” Marsh said.
I had to distance myself and not get defensive on Antonio’s behalf. Not argue that it was
actually much worse when he was on a ventilator and we didn’t even know if he’d pull through. I
would not tell Marsh that this was not about Antonio having the luxury to respond. I would not
remind him that we still didn’t know what the effects of the stroke were. We still knew close to
nothing.
My friend Ken, who I traveled around Southeast Asia with, and who had been a doctor-in-
training when Jim was in the ICU with a staph-infection, was now a doctor at Mount Sinai Hospital
in Manhattan. I called him and he talked me through some ideas around Antonio’s situation. First
off, he told me that Richmond University Medical Center Staten Island, that we had taken to calling
Rum-see (for RUMCSI) was not well regarded. “If you were there,” he told me, “I’d do everything
I could to get your family to take you out of there as soon as possible.”
“I don’t know where to begin, Ken,” I said.
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“Call the department of neurology,” he said. “And ask for a consultation so you know what
Antonio’s needs are.” As if this were that black and white. As if the department of neurology
would grant me such a consultation, and as if I would know how to negotiate such a consultation.
“Who is Antonio’s neurologist?” Ken asked me.
“His name is Doctor Chang. He met with us once, but that took seven weeks. And that was
weeks ago,” I said.
“Make an appointment with Edward Arsura, the chief medical officer, who oversees the
doctors there, and tell him that it took seven weeks to see Antonio’s doctor.” Ken was reading
Arsura’s name off the Rum-see website. But he knew where to look. I never would have been able
to figure that out. “Then, call the Chief of Neurology. Find out where Doctor Chang is. Sit down
with him and insist that he tell you, point-by-point, what the goals are with Antonio.” How could I
get a doctor to meet with me, when it took nearly two months for Antonio’s proxy to get an
appointment? “Get the doctor to evaluate him,” Ken was saying. “Who is the main person
responsible for his care?” Shouldn’t I know this? “You’ll have to get a clear sense of what Antonio’s
needs are, and then match these needs with available rehab centers.” Rehab Centers? What did I
know about rehab centers?
“Get a private social worker to review his case.” Where was I supposed get a social worker
from? He went on, telling me to deal with costumer service of medical insurances to find out
exactly what they cover. I could hardly handle phone calls with my own insurance company’s run-
around. These were the sorts of phone calls that made me want to go and get stoned. I told Ken
how helpless this seemed, how the hospital had largely been ignoring Antonio’s case, and how they
had not been forthcoming with his information. Ken had the answers. He told me to research
patient rights at the Advocates Department.
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“Threaten lawyers,” he said, as if I could ever find the right person to talk to, and get them
to take me seriously enough that a lawyers threat would have any effect. The more Ken went on
with his list of apparent things to do in such a situation, the more helpless and ineffectual I felt.
And if I felt this way, I couldn’t imagine how Lucha must have been feeling.
“The hospital has a federal obligation to provide translators,” Ken responded when I
mentioned Antonio’s mother.
In Ireland, they use the term “shattered” to describe complete exhaustion. That’s exactly
how I felt. Shattered. Not just tired but shaken to pieces. After three days of jury duty, followed by
a weekend helping to design a kitchen for the new Zen Center at IKEA, a morning filled with
preparing guacamole—for what was sure to be a high-energy, Thanksgiving food party with my
students—loads and loads of laundry, and aikido practice thrown into the midst, I somehow
managed a trip to Staten Island and the ICU.
Dana and I watched “Life. Support. Music.” and we were both moved by how the Crigler’s
family became such an inspirational support network. But Dana said, “I don’t know if I can do all
that,” and had a good, open, raw cry. I held her while she cried and tried to comfort her, but I
didn’t know if we could do all that either. We had taken Antonio on like family, but how could we
possibly achieve anything close to the Crigler’s well-oiled machine? We could barely get it together
to meet at the same time to talk about what was happening. We couldn’t nurse Antonio full-time, let
alone deal with unpaid bills. And we didn’t have friends with deep pockets. There was guilt around
feeling unable to give more to Antonio, because I knew it would be different if he were my brother
or lover. But his family was in Mexico and his mother’s VISA would be up soon. If we didn’t take
him on, who would? I couldn’t fit any of this in my head. I had not known that supporting Antonio
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meant signing up for all of this. I thought that once he woke up, I would get on with my life. Now,
my chest and neck were covered in a fungal rash which was a sign that I was really stressed out. I
kept thinking about buying a pack of cigarettes. But I thought more about aikido and ciggs
wouldn’t help me there. Instead, I took a long bath and sat zazen. I observed my mind observing
itself and that made me smile. Feeling better, I crawled into bed, calm and centered and tired in a
good way. I was very grateful for my practice and the fact that I had learned to take care of myself
like this.
Dear Marjorie,
I watched Life, Support, Music. with Monica last night and i can't express in
words how moved and inspired i was. I'm antonio's proxy, like Jason he had
a bleed, then every complication in the book, and is now post stroke, post
peritoneal ventricular shunt procedure on the icu, where he has been for 2
months. I think he may be depressed, he is very weak, and the hospital is
telling us that he won't 'withstand' the 3 hours of therapy at the more
aggressive rehab centers. I think his spirit won't withstand the experience of
the nursing home. I feel angry and unsure.
He's moving all his limbs, can talk with the passy-muir valve, and we all know
he IS in there. He's not opening his eyes and will not initiate talking. The
hospital says he does not follow commands well enough to go to a good
rehab. I think if our extended family gets together on this (i'm not blood
related to antonio but he is family) we can do well by him. I'm so so glad
that your brother is here on the planet and that his experience can help other
people like us. I'm sure you are busy, thank you for letting monica pass on
your email and I wish you a very joyful Thanksgiving.
Sincerely,
Dana Caulkins
Dear Dana,
Thanks for your email. I am so glad that the film gave you some inspiration.
The single thing I would say to someone in your/Antonio's situation is:
Don't give up. Many times, we heard from medical/professionals: Time to
quit. And we simply wouldn't and couldn't--and didn't. Keep talking to
people about the rehabilitation hospital possibility. When I thought of Jason
"coming to" in a facility with mostly old people, I just couldn't imagine it
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working out--as you say, his heart wouldn't withstand it. I mean, it was hard
enough for him to come around being at home, surrounded by people who
love him.
Would it be alright if I forwarded your email to Jason, my sister-in-law

Monica and my parents? They might have some suggestions for you.
Please do not hesitate to let me know if I can help you in any way.
Hang in there.
And happy Thanksgiving to you, too.
Best wishes,
Marjorie
(or...as our Monica knows me...Mojie)
Dana,
I'm Mojie's father. I agree with Moe that the main thing is to not give up,
and not give in to dire predictions and talk of nursing homes. The fact is,
you can deal with that stuff down the line if and when you have to -
emphasis on the "if." Better to stick with positive things.
What we did as an extended family was to figure out where each person
could best contribute to Jason's recovery. It's what I refer to in the film as a
"well-oiled machine." Jason's father-in-law and his wife dealt with the
insurance maze, as they had expertise in this area. Jason's mother gave over
her car for use in Boston, and kept working so money was coming in. Moe
and I spent a lot of time in Boston with Jason, doing rehab exercises at home
and taking him to out patient sessions at Spaulding Hospital in Boston.
Jason's mother would come up from New York every week end and cook up
a storm and go shopping for food. Jason's wife was pregnant when it
happened, but gradually came into the mix as far as care was concerned. Her
step-mother took over taking care of their baby, and helps out to this day in
that regard.
In other words, if there are enough people covering different needs, I think it
can work. We were told, when we said Jason was coming home, that we
didn't know what we were in for, that he required around-the-clock care.
These things were true, but we just did it anyway.
Also, Jason was pretty unresponsive for a long time too. And he was
exhausted (a side effect of brain injury). You probably need to push Antonio
a bit. It's quite possible, if he's not communicating, that he wants to work to
get better more than he can show. As far as taking directions in rehab, a lot
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depends on how the directions, or suggestions, are presented. And we found

the therapists who had the most patience were the most effective. (Whatever
meds he's on matter, too. There was a time when Jason was so medicated to
prevent seizures that he was unable to do rehab. It was a Catch 22. We had
his meds lowered and he progressed in rehab.)
I hope some of this is helpful. Let me know if I can help in any other way. I
wish you all the best.
Lynn Crigler
Dear Mojie,
Thank you for your words and support. Feel free to forward my email, my
main question is how did you all support each other during the rehab
process? How did you keep jobs going and cook and take care of basic self
needs while giving so much? I feel like your offer to call anytime gives me a
wonderful cushion to use when in great need, from someone who has been
through it. We listened to lots of Jason's music on youtube while cleaning up
the feast. Marsh (my husband) looked up and said "what music is this?" "I
like it." I explained again about the movie and he will watch it tonight.
Thanks again, tomorrow we check out Mt. Sinai rehab center.
Best to you all,
Dana
Dear Dana,
To answer your question about support:
We broke up the day, so one of us was with J in the morning, one in the
afternoon, one in the evening, etc.
We communicated a LOT to keep each other abreast of

progress/surgeries/complications, etc.
My mom was able to take a semester's (paid) leave from the school where she
teaches; Monica took emergency leave from work but when she hit her limit
she had to go back to work (their health insurance came through her job); I
did the same thing, basically, took a leave of absence until it ran out. It was
exhausting. It was put-one-foot-in-front-of-the-other for days, months on
end. Eventually, I quit my job to help Jason full-time and my mom gave me
some money to do that (and then Massachusetts Medicaid paid me about
$11/hour when J came home). I would say, Try to have someone with A. all
the time (we sometimes had someone with J at night).
As for taking care of self...this is the struggle of the caregiver. I think we all
neglected ourselves to some extent. But also friend helped a lot, cooking and
running errands and helping us move to Boston and offering emotional
support. Ask for help. That's the key. Think of what you need on a
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daily/weekly basis, and know that if you winnow those needs down, it's
temporary and worth it.
Oh, here is a funny little game that kept us laughing...let me know if this
works for you.. and please don't think we're crazy! When we were all sitting
around in the hospital, we (meaning my parents, sister-in-law and myself)
would "cast the movie" of our story. We had Matt Damon lined up to play
Jason, Susan Sarandon to play my mom, Kate Winslet to play me. When we
were trying to cast my dad, he said, "Robert Redford--of course!" (Like this
was so obvious.) And whenever we met a new doctor or nurse or
therapist,we would find the right movie star for their role... All this to say:
laughter, however you can make it happen, helps a lot.
Call anytime.
You are all in my prayers.

Mojie
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Thanksgiving Day
Leah called and left me a message:
Hi, Monica. First of all, Happy Thanksgiving. I’m definitely thankful for your
friendship in the past few months. Can’t imagine what it would have been like
without you and everyone else. I had a really great visit with Antonio. I’ll tell
you the story when we talk next. But, it was beautiful.
On Black Friday, while the rest of the country went on mad shopping sprees, I met Marsh,
Lucha, Christy, and Sage at Mount Sinai Rehabilitation Center. We had come to check it out, but the
fact that this was the where my friend Ken was a doctor, made me feel good about it right away.
What made me feel even better was when Christy told me that Antonio spoke to her, yesterday. She
said that he thanked her and asked her about his situation. When she told him it was time to find a
rehab center, he told her that there was one in Rochester. He also communicated with Sage. I was
not sure how to react to this news. Was it true? Antonio woke up on Thanksgiving Day and
thanked Christy? That was too Hollywood. Should I shut up, stop questioning, and just be
thankful? I could do that. I could also be grateful to be at this rehab, meeting Norma Parets, MS,
OTR, the rehab director, who sat down with us in her office and explained her facility.
“Mount Sinai offers interdisciplinary care,” she said. “Antonio will have a physiatrist, who
oversees his entire case. Also working with him will be a 3 rd or 4th year resident, as we are a training
hospital. A team of workers will be assigned to him who will be in constant communication as to
his needs. He’ll have a primary rehab nurse, physical therapist, occupational therapist, speech
therapist, neuropsychologist, and a social worker.” I glanced at Marsh. We exchange relieved
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glances. What was so frightening at the beginning of the week had turned into the best possible
scenario.
T.K. Chiba, my aikido sensei’s teacher, was a disciple of the founder of aikido, Morihei
Ueshiba. Chiba Sensei founded the Aikido Federation of Birankai North America to which my dojo
belongs. He used the word “biran” in this title, and on the federations website, he wrote:
Biran is a Buddhist term meaning a cosmic storm

that occurs in the moment before cosmic order
shifts. It is a force of recovery, spontaneously
manifesting itself to restore order. The storm can be
powerful and violent. Yet, at the same time it is one
that heals through cleansing and purification.
The previous weeks Antonio situation had simmered on down to normalcy, stagnancy. His crisis had
become the norm. Then, last weekend began an upswing that had indeed felt stormy, “powerful and
violent.” A shift had occurred though, and all seemed restored to order, or at least on its way.
Antonio was healing.
Norma showed us the ADL (activities of daily living) rooms. I imagined Antonio in there,
learning how to dress and bathe, boil water for tea. There was the OT (Orientation Treatment)
room, where he would acclimate to the seasons, weather, month and time. In the gymnasium, a
young therapist worked with a boy who looked close to Sage’s age. She guided him to kick a ball into
the goal. He missed. “So close!” she said. He shuffled towards the ball, holding onto her hand for
support. He looked as if he were in a continual state of surprise. Perhaps he was. It could be that
whatever put him here had shocked him into such a state. Would Antonio have such a look on his
face? Certainly Antonio would like to be led around a room by a beautiful, young therapist. Outside,
the Metro North train shot up towards Harlem. Antonio would like that view of the train, I told
myself. I thought of the last time Antonio had been in Manhattan, exactly one year ago.
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I had met him in Harlem, the day after the presidential elections, to celebrate Obama’s
victory. We drank Coronas at the Lenox Lounge and smiled at everyone smiling back at us. My
friend Brandt met up with us and we went to a Peruvian restaurant for dinner. When Antonio went
to the men’s room, Brandt remarked, “What a joyous person.” I couldn’t remember what made
Brandt say this. Antonio hadn’t done or said anything that stood out for me. But Brandt, who has a
deft perception into others’ characters, was simply remarking on his first impression of someone
who just was that joyous. Would Antonio be so joyous person, again?
Marsh and Christy were whispering about how beautiful Kessler Institute, in West Orange,
New Jersey was, how spacious and full of light. There, each private room had its own window.
That’s where Christopher Reeve had gone for treatment, and it was rated the second best in the
nation. But here, at Mount Sinai, all the therapists spoke Spanish, I reminded them. And family and
friends could stay in the gymnasium and speech therapy rooms with the patient. And, importantly,
this rehab was connected to the Medical Center, so if there were a problem, Antonio wouldn’t have
to be discharged and sent to the hospital. This was a major selling point. Also, because of the
location in Manhattan, it would be much more accessible for friends to visit him. An even bigger
consideration was that Mount Sinai would accept New York Medicare, while Kessler might not since
it was in New Jersey. Even though I hadn’t seen Kessler, I told myself that Antonio loved Manhattan
and would want to be in a rehab in New York if given a choice. I focused on what I perceived to be
an upbeat atmosphere, at least compared with the Rum-see. Everyone appeared friendly, patient and
helpful. I decided to overlook certain things—like how the rooms were all doubles, so our boy might
not get the window bed. And I ignored how the center looked so much like just another hospital
with its thin corridors busy with staff and sick people, machines and computers, meal and linen
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carts. The sooner Antonio got out of the ICU and into a rehab, the better, and Mount Sinai could
happen right away. Antonio in the New Jersey suburbs, where no one could get to him? In a resort-
like center? I was not swayed. I ignored the flatness in Norma’s voice and my fear that Antonio’s
care might not be all she played it up to be. I think we all preferred to overlook any misgivings. We
were desperate to get Antonio out of Rum-see and too stressed to wait for something better.
Brett and the girls met us a few block down Madison Avenue at Three Guys Family
Restaurant, where we ordered soup, fries, grilled cheese and coffee. After some discussion, Marsh
called Dana, who had just attended a birth. Again, new life entered the story. At 10:37 that very
morning, a baby boy was born into the world. Dana told Marsh that the social worker at St.
Vincent’s Hospital had been pressuring her to choose a rehab. Memorial was willing to take him
today, so this social worker called Dana and said she was “stalking her.” It was shocking that a social
worker would refer to her own consistent pestering as “stalking.” Did they need patients that badly?
Norma had told us that we might as well leave Antonio on the street as send him to Memorial. Dana
trusted our feelings around Sinai and gave her okay. Marsh called Norma. There would be a bed for
him on Monday. It was done! Marsh’s eyes welled up with tears. “I can’t believe that bitch wanted to
send him to that place, just to get him out. The word for that is, unconscionable.”
“Marsh, things were really scary a few days ago,” I said. “You were freaking out that this was
a pivotal moment, and things worked out. Antonio will have the best of care, and we’ll be able to be
an active part of things.” Marsh wiped his tears, looked around the table and told us,
“Dana said that he walked a couple of steps when they took him out of bed.” We were
stupefied.
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“He walked?” I looked at Sage. “He’s gonna recover fast,” I said, convinced. “Hey, good thing
this restaurant has good fries since it seems we’ll be eating here a lot. That’s really the deciding
factor!” Sage laughed. It was so good to see him happy.
Hey Mojie,
First of all, thank you for being so available and quick to respond, both to me and to
Dana. As she told you, watching the documentary was so helpful. Antonio’s son also
found it so inspiring. We had an appointment at Mount Sinai Rehab Center, today.
Antonio will be admitted on Monday. He was moved from ICU to his own room at
the Staten Island hospital, and they said he was able to take a couple of steps. I
doubt that was on his own as he hasn’t supported his own weight in 11 weeks, but so
exciting! Also, these past couple of days have found him so much more responsive.
He’s been speaking full sentences and having dialogues about his situation. This is a
huge turning point and we’re all feeling so relieved and much more hopeful and light
about everything.
I would love to see you this weekend if you’ll be in the city. My plans are to get as
much writing done as I can, but my schedule is flexible, so just tell me where and
when and I can meet you.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Monica
Hey Monica,
That is wonderful news! I am thrilled for all of you. Progress like that shows that he
is there, trying, and your efforts and prayers are not just wishful thinking.
Jason was at Mt. Sinai—first in the neuro ICU and then in their rehabilitation. The
neuro ICU was amazing. His experience in the rehab unit was not so fabulous; that’s
what prompted us to move him to Spaulding in Boston. But that was in 2004-5 and
things may well have changed since then. Also, every case is different—as every brain
injury is different—so I would not make a blanket statement about Mt Sinai. The
way I have described Jason’s experience in their rehabilitation unit is “It wasn’t the
right place for him.” He was not speaking full sentences—he wasn’t even speaking.
And he certainly was not walking. Regardless of our experience there, I wish
Antonio the absolute best. It sounds like his recovery is picking up steam.
I would love to see you on Sunday—my schedule is a little odd but there is definitely
time to meet up. Can we communicate tomorrow to set up a time?
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Happy Thanksgiving to you too!
Mojie
Wait a minute. Wasn’t Mount Sinai the place that Mojie told us sucked? I scrolled through
the email chains until I found the one that read, “Jason had moved from the neuro-ICU to the
rehabilitation unit at Mt. Sinai. The ICU was great; the rehab unit sucked. It was wimpy and really
hampered by nurses union rules.” Why hadn’t I taken that in the first time I read it? Of all the
rehabs to send Antonio to, we chose the one that Mojie singled out as sucking. Would we have
considered this if I had brought it up before making a decision? Probably. But it was done and I
needed to believe it would all be fine. I needed some time to be happy about Antonio’s progress. I
did not want to spend energy second-guessing things. I wanted to celebrate. I wanted to drink
champagne. So instead of worrying about this, I wrote an email to update my friends and family on
the good news.
Leah called as soon as she read my email. “He took steps?” she asked. “I just don’t
understand that. I mean, he was so weak when I saw him last week.”
“I know. I think his recovery is going to be really fast. What happened when you saw him?”
“Oh, it was so amazing. I thought he was sleeping when I went in, but when I asked him if
he was awake, he opened his eyes and looked at me with a really intense look. Then, he gave me a
big crooked smile, and I started laughing and crying. I had his hands in mine and was talking to him
with my face very close to his and all of a sudden he gave me a smooch on the lips. Then he said,
‘Another one,’ And so I gave him as many kisses as he could handle. Later, he wished me happy 31 st
birthday, and said something about all that is happening being fucking crazy.”
The next time I checked my email inbox, the responses were flooding in from friends and
family, some who knew Antonio and many who had never met him. Outside of our small care-
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giving circle at Bard Avenue, support had branched out in all directions. Antonio’s epic story had
been closely followed, and after two and a half months, things seemed to be pointing towards a
happy ending.
Dana called. “I took Alice to see Antonio, today. He said, ‘I miss you, Alice.’ She was kind of
shy. I felt bad. But we just played, did the tickle thing. He grabbed her nose. He was really animated
by her. He forgot about himself. She asked him, ‘How are we gonna get home if we can’t walk?’ and
he said, ‘Good question, Alice.’ He has moments of looking really shocked, like he doesn’t know
what happened. I told him I bought him a pair of sweatpants and that I’m gonna embroider ‘Single
Hot Mexican’ on them. I guess we’re all just going to have to get used to a new Antonio. He’s gonna
be slower, but he’s still lightening-quick. Did I tell you about what happened with the guardrail?”
“Um, no.”
“Sometime on Thursday night, he launched himself out of bed over the guardrails. He was
going for a scissors left out on a tray. A nurse came rushing in and asked him what’s going on. He
said, ‘I just wanted to finish off the job.’ She wasn’t sure she heard him right so she asked him,
‘Really? Are you sure? Tell me again.’ He said the same thing, again. So, they have him on twenty-
four-hour security.”
After all we’ve done for him, he better not fucking kill himself. The fucker.
I dream that I’m in a spaceship with my brother Matthew, heading to a sphere

between earth and outer space. We are over Iceland. The ship is huge. It has a
kitchen area and an auditorium. There is packaged food and coffee. I suggest
stocking up on food before we get too far from sunlight, and it becomes too dark to
see. I’m nervous and ask if this is a dangerous trip, Matthew says, “Of course it
is.” I look out the large windows and can see where it was getting dark over one
side of the earth. I realize that when the spaceship reaches total darkness and
we’re able to see only stars and planets, it will be so awesome that my fear will
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leave me and it won’t matter how dangerous the trip might be. This excites me.
Watching the news on the spaceship’s television, I see that a volcano on earth is
erupting. It’s so massive that it seems to take up an entire side of the globe. But
the newscaster doesn’t act like it’s a problem. She’s more scientific about it. I
wonder if it’s possible that the eruption isn’t harming anyone. I watch it on TV,
and then look out the window. Red, sulfuric fire spews into black space. It’s
beautiful and powerful. I wake Matthew, who is sleeping on the floor. He’s
slightly annoyed at being disturbed, until I point out the volcano to him.
Was this dream about wanting to enjoy and not fear a potentially perilous journey, somehow
connected with wanting to rejoice in Antonio’s recover and not worry about what might still go
wrong? The scientific newscaster could be Norma Parets, the rehab director. The kitchen area,
auditorium and packaged food were like Mount Sinai’s rehab rooms. Was the dream telling me to
take the rehab choice more seriously? Were the volcanic eruptions supposed to signify the
hemorrhage that Antonio (and Matthew) had? Was outer space the netherworld that Antonio had
lain in limbo for so long? Was this the same emptiness I breathed into while meditating? Was it the
deep Void that Chuang Tzu’s Starlight kept his gaze fixed on, “hoping to catch a glimpse of Non-
Being”?
All summer and into that autumn, the flower seeds I had planted the previous spring
rewarded me with sunflowers of all different heights and colors. Short fat dwarf sunflowers,
medium-sized red ones, and tall yellow sunflowers that eventually drooped their heavy heads over
bent stalks. On a rare hot sunshiny November day, after Antonio woke up, I prepared my plot for
the winter. It felt good to be in the garden wearing jeans and a t-shirt, turning over earth and
mulching with dead leaves. This connection to the earth and cycles of natures was precisely the
grounding I needed. Out here were reminders everywhere to let go of life. We plant seeds that
sprout and grow their flowers which we enjoy for some time. And then, the cold weather comes and
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the flowers die. Everything changes. If Antonio were to take his own life, I’d have to let go of that,
too. Sweat trickled down my back and I took a break, leaning on my rake. I closed my eyes and
breathed in the cool end-of-autumn air. It was the last week of summer when Antonio got sick. An
entire season had come and gone. I hoped that Antonio knew that we loved him. Maybe if he
realized how scared we’d been and how much we genuinely cared about him, he’d want to live.
Opening my eyes, I look at the dried leaves scattered across my cold plot. The garden was ready to
sleep. I had to let go of what I wanted for Antonio. What was going to happen was going to
happen.
On the way to bed that night, I passed that photo of him holding hours-old Alice. The
votive candle was nearly burned out and I knew I would not be buying another one. Tomorrow,
Antonio would move to Mount Sinai. The crisis had passed. It was up to him, now.
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DECEMBER
“Breathing is breathing you.”

~ Zoketsu Norman Fischer
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Week Twelve
I dream that issue after issue with Antonio is getting resolved. Hospital problems,
health insurance. To do’s. We figure it out, step by step. It’s a busy dream, like
doing office work.
When I woke, I lay in bed for a long time thinking about Antonio. If he chose to kill himself,
could I forgive him? After all we’ve done—I’ve done—how could he even consider such a thing? But
did he know? Would telling him be like trying to guilt him into staying alive? Would guilt really be
enough? Could he realize how much love is around him and want to live for that, rather than because
of it?
Dana called, exhausted. She had been at the hospital all morning and told me how Antonio
had to meet with a psychologist, which meant his move to Mount Sinai would be postponed another
day. Dana didn’t think she’d be able to go that day, so could I meet him there? I had no idea who
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else was coming, and I noticed my resistance. I’d be more into going if I weren’t so pissed off at
Antonio for trying to kill himself. I didn’t understand what really happened, or why. Leah and I
talked at length about this that. She didn’t get it either, given all the gratefulness and positivity he had
been showing. Then, according to Leah, “I was just trying to finish the job,” is exactly something
Drama Queen Antonio would say. I wanted to give him a piece of my mind. How could he consider
doing such a thing to us? But then, I was aware that suicide did not work like that. The “us” isn’t
involved. It’s an utterly selfish act that takes no consideration of others. I figured I’d have to remind
our dear boy about his mother, who travelled all this way just to sit in a hospital room and stare at
him hour and after, day after day, week after week. And Sage, who had been majorly traumatized by
this. And the rest of us who had sacrificed our emotional lives (to say the least) over to this crisis.
He needed to know what we’d done out of love. He needed to appreciate it enough to live and get
better. But then, I knew, he did not need to do anything for anyone. There was no saying or
predicting. I realized, weeks ago, when the possibility of suicide entered my mind, that I had to give
over to that idea and not resent or regret what I had done. I couldn’t be giving of myself expecting
anything in return—even Antonio’s will to live.
I also realized that I had not seen Antonio since he woke up. I mean really woke up. And I
was nervous. I had become used to him sleeping and didn’t know what this new Antonio would be
like. What might be different? The only thing do to about all of this was to have no expectations.
Remembering Mojie’s advice about lightening things up, I emailed Dana:
Ben Kingsley to play Antonio?
She emailed back on Tuesday morning:
totally, girl from pulp fiction to play you, kevin bacon to play marsh, etc.
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today's the day, i'm scared and happy. happy we're moving on from rumc, scared mt.
sinai will be more of the same. also concerned about my upcoming trip to cali in two
weeks. want to get organized on antonio's care and know that probably we might
not be at the crigler's level of devotion. i hope there are cool people in there with
him also doing the therapy. i'll be leaving today around noon for the hospital. don't
really need you there today, feel fine. its more the future that i'm thinking about.
xoxoox dana
I called her to make sure she didn’t need me to go. She was just arriving at the hospital with
Alice, and feeling good. I was relieved because that meant I could go to aikido, and I’d be able to get
to see him on Wednesday and Thursday. I asked Dana what his deal was with trying to kill himself.
She said that he told her, “I was just so tired of being in here.” And she told him, “The only way out
is through, just like giving birth. Like labor. I’ll be your doula.” She told me that she made him
promise that if he were ever feeling in any way hopeless, he’d talk to her or Marsh or one of us
about it.
“And then I made him laugh,” she said. “And he smiled. I thought it was like a miracle,
especially with that image in my head of him swollen up like a tick. Here he is now, smilin’ with his
teeth.” But she said that he has a wide-eyed look about him, from coming out of this and being
whisked around the hospital. “He’s not placid,” she said. “If he wants to get up and walk, he can’t
get up and walk. Later, when he’s more able, I’m worried about him falling. He might say, ‘Fuck it,
I’m walking to the bathroom,’ and he might break his leg. I’m scared, but I’m trying to be a little bit
detached. This is his gig and we’re all here to support him. None of us can do it for him.”
Reading Soshin’s journal that morning inspired me to sit for an hour straight. I set my alarm
for 11:11am, but halfway through realized I hadn’t turned the alarm on. I decided not to worry
about it and to continue until it felt near to an hour. When I finally reached to check the time, it was
exactly 11:11.
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Soshin wrote:
And I began. Each noise, sight, movement was me. I was

tremendously excited, quivering, smiling. As if there was a statue, my
physical body, with a cloth draped over it, hanging close around my
body; it was what I defined as self. Now a tack through the head and
cloth, someone is raising it and stretching it; it’s still attached to my
body but covers more and more, and that is me. How can I die or
cease to be? I am eternal; I am process and thing. I am my mother. I
am Roshi. I left the hondo [hall for chanting and teaching], a new I;
every noise and sight caught my notice, being incorporated into
myself.
Antonio was not in his room when I visited him at MSH. His roommate, a young boy, was
there with his parents. This same boy had tried to kick that soccer ball last week. We found out that
he had been in a car accident in Newark. His mother explained to us that when he came out of a
two-month coma and asked what happened, and they told him, he had said, “We have to forgive the
people who hit me.” His parents had already gotten a lawyer and were ready to sue. They explained
this to their son, but he said, “They didn’t do it on purpose. We can’t sue them.” I made a mental
note to tell Antonio this story. He’d be happy to know that he had a roommate with a big heart.
I found our boy in the rehab room. He was trying to take off his t-shirt. I didn’t want to
make him self-conscious so stood to the side and watched. He was trying to do the task how he used
to do it, by reaching his right arm to grab the material beneath his left arm and reaching his left arm
to do the same. But his left arm wasn’t working as fast as his right which had pulled half of the shirt
over his left shoulder. His left arm became trapped across the front of his body, but Antonio,
determined to use just his right arm, started to pull the t-shirt over his head. The result was that he
was stuck with his head under the material and his left arm dangling, and he was still pulling with his
right hand. The nurse was trying to talk him into letting go and starting over, but he was not
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listening. I knew that he wanted to do it his way and that he hadn’t yet learned that he had to start
over and do things they way the nurses explained. Poor Antonio. I walked over,
“Hey Antonio, you look like a pretzel,” I said. He stopped struggling with the shirt, but his
head was still covered and it was plain to see he wouldn’t be able to undo what he had done. Gently,
I pulled the shirt back down his left side and pulled it straight. “It’s really good to see you up and
about,” I said, kissing him on the cheek. He was not looking at me. His head hung toward his right
shoulder.
“Can you look at your friend, Mr. Cruz?” the nurse asked. I wanted to tell her that I’d handle
this.
“C’mon Antonio, look at me. I got all dressed up to visit you.” He lifted his head and we
made eye contact. I smiled until he did. “Let’s try the shirt again,” I suggested. “I want to learn the
easiest way for you to do this so let’s listen to the nurse. Okay?” He acquiesced and followed her
instructions. I could sense how degrading this was for him. What must it have been like to be told
how to dress? Swallow? Talk? Walk? Behave? But there was no other way. He was not allowed to eat
until he learned to swallow. This was going to be a long road and he knew it.
Watching Antonio come back to life was miraculous. What was frustrating and confusing for
him—taking small, shuffle steps with the walker and struggling to take off his shirt—caused us all
extreme joy. Those days found me bursting with a settled form of happiness, like how a flower
quietly bursts into blossom.
On Wednesday, I woke at 6 a.m. for the first of a three-day sesshin, and looked forward to
each and every breath. It was Rohatsu Sesshin. Rohatsu, or Bodhi Day, is on December 8 th, and is
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the anniversary of the Buddha’s enlightenment. Because of the build-out of the new Zen Center, we
were only doing a three-day sesshin at the old Zen Center, which was still in Greg and Laura’s living
room. I was to be the doan and hoped to be focused for service, not to satisfy my ego, but to help
set a mood of precise, gentle and clear timing. All went fine with the bells and service, but I had to
push myself to stay focused on my breathing. Sometimes, there were clear moments, but so much of
my sitting had thoughts buzzing around my head. And the zafu was not at all stiff or supportive. It
was too soft, which meant I sat too near the ground. My long legs needed more height. Halfway
through day one I was experiencing the kind of sharp achy pain that usually came on day three or
four. It was a struggle not to move. I thought—Antonio’s back hurts more than this, so I’ll just put up with
it. Do it for Antonio—and I did not move all day.
I had to leave sesshin early to teach my evening class. After seven hours of sitting, I had to
laugh when I caught myself throwing dirty looks at drivers who cut me off while I cycled to work. I
slowed down and enjoyed the ride. There was no hurry.
The next morning, I sat again in the doan seat, slightly separated from the rectangular space
the others sat around, all of us facing the wall. I had grown fond of that little space in the living
room alcove. I wondered if the new center would have the same intimacy we had all grown to
appreciate there in that humble zendo, transformed from Greg and Laura’s apartment. The bells
rested on wooden stands, and there was the Doan book of sutras in which circles were marked for
when I would hit the bells—large open circles for the big bell and little colored-in circles for the
small bell. The stopwatch lay on the floor in front of me with its long silver chain neatly wrapped
around the clock face. But I was not looking at the clock. I could gauge when the next thirty minutes
would be close to ending, at which time I would pick up the wooden mallet and gently hit the small
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bell, twice. Then, there would be a period of kinhin, walking meditation. This routine was in my
body now, so I did not worry about the time. To my left, light came through the windows, which
were closed, but the sounds of Ninth Street were clear. A bus careened past. A car alarm went off. A
child called to his mother. The floor vibrated when the ‘F’ train rumbled beneath us. I faced the wall
and breathed. The pain in my legs stopped mattering. I concentrated on my inhalation and felt my
breath fill and awaken every cell in my body. I was fully with the turning of the out breath. When I
exhaled, I felt myself smile with the realization that the breath leaving my body was not my breath. It
was a gift of support for those practicing with me in that small room. When I inhaled again, I was
aware that I was breathing in the effort of others’ exhalations. With my body, I was absorbing the
deeper meaning of sangha, and how by sitting together we were giving and receiving each others’ gift
of practice. Breathing out again, I consciously gave my energy to the room. Breathing in again, there
was only gratitude. There was no separation between myself and those practicing with me, for the
simple act of breathing connected us. Breath, the very essence of being alive, was the only magic
necessary and it had been there all along, like Dorothy’s ruby red slippers (if she had only known). I
didn’t need sage sticks or Reiki symbols, rituals or spells. The truth was much simpler than that. It
was in the air we all breathe, that palpable pulse there for the accepting and the giving, the in and
then out again. If only we always breathed with an awareness that we were keeping one another
alive. What use had I for extraneous thoughts that served merely to distract? There was nothing
more joyous than sitting there, doing nothing at all but giving and receiving the energy of life from
one another. It was all in that Chuang Tzu poem I had read to Antonio in the ICU, when I told him
that he didn’t have to do anything more beyond breathe. “Heaven and earth do nothing/Yet there is
nothing that they do not do.”
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There is an ancient Buddhist metaphor about the Net of Indra. This net extends infinitely in
all directions, throughout the entire universe. At every node is a jewel, and each jewel reflects every
other jewel. If a spot were to appear on one jewel, then that spot would become visible on all of the
jewels. Robert Aitken wrote:
You and I come forth as possibilities of essential nature, alone and

independent as stars yet reflecting and being reflected by all things.
My life and yours are the unfolding realization of total aloneness and
total intimacy.
My struggles were the struggles of those in that room. Their strengths were mine. How
remarkable that we continued to sit on that floor, struggling with our thoughts and the pain in our
legs, letting go of our suffering again, and then again. How humbling to feel such connectedness
from those practicing for me. How wonderful! Immense love filled me. I was love. And this love
reached, like Indra’s net, beyond that little room. I thought of my parents and there was only love. I
was wide open and wide-awake. All resistance was gone, like that waft of incense smoke
disappearing in my gaze. Inhaling, I took in what was offered to me by everyone else’s effort.
Exhaling, I gave fully to support that effort. This was the true meaning of selflessness. Breathing is
our connection to one another, to life. Focusing on our breath is our connection to reality, to what is directly in front of
us. It was in that endless moment that I knew I would receive the Buddhist precepts in a public
offering. For years, I had resisted this because I did not want to label myself a Buddhist. I did not
want to be a part of the religious aspect of Zen. But it was no longer about labeling or defining
myself. It was about acknowledging something that had already happened.
The passage from Soshin’s journals, which I had copied in my own journals every time I
reread her book, was written just months before she was killed in a bus accident:
I have maybe 50 or 60 years (who knows?) of time, of a life, open,

blank, ready to offer. I want to live it for other people. What else is
there to do with it? Not that I expect to change the world or even a
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blade of grass, but it’s as if to give myself is all I can do, as the
flowers have no choice but to blossom. At the moment, the best I
can see to do is to give to people this freedom, this bliss, and how
better than through zazen? So, I must go deeper and deeper and
work hard, no longer for me but for everyone I can help.
I first read this fifteen years before, and had been deeply moved and inspired to practice
zazen. But all those years, I had been practicing for myself. Now, I was ready to open my practice to
helping others. It was time to give back to this path.
After sesshin, we gathered in the kitchen and stood in a circle. Announcements were made.
When the circle broke, Noah Fischer came over to tell me that, while giving an update about the
auction, I was “radiant.” He said, “It must’ve been a good sesshin for you.” I smiled knowing that
Noah was merely seeing his own radiance reflected back. Like Reb Anderson Roshi wrote in his
book on the Buddhist precepts, Being Upright, where he talked about staying present “in the face of
this radiant image of your whole self—Wake up: I am you.”
Week Thirteen
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The Friends in Deed meeting went well. Edward, the man who had been in a coma for three
months, offered to call in on Antonio. I brought up his suicidal tendencies, and the facilitator
reminded me that I could not control any outcomes. Whatever Antonio might do (kill himself or
think of new life as a blank slate) was his path. Regardless of how much I gave to him, I could not
have expectations. My big lesson of the year.
The Antonio process was both wonderful and frustrating. He was so himself, yet quite
fractured. It was disconcerting to notice the lapses that occurred with his memory and cognitive
skills. He told me and Dana how annoyed he was at the staff members who call him Pappy and
Tono. Then, days later, when Leah visited, he told her that she had been calling him those names and
that it had been bothering him. At one point, he thought Dana was me and asked her how my sister
was doing. Oddest of all was when he told Leah that he was out looking for a job the other day.
When I visited him next, I sat in on a therapy session. He was given a task to try to find the
blue square in the box of shapes. It’s right there! I wanted to say, when he could not find it. And,
when the rehab nurse held up two identical red ovals and asked if they were same, he shook his head
that no, they were not. In speech class, with much prodding from the therapist, it took Antonio
fifteen minutes to put the following sequences of words in the correct, logical order:
son cold bird

mother cool dog
grandmother warm horse
great grand-father hot elephant
I could tell he was pissed off at these activities and didn’t think he was really trying. Part of
the problem was that his left side was so affected from the stroke that he was not looking straight at
anything. The rehab staff kept reminding him, “Turn your head this way, Mr. Cruz.” “Look at me,
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Mr. Cruz. Can you look in my eyes?” I knew that he was aggravated by the tone of voice they used,
as if he were a child and this were a kindergarten.
After speech therapy, I followed him and the rehab therapist down the hospital corridor.
Antonio was shuffling with a walker, leaning severely to the right, having to be guided continually
back to walk a straight line. “Can you walk this way, Mr. Cruz?” She asked in a careful, loud, high-
pitched voice that some use on foreigners, as if deafness were the problem. Antonio looked like he
wanted to throw the walker at her, but she didn’t seem to notice. “Goooood,” she sang. “That’s
better.” After a few more slow steps, Antonio told her, “I had a dream about you, last night.”
“You did?” she asked. “What was I doing?”
“You weren’t really there,” he said. “It was mostly about your father and mother. They were
preparing the land.”
“Were they going to grow something?”
“Yes. They were preparing the land for planting corn.”
“And, who am I?” she asked. I wondered if she meant in waking life, or in the dream. “Who
am I, Mr. Cruz?” she asked again in that condescending way of speaking too loudly and too clearly.
“A piece of meat,” he said. That ended that conversation. I followed them back into the
rehab room, and when the rehab nurse left, I said, “Do you realize you called that woman a piece of
meat, Antonio?” When he nodded, I asked him why.
“I’m just really sick of how people talk to me.” He explained that she and so many others
kept telling him how God had a purpose for his life, how he was still here because he had work to
do. “My mother as well, with her ‘God willing this and that’.”
I had noticed Lucha’s obsessive smothering, fluttering about, and constant hovering. Putting
Vaseline on his lips while I was talking to him. Wanting to feed him when he needed to learn how to
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feed himself. Leah and I had complained about how she was in the room with him all the time, no
matter who else might be there. But then, we laughed at ourselves for being annoyed by something
so mundane when, just a couple of weeks ago, our boy was still unconscious. In one short week, he
had relearned to eat solid food by himself, and get in and out of a wheelchair. Never mind that he
fell out of it the other day and was moved into a room where he could be watched. Never mind that
he peed himself without realizing it. Or that the rehab center had no continuity in terms of his care
—always shifting therapists on and then off of his case. Our boy was awake and getting better every
day! But in the meantime, he was pissed.
“You know, when I was in the hospital, they had this priest come in and pray over me.”
“I didn’t know that,” I said.
“Yes, he came into my room when my mother was there. I think she was the one that was
asking for it.”
“Do you know what he said?”
“No. But he was giving the last rites”
“How do you know this?”
“Dana told me about it. It’s a good thing that I didn’t see him and I didn’t hear him. If I had,
I would probably said very nasty things to him.” I looked at Lucha, who looked up and smiled at me
from her chair.
“It’s like when my cousin came to visit me that time,” he said.
“Elvia?” I said. “She came to the rehab?”
“No. That time she came with Dago to the ICU.” Antonio had been induced, then. How did
he know they were there?
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“What happened?” I asked. Was he misremembering something, or confusing them with
someone else?
“Yeah, they came into my room when I was in the hospital. And they were trying to force
me to hold a virgin.”
“Hold a virgin? What do you mean?”
“They were trying to make me hold a virgin picture. And I refused.”
“Why did they want you to hold this picture?” I asked, trying to draw out what he thought
had happened.
“According to them, I was dying. And they believe in miracles. So they wanted to save my
life. So they were doing the whole friggin’ thing. Prying my hand open to make me hold the friggin’
thing. And I said, ‘Dude, I don’t believe in that shit. Leave me alone.’ They got really offended. And
I got pissed.”
“But you were unconscious when you were in the hospital, Antonio.” I said.
“Not enough.”
“So you were aware of what they were saying to you?”
“Yes.”
“Cause I was there, but they were speaking in Spanish. That’s what they were saying?”
“Yes.”
“But they were only doing it because they care about you. I mean—”
“Yes. And they believe that. They believe that. Yes.” He was getting all worked up. Lucha had
stopped doing her cross-stitch and was looking at her son as if she knew what he was talking about.
I had seen that look on my own mother’s face when I would challenge her authority. It was a pious,
chin in the air, tight-lipped expression. I acknowledged that it must have been upsetting to Lucha
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not to understand our conversation. But I felt protective toward Antonio. I was there to support him.
He was the one who had lain for months, unable to prevent things from being said around his
bedside. Now, he was awake, and had lost control over everything—his body, his thinking patterns,
where he had to sleep every night, who came in and out of his room. This complete lack of control
over his life was coming out in anger around this single issue. If there was one thing Antonio could
still do, it was to get angry. I put my hand on his arm. “The thing is that, because they believe that
and they cannot accept that somebody does not…” He stopped, near tears. I rubbed his arm and
waited for him find the right words. “What I saw that day,” he went on, “was that they were trying to
push down my throat their beliefs. And that pissed me off.”
“I’m sorry, Antonio.” I wished Lucha would just go back to her sewing and stop staring.
“And then there was that man who came in the other day.”
“What man?”
“I don’t know. He said he knew you and Dana.”
“Edward? The guy from Friends in Deed?”
“Yes. That was that man.”
“He said he’d visit you. He was in a coma for three months and they thought he was going
to die.”
“Yes. He told me. And then he told me that it was God’s will that I was alive.”
“Oh, no.”
“Yes, and he just talked like that to me for like twenty minutes.”
“What did you say?”
“I didn’t say anything. I didn’t even look at him. And then he ran out of things to say and he
left. But it was that same old shit.”
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“I’m really sorry. I thought it would be good for you to talk to him. I didn’t know he was
going to talk like that.”
“And I keep hearing it from the staff here, too. Everybody seems to think that I’m alive
because God wants me to be alive. But I don’t even believe in God, man. I wish they’d all keep that
shit to themselves. Because what really angers me is the arrogance of religious people, especially
when they take advantage of a situation when someone is unconscious and unable to say no, and
they shove their belief system down their throats by force, and how it is a result that I am alive due
to their prayings and singing shit. Forget about the doctors, all of those years in a classroom and all
of the money put into their education, the advances of science, CAT scans MRIs. All of it is non-
existent. I am alive because they prayed for me!”
I understood my friend. My whole childhood was centered around prayer. We prayed before
meals, before bed, and before road trips. We prayed for big things like my father’s eyesight, and
mundane things like that so-and-so would do well on a test, or that I would get the part in an
audition. In Pentecostal churches, I had witnessed circles of people praying, all with their hands
reaching to touch the head of someone in the center. I had seen people pass out, speak in tongues,
go into seizures—all from ecstatic praying. Whenever I was sick, I was prayed over. Once, when I
was a child and had the flu, I was throwing up into the toilet. My mother was with me. After
everything came from my stomach, I dry-heaved until an especially loud belch burst from my throat.
My mother told me that it was a demon leaving my body. Yes, I understood the depths of Antonio’s
resentment.
That same week found me in a Brooklyn hospital clinic with an eye infection—as if I needed
any more symbolism around eyes and eyesight. I had been avoiding filing a tax form for spouse
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relief. If I could prove that my divorce had been pending when I last filed, I wouldn’t owe the extra
amount the IRS was asking for. I wanted to save the money, but I did not want to look at those files.
When I did, my eye itched even more. But I went through the “Jon” file to find the papers I needed,
and tears fell when I saw that first poem he had composed for my thirtieth birthday, “Microseason”.
He stayed up all night working out the thirty lines. “Romance is so / Manic! So sore!” Each line was
an anagram of Monica Roses. “So comes rain / As cries moon.”
And there was that poster he made to advertise the gig in Dublin he played after Kath had
died. The picture he chose for this poster was my favorite shot of him playing the guitar. It was
taken when we were in Germany, less than one year before Kath died. And in this photograph, Jon
looked beautiful and indomitable. This was the man I had fallen in love with; the man I had wanted
to spend my whole life with. I sat there with the poster on my lap and wondered what happened to
that person. Jon had photo-shopped the image to make it appear as though he were half-covered in
water. The effect was so realistic that people truly thought he was sitting in water playing the guitar.
On top of the flier it said, “Jon Hicks. Swimming or drowning?” Why hadn’t I caught this at the
time? Poor Jon had been drowning in heartache. The rest of the world stopped mattering after Kath
died. Chain-smoking joints only added to the non-corporeal haze that surrounded him in an aura of
grief. Every time he went outside to smoke on those back steps at One o One Bard, I went with
him, actively repressing my misgivings about smoking so much. Nothing about standing there
passing a joint back and forth with Jon, who was a silent time bomb of anxiety, felt good or healthy.
But I wanted back in, and thought I could connect with him if I shared his stoned space. But I could
not reach Jon anymore. He had indeed been drowning, not swimming, in a river of sorrow that was
too deep for even himself to fathom. Maybe his Pisces nature would enable him somehow to reach
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safer shores, but I could no longer journey with him. I was flooded with memories of all of our
shared dreams and all we had equally given to our adventure of a relationship.
In the south of Spain, we lived in La Linea de la Concepcion, which borders Gibraltar,
where we worked—me in a restaurant and Jon at the shipyard. We needed money for a van part and
made friends with an English couple who were also working to make money for a vehicle part. Only,
they owned a boat, which is how Jon and I came to spend the winter months of 2002 and 2003 at
the Gibraltar marina. There, we met a Danish skipper named, Martin. He was manning his yacht,
The Peregrine, by himself, since his crew abandoned ship after their treacherous crossing of the Bay
of Biscay, which we learned is infamous for its dangerous weather. Martin told us the story of the
twenty-four hour storm, with sixteen-meter high waves, that left his crew seasick and panicked down
below with the hatch shut, while Martin chained himself to the helm, and survived on Oreo cookies
and Coca Cola as he steered his ship through. His entire crew quit and some vowed never to sail
again. That meant Martin was on his own and he was getting ready to sail to the Canary Islands.
“You’re going by yourself ?” I asked. He sat with me and Jon at the bar of the restaurant I
was working at. I was amazed that he was brave enough to man his forty-seven foot ketch on his
own for five days and nights.
“I did the Bay of Biscay by myself,” he said.
“What if something happens?” I asked. But Martin assured me that the weather at this time
of the year was usually calm and that he had a GPS. He’d be fine. “Are you sure?” I asked. “Don’t
you want some help?” I looked at Jon who caught my drift.
“Yeah, wouldn’t you rather have help?” Martin looked from me to Jon, then back to me.
“You want to come?” he asked.
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“Really?” I asked.
“Hell, yeah,” Jon said.
And that is how Jon and I came to putting our beloved Snow Goose in storage, jumping on
The Peregrine with Martin, and setting sail the day after Christmas (the year before Kath died). This
sailing excursion became the highpoint of our travels. The very fact that we would do something like
this was what I loved about our relationship. We were truly up for anything. Adventure was our only
agenda. For all we knew, we’d end up staying in the Canary Islands, or come across our own boat
and become sailors. So even though neither of us had sailing experience, we took Martin up on his
offer and set sail for five days and five nights down the west coast of Africa to the Canary Islands.
The Straights of Gibraltar were rough with waves created by the Atlantic waters meeting the
Mediterranean. The last thing I expected was to get seasick, but thankfully it was like a mild flu and
cleared when we hit the open sea. Nauseous as I felt, I came out on deck to watch the mountains of
Tangier to my left and the gigantic windmills of Tarifa to my right, as we sailed along the southern
tip of Spain. Tarifa is known as the windiest spot in Europe, and Jon and I had spent weekends on
its beaches watching kite borders fly forty feet into the air. Tarifa is where Santiago sets out in search
for gold in The Alchemist. And like Santiago, Jon and I believed “It’s the possibility of having a dream
come true that makes life interesting.”
Martin was a quiet and unassuming gentleman, very Zen in his approach to sailing and much
too humble even to call it that. When we first met him, he fixed the bearings and breaks on our van,
happy to be paid in dinner and drinks and entertained by live music. Here, on deck, he was as
determined as any sailor must be to catch the wind. And when the wind changed, he leaped into
action. At once alert and relaxed, he switched off the autopilot, took to the helm and pulled in the
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front sail. Red-faced from the sun and wind, and certainly sleep deprived, he was in his element
standing behind the wheel, taking us up to six knots.
The days stretched long, there being nothing to see but wave after wave, lifting and carrying
us up and forward toward the Isle of Fuerteventura, which means strong luck. I lay on the deck
feeling the motion of the waves, tasting the salt in the air and listening to the J.J. Cale CD Jon had
put on.
“A drifter’s life is a drifter’s wife. Don’t say I didn’t tell you so.” If only I had been paying
attention to the lyrics.
Sometimes, Jon would bring out his guitar and sing his own songs, like “Sleeping at the
Wheel.”
“How can we be so close to the sea, and yet feel so far from the ocean?” Again, the finger
trying to touch itself… “You said you were just silence and dust. And how could you trust so much
water?” he sang, and I joined him at the chorus, “It’s so easy to feel like you’re sleeping at the wheel,
all the miles drifting by anyway. All our days disappear into seasons and years, yeah…”
Again, if only I had been paying attention to the lyrics. Instead, I was singing and drifting
along for the ride. Things were much too exciting to start paying attention. Imagine being at sea for
three days with Africa thirty miles west, too far to see except for at night when the red haze of
Casablanca’s light pollution burned in the distant sky. The only other signs of human life were
occasional ships on their way to that city I knew of only from movies.
When out of nowhere, a something appeared in the distance. It was too close to be a ship,
but big enough to warrant our attention. As we dipped down, we lost sight of it behind the waves,
but when the waves brought us up, the object appeared a little bit closer. As if waiting for us, this
something came closer into view, wave after wave, until we could make out a small fishing boat with
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an outboard motor and five Moroccan fishermen. Martin couldn’t believe it and explained to us how
dangerous it was to be so far out at sea in such a boat. One large wave could lap them into
nonexistence. But they waved to us, and held up a line with two-foot long bass hanging from it. We
waved back and they pulled alongside calling out, “Cigarettes? Vodka?” all smiles and fish. Then, we
understood. Alcohol was illegal in Muslim Africa, so they were looking out for sails, approaching
ships, and making deals. In return for a pack of Drum and a bottle of Danish schnapps, they tossed
us four large freshly caught deep sea bass, and then disappeared again behind the waves, leaving us
with dinner for the next several nights. I had been hoping for fish that night, always eyeing the line
cast behind The Peregrine that trailed rubber shrimp in hopes of a hungry tuna’s bite. I had been
wanting to get into fishing for my own food and finally had an opportunity to learn how to gut one,
which Martin obligingly taught me to do. I gutted the four large fish and with my bear hands threw
their innards overboard.
Martin also taught us how to use a compass on Navy charts, and showed us how to plot a
course. The three of us alternated four-hour shifts and watched for other ships’ directions by
reading their starboard and portside green and red lights in the distance. My first night alone, I
wasn’t afraid like I thought I’d be. I stood, tied in at the helm, riding three-meter waves. Although
The Peregrine was on autopilot, it seemed to me as if we were being guided by an invisible force
taking us wherever in the world we needed to be. Having left Ireland, driven to Spain’s southernmost
tip, where we left our van and continued where the wind blew us, I was filled with awe at how, when
Jon and I combined our wills, we really did go to extremes together.
One sunny day on deck, Martin and Jon were down below choreographing our dinner in a
balancing act of chopping vegetables and cooking on a gimbaled stove while the ship rocked back
and forth. I saw a movement in the water that made me leap to my feet. The next thing there was a
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spray high into the sky, when the rounded gray-black backside of a whale arced out of and back into
the ocean. I called for the boys to come up and the three of us watched the school of pilot whales
pass by, leaping like dolphins.
That night, I was alone at the helm at the wee hours while Martin and Jon slept. The sky was
filled with stars that seemed to be there only for me. Orion, the archer, whom I have kept in sight
since I was a kid, stood strong with his bow pulled, aimed and ready. I went down below to use the
loo and when I came up, Orion was across the sky from where he had been. The GPS still read the
same course, but the hunter was pointing somewhere else. I woke Martin, and he came up to find
that, sure enough, there had been a malfunction in the GPS. Had I not read the stars, we would have
gone miles off course. Martin took over for his shift, and I went to bed, but could not sleep. A
crosscurrent rocked the boat and I rolled back and forth listening to the repeated snap of the
mainsail, along with Martin’s footsteps as he attempted to catch that strong wind. For hours, I lay
there listening to the clanging and feeling that motion, when the thought occurred to me that it is
legal for a skipper to marry people at sea. I remembered seeing it on “I Love Lucy” as a child, and in
that sleepless night, my imagination ran rampant. By the time the sun began to rise, I had devised a
plan about proposing to Jon and marrying him at 20:02pm, just after sunset on the last day of 2002,
the final palindrome time of the palindrome year. Neither of us had felt the necessity for a marriage
contract, but we had been talking about getting land, building a house and having children, and I
knew things would go easier if we were legally married. How wonderful it would be to get married
at sea with no one around, just dolphins and whales for our witnesses. But the next day, Martin told
us that as far as he knew, only Navy captains could wed people. Jon kissed me, told me I was
beautiful, and said, “We’re married if we think we are.”
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My next watch was early in the morning, when the sky was still dark, but bright with more
stars than I had ever seen. Orion dipped partway into the Atlantic on the west, and to the east a
silver moon had just risen over an Africa, where some happy Moroccan fisherman got drunk on
Peppermint schnapps. A faint, yet solid rim of light surrounded the nail-clipped disc, and I thought
I could feel the gravitational pull from its curved and illuminated outer circle. We rolled with the
waves easy and strong at nine feet, and rocked all the way to the right and then all the way to the left,
like a baby’s cradle pushed by the hand of a god. I clipped myself to the helm and stood in a chi
gung posture learned from years of practicing tai chi and zazen—chin in, spine straight, waist
relaxed, bum tucked, knees slightly bent, all weight dropped to the balls of my feet, sensing the boats
direction, and kept my stance strong and balanced. I thought about the adventure that Jon and I
were on, and how we were hardly out there on a whim. We had been led, I was certain, by our
intuition, to that point, though we did not know why or where we would end up. And as The
Peregrine was an autopilot at 240 degrees south, towards the Canaries, all three sails were up and the
wind blew us along the ever-so-gentle energy of what the Native American Indians call The Great
Spirit. I felt wide-awake and certain we were taken care of.
When the sun began to light the sky, so many shooting stars were wasted on me with
nothing left to wish for. And then the dolphins came and played with the bow of the ketch where I
stuck my foot as far down as I could, my toes sometimes caught in the lap of a wave when the boat
tipped down, and I hoped for contact with a dolphins fin. When night came, the dolphins glowed far
beneath the surface where they danced beneath the same phosphorescence that left an emerald trail
of fairy dust behind us.
The sun rose red on new year’s day and, later that afternoon, Jon woke me for the view of
mountain ranges in the distance. The island’s topography was like a big top circus tent stretched for
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miles in crushed velvet colors of brown, green and yellow swept up at sporadic points. The colors
changed in dramatic shadows, depending on where the sun’s rays came through the still cloudy sky.
The closer we got to land, we noticed other things at sea, and reality took on a new perspective that
pierced into our Quixotic bubble. Oil tankers and aircraft carriers, metal monsters that loomed ever-
so-ominously in the horizon, were preparing for a havoc that went so against the beauty of all else.
In Gibraltar, warplanes had been landing on the airport that separated the rock from Spain, and
military from Great Britain and the United States had been showing up in droves. I had served the
sailors drinks at the bar. The two military basis in Gibraltar were busy, and the locals talked about
where they could hide, if need be, in the miles of roads, hospitals and the nuclear fallout shelter
built into that great big rock. Jon and I may have been avoiding many things, but we were all too
aware that war was imminent and George Bush was at the helm of America, steering the country
into the spring of 2003 and another Iraq invasion.
Other realities took shape when we reached dry land and tensions arose between Jon and I.
The fact that we were broke combined with what was to become a familiar feeling of “What are we
doing here?” We were learning to ignore this question as we moved and kept moving to yet another
country, keeping our problems at bay.
Two years later, after moving back to Ireland, then to Italy, and finally to New York, we
would sit on that porch in Staten Island asking, yet again, “What are we doing here?” If only I had
paid attention to those lyrics playing into the ocean sky while we sailed. “A drifter’s life is a drifters
wife.” When I first met Jon, he was very clear, “Don’t get attached to me. I’m a traveling musician.
Nothing will hold me down.” It was a both a cliché and a challenge. Even the challenge of it was
cliché. I was intrigued by his gypsy nature, and off my head on enough grass and magic mushrooms
to feel up for the challenge. Jon was intrigued by me as well, especially when I told him, “Alright,
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then. Not to worry. You’re still free.” We would be free, together. We would each be our own one
hundred percent. Enough with the fifty-fifty-make-a-whole.
But then Kath died and Jon slipped from his one hundred percent and I dove in to
compensate. He would appreciate me and give back. He surely would. I was, after all, his muse.
That’s what our friends had been telling me all along. What I didn’t realize for years and years was
that Kath was Jon’s true muse, not me. I was never gonna be that for Jon. We could only be together
if I agreed to keep moving with him. The moment I decided to ground myself, our relationship
crumbled, and he had to move on and drift away, as is his way, and he is still drifting. At the time of
this writing, Jon is in Thailand, getting ready to fly to Rome, still running wild with the wilds of the
world.
Divorce is like a death. And my own waves of heartache—that had once slammed me as
hard as a riptide, and had pulled me into an undertow of my own sorrow—now eased me towards
dry ground. “How could we be so close to the sea, and yet feel so far from the ocean?” I looked one
last time at the picture of Jon, “Swimming or drowning?” and put it back in the file and closed the
drawer.
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Week Fourteen
Mojie asked me to meet her in SoHo, at Housing Works Bookstore and Café. I had a clear
memory of her modest confidence, her ability to draw people in and make them feel comfortable. I
imagined that Mojie had been born with these qualities and that, through the struggles with her
family, they had accelerated into the impressive kind of inner strength I knew I could use more of.
When I arrived at the café, she was not yet there, so I had time to take in the rows of bookshelves
that reached so high a ladder leaned against one wall, so patrons could select books from the top
shelves. I picked up a pamphlet and read that Housing Works was created to deal with the needs of
those living with AIDS, and how they take on situations that other organizations consider to be “too
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challenging to serve.” Had Antonio been here, before? I knew that he would have liked this mellow
unpretentious atmosphere, where customers read books, sipped coffee and chatted quietly. Antonio
would have appreciated being served his cappuccino by a volunteer, who smiled like she meant it.
Above the café’s window, there was a “My Goodness, My Guinness” advertisement. The one with a
man reaching for a pint lodged in the neck of a smug-looking ostrich. In Galway, I lived down the
street from a pub called An Deor Dructa, which has this same ad painted on its outer white wall that
faced the Corrib—my favorite river, and the fastest one that runs into an open sea, in all of Europe.
For nine years, any time I needed to clear my head, I’d stand beside the Corrib and cast my troubles
into its twisting current that, like a living muscle, snakes out, out, out into the depths of the Atlantic.
There, the ocean would swallow my measly worries into an expansiveness that could easily contain
whatever suffering was swept into its waves. A block away from An Deor Dructa, the Galway Zen
Center is in a rented space on the top floor of the Bridge Mills, a stone building that once had a
working mill and that overlooks the Corrib. Out the dojo’s window, I would often see a heron
standing still as Buddha amidst the river’s reeves and rushes. How I wished I could stand beside the
Corrib then, still as a heron, and be reprieved of my doubts and fears. Instead, I bit my lip, lifted my
chin and carried my hot drink to a small round table. Taking out my journal, I checked over the
pages filled with questions I hoped Mojie could help with:
- How easy/difficult might it be to move Antonio out of Mt. Sinai if it

doesn’t work out?
- What is your opinion about what I mentioned in terms of Kessler’s
inconvenient location and lack of Spanish speaking staff ?
- How do we deal with Medicare and insurance issues?
- What about the IRS and green card considerations?
- Why hasn’t an eye doctor been in to assess Antonio’s damaged eye?
There were more but I didn’t want to expect too much or place unnecessary weight on this meeting.
Mojie would tell me what she could. She wouldn’t be able to make everything okay. And whether or
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not she could answer any of these questions, I was simply relieved to be reconnecting with someone
who understood.
She walked through the door like Athena, the goddess of wisdom and war, who appeared
when Odysseus needed her on his long, arduous journey. Mojie smiled when she saw me and there
was that comforting feeling of having seen her just yesterday that true friends have.
“The one and only, Monica Rose,” she said, hugging me and taking a seat. We got right down
to it. I told her how we all were and showed her my list of questions. She appreciated everything—
what there was to celebrate, worry about and strive towards. Regarding my concerns about Mount
Sinai, she suggested being diplomatic about how I approached Norma.
“Any changes you want, or make, need to be done in a cooperative manner. Start with the
practical issue of getting the letter the IRS asked for. Then, ask if an eye doctor has been to see
Antonio. Suggest he wear his glasses. Can’t they affix them to his head?”
I tried to write down everything she said but couldn’t keep up.
“Can they do his cognitive activities in Spanish?”
Why had none of us thought of these seemingly obvious details?
“What meds is he on?”
Did they tell Dana? My head was swimming. There were so many things to deal with, and I
did not know where to begin.
“In terms of potentially moving Antonio out of Mount Sinai,” Mojie said, “I don’t think it
will be impossible. MSH was Jason’s second hospital. He started out at Saint Vincent’s, which was
deplorable. I would advise you all to stay on your toes, exhausting as that is.”
“I can start by complaining about the nicknames that the staff have been using with him,” I
offered.
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“Good. You have to know these people are willing to work with you. Jason was improving
there, very slowly, but surely, and because of: A) the doctor’s disbelief that he would recover, and B)
Medicaid’s reimbursement schedule, which lags treatment by three months and demands ‘proof' of
patient progress—all of a sudden, out of the blue, Jason’s physiatrist and social worker suggested
that he go to a nursing home in Queens.”
Compared to the team Dana, Marsh, Leah and I had barely been holding together, Mojie
came across like a professional caretaker. I knew she was speaking from tons of experience but I
also knew that there was no way I could come close to living up to what she was suggesting. I took a
deep breath and sighed just as deeply. Mojie smiled and put her hand on mine. “As tiring as it is, I
would continue to investigate options. It’s shitty that insurance plays such a role in recovery, but
that’s the way the system is right now. So keep in mind that the hospital will be thinking, ‘Are we
going to get reimbursed for this?’ And if the situation gets muddy—like Jason’s, where he maxxed
out on his private insurance and was Medicaid-pending—the hospital will start thinking about
sending him elsewhere.” I tried to appear like I was up for all of this, but I all I could feel was how
inadequate I was. Dana was dealing with the insurance and she was one of the least organized
people I knew. I was organized, but was intimidated by the thought of filling out even one page of
paperwork or making a single telephone call. I did not feel qualified. I picked up my cappuccino and
sipped some foam from the top. Mojie went to order her own drink and I was left with her words
going round my head, and the rest of my questions blurring across the paper in front of me. I
flipped back through old journal entries. There were those words of advice from my Teacher from
our last telephone dokusan when I spoke to her about my frustration around her assumptions of my
practice. Or, had it been my own assumptions about what she thought? Either way, that old feeling
of inadequacy that surfaced then was exactly how I felt right now. I read where she asked, “Can you
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allow yourself to be with those feelings of ‘not good enough’?” That’s when I noticed the familiar
restrictiveness in my chest. I hadn’t been aware of it, but it had been there through this entire
conversation with Mojie. It had to be okay that I was not able to do all of this stuff for Antonio.
Could I accept this about myself ?
Mojie returned with a coffee. “Mojie, I don’t how much of all of this I can take on,” I said.
“At the moment visiting him a few times a week is as much as I can handle.”
“Well, then stay on your toes when you’re there. Can you sit in on the therapy sessions?”
“Yes, I would actually like to do that.”
“You’re an intelligent person and I assume Dana is, too. Use your judgment and instincts to
determine if you think the rehabilitation is working for Antonio, or not. Ask yourselves, ‘Can I see
him walking out of here?’ The main thing to find out,” she said, “is what their goal and vision are
for him. Then, you need to tell them your goals and vision. You need to figure them out and know
them.”
“I don’t really know what my goals are for him,” I admitted. “A couple of weeks ago, they
were just hopes that he wake up. Now, I want him to be himself again. How did your family figure
this out?”
“It didn’t happen all at once. One doctor we worked with at Spaulding remarked on
something he noticed that we had that other families often did not. We had a vision of what we
wanted for Jason. We wanted him to come home and resume an independent life. We wanted a full
recovery—or at least, pretty damn close. And this doctor noticed that he and the other people on
Jason’s team were like, ‘This is what we see for Jason…’ which was not terribly optimistic. And we,
his family, were like, ‘We don’t care; this is our vision. So, Antonio’s family and close ones would do
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well to talk about the near and distant future, what you all see for him. Then you can gauge if MSH
is helping him reach that point or not.”
“It’s hard to know what his mother wants since we can’t communicate with her. I know his
son wants his dad back. Marsh and Dana and I all want the old Antonio back. If put to it, I’d have
to say we all want a full recovery as well. Seems we all need to meet and figure this out. But I wonder
if that will actually happen. We’re all just so exhausted already. And what if a full recovery isn’t in the
cards?”
“Be careful,” Mojie said. “A negative vision can be a self-fulfilling prophesy. Remember, it’s a
marathon, not a sprint. Now is the time to get him the best treatment available.”
“It seems Kessler is the place, but what about their lack of Spanish-speaking staff ? Dana
and I think it would be good for Antonio to be spoken to in his first language, now. And his mother
needs to understand things better.”
“I do think Spanish-speaking staff is important. It’s really important for Antonio’s family to
be involved in his recovery at the hospital because he won’t be there forever and they have to know
what’s going on, both in the big picture and in the small parts of his day-to-day needs. And also to
communicate back to the staff what progress they see happening in him. Communication is
absolutely vital. It’s a team effort.”
“The other thing about Mount Sinai is that it’s in Manhattan, so we can all visit easily and
keep a better watch over his recovery. Kessler is in the New Jersey suburbs. I seriously doubt anyone
could visit on a regular basis there. I don’t have a car, for one. And his mother would have to be put
up in a nearby hotel, which would further isolate her. I don’t mean to make Kessler sound like a bad
option since it’s obviously a better rehabilitation center, but so much about it seems impossible.” As
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the reasons came out of my mouth, they sounded like excuses that I needed Mojie to validate. I
wanted her to reassure me that we had done the right thing.
“That’s not good about visitors. If people can’t come to see him, Antonio might detach, get
depressed, shut down.”
“He’s already depressed.”
“Jason got depressed too. Remember? A lot of what helped for Jason was to bring the
outside world into his hospital room. We read to him, talked—even if he slept, so he could hear our
voices—played music, brought friends to see him, etcetera. It’s so much about stimulation and
reconnecting, reminding him that life is here waiting for him, wanting him back. One doctor said to
me, ‘The brain is lazy. It doesn’t want to recover.’ When I heard this, I felt I had to be Jason’s
surrogate motivation.”
“Mojie, you’re an absolute angel. You really are. Jason is so lucky that he has you and the rest
of your family. I hope what we’re able to do for Antonio—though not even close to what you guys
pulled off—will be enough. I’m doing what I can but find it so hard to think about the big picture.
I’m better at dealing with what comes up on a day-to-day basis. Like when I went to check out the
rehab and found out about a caretaking class, I signed up for it on the spot. I couldn’t have planned
that.”
“That’s great. What was the class like?”
“It was okay, I guess. I learned some things about the rehab. There was this woman in the
class whose husband is in the rehab. She had trouble getting the staff to administer the proper
medication. When she told the nurses to lower his medication, she said it took two days before they
dealt with the request. Then, she asked them to give him no laxatives, and they gave him five.”
“Fucked up.”
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“Furthermore, there was no nurse with her husband for one, two, then three days.”
“Sounds like Mount Sinai, alright.”
“Another woman said she waited for one and a half weeks to see a doctor. ‘You have to have
elbows in this place,’ she said.” I figured that I would gently show mine by rolling up my sleeves.
Whether I’d be able to swing a punch if necessary was a whole other question.
On the way to the rehab, I bought molé tamales, enchiladas and New York cheesecake. Our
boy not only needed palatable food to fatten him up, he also needed to experience his senses. Taste
was an easy one to help him with, now that he could eat again. But first, I stopped in to speak with
the social worker, Allison Ostrowsky. She listened to my concerns and was surprised to hear that the
staff had been calling Antonio by nicknames. She seemed sincere, though I found it strange that she
didn’t know that he wore glasses. But what she said next erased any other worries I had.
“He’s doing really well,” she said. “If the doctor okays it, he’ll be able to have a home visit
on Christmas.” Christmas? That was less than two weeks away!
I went in to see Antonio, excited to tell him the good news. Again, I was impressed by the
progress he had made—sitting up straight in his wheelchair, voice stronger and appetite as good as
ever. I sat on his bed and watched him wolf down the food, trying my best to ignore the patient in
the other bed, the orderly in a chair at the door, and Lucha in the corner watching everything. But
Antonio talked to me like no one else was there. He told me how bad he felt for causing Dana so
much stress, implying how relieved she must be to be in California, visiting her parents.
“Are you kidding?” I said. “What was stressful was when you weren’t coming out of it. We’re
overjoyed, now. The better you get, the less stressed we are. So, you just keep getting better.”
“I feel a lot of progress,” he said.
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“It’s amazing. You’re a walking miracle. You came back from the dead.”
“I know. I feel like I did die.”
“What was it like?”
“Really quiet. I kept looking for those things they talk about. Golden palaces, angels,
gardens. But I didn’t find any of those things.” I told him about the red votive Jesus candle.
“Maybe you’ll be less obsessed with suffering, now.” He grinned his sly grin. I told him
about all of the dreams we had about him coming back, the bike light, the cell phone. How I really
believed he was communicating with us.
“I always knew when you were there,” he said. “And it gave me so much strength.” He cried
and I hugged him in his wheelchair.
“Every once in a while, we’d get a hand squeeze, or you’d open your eyes, and we’d get so
much hope,” I said.
“I really wanted to communicate with you, but I couldn’t.”
“What was that like?”
“Shit.”
I felt Lucha watching us. Antonio noticed, too. “They want me to go to Oaxaca.”
“Could be good for you. Dana says how grounding it is for her to be in Northern California,
taking hikes and climbing trees. She thinks it might do you good to connect with your roots.”
“Yeah, but there’s family stuff,” he said. “Could be complicated.”
“I know, Antonio, but you almost died. And your family loves you. I think when it comes to
life and death, all the bullshit needs to get shelved. Even Christy was at the hospital with us, rubbing
your feet.” Antonio looked down.
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“I’ve been thinking a lot about people,” he said. “More than usual. Feeling a lot of
gratefulness and love. Having these love attacks. Wanting to hug people and tell them how much I
love them.”
“So give me a hug and tell me how much you love me.”
On the way back to Brooklyn, I stopped at the Chelsea Hotel, where Debbie Gold came
down with the signed copy of her Grateful Dead-o-poly board game. I had noticed the game was
already for sale at Barnes and Noble, and knew a signed copy by its creator would be a fun piece for
people to bid on at the Zen Center auction. JD Souther had given me a signed copy of his new CD,
“If the World Was You.” Patty from Slope Cellars donated a case of Cheap ‘N Tasty red. In between
everything else, I was excited that the event was coming together so nicely. I sometimes wondered
how I had the energy to put into it, but when I did focus on it, it felt effortless.
On the ‘F’ back to Park Slope, the game balanced across my knees, I smiled thinking about
how the more I learned to trust life, the more it opened up for me. I noticed how I felt happy in a
quiet, centered and grateful way. Even though I was tired from giving so much energy to my
students, the auction, and Antonio, these things are what gave me energy.
The night before the auction, a blizzard blasted Brooklyn. I stayed up ‘til early morning,
preparing for an event that might be cancelled, and watched all that snow coming down out my
window. If the snow stopped and people came out, I thought, it would be great. If not, the event
would have to be postponed, or we’d just chance it. I hadn’t seen snow like that in more than
thirteen years, back before I even moved to Ireland. It was festive and beautiful snow and I loved it.
I even loved the stormy and windy cold – a cold that made me smile rather than shiver. I felt very
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happy. I thought about what Leah told me that Antonio said when she asked him what he wanted
from us. He said, “I just want you to be happy. To do what you need to do. To live your life.”
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Week Fifteen
Winter Solstice
It was the morning of the auction. An autumn that began in crisis was over. I woke early and
looked out the window at the blanket of white covering my street. It was deep but cars were driving
down my street. The auction would take place after all.
Items tagged, artwork up and hors d'oeuvres out, me and a few BZC volunteers finished
setting up just in time. Despite the snow, people started to arrive in a steady stream. Somehow, we
had pulled it off. I opened a bottle of red, poured myself a glass and relaxed on a black leather sofa.
For the first time, I could appreciate the beautiful space donated for the auction. There were red
brick walls, high ceilings, lots of sunlight, and plants in all the right places.
“Were you worried about the snow?” Laura asked, sitting beside me, her glass also filled.
“There was not one minute in which I felt stressed,” I said. “Even with the blizzard and
possibility of having to cancel after so much hard work.”
“I’m impressed by how calm you are,” she said.
“All that meditation stuff really works,” I said, and we clinked glasses.
“Things take on a whole other perspective when confronted up close with death,” she said.
“I know,” I nodded and sipped my wine. “When the snow was coming down hard and late
last night, which could have meant the auction would have to be cancelled, I could only think, ‘How
pretty’.”
Antonio was eating dinner when I next visited him, and he had a lot to say in between bites.
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“Leah told me something that has stayed in my mind, and I can’t stop thinking about it,” he
said, looking at me, chewing. Finally, he put his fork down and said, “She told me that when I was in
the hospital in Staten Island, you and Dana and Helz and Leah would sit beside my bed and just
cry.” Tears stung my eyes at this. I looked down and took a breath. “And I feel so bad about that. I
feel so bad that I made you all suffer so much. I’ve been having a lot of guilt about that.” He was
crying. I took his hand.
“We were scared,” I told him. “We didn’t know if you were going to wake up.”
“I’m sorry for making you suffer.”
“You make it sound like you did it on purpose,” I said. “Antonio, don’t feel guilty or bad.
We’re just all so happy that you’re here, now. And what we went through around this has been
amazing. I’m thankful for the lessons I’ve learned and the connections I’ve made, the reminder
about how wonderful life is and how much I appreciate my friends.”
“I learned a lot, too,” he said. “Life’s really good, still.” He nearly asked me this last bit, and I
nodded. We looked into one another’s eyes for a long time.
“Life is a near-death experience,” I said, and told Antonio about Yoko, Julieta and Stacy, and
the new lives coming into the world.
“Lately, when I see children with their parents in Prospect Park, or around the streets of
Park Slope, doing simple things like holding hands, I hope with all my heart that they are
appreciating it. I hope they remember that it’s these simple moments they dreamed about having
with a child before they had one.”
I told Antonio about the Adrian Mitchell poem called “Beatrix is Three”:
At the top of the stairs

I ask for her hand. O.K.
She gives it to me.
How her fist fits my palm,
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A bunch of consolation.
We take our time
Down the steep carpetway
As I wish silently
That the stairs were endless.
“I went outside the other day,” Antonio said. He sounded so natural that I almost missed his
shift into fantasyland. “And I saw this little girl holding hands with a man.”
“Before you went into the hospital?” I asked, wanting to root him into reality.
“No,” he said. “Just the other day.”
“How did you get out of the hospital?” I asked, trying to make sense of his memory.
“I just walked out,” he said like this was no big deal. “The little girl laughed, and her laugh
was so clear and musical, and just went on and on and on.”
“Sounds beautiful,” I said, wondering if he dreamed it, but deciding it didn’t matter. He went
back to his dinner and I could feel Lucha holding herself down in her chair. He had asked her to
stop feeding him and I knew it was hard for her to watch, especially when he dribbled or dropped
food onto his lap.
“Sage was here, yesterday,” Antonio said, after a few bites.
“How was that?”
“Good,” he said. “Poor guy.”
“He’s been through a lot.”
“My mom says that when I was unconscious, Sage would come in and sit beside me and take
my hand and put it on his head. He would sit like that just hoping I would rub his head.” I told
Antonio about some of those moments when he would show affection, and how we would rejoice
when they happened. I told him about the Day of the Dead and how his first words to me in over
two months were “Which one?”
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“How random is that?” I asked.
“When Sage was here, yesterday, he just put his head on my chest and cried.” I told Antonio
about the night Sage and I bonded over bowls of Rice Crispies, and the story of the chalkboard
drawing of the macho Spaniards with the big penis-arm.
“That’s a good one,” he laughed.
“I knew you’d appreciate that.” Then, he told me again and again how grateful he was to all
of us and how much he loved us.
“I’ve been having love attacks,” he said, forgetting he had said this to me before. I told him
how Dana had described him as a Buddha teacher and how much we all learned.
“Don’t feel guilty,” I said, again. “You’ve had enough suffering and guilt. I think you can
move past your obsession with these things.”
“I’ve been rediscovering my mother,” he said, smiling over at her. She was watching us with a
curious and grateful expression on her face. He told me how thankful he is for her being here and
how she laughed the other day saying, “I speak no English and they speak no Spanish, but I love
them.”
“We’re all family, now,” I said, and then asked if it was weird for him to come out of it and
find out that we all knew each other.
“Yeah,” he said. “Christy was here this morning.”
“To pick up Sage?”
“Yeah.”
“How was that?”
“She was nice. I think there can be peace between us.”
“That’s good.”
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We hugged and kissed and talked and cried for a while longer. It felt so good to be
affectionate with Antonio and feel him warm and responsive. His sexual drive, however, was
completely absent. Our kisses were light pecks on the lips. The flirtatious part of our friendship was
absent. We had only ever kissed deeply once, the weekend of The Dead party. We were out on the
porch. It was dark. The kiss was lovely. Lying in the altar room that night, I had waited for him to
come down to me, certain he would, and surprised when didn’t. The next morning, he explained that
he was still so exhausted from the party that he had passed out. Did Antonio think about sex? I
wondered. Was it even on his radar?
“What do you miss the most?” I asked.
“Just being outside and walking around. Having that freedom.” I smiled. Of course. How
simple. I told him how I came to visit him that first week in the ICU, and he had asked me how the
weather was. How I lied and told him there was a blizzard. He laughed.
“Was it strange to realize how much time went by?” I asked.
“Yeah. I wasn’t scared when I was out of it. But when I started to wake up and my rational
mind kicked in, then I was scared. I thought I was gonna die. I wanted to stop it all,” he said.
“Gradually, I realized it wasn’t as scary as I thought, and I was getting better.” This was all I need to
ease my fear around Antonio’s suicidal tendencies.
I told again him about our dreams and the moments of communication. My vision of him
sitting outside on the back steps drinking a beer.
“I will,” he said.
“I know,” I said. “That moment is so close I can taste it.”
“I’m not bitter,” he said. “Just sad and guilty. But life is good, still.”
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Antonio’s pain and guilt around the suffering we went through made me think of the story
about Suzuki Roshi and the bad pickles. When he was a boy of twelve, his teacher had served the
students rotten pickles night after night, though the boys continually refused to eat them. One night,
Suzuki snuck into the kitchen and took the pickles out to the back of the garden, where he dug a
hole and buried them in the ground. The next day, the pickles were back on the plates and served
again to the students. The lesson was to deal with the parts of life we don’t like. To chew and
swallow what is distasteful to us. To eat pain.
How I wanted him to believe me when I told him how much I had learned. I thanked him
for showing me how important the simple gift of breathing is, and how important friendship is. Did
he understand? Did he get what I explained about the stress-free auction, and how I’d been walking
around New York with a silly grin on my face? “What if Antonio dies?” we had wondered. I told
him that the doctors and nurses weren’t even crossing their fingers. They were just shaking their
heads. One of them had suggested it would take a miracle. Another told Dana that Antonio was the
sickest person in the ICU. “What if he’s a vegetable?” Dana had asked in a small voice when we lay
on the earth beneath a full harvest moon, a long time ago in October. There were all those hospital
visits, watching him lying there, eyes closed, gone. I told him what it was like to be confronted with
that as reality, and how it was to have no other choice but to accept.
Antonio had a brain hemorrhage
Five hours of surgery

ICU for a week
Risk of stroke
Pneumonia
Can’t breathe for himself
Lungs don’t work
A week on the respirator
Induced coma
Another week
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Another week
A month
CAT scan
Stroke in the right side of his brain
Three weeks on the vent
Tracheotomy
Meningitis
Is he ever waking up?
Accept. Accept. Accept.

Patience. Patience. Patience.
And then
Antonio opened his eyes and looked at me

He pulled me to him and stroked my hair
He talked to me
He said thank you.
Took ten steps
Pulled out his trach tube
The miracle happened

Antonio woke up
on Thanksgiving Day
We wanted to celebrate
Pop bottles of champagne
Then,
Did you hear?

He threw himself over the guardrail last night.
Went for the scissors.
Wanted to finish the job.
What if,
after all we’ve done
Antonio comes out of this only to kill himself ?
But I knew he was on his own path and I had to let go. And so I did. Life, then, happened as
it was going to, and we got to witness the healing process and had to step back in utter awe,
thanksgiving, and a feeling that I will call reverence. Watching Antonio accept what happened, let go
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and give over to the doctors, nurses, the rehab center, and even to us, who had gone so far past his
need for privacy and space, had been so humbling.
“I’m not gonna walk out of here,” he told me before I left. “I’m going to roar!”
My next aikido class was as challenging, fun, intense and sweaty, as usual. I practiced back
falls and understood a bit better how to roll. There was so much that I got, intellectually, that my
body had to learn. Baisho, who taught that day’s class, told me to do things, pointed and repeated
himself. And I tried and tried until I was out of breath, and then I kept on trying. He was very kind,
like one would be to a child learning to speak. Aikido, like Spanish, was a whole new language. It was
like Antonio, learning to walk all over again. There, he relearned what his body once knew how to
do. He would attempt to take a shirt off like he once did, but his body wouldn’t move how he
wanted it to. Here, I was teaching my body to move in a way it never had before, so my body also
did not move in the way I wanted it to. Was my timing around starting aikido a coincidence? Or was
it more a metaphor? A way to connect somehow to Antonio’s struggles?
After training, Dana and I met at the rehab to be trained as home caretakers for our boy’s
Christmas visit. They were supposed to train Lucha as well, but Mount Sinai had been unable to
offer us a translator. While waiting for the trainer to arrive, Antonio told us, “I’m getting funny looks
from the staff here. One person asked me who I am to have all these beautiful women in here all the
time. She thought I must be a famous musician or something.”
“I overheard a couple of the nurses talking, last time I was here,” Dana said. “They were
saying, ‘I heard about communal houses like the one he’s from and have seen them on TV, but I
didn’t think they actually existed!’”
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“You know my friend, Jim, who was in the ICU that time?” I asked. “Well, when he came up
to Vermont to see me graduate from the master’s program up there, a bunch of us went to play pool
at some local bar. It was me, my sister, and two other women from the program—Tania and Nikole.
At one point, my sister was giving Jim a massage, and some guy walked up to him and asked, ‘Who
are you’? Jim looked up at the guy all slow, like he was going to say something important. But then he
shrugged and said, ‘I’m just a guy’.”
“That’s right,” Antonio laughed, “I’m just a guy!” Dana hugged him.
“Our guy,” I said. Lucha laughed because we were laughing and I put my arm around her to
include her in the fun. “I wonder if your mother saw houses like ours on TV,” I said. Antonio shook
his head.
“When I first woke up, she asked me which one of you was my girlfriend.”
“What did you tell her?”
“I said you’re all my girlfriends!”
“That’s right,” I said. “And you’re just a guy!”
When Jennifer, the therapist, showed up to take us to the gymnasium, I pushed Antonio in
his wheelchair. When we arrived, he stood up by himself. Jennifer asked him if he was dizzy. He
shook his head, no.
“Dizziness takes a while to go away,” she said, even though Antonio said he was not dizzy.
“Make sure to give him water. His heart rate will increase with activity.” We knew all of this. We had
been coming there for weeks. Now, they were treating us like we were in kindergarten. “Who wants
to go first?” Jennifer asked. I volunteered and was told to be on his left side with my right hand on
his right hip and my left hand on his left shoulder. This was natural to me since I’d led my father
around my whole life. Dad would walk with his unseeing eyes cast downward. Antonio, though,
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should have been making an effort to look up, which Jennifer kept reminding him to do. We tried
the training stairs with its ten steps up to a wooden platform, just big enough to turn around on and
come back down. Jennifer told Antonio to go up with the right foot leading and down with the left
first. I thought about last month when Norma had walked us through this room. When we passed
these same steps, she said they wouldn’t happen for a long time. Was this considered a long time, or
was Antonio really a miracle boy? Chico milagro would become my new nickname for him.
We went into the occupational therapy room and practiced with the bed. He was told to shift
from standing to sitting. “No plopping,” Jennifer warned. “Reach down and feel the surface of the
bed before sitting on it. Good. That’s right. And now, when you come back up, go slow so you don’t
get dizzy.” I could feel Antonio seething. He had been getting from his wheelchair to his bed by
himself for a week so far. I remember how Norma had told us that Antonio’s therapists would meet
regularly to discuss his progress. So, how come Jennifer was treating Antonio like he was learning
this for the first time?
When we practiced with the car, he was told to duck down low and not to grab the door
because it could swing open and take him off balance. Antonio sat in the pretend car and pretended
to drive. I pretended to think this was funny.
We trained in the bathroom and shower, next.
“Can he take a bath?” I asked.
“Definitely, not. He won’t be able to climb in and out of the tub. Getting down on his knees
from a standing position won’t happen for a long time.” Again, this ‘long time’ thing. What did that
mean? A year? Six months? What did they mean and why such negative assumptions? When I
pressed her, Jennifer decided to demonstrate. She brought Antonio over to where a thin mat, like the
ones on the floor of the aikido dojo, covered a five-foot square of floor. She showed him how to go
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from standing to kneeling on all fours. But when he tried, his legs buckled under him and he
slammed his knee into the mat hard enough to hurt. Jennifer looked at me as if to say, “See?” I
wanted to push her down on the mat and get her in the chokehold I had seen Sensei demonstrate.
But I could only watch Antonio struggle back into the wheelchair. We needed to get him out of this
environment, where people were condescending and negative and presumptuous. Where all of the
patients were talked down to, and where no one was expected to progress very far. It was better than
where he had been, but it was not home. On Christmas, we’d get our boy for the day. It was almost
too good to be true, like we were all in some movie. Who wakes up from a two-month coma on
Thanksgiving Day, and goes home for the first time on Christmas Day? So far, we had cast Ben
Kingsley, Kevin Bacon and Uma Thurman to star in the Hollywood version.
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Christmas Day
Antonio was awake and ready to go when I arrived on Christmas morning. The nurse came
in with his meds, and I signed a bunch of release papers, taking responsibility for him.
“When does he need to be back by?” I asked.
“Around nine,” the nurse said.
“We’ll see you at ten,” I said. Antonio laughed. The nurse looked at me. “Okay, nine-thirty,” I
said. “Not a minute later.” She shook her head and left the room. Antonio slipped into his
wheelchair, buckled in, and we headed for the elevator.
Downstairs, the security guard pressed the button for the wheelchair access door and I
pushed Antonio outside. It was gray and drizzly and the cold air was damp on my face. Dirty clumps
of snow from last Saturday’s storm were pushed up against the street curbs. Antonio’s eyes filled.
This was the first time he had been outside since September fourteenth. Dana pulled up and we
shoved the wheelchair and walker, both of which he claimed he would not be needing, into the
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backseat. I reminded him not to hold onto the car door as he lowered himself into the front seat.
We took the FDR Drive toward Staten Island. The only thing Antonio said the whole way home
was, “I feel like I just got out of jail.” The drive out of Manhattan, and over the Verrazano Bridge,
was not filled with the excitement I had anticipated.
When we got to the house, I walked him to the front door, up the steps and over the
threshold, where Dana stopped to take off her shoes. I could see Marigold and Alice waiting in the
hallway and I urged Antonio forward, but he hung back, intent on removing his shoes like the rest
of us. Stepping into the hallway, Marigold wrapped her arms around his waist and he held her tight.
“I missed you so much,” he repeated, crying. Her smile relieved me since I had worried she might be
distant and take a while to warm up to this new Antonio. We led our boy into the living room, where
a tall and a short tree—“A kids one and a grown-up one,” Alice explained—were surrounded with
presents. Once on the couch, we all sighed. We did it. Antonio was home.
After presents and breakfast, I sat on the couch with my arms wrapped around Antonio. I
couldn’t help being super-affectionate. I told myself I was being protective, guarding and holding
him safe from harm. But mostly it was just so good to feel him alive in his body. How many times
had Antonio and I sat on that couch? That same couch where I had posed nude, covered only with
red, green, blue and yellow balloons left over from a party, while he snapped photos for an art
project. And how often had Antonio and I sat on this couch with our arms around each other, either
in friendship or flirting on that edge we sometimes teetered on? How different to sit on this same
couch with my arms around him while he sat limp. His lack of physical response and his fragility
made me want to give him more. Something stirred in me. I wanted to kiss him and I wanted him to
kiss me back. I wanted to take him into the room where the massage table was set up. I wanted to
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open him back up again, and have him respond to me. I pulled him closer and kissed his neck, but
he only stared straight ahead, into the space of his own mind.
The first time Oaxaca Skyped that day, Lucha took the call on the kitchen computer. But
there were repeated calls from family members wanting to see Antonio. He did not want to walk all
the way to the kitchen, where the computer sat high up on top of a cabinet, and where there was
nothing to lean on. There were only the stools for sitting around the chopping block and these
would not support Antonio. Someone brought down Dana’s laptop, but we couldn’t find the cord.
Lucha was anxiously waving at us from the kitchen, rattling away in Spanish, determined to get
Antonio in front of the rest of her family. The phone rang again and we still could not find the
cord. I ran upstairs and searched all the rooms. Downstairs, Dana and Marsh looked everywhere.
“I found it!” someone yelled. But once the laptop was plugged in, we discovered the lack of
a signal.
“Antonio, I can get your walker and maybe you can stand for a while leaning on that,” I
suggested. He nodded. I raced out to the car and brought the walker back in. We situated him in
front of the computer screen, where his brother was waiting. Marsh, Dana, Marigold, Alice and I
squeezed beside Lucha and Antonio and he introduced us to his family in their living room in
Mexico. Filaberto introduced his family back and there was much excitement all around. I was
unable to understand the conversation and felt odd, after a while, posing like this in front of
Antonio’s family with my right hand protectively placed on his right shoulder. After a while, it
occurred to me that I could shove a kitchen stool under his butt so he could lean back a little. This
worked well. He seemed comfortable enough and even scooted himself onto the stool. It felt
normal to have Antonio sitting upright on a stool in the kitchen, like he used to. After a while,
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Marigold ran back into the living room to play with her presents. Dana went upstairs to put Alice
down for a nap. Lucha and Marsh and I remained in the kitchen, and after a while, I grew
discouraged with not being able to partake in the conversation. Marsh was having fun with the
Spanish he’d picked up living from with Lucha, but my rudimentary Spanish skills were not nearly
enough for conversing. I left the three to their talking and went out to the car to grab the laundry I
had brought with me. I brought it downstairs, put it in the machine and turned it on. Then, I heard a
loud thud on the ceiling above me, followed by a scream from Lucha. By the time I got upstairs,
Marsh was leading Antonio back into the living room.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“He fell off the stool,” Marsh said. He had his right hand on Antonio’s right shoulder and
his left hand on Antonio’s left shoulder, which was not the way the nurses had showed me how to
walk with him. But we got him to the couch and sat him down. There was a small cut in his eyebrow
with a droplet of blood oozing out of it. Marsh said, “I went to go find Dana. Lucha walked over to
stir something on the stove, and Antonio fell over and hit his head on the floor.”
“What?” I said. “Are you okay?” Antonio nodded, but he was clearly dazed. What did this
mean? Antonio hit his head on the floor. When Dana came in, I asked her, “Do you think we should take
him to the emergency room?” We looked at each other, both knowing that we could not bring
Antonio up the road to RUMSCI with a cut in his head on Christmas Day. It was a small cut, one
that under different circumstances we wouldn’t think twice about. But what did we know about
brain injuries? Surely, they’d keep him all day doing tests. The mere idea of our boy spending
Christmas Day in the same hospital he was trapped in for an entire season was absurd. What that
would do to his spirit was unthinkable.
“I’m fine,” Antonio said, as if reading my thoughts.
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“Are you sure? Does your head hurt?” I asked.
“No. I’m fine,” he repeated. But I had a terrible feeling. I had signed Antonio out. I was
responsible for him. I shouldn’t have left his side. What were we thinking leaving him on a stool
without any support? We tacitly agreed to do nothing. Marigold played with presents and I sat with
Antonio, holding his hand. Everything felt surreal.
“Do you feel like you’re tripping?” I asked. He nodded. “Do you want to take a nap?”
Another nod. I walked him to the bedroom near the front door, the one that was the altar room at
last year’s Dia de los Muertos party. The room with the massage table that Dana had set up so we
could knead his weakened muscles back to life. I looked at the table and knew that we would not be
massaging Antonio that day. I would not be kissing Antonio, and he certainly would not be kissing
me back. Not any time soon. I helped him to lie down, tucked him in, and kissed his cut, which had
stopped bleeding. Closing the door, I prayed he wasn’t concussed.
The rest of the day went fine. Antonio looked much better when I woke him. We ate
Mexican food, opened more presents, made more food, ate cake and drank coffee. But soon it was
time to get Antonio back to the hospital. “I don’t want to go back there,” he said. Marigold gave him
more hugs at the door and Dana and I piled back in the car with the walker, cane, and our very sad
boy. On the way down Bard Avenue, he said, “Who would’ve known that when those two guys
grabbed me and threw me in an elevator and beat the shit out of me, it would have led me to your
house. To a place where I can give and receive love.”
Dana said, “So many times in ICU, I wanted to tell you and couldn’t, and now I can. I love
you, and I’ll say it at least five or seven times a day.”
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I said “It’s just so good to feel life in your body, which is why I’ve been all over you with
affection all day. So often in ICU, we’d massage you or hold your hand, but you wouldn’t respond.
Now, it’s just so good to see you alive and looking so beautiful.”
A few days later, I was back in Brooklyn, roasting vegetables for a potluck dinner the next
night after the aikido dojo’s day of zazen. I had never sat a full day of Rinzai style Zen, as the Zen I
practice is Soto Zen. I didn’t expect any major differences, though I knew that kinhin was much
faster. Mostly, I was looking forward to the use of the kyusaku. When I practiced Soto Zen in
Ireland, in the Deshimaru lineage, the kyusaku was frequently used. If a person is meditating and
feels that they are falling asleep, they may ask to be struck by this long wooden stick, on a pressure
point between the neck and shoulder. The strike stimulates point in order to wake one up. Likewise,
if the person is too agitated, when the same point is hit it there is a settling effect. The strike is not
meant to induce pain, though often there is a stinging sensation that lasts a few seconds. When used
correctly, I found this tool to be very useful. In the Soto Zen schools in the States, however, I was
told that the kyusaku is not used much anymore. I understood this to be because it can conjure up
feelings of violence for some, and for those with past abuse issues it has been known to have
negative effects. I could understand this, but since it was only used if asked for, that seemed okay to
me. I was glad that Fujin, the Rinzai nun who would be leading our sit, was going to use the
kyusaku. I planned to place my hands in gassho when she moved in front of me with the stick, the
sign that I would like to receive her strike.
While waiting for the vegetables to finish in the oven, I made myself a bowl of soup, when
Baisho called. He told me that Sensei had received my email about the satay peanut sauce dish that I
had offered to make, and was sorry to tell me that the dinner actually had a French theme. They
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thought I knew. My first thought—How was I supposed to know that when no one had told me?
My second thought was more practical—Thankfully, I hadn’t yet mixed the marinade in with the
vegetables. Eager to go with the flow and be cool, I went with Baisho’s suggestion that I add my veg
to his bean dish. I refrained from telling him that the breadcrumbs in his recipe weren’t good for my
wheat allergy. I got off the phone and thought, “At least I’m done in the kitchen.” But I couldn’t let
it go so easily and Googled French roasted vegetable recipes online, finding a salad I could make
with lemon and garlic. I didn’t have enough lemons though, and I would have had to roast the garlic.
Never mind, I told myself. A few minutes later, I imagined how nice it would be show up with a
French dish. I could go out and buy more lemons… I let it go and revisited it, let it go and revisited
it. Even after I filled the bath, I found myself in the kitchen slicing lemons, determined to swing it.
Finally, I came to my senses, stuck the lemons in the fridge and climbed into the bath. Gradually, my
noisy head calmed down and I was just in the bath, aware of the hot soapy water.
The day sit was challenging. There were subtle differences in ritualistic forms between Soto
Zen and Renzai—meaning we faced towards one another rather than the wall, and they way we
bowed was not the same. The pattern in which the bells were hit was different, and we chanted in
Japanese rather than in English. The sitting periods were also longer, but I was able to keep up.
When Fujin rose to present the kyusaku, I was ready. But when she gave the kyusaku to others, it
sounded as if she were hitting people as hard as she possible could. THWACK! The energy that
filled the room made me uneasy. I knew it was not necessary to hit so hard in order for the necessary
points to be stimulated. When she neared me, my eyes stung with the tears. I let her pass.
There was two more fifty-minute periods. We had been going since nine in the morning and
it was nearly five in the afternoon. I had sat many three, five, and seven-day sesshins. The longest
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being the ten-day sesshin I had sat years before in France at Deshimaru’s temple, La Gendronnière.
By the end of those ten long days, I had learned what it meant to “go beyond the pain,” of, “to
become one with the pain.” By the second to last sit of that one day at the aikido dojo, however, a
white-hot pain seared down my thighs to my knees. It felt as if my skin were being peeled off.
Images flashed in my head of Ben Hur being dragged behind a chariot until there was no skin left
on his legs. The temptation to shift my posture was more extreme than it had ever been in all of my
years of sitting. I had always prided myself on how I could take it, and I would never move. I also
knew that, were I to move, Fujin’s voice would cut through the deep silence in the room. “Be still,”
she would say. Everyone would know I had moved. Sensei, who was sitting across from me, would
think me a beginner. Nobody else had moved, and I had probably been sitting for many more years
than most people in that room. If I moved, I would appear weak.
My thoughts might as well have been doing aikido on that tatami mats we sat on. One after
another, they pushed, pulled, rolled this way, then that, slamming one another down, again and
again.
There’s no reason to be in such pain. This is not a competition. Just move.

No! Don’t move. They’ll think you’ve never sat before. Remember when you asked
how to bow at the beginning, before things started, wanting direction on the
different forms? You were told, “You’ll see,” in a way that made you certain they
assumed you’d never sat before.
But I’ve been sitting for more than fifteen years. I never move. I don’t want them
to think me a novice.
My legs fucking hurt.
Breathe into it, Monica. Just breathe.
But, it’s getting worse. My eyes are filling with tears.
What’s the worst that can happen?
I’ll be scolded in front of everyone.
But pain like this isn’t normal. This isn’t the point of sitting. I’m hardly engaged
with non-thinking. I’m highly stressed out—And nobody knows. I only appear
calm and still.
I must support those beside me. The woman next to me is sitting with a torn
ACL and she’s not moving.
When will the bell ring?
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Keep breathing. Go beyond the pain.

But there is no getting beyond this kind of pain. This is excruciating! I can’t
believe how much this hurts.
Well, you’ve sat this long. You might as well push through. Nothing is really
happening. You’re just sitting there. When the bell rings, you’ll move and it’ll be
all over. Just breathe.
What a fucking ego trip sitting meditation can be!
Finally, the bell sounded and I stood for kinhin. The Rinzai form had us practically running
as we followed one another, weaving beautifully through the room like one long snake trying to
catch its own tail. But I was shaking uncontrollably. My body temperature must’ve fallen from sitting
still for so long, and I was certainly having a reaction to the pain I was in. I shook so badly my teeth
actually chattered so I could hear them. I was sure everyone else noticed. But, we were only
following one another around the room. Each person was paying attention to the person in front of
them, following where they were going. No one was aware of how much my body was shaking.
For the last sit, I straddled the zafu in seiza. I wouldn’t chance the half-lotus, or even a three-
quarter lotus, and be that kind of pain again. I knew I could sit still in seiza for a good hour if
necessary. And I didn’t want to disturb the silence by moving in the middle of everything. I didn’t
want to get yelled at.
After zazen, we set up for the French-themed dinner which, I had to admit, was impressive.
We all sit in seiza around a long, low wooden table in the kitchen above the dojo. Head-students
served course after course and poured wine like it was water, making sure everyone’s glass was
always full. The French theme made sense now, and I understood how my peanut satay sauce would
have been out of place. Those who organized this meal had put a great deal of effort into making
sure the food and wine went together. Nothing was overlooked. I appreciated the care taken, though
I was not used to such formality outside of sesshin. Of course, at some point in the night, Sensei
informed me that, “We don’t sit in seiza for zazen in our tradition.”
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“I don’t either,” I said. “But I was having a moment.” It was not such a big deal after-the-
fact. I was able to smile and shrug it off. The mind makes such big deals of things with the stories it
creates. I could have shifted my posture and been more comfortable. I might have gotten called out,
but who cared? What did I need to prove to these people? Nothing.
Week Sixteen
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I walked into Mount Sinai rehab for the last time. Tomorrow, Antonio was going home for
good. I did not want to visit anyone or set foot in another hospital for a very long time. Lucha was
in her usual spot on the chair beside his bed, uninhibitedly watching over our interaction. I said hello
and smiled at her, then ignored her and sat beside Antonio on his bed. Taking his hand, I asked,
“¿Cómo es el chico milagro?”
“Muy bien,” Antonio grinned. “Really fuckin’ good.”
“I’m so glad I don’t have to visit you in a hospital again.”
“Me too. This motherfucker is back. False alarm.”
“Welcome back, motherfucker.”
I gave him the molé tamales I had brought and watched him devour them. It was still so
surreal having an animated Antonio, who could talk and laugh and eat.
“Want some?” he asked.
“No, thanks. I’m having dinner with Leah, tonight.” Antonio rested the plastic fork in the
aluminum tray, sighed and looked up at me.
“I talked to Leah the other day. I think she’s having a hard time.” It was incredibly endearing
hearing him so concerned and sensitive about others. Mere months before, Antonio would so easily
shut off and leave a room whenever Leah’s name was mentioned. “A lot is hitting her now that the
school semester is over and she’s not teaching.”
“You mean because now she has the time and space to process all that’s happened?”
“Yeah, man.” I squeezed Antonio’s hand.
“Leah will be okay.”
“Tell her that I love her,” he said. “Tell yourself I love you, too.” I hugged him. The tears
came.
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“Antonio loves me,” I whispered in his ear.
“Good things happen to good people,” he said. “But I’m not good, or nice.”
“You have a good heart.”
“I think so.” I sensed Lucha watching and glanced at her. She smiled through the tears in her
eyes. This poor woman who had to sit and watch these interactions, unable to understand what was
said. But she got the sentiment and reacted. I gave her a wholehearted smile. When she went back to
her needlepoint, I said,
“There’s something I’ve been wanting to talk to you about, Antonio.” He waited. “I felt
really bad when you fell off the stool.”
“I know,” he said. “But it had to happen.”
“It showed me that we need to err on the side of caution.”
“And it was important that I got how easy it is for me to fall. It takes very little. I have a lot
of work to do, yet,” he said. I was glad he got this.
“You have a lot of people to help you,”
“I’m lucky.”
“I made you some promises when you were under, and one was that when you came out of
this and came home, I’d help you. When they had you on the respirator, we didn’t know you’d had a
stroke until they gave you the trach and were able to give you a CAT scan. But we didn’t know what
the stroke meant. We didn’t know if you would have brain damage or be able to walk again, or
what.”
“I’m starting to understand all this little by little. It’s a lot to get my head around.” The irony
of Antonio trying to get his head around the fact of his stroke made me think the Alan Watts quote
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about how attempting to comprehend the workings of the universe was “like the body trying to
know how the brain is made.” I looked into my friends eyes and shook my head.
“Chico milagro,” I said.
I sat in a crowded waiting room of the eye doctor’s office, where I had come for a follow-up
visit for my eye infection, which had cleared, along with my deep-seated need to be recognized and
to be seen. But I was not making such positive connections about this visit to the eye doctor. I was
too annoyed with how the volume on the TV went in and out, making the awful soap opera dialogue
sound like a skipping CD. It was getting under my skin. I took out my copy of Watts’ The Watercourse
Way, which I was also rereading for the umpteenth time, and read, “Tranquility in disturbance means
perfection.”
My next aikido class challenged me further to stay focused and push beyond my frustration.
I was over-whelmed though, and found myself checking the clock to see how much time was left.
How could a mere twenty minutes have me this ready to stop? It was fear more than exhaustion, I knew. Fear
of not getting it; not being able to do the next move; falling wrongly and hurting myself. But there
was no time to be afraid, only to bounce back up and keep going. It was more simple than I thought.
In fact, the point is not to think. And then I was able to have a moment with Sensei where he took
me through a move, fast and effortless. I flew easy and light. To allow it, I had to let go of trying to
figure out what was happening. I was always surprised when the move happened correctly and it
worked. Whenever my partner would go flying into a forward or backward roll, I thought they must
have been exaggerating. Yet, when I moved them incorrectly, they would not budge. It was all about
letting go and trusting—with aikido, Antonio, life.
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Antonio went home and I took his photograph down from my altar. The next day, Dana
called, stressed about the reality of having him home.
“How do we know when we’re not responsible for other people? When we’ve given
enough?”
“I once asked my Teacher that question, and she told me not to practice stupid compassion,”
I said.
“What does that mean?” Dana asked.
“Just that wise compassion is when you give what you can. When you’re not able anymore,
you stop.”
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New Year’s Eve, 2009
On a lunar eclipse of a blue moon, I started the day sanding and oiling weapons at the aikido
dojo, for their traditional New Year’s cleaning. Then, I went to the Zen Center to help prepare their
traditional New Year’s dinner. A part of me wished my own apartment were clean and in order. The
idea of starting with myself before giving to others seemed important. But I shrugged it off. I was
organized enough. At the zendo, I helped Yoko—who was glowing in her seventh month of
pregnancy—make udon noodle soup. Her husband Brian helped. He wore glasses that blacked out
his left eye where he got hit with a firework years ago. I wondered if Yoko had told him that my
father is blind.
“Do you have any names picked out for your boy?” I asked while he rinsed bean sprouts in
the sink.
“Aidann is the English name,” he said. “Well, Irish or Western, anyway. There are a few
Japanese possibilities.”
“Did I tell you we’re having a home birth?” Yoko asked while slicing button mushrooms.
“That’s great,” I said. “Did you see the ‘Business of Being Born’?” Stacy asked me to watch
that in preparation for her delivery.
“Yes. Have you seen ‘Orgasmic Birth’?” Yoko asked.
“No, but my friend Dana told me about it,” I said, opening a bag of shitake mushrooms. We
talked about cesarean vs. vaginal births, and the statistics of home births in this country.
“We’re doing the Bradley Method,” Brian said. “Birthing classes begin next week.”
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“Our classes start next week, too!” I said. We got excited about the possibility of being in
the same class. Either way, it was a nice connection to have, this focus on life. I was so excited to be
going into a new year with new life to be a part of. I hoped that the wintertime, with its promise of
springtime births, might balance out those dark and difficult months of last fall with all that fear
around death. When Antonio woke up suicidal, Dana told him that the only way out was through.
“I’ll be your doula,” she had said. And he was reborn. Somehow, we all had been—me, Dana,
Marsh, Helz, Leah, Lucha and Sage. None of us would ever be the same again.
A few days before, when Stacy came over for lunch, she repeated something she’d been
saying for months. We were discussing Antonio and I told her I planned to go to Staten Island a
couple times a week that month since I had January off from teaching.
“You don’t have to come to all of the birthing classes. You have a lot going on,” she said. I
repeated the answer I had been giving all along of how I wanted to be a part of this. To be so in
touch with life, after being face to face with death, was a relief. How exciting it was to think about
the birth of her baby. Yes, it was a huge responsibility and an intense undertaking. But compared to
ICU and rehab for months on end, being Stacy’s birth partner was thrilling.
Yoko, Brian and I finished the noodle soup just in time to start zazen at 11:30pm. The plan
was to sit for forty minutes, the last ten of which would carry us into 2010. As doan it was my
responsibility to hit the bell one hundred and eight times in those forty minutes. It didn’t take long
to get into the rhythm, and soon I was completely concentrated. There were no superfluous
thoughts. I was completely present. At midnight, Park Slope burst around us and my attention went
out the window to the hollers and fireworks, but when I hit the bell again, I was back in the zendo
on the cushion.
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After sitting, we got a small fire going in the barbecue grill out back, and we all wrote down
what we wanted to leave behind in 2009, on pieces of paper. I wrote: Lack of self-worth, fear, self-doubt,
want. Dropping my paper with everyone else’s into the burning flames, I watched the edges turn dark
and curl in on themselves until there was only ash.
JANUARY
It doesn’t interest me
to know where you live
or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up
after the night of grief and despair
weary and bruised to the bone
and do what needs to be done
to feed the children…
It doesn’t interest me
who you know
or how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand
in the center if the fire
with me
and not shrink back.
~ from “The Invitation”
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by Oriah Mountain Dreamer
Week Seventeen
New Year’s Day, 2010
In Staten Island, Dana and I lounged on Antonio’s bed with him, limbs entwined just like
the old days. We talked about all that had happened and Dana voiced her concerns about not being
up for full-time care. I just cried and let my tears fall. The subject of Oaxaca came up.
“I don’t want to go to Mexico,” Antonio said. “It will be too much of an upheaval.” I could
see what he meant, but was certain he was not aware of that sinking feeling crossing Dana’s face.
Was I projecting onto Dana, or was that sinking feeling coming from me? I was so aware of
how much she needed a break, yet so unaware how much I needed one. It took me that first full
week in 2010 to understand my own limitations. On that first evening in January, I scheduled every
spare minute on that month’s calendar with disciplined activities: aikido, meditation, writing and
yoga. I color-coded the events until each and every day was rainbowed with commitments.
I dream I’m developing a connection to a man. I don’t want to let go of his arm.
He has a way of creating space and of allowing our connection to happen,
simultaneously. He takes his arm from my grip, and then rests it beside my arm.
In this way, we both feel our connection, but there is no clinging.
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After ten hours of sleep, I awoke on the second day of January with a rattling congestion in
my chest. And I woke up thinking about Jon. Was it loneliness I felt, or was I just sick? Though the
congestion in my chest had cleared, my energy was just wiped. No aikido today, I told myself. And I
really did not think I was up to that Saturday’s seminar with Juba Sensei. I had never been to a
seminar and four intense classes in a row seemed like too much. Maybe a weekend away from the
Staten Island drama would also be a good idea—and away from looking at my calendar. Maybe there
was something to what Dana had said about control. How having had no control over what
happened with Antonio may have been causing me try to control other areas of my life.
Those first few days into January, I was aware of this constant grasping (like at my lover’s
arm in the dream) and need to organize my life. It got to a point where I’d be doing what I had
planned—say, cooking a meal—but spending much of that time thinking about the next thing on
my calendar. It soon became clear that the weight of the responsibility of following through on my
rainbow-coated regime was what was making me sick. Hadn’t I already been doing aikido,
meditating, yoga and writing on a regular basis? Why was a boot camp discipline necessary? What
was I trying to prove? Hadn’t I burned the paper with the words “Lack of self-worth” on it?
In the middle of all of this, I received an email from Sheena, a mutual acquaintance of mine
and Jon’s. We hadn’t been in touch since last summer and I had recently filled her in on the past few
months. Her response: “I find it interesting that you got so caught up in someone else’s crisis.”
Sheena had watched me support Jon through Kath’s death, and then sink with him when he was
drowning. Her words stopped my short. How could I not have been there for Jon when his mother
died? And how could I not have been there for Antonio when he needed me? I recalled what my
therapist had told me the day before, that she admired how I “show up.” Showing up was an
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admirable quality. All of this was true, and at the same time, I knew there was something to pay
attention to about what Sheena was suggesting. At the very least, I had learned that I had to take
care of myself before I could be there for anyone else.
So I emailed the dojo and told them I was ill and could not make the seminar, which was two
days away. The next day, Annie, who was planning the post-seminar potluck, emailed me back to ask
if I could still bring the fruit salad I had been asked to contribute. Her request, which she backed up
by dojo etiquette—“Usually, if someone cancels last minute, they make an effort to bring their dish,
anyway”—irked me. I didn’t like this pressure to comply. And once again I was not doing the right
thing around food for the dojo. Also, once more, this had to do with lack of information. Had I
known how things worked there, I’d have emailed Annie earlier to cancel. Had I known there was to
be a French theme last month, I wouldn’t have decided on a Thai dish. These things weren’t my
fault. But that slight disapproval I felt about the potluck dish made me feel like all that I’d given to
the dojo had been lost in a single action, which I was unable to follow through on because I was
sick. Even while mulling this all over, my defensive mind presented another example for me to feel
resentment about. Just one month into my training, I had been asked to give money toward a sword
for Baisho. I was told that dojo members usually give twenty-five dollars for gifts. But I hardly even
knew Baisho. I gave the money to show my commitment, but had my name gone on the card? Did
Baisho even know I had contributed? He certainly hadn’t thanked me. Yet even with these
resentments, my need for approval tempted me to go to the co-op, buy fruit and make the damn
salad. But I was sick and needed to pull back, and do something healthy for myself. The problem
was that it felt like they were pushing me and this made me feel resentful, which I explained to my
Teacher when I called her for our next practice discussion.
“Investigate that!” she said.
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“I’m resenting that I’ve given so much to this place in only two months, and when I have the
physical necessity to slow down, they want more.”
So much of what dokusan is about is having the teacher mirror where the student is at. I was
aware that I was merely repeating the same issues I had voiced to her months ago, about what I had
felt that she had wanted from me in terms of giving more to the Zen Center. These were those same
karmic patterns around needing to be seen and needing approval. And once again, I faced the fact
that these problems had nothing to do with anything else but my own ancestral karma. This was not
about the dojo. They were just existing in the way they always had. I was the one projecting my stuff
onto them. I told my Teacher,
“I guess I have a deep-seated need for where I’m at to be acceptable, that is, approved.
When I’m not, I have an inclination to give more of myself so maybe then I’ll be seen. And if I’m
still not feeling accepted, it makes me want to pull back.” I didn’t want to pull back from training.
But I needed to create more of a balance. I had my limitations. True, I could go beyond them. But
that was for me to figure out.
“I realize that when I don’t feel accepted, I have an urge to give more.”
“And then what happens.”
“The more I give, the more I want something back.”
“Which goes back to the core issue of the kind of giving you do that comes from a place of
lack.”
“Yes, and when I don’t get something back, I feel resentful.”
“Because you don’t feel met,” she said.
“Yes. But not always,” I said, backtracking. “I mean there are plenty of times when I’m
giving from a healthy place.”
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“Ah, ah, ah,” she said. “Now, you’re modifying and offering a reason in response to what I
pointed out that you’re bringing to the conversation!”
“But I’m feeling defensive. I give in a good way, too.”
“But this isn’t about good or bad,” She said. “It’s more useful to ask—What did I learn?
Where am I stuck? What catches me? How does it work? What’s the trigger?” I tried to understand.
What was the trigger? What made me want to give, even when I was not getting what I thought I
needed? The harder I tried to figure this out the more confused I became. Like that fingertip trying
to touch itself, the answer kept eluding me. It was like the dream I had about gripping the man’s
arm. When he helped me to relax my grip, the space created made me feel the connection I had
been grasping for. And just like in aikido, when I stopped trying so hard, the place to move in a
given technique became clear. So, I relaxed my mind, stopped trying so hard and created space for
the answer to come. When it did, it was a single obvious word:
“Approval.” It was what we had been talking about all along.
“Good,” she said. “Now, investigate that. Approval from whom? Why can’t you give it to
yourself ? Where is this coming from?” Gather information, she had told me months ago. This was
all information. “You might continue to bounce back and forth from giving and wanting while you
look at this. Maybe you’ll want different things back. Pay attention to where you’re caught,” she
repeated. “What are you seeking approval for and what does it feel like when you don’t receive it?
Get it?”
“I get it. I get it,” I said.
“Good work, Sweetie. Carry on.” I was moved by her term of endearment and touch of
approval. Had she done that on purpose? Her approval felt validating. Lack of it…? Where is this
coming from? My Teacher had asked. I knew this all went back to my parents. But I had stopped
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blaming them a long time ago. Like she said, we are responsible for how we respond to situations.
Our parents are only projecting their stuff from their parents. There is a poem by Philip Larkin that
Jon had often quoted to me. Ironically, his mother had also found reason to recite the same poem in
my presence.
This Be the Verse
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.

They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
But they were fucked up in their turn

By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.
Man hands on misery to man.

It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.
~ Philip Larkin
This same karmic pull had me scheduling a militaristic month for myself in order to prove
that I was disciplined and committed, that I could show up. But I was in the process of squeezing
the scissors shut on these ancestral issues, so I deleted the entire calendar.
On Sunday, Leah picked me up and we drove to Staten Island to air thoughts with Antonio
and Dana. “I’m nervous,” I said. “I feel like this is going to be very heavy and intense with lots of
tears, especially on Dana’s part.”
“I know,” Leah said. “I’m amazed she’s held up so long.”
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“And now, after months of giving her energy to an unconscious Antonio, she’s in a position
of having to take care of him at home,” I said.
“I wonder how Lucha feels about everything,” Leah said.
“I give up on how Lucha feels,” I said. Whatever karmic patterns Lucha and her son were
caught up in were beyond me and not a place I wished to explore. “I have no idea how to fit her into
everything,” I said. “I can’t imagine what this has been like for her, being in a new country, living in a
house where no one can communicate properly with her, and then being by Antonio’s bed all that
time and having no idea if he’d ever wake up.”
“And when he does, her over-mothering pisses him off.”
“Now, she’s pressuring him to go back to Mexico.”
“Do you think he should?”
“I know he doesn’t want to.”
“But how will he survive here? Dana can’t look after him full time and Lucha’s going back
soon.”
“I have no idea,” I said, getting out my journal and pen, “Let’s write down out concerns.”
We came up with the following list:
- Antonio going back to work

- Antonio getting up and down
- Antonio’s mental health / cognitive therapy?
- Antonio’s emotions / where is he at?
- Anti-depressants / effects?
- How aware is he of his limitations?
- What is a doctor’s perspective of his recovery / medical records
- Dana is going to have a nervous breakdown / therapy?
- Marsh’s role?
- Lucha’s agenda?
- Mexico—what would that mean? What would be the best place for him / for us?
- What are our roles—realistically / Expectations—honestly / Needs—who will provide
these needs?
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“We all have amorphous relationships with Antonio,” Leah said, veering left for the upper
level of the Verrazano.
“Except his mother.”
“Yet, his needs are specific. The puzzle pieces don’t fit.”
“Yeah. Dana went from roommate to lover to caretaker. I feel like she needs more support
from me than Antonio does. There’s something wrong with that.”
“I’m feeling not as engaged,” Leah said, eyes straight on the road. “I have a lot going on and
won’t be able to really be here that much. And I have guilt around that.” The sun had set but there
was still light coming from the horizon. A band of yellow was highlighted with a pink undertone
that faded into ever-darker shades of blue, up into a clear black sky. It was the perfect backdrop to
how all those bright lights outlined Manhattan all the way down there. When we turned down Bard
Avenue, where Christmas lights still outlined homes and dangled from trees, I noticed I was not
bothered by those silly blowup lawn ornaments that I usually fantasized popping.
Once in the house, we quickly got swept up in Bard Avenue goings-on. Marigold greeted me
with a hug then went back to playing with her friend. Alice crawled up to me.
“I’m a baby,” she said.
“Can I have a hug from the baby?” I asked, leaning over to hug and kiss her. She started to
crawl away, but then turned back.
“I don’t like kisses.” And then she crawled away without looking back. I hoped we could all
be so bluntly honest, that day.
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Lucha came into the hallway. “Ola, Lucha,” I said. “New haircut?” I rubbed her head and
smiled to show that I noticed and liked the style. I asked Leah, “How do you say, ‘You look like a
dyke’ in Spanish?”
“Me gusta,” Lucha said, and then rattled on after me and Leah, following us into the kitchen
with Dana and Marsh. Dana seemed to be agreeing with what Lucha said, but then turned to me to
confess, “I don’t know what she’s saying anymore, and I don’t care!” She smiled and shrugged and
dumped the soup I brought into a pot. Marsh invited me to the basement for a cigarette. There was
only one American Spirit left so we shared it.
“Marsh, how’s Dana doing?” I asked, inhaling.
“Dana’s good,” he said, smiling, meaning it. I thought, Wow.
“Really? You think she’s good?” I asked, handing him the cigarette.
“Well, how do you mean?” He tilted his head back as he inhaled, eyes on mine.
“I mean with Antonio being home and all, doesn’t she seem stressed out to you?” He leaned
forward, blew out a stream of smoke, tapped ashes on the floor and laughed.
“Dana’s always stressed out.” He handed me the cigarette.
“Right, but there’s more to be stressed out about.” I inhaled.
“It’s just a redirection of the same stress.”
“Or, added stress on top of stress that’s already there.” I tapped ashes into the tray and
handed him the cigarette.
“The way I look at Antonio being back,” he said, “is that there’s things that have to be done
so let’s get them done.” He inhaled. “I don’t have a hard time with stress.” He blew out a stream of
smoke. “I deal with stress all the time.”
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“So, you don’t think Dana’s freaking out, or more stressed out than she’s been? You think
she’s fine?” I asked, not trying to hide my doubt.
“Well, we had really good sex last night,” he said with a smile that was so genuine and cute. I
noticed how relaxed he felt and realized he had that glow. “And twice last week,” he said, beaming.
“That’s great!” I said. “I’m really happy for you.”
“Yeah, it’s so much better than having sex once a month or once every six weeks.” I thought
about the fact that they had two kids, the youngest of whom was three and still breastfeeding. Marsh
and I had talked about this before. I knew how happy he was to have had good sex with Dana, and
how important that was. “And that thing with Antonio was such a turn-off,” he added.
“No kidding,” I said. And then, “I haven’t had sex in almost a year.”
“Really?” Marsh was genuinely surprised.
“Really. And I’m starting to dream about it.”
“That means it’ll happen soon.” Dana had said the same thing.
“I hope so,” I said. “I could use some good sex.”
“But you can go out and make that happen,” Marsh said.
“I know, but I don’t really want to go after it. I prefer to let it just happen, naturally.”
“Yeah, that’s true. Who was the last person you had sex with?”
“Remember the massage therapist?”
“She sounded nice. That must have been fun.”
“She was lovely. And it was fun. But she wanted, like, a wife. And I only knew her for a few
months. She already had my photo on her bed stand.”
“Sounds claustrophobic.”
“It was intense.”
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“What about with a guy?”
“It’s been years.”
“Any crushes?”
“Nope.”
Leah, Dana and I flopped onto Antonio’s bed with him. My legs rested on his and Leah
draped a leg over both of ours. Dana snuggled into the mix, draping an arm around my waist and
one around Antonio’s shoulder. We were nothing less than adorable. This physical intertwining,
suggestive of Klimt’s “Death and Life,” was not sexual, and it no longer held the need for comfort
that it once had. Now, I believed our bodily interweaving was a metaphor for how laced together our
paths had become. As if each one of us were a separate strand that has been threaded through the
same loom, with no control over the destiny the final shape would take. Thankfully, this fabric of
our lives had come through intact, thus far.
Leah opened her bag, pulled out these brightly colored, strangely shaped, small objects and
passed them around.
“This is for you.” She handed me three tiny packages wrapped individually in red, green, and
orange rice paper, and tightly bound in string. There were little stickers dotted around them, like
children would use. One had a little yellow flag with an apple that had a smiley-faced worm coming
out of it and the words “good luck!” across the bottom. It was the sort of flag an elementary school
teacher might stick… I actually couldn’t imagine where.
“These are great!” I said.
“I wrapped these with a teacher friend of mine, after school one day.” Leah watched us try
to unwrap her oddly bound gifts, and smiled, pleased by our efforts.
“Is this a joke?” I asked, unwinding and unwinding. “Is there anything actually in here?”
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“There is.” She said, smiling, clearly pleased with herself. When I finally succeeded in getting
the streams of rice paper from around my first object, I laughed to find a plastic white pony, about
as big as my thumbnail, with a piece of string to hang it up.
“Did you get this in a gumball machine?” I asked.
“No. Chinatown!” Leah said. We were all laughing. There were colored streamers all over the
bed.
I threw a bunch up in the air and yell,
“Happy new year!” My next present was a rubber chicken, no more than an inch big. “This
will be perfect on my altar,” I said. When I finally unraveled the last item, I was touched to find a
plastic red heart, again with a string for hanging it up. I pressed it against my own heart. “Thank you,
Leah,” I said. “You must have had a lot of fun wrapping these.”
“I did. You should’ve seen how tightly I wrapped the one for the co-worker I don’t like
working with!”
It was the perfect way to lighten the atmosphere for the impending talk. Still unwrapping her
gifts, Dana handed me her list of concerns to read out loud. The first line was about losing her
ability to communicate with Lucha.
“How is Lucha, Antonio?” Leah asked.
“She’s fine, I think. But she’s missing Oaxaca, and she’s missing the kids, and the not-so-
kids-anymore.”
“Did you tell her you’re not going back?” I asked. He nodded.
“Why don’t you want to go?” Leah asked.
“You see how she treats me. She treats me like a baby, and it bothers me profoundly.”
“She does,” Dana said. “But at the same time, she really wants you to be independent.”
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“If I go to Mexico,” Antonio said, “it won’t only be her, but the whole crowd. They’ll treat
me like the dumb kid that they never had.” He laughed when he says this, but not because he found
it funny.
“They seem to give you a hard time on Skype,” Dana said.
“Carlos does,” Antonio said. “And Filaberto.” The brother he didn’t get along with and the
one he did. Leah and Dana and I exchanged glances. We could feel him getting defensive and weren’t
sure which direction to take things. “Also, if I go, I don’t know what will happen with therapy. I can’t
leave it behind. I have come a long way. It’s been arduous, difficult, painful and really frustrating. But
hey, I’m here.” Leah hugged him at this.
“You’re alive!” she said, shaking him.
Dana turned on her back, looked at the ceiling and said.
“I guess I’m worried about what will happen when she goes.”
“What do you mean?” Antonio asked.
“We all want you here,” Leah said. “But who is gonna deal with all your needs?”
“We’ll all have to do all the work,” Antonio said. Dana and I looked at each other.
“Who’s ‘we’?” Leah asked.
I was glad Leah was being as direct as Alice had been downstairs, earlier. Her honesty
provided an opening for Dana to blurt out,
“Who’s gonna tell you to take your medicine and make your meals and tell you it’s time to
exercise and help you get dressed and do your laundry and buy your food and help you get in and
out of the shower and tell you it’s time to take a walk and get you to the eye doctor?”
“Dana will have to do it all,” Leah said.
“Maybe not,” Antonio said.
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“Well, there is that possibility of getting a home health-aid. I can’t prepare food for one
more person,” Dana said, staring at the ceiling.
“I’m gonna have to cook,” Antonio said.
“We can add that to the schedule of things to do,” I said, taking notes. “Dana, would you be
able to help Antonio learn to cook?”
“But even before all these practicalities,” Leah said, “we need to pay attention to Dana’s
stress. And we need to talk about the fear of continually having to change our lives. I don’t have the
time to come to Staten Island.”
“I’ll just have to practice,” Antonio said.
“I feel like in your mind and heart, you can do a lot. But right now, you can’t do much,”
Dana said.
“Yeah, right,” Antonio agreed.
“I don’t want to be a downer,” Dana said, but I’m burned out. Not only can I not make up a
schedule, but I don’t want to have to tell anyone to do things but my kids ‘cause that’s my job. I want
to know who Antonio’s friends are. Who are your friends? I don’t know where they are. I feel like
people need to show up.” She trailed off, still staring at the ceiling. I found another piece of brightly
colored, streamer-wrapped something, and started to unravel it.
Antonio said, “I think that I need to know what Dana thinks I can’t do. You’re right. I think
that I’m Superman.”
“We don’t want an accident to happen. If you need to crawl to the ferry to get to your job, I
know you’ll do it. But who will escort you? Who’s gonna sign up for that job? Your vision and
balance aren’t coordinated enough to navigate ferry terminals.”
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“I don’t see it as a problem. Everything is gonna be a challenge. Small or big. I really do
think so. I cannot let the ‘what ifs’ immobilize me. Or I’ll be worse than ever.” Without looking at it,
I turned my wrapped object over and continued, slowly, to peel off the paper.
“For me,” Dana said, “on the mornings of weekdays, I don’t feel available. For you getting
up and getting dressed and getting ready, I won’t be able to help you.”
“I can do all that.”
“What does that look like?” Leah asked. Antonio went through the steps, starting at getting
up at 6:30 am.
“You’re gonna have to take the bus,” Dana said.
“That’s fine.”
“It’s gonna be cold,” she said. “How long will it take you to walk there?”
“Ten minutes.”
“I’m not sure dealing with the bus will be the best thing.”
“It’ll be fine.”
“So, it’s just gonna take doing it?” Dana asked.
“That’s all what it is, just doing it,” Antonio said. “That’s all what it is.” My paper ran out and
I looked down to find a chocolate angel wrapped in tinfoil.
“I’m happy to try to work it out,” Dana said. “But it makes me feel negligent.”
“And then, what will you be doing at work?” I asked, offering Antonio a bite of my angel.
“Making furniture,” he said, biting off a wing.
“That makes me really nervous, Antonio,” I said. “You’re going to be in an environment
where there are tools, equipment and machines that can be dangerous. And I know how you can be
ready to jump in and try something you might not be ready to try.”
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“I think there’s gonna be a trial period,” he said. “The workshop is really safe.” But I
remembered him coming home with cuts, gashes, broken ribs, and hernias.
“How many days are you planning to go?” I asked.
“Monday through Friday.”
“It’s a big jump for us from the hospital and unconscious to this,” Leah said. “It shouldn’t be
five days a week right now.”
“My biggest concern is your vision,” Dana said. “You can’t seem to discern where the door
is when we’re walking, or which shop is which. How are you going to discern things at work?”
“Do we make sense to you, Antonio?” Leah asked.
“I understand your concerns, but it’s a little bit too concerned.”
“I’m concerned about myself,” Dana said. “I feel bad. I want you to be independent.”
“You understand, though, right?” I asked Antonio. “Yourb not being at a place where you
can gauge where a door is. And knowing that your balance isn’t 100% and picturing you in a
workshop doesn’t fit in my head.”
“Why not take another month off, Antonio?” Leah asked.
“Scott needs me, now.”
“I’m sure if you called Scott and asked him for a few more weeks, he’d understand.”
“I think that if you got your balance together first,” I added, “went to the eye doctor and
dealt with that, and learned how to cook for yourself, and then thought about returning to work—
that just makes more sense to me.” Leah and Dana agreed. Antonio was quiet. Leah stroked his arm.
“Antonio, I understand needing to be in an environment that makes you feel alive and
stimulated, but I don’t want you to get hurt. Maybe go on Monday and see how it is. If it’s too
overwhelming, maybe reassess.”
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Marsh came up the stairs with the girls and took them to the bathroom to do their nighttime
things. Marigold came in to say hi, climbed into the bed with us, spotted the remnants of the
chocolate angel, but said nothing. I kissed and held her—and refrained from asking a six-year-old
what she thought about Antonio returning to work—until Marsh called her to come brush her teeth.
“So, in the movie version of this, I’m played by Natalie Portman,” Dana said.
“Antonio is Ben Kingsley,” I said.
“Who?” he asked.
“The guy who played Gandhi,” Leah said. Antonio smiled. “Who’s Monica?”
“You know, that girl from that movie. Uma Thurman,” Dana said.
“Who plays Leah?” I asked.
“Who is short with curly hair and a big butt?” Leah asked. We all laughed. Dana sighed.
“I used to be called the ‘Fun-maker’,” she said. “My friend Sarah had that nickname for me
‘cause I could always make things so much fun. I feel like writing her and saying, Fun-maker meets
her match. When Helz was here, I felt so negative because she was so positive.”
“I feel like a lot of this just isn’t fun,” Leah said. “I feel joy, but this hasn’t been fun.”
“Dana,” I said, “I just want to say that I think you pour a lot of your fun-making tendencies
into your children. You make things fun for them all the time, and then you don’t have any left for
yourself.”
“Yeah,” Antonio agreed.
“I guess I need to accept that I’m gonna be doing more than I would like. As Antonio
knows, I want to go to my own planet.”
“Antonio,” Leah began, “you remember that we weren’t really in touch before this happened.
We had an argument. I can’t remember about what. Then this happened, and we all came together in
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this support network. The timing of it was terrible for me. With my new job and graduate school,
I’ve taken on more than I have in my entire life. I know that I can’t be around a lot over the next six
months, and I have a lot of guilt around that. I want you guys to know that.” Leah was curled up
with her arms around Antonio. I leaned against the wall beside Dana.
“Well,” Dana said, “I just want to thank you for waiting until after I finished nursing school
to get sick.”
“And you, being you,” Leah continued, “have created these amorphous relationships with all
of us.”
“I keep thinking of that nurse in rehab who said, “Who is this guy with all these beautiful
women always visiting him?’” Dana said.
“I’m just a guy,” Antonio said. We laughed.
“So, you’re just a guy,” Leah went on, “with these nebulous relationships. But your needs are
really specific. I guess what I need to know is, what is the support network at this point. What do
you want from us?”
“All what I can do is try,” he said. “There is no other way to know. All what I can do is try,
and I don’t want any more from you guys than you can do.”
“What about you, Dana?” Leah said. “How can we help you? What are your options?”
“Childcare dates with the kids,” she said. “Oh, I don’t know. I just feel like I have to deal
with the kids and I have to deal with Antonio, and that’s all I can think about.”
“But Dana, what about you?” I asked. “You just put your kids and Antonio before your own
needs. What about some kind of counseling? You’ve been through a lot. And we say that the crisis
has been ongoing, without any breathing room, but I can go back to Brooklyn and get into my life
and get perspective on things. I’ve always been able to do that. But all along, you’ve been at the
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hospital practically every day, and now Antonio and Lucha are both in the house needing things
from you. What I feel is that Antonio doesn’t need me as much as you do. When you called me this
week, I thought you were losing it, on the verge of a nervous breakdown. You need to take care of
yourself.”
“Well, it was really good to talk about everything. It doesn’t seem so hard or like as big a deal
with it out there,” she said.
“Lightens it up, doesn’t it? Otherwise, it gets bigger and bigger in your head. So, make sure
to keep talking about things,” Antonio, maybe you can ask Dana once in a while how she’s doing.”
“But I don’t want to ask for your support,” Dana said to Antonio.
“You have to express your needs,” he said.
“I’ll try.”
I looked at the list of concerns Leah and I wrote and showed it to her. “I wonder where
you’re at, emotionally, Antonio,” she said. I used to be able to gauge that really well with you, but
now I can’t.”
“I’ve been reading about stroke victims,” Dana said, “and right after, they go through
something called a ‘flat stage.’ They’re more muted. Like Jason in the movie, he’d say things like,
‘Cool.’ when someone asked how he was, but there was no emotion in it.”
“Or, ‘I’m doing the thing,’ or ‘Hi, baby Ellie,’” I said, “all with this really flat tone.”
“But your eyes have emotion in them,” Dana said. “Remember, Leah, when he first opened
his eyes and we would try to look in them?” She moved to see into Antonio’s eyes, like she had at
the hospital, when we would have to arrange our posture so that our eyes met Antonio’s unmoving
stare.
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“I don’t know what I look like from the outside, or how much I mentally came back,” he
said. “I don’t know how much of me came back. I may have lost my salt and pepper, but I feel
pretty good.”
“We need to have a life party,” Leah said. “An anti-eulogy party. How do you feel about that,
Antonio?”
“Yeah,” he said. “We will.” And then, “I feel like I should be appreciating life more, but I
don’t know how.”
“For me, it’s all about the breath,” I said. “When you had that machine breathing for you, it
really made me think about the importance of that simple thing—breathing. I’ve been really trying
to pay attention. Like today, walking down the street, I was like—I can breathe. I’m alive. I think it’s
just about paying closer attention. When you first had pneumonia, that nurse told you to remember
to breathe deeply into the oxygen mask. But you couldn’t and they had to put you on the respirator.”
“Remember how awful that was?” Leah asked. “Antonio, when you were on the respirator,
your breathing sounded like this.” She made Darth Vader-like sounds. “And your chest would rise up
and down like this.”
“It was too perfect. Too rhythmic,” I said.
“It’s so good to just hear you breathe like you breathe,” Leah said.
“And his smell is coming back,” Dana said. “Do you smell that Antonio smell?”
“I’ll call Scott,” Antonio said. We all looked at him. “Tomorrow, I’ll call Scott and ask him
for three more weeks.”
“Does that upset you?” I asked.
“Yes. But, I see the need for it.”
“Are you annoyed with me?” I asked.
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“Of course I am,” he said.
“Why?” Leah asked.
“Because you don’t want me to go to work.”
“Antonio,” I said, “do you remember right before you left rehab, I told you that I might get
to be annoying at times in regards to your safety? And I told you that I’d rather be annoying than see
you get hurt. I told you to be prepared for me to get annoying sometimes. And you agreed with me.
Remember?”
“Yes, I remember.”
Dana and I gave Leah and Antonio space and went down to the kitchen. We sat on the
stools around the chopping block and she told me that Antonio is not getting up at 6:30 and doing
exercises by 8am, like he told us he was. “He’s not even out of his room until eight-thirty—nine,
sometimes even ten. Lucha’s great because she’s on top of Antonio. He wouldn’t exercise at all if it
weren’t for her. But, I’m having a communication breakdown with her. I can’t remember Spanish,
anymore. And, I’m feeling like she’s fed up with me, too. I was standing here one day, really feeling
like I couldn’t communicate with her anymore. Remember what a team she and Helz were and how
great Helz was with her, and how much I suck at being positive all the time? Lucha was leaning on
the counter, and out of nowhere she says to me, ‘Ah, Helz. She was a good woman.’ And I was like,
I’m a good woman, too!”
I asked Dana how she was feeling about Antonio, physically. We talked about the fantasy she
had about running away with him, before all of this happened.
“And I really hesitate calling it a fantasy because it was so close to my heart,” she said, then
tells me about a guy she made out with at folk festival last weekend. “Marsh didn’t mind because it
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was away from the house and someone he’ll never meet.” Open relationships are one thing when it’s
just about hooking up for fun. But when emotions get involved, all sorts of things come up.
On the ride home, Leah told me that she asked Antonio if it was okay for her to be physical
with him. “We stopped being sexual a long time ago, but never stopped being physical.” We talked
about Antonio’s sex drive, how different he seemed without it. Would it come back? What would
that be like?
“I can have sex with him and let you know,” I said, joking. Sort of.
I watched the TED video called, “Stroke of Insight,” and emailed Dana and Leah straight
away:
Dear Dana and Leah,
I'm sitting at my desk going over all we talked about last

night. I remember Antonio saying at one point, "I feel like I
should be appreciating life more, but I don't know how." That
question is key. How does one take an experience like this and
turn it around? I just watched this video that a few people
have told me about, by a neuroscientist who had a stroke. It's
incredibly powerful and for me, it answered Antonio's
question. I truly feel that the fact of Antonio's stroke brought
a bunch of people together into a shared reality. This
connection is what makes life worth appreciating. Dana,
please show Antonio this video:
http://www.ted.com/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stro
ke_of_insight.html
I love you all,

Monica
I wondered about the left side of the brain awareness vs. the right side. That leaning into
euphoria and nirvana that Jill Bolte Taylor experienced before being pulled back by left-brain
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practicalities. I had felt that way once, tripping on mushrooms. It was a bad trip, but there was a
moment where a space appeared in my mind that was sweet and comfortable to move towards. I
started to relax into that space when, at the last second, I panicked. I was afraid that if I let go
completely, then I would die. I believed that the space I was moving towards was death. This
awareness instantly slammed me back into the bad trip of waking reality. This fear to let go and give
over that we humans have is so much about fear of death. How must it have been for Antonio when
he was on the other side where it was quiet? What was it like to be pulled back into the sterile
hospital room of beeping machines, doctors and nurses, pain and confusion? Why come back to
that at all? Then, as Antonio told me, he was sure that he would have died if his mother hadn’t been
there all the time. Her constant presence in that room must have been the umbilical cord that
connected him to reality, making it possible to bear what there was to come back to in this life. “I
always knew when she was there,” he said through tears.
I thought about what it was to ask someone to stay in this world just because we didn’t know
what we’d do without them. How many times had we told Antonio, “We need you”? What did that
even mean? What did we need, exactly? His willingness to stay and validate this dream we call life?
Why did we so desperately need him to come back? It was not like his death would have affected my
day-to-day. I only saw him once every few months before this all happened. I would miss him if he
died. That was true, of course. But there was something else going on. Something deeper.
Something about his impending, possible death. Those months when he was on the verge brought
the reality of death so fucking close. Antonio’s role in the loop, that thin thread he was hanging
onto, was so necessary. He could have, like a lost thought, just unwound like the string on the end of
a kite that slips around and off the spool, suddenly out of reach and floating further out of reach
until it is gone. And we would have been left on the ground holding the empty spool at a complete
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loss. Was that it? Is it? The unknown about where he might have gone that we’re all facing traveling
to someday? Was this the “deep Void,” that Starlight “hoped to catch a glimpse of Non-Being” in?
The next day, Dana called. “Antonio says he doesn’t want to go to Friends in Deed with you,
tomorrow. He wants to go to work.”
“Okay.” I took a deep breath, not surprised.
“He said he was up all night, that he couldn’t sleep, and all he could think about was work.
He said he needs to be making money.” Dana went on to tell me how tired he seemed all morning,
how at 10 am, he was still in his room and she went in and said, “Alright, time to do your exercises,”
and then left. When she came back, “He had put on his sweatpants and hoodie, but the hoodie was
upside down and backwards.”
“Upside down?”
“Yes, upside down. The hood part was hanging over his butt. And I was like, ‘I wish I had a
camera because you put your hoodie on upside down and backwards,’ and he looked down and
laughed, and we fixed it and it was fine. But…” She stopped and I took in this image, trying to
understand how he’d deal with not only getting to work, but doing anything of value once he got
there.
“I wish he would put the priority of health over finances,” I said. But it’s so typical in this
country to have these backwards priorities. I imagined going to Friends in Deed by myself and
complaining that my friend just got out of rehab and was hardly ready to go back to work, but had
decided to anyway. I knew what the Big Group facilitator would say. The same thing he said when I
went in afraid that Antonio might try to kill himself. This was Antonio’s path. I could only do what I
could do, but the rest was up to him. We could not walk his path for him.
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“It’s his recovery,” Dana said.
“Beats him being suicidal,” I said. “What does Scott think of things? I’d like to talk to him.”
“When I talked to him about having to be Antonio’s caretaker at work, he was like, ‘Yeah,
yeah. Don’t worry.’ I’ll call you back with his number.”
I called Leah and explained the news. She sighed. “I think we’re just gonna have to take a
step back and let him do what he’s gonna do,” I said. “We made a big effort last night to be open
and honest and express our concerns, and Antonio heard us. The rest is up to him.”
“I think you’re right. I feel like we have to learn how to be there with him how he is and let
him be who he is. And also try to connect with his soul, spiritually. I think his soul is very much the
same.”
“So, I guess he just has to try it out and work it out for himself. Maybe he’ll get to work and
be so exhausted by the effort that he won’t have the energy to do any work. Or, maybe he’ll be fine,
and this will be a good thing for him. I don’t know.”
“It’s hard to understand where he’s at when his thought process seems so abstract,” Leah
said. “Is Scott actually going to pay him? I get the feeling he’s doing this more out of charity.”
“I don’t know. I want to call Scott anyway, so I’ll find out.”
“It seems so important for him to be going to work and he’s so fixated on making money.”
“Well, it did come up last night, so I guess he’s concerned about it,” I said, thinking about
what Dana had expressed about a food budget. I had pushed her to talk about her financial worries
because they were on her list and it seemed important not to hold back anything. Should we have
kept quiet about that? Let Antonio think the money thing was fine? Was he feeling pressured now,
like he had to carry his own weight?
“Maybe he’d feel differently if the disability went through,” Leah offered.
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“I don’t know,” I said. And that’s just it. I didn’t know. We didn’t know. I felt like it was time
for me to understand strokes. Educate myself. I had avoided reading anything when Antonio was
unconscious because it scared me too much. But now that he was okay, I wanted to understand how
the stroke might have affected his thinking and decision-making process. Why the fixation on money
and work? Was this his need for control? Why was he unable to assess his own aptitude, or lack
thereof, toward doing simple tasks? Who was the best judge of Antonio’s own situation, anyway? I
supposed, at the end of the day, Antonio had to be. At least he wanted to be. Like he had said last
night, “I’m willing to consider everything. But, I’m not willing to do everything.”
After Leah and I hung up, I called Antonio.
“Hey. So, Dana told me you want to go to work on Monday.”
“Yeah.”
“I just want you to know, Antonio, that as your friend I will support you with that. I love
you.”
“I love you, too.”
“I know you heard us last night and—”
“Everything’s gonna be alright,” he said.
“Okay. Just be careful.”
“I will. I’ll be careful.”
“And let me know how it goes.”
“I will. I’ll call you after work tomorrow and tell you how it went.”
“Okay, Antonio. Good luck,” I said and hung up. It is what it is, and that’s all what it is.
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Week Eighteen
I woke up early for a yoga class and then went to aikido. I was glad to be back at the dojo. It
felt good to use my body again, after a week’s break, and when it came time for conditioning
exercises, I found myself looking forward to the forearm drag. I had bought a chin-up bar and
secured it in my kitchen doorway. At first, I could only pull myself up three times. But I added one a
day, and in a couple of weeks, I could do fifteen chin-ups. Sure enough, this practice was
strengthening the muscles necessary to pull my body across the dojo mat, and I was able to drag my
body without the use of my toes.
After class, I went to the Strand and purchased My Stroke of Insight, the memoir that Jill Bolte
Taylor wrote about the experience of watching herself have a stroke. Flipping through the pages, I
thought about my Teacher’s suggestion to watch the one watching. In Buddhism there are five
hindrances: desire, ill will, sloth and torpor, restlessness and remorse, and doubt. So there is the self
who experiences suffering. And when we become aware of these hindrances, there is the self who is
the watcher. “Who is the one watching?” she would ask. In Taylor’s case, it was powerful to consider
who the one watching was when she talked of how she, the neurosurgeon, knew that she, the victim,
was in the midst of a stroke. Again, I was reminded of Watts: “Trying to understand how the
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universe works is like the body trying to know how the brain is made.” I also purchased a Laura
Esquivel novel in Spanish for Lucha since she seemed to appreciate Like Water for Chocolate. Then, I
called Marsh to see how Antonio’s day at work went.
“Not good,” he said. “He slipped away five minutes before I got here and no one knows
where he is. He knew I was coming. I mean, he called me.”
“Well, that’s unsettling. How did work go before he disappeared?”
“It went fine. Scott said he was busy and doing stuff all day.”
“And then he just left?”
“Yep. Look, I gotta go. I’m drivin’ around trying to find him. I’ll let you know how it goes.” I
pictured Marsh at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, where Scott’s workshop was. What if Antonio had
walked to the water and fell in? He could be anywhere. It was so typical of him to take off on his
own, but he should have known better. But this was for Marsh to figure out. What could I do from
Manhattan? This was my get-my-body-back-in-shape day. It was nearly time for the private pilates
session I had won at the BZC auction.
Once home, I filled the bath and looked forward to a long soak after all that yoga, aikido and
pilates. Rummaging for candles in the living room, I noticed there was a text from my brother,
Matthew:
“Check your email about cousin Ben’s stroke.”
My stomach tightened and my heart started racing. Three months ago, two months, even one
month ago—possibly even just one week ago—I would have raced to my computer, read the
awaiting emails, made phone calls and gotten involved in the drama. That night, I turned off my
phone, found the candles and lit them in the bathroom. Stepping into the hot water, I told myself, I
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am not reading any emails about anybody else’s stroke. Not tonight. I pushed Matthew’s text away as far as I
could. After bathing, I sat zazen and went to bed.
Upon waking up, I lay still feeling my heart beating. I thought about Matthew’s text. I
breathed in and then out. Only after making coffee did I sit down at my laptop and read Mom’s
announcement:
Hi, Aunt Carol called. Ben, her youngest—about the same age as Monica—
has had a stroke while in California with a friend. He called his mom
complaining of symptoms (vomiting, trouble w/ balance, slurred speech and
lack of control of right arm). She told him to get an ambulance immed. and
the Dr. in intensive care at first diagnosed vertigo then at Carol's insistence
reconsidered and ordered a CAT, later concluding a cerebral stroke caused by
"dissection of an artery", fancy language for an artery collapsing and causing
a blockage. He's in the critical 3-day period, and his brother, Tiger,
immediately flew to CA. Tiger is a Nurse, so quite capable of advocating.
He's in Los Robles hospital in Thousand Oakes, outside LA in Ventura
County.
That’ all I know; am sure he'll appreciate a card.

love, Mom
Dear Aunt Carol and Uncle Kenan and everybody,

I just woke up to this email about Ben. I can't believe it. I want you to know
you're all in my thoughts and I'll be checking my email/phone for news
throughout the coming days.
Love,
Monica
Before pressing Send, I scrolled down to reread the email that Aunt Carol had written to me
on Sunday, November 29th, in response to the Antonio update I had sent to friends and family:
Monica
That's such good news! I know how worried you were about Antonio, and
now you/he can reap the benefits of all the concern & that of others. And,
on Thanksgiving day to boot!
Hurray.
Carol
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In a daze, I lit some sage and fought back the emotions. I can’t believe this is happening.
Mechanically, I gathered my Spanish books and headed for the subway. Determined to space things
out and consciously deal with what felt possible, I decided not to call home until after class.
Therefore, I was able to be in the moment and concentrate on my Spanish lesson. Afterwards, while
on my way to meet Marsh for lunch, I made the phone call. Dad reported that Ben was in the
seventy-two-hour stage where they didn’t yet know what the effects were.
“Is he conscious?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Dad said.
Marsh was waiting for me on the corner of 48 th and Lexington, all smiles. We ducked into a
café. When I told him what happened, he said, “Wow. That’s crazy how strokes can happen to
anyone at any time. Thankfully, he’s young so he’ll probably have a quick recovery.”
“Probably,” I said. We sat at cafeteria-style tables with salads.
“Well, it’s hard to think of anything else to talk about,” he said. “This is such a big deal.”
“Yeah, but I’m pretty good at not reacting until we know something. Like when Matthew
was in ICU for that week, I didn’t lose it until we knew he’d be okay. Then, it was a release of relief
more than anything. With Antonio, it was different because that waiting period went on for three
months.”
“With Antonio, that was an exception,” Marsh said. I don’t reply that it’s an exception even
to be alive after a brain hemorrhage.
“Speaking of Antonio,” I said, “what happened with him MIA from work on Monday?”
“Well, he got home five minutes before I did.”
“So, you didn’t know he was okay ‘til you got home?”
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“He called me from the ferry terminal.”
“He had a phone?”
“I tried calling him a hundred times, but he was on the subway.”
“Why didn’t he call you before he left work?”
“I think he was confused.”
“You don’t think he left on purpose ‘cause that was the only way he was gonna get to try to
get home on his own?”
“No. I can’t think that ‘cause it makes me furious to imagine someone would do something
that insensitive.”
“Even though it might be reality, you’re choosing not to think that way?”
“Yes. When I got home, I went at Antonio. I was so angry, I was practically shaking. And
Marigold and Alice were there, too. But they didn’t really react.”
“What did you say?”
“I asked him what he was thinking, and he said, ‘You should have been on time. You were an
hour late’.”
“You mean, he defended himself instead of apologizing?”
“Yeah! I told him that he’s in no position, after all we’ve been though and are going through
as his caretakers, to take it upon himself to decide where and when he’ll be somewhere. And he got
all puffed up and defensive and we got into this big thing, and Lucha started crying and saying
something to me in Spanish, but I don’t know what she was saying. Probably something like, ‘Please
don’t pressure him.’ Finally, I looked at the clock. It was ten to eight. I said, “We need to stop talking
for ten minutes.” And at 8:00, we talked again and both said we were sorry.”
“And let it go and moved on?”
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“Yep.”
“And you’re choosing to believe he didn’t do it on purpose?”
“I think he was sitting there at work and forgot he was waiting for me, and the bus came and
he just got on it ‘cause that’s what he always does, or used to do.”
“He is confused. I wonder what it was like for him.”
“I wonder at what point of the journey he had the realization, ‘I shouldn’t be doing this.
Wait a minute’.”
“Did Marigold and Alice get upset that you guys were fighting?”
“Not really. Later, I asked them what it was like to see Daddy angry like that. Marigold said,
“It was like watching something on TV’.”
It was surreal to go back to the Botanica and purchase another votive candle to burn on my
altar. I bought flowers, too, all white. I placed them in a vase on the coffee table, and lit the candle
on the altar. Do I have a photograph of Benji? I knew there was one somewhere of that time he visited
me when I was studying in England. He had stayed for the weekend and had come with me to the
hospital to visit my friend, Doug, who had his leg in traction after a motorcycle accident. Doug was
the campus drug dealer and the scene that he attracted to his hospital room was one of a kind.
Dreadlocks hung from his head and flower hung from the top of his bed, which had bars going over
it that his leg was suspended from. We would wheel his hippie bed out to the car park and sit around
with cans of beer. There would always be a hash-filled pipe going around the circle. The day Benji
came, he and I wheeled Doug outside. It must have been a full moon because I had brought a
smudge stick that I lit and set beneath the bed. I knew I had a photograph somewhere of Doug
toking from a pipe, my cousin standing there grinning, and a big waft of smoke rising from beneath
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that bed as if it were on fire. What the hospital staff thought of us, I had wondered. One night, we
had stayed out drinking so late that the wardens had locked the doors, not realizing we were still
outside. We had to get security to let us back in, and Doug was banned from being taken out in his
bed after that. I wondered if he ever did trip on acid with those guys from the morgue like he had
planned.
It did not occur to me, while searching for that photograph, to consider that, even when I
was only twenty years old, I had taken it upon myself to support a friend in the hospital. Such
caretaking was that familiar to me. The irony of looking for a photograph of Benji hanging out with
me in a hospital in England, to put up on my altar because he was in an ICU in America, was lost on
me that day.
On the ‘F’ train, reading the chapter in Jill Bolte Taylor’s book where she illustrated the
different types of stroke, I analyzed the diagrams and tried to process them. This helped me to
imagine more clearly what had happened in Ben’s brain. Antonio’s brain. Matthew’s brain. But I
needed to reread to understand because it was so fucking intense. I had to pause and breathe, or
close my eyes, or stare at all the different types of shoes the passengers around were wearing. Any of
these people, including myself, can have a stroke at any moment. In fact, I might have a greater chance if Matthew
and Ben’s strokes were congenital like Mom suggested they might be. What side is Ben’s on? What side was
Matthew’s? What types are they?
When I got out of the subway, there was a phone message from Mom saying there was still
no change. “There’s a question of surgery, but the doctors say if he makes it through the next day,
things should improve.”
“If he makes it through…,” echoed in my head as I walked up busy Broadway noticing
nothing of its busyness. All I could think about was Ben’s stroke, and poor Aunt Carol and Uncle
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Kenan, both of whom couldn’t fly for medical reasons. Carol refused to take the train from Chicago
to L.A. until Ben was out of ICU, since she was afraid the train would go out of cell phone coverage
and she might miss something. She must be going out of her mind.
I slept a long time and dreamt hard, though the dreams dissipated when I woke up. I lay in
bed feeling sad, wondering how Ben was, pondering what Mom had said about how yesterday was
“the hump day” and that if he survived the night without worsening, or, “going south,” as she had
put it, his chances would be better. Getting up to make coffee, I decided to leave my phone off for a
bit. There were bound to be messages either way, and I didn’t want to know just yet. I wanted to sit
on my couch and drink my coffee, ease into a late chilly Sunday morning listening to Astrud
Gilberto, enjoy the flowers, though some were already browning and turning in at their white edges.
Benji’s candle on the altar burned steady, one side dripping over itself in a deep waxy curve as if
even the candle were sad.
There were unpleasant things going on all over the world. Last night the BBC World News
had given reports of a recent earthquake in Haiti. One reporter stated, “I couldn’t exaggerate the
damage.” There were no signs of food or relief. Greg told me that his Haitian friend had gone to
bed on Monday night and woke up to find that twenty-five people she knew had died. I thought of
how Kath had died on the same day that the Iranian city of Bam was wiped out by an earthquake.
An entire city on the other side of the planet, gone in an instant. And one woman’s arterial
dissection, so close to me, so huge. Bam. Gone.
There were things going on in the world, but it was so nice and quiet in my apartment.
Couldn’t I just leave my phone off for a while longer? Did I need to know? Couldn’t I be excused
for just a little while? I wanted to feel good about this day, preferring to listen to “Once Upon a
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Summertime” and eat breakfast. I opted to read, Active Birth rather than My Stroke of Insight as I
sipped my coffee, but I couldn’t fully concentrate. I was not relaxed. Reading about crowning,
imagining Stacy reaching down to feel her baby’s head emerging, was too abstract. I was getting
curious about the messages my phone might contain. The tightness in my stomach was too strong to
ignore. I’ll add some water to these flowers first and give my plants a drink. And then I’ll face what waits. I stood
and took a deep breath into the moment.
“Look, look to the rainbow,” Gilberto sang. “Follow it over the hills and the stream.” The
scent from the incense I had lit was calming.
When I turned on my phone there was a message from Dad to call home ASAP.
I had been called to action to go out to L.A. Mom wanted me to go a.s.a.p. I told her I’d
think about it and call her back. I knew I’d do it, but I needed to sit with this before I committed. It
was no small thing. Last night, a friend had asked me if I’d be heading to L.A. because of Ben’s
stroke. “Oh, no,” I had said, almost defensively. “I won’t need to do that. That’s not my job. He has
people there for him.” But I hadn’t realized that his oldest brother, Tiger, had already flown home,
and though cousin Danny, the middle brother, was there with Ben now, he had to leave in the
morning. His older brothers had work and family to tend to. I was the one with the month off from
work and no children to take care of. I left a stressed-out message on my therapist’s voice mail, and
then called Dana in tears.
“Can I do this? Is it healthy?”
“Yes, you can do it,” she said. “Be sure to set up a support network before you go, and have
fun while you’re there to balance things. Walk on the beach. Go to some shows. For now, take a
bath, take a walk to the park, work in the garden. Relax and ground yourself and process.” For
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months, I had been talking her through her fears. Here, she was giving the words of wisdom and
support.
I called my uncle and committed. “We’re over the moon that you’re doing this,” he said.
Next, I called Danny, while he was still in L.A., to tell him I’d be flying out there.
“We’re not worthy,” he said. “Words fail me. Where are you flying from?”
“Brooklyn.”
“You’re flying that far?”
“Well this is where I live, so yes, I’m flying that far.”
“I’m only sorry I won’t still be out here to hang out with you.”
“I know. Me too. But we’ll just have to hang out sooner rather than later.” My “Mission of
Mercy,” as Aunt Carol called it, was integrating me right in with the part of my extended family I
had always felt the strongest bond with. I knew how powerful the support group bonds could be,
and was happy to have this opportunity with my blood family. Maybe in the future, when I had a
house of my own, and chose photographs to line my stairwell with, there would be pictures of, not
just parents and siblings, but cousins, aunts and uncles. Just like at One o One.
Danny explained that Ben was not an easy patient and that had been stressful and
exhausting, but that it was good to be there. He said that Ben had slurred speech and problems with
balance, but was incredibly lucid and sharp. “He’s the hottest rod in the bunch,” Dan said, explaining
how Ben was able to dictate work-related things, but was over-concerned with planning and
organizing things that didn’t really matter. He was on Mannitol, to keep his brain from swelling and
needed to stay in the ICU while he was on this drug. Dan felt sure that in a couple of days, he’d be
taken off it.
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“I’ve been wrong about time every guess,” he said. “But hey, I’m an optimist.” Once off
Mannitol, Ben would be sent to a rehab in Huntington Beach, Orange County. “You won’t want to
be hanging out at the rehab,” Dan told me. I knew too well.
“Do you feel conflicted about leaving him?” I asked.
“No. I’ve done all I can here. He’s going to be fine. And I have a two-year-old to get back to.
My wife is not going to recognize me when I arrive. She’s not going to know what to say when I
offer to take the baby. ‘What? You want to look after her?’” he said, imitating Amanda. “‘Don’t you
need to go out and blow off some steam?’”
“Things take on a whole different perspective, don’t they?” I said, choosing not to share why
I knew this so well.
“Absolutely. Besides this, my life is great. I have a gorgeous child, a beautiful wife… I mean,
we have our problems, but who doesn’t? And I have a job, which is a big deal these days. And, my
brother didn’t die of a stroke!” As Marie Howe wrote, “I've been trying to think of another word
for gratitude because my brother could have died and didn't.”
I asked Dan if he was taking care of himself, and he asked how I was doing. I was surprised
and not surprised by how easy it was to talk to this cousin of mine. The last time I had seen him was
at his and Amanda’s wedding reception over seven years ago. But somehow it felt like we had always
been talking.
“Thank you again, Monica. You’re amazing for doing this.”
“Hey, we’re family.”
“Last time I checked. I didn’t secede.”
“I love you,” I say, certain this was the first time I had said that to Danny.
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My therapist called and left a message. She was confused about why Ben’s parents couldn’t
fly out instead of me. I was touched that she was looking out for me. When I called her back, she
asked how I was. “I’m fine. A lot better than yesterday.” I explained that I was actually feeling good
about going to L.A., now that I had processed it. It was the right thing to do. Not only were family
members relieved and grateful, but things were flowing in a way that relieved any stress around
traveling. An old friend had offered a crash, use of his car, a lift from the airport, and a night out. I
told her that my cousin Danny had prepared me not to buy into Benji’s anxiety and to set the tone
by remaining calm, while at the same time taking him seriously. Things that came up for him might
be silly to me, but were a very big deal to him. “Seems like it will be a balancing act being around
him. But I feel like I can deal with it. Thankfully, he should be out of I CU by the time I get there.”
“Do you have a sense of how you got here from the frantic place you were at yesterday,
when you left that panicked message?” she asked. I told her about doing those normal things that
Dana suggested, like gardening and walking in Prospect Park.
“And it feels good to do this for my family,” I said. She restated my doing normal things and
taking care of myself.
“I see this as you coming into your power—coming into your own as a healer.”
“Thanks for that,” I said, moved by her support. A healer? I supposed we all have the
capacity for healing and I had learned a lot about trusting that those past few months.
“Of course. Good work, Monica.”
I was aware that the validation felt good. There was approval and appreciation smothering
me from all directions. But it was not an ego trip. This was more simple and straightforward. I was
helping my family. It was the right thing to do. No more, no less.
356
Week Nineteen
357
My ticket was booked and I was relieved I had a few days to prepare. I was also very excited
that I got to go to a birthing class with Stacy. I met her at a preschool in Carroll Gardens, where
several other couples—mostly men and women, one lesbian couple, Stacy and me—sat in a half
circle of chairs, facing Natasha, the Active Birth instructor. She asked us each, mothers and partners,
to express what the birthing process, from the beginning of labor to the birth, meant to us.
“What do you want from it? How do you want to be able to be in it? How are you feeling
about this, for yourself and for Mom?”
When it was my turn, I said, “I’m really honored to be in this role for Stacy, who is my oldest
friend. And I’m just really excited about the prospect of being able to be there to witness the birth.”
Natasha looked at me and carefully said, “Can you verbalize what you expect from the labor,
though? How do you see yourself being before the moment of birth—during the labor?” I only
realized the seriousness of this question when she asked it. I hadn’t thought about my role in that
way. I had thought I would be there for Stacy while she was pushing and had figured I would be
good at that. I imagined I would get her things in between contractions to make her comfortable.
Cook food. Put on music. Be alert and calm. Stacy told me herself that she chose me because she
knew I’d be calm. I also had good breath control, so figured I’d be a good coach when it came to
breathing. But now, all eyes on me, I got that this birth partner thing was bigger than all that. Stacy
sat beside me, patiently waiting to hear what I’d say.
What could I say but “I just want to be there as best I can be for Stacy. I want to be a calm
presence and be educated for whatever I might be needed to do. I hope to be really strong and clear
and focused for her, and supportive of whatever choices she makes.” There. That was honest and
seemed to satisfy Natasha.
358
With Antonio, for the first few months, I didn’t have to do anything in particular.
Unpredictable things presented themselves and I responded. Mostly, I felt there for Dana and the
rest of the support group. I was good at being there for people when they needed to talk, and when
they asked for something specific. I didn’t have to take a course in stroke though, or be informed
about Antonio’s medication. I just had to show up. With Stacy, I was starting to understand how
learned I needed to be. I was going to have to read a lot. There was a book, Birth Partner, which
Natasha recommended. A doula from aikido, who had helped Sensei’s wife through her three-day
labor, had also told me about this book. And Stacy asked me to read Active Birth, as well as see the
film, The Business of Being Born.
“I know you’re really committed to what’s happening with Antonio,” Stacy told me again,
before the class. She knew I had planned to spend more time in Staten Island over my winter break.
And now, the L.A. trip was two days away. “But you don’t have to come to all of the birthing
classes,” she said.
“I really want to,” I repeated. “When I get back from L.A., I want to learn about all this. And
I’m looking forward to the balance of focusing on new life after so many months at the edge of
death.” And so I paid close attention and took lots of notes when Natasha informed us of things
like erythromycin in the eyes and Vitamin K shots. I wrote down names of local baby stores where
Stacy could get gliders, strollers, carriers, wraps. I went through the breathing exercises with her,
exhaling to meet her while she and the other Moms practiced exhaling audibly.
Natasha told the partners to “Follow the Mom’s breath, dragging it out a little longer.” I
wondered what this was going to be like in the real moment, when Stacy was actually moaning from
the pain of contractions. Would she want me breathing out loud with her? Would she tell me to shut
the hell up? Would it be embarrassing to exhale out loud? I was nervous. I wanted to do everything
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right. I wanted to be the perfect partner. I wanted it to go well for Stacy. It was our turn to breathe
together. I listened, felt for her to begin, and we exhaled together.
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On the ‘R’ to South Ferry, to meet Antonio and Lucha, I flipped through the pages in the
back of my journal: rehab notes on how to take care of Antonio intermixed with birthing class
notes on being there for Stacy, followed by the flight itinerary from LaGuardia to LAX. I closed my
eyes, hoping Ben was okay.
When Antonio’s ferry arrived and the rush of disembarking passengers pushed through the
terminal, I waited for it to diminish before I noticed Antonio and Lucha at the top of the escalator.
He gripped the rubber railing and looked down at the moving stairs. Lucha’s gaze, however, was
everywhere at once. She spotted me and smiled that wide-toothed grin I still missed from Antonio’s
full-belly laughs he hadn’t quite caught up to yet. Dana had told me that Antonio was depressed. No
kidding, I thought, wondering what it must be like to navigate an escalator for the first time in four
months. What was it like to ride the ferry again? Did he see any of those old commuter friends he
used to talk to? I smiled back and waved, happy to be meeting up with a live, whole, walking and
talking Antonio. We had made it to the other side of a long dark passage. But Antonio was just
beginning to embark on a new journey, one of slow and intense healing. My role now, so different
from sitting and watching and waiting, was to walk beside him as support, but at a healthy distance,
with respect for both of our separate paths.
Where I stood at the bottom of the escalator, others scattered in their many directions to
and from the ferry, to and from various subways, to and from the streets of lower Manhattan. And
there was Lucha, methodically guiding Antonio by the elbow as they reached the landing. He used
his cane with the other arm, taking one careful step at a time until he stood in front of me and
looked up. “How is your cousin?” he asked. I took a breath.
“Thanks for asking,” I said. “It looks like he’s going to be fine.” Antonio translated this for
Lucha, who communicated her concern to me through her eyes. I told them all about it as we
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walked the few blocks to the Native American Indian Museum, where Lucha would wander while
Antonio and I went to a Friends in Deed meeting. Their website’s quote of this week was,
“The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, not to worry about the
future, or not to anticipate troubles, but to live in the present moment wisely.” ~ The Buddha
That afternoon, the Friends in Deed facilitator told us, “The difference between the spiritual
and material planes is that in the spiritual plane we hold to the mystery and let it be a mystery. In the
material plane we deal with what needs to be dealt with in practical ways.” To exemplify, she used an
anecdote of when she was at a Ram Daas workshop years ago. “A woman with a serious
degenerative disease said, with much gravity, ‘Sometimes I spend the whole morning just getting
dressed.’ Ram Daas replied, ‘Well, you’re just gonna have to learn to love getting dressed’.” Ram
Daas had suffered a stroke that had given him a condition called expressive aphasia, which
compromised his ability to produce written or spoken language. Somehow, he was able to look upon
his stroke as an act of grace and did not allow it to stop him traveling and giving lectures. Ram Daas
summarized his life's message thus: “I help people as a way to work on myself, and I work on myself
to help people... To me, that's what the emerging game is all about’.”
Would Antonio be able to transcend his depression and find meaning in his stroke? Would
Ben perceive what happened to him as an opportunity? Could I be so strong?
When Antonio and Lucha got back on the ferry and I watched it glide away, I thought about
all that Antonio had gone through. I looked back on how my own journey had paralleled his. We had
both been in states of limbo and had each gone through transformations. Antonio’s path was no
longer mine. I had learned to how to be there for him in a healthy way by learning to take care of
myself. I could now be there for my cousin without losing myself. The Staten Island Ferry sailed
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away and I was relieved to know that I would not be taking that trip again anytime soon. In a few
days, I would be on a plane to Los Angeles. But now, I was on my way home to Brooklyn to take
care of myself.
I took a breath and turned toward away from the ferry. Exhaling, I walked toward the ‘R’
train and home.
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All What It Is For Antonio

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All What it is Monica Rose

“Trying to understand how the universe works is like the

But still… I try.

for the past week? Did they wonder why?

suffer along with others in order to be there for them.

“Does that feel okay?”

sensed came from a place of darkness I no longer wished to go to with a lover.

Determined to lighten the heaviness, I said,

singing, hot but not too hot.

“Catching up on your sports?” I asked.

he had seen an apparition of me. Letting go of his foot, I took a breath.

squirming in the sky.”

“Those are in your eyes,” I said. “They’re not in the sky.”

hospital. In the dream, Jon and I had just broken up.

“Why are you so sad?” I ask him.

Jon, the more elusive he became.

“I had some of Dana’s soup,” he said, all proud of himself.

“You did?” I hugged him. “That’s great!”

band—to his cheek so he could take a sip of soup.

body. I squeezed Antonio’s hand.

the machine’s volume down.

“She’s pregnant,” I told him.

“That guy from Ecuador?” he asked. I nodded.

fights—which reminded me all too well of me and Jon.

“So Stacy’s pregnant,” he said. “She gonna be a single Mom?”

I woke up, Alice was safely in the world.

rising, Antonio turned to me and asked,

“How was Ireland?” Good question. I sighed.

I changed the subject. “Hey, your birthday is on Friday.”

“I’m gonna be forty-nine,” he said. “Hope I make it.”

“Of course you’re gonna make it.”

hug from Leah. “Do you have a message for her?”

landed in, which at that point was Italy.

were being made out of such adventures.

dragged us ever so slowly, down.

“Well, there’s always that house in Staten Island.”

“What house?” he asked.

“How’s house hunting in Italy?” friends asked.

We’ll give it two years, we said. We were back! So I thought.

“For how long?”

lightening. “They couldn’t tell me if he’d live or die,” she said.

me breathe. Dana’s words echoed in my head.

His lungs weren’t able to catch up to his brain.

They couldn’t tell me if he’d live or die.

But I couldn’t push away Antonio’s apologetic eyes.

It’s so hard to remember to breathe.

I’m not gonna die, goddamit.

California, let’s-share-a-house-and-be-all-sorts-of-communal vibe. Though many of my east coast

time without saying anything, without wanting to let go.

Q. & A. of the Month

open a ripe avocado.

the root and squeezed it.

“It feels kind of squishy.”

I wondered why she didn’t just use fresh ginger.

scooping avocado onto it.

counter between bowls.

“Listen to this,” she said:

cerebral hemorrhage between 3 A.M and 6 A. M. on holiday-weekend

oil paints and books, was his beloved Stella Scooter.

where Joe Wilson shouted out, ‘You lie!’”

“Why did he say that, again?”

out of the country after being released from the hospital.

“I’m sure Antonio is legal,” Dana said.