Welcome To The Clubhouse

I'm so glad you're here.

My dad doesn’t visit my dreams. Not when he was living and not now that he is dead. I talk to other people going through their grief and they say things to me like, “I dream of him every night.” They talk about the intensity of grief dreams and how they wake up for a moment believing that the person is still walking the earth. They nod at me when they say this, as though I must know exactly what they are talking about.

But when my dad died last May, what I felt was his absence. It was as though my chest had been cored like an apple and two hands were pressing on the outside of a hollow tube. I was still breathing, still walking, still talking, but at any moment it felt like the  the hollowness of my insides would give way to the pressure on the outside and I would collapse.  I didn’t sleep much and when I did I never dreamt of him, though I longed to. I felt alone in a way I had never experienced before.

In those early days, after my brother and I had cleaned out our father’s tiny living space, I restarted all my routines. I parented my children. I cuddled them and joked with them. I made their lunches and washed their clothes. I fed the pets. I spoke to people about the weather and the school’s upcoming summer break. I bought groceries. I worked. I did all the stuff of life and yet all of it was done cushioned by an impenetrable and thick silence.

People asked about my dad. They sent food and condolence cards. They looked at me as though they knew what I was going through.  They assumed he had cancer. They assumed heart attack or stroke. They assumed I’d had the chance to say goodbye. They assumed he and I were close. They were wrong about all of that.

It was AIDS. It was also a slow growing hemorrhage. It was also suicide. We had been close. I’d saved his life and cared for him instead of going to college. We were ferociously, exclusively, deeply close for many years until we weren’t and when we weren’t, there wasn’t a boat or bridge that could close the divide. When he died I had only seen him once in the previous 5 years.

These are not facts that one shares at school drop off. These are not facts that most people can hear at any time without becoming uncomfortable and changing the subject or telling you about a book or a yoga program or some other way to help you ‘get through this terrible time’. And so when asked, I said things like, “It was complicated.” Or I simply told them his death was sudden but he’d had a long illness. None of this was untrue, but the half truths simply deepened the space of aloneness around me.

Then, one day about six weeks after his death, something changed. I was sitting on my bed next to my napping toddler. My older child was at camp and my spouse was at work and for that brief time there was nowhere else to be and instead of stifling silence, there was a moment of perfect quiet. I watched the rise and fall of my child’s chest and heard the sound of his sleep. I felt the sun touch my shins through the window, warming them. I heard laughter and birdsong through the window. The stuff of life, continuing. For the first time, I really felt the offerings of friendship; the earnest questions, the deliveries of bagels, the jokey memes, and all the ways (however imperfectly) the world had risen to meet me in this moment of grief and change and for the first time, I also felt my dad, all around me. Then, I felt more than heard him say the words ‘Have it, Darling.’ It was a summoning and a prayer and a push to welcome my life in all its complexity and grief, in all its joy and magic, in all its chaos and passion and longing

And so the silence began to turn more regularly to stillness, and that stillness to tenderness, and the tenderness to openness and now, here I am, with you and these pages and all the stuff of life; so glad you’ve joined me.

My dad was Rosalind Russell and David Lynch and Lucille Ball. He was manic and he was magic and he outlived every expectation his illnesses laid at his feet. Losing him has been devastating and powerful and profound and The Clubhouse is our story. Mine and his, and also yours.

Whether you are grieving the loss of a parent, sibling, lover, or friend; whether you are weeping for a world on fire with war and seemingly insurmountable suffering; whether you are mourning  the time lost over these years during the pandemic and who you had to become to survive it—no matter your story, this space is for you. I made it with you in mind, so that we could grow. Together.  In these pages so far, you’ll find memoir and essay; you’ll find meditation and community. The rest, we’ll discover as we go.

Welcome to The Clubhouse.

Come as you are. I’m so glad you’re here.

Jx