December, 2018 Originally on facebook.com
I wrote this homage to Allison before what would have been her 42nd birthday. If it's a little bit self-centered, please forgive. It's part of the process...
---
Allison was the first child of my first marriage. I think such a child holds a special place in any parent’s life, and that’s no less true for me. I’m telling her story to honor her, and to help me heal from her death.
Her conception is lost in the cloud of memory. It happened some time during a period when I was wavering in my commitment to my first wife, Ronni, though I wasn’t at a point where I wanted to take action about it. When I learned that Ronni was pregnant, I felt at first that I was “stuck”.
One morning during the first few months of Ronni’s pregnancy, I woke up from a dream moaning like a baby. It was such a vivid dream: I was in a cave with a cat on a leash; I felt it was time to leave the cave, but when I moved toward the exit, the cave became narrower, and the cat was scratching my face; it became more and more difficult. But suddenly there was overwhelmingly bright light, and I was moving through the air and crying. That’s when I woke up and realized that I was somehow remembering my own birth, including (as my mother had once told me) my umbilical cord wrapped around my neck and my sharp little fingernails scratching my face.
The realization of what I had just dreamed left me with sudden, deep empathy for the life growing inside Ronni, and for Ronni herself who carried that life. The uncertainty I had felt about our marriage and our upcoming parenthood was suddenly gone. I was excited and warmed with anticipation.
The next months were filled with visits to a natural birthing center in NY City in which we eagerly followed the progress of Allison’s growth and did everything we were told would help her be born healthy and strong. At the last, Ronni’s water broke and the birth process didn’t progress fast enough, so we “risked out” and landed in Lenox Hill Hospital under the care of a doctor rather than a doula. Under the influence of pitocin Allison finally arrived very early in the morning of January 5, 1977.
Thanks to the kindness of the doctor and hospital, rather than bright lights and noise, Allison was greeted by her parents in a softly-lit, warm room. There was no crying (except a little by Ronni and me), just the sounds of Allison, Ronni and me breathing. There were Allison’s huge, bright blue eyes taking it all in, as though she was just as awed as we were by the scene unfolding. I got to cut her umbilical cord, and Allison took her first meal from Ronni’s breast.
Allison was a happy, bright, active child. I remember how hard it was to get her to fall asleep - I think she felt she would miss out on something. Over her pleas of, “No go sweep,” many nights we would rock her to sleep on a pillow on our laps. She learned to play violin in a Suzuki program (a cringe-inducing experience for us, but only at first), and we sent her to a Montessori pre-school where she made friends and thrived.
I remember one day while we were living in an apartment in Queens, NY, when we all walked outside to wait with her for her school bus. I would then have driven to work, but we saw that the car had been stolen, and I said, “Holy shit, the car is gone!” And then there was the sound of Allison shouting, “Holy shit, the car is gone!” over and over for the next several minutes. Sometimes I was not the best example for my child.
I wonder how Allison remembered our trip to Disney World in Florida when she was 7 years old. My favorite memory of that trip is the Space Mountain roller coaster: Allison screamed and cried the whole time, and when we finally got off she said, all in one breath, “That was horrible! Can we go again?”
Ronni and I would have been thrilled to have more kids while Allison was still so young, but by the time she was 8 we had been unsuccessful, so we began an adoption process. Jonathan had been born in Korea in late January of 1985, and his unmarried parents had given him up to foster care; by late Spring we were well on the way toward bringing him home. Allison would finally become a big sister. As has happened with many adoptive parents, while Jon’s adoption was in progress, Ronni became pregnant with Jason. Normally that would have disqualified us from adopting Jon, but we kept Ronni’s pregnancy a secret because we had already fallen in love with Jon. He arrived in September, and Jason arrived in February. We had (and I have) no regrets, although the agency facilitating this adoption changed some of their rules to prevent this ever happening again.
So Allison was a big sister twice over, and both of them were boys. I think there was a little corner of her mind that would have preferred at least one of them be a girl, but that didn’t stop her being the best sister.
Allison’s violin talent blossomed, as did her aptitude for math and science. She was the co-concertmistress with her BFF, Erica, of her high school orchestra, and was in the top tier of students of her high school. She won a nearly full scholarship to Smith College in Massachusetts, where she double-majored in math and music and finished her senior year as the concertmistress of the college’s orchestra.
After college she lived in our home for awhile but decided to break free and move to Port Jefferson, sharing a house with some roommates. She started working as a temp but soon was asked by Arrow Electronics to become a full-time employee. It’s not a job she liked, but it paid the bills and she liked the people she worked with.
I guess it was mid-2005 when she went on a trip to Italy with Mark. Who? She had met Mark on a group hike, and the attraction was mutual and strong. A few months after they returned, Allison came to visit us alone, prancing around the kitchen helping Mom prep dinner and trying to get her to notice the ring on her finger. It took awhile. Many tears of joy followed.
It was early January of 2006, merely two months later when Ronni, feeling a persistent pain in her side, went to her doctor. Tests showed a cancerous mass at the top of Ronni’s kidney. There were many more tears, clearly not tears of joy this time. The tumor was surgically removed late in January, followed by unceasing rounds of various chemical and radiation therapies. As soon as one spot showed up and was vanquished, another spot would show up elsewhere. Ronni’s fight was relentless.
During all of this, Allison and Ronni set about preparing for Allison’s wedding, scheduled for September, 2006. Mother and daughter pulled off a beautiful event in a beautiful venue.
I have suspected that Allison wanted her mother to enjoy her daughter’s big life events as quickly as possible, given Ronni’s uncertain prognosis. Our grandson Zachary was born in June, 2007, barely nine months after Allison and Mark’s wedding. Ronni happily became Zach’s nanny when Allison returned to work, though the cancer continued to spread regardless of the various treatments she endured. The year and some after Zachary’s arrival became increasingly bleak. Ronni died at home on the Jewish holiday of mourning, Tisha B’Av, which fell on August 10, 2008.
We must barely have settled into a new routine when, around Thanksgiving, Allison had some tests to investigate some recent digestive issues. She was diagnosed with esophageal cancer that December, 2008, just four months after her Mom’s passing.
The next year was filled with doctors and treatments again, this time for Allison. She, Mark and Zachary moved in with me, where she could get more help from her grandparents as well as me. Among all the medicines and radiation treatments, she maintained a remarkable strength of will, expecting to beat it and start school again with the aim of starting a career. But the treatments took away some cognitive abilities, scuttling her potential success in school, and caused neuropathy which eventually took away Allison’s ability to play violin.
When the Fall of 2009 came, and it was time for the Jewish Holiday of Rosh Hashanah, Allison was still strong enough and able to attend services. But the following week when Yom Kippur arrived, she sat in a chair and cried bitterly. She said that she could not listen to the part of the service that describes the Almighty as deciding “who shall live and who shall die.” I was unable to speak, and unable to comfort her beyond a hug.
It must have been the end of May when she pointedly asked her doctors how much extra time all of these debilitating treatments were buying her. When she heard, “A few weeks at best,” she told them she’d rather have some more time feeling well, and asked that her treatments stop and home hospice care begin.
The decline was sudden and steep. I don’t think she ever got those hoped-for extra weeks of feeling well. She tried to leave some written notes and stories for Zachary to read after she was gone, a legacy of sorts, but she ran out of energy and time. Towards mid-July she slipped into a coma. We could only give her pain medications and read to her and talk to her. The day after I read the Vidui to her (a traditional Jewish confession usually read at Yom Kippur), I watched from across the room as she suddenly became pale, took one more breath, then stopped. She was gone.
It was, again, the Jewish holiday of mourning, Tisha B’Av, which fell on July 20, 2010.
I believe the soul persists after one’s death. I believe that Ronni and Allison each spoke to me many times after they died, and left many signs that they were around. I believe that Allison had something to do with the peculiar weather on the day of her funeral: it rained only while we were indoors, and afterwards the rain, outside the front window of her grandparents’ house, dripped off the tree in huge sun-lit goblets that caused me to gasp because they were so beautiful. She had given me a beautiful moment after she passed.
I had seen Allison leave us, taking her very last breath in my presence. Then I remembered that I had seen her take her very first breath as well.
