Since You're Gone
Honestly, the first thought that enters my mind when I begin a post about my Aunt Sherrie - nearing the third anniversary of her death - is if there’s been enough of a buffer since I posted about the suicide of my grandfather, her father — If I’ve shared enough photos of sunsets and oceans and my smiling children, if I’ve cracked enough jokes, thrown enough heart emojis into the air, to earn a space between writing about his suicide and hers.
And, then driving home this morning, the ocean to my left, the tall Eucalyptus trees and sparkling lakes in Golden Gate Park ahead of me, I remembered this comic strip I used to read in the Sunday Funnies as a kid: Cathy. (Who remembers Cathy?) And how she’d say “Love me, Love my mess!”
And this is my mess.
When I fill out the intake form with a new therapist I check so many boxes under family history that it feels like a strange type of bragging.
But the thing is — this mess is so tangled in beauty and love (and of course the prophecy of hindsight: regret) that even without sandwiching their deaths between blue birds and lemon trees and the surf at high tide — on its own, this story still contains joy and tenderness alongside the sadness.
Even laughter — like in the parking lot of Sherrie’s apartment getting ready to enter, when my mother - a speech therapist turned shaman - pulled out her sound-bowl and incense and chimes - instructing me and my older brother, Evan, on how we’d need to cleanse the air before entering her younger sister’s home, because death was still so present there.
And she was right, but I turned to Evan, the two of us approaching middle-age, and thought of what Sherrie would think of this, and felt like I was in some absurd Wes Anderson film, and started laughing so hard I doubled-over, tears streamed down my face and the bottle of seltzer I was holding exploded into fizz on my legs and leather boots. It was just the type of moment we’d enjoyed so many times, Sherrie at our side, her generous laugh, her relentless hiccups, my entire Matriarch line not knowing how to open a Vintage plastic bottle of seltzer without a small flood at our feet.
I know we all have the quarantine hobbies that we share with each other: Knitting and Candy Crush and Bread Baking and Puppy-Adoption and Long Exploratory Walks and Books on Tape. But I also know there are the ones that we keep to ourselves.
Here’s one that I haven’t shared yet: I’ll sometimes light a cotton-candy-scented candle and play The Cars song Since You’re Gone on repeat and click on my dead Aunt Sherrie’s Facebook Page Photos and study the hundreds of photographs that she took in the months and weeks leading up to her death.
The photographs that most capture my imagination are dozens of Philadelphia murals taken on February 24th 2018, two week’s before she died. This date stands out because Dan and I were in California that weekend, having traveled from New York to interview for a pulpit opening in San Francisco.
I see our lives criss-crossing the cosmos at that exact moment — she already determined to end hers, and mine unfurling across the country, a brand new landscape spread out before me.
I’m sharing some of these photographs here with you. When I witness my Aunt Sherrie’s artistry and how she saw the vibrancy and grit and truth painted on the walls of her city, it is both a source consolation and inspiration.
Sending you all continued strength and love.
Prayer + Action: Photography was a hobby that Sherrie dreamt of turning into a profession, lugging her camera and video equipment to Bar Mitzvahs and weddings. Mostly, she chronicled the lives our large family for free. I’ve been researching grants dedicated to women artists over 40 in her honor.
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