I cry all the time now–I cry at work, I cry when I get home, I cry when I wake up and can’t sleep any more. I don’t want my dad to die, I don’t want to bury 2 parents in less than a year. Then I start thinking about my mom, and I start missing her–the idea of her, I guess. I google her, and I find articles she’s written, people she used to work with. I google those people–I vaguely remember meeting some of them in her lab. I remember spending Saturdays at the lab with Dennis, our only entertainment the stinky mice they studied and beakers.

I toy with the idea of emailing those people. I want to know who she was…but then I wonder if I should just let it lie, and let the dead stay dead. Would they even remember her? How could they not…to spend years of research together, and then have a partner (in so many ways…) just vanish. Did they call? Did they wonder? I was too young to wonder or notice.

And then last night I thought of where I want to spread my mom’s ashes: Wave Hill, along the Hudson River waterfront where we grew up. My mom used to take us there–one of the few remaining memories I have. Respite for her on a weekend, rolling down hills and playing around the koi pond for Dennis and me. I also thought it would be an interesting counterpoint to what I do for a living–it would be interesting to revisit it now as an adult and a landscape architect. Different eyes. I wonder if that huge beech tree is still there, if the gardens are still the same. I just remembered how in high school a friend and I made pesto at home for lunch, and then drove over there to have a picnic.

My dad, my poor dad. It’s not fair, he just finally kicked all the drugs, and we’re just starting to rebuild our relationship. More around Graem now. I watch him interact with her, and it reminds me of how he was when Dennis and I were kids. He was a great dad, once. He was the one we always wanted to play with and spend time with, not my mom. He was just more fun.

I can’t remember when he became so frail, it was a few years ago. I guess it must have happened when I moved out of the house for college, and came to visit less and less. All my memories of my dad are of a strong, arrogant, garrulous person with a sometimes fiery temper. When Dennis and I were about 2 and 5, he could lift the two of us, one in each hand, arms outstretched. The push-ups, the chin-ups, the martial arts that he would show off to us and encourage us to do…and now he spends most of his time in his massage chair, or in bed. I suppose the loss and pain in his life, the drugs, the cancer–all have diluted him to what he is now. I just missed when it happened.

I hope–pray–that he kicks this. I feel like we’re so close, he has struggled through so much with the chemo and radiation, suffered so much nearly alone. He just has to make it to this surgery–then all will have been done, all that could have been done. The rest is up to the universe.