Feeling vulnerable today.
Feeling stunned as well. Wishing
I could still smoke cigarettes, though 34 years have passed since I did. Need
to take that long, deep drag on a cigarette that is like the deepest you can
inhale. I’ve never been sure why taking a deep breath of fresh air just doesn’t
feel as satisfying. I am a jangled mess
today for many reasons, some more trivial and some completely
heartbreaking.
The trivial one first.
My tooth broke over the weekend.
I bit down on a cherry pit and whammo – the temporary filling I had for
28 years shattered – tooth face and all!
When I was pregnant with my second son and lived in the Hamptons, Dr.
Frost said I shouldn’t have work done on my teeth while pregnant so he
installed this black temporary filling, that I believe was made of cement! It has served me well, albeit ugly and
noticeable in photos and I stupidly, never addressed replacing it over all
these years. My come-uppance has arrived
and now, I am faced with a costly, painful, scary dilemma. I got into see my
often depressed, kind of quirky dentist this morning and he winced when he saw
the tooth and shuddered when he viewed the x-ray. Alas, there is nothing left
but some filling and I am clearly missing a tooth when I smile, so I refuse to
remain toothless. My choices are grim, running from hundreds of dollars for
something temporary to $6000 for an implant. I feel old and falling apart and
scared to death of procedures like these, not to mention, at a loss for where I
will find this much money. Not a good
start to my day.
However, I am keeping it all in perspective, because I have
been weeping since last night and not over my tooth but over something far more
wrenching.
I have known my friend Mindy (whose real name is Michelle)
since I was in kindergarten and although we have never been very close, we have
been with each other for most days of the year through all 12 years of school,
in every single class! Mindy had a
little sister named, Lynn Ann when we were growing up in the ENY projects. She was a few years younger than us so we
never bothered much with her. She was
cute enough but she seemed to be always doing something with her mom when we
were hanging out dreaming of Paul McCartney and George Harrison. Mindy had one of the fanciest apartments on
the first floor of her building in the projects with clear vinyl covering the
couches and a lot of fringe dangling from the lampshades. Her parents were
Clara and Jerry and they were an attractive active couple. The expression of
the day for mothers who worked was “She goes to business.” I believe that Clara went to business.
I don’t remember much about Lynn Ann after those early days
until a few years ago I shared a Marriott room with Mindy and our friend, Susan
at a reunion in Long Island. It was
then, that I first heard about Lynn Ann again and about how different these
sisters had turned out (is that not always the case??). And, I remember Mindy telling us that she had
a close relationship with her nieces, Dianna and Rachel. She described how they lived in wilderness
areas in Canada and this seemed very different to Mindy. Lynn Ann actually
sounded like she had grown up into someone I might really like to know.
About four days ago, Mindy posted on her Facebook page that
there had been a landslide in British Columbia and that some residents were
being searched for. She was unsure if
her nieces were a part of this. Day by day, it has gotten worse and more
harrowing. I did not even know what a landslide was but thanks to Facebook and
Youtube, I sure did learn what they looked like and the rampage of damage they
cause. In fact, so much so, that I have
watched the live footage over and over and like an awful horror movie, I cannot
get these images to keep replaying in my mind’s eye.
Apparently, Dianna, Rachel and their dad, Valentine were
having breakfast outside their home, overlooking the most ideal, paradise-like in
Johnson’s Landing on the lake. I don’t know if a landslide happens in seconds
or in minutes. I don’t know if it is a
roaring, loud sound or if is more subtle.
I do know that it takes all dirt, mud, trees and houses with it with a
force the likes of which I have only seen in Tsunamis, and apparently, the
Webber house was taken and smashed and cracked into pieces, and then buried in
mud. For the three-day search, it was
felt that the two girls and their dad had taken to the basement and needed to
be rescued. I wondered how long one can
go without food or water but convinced myself that both were supplies might be
in the smashed basement with them.
Lynn Ann arrived in Vancouver on Saturday, the third day and
was frantically trying to convince the rescue to speed up. There was literally no way to rescue anyone
since the mud was compared to “quicksand” rendering it impossible to get to the
smashed home. I became completely
fixated on updates, on watching helicopters try to get to the home, and on
keeping track of the latest news. I also texted my friend Mindy who when asked
how she was passing the time, shared that she could not stop crying.
It was last night when the workers stopped being called
“rescue workers” and became “recovery crew.”
In the morning, they found Val, the dad buried under about 3 yards of
dirt. The girls are still missing. I
remain more involved than I should be.
There are many reasons that my emotions run haywire over this sort of
thing. The main one is probably that I
cannot bear to think that any other mother in the universe would ever have to
feel the agony over losing a child. Losing two at once is not comprehensible. Suffocating in mud seems very similar to me as
the nightmare of drowning and suffocating in water. I become consumed wondering
if they suffered, if they tried to breathe or if they were knocked unconscious
immediately from all the falling trees.
It is amazing that they were together since the older girl lived in Los
Angeles and the younger was to be a senior in the local high school in this
remote area.
Then, after I know someone cherished has died, I spend days
thinking of all they will miss. At Yoga
tonight, I imagined that they will never again get to do yoga. When I got
coffee, I thought the same and when I looked at the Carolina blue sky today I
realized they would never see that either.
No graduation this year, no weddings, no having babies, just a funeral.
