The Chair

My favorite routine with my kids is bedtime. Perhaps, not for the reasons you may expect, like total exhaustion from chasing the kids around all day, or just craving a little peace and quiet. Don’t get me wrong, I am one-hundred percent completely exhausted and craving peace and quiet, every day, but this routine is more about the ritual. The moments leading up to placing my son in his crib are moments of connection between me and him, despite what may have or have not happened throughout the day. They are similar sacred moments like those I’d once shared with June, in the very same room, in the very same rocking chair. June’s room, now turned into our son’s nursery, has two of June’s items that once belonged to her, and were passed down from our eldest daughter: a faux white pine mid-century modern crib and a gray suede rocking chair. Despite them once belonging to our eldest daughter and now belonging to our son, my subconscious has decided both the crib and rocking chair belong solely to June. My son is simply borrowing his older sister’s things. He won’t ever return the crib or the chair to her, but instead allow them to simply exist when he is done with them, to remind us of what once was. They are clear representations of June, and the proof is in the flashbacks they trigger in me daily. 

For some awful reason, and one which brings me so much guilt, is that those objects also remind me that it’s easier to love June at times, than it is to love my living children. When I make the acknowledgment that I have been giving June too much of my brain and my body in one day, I return to the beautiful babies in front of me. Sometimes the lines however, are blurred between them and her. Sometimes their mannerisms are identical to their sister who is gone, or one of them gives me a look that’s just like her. Because I never want them to believe I only think about their sister, and because I never want them to think they are walking in her shadow, I carefully choose the precious times that I say her name out loud. As a knee-jerk reaction, my daughter immediately says, “Don’t cry mommy,” and I look at her, eyes wide open to prove to her that June is a safe subject, and that the mere thought of her doesn’t cause me to cry, every time. “Besides,” I tell her, “Crying is therapeutic. It’s good for us. It’s the release of lots of mixed energies and emotions that our bodies want out. Crying can help us feel better, even lighter, in our bodies. Did you know that?” But I know, she doesn’t care, she wants her mama strong, and when I cry, I become weak and it makes her uncomfortable. I don’t want to ever make her uncomfortable. But it inevitably happens, I cry and then I watch her insert her thumb into her mouth, and I think “Goddamnit. What have I done again?”. Recently, I’ve been practicing bringing up June in moments of joy, when we are all laughing as a family, or better yet, I let my daughter bring June into our shared time. “Mama, Junie used to do that.” She randomly says. I give her a big smile, agree, and stave off the tears. I want her to know that with me, she is always in a safe space to talk about Junie. When I am able to, I mold myself to make her feel more comfortable.

June and I spent most of her life together sitting in a chair. Either a hospital room chair, or a chair in our house. In the weeks following chemotherapy, she would be too sick to move, entirely lifeless in my arms. Unable to lift her bald little head or open her pale blue eyes. So, I’d stop everything, and sit with her, cradling her in my arms. We wouldn’t take our hourly walks around the house, picking up toys, looking out the window, dancing to music in the kitchen. We would stay very still on the plush, pale yellow chair in our living room. I’d sing to her, rock her, keep her warm under the pink blankets that her great-grandmother had hand-knitted for her. She’d lay for hours, not moving, barely breathing. With extreme worry,  I’d call the nurse for the second or third time at “clinic”, the children’s cancer clinic, to make sure I was doing everything I possibly could to nurture June back to health. Was she making wet diapers, was she consuming fluids, was she tolerating any food? These were the common questions spouted off in the first thirty seconds by the clinic nurse. “Yes, no, no.” I’d tell her, reaching defeat, as we hung up again. I knew it wouldn’t be long before the first question became a no as well, so I gently stood up, June in my arms, and carried her to our medicine cabinet in the kitchen. I’d pull out the bin of hydromorphone, Motrin, Tylenol, Zofran, Benadryl, SSKI drops, GCSF, and various sized syringes and needles as well as three thermometers, one forehead reading and two internal reading thermometers. If one thermometer screamed fever it wasn't proof enough that we needed to go to the hospital, and I’d methodically take her temperature twelve more times, rotating devices and spots on her forehead, just to be sure. 

I’d pull out the largest syringe I had in the bin, sixty milliliters, and fill a water glass. Then I’d draw sixty milliliters of water, sometimes mixed with a pedialyte powder, into the syringe, all while balancing June in my arms. I’d tiptoe back to the living room, and slowly, we’d slink back into the yellow chair. Then I’d begin administering the fluid to June. One ounce every hour which was roughly thirty milliliters at the end of the hour. The tiniest trickle of water could make June gag and throw up, which would be counterproductive to hydration, and frightening for her. Every ten to twenty seconds I’d dribble a couple more drops into her mouth. I’d become so hyper focused with keeping her alive that I’d often forget to breathe. We would bank one hour of hydration success, followed by a massive episode of throw up in the second hour. Usually, I could predict the oncoming puke, and I’d run to the nearest sink and hold her tiny little body over it. By the end of the day we were surrounded by towels on the floor, and covered in vomit. We would sleep for a couple of hours, and every morning we’d start over, hoping for it to be a bit better, a bit easier, but usually it was the same. The neverending days felt like a month in a day, the seconds and hours ticked by without any hope in the near future of living differently.

After every round of chemotherapy, and for roughly two weeks, this is what we did. I can’t remember where my daughter or husband were, but daycare and work feel like safe assumptions. I stayed home with June. I kept June alive. You know that mostly terrifying feeling when you first take your brand new infant home from the hospital and don’t know what to do next, but know you’ll sacrifice your own soul to keep them alive? Keeping June alive felt sort of like that, magnified by one million. 

In the evenings, we would switch from the yellow chair in the living room to the gray chair in June's room, and I’d rock her for an hour, nursing as much of a bottle into her as she would tolerate. Sometimes an ounce, sometimes two or three. Never more than four. We had two great adversaries preventing proper nourishment: the tumor which was the size of a grapefruit and had pushed aside vital organs, leaving no room for June’s stomach to expand, and the nausea from the chemotherapy. I’d imagine what June’s insides looked like, and I’d curse the tumor. Then I’d gently rock her until I felt like she was no longer in danger of retching the bottle. I’d rub her little bald head until she was asleep. I’d continue relishing every moment with her, still rocking, crying silent, stoic tears out of fear that if she heard me, it would delay her healing. That somehow the sadness the tears carried as they dripped off my chin and onto her cheek, neck, arms or hands, would seep into her skin and make her more sick, or sad, or not want to do this anymore. Maybe my tears were enough to make her give up. It was one of those beliefs I took on after too many days inside the house, and inside the hospital. I shielded her emotionally and physically from my tears. I decided it was better if she didn’t know how much I was also suffering.

When I’d sit in June’s chair, in her room, and rock her when she was well, it was something altogether different. She’d giggle and look up at me. She’d turn her eyes to the ceiling and smile, showing off her big beautiful white teeth, and throw her head back into the crook of my arm, flashing just under her tiny chin, a jaw, and the most tender, translucent skin. I’d crane my neck to nuzzle my nose and mouth into the little folds of skin where there had once existed a double-chin, and now, only a pocket of fat and a rigid jawbone. It was my favorite view. Maybe because when someone throws their head back, smiling, laughing, it’s in pure ecstasy. As if there couldn’t be a care in the world. For one second, I’d pretend there wasn’t a care in the world.

With my son, our bedtime routine resumes, much like it did with June and with little time in between each baby. Eight weeks. Lately, he’s not ready for his seven o’clock bedtime, which means he’s really ready. One second after I close the bedroom door, he’s silent. 

We begin our routine by sinking into the gray rocking chair which is a little more broken-in now than it once was. His head rests in the crook of my arm, his legs sprawl over mine, and he starts to guzzle his bottle. Once finished, we rock a bit more because selfishly, I am not ready to let him go. In response, he becomes squirrely. Snuggled in his sleep sack, he manages to hoist himself up to a standing position, arms firmly wrapped around my neck, standing strongly with two feet balanced on my thighs. He peeks curiously upward, over my shoulder, out the window, and squeals with delight at the rustling leaves on the trees. Flashing me the most perfect baby chin of which I have a front row seat. I am looking up from just beyond the orchestra pit, and he’s on stage. I’m in heaven. I feel pure energetic bliss as the light filters through the trees and into the window, casting quivering white designs on the wall. The same designs a kindred light once made for June. I nuzzle my nose upward into the folds of his little neck. His skin is the most satiny, milky thing I’ve ever felt, and I inhale its scent deeply into the pits of my lungs. He giggles just like June once did, as I kiss his chubby, tender, under chin. He casts his big blue eyes down to meet mine, and it’s in that moment I realize, I will go on living. 

I picture an eighty-five year old self, dragging the gray rocking chair out from the attic to the farmers porch out front of our house. Husband, reluctantly, allowed me to hold onto it all these years because he knew. He knew if it went away, so did a slice of my memory. A slice of my being. The chair is now fifty-years-old, and slightly faded, but otherwise it has not aged. I have aged. My hands are sprinkled with white spots from the sun where the melanin has died. My hair is long still, but it’s white and wispy and reminds me of freshly rinsed soap suds as they swirl around the drain. I sit in the gray rocking chair and reflect on my life. I rock, just like I did once with my three babies. 

I remember the day my mom showed up with the chair in the back of her pick-up truck fifty-years before. “What is that?” I thought, looking at it in the driveway from the window on the second floor of our house. Running out to meet her, I blurted “No footrest?” Then in an effort to repair any unintentional damage, I said “Wow. I love it. Thanks mom.” We hauled it inside, the two of us. I was several months pregnant with our first daughter. The moment it was in the nursery, I sat down, leaned back and rocked in it. I imagined what life would be like once she came into this world. What husband and I would be like as her parents. 

The eighty-five year old version of me is closer to June than I have been in forty-eight years. I am content. My life has been both grueling yet rewarding. I have lived in the deepest depths of sadness, and surfaced, to sink back into the depths again, and to rise up once more. I’ve realized there is no permanence about these places much like life itself.  It hasn’t been easy. I am the only eighty-five year old in my neighborhood with a one-and-a-half year old daughter. I’ve carried June with me every day since she has been gone which is how I believe I’ve grown to be this old. As I rest my tired body into the gray, sunken chair, I do it again: I lean back, start rocking, and look down at the crook of my arm. I picture her little chin and pearly whites and I say to her, “Mama’s going to be home soon, Junie.” I close my eyes, the wind sifting lightly through my hair, and as I picture her face I know, we have never been apart. She’s always been right here. I’m looking forward to what the next one-hundred years bring.