As you know, I am a scattered writer—perhaps a journeying journaler. A backsliding poet, raw and crafted, immediate and archived. A Gemini. An Enneagram 7 consumer struggling to be a 5 contributor—I buy tons of planners, notebooks, and pens, but I can’t quite sort out how to use them. I get their function but not their purpose. 

One purpose I want my journals to function as is memory keepers. I would like to record the commonplace and extraordinary of my life so that I can remember what I have done and so that others, now and future, may reference it, too. The written record clarifies my memories and gives me a stab at a legacy. 

But, as I discussed in my last blog, my polyamorous pen and paper nature can get confusing and my attempts at remembering become experiments in forgetting because I can never quite recall where, in my harem of notebooks, I wrote something down.

Even when what I wrote down is something that I believe I can’t possibly forget.

In mid-February, my mother-in-law, Joanna, went into the hospital for surgery. The surgery was successful—quadruple bypass—but she died anyway. She made it through the surgery but couldn’t survive the recovery.

While there is always a corner of dread with any hospitalization, none of us expected her to die. We were sorting out vacation schedules and making travel plans around her convalescence. Getting her through the healing part would be difficult, perhaps even a bit inconvenient, but between all of us, we’d figure it out and by June’s family vacation, Gma would be back to planning breakfasts to feed the eight of us and about a dozen more—just in case anyone dropped by (at a rental house, during Covid, about 200 miles away from anyone we know, but OK).

When my husband called from the hospital telling me they were planning on taking her off the ventilator as soon as the priest delivered the Last Rights, I had to start thinking about what to tell the kids. They had the blessings of Gma in their lives from their first moments to their early teens. She was their only babysitter. She was a constant presence for them—they did not know life without her, and now they would have to.

My daughter took it all very stoically, but she was fearing the worst from the onset. Other than leaning into the production of cookies of necessity, (see Casserole pt 1) she didn’t show much of what she was feeling. She is very emotional, but doesn’t want anyone to know it—emotion hurts and hurting makes you vulnerable. And vulnerability means you’re not tough. I get it.

My son, like my husband, is a little more expressive. I wasn’t quite sure how to tell him that Gma was dying. I didn’t really know how he would understand it. And as I was talking with him, I knew that what he said was something, as painful as it was, we would always want to remember.

Last week, I was thinking about finally writing this blog about Joanna, and I wanted to include my conversation with Henry, but I could only remember part of what he said, and I knew that was not enough. It was a conversation I was sure I would never forget, but I did.

Today, I discovered that I did write it down—I didn’t forget the words, I just forgot where I put them. 

Henry, Grandma is not doing well.
Are they going to find another hospital?

No, Henry, the doctors don’t really know what is wrong with her.
So, are they going to find different doctors?

No, Henry, there’s nothing more the doctors can do.
Oh, okay, so she is just going to get better on her own at home then?

Henry, Grandma is going to die.

He was not prepared for that response. Henry doesn’t have the hesitation about his emotions that Bea has. The disbelief and tears that flooded out of him are flowing back to me now. I understand why I recorded the conversation and promptly forgot where I wrote it.

Joanna died on February 22. I wrote my conversation with Henry on my planner’s February 23rd page and rediscovered it this morning. I also wrote the word “trust” at the top of the page and, until that conversation, it was all I had planned for February 23rd. I assume “trust” was the card I pulled from a daily affirmations deck that morning and this morning, as I went back to that deck to find the trust card and revisit it, perhaps use the affirmation for an epigraph, I couldn’t find it.

Trust was not in the deck. I lost trust.

Losing trust seems portentous—a troubling sign like losing your wedding ring or forgetting your passport on your way to the airport for your dream European vacation—but I don’t think it is. Trust just wasn’t where I thought was. 

But I knew where to find it.

I have another deck of the same cards—it’s not complete—I use this deck when I want to give cards away—when I want to share affirmations. Trust was there; I knew it would be.

I’ve been feeling misplaced in my writing—and in pretty much everything my ever-growing pile of Moleskines, Hobonichi, Leuchtturm (and the enticing Planner Perfects) are trying to help me find. 

Nothing is ever where I think it should be. My children are not. My notes are not. Joanna is not. But that doesn’t mean they are lost.