there will be lemon balm and rain

that which probably won't and definitely will happen

Read this post below or listen to the audio, which I recorded in my backyard.

A little over a week ago, I did a reading at the celebration of life for my adored friend Kay Bohannon Holley, who we lost in January.

the ceremony was in the chapel of the old UU church where I saw bands in high school. a few friends of Kay’s got up and spoke and shared stories. just before it was time for me to read, Kay’s childhood best friend Susan, whom she’d toured with in her younger days in their band WHOLE WHEAT and may god bless the 1970s forever for all of that - played In My Life on the keyboard and sang so beautifully - but of all these friends and lovers, there is no one compares with you - the room settled into sniffling shambles as she shifted from verse to chorus and back.

my reading was up next. I was still actively crying, bleary-eyed and nose running as I clomped up the stage steps in my platform sandals. I leaned into the mic and said umm yes I have a complaint about the line-up? and everyone laughed and Dave shouted sorry! and I think that reaction gave me too much juice because I laughed too, then felt so held by the room that I went off-script and simply started talking. I said I met Kay through the Station Theatre, and I think I held up a little fist here to represent, and I met her around 2010 (I know this because she and I met acting together in Eurydice by Sarah Ruhl, which Mathew directed - I looked to him in his seat when I said 2010 like he knew where I was going with all this - and I know Eurydice was early 2011 because I remember my program bio said she is marrying a musician in June, Orpheus of course being a musician - I didn’t say all this by the way, just the 2010 part).

I said that meant I’d gotten to know Kay for about 15 years, which is relatively so much of my life and includes all of my 30s thank god - but that it’s also not enough, not nearly enough. I know I talked about her being a director and how being directed by her onstage was just one of many ways to experience how wonderful she was, though there were so many ways, that was one.

I heard myself saying I guess what I’m trying to say is, which is what I say at work when I’m rambling to a client, trying to save face by wrapping up with an irrefutable emotional or moral conclusion. the sun was streaming through the windows at the back of the room, making all the people silhouettes. what WAS I trying to say? Kay definitely had an impact on who I am, I said, cringing inwardly at “definitely” even as it flopped out of my mouth. a qualifier?? “impact”?

dialect rehearsal for The Night Alive, dir. by Kay in 2016

I’ve spoken at a lot of funerals, including a stretch where my three living grandparents, little brother, and then father-in-law all died within two years. in some ways it’s an exercise in frustration, the limits of communication mingling with the arrogance of my own ego. whatever I say will never be enough for me, never fully land, death being a topic with its own irrefutable conclusion - its own complete finality and our attendant bafflement at the finality. I hate that. I want to rend my garments, beat my chest. if the crowd had been even 1% more receptive I would have been wailing I WANTED MY BABY TO GROW UP KNOWING HER, so relatively speaking, a little Rain-Man-esque yap about how much Kay - a mother figure, a mentor, a collaborator, a confidant, a hype woman, a friend - had shaped and inspired and influenced me, definitely definitely - was fine, just a bit limp, “sad” but not in the griefy way. so I finally cut myself off and read the monologue I’d actually been asked to read.

a few weeks earlier, Dave had asked if I would read the monologue from 10 out of 12 that had resonated with Kay — a play about the last days before opening a play, a speech in which the character I’d played who was an older, veteran actor (ahem) reminisced about the scrappy pre-union rehearsal days of his youth, rehearsing all night and Opening the Show.

from 10 out of 12 by Anne Washburn

I did the monologue and it was fine. even though it has its own satisfying-enough emotional conclusion, mostly what I felt when I was done was that Kay’s absence was highlighted even more - she had loved it most of all.

at the end of the ceremony, Susan played and sang again, this time The Circle Game and invited us to sing along on the chorus, which I know by heart and which I sang like a crying child as the whole room lifted with voices, harmonies, volume:

and the seasons
they go round and round
and the painted ponies go up and down
we’re captive on the carousel of time
we can’t return, we can only look
behind from where we came
and go round and round and round
in the circle game

ever since I can remember being aware of time, its linear nature has felt like a challenge I should be able to solve. the days of my nearly-forty-two years feel so close, so accessible, like if I could just find the right words I could live in them again, or at least stand struck with feeling in the middle of them like Scrooge escorted by his ghosts. for instance, when my brother died, I was so pierced with shock (and cushioned by denial) that I actually and literally pondered, for the first couple days, how I could get a message to him.

but (clunking toward the unsatisfying conclusion - beautiful since it’s all we have, the fleeting hours, but if we had another choice we’d take it, wouldn’t we??) we can only go forward, settle for our beloved ghosts steering us one way into the future. I thank my brother regularly for sending Lola. I know I’ll call on Kay to guide her, and to keep guiding me.

I wanted a glass of wine as soon as the ceremony ended. this almost never happens, but I had a distinct craving. “I’m REALLY not an ‘I need a drink person,’” I kept hearing myself say as we made our way out of the building, “but—” as if one might simply drink a glass of wine without making a whole personality out of it. Mom and I walked down the street to Bread Co but they were closed, summer hours, students gone from campus. sit at the nice bar at the upscale restaurant Dad likes, maybe?? we got in the car but google said they were closed, too, weird Sunday hours. finally we went to art mart even though they were closing in less than an hour, ordered our glasses and took them to the front patio against the busy street. there was another table of older women already out there, dressed in breezy linens, chatting and laughing. I let my shoulders unclench a bit in their orbit and my mom’s. I’d been anxious about the ceremony, emotionally frayed from anticipating leaving Lola the next day to go on the hot rod tour with my dad, the first time I’d be away from her for more than one night, and now I felt plunged back into grief for my friend, and The Circle Game was in my head, turning a bit singsong and taunting.

but the ceremony was over, I had wept a big weep (and gotten two big laughs from the crowd, MY MOM CONFIRMED, a success on my sick little scale), and grief is at least a familiar companion. I can move forward with it arm-in-arm.

that night I couldn’t sleep - I hadn’t eaten enough during the day, the wine made me thirsty and anxious, and my nighttime meds on top of it all had me feeling queasy. I wanted to wake Alen up and say what if Dad and I get in a car accident on the trip and I die? but I didn’t. I could soothe myself well enough with what I knew he’d say. his mantra when I’m feeling anxious is: that probably won’t happen.

those words might not sound that reassuring to you, but they are to me. to me they are a better answer than the frictionless platitude of “don’t worry!” or “that won’t happen!” - an unsatisfying guarantee given we’re both mortal humans who don’t actually know what will happen. but hearing that a fearful thing is very unlikely to happen - that works better for me. it sounds like data. it sounds true. it usually is true!

so I told myself I probably wouldn’t die on the road and eliminate both Lola’s mommy and beloved grandpa from her life in one fell swoop, not to mention end my sweet and beautiful life that I desperately want to keep living. then I tried to fall asleep with all my usual tricks: I closed my eyes and listened to the sounds of the fan and Alen breathing and the a/c seeping in through the ceiling. I took a huge deep breath through my nose and then sipped one extra breath to fully fill my lungs. I let it out slowly through my mouth. I thought of nouns, unconnected words, to distract my brain with thoughts but cut it off from building a story. this is a trick I saw on tiktok when I was postpartum, right when it became impossible for me to not think about the baby. my stream of words is usually something like barn - grass - radio - baby - book - baby - plant - brush - baby - baby - camera - cake - baby

this worked, as it always does, and I eventually fell asleep.

lately I feel myself comforted by taking analog paths more reminiscent of my childhood. inspired by Lisa like usual, I fantasize daily about buying the exact stereo I had as a teenager and building back our CD collection. when I dig in the dirt behind the house, transplanting hostas from the overgrown side yard to the shade, flooding the new residents with cold water from the hose, I’m annoyed but also weirdly relieved when Lola clambers up onto a concrete paver next to me and shoves a handful of soil in her mouth. we’re planting flowers for seasons to come, encouraging roots to join the ecosystem of this home, and kids are still scraping their knees and eating dirt! all must be well.

the dirt-eater in a rare moment (not eating dirt)

my grief about losing Kay is connected to my grief about losing Barbara, who passed away just weeks before her. of course all grief is related to every grief anyway, but they were part of the same vanguard, same circles, same generation. I met them in the same theater. I got to know and admired them in similar ways. the little child inside me is afraid, not wanting my protectors and mothers and guides to disappear.

I am so aware right now of how precious this time of our lives is. I feel so devoted to and so loved by Alen. our daughter is almost sixteen months old, walking into daycare grinning and proud, signing “more” and “milk” and shouting AGUA! and dipping her pita in hummus at lunchtime - both my mom and dad alive and healthy, Alen’s parents alive and healthy, our home where nothing is leaking or broken, our backyard where plants are growing, the lemon balm exploding in the heat and rain. I know this is a time I’ll look back on and yearn for someday, in a future time when all this isn’t true.

and yet I know in the future there will be lemon balm and rain. no matter how old she is, there will always be stories about our child that feel miraculous to us. I know even when loved ones are gone, they remain, which has to be beautiful both because it’s true and because it’s all we have. I know life is full of endings but mostly it begins and begins and begins.

Lindsey

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more joni

one of my most played youtubes (no regerts, coyote):