Category Archives: Family

Nothing beats an impromptu stop for a milkshake with your fourteeen-year-old niece, which is just what transpired on my last visit to Amsterdam. We’d both already had dinner, so when I proposed ice cream we drove around for a bit before realizing none of the little ice cream places took American Express before settling on a chain that made milkshakes (according to Emi, Five Guys did a decent job, so I was game – and Route 30 has come a long way since the days when Dunkin Donuts was the shining star of stops in Amsterdam). 

We sat in the window of the shop, each of us reminiscing about Polar Freeze – an ice cream memory we both shared from our respective childhoods – and I realized we fluently spoke the same language: the frivolous, heartbreaking, all-important and all-too-nonsensical language of a teenage girl. My tongue was a bit rusty, but I quickly found the rhythm, the gravitas and the drama of it all, punctuated by a few squeals and the occasional giggle. 

This was my homeland, and it was good to be back.

The day had been filled with spurts of rain and quickly-moving clouds. A preliminary medical appointment to gain me entrance to my first scheduled colonoscopy left me in contemplative state of mind, and the weather did nothing to abate any vague concerns. After attempting to find a gift for a friend’s birthday, and failing, I pulled back into the rainy evening, which was suddenly much darker than the gray day that had preceded it. An end-of-the-errands stop at Trader Joe’s, mostly to pick up a bag or two of their Savory, Sweet and Tart Trek Mix, seems like the strangest place to start crying, but that’s sometimes the way grief sneaks up on me these days.

I had just left the cheese section, and was headed toward the crackers to stock up for an upcoming visit from out-of-town friends, when I saw a couple that instantly reminded me of my parents, maybe fifteen years ago. The man was quietly pushing a cart, while the woman I assumed is his wife (from the easy and loving way they had about each other) circled around picking up items. They stopped in the ice cream aisle, where I surreptitiously (at least I hope) entered their orbit and watched from a distance, as I pretended to examine a box of Green Tea Mochi. The woman picked up a box of frozen cannoli desserts and placed it in the cart with a little smile. She watched as the man made his own sweet selection, smiling a little more, and then they advanced to the next section. Casually but nicely dressed, there was something about their manners and the quiet way they moved around the store unconcerned with anyone but themselves that so vividly recalled the way my parents used to be. 

I’d forgotten how long ago that was, and in that suddenly-empty aisle I felt tears come to my eyes as I thought of how much time had passed – how many years my parents lived their lives together – and how short and quick it now felt. And then I thought of how much love there had been too, and how that elongated their finite time into something that maybe knows no real boundary of time – because love, so tangibly realized in the rivulets of salty water down my cheeks, may just be the only thing that can topple time, rendering it meaningless in the end. 

My Dad has been gone a long time – much longer than his final physical ending here on earth, when he drew his last breath – and I still miss him. I also still feel his love, and my love for him, and I’ll carry that with me until my last day on earth. Time won’t take that away. 

Easter came early this year, and so our delayed posting schedule here means it’s going up here now. We spent our first Easter without Dad, in the last home in which he lived, and it was a good one. Mom put together a delicious meal, and Dad was present in his favorite lemon meringue pie – ideal for Easter. I made an extremely unpopular ambrosia (which I have come around to enjoying in spite of everyone else) and Andy brought an apple crumble, as favored by Noah. 

After our meal, we invited the twins for an impromptu sleepover during their spring vacation. At 14 years old, their interest in their old uncles wanes, but we still manage to have a good time. They are scheduled to join me for my office’s ‘Take Your Children to Work Day’ – their first time, and mine, to participate in such an event. They’re turning into young adults, and they make us proud every day.

Out of all my younger years, I think it was the year I turned 14 that was my favorite. In so many ways, it was the last year of real innocence, and the first year of many awakenings. It also seemed to mark the beginning of the age when memories solidified into the soul I hold to this day. The age of 14 was when I started to become the young adult I would end up being. For those reasons, this is a very special birthday for the Ilagan twins.

My niece and nephew, Emi and Noah, have celebrated thirteen of these days before, and given the promising section of life they are entering, it feels like a fine time to look back over those previous thirteen celebrations. Here we go…

#13 ~ In which a letter to Noah and a letter to Emi marked their entry into the teenage world. 

#12 ~ In which a dozen years have flown by like eggs in a carton. 

#11 ~ In which a full year of COVID wreaks its sustained havoc but there was still time to celebrate. 

#10 ~ In which a decade of the Ilagan twins finds us looking back again. 

#9, 8, 7 ~ In which a few years get away from me posting wise (and the best parts of life take place offline). 

#6 ~ In which a birthday celebration takes place in a children’s museum. 

#5 ~ In which the twins and their friends rounded the half-decade mark. 

#4 ~ In which a birthday double-header brings happiness to the family. 

#3 ~ In which a ride in the Radio Flyer signifies a Happy Birthday.

#2 and #1 ~ In which the birthday blog posts were part of all those lost in a revamp. We lived then, offline, and in all the glory that being off the grid entails. 

Happy Birthday Emi and Noah! See you for dinner tomorrow!

Whenever I needed my Dad, he was always there for me. Even at those times when I didn’t think I needed him, he managed to be the unexpected supplier of reassurance and unspoken love, and somehow I still feel that even though he is gone. The other morning I was realizing how much I still missed him, when this cardinal appeared in the front yard. I think there’s a family of them nesting in our front hedge, so this isn’t out of the ordinary, but I’m taking it as a reassuring reminder that Dad is still here, still guiding me, still a source of support even when I might think I don’t need it. 

The next day, during a meditation, the cardinal returned to perch in the one section of the Japanese maple that was visible from my vantage point, as if peering in through the front door to make sure I had seen him.

Grief winds its way through this winter, while the universe works in wonderful ways if you allow it. 

My Dad has been on my mind this past week. Maybe some recent time spent in Amsterdam rekindled a few memories. Maybe it’s that I’m finally realizing how much I miss him. Some small part of me is still expecting him to be there at an undefined point in the future. When he was well I would only see him about once a month or so, and in a way I’ve reverted back to that time, or the years when I was in college and saw him even less. It’s easier to think of him being away for some indeterminable length of time rather than gone from this earth forever; my head makes sense of it, but my heart holds out. 

On a recent lunch break, I walked up the hill to the church I used to sit in during his last days here. It offered a small bit of solace in that sad summer, but on this visit, as on my last, the doors remained locked. The day was splendid, though – one of the first sunny and warm ones we’ve had this year – so I made the most of my time outside. Later, after I’d arrived home, I sat down to my meditation and invited Dad to join me there. (Not out loud – I haven’t gone that crazy yet.) It is a comfort to think of him sitting silently beside me – it’s something that would never have happened quite in this way in real life (my father was not the meditative type) but there were many times when I would find him at a gathering or dinner, alone in the family room watching television, or sitting off to the side at a wedding, and I’d stop to sit next to him. We didn’t talk much, simply sat there together in the unease of a crowd, or the welcome semi-solitude of his favored family room. In that shared silence, we understood one another in a way that no one else could. 

The next morning I felt that familiar emptiness which has been part of our lives since last summer – duller and less pointed now, but still there – and as I looked out the front window I saw a quartet of cardinals going about their daily business – a few of their chirps cutting through the glass as they flitted away. It was the happy sound of spring on the way, the sound of hope, and maybe the sound of a lost loved one reminding me that he was still near.

At the bottom of the hill where my Dad’s ashes are interred, I always stop to get whatever bearings I might locate. It is the pause before the visit. Here is where I will get out of the car and walk to the edge of where the manicured grass meets the barbed wire fence where a more wild and untamed section of land begins. It is a wet space, damp enough year-round for cattails to grow and flourish. On this gray day in early February, I walk through a muddy mess just barely speckled with snow. The ground is uncharacteristically soft, the grass gives way beneath my feet and there are mounds of spongy moss lending a gentleness to my steps. Seeking some sign of my Dad, I wait and listen, then hear the running water. 

A little stream, hidden at other times of the year by foliage and brush, gurgles ever so quietly, the running water like a set of barely-audible chimes carried on the wind. A sign of spring. A sign of hope. Water and land – movable and immovable – constant and inconstant. I hadn’t noticed it before. Maybe the water wasn’t running the previous times I’ve been here. Maybe I wasn’t ready to hear it. On this day, I am listening, and the sound of the water is soothing. 

Dad had been on my mind the last few days, and it dawned on me that today marks six months since he physically departed our world. These pictures are from a memory on FaceBook which popped up from ten years ago, when St. Marys Hospital was honoring Dad for his years of service. I remember that winter evening well – it was a night of nasty weather, yet somehow we all made it to the dinner. Looking back, and seeing my Dad in this photo, I realize that the start of his Alzheimer’s was just beginning to slightly show itself that night. All I sensed at the time was a slight difference in the way he was engaging – something that felt like a softer focus, and something I just attributed to an extra glass of wine to help ease his nerves for the evening. Hindsight may not quite be 20/20, but it is clearer than what was seen at the moment. 

He accepted his award and made a few of his typical jokes, and everything that everyone else could so would have appeared normal. Only I (and likely Mom) could sense the smallest difference. Some part of me understood then that things were shifting, (something I would see more clearly in later years) and I hurriedly buried the thought away at the bottom of my mind, covering it with the smiles and camaraderie of the rest of the night. That was ten years ago – and ten years is a long time, especially when it means the progression of a disease that slowly robs a person of who they are. Luckily, most of Dad’s worst changes came in the last few years, and even during that time there were still glimpses of the man we knew and loved so well. 

This is the first winter we are experiencing without him. I thought it would be the holidays that were the most difficult, but Dad was never big on holidays, so they weren’t as sad as expected. Instead, the sorrow stings more on uneventful days like this, days when I might have spent a few hours with him in quiet and still companionship. 

The last few years have been difficult ones for my family, and the one person guiding and getting us through them intact has been my Mom. Today is her birthday, so this little post goes to honor her. Celebrating such love is one of the best things about this blog, and sharing it seems to be largely missing on the rest of the wretched internet. And so we offer gratitude and appreciation on this day for the woman who keeps our family together.

She moved into her new home last year, letting go of the house where so many childhood memories took place, and so many adult memories as well. I thought at first that I would miss the old house – it seemed such an indelible part of all those memories. I was thankful when my brother and his family simply switched homes and moved in, keeping it in the family. When we had Christmas Day dinner in the old house, however, I understood that things had changed, and it wasn’t a bad thing. I thought I might be sad, that pangs of our former lives there would come back up in ways that only served to remind us that such a time was over. I thought our connection to that house would only be painful now that so much had changed. My Mom knew better. 

She said many months ago that she didn’t miss the old house. She missed the life she had there, and the memories she made during that time, but she didn’t miss the house. I wasn’t so sure until we returned there for Christmas, and I realized she was right. It wasn’t the house that had made those moments and years matter, it was Mom. And Dad. And my brother. And me. Our family is what made those memories mean so much, and it would have happened wherever we happened to be.

I feel that in Mom’s new home. There is a warmth and comfort and love that comes through, not because she has made it her own with key pieces of furniture and objects from our old house, but because she is there. 

Home isn’t a place, it’s the people we love. 

Happy birthday, Mom. Thanks for still being our home. 

According to my Mom, my Grandma’s favorite waltz was the ‘Blue Danube’. That makes sense, as she was always one to be thrilled by what thrilled others. For me, though, my grandmother’s waltz will always be the lesser-known and lesser-celebrated ‘Viennese Blood Waltz’, also by Johann Strauss, but not nearly as played as much as its blue cousin. 

This was the song that sounded on my Grandmother’s music box clock; as a child I never realized how lovely it would have been to be awakened by a music box. I don’t know if Gram ever used it to wake up – she was always simply up in the morning, and when we were growing up I never, ever saw her sleep. She stayed up reading well beyond our bedtime, and was up early to say her prayers in the morning, often worrying her rosary beads before there was light in the sky, and always before me and my brother were awake. 

In this waltz, I hear my grandmother, and am reminded of the happiest moments of my childhood ~ nights spent playing cards in her little room when she would visit our house, and weekends spent in Hoosick Falls when Mom would bring us for a visit. 

In this waltz, I hear something else now that I am almost into my fifties, now that I understand a bit more of the world and the way time has its way with all of us. These days, this waltz reminds me that the grandmother I knew and adored was but a small part of the woman who raised my Mom, lost her husband to a heart attack, and then settled into a quiet life that led into the section that I inhabited with her. This waltz goes back years, long before I was born, long before my mother was born, to a time when Gram was a young woman, one of five children, and making her way into the world. 

My Mom would often say that Gram always seemed old to her, even when she was young, but I had glimpses and hints of the life that Gram had, and I remember seeing a picture of her and her husband out on the town – Gram glammed up and smiling broadly at a cocktail table, sitting across from my Grandfather whom I would never meet, looking like some starlet that she used to describe to me and my brother as we drifted off to sleep in her care. 

We know so little of each other, I think, even of those who matter the most to us. Every human carries such infinite mystery, such unknowable history. It’s a wonder we ever get over ourselves long enough to love someone else – and a marvelous and happy wonder at that.

It wouldn’t be 2023 without another loss, and this time our family lost my Dad’s older brother – the oldest of the Ilagan brothers – my Uncle Ding (a shortened version of Narding, which is a Filipino nickname for Leonardo). That leaves just one last Ilagan brother – my Uncle Pablo – who just visited this fall. 

Uncle Ding had had similar medical afflictions as my Dad, but for years longer. In many ways, it is yet another erosion of the people who have been in my life since I was born, and an echo of the loss of Dad this past summer. 

Uncle Ding and his wife, my Aunt Sally, formed part of our favorite family visits in our childhood. They lived in Cherry Hill, New Jersey with their three children – our cousins Greg, Lee Marie and Mark. They were only a few years older, but as kids they might as well have been adults, as they wanted little to do with us, with the occasional exception of Mark, who took us around the block on his motorcycle once. 

Our visits were centered around the NJ anesthesiology conference that Dad would attend with his brother. Mom would take us around to see the sights, usually in nearby Philadelphia, but we were more interested in hanging out in our Uncle’s cellar, where a pool table and air hockey and a foosball table provided the dreams for two boys whose own cellar was then only a holding place for the washer and dryer. 

My brother and I would sneak out of bed at night and creep down into the basement, fire up the air hockey engine, clicking around the pool balls and somehow avoiding getting yelled at for keeping the house awake. My Aunt and Uncle seemed less strict with their kids than our Mom and Dad were with us, but everyone thinks that about their parents I suppose. 

I remember one night we had already changed into our pajamas and were in the family room waiting for bedtime. I’d crossed my arms in front of me and must have looked cold, as my Uncle came over and asked if I wanted him to turn up the heat. It was the simplest and kindest thing to offer a kid like me, and something my own parents would have never bothered to do. I told him I was fine, but that little act endeared him to me for life. 

He and Aunt Sally were a foil to my own parents in many ways, and they were there for all the weddings and funerals and formative family events in our lives. In later years, Andy got to to meet them, and he was as amused by them as they were by him. Now, another light has gone out, adding to the darkness that 2023 will forever embody for us.