There’s a picture of us at the airport. It’s framed and sits on the shelf behind the glass doors of what was originally a china cabinet in this old house. “Us” is me and my daughter, Susan.
I look younger – I am younger then. I’m wearing a turquoise jacket I no longer have, and a white turtleneck jersey, jeans, earrings. A typical outfit. We’re standing close together, my arm around her, my hand draped over her shoulder.
She’s wearing a v-neck olive green sweater, one of her cashmeres, and jeans, and is carrying, slung over one arm, several jackets. I can see the purple windbreaker, slightly visible, something in black and the light denim one on top. In her hand is a white shopping bag—See’s candies that she’d bought the day before for her best friend. To her left is a carry-on suitcase. Her hair is pulled back, and on top of her head are her sunglasses, pushed there for the photo.
Behind us are glass doors; we’re on a pavement. It’s at the airport. I’m seeing her off from her summer visit in San Francisco in July, 2010. She’s heading back to Philadelphia and then to Delaware. Her car is probably parked at the airport, waiting.
Why is this picture important?
It’s the last time I ever saw my daughter.
A few months later, on the almost-eve of my traveling to Philadelphia to see her, I got a call that she had died. Heart attack. Just like that.
There was no daughter to go and see. There was nothing, and I found it all impossible to cope with. I had to cope. People have to.
I still had my husband then. I still had my son, too, who was as shaken as I. Susan’s father was still alive then, too; he’d been the one to call me although over the last thirty years or so we’d barely spoken. The fact that he’d called at all had set my something inside my body sinking like lead, like tar, through my bowels.
What happened next? Does it matter?
A month later, shifting through some photos to take to a Grief Group I was attending (desperate to do anything, I did everything; nothing helped), crying the while, I discovered, among the summer photos of us at the zoo, at Point Reyes, at Yosemite, and so on, this photo of the two of us, her jackets and suitcase, our arms around each other, at the airport, and thought, my god, that’s it, that was the very last moment.
I still cannot grasp that she’s gone. Recently I haven’t been able to grasp that she was here at all.
And I don’t look at any of the photos now. I just can’t. I mean, I cannot call this one “the sad goodbye.” It was not. It was a happy one; life would go on and we’d be together again soon. It was not a sad goodbye. It was just the very last one, a sadness that has no name.
e “the sad goodbye.” It was not. It was a happy one; life would go on and we’d be together again soon. It was not a sad goodbye. It was just the very last one, a sadness that has no name.