To Make An End Is To Make A Beginning

Easter Day of 2010 sparkled with promise. I felt the corners of Life edge towards me amidst the dappled green of the lawn at my family gathering. The day was sun-drenched and airy, soft and forgiving.


Just a few hours later, the police found my sister. Now the brilliance of those last holiday moments come back to me in a crazed sort of whisper.


The day after Easter found me speeding to Massachusetts, to the house where we grew up. I arrived mid-day to rooms thick with casserole-bearing neighbors and the smell of their  funeral food, laced with grief and pity.

What I want to say has to do with losing a part of yourself that perhaps never belonged to you at all, of the little waves of horror that take hold of a life, rupturing it anew again and again in the weeks and months after suicide.

How the person you loved, who breathed into your hair and giggled on the phone and kicked into the surf beside you vanishes and you are left with remnants of her likes and dislikes, of her quirks. And it feels like failure, not to be able to receive her in your dreams, not to feel her somehow beside you. There are no messages from Nora from beyond the grave, cryptic or otherwise.

What I want to say has to do with escape and maybe even redemption.


I came to Maine, adrift, on a gloomy day, to camp with my mother for a week on a mostly uninhabited island in Penobscot Bay. And slowly I was enveloped by the ripple of the tides, the crackle of the driftwood bonfires. Sheltered by the wide dark heavens, I found an island boy from my past, walked right up to him and then just never really walked away again. 


It is exactly one year ago this week that I returned for a moment to my city life to pack up a tiny rented room in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. 


One year ago this week I started over on an island in Maine. Nora and I had come here together as children. It was our very own repository of myth and magic. Maybe the only place for me now.


The Maine State Ferry Service runs six boats a day from the Mid-Coast out to sea. Last September found me hobbling aboard the last boat of the day. I arrived with a half dozen boxes, on an ankle I sprained in my late summer NY packing frenzy. Fifteen miles separate America and these Penobscot Bay islands. From harbor to harbor, between departure and arrival, the ocean settles into herself, unfurling lazily alongside the ship's hypnotic drone and the constant churn and fizz of the displaced Atlantic.


On the other side: a new boyfriend, a new (old) dog, and our attic apartment in the town's old yellow schoolhouse.


Before I came here, I worked as an administrator at an evening English school in Chinatown. I served cocktails in the trendy part of Brooklyn. I went to secret parties on my monthly Metro Card. I arrived at crowded tables in cafes and imparted quick kisses on each cheek. I fell asleep on 5 a.m. trains, on my way home from work and barhopping.


This year, I learned how to operate a tractor. I navigated a skiff alone through thick banks of fog and then piloted a 70 foot, 102 year-old industrial ship across the bay. I can still barely drive a car. I am stronger than when I came. My hands are tougher and my nails are dirty and stubby. My hair is tangled and frayed. I've spent time around gasoline and grease, engines and compost and fertilizer and good thick black earth.


It's quiet here, mostly. Lush and still and ever-shifting. Here I found love again. Here I found a certain peace of mind.

And now I am leaving...