Last night I saw Star Wars. It was a big day for a few reasons. My first time out to a movie since Maya’s death. My first attempt to navigate a crowd with so many people I know. And it was Star Wars, Episode VII, and it brought me right back to 1977, as I think was the intention.
I was 14 in 1977, and everything somehow connects to Maya right now. That was the connection last night.
I used to joke with Maya and say “I am your father” in my cheesy Darth Vader voice. For a long time it was funny, but I remember how that joke got less and less funny over the years. To her anyway. I kept laughing at it. It was indicative of her getting older, getting serious, pulling away. In the last few years she would tell me to “grow up”, because I was always fooling around in one way or another. “How old are you?” was a common question of Maya’s. “Nine, mentally”, I often replied. She did not know what a challenge it was for me, watching her literally grow up and take on such weight, such worry, such seriousness. For a long time. I could eventually get her to crack a smile, to get her to see things in a different way, to get her to a perspective she had not seen before. But not so much the last few months of her life. She had embraced a despair that I could not understand. How could I know what it means to be 15 in 2015? I could only try to relate, to empathize, but I could never really feel what she was going through. That is what is so heartbreaking for me. If only….
In April, on April 2nd actually, six months before Maya died, to the day, we went to Ellis Island together. A day trip to the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, and Liberty State Park. I managed to get her to smile on the ferry by feigning being sick over the side. I loved that smile. I miss that smile.
Mathew, this is so poignant and real; thank you for sharing. I took my 13-year-old on the same trip two weeks before you, to Ellis Island, for her mitzvah project. She didn’t smile much, either. She’s very disturbed by the world too, taking on that teenage angst. No one is immune to what happened to Maya and to you. Maya was only an acquaintance to me, but because I know her mother, my heart breaks at how intensely I know she is missed. I am not exaggerating in saying that I think of you and Elise and Adin every day. Bravo to you for going to Star Wars. We should not let our children stand in the way of our health and happiness – not in life, and not in death.
Your reflections on fatherhood, Mathew, although universal are also so deeply personal, so exquisitely loving, so courageously recounted. I am honored to read your words, each one honors Maya. Thank you for trusting them with me.
“She had embraced a despair I could not understand.”
This is the galactic center of the lament of every survivor, and it brings me straight into my heart.
Her smile in this picture is so deeply loving. It shows her willingness to come to the surface of buoyancy, if only for a moment, out of great love for her father.
About being silly…In college I had a girlfriend who really got fed up each time I did something clowny. Thank goodness we did not end up together, for I think my life as a theatre person might never have been fulfilled.
With kids, of course, it is different. During their teenage years they will find their parents just too odd, too different. But I trust Maya deep down loved you for your cheesiness, and I hope you do not ever stop being funny, silly, cheesy, whatever.