Silber - White hot grief parade: a memoir

ALSO BY ALEXANDRA SILBER

After Anatevka

W HITE H OT G RIEF P ARADE

Pegasus Books Ltd.
148 West 37th Street, 13th FL
New York, NY 10018

Copyright 2018 Alexandra Sliber

First Pegasus Books cloth edition July 2018

Interior design by Sabrina Plomitallo-Gonzlez

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced
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ISBN: 978-1-68177-764-1

ISBN: 978-1-68177-830-3 (e-book)

Distributed by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

W henever I meet people, they inevitably get curious about the idiosyncratic arc of my life. Common questions include: Where did you go to college? or How did you end up in the UK? The answers, of course, are complicated, because in the autumn of 2001, I lost my father to a lifelong battle with cancer. I was just eighteen, only a few months out of high school, and a few weeks into my freshman year of college.

What followed was a very strange and challenging chapter of my life that I rarely take out and examine, for obvious reasons.

Thus, I do what we all do: I CliffsNotes itthat is, I give you the gist. I skip over this bizarre chapter of Twilight Zone weirdness that for many years I felt no one else could possibly understand (unless they were, by some coincidence, there). So whenever I tell the CliffsNotes story of my life it goes like this:

My dad died.

I moved to Scotland.

I grew up.

And here we are at this cocktail party.

But of course, everyones story is more nuanced than that. For all of us there exists that space between the lines of our first two CliffsNotes sentencesthe space where a universe of life occurred. Where I faced, experienced, and walked within the universal fear all humanityregardless of time period, culture or statusspends its waking hours fending off: the loss of someone they love. Where, like so many others who overcome adversity, I learned to stand back up. At the intersection of childhood and adulthood.

At eighteen, I suppose no one would have blamed me for capitulating to grief under such circumstances. It was a mighty blow at such a crucial moment in anyones development. Despite being bright, hardworking, and full of ambitions, I was also sensitive and did not have the appropriate skills to cope with such a loss.

Yet, in reflection I recognize that the secret of my personal resilience lay within that enigmatic fold between those CliffsNotes lines, lessons gifted to me by the people who shared the chapterin every way the heroes of this story and of my actual lifewho lifted, taught, and revealed to me what I amwhat we all aretruly made of. It was in the in-between chapter that I experienced the thing every human being fears the most, and I lived. And, having lived, I learned; What else was there to be afraid of? The loss provided the ultimate gift: fearlessness.

Some people tell me I was brave. But I didnt feel brave. I felt terrified. It was in this secret chapter that I learned one cant be courageous unless one feels afraid. I felt compelled to write the invisible chapter down and own every messy, awkward, ugly, hilarious, roaring, agonizing moment. To document standing back up.

I know now that such a document doesnt begin with the death. It begins right nowlooking back upon those charmed and sacred days, the moments before it all came crashing down.

Before we lost Dad, before the dying and the feuding and the grieving, there was just me: Al, a seventeen-year-old with her own set of concerns and everything ahead of her.

Heres what Id tell my seventeen-year-old self:

1. It is all ahead of you.

2. You are not fat.

3. That thing you are all working so hard to prevent? It is going to happen. Soon. Enjoy this last year. Go on a lot of walks with your dad, ask for more stories, remember his eyes, his smell, the squeeze of his hand. What seems like always and forever will be gone.

4. Frizz Ease. Buy it.

5. Youre going to get many, many letters, phone calls, and all forms of messages from people about how much you and your entire family mean to them.

6. Some people are going to call you Alex rather than Al. Try to forgive; they know not what they do.

7. Wear sunscreen. All. The. Time.

8. Wear any outfit you want. Because you can.

9. You are not going to believe this, but you do not know everything. Also, your parents are right. About a lot of things.

10. There is life after not doing it all perfectly.

11. Keep writing.

12. When your mom offers to teach you how to cook, sew, tile the basement, use power tools, install a ceiling fan, or reverse flush an engine core, do not blow her off.

13. He will be unbelievable. He will exceed every possible expectation of what a young man of seventeen should be able to handle. More people should be like him. But, Al? You have six months. Just that. Six months before your tender romance that is currently full of every pleasure of magical, hopeful youth will turn very, very dark and serious. But he will stay, for years. And he will hold you and stand by you and you will grow up together. Never stop feeling grateful. Never stop thanking him. Never forget how you loved him or, indeed, how he loved you. And although he is not the One, no one else could have been better right at this moment.

14. Fortune favors the brave. And you are braver than you think.

15. The friends you have right now? They are incredible. In a few months, they will all absolutely blow your mind with loyalty and resilience no seventeen- or eighteen-year-olds should rightly possess.

16. And seriously: buy Frizz Ease.

I t was our first family vacation in years, and it would be our last.

My grandparents Albert and Edna owned a condo in Sarasota, Florida, where, just like the nearly two-thirds of Jewish Detroit, they spent their winters with all the other Midwestern snowbirds. The condo was modest but gloriousa small two bedroom that smelled of sea salt, right on the Gulf of Mexico with the whitest sand you have ever seen, infinite shells, shuffle board, tennis, and even a swimming pool in the back. Despite scant company for children, Sarasota was warm and breezy and, when Albert and Edna werent there, it was paradise. We spent a few of our family vacations there in my childhood, but we hadnt returned in years.

We each had our roles when it came to the seaside. My mother was the sun worshipper. Nothing pleased her more than slathering herself in oil and baking in the sun like a true California girl of the 1960s. (Please do not ask me how her skin has never given her a stitch of trouble, nor how she manages to still look thirty years old. It is possible that she drinks the blood of virgins. I am praying I get my fully deserved 50 percent of those genes because the Silber half of the family look like raisins). I was the shade dweller. I had loved the water as a child; you couldnt keep me from diving in with abandon. But, as I grew, so did my water-related anxieties, so I stayed safely on shore, most often in the shade beneath a Joshua tree. My father split the difference. He enjoyed dabbling: a little shore, a little swim, a little stroll, a little Frisbee with anyone he could convince to play with him. But his favorite activity was staring endlessly at the water, contemplating anything and everything. He sometimes did this from his beach chair and sometimes from the terrace of Albert and Ednas condo that overlooked the waves.