This is the audio narration of “See You At the Elevator” by Jessica Latshaw.
“Every man has two deaths, when he is buried in the ground and the last time someone says his name. In some ways men can be immortal.”
― Ernest Hemingway
Recently, I have been thinking about my friend Marianna. I first met her through a letter she wrote to me and TJ after our son Luca died. It was sealed with a wax M, evidence of an artist’s care and detail. At the time, I was regularly pouring my grief into words I posted on the internet at night, especially—when I was having a hard time settling; when grief felt like a razor in my throat, my belly, my lungs—all the places that had never before been weaponized by the simple act of being—I’d write it down. By doing this, I’d get as close as possible to catching the all-encompassing, omnipresent, omnipotent genie that is grief. I’d put it into a bottle, find some peace this way—at least until morning. “Jess, I know we have different grief, but reading about yours makes me feel less alone, so I need to tell you that,” Marianna wrote.
She was young, only 24 when we met. She had been diagnosed with stage 4 ovarian cancer. After we’d become friends, she’d tell me about all the other women being treated for the same disease. “I’m so much younger, everyone else has grey hair and full lives to claim. As the only “kid” in the room, I stand out.”
Marianna and her dear sister Kelly came to visit us in Boston. Charlee was three and, never having been shy a day in her life, reached for Marianna’s hand before we crossed the street. Marianna stayed silent, but I saw the look on her face. “I think Charlee really likes me!” she told me later, the sound of wonder in her tone. “Ever since I had to get a hysterectomy, I wondered if kids could, like, sense I was dried up inside and would just kind of stay away, since, you know, I’d lost my ability to make them a friend—but Charlee didn’t seem put off by my lack of a uterus at all! What a great day!” (And yes, her sense of humor was a wonder.)
She called me one night, needing to talk about a boy. “I think…I think I might love him,” she confided over the phone. “If you thought dating was hard and awkward in general, try doing it with a terminal disease,” she’d say wryly. Another time she told me about going on a date with one of her oncologists. “It’s super weird, he’s seen me at my worst, seen me so so sick—and I figure I have nothing to lose, so I ask him out,” she said. “How’d it go?” I wondered. “I mean, it was fine, but it didn’t go anywhere. Maybe when someone’s seen scan after scan of someone else’s insides, the romance is kind of a dud, I don’t know.”
The guy she called me about—the one she thought she might love—she decided to make him something. “He’s a musician, a guitarist; I’m going to build him a model guitar, it’s no big deal.” (I’ve been playing the piano for a long time, and nobody has ever once built me a tiny piano—and if they did, I’m pretty sure I’d think it was a very big deal.) She sent me the photo of what she made him and I stared at it in disbelief. It looked like a little Spanish guitar, something you’d see in the animated movie Coco; it was stunning. “Marianna,” I told her, “This man must be very special for you to spend so much time and creativity on him.”
She paused over the phone.
“Do you think it’s too much?”
“I think it’s perfect and I think you’re perfect and I think he’s lucky to get such an incredible gift from you.”
One night she texted to let us know she was home, on hospice care.
“Hey you guys. This is one of those things I could probably use one of those cards Jess has made, like “I’m getting a divorce “ except instead it will say “I’ve started hospice.” And no I don’t fully understand what it entails but the end of it equals me dying. And my mom just pointed out that you’re both really good friends so I should probably tell you. It’s only been decided recently but internally I knew it was heading this way for a while now.
And because Marianna is Marianna, she immediately followed with:
“Also didn’t mean to send such a loaded text at dinner time lol feel free to absorb that for a bit ”
TJ and I drove to Connecticut that weekend. I brought a ukulele and we sang songs about God and hope and forever. Doing that while our friend’s body was dying in her parents’ living room felt hard and rich and daring and true. I couldn’t stop wiping my eyes. “The other day, I was so tired,” Marianna told us, “So I kept closing my eyes and dozing off. At one point, I woke up to my whole family gathered around me, crying. Some soprano was singing Ave Maria through the speakers and it was just so sad and ridiculous, that I had to snap them out of it. I think they honestly thought I’d died, but it wasn’t the day and I knew that. So I was like, “Mom! Turn that sad song off. Guys, I’m still here, I’m not dead yet. Please just be chill.” We all started laughing and my mom quickly switched to an upbeat pop song. I think that song might’ve been a stretch, though—like I’m not sure we were at the level of Taylor Swift’s Shake it Off quite yet— but it was better than Ave Maria, at least.”
Now I was wiping my eyes and laughing. We all were.
Marianna’s dad is a tall man, a doting father. He told us he’s gone to mass every day since his daughter moved home. He sat with us as we spent time with Marianna. He laughed and cried with us, but mostly, he just listened to his daughter talk with her friends. He observed the sounds, the sight of his oldest kid in the living room. Maybe if he closed his eyes, let his mind wander a little, he might for a brief moment forget. He might for a brief moment think this is normal.
“I found this program that allows me to send letters to people after I’m gone,” Marianna said. “I’m working really hard to get them written. I can’t be at Kelly’s wedding she’ll have someday, but my words can. I keep thinking about that line from Hamilton—Eliza sings to Alexander, “Why do you write like you’re running out of time?” And I don’t know that he knew he was running out of time, but I do.”
“We’re all running out of time,” I said quietly.
She smiled, gave me a look that said, Right, but it’s different.
And it is, it is.
“I want to show you my pet project,” Marianna’s dad said, as TJ and I followed him into his garage. “I’m slowly restoring this car,” he told us, as we oohed and aahed over the kind of vintage vehicle you see in parades. “I come in here and I just figure stuff out. Make things work. Replace broken stuff with something that runs.”
I watched him point out everything he had done and listened to him describe what he will do in the future. The juxtaposition between the old car in his garage that he could actually do something about compared to his beloved daughter in his living room that he has to helplessly watch die was not lost on me. The things we are forced to do, balanced out by the few things allotted to us that we actually have a choice in—isn’t that how we make a life? We dig and we dig until we find a little bit of autonomy, discover it’s fertile ground, we cast a seed or two there and hope it grows into something good. We discover that at times the seeds are tiny, invisible to the world. It is the posture of our heart, the thoughts we cradle and nurture within. It’s the way we take the little we have and try our best to make it something worth living in. The shack that is swept clean, kept tidy, homemade curtains, pressed and hanging over the cracked window that separates us from a world on fire. The old cars we collect in order to restore, a miracle wrought from metal and time and tinkering and the simple daring act of not quitting. The way we thank God when we lay down at night. We encourage each other, laugh with our friends, cry with our friends, show up for each other, dying or living, we show up.
“Your car is so cool,” we said to Marianna’s dad, meaning it. “It’s gonna be better,” he replied, meaning it, too.
When it was clear that Marianna needed to rest, TJ and I each hugged her. “I think about what you told me about Charlee at the elevator, Jess,” she said softly, smiling, “It brings me a lot of comfort.”
Charlee was two and a half when Luca (her brother) died. In that season, she would run into our apartment building ahead of us, round a corner in the lobby, and be waiting for me at the elevator by the time I got there. For a moment, a breath, she was out of my sight. After Luca died, I thought about that moment when Charlee rounded the corner first. I thought about how Luca had simply rounded the corner first, how we’d all meet up at the elevator, how maybe being not right here does not mean he’s not okay.
“Meet you at the elevator, Marianna,” I told her, “I love you, friend.”
Marianna’s dad walked us out to our car. “When Marianna was born, I cried for two weeks straight,” he said, all of us lingering in the driveway. “When they handed her to me, so tiny and perfect and fragile, I kept wondering if they got the right guy. How could someone this wonderful be mine? I was undone. She was a handful, she’s always been a handful. There’s nobody like Mare, nobody. I know I annoy her sometimes, but I just love her so much.”
“We all annoy each other in families,” I say, “And she loves you so much. She talks about you. I feel like we met you before we met you because she talks about you.”
TJ and I listened to him talk about his daughter. Listening is a way to hold vigil. The Cambridge Dictionary describes holding vigil as “an act of staying awake, especially at night, in order to be with a person who is very ill or dying, or to make a protest, or to pray.” We hold vigil with those sick and dying, and we also hold vigil with those grieving. We hold vigil with each other, with those left to tend our communities, by simply staying awake, observing the good, noticing it, nurturing it; we also hold vigil by our very lives being in direct protest to anything less than good and beautiful. I don’t always know what this looks like. In Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl describes watching his parents, along with the other Jews in his Vienna ghetto who had been spared during the latest pogrom, clean the blood of their murdered friends and family from their homes and streets and drag their bodies to graves. They did this terrible act with the Kaddish, the Hebrew prayer of mourning, on their lips:
May the great Name of God be exalted and sanctified, throughout the world, which He has created according to his will. May His Kingship be established in your lifetime and in your days, and in the lifetime of the entire household of Israel, swiftly and in the near future; and say, Amen. May His great name be blessed, forever and ever. Blessed, praised, glorified, exalted, extolled, honored, elevated and lauded be the Name of the holy one, Blessed is He – above and beyond any blessings and hymns, Praises and consolations which are uttered in the world; and say Amen. May there be abundant peace from Heaven, and life, upon us and upon all Israel; and say, Amen.
He who makes peace in His high holy places, may He bring peace upon us, and upon all Israel; and say Amen.
Imagine this scene—the atrocity of it, the unimaginable suffering, the abject grief—and imagine praying to the God who makes peace—not on the other side, but in it. The contrast is startling, shocking, and dare I say beautiful. Reading Frankl’s description of the beautiful posture of these Jewish refugees hearts—the way they held vigil with a prayer of peace on their lips while burying their loved ones—is something I will hold with me forever.
I wonder if I can describe the gift it was to be ushered into Marianna’s home in her last days. Driving by houses at night has always fascinated me. All you see is the glow from the window, an invitation to look in, to catch what you can as you speed by. I always hope the people inside the homes are whole, really living, engaging in conversations that stoke the fire within, making food together as a radical act to defy death’s looming weight, as if to say, Let’s eat again, let’s live today, let’s not die, let’s do this one meal at a time. I always hope the homes are as warm as the yellow glow through the windows look. Marianna’s family’s love, their grief, their laughter, the way they walked her home—it gave me such deep peace. This is a home that loves, their hearts see beyond what their eyes can. Their faith is a compass; God, the North Star. They are gonna be okay, they are gonna be okay, they are gonna be okay.
Two days later, Marianna’s dad called TJ to let him know she died. “How did he sound?” I said.
“He sounded peaceful, Jess,” TJ told me. “He’d had a dream last night—he said in this dream, he got to watch Marianna all ready for something extravagant. He watched her cross the threshold and walk into the most gorgeous party. When he woke up, she had died.”
I blinked.
“I…I don’t know what to say. That is so beautiful.”
“I told her dad—God is giving you a sign that she is well. That we don’t have to grieve like those who have no hope.”
“That we’ll see her at the elevator.”
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AUDIO NARRATION: See You at the Elevator