Suggested Listening: “Heaven or Las Vegas” by Cocteau Twins
June 2001. Tuscany. Sunset bleeding red and orange across the sky. The most beautiful sunset I’d ever seen.
I’m standing outside on a flip phone, talking to my parents back in the U.S. I don’t remember what we said.
Three weeks later, on the morning after the 4th of July, the phone rings at 4 a.m. in my New York City apartment.
Mom’s voice: “Dad died tonight.”
Heart attack. Fifty-eight years old.
She tried. Five-foot-three, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, somehow helping two-hundred-twenty-five pounds of him into the car. They never made it to the ER. She panicked, pulled into a Super America gas station. Clerk called 911. A stranger pumping gas pulled Dad out and started CPR in the parking lot.
He was gone.
One year later, almost to the day. November 11, 2002. Mom was gone too. Same age. Massive stroke, the doctor said. But I know it was a broken heart that never healed.
Dad met her the moment she closed her eyes. She smiled, took his hand, and never had a thought of coming back to us.
I was working at Discovery in New York. They told me to take all the time I needed. Come back whenever you want, they said. There’ll always be a spot.
I knew that was never going to be an option. I had something else in the world I had to find. I just didn’t know what it was.