FROM: [email protected]
DATE: Mar 6, 2015 11:32 PM
SUBJECT: HELLO (Attn: Basam)
Hi Basam, How is your wife doing with her English course? Did she quit at the restaurant? What that boss is doing to her is harassment, and surely she can find restaurant work anywhere. And how are the children? Did Zoha get glasses? Surely that’s all it is.
My son Bruce has a friend who works in city planning in Northern Virginia at a firm with branches across the US. He said he would be willing to take a look at your resume. His work is like the work you trained in, transportation infrastructure. This man, his name is Dale Woodson, is honestly rather dull, and the poor man has a stutter he goes to unsuccessful pains to conceal, but he has been a friend of Bruce’s (that is Bruce, my son, who is a lawyer and is also honestly a bit dull, but he is also reliable and kind and takes care of me) since grade school and I’ve known him a long time. He is practical and he’s made a good life for himself. I explained your situation, but I DID NOT EXPLAIN HOW WE HAVE COME TO BE FRIENDS, SO PLEASE DO NOT MENTION THE DNA TESTING AS IF I AM A SUBJECT OF SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH.
The best course is for you to send me your resume, I’ll look it over and clean it up for you, as we have previously discussed, and then I will send the resume back to you and you can contact Dale directly, referencing Bruce.
Regarding the DNA: What, precisely, happens when one checks the box? I suppose once I do, it’s done. Not something I could really take back.
With warm regards,
Sybil Van Antwerp
Sybil Van Antwerp
17 Farney Road
Arnold, MD
21012 USA
30 May 2015
Dear Sybil,
Yesterday was your birthday. When I imagine you it is still in the house we shared, though I know you have not lived there now for almost thirty years. Because I cannot envision any other place I think often of it, and our life there feels like only a short time ago. Sometimes, like a test, I wander that house in my mind and see if I can still open every door and see what was inside. I make sure I can account for the entire house, down to the details like what photos we had on the mantel. How the cupboards were organized—cereal beside the refrigerator. Mugs and bowls over the stove. I step the stones from the back door off the kitchen to the garden.
The children told me you know of my cancer from Rosalie. I’m glad she was the one to tell you. Rosalie always seemed more like a sister to you than a friend and I have been grateful for that. We were fortunate to have Rosalie and Lars as family and friends. It’s rare, I think. The children have been back and forth to Belgium over the past few months, as I assume you know. The fact is, I won’t live very much longer. They have tried all sorts of things and they don’t say it isn’t working, but I can feel the cancer. Bruce wishes I would fly back and go to the Mayo Clinic. I have no desire to return to America. I want to be here at home for as many days as I can.
They call it “fighting.” Fighting cancer. Fighting through treatment. Putting up a fight. But you know I am not a fighting man. I am far more inclined to surrender. I’m ready to go, but Ikeep this to myself. Sometimes I imagine you being here. I think you would let me go. Lina holds on. She takes me to the graveyard to see the gravestones of my parents and it brings me a great deal of comfort. I remember visiting the site as a younger man and that sense of grief, like my chest filling with wet sand. But now I feel only peace there knowing I will see my mother and father and Gilbert again. Lina is not doing very well. It seems as though she has become sick with something else, thin, sad, while I have become sick with my cancer. Felix visited me. Did you know that? He came on the train. It was lovely to see him again. You know how he is. He made me laugh and that was the greatest gift of all. I do regret I won’t see my brother again. The last time was when we met in London. It was years ago now. I can’t recall.
You are a remarkable woman. Solid as a mountain. Intelligent. I loved your intelligence first, that smart brightness in your eyes, the look you had when I met you—like you were ready, whatever was coming, you were ready. With you I felt formidable. You say what you mean. You are well able for the hard things, much more than I am. Your career was astounding. It makes me proud. You still occupy a large space in me. I felt honored those years we were together that you entrusted me with your stones, and I still keep them. I want you to know that, even though it’s not what I’m writing for. I want you to know I keep your stones as safe as ever. But here is what I’m trying to say, I am trying to get around to something, I’m not sure precisely what.
Gilbert’s dying. It became the whole thing. You, Bruce and Fiona, my brother, our friends, my work, the house, our life, all of that was sitting on the sidelines, but I wasin the ringwrestling, bloody, half-dead, with Gill’s death. Parenting the other two, trying to help them with their own grief, was like acting. I could say what needed to be said, but I was only thinking of myself in the ring with Gill’s death. I have asked Bruce and Fiona about thatperiod of time. I was surprised to learn they’re both in therapy. I think neither of us was able to shepherd them in those first crucial months, submerged, completely, in the swamp water of despair. We were needing the same thing, you and I, a temple in which to tuck away and disappear from the earth, to mourn at the altar of our desolation, but we had the children, so we could not. Could we have held onto each other? I’ve wondered. We did the best we could and it was not enough. The four of us came away injured, but is there any other way for a person to come through? Oh, Gilbert. I do hope there is a heaven as I have always believed. I hope I will see him and know him there. I believe I’ve been looking forward to death on one hand.
Here I am finally making my way, though slowly. It was this reason I had to leave. I was not up to the task of grieving Gilbert’s death and still being a decent father or a decent husband. I know that by the time we separated it was what we both wanted. Things had become so wretched, but this wasmyfailure. I regret it even now. It’s one of the things I regret. I am grateful to have fallen in love with Lina, something that was only possible because Lina was so distant from all that I’d left when I left you. But what I want to say to you is this: I cannot take back things I said to you in those early dark days. Oh, that we could have the wisdom of age earlier! What happened to Gill could have happened to any child. I blamed you, but you were not at fault. Terrible accidents happen all the time to many, many people. The grief that must fill the world is incomprehensible. Our small dose felt as large as the sun, didn’t it? And it persists. I’ll never forget the day he died, the way you knelt on the floor and wept, and I left you there, unable to touch you, blaming you when there was nothing to blame. Sybil, forgive me!
Now that I’m dying it seems much simpler than it ever did before. Living, I mean. There is no parallel universe. There is no “what could have been if only.” In some ways this has broughtme a great deal of peace. In other ways it is bitter. How cruel life is only this long. Now that I see clearly, I’d like more time. It’s not to be. I can’t exactly explain it, but I feel the dying. Did you read that remarkable book about cancer?The Emperor of All Maladies. The emperor, indeed. Mukherjee. Remarkable. I think of it often. It’s taken me an entire afternoon with a nap after the third paragraph to finish this letter.
I’m ready to go, but I don’t think Fiona is OK. Please make sure she is OK. Dear Sybil, I do love you. The children are fortunate it’s not you they’re losing. You’ve been a wonderful mother to them. The first thing I will do is kiss Gilbert for you.
I’d like to hear from you. Not a demand, merely a hope, but either way, until we meet again, and I believe we will—we must—with love,
Daan
(cont. June 6, 2015, previous pages UNSENT)
AMERICAN PHARAOH WINS THE TRIPLE CROWN!
A descendant (some great-great-great-grandson) of Secretariat. Isn’t that just wonderful? Oh, it’s just absolutely a smash. I’m delighted, and thinking of you, of course. Of course.
