We have made friends – and said goodbye to them – as our lives or theirs took a different direction, as we or they moved from the job, the cause, or the neighborhood that had put us in the same orbit, on the same wavelength, for a time. Spouses, too, have come –and, for many of us, gone – either by our choice or theirs. We have said goodbye to our children, as well – both actually, as they left us for university or the first job or first apartment, and metaphorically, as the babies who kept us awake at night became 10-year-olds, then teens, and then adults, who keep us awake for different reasons.

We have said hello, and then goodbye, to six or seven decades of history, some inspiring (the ’60s), some silly (the ’70s), some awful (the years and wars of Bush the Second), only to find ourselves, now, mired in the direst of them all, the Trump years, wondering at the cosmic irony that may make this, the all-time lowest point, our last chance. We have also had to say goodbye to many of the certainties that formed the reassuring background of our lives: newspapers thudding grayly onto the doorstep every morning, thick with ads; the gentle passage of the four seasons, unaffected by a recklessly warming globe. And then there have been the serial goodbyes, as radios gave way to television sets in boxes; LPs to CDs; browsing at Blockbuster to browsing on the Web; the grocer, the butcher, the bakery on the corner to supermarkets and malls, which in their turn are going the way of Amazon.

Goodbyes are not always sad. It is a pleasure to bid goodbye to depression and anxiety, to people we feared, friends we distrusted, jobs we disliked, and especially to semi-lethal combinations of some or all of the above. And many goodbyes are actually hellos. Goodbye to the baby is, eventually, hello to the adult. Goodbye to one neighborhood or country is hello to another. Goodbye to work can be hello to a retirement so creative we need to find another name for it.

But our age cohort is also characterized by the steadily increasing number of final goodbyes we find ourselves having to say. Parents die, leaving us orphans at an age when one is too old to think of oneself as an orphan. Friends and lovers die. Those are the hardest, because it is true, so true, that each death diminishes me. Each death leaves a chasm where friendship and love and shared adventures used to be. Each death reminds us how inexorably closer we are than we were a few dozen goodbyes ago to our own deaths, to the goodbye that will be our last.

That is why I find our unfailing good cheer so astounding. We are dancing on our own graves. But it is not a mindless dance, not wrongheaded, not foolish. We dance because we are still alive, because whatever our afflictions or limitations, we still have much to give. Because standing here, the product of so many goodbyes, so many hellos, we are indeed wise beyond our years. We possess the wisdom – and the happiness – of the ages.

He stood in the kitchen, legs spread in the stance of a wronged warrior, arms raised toward the ceiling, palms upward in appeal. Hungry for an ice cream sandwich, he cursed the empty spot in the freezer that had stored the carton. His internal pressure gauge rose until his entire body steamed, mouth twisted and lips foamed. He slammed the freezer. Hard. The lower hinge sagged. Nothing remained safe in our house.

The boys and I stared in amazement, not daring to say a word.

Anger still smoldering, he smashed his fist through the hollow pantry door and smiled at the jagged hole. “Looks a lot like your head.” A minute later, he’d forgotten his comment.

His arrival home the next evening brought an encore. Stomping in, he yelled, “the place looks like crap from the outside. The windows don’t match. You have every shade pulled at a different level.”

This from the man who undressed in any room and let his dirty clothes slide to the floor. I refused to pick them up until unexpected visitors gaped in disbelief at underwear lying on the living room rug.

While he couldn’t remember what he said or did, I couldn’t forget. To survive, I hardened myself to his habits and bluster, but it took some time.

Meanwhile, our boys were growing up. I tried to create the appearance of a normal family by inviting neighbors over for games in our backyard pool, including one of riding unbalanced animal floats, a turtle and a legless giraffe, to see who could stay on the longest. Once, as I climbed the ladder to get out, he yanked the bottom of my swimsuit down and hooted raucous laughter because I’d mooned our guests.

Maybe it’s not surprising he didn’t respect my modesty because he had none of his own. Complaining about the heat during a party in our entertainment room, he dropped his pants and finished the evening in blue slick-as-satin briefs that friends tagged, “electric blue jobs.” Boxers would have been a step up for decency.

After everyone left, I asked why.

In a flash of cruelty or a rare case of honesty, he said, “Sometimes I wish you weren’t here. I’d be happier without you.”

A wave of my wand granted his wish.

Lonnie’s handsome husband, 54, died five months ago, standing up in the bathroom, sneaking what would be his last cigarette, she explained over her burger. “At least he died doing what he loved.”

Slim, blonde, with turquoise rings on every finger, bangle bracelets on both wrists, she’s wearing hot pants and a bright blue tank top with her name across her chest in bold white letters.

She hates being alone and has never been without a man ever, she said twice.

Lonnie’s got a man in her life again. They met online and he watches over her, worries about her, especially when she rides the train alone.

Lonnie’s wearing a special bright red lipstick, one that hardly ever comes off. All the women want to know where she bought it.

As she heads down the dining car, her love handles peeking out between her shorts and T, reeling from side to side in motion with the ride, all the gray-haired men turn to watch her go by.

For her, darkling demons, dementia’s brood
Blacken her mind, shutter memory’s flare
Fearful paranoia her only mood
Terrible conjurings her steady fare.

All meaning lost to Alzheimer’s sly thief
Robbed of truth, mem’ries comfort no more 

When she dies, deep relief buries our grief
We pack her room quickly, a final chore.

 (Inspired by the curses in “Nell Flaherty’s Drake,” anonymous 1830’s Irish street broadside)

My feet have never been as cold as they were on the frigid January morning when my mother was buried. The ground was like frozen tundra beneath my feet. I couldn’t imagine how the gravediggers had even done their job. I shifted from side to side, struggling to maintain some heat in my shivering body as the rabbi recited the strange but familiar Hebrew prayers and the small group of mourners shared in our family’s grief.

Why hadn’t I worn warmer shoes, heavy socks or boots? This was Boston in January. I had spent the first 17 years of my life here. I was very familiar with blustery blizzards and bone-chilling weather. But on this January day I felt under attack by a hostile and alien climate and I just couldn’t stop thinking about how freezing cold my feet were. I wanted nothing more than to get back into the well-heated limousine with the neatly uniformed driver.

As the service ended and I trekked slowly and painfully on the concrete path from the gravesite back to the limousine, I felt excruciatingly alone. My husband was not by my side. For more than a week, following the latest of several hospitalizations, he had been in a New York City nursing home.

Three days earlier, at 8:30 on Sunday morning, the shrill ringing of the telephone had jolted me out of an already fitful sleep. I fearfully checked the caller ID, fully expecting to see my husband’s cellphone number or, even worse, the number of the nursing home administrator.

Barely awake, I was surprised and confused to see my sister’s cellphone number instead. Using my childhood nickname, she said softly, “Ca, I’m downstairs. Please let me in.” My sister lives 90 miles away and it was 8:30 in the morning. I knew this could mean only one thing. I wanted to send her away, to make it not true. My heart was racing and my hands were sweating as I opened the apartment door. “Mom died this morning,” she said simply, telling me what I already knew. We fell into each other’s arms, sobbing.

As we held each other, I heard a cry from deep inside me: “I was going to go see her tomorrow. Why didn’t she wait for me?” For months, I had been feeling guilty because I had been so caught up with my husband’s health issues that I had neither the time nor the energy to visit her.

Now she was dead. As we laid her to rest in her beloved New England, I wished she could hear my words, “Mom, I love you. I’m sorry I didn’t come to see you.”

It began for me during the winter of eighth grade. The artificial feeling. I am not acting real, I thought. While I responded cheerfully to my friends’ overtures, I felt as if I were a windup doll.

You are my life, Paula. I would die for you .

Then don’t be mean. Don’t hit me.

Don’t tell me I’m bad.

My body was changing. Blood every month now. The curse, Mom called it. When I told her about the blood, she slapped me lightly on both cheeks. It was the custom, she said. I told my younger sister about it, hoping to prepare her, so that she would be spared the shock of what I had felt.

Now there was pubic hair. And I had breasts that stuck out like miniature erect pears. With the change in my body came increased sensitivity, as though a protective covering, a psychic skin had been peeled off.

I began to write poetry. “It’s beautiful,” said Mom in one of her calm moments. “Your poetry is beautiful.” Sometimes I thought Mom was thinking through me, and that my thoughts and feelings did not belong to me at all.

Paula, I love you the most of all my children. You are the most like me. Oh, I am lonely, my darling child. You are a friend, not just a daughter. Mom nestled her chin against my soft dark hair.

At that instant, her force flowed into me. It felt like an alien being. A being that would like to choke my younger sister. Choke the baby brother.

I wanted to vomit this alien being inside me, but I couldn’t. It lodged there.

Maybe I could kill myself because it would be less painful to be dead. To float around  as a disembodied being. No anxiety about whether people liked me. No more wondering what to do with my unruly hair. No more homework pressure. No more worry. No more pain.

Days later, I lay on the roof. The asphalt shingles scratched my body. I watched Mom below with three policemen. A branch from the maple tree nearly grazed my face. Through the leaves I watched them, feeling as distant as if I were light years away, as if I were watching them through a kaleidoscope. Blobs of shifting color and form.

One of the policemen was filling out a report. What does she look like? Medium height. About five foot three. Twelve years old. Nearly thirteen. Long black hair. Birthmarks? Other signs of identification?

Finally I watched them drive off in the squad car. Mom paced back and forth along the deck. She went inside the house. Soon she would be phoning her friends. Everyone would be frantic. Good! Dad would be upset, too. Let him suffer.

Much later, after a sliver of moon appeared in the night sky, I realized I was hungry. Beyond hungry. I felt light and spacy as I climbed down from the roof and made my way towards the street. A gigantic black bird appeared and moved its huge wings.

In a perfect world, ZsuZsa would have been a manuscript curator at the Met. She would have worn a houndstooth wool-tweed skirt from Miu Miu and a velvet Prada belt bag, and on weekends she would have enjoyed an occasional meal of expensive, caper-driven gnocchi or a meditative afternoon in the gardens at the Frick with the fantasy, non-drinking version of her last ex. As it was, however, she lived alone in Hoboken and did user-support for networked printing at Goya Foods, whose mango juice with its 38 grams of sugar she loved.

She was heading into Manhattan to a birthday party for the mother of a childhood friend, the friend herself having passed on. At 60, ZsuZsa would be the youngest person there. Although she was now twenty years into the habit of being single and couldn’t actually remember what the stirring of passion felt like, she poured herself into a green shirred-waist dress that made her look like the snake from Anthony and Cleopatra. ZsuZsa liked old people; with them the pressure was off. They were full of stories they liked to tell. The exhausting commerce of social status and expectations could be set aside in their company. At the party, she found it very pleasant to find herself enjoying the company of one Mr. Bota, a newly widowed East European polyglot, with whom she discussed Murano glass and bibliophilia in English. Because despite her name, ZsuZsa was a monoglot.

The champagne had been flowing freely for a couple of hours, when the sharp crack of yet another bottle being decorked was immediately followed by a howl of anguish and cries of “My eye!” “Ow!” “My eye!” The party-goers turned to see the horrified face of the woman holding the champagne bottle and the bowed head of her slumped victim. Someone wrapped up ice in a cloth, someone else rousted the ophthalmologist in 316D, but eventually the weeping victim (“I cannot see!”) and his wife headed off to the emergency room and – as we later learned – to surgery.

The party spoiled, twenty people were kissed on both cheeks, mutual love was pledged, and jackets sought. As ZsuZsa pulled off her sandals and slipped into her walking shoes, the suave Mr. Bota gallantly offered to either pour her a last champagne or walk with her to the Q. A perfect gentleman. But no, she really couldn’t imagine it. No, she said, I’m taking a cab. Goodbye, she said. Goodbye. At the corner she sneaked a look back, then dashed off towards the Q.

It was a short cool walk, sprinkled every few seconds with a splotch of mist. It was as if the heavy summer air was so oversaturated that globes of wet periodically condensed into suspended droplets, into which one walked. On the escalator down, she walked into one at tear-duct level. It paused for a second, then rolled down her cheek.

My son-in-law Adam told me, “The last time Jacob saw Gramme, they enjoyed a competitive game of Rummiku. I think it might be best for the children  to hold onto those vibrant memories when they had so much fun together. I don’t think it would be helpful for them to see her in a coma.”

I had to call my siblings and four children when my 94-year-old Mom was failing. No one could believe it. Me included. How could their strong spirited Gramme be dying? She had seemed indomitable. She had always been there for her four children, twelve grandchildren and ten great grandchildren, despite being widowed at the age of 53.

My brother left work early and drove right over to see Mom. My two sisters took the first flight out of California, but by the time they arrived, Mom had slipped into a coma.

Most of the grandchildren decided to provide support from afar, while protecting their children from the trauma of seeing their beloved great-grandmother lying still and breathing heavily, without her familiar animated conversation and signature stylish outfit with matching necklace and earrings.

My daughter Samantha had a different opinion than Adam, her husband. She wanted to bring the children – Aerin, 11, Jacob, 8 and Ronen, 5.

I decided Adam was right and told Samantha so. She felt strongly otherwise. “I think it’s important for the children to see how we care for someone with love at the end of their life. They will experience the family pulling together to be there for Gramme. I don’t think it is a scary experience. It’s a part of life. Families take care of family. I will talk to them about what to expect and prepare them that she will look different and she won’t be able to talk to them. They will always be glad they had an opportunity to say good-bye to their Gramme.” Samantha was very convincing.

When the children arrived, they each had some time to go into the bedroom to say good-bye. We told them that although Gramme wasn’t responsive, she could probably hear them. Jacob went first, said, “I love you Grammie” and kissed her on the cheek. Aerin asked Ronen if he would like to go in with her because she thought he might be scared. She held his hand and led him to sit down next to the hospital bed. I didn’t hear their conversations but the two of them had some private time to bid adieu to their Gramme.

She died two days later, enveloped in the love of three generations.

Finding Tate
By Ann Anthony
Award-winning Tween Novel
In this heartwarming middle-grade novel, summer is here, and Taylor and her best friend, Carey, have planned “makeover” missions. Each girl has chosen one thing in her life she wants, no needs, to change before seventh grade begins in their new junior high. Taylor wants to change her name, a relic from an ancient relative revered by her father.

But when Taylor’s long-lost Aunt Julie appears out of the blue with her 15-year-old daughter, Tate, everything changes. Taylor suddenly has more missions and lots of questions. Who is this quirky Tate? Why did Aunt Julie really leave, and why has she returned? And why won’t her parents let her shape her own destiny?

With a little help from her grandfather, a key moral compass in her life, and his reminder to “treasure the trees,” Taylor finds some answers. Friendships and family ties are stretched, but connection and courage save the day for everyone. By the end of the summer, Taylor has discovered much more than a new cousin.

This first novel has won an Indie book award and applause from parents, teachers, and ‘tween’ readers. Readers follow Taylor and Carey through a summer of expanding family relationships, building self-confidence, and navigating the ups and downs of friendship.

Ann Anthony writes fiction and non-fiction and teaches college-level writing. She loves to help students of all ages become happy readers and writers.

To order, CLICK HERE.