Dog Days

Sun Dog Rainbow, Summer 8/29/24

Dear Starlight, 

It was my first time back to the island without an anchor, my family home. My mother was absent from the boat landing as I walked off the ferry deck. For over forty years, she had been there waiting, waving with her long hair, now silver, delighted to see me returning home to the island. Not any longer. Every big change is a death.

I drove past our home—no longer our home. The gardens are overgrown. My mother will want to know that detail, though I can’t decide if it will make her happy or sad as she considers how the new owners care, or don’t care, for what she cherished. Should I say, “they look wild,” or should I say, “they look forgotten”?

I stopped at the fish market down the street and ordered smoked bluefish pâté to take with me to the beach to watch the sunset on the eve of my sister Summer’s passing. The same family has been out on boats and serving us bluefish since before I was born. They are a salty bunch; Sandy, the mother, doesn’t smile much, but her son makes up for it when he hands me my cut wrapped in white paper and grins a big toothy one.

I drove past places that no longer exist except in my memory: Humphrey’s original bakery, with the best sandwiches on thick-cut homemade bread and small sticky donuts packaged in plastic sandwich bags; Chilmark Chocolates, award-winning and handmade by people with disabilities who always smiled; the Aquinnah house on the hill where Summer lived with her boyfriend and friends. A cedar-shingled, uninsulated house with a window overlooking the Atlantic. A house where young landscapers, gardeners, carpenters, and surfers slept, partied, and mostly lived unclothed. The Chilmark composer’s compound where my youngest sister and I lived once, where we found an Emmy collecting dust amidst the three broken and nearly abandoned mid-century houses dotting Menemsha Pond. Gray Gardens, we said. All gone.

My return home felt like a ghost tour.

It was uncannily quiet.

I arrived at her beach—my sister’s beach—and celebrated her hot pink sunset with my bluefish. As I lay there watching the giant fuchsia orb sink into the silver froth, I began to feel light. For the first time ever, I was here on this island alone. No son, husband, mother, sister, friend—just me.

As I walked through the wavy beach grass back towards my parked car, I heard music in the distance—siren songs. I decided to move towards it, high on the hill I found a blue grass honkey tonk band with people dancing under the stars. I’ve moved this way towards everything since.

For the first time ever, I am completely free to go anywhere I want, without compromise or conversation. These last few days on the island have been an improvisational dance with my spirit. Picture Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey. I pivot when the perfume of butterfly weed wafts by, I duck under shade when I feel too sticky with heat, I prance into the gallery to see watercolors, I pause to read anything that catches my attention, I pirouette to the restaurant and order dessert if I please. I choose my adventure.

I had wondered what it would feel like to come home without my mother here, without our house, without my family, with only my history in hand. It was a surprise last minute opportunity to be able to come here this weekend, to pay homage to my sister. An even greater surprise was experiencing the aloneness as a gift.

This past week, I heard a woman discuss how she had recently and suddenly lost her beloved dog. She mentioned being surprised by the weight she felt lifted by the absence of his affection. His adoration of her was constant, and she was perplexed, even guilty, to admit that she felt relief coupled with her grief. She felt liberated. She said she wondered how much space and weight what and whom we love holds in our life.

I noticed that every time I looked up on Thursday, the day my sister died, I saw a sundog rainbow, a bright wink in the clouds. When she passed and we splashed her ashes into the ocean, a sundog rainbow sprang into the sky.

I don’t think I was alone this weekend on Martha’s Vineyard. I think my sister invited me out for a sister’s getaway—a much-needed silent retreat with sexy solo spirit dancing. She brought me home, to a place I love, where I found joy with myself.