God Save Our Queens
The bond between sovereign and subjects is a strange and mostly unknowable thing. A nation’s life becomes a person’s, and then the string must break.
Sam Knight on Operation London Bridge
Monarchies want abolishing, that’s a fact, but sitting in a precarious Massachusetts town settled during the previous Queen Elizabeth’s reign, reading about Operation London Bridge, Twitter unscrolling in Cheyne-Stokes gasps as the world waited, I keenly understood how they can persist. It is thanks to the existence of An Operation.
An Operation meets that visceral human need, in the eye of that specific emotional and administrative storm, to impose order, to look for a plan or a snow-day phone tree, anything that looks like a map. An Operation understands what it is to stand by the bed and in the doorway as the dying is done, and the overpowering stillness that follows. Does the British monarchy’s foresight, its exactitude — and in fact so many other fillips and furbelows of hierarchy: titling, crests, “stylings” of formal address, which curtseys under which circumstances — come not from a desire to comfort its countrymen, but a gelid sense of self-preservation, a cynical consciousness that what many of said countrymen want is to know that someone is in charge, a “real” grown-up who knows how to change a fuse and open the safe?
Probably. But I’ve sat by two of those beds in the last 11 months, watched two warrior queens struggle towards the horizon and waited until they were out of sight, and if the universe had arranged for some sort of The Crown-esque silver stick or Lord Chancellor of Process to appear then at my elbow with a heavy-stock envelope and an instructional inch of Michter’s, I really wouldn’t have given a good goddamn about the motivations. This, needless to say, is not what occurred.
What occurred: my mother died; we waited with the body, and made lists and jokes; a pair of gentle people came and took the body, and we made more lists and more jokes; we cried and drank and told stories about her and told stories about each other, and fiiiiled and filed and filed, for the death certificates, for the title to a car she hadn’t driven since Obama, on and on. I waited for someone else, a “real” grown-up with a probate lawyer, to take over. Nobody did. Hospice liaisons and paralegals periodically reminded us that nobody would, and then handed us another clipboard with yet more paperwork. We are the someones else, Mr. S and I.
What occurred: Mabel began to fail, so we arranged for a house call to help her through the veil, but the vet team got stuck in traffic, and then they couldn’t find parking, and Mabel slipped away on her own. We had two jobs, to give her a good life and to give her a good death, and it’s hard to feel good about the former when the latter got fouled up, and there is no shaman, no Rainbow Bridge toll collector who can tell you what she knew or felt. “Feline Psychometry Bureau, this is Kevin. …Welp, says here she felt safe and loved and she’s sorry she ralphed in your sneaker. …You’re very welcome, please hold and I’ll transfer you to your tuxedo-kitten coordinator.” It sounds like a bit of all right, doesn’t it? I know this. You stand here. Hungry? I thought so.
What occurred: I figured it out, some of it. Some of it I stared at for a while until a work spouse yoinked it off my plate and replaced it with curly fries. Some of it I kicked into a corner and my husband put it out with the recycling. Some of it I hauled onto Twitter all “anyone here speak bureaucracy?” and my DMs filled up with Pomeranians. “Someone” never came; everyone did. Y’all did.
A very happy birthday to a legendary someone/the only reason we haven’t thrown the name “Don” into the sea. Much love, everyone.
Tags: September 11th
Well, another year, more loss, and I’m so sorry for yours. We put one foot in front of the other, scoop up the good stuff, and hope like hell that death passes over those we love for a little while longer.
And every year, I come here, for your words, and this community; thank you Sars, and happy birthday Don.
Oh, Sarah. An exquisite piece, as always. I’m so sorry about your mother; my deepest condolences to you. (Same goes for Mabel, too, of course.) Nothing quite so crippling like the loss of a parent, especially a mother.
Every year I come here to read your wonderful (and wonderfully written) thoughts…and every year I’m amazed by the profound beauty of your words, how subtly you weave things, and how there’s always a sucker punch.
Sending you lots of hugs, and happy birthday, Don.
I am so sorry for your losses. I’m sorry for all our losses. I’m glad we’re together today, in our odd little way.
Thank you for posting today, Sars. It is a great comfort to me every year, as I’m sure it is for all of us here.
Happy birthday, Don.
I’m so sorry for your losses. Trust me, I feel this. My mom died suddenly last year. My stepdad was a wreck, my siblings were wrecks. I was it. I had to put aside the deep desire to curl up in the fetal position and ugly cry and instead do all the things you mentioned. Three weeks later my mom’s younger sister passed. Nine months later my stepdad went. Somewhere in there I retired from the only career I’ve ever known…another kind of death in a way. Luckily, I have an amazing ride-or-die husband who was my back-stop and two longtime friends who shored me up. There was no checklist, there was no pre-planned anything. You do the first thing that needs to be done, and then the next, and the next after that. A stand-by contingency team would’ve been awesome.
Happy birthday Don. And thank you Sarah, for another beautiful remembrance.
Oh, Sarah. I’m so sorry for your loss. I’ve been there. I figured out some of the things, too. I’m sorry not to be one of those who came to be part of your Operation.
Thank you for sharing this, for another beautiful thing you made for us, and for you, as every year since. Thank you for being here. Happy birthday, Don.
I’m so sorry for your losses. Trust me when I say I feel this. My mom died suddenly last year. My stepdad was a wreck, my siblings were wrecks. It was on me. I had to put aside my strong desire to curl up in the fetal position and ugly cry for a few weeks and do all the things you talked about. Three weeks later, my mom’s younger sister passed. Nine months later, my stepdad went. Somewhere in there, I retired from the only career I’d ever known…another kind of death in a way. I had my husband and close friends to shore me up, but no pre-positioned team came. You do the first thing that needs to be done, then the next, then the one after that. Adulting is not for the faint of heart.
But you are, @Sandman. That we all come here each year and pull the sheets off the furniture all “everyone here? how’s it been?” is an operation for sure. (And it’s old enough to drink, for the love of little apples.)
21 years. A lifetime. A minute.
I’m so sorry for your losses, Sarah. Happy birthday Don.
Sarah, I have been reading your essays since “For Thou Art With Us”— so somehow, now, for 21 years. Your writings and work have provided much welcome insight and support through many difficult times in my own life.
This is a tremendously moving essay series that I revisit in every September. I am so deeply sorry to read about the losses of your mom and of Mabel in this challenging year. Thank you as ever for sharing your writing, and happy birthday to Don.
Oh, Sarah. May next year be an easier one. Thank you for being here for all of us, every year, even in the hardest years. Happy Birthday, Don.
Thank you Sarah, for continuing the tradition – I’m so sorry for your losses. I feel like we’ve all lost something during the pandemic, be it events or important moments, friends, or family members. Some breaches are not due to death, but still a loss. Much love to you and Mr S.
Happy birthday, Don.
I’m so sorry. Going through this now with my Mom, and thank you for your eloquence. Always.
Barbara. Mabel. Elizabeth.
Great and good queens.
Thank you, Sarah, for all you do.
Happy birthday, Don.
May we all find what we need to get through the Operation.
so sorry for your losses; both hurt so deeply in different and not-so-different ways.
thank you for being here each year. and happy birthday, Don.
For me, the thing about losing a parent was that he was the person who did the paperwork, the organizing, the planning. Doing those things FOR him felt like acting; someone would surely pull me, the unprepared understudy, off the stage any moment and put the lead actor back in. Thank goodness, as you say, for the friends and family who help feed us the lines until we can plausibly fake it.
Happy Birthday, Don.
@T2, excellent comparison. The realization that everyone is faking it with varying degrees of plausibility is both comforting and disorienting.
Sarah, I’m so sorry for your losses. Thank you for taking the time to write your beautiful essays each year. I’m not an eloquent writer, but I hope I can convey how important this space is for me and so many others as we remember and pay our respects. I’ve been here since the beginning and revisit your words every year.
21 years ago, I was just about to turn 21. Half of my lifetime, and yet it feels like it was just a moment ago. Wild how that happens.
Happy birthday, Don.
I’m sorry, Sarah, for your losses.
What a strange and beautiful thing you have created here—a place for people who never met and never will, to gather together in silence this one time each year, and to read your words, and to know each other.
Happy birthday, Don.
Sarah, I am so sorry for your losses this year. I really relate to your description of blows that leave us disoriented while hard decisions have to be made and endless paperwork has to be filed. Adulting can be a bad trip, no question – we only make it through by gripping helping hands.
Thank you for keeping the door open for us all to gather and hold hands on a hard day. As always, happy birthday, Don.
So sorry for your year of loss, and grateful for the grace of this remembrance.
The death of a mother is the first loss grieved without her.
So sorry you’ve joined us in the ranks of the motherless. Everybody ends up here eventually, but it’s still a desperately lonely place.
21 years. Now we’re all adults – our memories, our grief, all of it. You too, Don. Happy Birthday.
Deepest sympathies for you and those you’ve loved and lost. Thank you for another beautiful piece to reflect upon today as we have for the last 21 years.
Happy Birthday, Don
“blessed are those that mourn” So much mourning done, since that first beautiful and awful morning. I am sorry for your losses and my own. Thank you for keeping the light on, for all of us. Happy Birthday Don.
“blessed are those that mourn” So much mourning done, since that first beautiful and awful morning. I am sorry for your losses and my own. Thank you for keeping the light on, for all of us.
Happy Birthday Don.
Hello, old friends. The day crept up on me, and the moment I realized I paused and came here.
Sars, I’m deeply sorry for your losses. As the years pass, it’s humbling to realize that WE are now the adultier adults, and the responsibility that comes with that is frightening. But we persevere, and we get through it, and we realize again and again that “family” isn’t about blood; it’s about the people who help prop you up when you’re about to crumble. I’m so glad you have your family and that we have this family to help prop us up.
Happy birthday, Don. I hope your family is with you today.
Thanks for turning on the lights here again, for another year. Will pour a cold one for Don.
The hardest part of being the grownups is realizing that this is how the grownups have been operating all along, that there never was an instruction manual, that it’s always been this way and we just know about it now.
Sorry for the losses. Glad for the company. The stories still have the power to hurt, and are what help us keep going, and are really the only things we can pass on. I’ve noticed that people tell covid stories the same way they tell 9/11 stories, Challenger launch stories, JFK stories, parent loss stories: how this universal thing happened to me, on that day. What changed, what is held onto. The ripples go out forever.
It’s been a rough year. A few years, really. For you, Sarah, and for me, and for most of us, I’m sure. But I’m always so grateful to see the light on so we can all visit and rest for a bit.
Thanks, Sarah, and I’m so sorry for your losses. And happy birthday, Don.
It’s today again.
Sars, I am so sorry, my dear. It’s never not the first time, is it?
My dad’s in memory care–his second memory care, since his third wife yanked him from the one he was settling him and hauled him to another where she was going to stay, without so much as a by your leave to his daughters. My sister was the one buying him shoes, blankets and jackets, and they were all left behind in the first room while he got dumped in the second. Just getting back the cards and photos was a hassle, as his former aides and nurses kept saying, bewildered, she never checked him out, we need to know who’s going to pay for cleaning? I was never so happy to rat out a person’s current location in my life.
He’s apparently safe now; I’ve talked to him on the phone, they had a little birthday party for him last week, but it’s like–not like he died but like he’s been banished to some realm you can see, and hear, but not find an entrance to. Loss likes to lie.
Twenty one years ago so many people were ripped from here to that realm, and Don walked you back to ours, so we could meet every year and realize how lucky and fragile we are. Happy Birthday, Don.
Even in sadness it’s good to return here each year. Take good care Sarah. And Happy Birthday Don.
I’m so sorry, Sarah. May their memories be blessings. And may the next year be easier for you – for all of us.
Happy Birthday, dear Don.
Sarah I am sorry for your losses. When my mother passed we had already the experience of the passing of my father-in-law and what details big and small needed to be taken care of. I come here every year to join you all on this day that is such a landmark in my life. Thank you all for continuing to come and for Sarah to continue to give us this place. Happy Birthday Don!
Thank you for keeping this tradition going. I am sorry for your losses, but oh so grateful that in the midst of it all, you remember those of us for whom coming here is part of how we mark this day. Thank you.
And happy birthday, Don.
All of this, yes.
Being the adult most assuredly sucks eggs, but you’re right. Knowing that those who came before us managed All Of This with the same lack of sure-footedness is more than a bit comforting. Having Important Things to Do is for sure keeping me from falling all the way apart.
I’m sure Barb and Louise have become fast friends and are sharing stories about their daughters, laughing at what happens when you raise strong-willed women unafraid of voicing their opinions.
Happy birthday, Don.
I am sure you’re right…but when I first read that, I defaulted to my grandmother Louise, my mother’s MIL, and while they managed to achieve a collegial resignation in their relationship, it took decades, so my knee-jerk response was “then wherever they are has pigs on the wing,” hee hee.
Anyway, a muttered “mothers and aunts, take the wheel ffs” is a shared one.
Thank you as always, Sarah. So sorry for your losses. And happy bday Don.
Oh, Sarah, I’m sorry about your mom and Mabel. So much muddling and flailing and standing around looking for some direction in these stories we’re all working on for ourselves. Middle age, autumn, loss…and everything seems so lovely and heartbreaking and ordinary, so interminable and so fast, all at once. Thank you for being here and coming back each year to where things are sort of the same, and I hope there’s more light for you in the next 11 months. Be well.
Oh, Sarah…I am deeply sorry for your losses.
The Grammy who raised me died a few weeks after 9/11, and the losses have always felt all of a piece. But she had always been the matriarch who handled everything, everything —if she could have pushed herself out to sea on an ice floe and saved us any trouble, she would have. In lieu of that, she’d left us detailed instructions: who to call, bank accounts, all of that, in a little green book-report cover she’d repurposed from one of my school projects, and labeled “Things To Do If I Die.” If! That if, that hope and denial, have carried me through the subsequent decades in all kinds of circumstances. Hope for the best; prepare for otherwise, but only just in case. It still comforts me, and I hope it does you, and the Nation, too.
Happy birthday, Don, and much love to all y’all out there, keeping on. See you next time around the sun.
Thanks for the beautiful words, Sarah. Coming back here, checking in, seeing old friends, knowing the sadness, feeling the warmth.
Happy birthday, Don.
Mom and Mabel – my deepest condolences, Sars!! Like so many, I come here every year. May we never forget.
Happy Birthday, Don!!
Sars, you’re one of my touchstones on this day. If. I thing else, knowing I’ll hear from you is a source of comfort in a world that needs it. Hope you find some this year, dear heart.
And happy birthday, Don.
Through our mourning there should be joy that such wonder was a part of our lives. That was what kept me going through my own father’s death.
Thank you for creating this space, a familiar community each year. Happy birthday, Don.
As the Queen said to America 21 years ago: grief is the price we pay for love. How very very apt.
I’m sorry about your losses, all of them. May next year be a better one, and I hope that the Good Don is having a Good Birthday, wherever he is.
I’m so sorry for your losses. And thank you, as ever <3
Ooof. It’s never easy, is it…this membership in a club no one wants to join.
I sometimes think about the saying that people and pets take a piece of your heart with them when they die which is why you feel so hollow, and I wonder…do they hang on to those pieces wherever they’ve gone, then give them back to you when you finally join them so that your heart is once again whole…?
Extending my condolences for your losses. May your memories bring you comfort.
Thank you, Sarah, and as always Happy Birthday, Don.
I should reread 2001 again. Haven’t been here in a while, still listen to you and Wing talk GBC while on a road trip though. Thanks.
Oh Sars, I’m so sorry for your losses. Thank you for another beautiful essay. I’m in tears over here. So much love to you and your family. Happy birthday, Don.
I looked at the site on the 11th, saw no update and then remembered timezones are still a thing and checked again today. I’m so sorry for your losses, and hope that next year is much quieter for you on that front. Happy birthday Don, and hope you are safe wherever you are.
Uf, I feel this one too much. The first one less viscerally but I have watched my own mom deal with that with both of her parents through a yearslong process which only ended a couple weeks ago. So the next stage is definitely on my mind (and, I think, hers).
I couldn’t be with Ian when he died– he’d been sick but we thought it was managed, so it was sudden and I was out of town and it was devastating and I still feel bad I wasn’t there for him (at least my mom and brother were, though; he wasn’t alone). I have to believe their deaths are one situation where intent does actually matter as much as actuality? They know we tried, and that counts, right? And our 18 year old little old man Charlie has had some health problems lately– we’re committed to doing whatever he needs (including a sizable ER vet bill last week) but “when do we stop trying” has also been at the front of my mind particularly the last couple weeks. So far he still seems happy if slower so fingers crossed we have a bit more time with him. I remember when you got Mabel, and losing Hobie and Little Joe; I hate hate hate how our cats are not immortal.
I’m sorry for both your losses. Thank you for still updating today, I always come back here.
I’m so sorry about your mom, Sarah, and about Mabel. Thank you for doing this for us every year.
Happy birthday, Don.