It has been a week since Ebony passed. Numerous phone calls,
emails and texts messages have come through and I ignored most of them. I
didn’t want to see people but I didn’t want to be alone. Not much has changed.
It has been an inauspicious week of self-destruction and
self-flagellation but mostly just crying. Ebony’s Mother’s husband came up to
get her and I left on Wednesday so they could have some time. I think they left
on Friday. I stayed away because I didn’t want to return to an empty apartment.
On Sunday I came back and wasn’t here five minutes before I
started to fall apart. Ebony and I were together for 10 years, lived together
for six and I spent the last six months taking care of her. To come back and
not have her here… it was all so overwhelming. Everything reminds me of her and
everything makes me ache.
Mediplus, the medical products rental company, came and
picked up the bed yesterday and today I am waiting for the cremation services
company to return Ebony’s ashes to me. I am present but not at all ready.
I have been playing music but find it difficult to choose
anything that doesn’t make me cry. Today it’s a lot of reggae and dub: Prince
Far I, Black Uhuru, Steel Pulse, Shaggy; Bob Marley hurts the most.
Last Monday night, after I had been at the hospital for 3
days straight, Sundai, her Mother, decided to stay with Ebony. I needed to go
home. Shortly after 2 in the morning, Sunday called and I knew. She was crying
and handed the phone to the RN, Kayla. She told me that Ebony’s oxygen was
dropping and I should get there.
I got dressed in a flash and punched up a Lyft. Downstairs
in 3 minutes, I was outside and climbing into a white four-door SUV. I told the
guy, Ralph, I had to be there. He must have broken every law on the books to
get me there. The ride receipt says he picked me up at 2:37 a.m. and dropped me
at Weill Cornell at 3:04 a.m.
Ebony’s breathing has slowed but she was asleep when I
arrived. Sundai let me take the chair next to the bed and I held her hand and
told her I was there. I told her I loved her and kissed her and kept telling
her I loved her and that she was not alone.
About ten or fifteen minutes later I could no longer stand
the incessant beeping and outside noise of the Neurology wing. I wanted to play
music for Ebony. With her Mother there, I couldn’t very well put on Judas
Priest or Motorhead, so I put on “Legend,” by Bob Marley and the Wailers. A
greatest hits collection, it consists of many, many beautiful love songs and
is, without a doubt, a truly magnificent album and one she really enjoyed. So I
pulled it up on my phone and set the phone on the bed near her shoulder. And
then I just sat there and held her hand.
I was still holding her hand when she passed. Her mother
noticed the monitor had stopped. Ebony looked so peaceful. Eyes closed and head
turned to the side. Her mouth was open ever so slightly. That’s how she used to
sleep. Like she didn’t have a care in the world.
The nurse came in and checked her vitals and then, I think for
the next three hours, people just kept fucking coming in the room. Nurses
wanting to hug us, the Hospice RN who looks like Christine Baranski and who is
one of those… I don’t know. She put both of her hands on my cheeks and kissed
my forehead. You know, that person who tells you about the universe and how
Ebony’s soul is traveling? That lady. I just wanted to sit there with Ebony.
Her hand was still warm and these fucking people kept coming in. I know they
all mean well but I’m crying and I can’t breathe and I just wanted to hold
Ebony’s hand and fucking social workers are coming in to talk about
“arrangements” and some aide came to change the trash bin liner – there was no
trash in, they had just changed it the night before and it’s not like it was
being attacked by seagulls. Honestly.
Then one of the social workers said, oh, by the way, you
have to leave. “You will have vacate the room at 11.” What? Like seriously,
what the fucking fuck? Turns out it has something to do with how the human
body, I don’t know, transitions. But also, they need the fucking room. Get out,
bitches. We were all nice before, but now it’s fuck you, you have to leave.
Sundai had pulled it together but I was a crying mess of
just snot and tears and I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to leave her. Sundai
said we have to go and I refused. I didn’t want to leave without someone
staying with her. So Sundai got Winnie, this nurse from the Caribbean (all the
nurses that weren’t named Kayla or Nicole were from the Caribbean it seemed) to
come in. She could see I was a wreck and she spoke softly when she touched my
hand and said, “You have to go, love.”
I don’t even remember the ride home and the last seven days
were very F. Scott Bukowski. I started going through some of her things in the
bedroom and I have keep coming out because I cannot stop crying. At some point
I turned into Liam Neeson in “Love, Actually.” I am heartbroken and
grief-stricken and I cannot talk about Ebony without falling apart. I loved her so much
So I’m here waiting for the crematory to return her ashes
and I’ve been up all morning and sitting here all day and it’s driving me nuts
but I kinda don’t want them to come: I just don’t want to face it. Her cousin
said she would help me plan a Memorial and I think we’ll have to do that for
the family and work and close friends but I also want to figure out something
to do at Duff’s, for her friends and fellow metalheads. Because I know she’d
want that. Duff’s is where we met – old Duff’s in Williamsburg on Kent and
North 3rd – so it makes total sense. Maybe something in Newport, too.
It was Ebony’s wish to be cremated and have her ashes
scattered across the water – along the Fjords of Norway. I am not fucking
kidding. What a badass. She always talked about going to Norway
and it was one of those things we were supposed to do but time, money and
everything else got in our way. We should have gone and I regret it terribly. She
loved all those Scando bands but she was especially intrigued by the country of
Norway because of the landscape and the long periods of darkness. She was such a creature of the night.
I will keep my promise somehow and Mister Bear and I will
take her to Norway.
