The City That Won't Let Me Sleep...and Ice Cream

An Excerpt not included in the book: My Special Force, 


At least once a week, I have a recurrent dream about New York City. I don't know if it is because it is the last place I saw Ryan alive or if I have this subconsciously imbedded notion that his spirit is laughing and free, floating throughout the city, but the ideas are somewhere programmed in my brain and only surface when I sleep.

In this recent dream, which is not unlike the many others, I'm trying to explain to my brother-in-law why I need to go to NYC to find Ryan. I'm certain that we both know Ryan has passed, but he supports my idea anyhow because I have been constantly struggling to find him, not convinced that he is actually dead.

I arrive in New York. Even in my dream, I can smell the distinctive scent as I exit the cab. Some may say it smells like fishy garbage, but if you ask me, even in the garbage in NYC has a personality that can't turn me off. Some like the smell of salty beach air, I much prefer the curated stench of the greatest city on earth.

I'm left at the front door of the Helmsley Medical Towers on York Avenue and I leave my bags inside as I walk briskly (trying to not look like I'm running-even though I want to) towards the Sloan-Kettering Cancer Institute, then to the hospital across the street where Sophie was born, Presbyterian Hospital. I've asked everyone, but no signs of Ryan. No big deal. I will find him.

One by one, I stop in every place I visited during the summer Ryan was hospitalized and still no signs. Not at Lulu Lemon, Duane Reade drugstore, nor the Irish Pub. I go into Grace's Market and look for some Gatorade and Haagen-Daz mint chip ice cream because when I find him, he will need food that he can keep down despite the nausea. But they are out of the ice cream. And here is where I absolutely lose it.

Ah ha! Here it is!      

I move every single pint off of the shelves searching desperately for the mint chocolate chip. But there isn't even a spot for it on the shelf. How can that be?!? It was the one food that he could tolerate while he was so ill! I need to have it before I can leave the market, before I can find him. The store manager approaches and assures me I can find it somewhere else, but it isn't enough to stop the tears and the decent into a total breakdown on the cold floor of the perfectly arranged freezer section. My knees feel achy, cold and stiff when I awake as if I had been kneeling, sobbing on the tiled floor in actuality.
                       
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This a one of handful of entries that were edited from My Special Force. During recent interviews,  the question of "how much did you leave out because of your children?" came up, and although nothing was sugar coated, I did have to edit, else the book would be printed in volumes rather than chapters.

However, I never would say that grief can be tied up into a package of 300 pages and then we move on...if you have experienced it, you know that it is something that stays with you for life. It makes an ever lasting impression on the person you will be from that fated day forward. I don't know if we ever move past grief or if we really just move around it. As for my own life, the way we have dealt may look impressive from afar, but up close it is a total 'shit-show' for lack of a better or less appropriate term.  So to clarify, for those who have not yet read My Special Force, the book isn't intended to 'teach' how to get past grief (or teach anything at all for that matter) but really intends to help people realize the transient nature of life and appreciate how fortunate we are just to be alive and have a second chance at life each morning that we awake.... and snap out of those awful recurring dreams. (On an odd side note-- Sophie has been asking for green chocolate chip ice cream this week?!).

Rare still photo of the hour-to-hour (minute-to-minute) improv show called "My Life"