Cupcakes and Funerals

“As I stood there looking at an empty house, one where I had spent a decade living and the one that would host the last Christmas with my family ever to be had…I couldn’t help but wonder how one’s entire life can be gone within a blink. Everything that was my foundation, my life…. just vanished, as if it never existed. It seemed like just yesterday  I tore out carpet with my mother and saw my father walk up to the door to stop by and say hello. I  baked cupcakes with my nieces in the kitchen. This home held my hand through a divorce.  It watched relationships come and go but it always made me feel safe and loved. It was a part of me and I was a part of it.

Now, it was empty. “Come here Pearl, ”  I called hearing my voice echo through this once filled, now empty house. The lease  signed and every single item I owned sold. As I pulled out of the driveway with only what would fit in my car and my faithful Labrador Retriever Pearl, I knew I was leaving everything familiar behind and taking a giant leap into the unknown. Strangely, I wasn’t afraid.  I had nothing left to lose. All I had in the world was my dog.

I  watched my mom slowly die from cancer for over a year while my father was dying the slow death of heartbreak. They had been married for forty years and couldn’t stand to live without each other. When my mother was in her final days, my father led the way passing before her. I remember the day she crossed over watching her arms reaching upward just moments before leaving us. Is that Dad she’s reaching out for?  They died three days apart and the funerals had been back to back for weeks.

I could never go in their house again, even to settle the estate. Watching my mother’s physical death there was too traumatic. I’m still haunted by the things I saw that day. Death is not easy and not negotiable. My mother deserved more than to have my dad’s family sitting there talking about sports as my then tiny little mother was being carried out on a stretcher with only a skeleton of an arm dangling out of the body bag. An oversight that would be sketched on my brain for the rest of my life.

Being an only child, I had no one else.  As I left, I could barely walk out the door after being infected with Lyme Disease by a mosquito bite earlier that summer. I love baking and always shared the comfort of good food with those special in my life. It was how I showed appreciation for them. Baking was love to me. I knew I needed change and I knew I had nothing left to lose. Liz Gilbert said in her book Eat, Pray, Love that “Ruin is a gift. Ruin is the road to transformation.”  She was right. 

Sometimes life has to punch you in the gut to take you off of autopilot. I had sold everything I owned, leased my house, rented a place I had never seen on an island far away from the mountains and was going to start a cupcake bakery. I was going to love the world through delicious cakes and heal myself along the way.

The Island

My parents were married at the beach and we always went there every year together on their anniversary. It was my favorite place on the planet. Even as a small child, I cried when we had to leave, pleading to the ocean to stay. My mom said I would cry out, “Bye-bye big water.”  The ocean and me –we’d have a long relationship in life. It would heal me and I would learn from it. Water has healing energetic properties and I needed healing. So, I was moving to a little island with amazing sunsets. It was just me and Pearl the Labrador now.

I spent several years on that island. It is still the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen. Each day after work I  raced down to the sound to photograph the sunset. While my photographs were amazing, they did it no justice. The sky looked like it was painted with the most beautiful alchemy of fire and watercolors. The stillness was intangible there. I had a secret spot on the island that none of the tourists knew about.  I went there just to be still, just to appreciate that moment and maybe say hello to some frisky dolphins in the sound. They came right up to the dock and popped up to show off their joy. You couldn’t help but want to be like them flapping up and down in the water and playing without a care in the world.