Linda's Language

We are getting ready to put our house "on the market" and move. Fixing up a house was part of the language of everyday life for Bob and Linda. They bought houses, renovated them and sold them, sometimes we lived in them. We always had "our home" - but these were summer places or weekend homes and it was fun and work for Bob.

 

Linda kept everything organized and on schedule at home - and with their projects. Bob had pink office pads. They had boxes and lines - I think that they were for phone messages. Linda had yellow legal pads. Then she ripped pieces of legal pads - very neatly and taped them where she needed them. When I was older I said that she should have invented "post-it-notes" - and when post- its came out in the stores she immediately bought them, but they were all shaped the same and Linda was a creative woman...so...

 

Linda's post-it-notes had logic. She would not have said that she was creating a language, but she was. It started with a heart at the end of her notes. Then it became a face and then she added hair. The hair reminded me of Mary Tyler Moore in her flip days when she played a journalist on TV and her best friend was Rhoda. If mom used "the hair" she was usually in her 1970's feisty spirit place, other times, the eyes were huge or the mouth was large. I started saving them over 10 years ago. I decided that I needed a bigger sample than individual images and that is how the file began.

After Bob died, Linda reverted to wearing her hair in a twist at the back of her head - with lots of hairspray. I hated it. It scared me. Slowly, over the years it came down and became softer, but never again the long "that girl" hair.

Marlo Thomas as That Girl
 
Language, critical thinking, logic... I count on these tools in order to understand life, but for me the terms are flexible in how I process the information. "Actions speak louder than words"- this always made sense to me because I could observe and respond. Actions often reveal patterns. This is my bridge between left and right brain thinking. I love that I was taught to see pattern. I am Bob's daughter.

 

As our house is being rearranged, I miss Linda's post-it-notes. I am finding occasional post-it, but they are out of sequence and no longer relate to our current life situation. The pattern is broken and I am trying to create my own.

Peeking

I peeked once
a year ago
into Linda's Red Bag.
I quickly closed it.

Inside the red bag
is a black briefcase.

Inside the black briefcase
are papers and I know not what.

"My whole life is in that bag."


My brother and sister-in-law visited with us over Memorial Day weekend.
They took the the girls to the park and for a walk in Woodstock.
It was comforting to see our little ones play happily with their aunt and uncle.
I even had the sense of what other mothers are talking about when they describe "dropping the kids off with their grandparents."

We sat and talked when they came back from their "big adventure."
Tuli (one of the twins) took out "her" passport.
Pete thought it was odd that a child was playing with a passport.
I  wasn't in the room.
My husband told me later.
I replied, "It isn't my passport - it's my mom's."
This made sense to me...
Linda can't use it.
It has a picture of their grandmother before the chemo took her hair.
It has pretty pictures of eagles - which they love... and... suddenly I am my grandmother Kate
with a balloon of Santa floating around the house in March because it reminds her of Grandpa Joe who died the previous summer.
Floating objects.

We need to decide what to put on mom's gravestone.
The bag needs to be opened and stored or heaven forbid
some contents thrown out.
That is what I am afraid of... that this carefully packaged mausoleum
that my mother constructed of her "whole life,"
in the end will not be understandable to me.

I don't know if it will be good or bad if there are post-it-notes on everything.
The only way I knew who Linda's lawyer was when she got sick was  deciding that the post-it-note with a heart on it must indicate importance. When I called the number, the man on the other end of the phone said, "Linda must be very ill. I knew this day would come. I hoped it wouldn't be for a long time. How is she?" Not bread crumbs, post-it -notes.

I used to say that Linda should have invented post-it-notes.
When Bob and Linda had big buffet dinner parties, which was a couple times a year, Linda would rip up little pieces of yellow legal pads and write notes on them and put them in the silver serving bowls so that "the help" would know where to put the peas. Little floating pieces of paper in big silver bowls - directions. I hope there are directions in that bag. For the first time in my life, I am hoping for post-it-notes.

With regards,
Bob's Daughter

What to say...

It's ringing in my pocketbook. The enormous mommy sized one.
I am driving with one hand and reaching...
Got it.
It's my brother.
Chit chat hi/ hi
Tunnel sound from speaker phone buzz.

I pass Mobile.
Gas is down to $3.95 a gallon .

Then, "We have to decide what to write on mom's gravestone.
If you can't talk about this now I understand."

It's not cell phones that cause accidents - It's the conversations.

Hess gas is $3.97 a gallon.

"I can talk about it."
pause
"How about, 'She was loved by all.'"

Huge laughter on the other end of the phone.
Finally he says, "That's what Dad's stone says, 'He was loved by all who knew him.'"

Tuxedo rentals in a previously empty store...

"That's not funny!"
"I'm serious, that's what it says. Did you know that?"
"No, I didn't know that, or I wouldn't have suggested it. I mean, maybe I remember it from some subconscious place, but no, I didn't know that!!"

Red Lobster is renovating...

"Are you going to write about this? It is sooo Bob's Daughter."
"I don't know. This is twisted."
"What do you think it means?" says a voice that is suddenly my younger brother, rather that the man I joke around with.

pause

"That she probably spent as much time thinking about it as I just did."

"We'll think of something," responds the man whom I recently began relying on for comfort.

Marshalls is long past. The exit for 209 south is upon me.



~ Bob's Daughter

Sorting

For .95 cents PeopleFinders.com will give me Robert A. Caigan's phone number. It is sooooo tempting, but there is a sanity line that I do not want to cross. My logic may be creative, but paying for a phone number that I know is not possible? It can't be healthy.

I received a letter in the mail from my cousin Jay.

There was a note on it in my mother's handwriting.

"Please take care of this yearly...Thanks Dear"

and the date 6/15/91.

It is a flower bill for our great-grandparents burial plot in Montreal.

While my mother's post-it-note is a bit curt, I did not receive instructions and it came with a forwarded condolence letter about Linda's death.

I called Jay.

E: Hi, I'm just wondering about the letter I received?

J: Well, your mom sent it to me and I thought I'd send it to you. 

 
(I am silent)

J: I wouldn't worry about it. I haven't paid it in a few years, but if you want to, you can. I don't think it mattered that much to your mother.

(I can hear him smiling - he knows that this is somewhere between mean, teasing, and funny.)

E: Oh, okay, thanks, I just needed an explanation.

(We are both eldest children and I know how to play this game - no response is the only way to win.)

J: The letter's from someone who knew your mom.

E: Thanks, yes, I read it. It was very nice.

blah, blah, blah...good to speak with you - best to the family...

I hate him, love him, have wanted his approval for way too long, it shouldn't matter and he's the only person Linda wanted by her side before she died - maybe my brother as well. I know, I'm bitter, she was always "protecting" me. The problem is, that never worked. The silences have always been quite full - Linda taught me that.

Flowers for Rae Wilansky and Max Wilansky.

Unimportant flowers...

I google, that is how I find out about my dead relatives.

I laugh out loud.

Kehal Israel Memorial Park (click)

There is another site that provides a phone number and states:

"Emily Caigan Be the first of your friends to recommend this". Then provided me with a Facebook link.

Seriously, I could not make this stuff up.

What the sites do not say is that Max and Rae came from somewhere in Russia and changed their names to Wilansky because that is the set of passports they could get and he was called "Count Wilansky", because that is what the passport said. This may of course all be false and might have been made up, but that depends how much you trust a man on the run who ends up starting and managing a "card club" in Montreal and importing illegal furs. But he did it - he got himself and his wife out of Russia and his grand-daughter Linda went to Cornell University and then Columbia University for graduate school.

I was told that his real name was Schumacher.

I think about such things. I will find them. I need to make sure that this really is where they are buried. I'll decide about the flowers later.

 

I told Beth, Jay's sister-in law, married to Lee, Jay's brother, that I now know where Rea and Max are most likely buried. She said, "Oh, that would make a nice trip. We should go visit."

xoxoxo,

Bob's Daughter

 

Linda's Red Bag

Ideas take up space. There is no design for where to put them. It is up to each individual.

It is memorial Day weekend and I have driven by many yard sales, driveways filled with items that people no longer use, that are taking up space, and will be sold or given away. Truly valuable items are sold at auctions and other marketplace venues or given to loved ones. Is it the same for ideas?

The red bag my mother gave me, with folders probably filled with resumes, stories, poems from throughout her life, items that she valued because they concretize her ideas, it still sits on my floor and I have no heart to put it in a closet or an attic. The contents are much larger than the bag. They fill time, our home, my future, if I cannot decide where to put them.

xoxo,
Bob's Daughter

Mother's Account

It's Mother's Day.
I closed her LinkedIn account.
A gift for us both.

Bob and Linda, spring/ summer 1965

Martha's Vineyard, MA

xoxo,

Emily

aka Bob's Daughter

Linked

I am not against search engines
that reunite or introduce people.
I merely think that it is prudent that the service tell you if the person is living or deceased. It is a matter of good manners. Or best business practices.

Facebook has set up memorial pages for people who have died.
This seems wise, though I wonder how long a time they maintain the page?

I have done something strange.
Some of you may be laughing because this entire blog and topic is strange...
something strange - even for me...

I googled "Linda Caigan", discovered that my mother is on LinkedIn, tried her usual password, and visited her page as Linda. She has one contact and one invitation to connect.

I considered taking it down, just canceling the account.
Then I had another idea.
We have already paid over $5,000 in death notice fees, perhaps this is another way to let people know that Linda has died?

I added a summary to her page regretting to inform people of her death.
I have no idea if anyone has read it.
LINDA CAIGAN at LinkedIn


xoxo,
Bob's Daughter

Looking for Bob's Tie

I just searched the Paul Smith site looking for ties that remind
me of my father.
Clearly they are not as adventurous as they were in the 1970's.
A brand lives on beyond its designers.
Bob might have worn this tie.

Now that Liberty of London is at Target I doubt he would still wear their line.
I loved his Liberty of London ties. There was a tie rack on the back of the walk-in closet door in Bob and Linda's bedroom. After Bob died Linda gave away his clothes and shoes, but not his ties - not for a very long time. I used to go into the closet and run my fingers through them. Then one day they were gone, but I had already taken the motorcycle tie. I will find it. I still have it, packed away, so that I will never forget. I will always have my father's tie.

I wonder where my email went?

xo,
Bob's Daughter

TRAVEL

Once I submit my mother's obituary to the NY Times
it will inevitably link back to this blog
because the name Robert Caigan will appear.
Perhaps MyLife.com will scan it and realize
that he died in 1978,
but most likely not.
Now I have two parents alive on the internet
according to Mylife.com.

This blog is not "Linda's Daughter".
I think more like my father.
Bob's Daughter
has been taking care of Linda
for a long time.
Linda sometimes mistakenly called her, "mom".

Bob's Daughter is tired.
I feel a little bit lighter.
Embodying different parts of one's self
is a little bit like living in different homes.
Travel between them can be challenging.
I never know what to bring...

xoxo,
Emily

There was a National weather disaster on Sunday
when we buried Linda next to Bob.
A tree fell on the temple.
A tree fell on the house I grew up in.

There was a flood on the NY State Thruway.
There was no electricity in the towns
south of the Tappan Zee Bridge.
An act of Nature.

My brother said,
"There's going to be one hot date in heaven tonight!"
Bob' son is a romantic.

I'm...something else.

Love,
Bob's Daughter

"Robert Caigan is in plot 3 in a series of 4.
I suggest Linda should go in plot 4,
so that we don't break up 1 and 2."

"Wait, where is my uncle?
My father is to the left of my uncle."

"I don't know about that.
It's a different series.
It belongs to someone else.
Let's stay focused."

"OK, no, that's not possible
Bob is to the left of Bud,
so if Mom goes to the right of Bob
we have to know who is to the right of Bud
so that when Amy dies
she can have a plot next to Bud.
Maybe there are two plots to the left of Bud?
That will determine if mom goes in 2 or 4.
I think we own a lot of plots.
Will you please check this out."

"I'll call you back"

This is the worst seating arrangement I have ever had to think about.

The strangest part is that I keep seeing it as if I am looking at a slice from the side inside the the ground, staring at the short end of either empty, already dug out plots or dug out and filled with new coffins.

Perhaps that is just one of the strangest elements.

The Funeral Director calls me back.

"Robert Caigan is in plot three of series xxx
and Bud Cohen is in plot 3 of yyy.
Linda can be buried in plot 4 and Amy can still be buried next to Bud."

"Great, then plot 4." I can barely believe this entire conversation.

Someone has thought about this. There is a design plan.
There must be. Both men are in "plot 3" and the brothers are not next to each other. Is this what has happened to the "nuclear family"?

xoxo,
Bob's Daughter

Brutal

She died this morning.
A doctor I didn't know was the fourth phone call.

He said, "It was very peaceful."
I said, "Do you say that to everyone?"
silence
I said, "Were you there?"
He said, "No, I'm home,
probably the same place you are, in bed"
I said, "I don't think you are the same place I am."
I was lying in bed.

I wonder if MyLife.com will ask me if I want to send her an email?

How much or how little of my life belongs on these pages?
It may be impossible to continue without writing more in detail about the dailiness in life. Not to say the trivial, but how one gets through difficult times.

I seem to be craving architecture. A structure for the mind to contain the emotions. How to keep the building standing is one element, but doing so with grace is another.

My mother is dying.
I had to write this to Gideon Loewenstein.
I didn't want to.
In order to continue this blog I must also write it here.
She is fierce.

My husband says that we are all dying.
It's not the same.

Bob Caigan went to work the last time I saw him in 1978.
He wore a blue jacket and a Paul Smith tie
with motorcycles on it.
It looked like a Peter Max print and yes,
I was an 11 year old who knew that.

I remember thinking about starting this project
and what to call it.
BOB'S DAUGHTER came to mind very quickly.
I have often heard that if one does this or that then -
"Bob's your uncle!"
As a kid I would laugh and think, "No, he's my father!"

The last time I saw my grandmother, Bob's mother,
she did not remember me.(I don't remember what she was wearing).
She was 97 years old and had memory loss.
Uncle Herbie and I tried to give her clues to my identity.

Finally I said, "I'm Bob's daughter"
She paused
became agitated
looked me and said,
"Bob's dead."
I said, "Yes, but I am his daughter."
She looked at me.
I said,"I was born before he died."
She looked at me.
Then she said,
"Well you seem like a nice girl, so if you say that
you are my Grand-daughter then I believe you."
End of discussion.

She was very practical.
I'm...something else.

Love,
Bob's Daughter