I have mentioned a scene that played out, just outside the Baltimore Museum of Industry, before Brian’s first Celebration of Life. One of our previous nannies, Lindsay, found Brooke sitting alone in the lotus position atop a concrete block: her eyes were closed, her little back was straight as a ruler, and her hands were resting, palms up, on her knees in shuni mudra (which unites space and fire and helps provide emotional stability). The lotus flower is a Buddhist symbol of purity and faith.
Lindsay took a photo.
Science and spirituality show that practicing yoga and meditation changes the neural networks of our brains; stimulates glands, nerves, and organs; grounds and energizes us. As we practice, learn, and transform, whether we ever sit on a yoga mat or not, it is possible for all of us to become like the lotus flower, which, though rooted in mud, floats beautifully on the water’s surface, opening to the sun.
In November 2018, I received an email from my father. He doesn’t usually communicate via email, so I was curious. With some encouragement from me, he had been taking a gentle yin yoga class for a couple of years. One day after class, he decided to attend his first meditation session, where the teacher asked participants to sit in lotus position with palms facing skyward.
“The last time I saw this position,” he wrote in the email, “was when Brookie was doing it in the parking lot before Brian’s Celebration of Life in Baltimore. I was in tears during the whole session.”
He attached to his email the photo Lindsay had snapped. I hadn’t seen it in years.
My father’s Knights of Columbus chapter supports a philanthropic foundation that builds schools, medical dispensaries, and wells for villagers in northern Tanzania. Thinking about their basic needs not being met, he ached, and he ended his email by asking if we might want to raise funds together as a family, to build a well in Tanzania to honor Tricia and Brian’s memory.
After saying yes, I stared at Brooke in that photo and thought not so much about the day the picture was taken, but about how far all of us had come, how much we had learned together, as an ever-loving and ever-evolving family.
Don’t misunderstand me. We aren’t perfect in our quest to live with a keen awareness of the preciousness of time. We function on autopilot sometimes. We go through spells where we forget to be cognizant of, and grateful for, the lessons, the love, and the light we absorb and reflect. Like most people, we are not “professional” meditators or spiritual gurus and can’t always be in the moment or be appreciative of all the moments.
When shit hits the fan, though, autopilot fails and the narrative ruptures. The simplest things—good butter on good bread, the comfort of a warm shower—may be all we need to come back to the present.
Eventually, without dwelling in the past and wishing things were as they once were, we can appreciate all the ways we’ve created and sustained a real “fairy-tale” life.
Last summer, the summer of 2018, Max’s teachers nominated him to attend a summer leadership camp in Washington, D.C.—a fairly big deal. At first, he said he wanted to go but then changed his mind. He was begging me to let him skip it. I asked Mike what he thought and wondered what Brian would do. It seemed like the right thing for him to go. “If you give it a shot and really still hate it, I will come get you,” I told Max.
He was only ten, and summer camp should not feel like torture.
Balancing somewhere between trying to reduce the pressure of following in Brian’s genius-directed footsteps and telling our kids, “To whom a lot is given, a lot is expected,” we hope our children comprehend their fortune in having the brains, the family, and the opportunities they’ve been given. We tell them on a regular basis that, if they pursue what they love to do, everything will work out; but we know—because my kids write and talk about these things still—that polarities exist. Brian was doing what he loved when he died. Their father was kicking ass, firing on all cylinders, showing up for those who mattered most, and still . . .
So, Max does go to leadership camp, and he calls me. He’s not thrilled with it, but there is one kid there who, like him, respects boundaries and time. Max and this kid tell each other, “I don’t want to talk. I want to read.” They get each other. And then Max tells me this: “Mom,” he says, “The best part of camp so far is the movie we watched: Endurance.”
Pre-parenthood, Brian and I once visited the Antarctic. Prior to traveling, I read Irish-born explorer Ernest Shackleton’s story, Endurance. As a parent, I always told the kids, “You have to read this book. We have to watch the movie.” But you know how it goes—they had music, dance, and soccer practice. Still, the story kills (astounds?) me: How do you climb a mountain made of ice, survive even ten minutes in icy water, not freak out completely after floating through one dark night in that sea?
“These guys put nails on the bottoms of their shoes and made it,” Max says. “The will to live can help you get through anything.”
Isn’t that the truth? Sometimes all you are left with is your will to live.
Grief is a long haul. Our family didn’t drive nails into the bottoms of our shoes to survive it; we endured by holding each other as tight as puzzle pieces and promising each other in various spoken and unspoken ways that we would be okay.
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Brian hadn’t intentionally set out to become a rock star in the solar industry: He initially turned toward the idea of installing solar panels at our place in Mexico for the same reason he wanted to become a pilot and fly his own planes—because of our home’s remoteness. Brian learned solar science by applying it, and then it hit him: With alternative energy we can help reverse some of the damage we’ve done to this planet—for our kids, for the future.
He was a creative businessman, a caring scientist, and a down-to-earth spiritualist. Our whole family looks for ways to continue this energy and spirit in small and big ways. From 2012 to 2017, I was the chairman of a joint venture between the Brian D. Robertson Memorial Solar Schools Fund and the Solar Foundation. We designed a vision that would be worthy of Brian and called it “20/20 Vision of Solar in America.” The aim of our collaboration was to facilitate the installation of 20,000 solar energy systems at K–12 schools throughout the United States by 2020. Okay, that was way more than we could realistically do, but we worked toward it, anyway, and made a difference doing it.
I needed to step down from leading this joint venture when Zack, the latest piece of our family’s legacy, was due to arrive. There are times when you cannot do it all.
Our family has done smaller, more personal things in Brian’s name too. This may sound insignificant—and unhealthy—but every August when we are all together in Canada, we order and devour boxes full of Dixie Lee Chicken to celebrate Brian’s birthday. Brian loved that stuff, famous in Canada since 1964, and I’d played a joke on him once by replacing the thighs, legs, and breasts of his order with vegetables.
On Facebook, on the one-year anniversary of his death, I started a What Would Brian Do? thread.
Add salt.
Blow something up.
Channel Will Ferrell.
Dance with his daughters.
There is an element to legacy—or rather, to the “how to” of carrying it on—that can be confusing. Social media, as always, simplifies and complicates matters. But, just as there is no right way to grieve, there is no right way to carry on someone’s legacy. There are no clear lines, no dates set in stone, no shoulds or musts. Do what feels right for you and your loved ones, and remember it is never too late.
Tricia’s friends inducted her into the Water Polo Hall of Fame twenty-five years after she passed. Mike, Max, Zack, and my nephews were present at the ceremony. Tricia died way before the kids were born, but they now have a modern-day memory of her. They have a way of knowing someone so special to the family that they wouldn’t have had otherwise.
After Tricia died, I watched my mom as she dealt with photos of her. How many photos do you keep up on the wall in that first year? Five years later? Twenty? Which photos remain visible, while so visibly fixed in time, and which do you relegate to a good old-fashioned photo album or a shoebox? A year after Mike and I were married and I was already pregnant with Zack, my mother still had Brian’s and my wedding picture prominently displayed on the mantel—the spot for the most important photos. I doubt Mike ever noticed, but a few months ago I asked if we could at least add a picture of Mike and me. Of course, my mother said yes. She kept the picture of Brian and me up as her reminder of the love that brought three of her precious grandchildren into being.
There are no hard and fast rules concerning any of this “grief etiquette,” beyond this: You do you.
Even the Queen of Letting Go, as I call Marie Kondo, instructs us in Tidying Up to wait to let go of sentimental items until after we’ve practiced asking ourselves loads of times, “Does it spark joy?” When deciding to hold on to something or to let it go, we practice first with things that hold less personal value, such as unworn skirts, unread books, or travel-size bottles of shampoo.
Sentimental items such as photographs and gifts, Kondo says, are the last items to approach. Guilt, it seems, takes up space in our homes.
“Keeping an item beyond the time it sparks joy for you,” Kondo says, “will only diminish the care and appreciation you have for the other items in your life.”
I believe in the infinitely expansive nature of giving and receiving love. Our souls, in their interconnectivity, have more room to grow than we know, but she’s right. Our possessions can contain and emanate love for only so long. Items that meant so much to the giver and the receiver at one time were a gift at that specific time only. Letting go of a present a loved one gave me does not equate to tossing out the memories of joy associated with it.
Marie Kondo seems to think about space the way Brian thought about time—it is precious. Fill it thoughtfully and wisely to live your best life now.
Letting go is as much a part of legacy as deciding what to carry forward.