Back in July, Mom and I anticipated that our first Christmas without you would destroy us—again—so we booked an Expedia trip to some gigantic resort in Playa del Carmen with a pirate themed-water park for kids and all-inclusive alcohol for parents. The idea was to put distance between us and your absence, but you only come into greater focus on our first family vacation without you.
We all fly to Mexico the day after Christmas. The most magical part of the trip is the moment Iris sees the ocean for the first time. It will forever be cemented into my memory as one of those glorious life moments that makes you feel lucky to be alive. I haven’t felt much of those lately, so I treasure this one. First, she feels the sand between her toes and giggles. She keeps digging them deeper and deeper into the earth. When she looks up from her feet and spots the ocean, her eyes light up and her jaw drops open and she looks at me as if to say, “Mama, can you believe this!?” She runs right toward it without hesitation. As soon as her toes touch the water, she rips off her shirt and pants and stands there in a diaper, in the ocean. She laughs and laughs and laughs. An expression of sheer joy.
I think, God, why are you not here to see this?
Iris is about the same age as you were in that home movie from 1986, where you, me, Mom, and Dad are all standing together on an overcast beach in Galveston, Texas. You’re wearing a bright yellow shirt and blue-and-white-striped overalls with a red fire truck on the front. The wind is fierce, so Mom and Dad have to keep shouting back and forth at each other, narrating the scene for the camera.
“Are you filming us?” Mom asks.
“Who are you?” Dad jokes.
“Oh, we are your wife and two children. We’re in Galveston.”
He focuses the camera on me. “What’s your name, little girl?”
“Stephanie!” I shout.
He focuses the camera on you. “What’s your name, little boy?”
“Tell him, Harris,” Mom urges.
But you keep wandering away from the camera, so distracted by the water. You jump up and down and make splashes that are taller than you are. I follow you as you zig-zag and dance in and out of the water. Mom shouts, “Hey, guys, stay over here!” She reaches both her hands out to pull us closer to her, to keep us safe. This is a mother’s instinct.
“Harris, come here,” she demands. “Stephanie, out of the water, please!”
Dad says, “Show me the ocean, Harris. Where’s the ocean?”
You point to the vast, brown body of water stretched out before you with wonder in your eyes then pick up dead crabs off the wet sand.
• • •
With the exception of the lack of free Wi-Fi (which is total bullshit), you would love this place in Mexico. Dining options boil down to several all-you-can-eat buffets—your favorite. There’s always an ample amount of boiled shrimp you would have “tore up,” as you liked to say. You used to pile your plate high into a food mountain at any buffet, take a few bites, leave the rest, and go back for seconds, thirds, fourths, and fifths. You wanted to try it all. I think you liked the process of getting the food more than you liked eating it. Steamed king crab legs were your top pick, and they had them at all Las Vegas buffets, so Las Vegas buffets were your favorite. You also always went for the mac and cheese, lo mein, egg rolls, crab rangoon, sushi, chicken fingers, fried chicken, mashed potatoes, potatoes au gratin, prime rib, nachos, quesadillas, fried mozzarella sticks, pizza, lasagna, oysters, and any variety of seafood. Never any vegetables or fresh things.
There’s this ice cream parlor at the resort that opens every day at 9:00 a.m. and closes at 11:00 p.m. It has a dance floor in the middle that lights up in neon colors wherever you step on it, like that piano at FAO Schwartz. Iris bounces all over the neon floor in only a diaper and a hot pink T-shirt, holding a giant waffle cone in one hand and a spoon in the other. She is a vision. Looking at her dancing in this ice cream parlor, I keep thinking about that podcast you did a while back, where you pretended to call in from heaven:
“Hey, it’s Harris, calling from heaven. Uh, it’s pretty great up here! It’s beautiful, for starters. Uh, Hitler’s up here, however, for the vegetarianism thing, so…callin’ bullshit on that. But other than that, it’s pretty great. It is very cloudy, and you, uh, you sit on ’em. That’s cool. Ooh, gotta go—ice cream buffet!”
I wonder if there really is a heaven. And I wonder if you’re up there, right now, sitting on a cloud, eating ice cream. If so, I hope Phish is playing in the background.