Go Stand in the Seaweed

by Karen Yvonne Hamilton, 2025

Mother and I went to Key West together a few years before she died. It was around my birthday and we stayed in the Palms Hotel on White Street. We had dinner at El Siboney. In the morning of my birthday, we drove around town and she told me stories about all the places and houses she grew up in, schools she went to, places she played with her sisters. I heard the story about her sister pushing her into the cistern. Again. She loved telling that story. 

At White Street Pier she told me about how she was taught by her grandmother that the seaweed had healing properties. “When we were sick, grandma or mummy would bring us here and make us stand in the seaweed for a while.” At the pier, the seaweed isn’t in small clumps here and there, it is a tangled mess spreading the entire shore. It smells horrible. While most seaweeds are considered to have health benefits, the seaweed in Key West is a beast of another kind. 

The seaweed in Key West is called Sargassum; a brown algae that can also be found in the Sargasso Sea. Tourists who visit Key West in the summer are often first introduced to this seawood by its pungent smell, like rotten eggs. This smell comes from the hydrogen sulfide that the decaying seaweed emits. While sargassum is not harmful, some people with respiratory problems might find this smell troublesome. As of this writing, I haven’t been able to find out why my ancestors found it to have ‘healing properties.’ I suspect this old wive’s tale was handed down through the generations and applied to other seaweeds, not Sargassum.

Continuing on our island tour, I chose to not ride the Conch train because “they lie,” Mother says. I know this is true because I rode it a few years ago. And yes, those conductors do make up a tall tale here and there to titillate the tourists. No way would I ride that train with my mother! I’d have to sit on her and gag her to keep her from standing up and announcing “I was born and raised on this island and that never happened.”  She always told everyone she encountered “I’m a conch, born and raised in Key West.”  She was so proud of this that she wore a gold conch around her neck until the day she died. She bought every one of her daughters and granddaughters one too.

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I remember her last day, before she slipped into a haze to begin the journey to the other side. What were the last words she said to me, to me personally? We were alone and I was fussing around her bed, brushing her hair probably.  And she turned her head to me and looked me in the eyes and said “are you okay?” And I wasn’t. Not okay at all. Somehow though it felt okay to say “yes”  because the question wasn’t really about that moment. It was more “WILL you be okay?”  I will. Someday. Not there yet. 

The hospice worker told us,“Take down that curtain so she can see the angels coming.”  Did she? See the angels? I didn’t. Just a final breath expelled and silence. I hope she saw the angels. She loved angels. It does kind of take you by surprise. Death. No matter how prepared you think you are for it. One day you’re saying” I’m not afraid of death,”  and the next there it is now you’re saying, “Whoa, wait, not yet! I’m not ready!”  And when it is inevitable that arguing  about it and fighting against it won’t make any difference whatsoever, you cry “Why? Why me?” Yeah. We think we’re okay with it. But are we really?

I will never be the same person after this. It’s a new world. I have to somehow come to terms with a life without her in it. Everything takes on new meaning. Every little aspect of who I am is strange now. Mother helped me get through my stepmothers dying. Who will help me get through this? They are both lost to me now. Nothing but memories. And memories are not enough for me. I want to hug my mother.

I have some good days. Okay, days. Good means something different these days. I struggle mostly with the complete absence. She is not here. Not anywhere. I wear her jewelry, her skirt. I carry her purse. Her photo is everywhere. But I do not feel her. Anywhere. Mother is absent. As huge as the sky is this absence. So I find myself questioning everything I ever thought about death. It is like she has forgotten me. Which she did in the end. Forgot me. And bizarrely, I take this personally. I am mad at her for forgetting me. Mad at her for dying and not still being here. How ludicrous. Like she had any choice in the matter. But I’m still mad. And I carry on, trudging through my days trying to keep the anger at bay. It is exhausting.

This empty space is like a balloon out of control; it doesn’t know when to stop expanding. Or when it should expand. It sometimes just sits there, doing nothing. And then some invisible switch gets turned on and leaves me breathless as the emptiness that is the balloon (I see it as red, always red)  starts moving outward and outward from my heart to my chest to my belly and where else can it go? And I choke and the tears run down my cheeks and puddle in that little hollow of my neck. Maybe that is where the empty goes. It becomes water. It becomes tears.  I don’t think I believe in impossible things anymore. She took the magic with her. Maybe there never was any. She was just the only person in the world who let me believe.

I went to visit my stepfather. It is strange to not write “visit Mother”  because she is certainly everywhere here. I don’t really look. I peek. Yes, there is her bathrobe, baby blue, hanging neatly in the guest room closet, tucked to the far right by the wall. I acknowledge its presence. But I don’t touch it. I can feel myself reaching for it, but I don’t. I turn instead to the empty hangers and begin hanging up my clothes. The robe is just in my peripheral vision. I don’t cover it up. it’s just a presence. I don’t know how I feel about that. I try to not feel anything at all.

We took a drive to the cemetery to visit Mother. That sounds so strange to me. “Visit Mother.” Like she is there at all. It is what we do though, isn’t it? Go to the grave and say hello. What strange comforts we find in that. She is here, all around me. Sometimes I think that is worse. She comforts me, yet I cry. And crying gives me a runny nose and a headache. I hear her now saying, “You silly, girl.” 

I stood there, looking at the still visible rectangle of grass that had not been there long enough to settle in and merge neatly with the surrounding land. My eyes could not help but travel below the lines of new grass marking her grave. And I saw the pretty, dark wooden coffin and on through that to my mother in her Clemson orange silk pajamas and further…. I could not go. I went into full retreat from this side trip under the ground. Not ready for that. Not my loud, vivacious Cuban mother forever cold and silenced.  No. Not ready for that. Back at the house I attempt to read and research and sleep, anything other than look at her things which surround me. I’m not ready for this. 

The whole world feels askew and the people in it are insane robots. Stepford Wives. Soylent Green. “Take a pill and be happy.” That was one friend’s advice. Always the answer. Throw a pill at it. I am fucking sad! Why do we need to call ‘sad’ depression? Sad is a valid human emotion to feel when one loses something precious to them. When one loses several things precious to them in a row. An emotion. There is only one emotion acceptable in society – happy. Fake it if you have to but don’t ever show them the other emotions.

I am wondering why people insist on throwing platitudes at grieving people. I imagine they don’t know what to say. I imagine the grieving person’s pain is just too hefty for them. Humans tend to shy away from such things. Rather, run away as fast as you can. Hence, platitudes. “There, there.” Here is what they tell me::

• You’re lucky to have had your mother for 81 years; some people don’t get that.
• She’s happy now. No more pain.
• It will get better, I promise. (Actually, that one isn’t so bad. It does give you some hope but only a fraction. Because when you’re in it, you’re in it. Hope is nowhere on the horizon.)
• Do things that make you happy. Walk, run, paint, look at the flowers, cook, blah, blah, blah. (Again, do anything but FEEL what you are feeling.)
• We have to make you happy again.
• Most importantly, stop feeling sad! 

Grief is a personal thing. We all do it in our own way. Mine is isolation. Mother knew that was where I would go. “I know you, Karen Yvonne, you always go quiet when something’s wrong.”

I am sad. I am angry. I am feeling my feelings. I am standing in the seaweed. I am one of the rare humans who allows themselves to have feelings. They have the option to just stay away from me. I’m okay with that.  

*Mother passed away December 15, 2021.