Dear Reader, Thank you for downloading an excerpt of my book. The Angel in My Pocket is a story of grief and resilience woven through a backdrop of family history. I am a bereaved parent, a mother of teens, and a woman who despite life’s challenges has chosen to let the light back into life and learn from all that is placed in her path.
I hope some of my writing resonates with you. If you have questions, comments or would like to discuss a speaking engagement please feel free to contact me— I’d love to hear from you.
CHEERS! —Sukey
Read more resources and learn about my book The Angel in my Pocket on my website at: sukeyforbes.com Praise for The Angel in my Pocket
“What we do when the unthinkable happens? We have choices, of course. We can break, become tough, allow cynicism to seep into all our broken places. Or, as Sukey Forbes illustrates in this remarkable book, grief can kick the door wide open and let the light in. The Angel in My Pocket is a devastating and beautiful paean to the human spirit”. —DANI SHAPIRO, Bestselling author of Devotion, Still Writing, Slow Motion
“How do we bear the unbearable? In this heartbreaking book, a bereaved mother offers an unflinching account of the different ways we grieve and the different—and surprising— ways we may begin to heal.” —GEORGE HOWE COLT, Author of The Big House
“If your life has ever come to a halt, if you have wondered how to want to live again, if you are looking for hope and longing for courage in the face of grief, if you seek staunch honesty and are keen to hear it from someone who knows firsthand that privilege does not protect you from pain, read this book and know that you are not alone.” —LAURA MUNSON, New York Times bestselling author of This Is Not The Story You Think It Is
01 02 Sukey Forbes 03 04 05 06 07 The Angel in My Pocket 08 09 10 11 • 12 13 A Story of Love, Loss, and 14 Life After Death 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 viking 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 S29 N30
9780670026319_Angel_FM_pi-x.indd 3 10/24/13 10:12 AM 01 02 Contents 03 04 05 06 1. Haunted 1 07 08 2. Storm Warning 15 09 3. To Whom Much Is Given 30 10 11 4. Summer Ends 62 12 13 5. Reeling 81 14 6. Naushon 110 15 16 7. Snow Falling Faintly 140 17 18 8. Angel Day 164 19 9. Second Autumn 192 20 21 10. Memory Road 216 22 23 acknowledgments 243 24 25 26 27 28 S29 N30
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9780670026319_Angel_FM_pi-x.indd 9 10/24/13 10:12 AM 9780670026319_Angel_FM_pi-x.indd 10 10/24/13 10:12 AM 1 01 02 Haunted 03 04 • 05 06 Just across the meadow from Mansion House on Naushon Island, 07 there’s a barn devoted entirely to genealogy. This newly renovated 08 space, bright and spare as a Chelsea art gallery, serves as an ar- 09 chive for the eight generations of Forbes who have summered 10 here. Ancient maps depict the Elizabeth Islands, the tiny archipel- 11 ago to which Naushon belongs, and which juts southwest from the 12 underbelly of Cape Cod. Alongside the maps hang old sepia pho- 13 tographs and, as if we family members were racehorses, color- 14 coded bloodlines. Each of us has his or her own card, and the 15 cards are connected by differently colored ribbons. Each color 16 represents a separate line of descent from John Murray Forbes, 17 the young merchant in the China trade who in 1842 bought the 18 entire seven-thousand-acre preserve. Nine years earlier he had 19 married Sarah Hathaway, with whom he had seven children. My 20 particular line, marked by a blue ribbon, descends from William 21 Hathaway Forbes, the eldest son, who shifted the family’s enter- 22 prises from tea and opium and railroads to telephones. It proved 23 to be a good decision. 24 From the time my own children could walk I’ve taken them to 25 the barn at least once each year because I’ve always wanted to make 26 them feel a part of this tradition. As they grew older, I tried to ex- 27 plain to them exactly what a “cousin” was, and what having an “uncle” 28 meant, and how far back a “great-great-grandmother” reached in S29 time, and what it meant to have a relative “once removed.” I thought it N30
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01 was important for them to understand this larger backdrop to their 02 lives, and for me to be able to say, “See. There you are. You belong. 03 You’re part of the clan.” 04 I have three children, though only two of them are still with 05 me physically. The card on the wall representing Charlotte, my 06 middle child, has a red dot in the corner, and the dates 12/23/ 07 97–8/ 18/ 04. 08 Whenever I visit the barn now I can still feel six- year-old 09 Charlotte tugging on my shirt, trying to hurry me along, saying, 10 “Come on, Mummy. I want to see my tag.” 11 Charlotte’s hair was a soft corn silk blond with red highlights, 12 very straight and very shiny, and every time I was with her I 13 wanted to touch it. She had freckles across the bridge of her nose, 14 and a crooked little grin, and her eyes were large and green like 15 her father’s, with exceptionally long lashes. When I think of those 16 eyes I remember how they were always opened wide and absorb- 17 ing everything, almost as if she knew she did not have much time 18 and she wanted to make the most of it. 19 I can still hear her commentary on what our ancestors wore in 20 those old photographs, and how it was different from what she 21 was wearing. Charlotte’s fashion sense seemed to have emerged 22 with her from the womb. Once, when I was still nursing her, I 23 was in a meeting choosing fabrics for a project and this infant at- 24 tached to my breast reached out a tiny hand and started stroking 25 one of the bolts of cloth. Typically, the fabric that attracted Char- 26 lotte’s attention was the one we ultimately went with for the sofa. 27 Charlotte was a girl’s girl who loved to twirl and dance in fab- 28 ulous fabrics, and after she began to dress herself she was known 29S to wear one pink loafer and one blue one, which usually inspired 30N
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me to do the same. Whenever she stole into my closet for dress‑up, 01 invariably she pulled out only the best cashmere sweaters. She 02 also went straight for the Manolo Blahnik heels. When I hid them 03 she’d come find me, tug on my sleeve, and say “Manolo.” It was 04 one of her first words. 05 And yet Charlotte was just as much a nature child, someone 06 who fundamentally “got” Naushon. She loved to run through the 07 fields and see shapes in the clouds and catch snakes and turtles out 08 by the lake. But she also loved princesses, and as she began to 09 learn to read and write, most of the stories she composed were 10 about her own variations on Snow White and Cinderella. I re- 11 member her, just days before she died, dancing through a neigh- 12 bor’s garden, hopping about to taste each and every variety of 13 arugula. I also remember her during berry-picking season. She’d 14 just come back from a birthday party and was purple all over from 15 making jam in the kitchen, but on top of the berry stains her face 16 was painted like a tiger’s. 17 A fairy princess and a critter catcher. A tiger who made jam. A 18 middle child who nonetheless ruled the roost. The mystery that 19 haunted me during my first months without her was: What hap- 20 pened to all these contradictions? All this exuberance? What 21 about all this joy? They say my daughter died, but where exactly 22 did my daughter go? 23 For me, the place for probing such questions has never been a 24 grand cathedral, or an ashram, or even one of those stark white 25 buildings beneath the steeple in the center of a New England vil- 26 lage. The woods and meadows of Naushon have always been my 27 church. And long before I knew anything about my great-great- 28 great-grandfather, the poet Ralph Waldo Emerson, and how he S29 N30
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01 helped develop such ideas into the school of thought called Tran- 02 scendentalism, my approach to finding God was through the di- 03 rect experience of nature. 04 I loved Naushon’s forests and meadows because this was the 05 one setting in which Forbes children were allowed to be ram- 06 bunctious and expressive, even rapturous. For as long as I can re- 07 member we rode horses there and we sheared sheep. We drove 08 pony carts, cleared trails with chain saws, put on plays in the for- 09 ests, skinny- dipped on the beaches, rolled down the hills, and 10 sang at the top of our lungs while tramping along the dirt roads. 11 It was—and remains— a matter of pride among us to never use a 12 flashlight when out walking at night, not even in the woods. If 13 you’re a Forbes, you’re supposed to know the trails well enough 14 that you can sense where you are. 15 This barefoot, unbuttoned life on Naushon was all the more 16 precious because of the way it contrasted with the puritanical 17 constraints imposed in all other respects by old-line families like 18 the Forbeses— and there was no lightening up on my mother’s 19 side, either. The maternal genealogy reads like a “You Are Here” 20 map at a New England prep school. Saltonstall, Cabot, Palfrey, 21 Winthrop—the names above the entrances to the ivy- covered 22 buildings are my family names. 23 For kids like us, brought up on formal teas and white- gloved 24 dancing lessons, the wildness of Naushon provided the kind of soul 25 nurturing that Brahmin propriety and reserve seemed to neglect. 26 In me, its elemental beauty also inspired some very un‑Brahmin 27 soul searching, begun when I was young but brought to a crisis by 28 my daughter’s death. 29S To the extent that Naushon could never adequately answer my 30N deepest questions about Charlotte, it could at least make me feel
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01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 Mansion House etching, 1844. 18 19 that, wherever she had gone, it was not so very far. Naushon had a 20 way of uniting not only past and present, the spirit world and the 21 natural world, but the living and the dead. 22 In the attic of Mansion House, built in 1809, the faces of long- 23 dead ancestors are preserved in a series of plaster “death masks,” 24 which I remember from my childhood as fondly as some other girl 25 might remember a gilt mirror from her mother’s dressing table. 26 And the collection is not nearly so morbid as it might seem—and 27 often does seem to visitors who are brave enough to follow me up 28 the rickety stairs and brush away the dust to see them. Using wax S29 or plaster molds to preserve an image of the dead is a custom that N30
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01 goes well back into the Middle Ages and was still common at the 02 end of the nineteenth century. These casts were often used in fu- 03 neral ceremonies, as models for subsequent sculpting or engrav- 04 ing, and, before the advent of photography, for purposes of 05 forensic identification. In Egypt, of course, there was a much 06 more ancient tradition of stylized masks, made of gold, which 07 were thought to guard the soul from evil spirits on its way to the 08 afterlife. 09 On Naushon we didn’t talk about life after death, or about the 10 existence of a spirit world, and yet the references were all around 11 us. Some of my ancestors are buried in a beech forest near the 12 center of the island. Others gaze down from the oil paintings that 13 line the entryway to Mansion House, and, yes, some of these 14 paintings have eyes that seem to follow you around the room. 15 Since 1855 there’s been a sundial out front that carries this in- 16 scription: 17 18 With warning hand I mark Time’s rapid flight; 19 From Life’s glad morning to its solemn night, 20 Yet through the dear God’s love I also show 21 There’s a flight above me, by the shade below. 22 23 It’s hard to deny that the place carries a haunted-house vibe, 24 with a soupçon of Miss Havisham and more than a hint of Pea- 25 body Essex Museum. In the Chestnut Parlor, elk antlers rest on 26 top of the grand piano. Glass cases contain relics from the days of 27 Hong Kong and clipper ships and the family’s early investment in 28 railroads, the telegraph, and the telephone. We have trinkets left 29S by summer guests who included Daniel Webster, Herman Mel- 30N ville, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Generals Sheridan and Pershing,
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and U.S. presidents from Grant to Clinton. John Singer Sargent 01 signed the leather- bound guest book when he came to paint por- 02 traits of the children, as did Frederick Law Olmsted when he 03 dropped by to help with the gardens. 04 In the summer of 1811, James Bowdoin III, the man who built 05 the big house and was its first resident, died so suddenly and mys- 06 teriously that family, servants, and farmhands all fled, leaving 07 food on the table and in the cupboards. No one came back for 08 seven years. 09 John Murray Forbes, the family patriarch, gives this account 10 in his privately published Reminiscences: 11 12 Mr. James Bowdoin died very suddenly in the north-west up- 13 per room, and in the old armchair still kept there. His depar- 14 ture was so sudden that it was thought necessary to remove 15 his remains at once to Boston, closing the doors of the Man- 16 sion House and merely turning the key, without clearing the 17 dinner table or otherwise making the rooms habitable; and 18 this is said to have remained exactly the situation here for about seven years. Somehow the story got around that Mr. 19 Bowdoin had ordered this to be done, in the expectation of 20 coming back at the end of seven years. However this may be 21 so, the rumor of his haunting the house grew up. During all 22 the years up to the building of the tower in 1881, I remember 23 the old house as a very open one, not only to friends and ship- 24 wrecked guests, but also to wind and rain. All the windows 25 were loose, all the shutters slammed and rattled, as did the 26 doors; and the latches wearing loose permitted the doors, 27 (especially that of the north-west room) to open of a windy 28 night most uncannily. The cellar walls were not chinked up, S29 the floor not plastered below; and, when the wind blew from N30
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01 the north, I have seen the parlor carpet rise up six to twelve 02 inches, lifting with it a common chair . . . 03 04 When Secretary Stanton [Edwin Stanton, President Lincoln’s 05 secretary of war] visited us just after the war, he was much over- 06 strained by the excitement of his long service, and a good subject 07 for nerves. He was put into the haunted room, but nothing 08 was said to him, as far as we could find out, about the ghost, and 09 he left us without a word on that tender subject; but about 10 two years ago a friend of his told me that Stanton had confided to 11 him that he had here come nearer the supernatural than ever 12 before. 13 Many years later, when my mother came for her first visit, she 14 and my father were sitting on the porch and she was so uncom- 15 fortable that she had to keep moving around. After they’d gone 16 inside, my father calmly informed her that the ghost of Mr. Bow- 17 doin had been standing behind them the whole time. 18 The disembodied spirits of deceased family members were 19 said to linger in the hallways, to haunt the bedchambers, and 20 sometimes to join us for dinner. One autumn I received a thank- 21 you note from a cousin who had hosted a large dinner party in our 22 dining room. With it she included two photographs taken while 23 they had all gathered around after dinner to sing at the far end of 24 the table. Very clearly in the middle of the photograph is the 25 white silhouette of a woman seated in profile wearing a shawl 26 over her shoulders and her hair in a topknot. Grandmother Edith 27 had clearly enjoyed the madrigals and seated herself at the head of 28 the table to enjoy them. My cousin thought I would be pleased to 29S have the photograph of her for the guest books. 30N I’d always accepted the presence of ghosts, as well as my
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01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 A ghostly silhouette appears at the head of the table in 27 Mansion House, 2008. 28 S29 N30
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01 family’s very matter‑of‑fact acceptance of ghosts . . . matter‑of‑ 02 factly. But “ghosts” are as common as mice in creaky old New 03 England houses. Was the idea of ghosts on Naushon just a game, 04 or was there more to it? The question never came up. Then again, 05 I knew the visceral experience. I work at an elaborately carved 06 wooden partner’s desk that was given as a gift to my great- great- 07 uncle from Chiang Kai-shek when he was ambassador to Japan in 08 the 1930s. Often when I sit down to work or to write I will smell 09 cigarette smoke. I have come to consider this smoke as some fa- 10 milial entity who comes to inspire me in my work. I refer to this 11 entity as my smoking muse. My smoking muse arrived with the 12 desk. There is no explanation for its presence and I have just come 13 to accept it and actually smile when it appears. 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 Great-great-great-grandfathers Ralph 27 Waldo Emerson and John Murray 28 Forbes with their first grandchild, 29S my great-grandfather Ralph Emerson 30N Forbes, 1868.
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While my great-great-great-grandfather may have been the 01 progenitor of Transcendentalism, much of the family moved well 02 beyond him on the spectrum of unconventional beliefs, far more 03 pagan than Puritan. And Naushon has always attracted more than 04 its share of spiritual seekers, extending from Emerson himself 05 (known locally as Grandpa Moo Moo) to Aldous Huxley—author 06 of Brave New World and The Doors of Perception, popularizer of Ve- 07 danta, mescaline, and LSD. 08 For 150 years, our “blue” Forbes- Emerson descendants have 09 embraced all manner of spiritual alternatives, ranging from The- 10 osophy to Krishnamurti to mathematical astrology and the at- 11 tempt to communicate with extraterrestrial beings. Over the 12 decades, one family member or another has always kept the “doors 13 of perception” wide open, sometimes banging in the breeze. 14 It’s also true that, whether the product of emotional con- 15 straint, inbreeding, or simply the luck of the draw, the Forbes 16 clan has always exhibited more than its share of garden-variety 17 madness. There was John Murray Forbes’s daughter Ellen, who 18 threw herself into a gorge when her parents would not let her 19 marry a man they deemed “inappropriate.” Her mother had writ- 20 ten to Ellen’s brother William, saying, “I fear she has these bouts 21 of insanity, and very likely you are going to wind up with an angel 22 sister, and we an angel daughter.” 23 And then there was my grandmother Irene, who spent much of 24 her life in McLean Hospital, where she was often subjected to 25 shock treatments. Her mental illness aside, I always thought she 26 was exotic and glamorous. After all, she wore nail polish and cared 27 about the way she looked. She had an apartment in Boston with 28 modern furniture, and she was also a fallen women. She had been S29 married to an Emerson (a different branch from the poet) before N30
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01 my grandfather David Cabot Forbes stole her away from him. (The 02 frequent crossovers and overlaps are why we refer to Forbes gene- 03 alogy as a family wreath rather than a family tree.) 04 Ralph W. Emerson’s wife Lidian had visions, was said to be 05 clairvoyant, and after the loss of their beloved son Waldo at age six, 06 became a follower of Swedenborg, spent much of her life in bed, 07 and became addicted to morphine. Emerson himself may have been 08 the patriarch of a distinctly American voice in literature, but be- 09 neath the high collar and the frock coat, he was much more strangely 10 mystical than the English professors let on. A year after the death of 11 his first, very young wife, Ellen Louisa Tucker, he went to her crypt 12 and opened it. “I just had to see,” he wrote. He followed the same 13 procedure after Waldo’s death, gazing at his son’s corpse “as if he 14 was taking a long long look into eternity.” 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29S Lidian Emerson. 30N
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I had always struggled with my famous forebear’s philosophy, 01 finding it opaque, when deep down I wanted it to be as if I were 02 sitting beside his chair and simply absorbing his wisdom, as if 03 something in the DNA provided for a natural and easy transmis- 04 sion of his ideas. But the “transparent eyeball”? The “Oversoul”? It 05 took me forever to realize that a schoolgirl appreciation and being 06 able to fill in the right jargon on a quiz was not the point, and that 07 the only thing that mattered about my famous ancestor’s ideas 08 was their resonance in the heart, not the head. There was a far 09 more intuitive way of appreciating Emerson, along with every- 10 thing else in the world, and that way was my way. 11 My first memory of a spirit encounter was very Emersonian in 12 its merger of the natural and the supernatural, the domestic and 13 demonic, and of course it took place on Naushon. We were stay- 14 ing in the big Stone House up on the hill above the harbor, my 15 brother Jamie and I sharing a room, and there was a huge thun- 16 derstorm. I remember hollering until my mother finally relented 17 and came in and got us. I had been terrified, and suddenly it 18 turned very cozy. My father was smoking a pipe, standing in pro- 19 file in front of a huge bay window that looked out over the harbor 20 pasture, when lightning struck an old pump house and danced 21 along the ground. I could have sworn I saw a human form emerge 22 from that flash of electricity and walk across the field. 23 Given this family tradition of seeking and seekers, perhaps it 24 was not so unusual that six months after Charlotte’s death, when a 25 friend suggested I might want to pay a visit to a medium—a 26 woman with special abilities who was able to contact what’s of- 27 ten called the Other Side— I was guarded, but not entirely resis- 28 tant. In fact, this experience wound up changing my view of life, S29 N30
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01 death—everything—fundamentally. It altered the course of my 02 grieving to help me move away from mere suffering and complete 03 the circle of my own personal search. 04 “In Nature every moment is new,” Emerson wrote. “The past 05 is always swallowed and forgotten; the coming only is sacred. 06 Nothing is secure but life, transition, the energizing spirit . . . 07 People wish to be settled; only as far as they are unsettled is there 08 any hope for them.” 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29S 30N
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