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Christopher

Noxon

Available Art

Tree comic in Modern Loss

My stepmom Pam died last March, five weeks after the death of Charlie. She died after a long bout with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. It’s a rough way to go. She and my mom were together 30-plus years - they were among the first gay couples to get married when it was made legal in California.

Her passing was everything Charlie’s was not—anticipated, painful, drawn out, medically complicated. Being there for her and my mom in those last days at Kaiser Hollywood was intense and difficult and ultimately beautiful. As the hospital chaplain Daniel (happily, a rabbi!) put it, she had a good death.

Then Covid hit and we weren’t able to have a proper memorial. A few months ago my mom started planning a Zoom service and firing off emails about going to the LA Arboretum to pick out a memorial tree. I was not at all excited about schlepping to LA to pick her up and take her out to Arcadia… but the experience turned out to be amazing.

I made a comic about it for Pam’s service; it was published last week by the website Modern Loss. Check it out in the illustrations section on this site, or here.

A week before the memorial we planted Pam in a biodegradable container below the root ball of a peach tree in mom’s back yard. We took turns pouring her chalky grey remains from the plastic bag into the hole. The whole process was strange and oddly normal, like most momentous events. The container where Pam now rests was made of cheap cardboard. It looked like shipping material. Which I guess it was.