The Place Where Berries Are

The complexities of family, grief, and the time we have left

Three years ago, my family started coming together annually for the last week of July. The destinations for all events so far have all been Conesus Lake, one of upstate New York’s minor Finger Lakes. Conesus is pronounced Koh-knee-shuss. The name is derived from a native word that means, “the place where berries are.”

We’re not a family of lake people. There are no watersports enthusiasts among us—nobody pining to mount a wave runner or get towed across rippling wakes on an air-filled tube. Mostly, Conesus was an easy destination for my aging parents whose health and mobility made any kind of travel increasingly challenging.

My dad came to the first family camp in 2022, then died unexpectedly a few months before the next one. We scheduled his funeral to coincide with our 2023 coming together. This year we’re a smaller group due to schedule conflicts and sudden changes in plans.

We’re all packed into a large rental house on Dacola Shores Road and allowing our routines to blend and clash for a hot and humid week of sunburns, campfires, and excessive snacking. There’s an abundance of small talk in the first few days—which is probably because we don’t really keep up with each other’s prosaic life details.   

By midweek our chatter grows uncluttered and we’ve (re)discovered commonalities that propel conversations beyond trivial job talk or how have you beens. It’s then when we collectively loosen up and become truer versions of ourselves. When this happens, I, for one, find it hard to believe that we all came from the same nest. Our histories are intimately braided, but we are all so doggone different.

Through I generally look forward to family camp, melancholy mounts as the date draws near. When we all eventually explode on the scene, I am most comfortable as a bystander. Which is fine because my chattier siblings and their families easily fill the space with raucous banter. I’d rather watch and listen, hoping the focus stays on the youngest and oldest among us—the grandkids creating core memories, and their Nanny, my mom, who’s trying to absorb as much family time as possible.

When it’s all over I’ll drive my mom back to her place. En route she will undoubtedly bring her hands together in prayer, look towards the heavens and say something like, “I can’t wait until we do this again next year.” She will then spend the next fifty one weeks exclaiming similar anticipatory comments about 2025’s gathering. Such words will consume her like an extended novena until we convene again.

Holding space for my mom’s yearning leaves a hollow space in my chest. I have not yet learned how to pilot this emptiness. At times it leans me towards self-indulgence where I find comfort in animosity. At other times the vacant weight eliminates all pressing questions and concerns, making it crystal clear that letting go is the only thing worth doing.

Over the past year and a half, I’ve assumed the role of my mom’s pseudo-caretaker, albeit from afar and at infrequent intervals. Mostly I keep close tabs on household details that my father, while he was alive, reserved solely for himself—his and my mom’s finances, their meager investments, health decisions, prescriptions, in-home IT, important documents and phone numbers, and a litany of other minutiae he micromanaged in order to keep pretty much everything off his wife’s plate.

The last time I spoke with my dad was during a hospital stay just months before his death. He’d been admitted for kidney complications and ended up with full blown sepsis and a mild case of Covid. He told my mom he wanted to speak with me alone—so she and I staggered our Christmas Eve visits.

I entered his room and he greeted me with a tired smile and a simple, “Hey.” Then, for the first time in my life, my father, feverish and gaunt, seated before an untouched pack of red Jello, asked for my help with his personal affairs. “I can’t do this alone anymore,” he said. The child in me jumped at the chance to do anything that might make him proud. The adult in me, however, wanted to tell him to go to hell. Too little, too late, went my dismissive and resentful thoughts. The child’s voice proved louder.

With shaky and animated hands, one wrist subdued by an IV line, my dad laid out his plan “to take care of mom.” His proposal included me doing some legwork, and he sent me home with marching orders. I took his appeal to heart.

Our final exchange on equal ground was the first of its kind. And since then, every one of the relationships in my life has energetically shifted. With my father no longer serving as a blocker between me and my own death, I loudly hear his and other forbearing voices spouting comments like, “Life’s too short to waste your time,” or, “Say yes while you can.” Stuff like that. My grandpa once told me that as he got older he stopped making unreciprocated efforts to visit his pals. “ No shit we’re all busy,” he’d say with a huff, “but if I’m the only one picking up the phone, fuck ‘em.”

The thematic results of me rethinking what’s important have been twofold. 1) I’ve tightened my own boundaries, and 2) I’ve locked down what’s truly important. And though this new perspective inevitably triggers other losses, it lightens my energetic load, making it possible to deepen my genuine and mutually uplifting connections. “Carry only what you need,” is something my dad might have said. And he would trust I caught the metaphor.

These days my mom is learning how to live alone for the fist time in her life. She often expresses sentiments of appreciation for having crossed new thresholds of self empowerment. Choosing an outfit, signing up for a group outing, retooling her last will and testament, selecting the array of snacks for her pantry, or taking a Lyft back and forth from her bereavement group—all noteworthy landmarks of newfound autonomy.“I’m learning so many new things,” she says. “I’m proud of all I’ve done since dad died.” Her delight at herself is evident.

Meanwhile, me and my four siblings support her like a parent might uplift a teenager exploring their freedoms. Lots of good jobs and way to gos while vestiges of our mom’s six-decades with our dad grow clearer with each milestone.

I don’t believe my mom felt stifled by her husband’s insistence to do everything, but it’s obvious his style of “care” didn’t quite set her up for success in his absence—a detail my mom is either unaware of or unwilling to acknowledge. “I know he’s looking down on me and is so very essited (sic) to see how well I am doing,” she often says. Her tone, cadence, and aura of joy fully unique to her.

I imagine that part of my mom’s obsessive hunger for our family gathering stems from the pleasure and comfort that comes from familiarity. I am not a parent, but I can imagine that as years and distance increase between parents and children, occasionally just being in the same room with them is, in fact, enough.

Perhaps this is why we all want to make these family camps happen—to be in each others’ presence. It’s not about plans or entertainment or sightseeing or proximity to a local brewhouse. If it were we damn sure wouldn’t jump through massive logistical hoops to briefly live on the shores of this minor lake.

Not everyone is here, but those of us who made it are reveling in each other’s presence. And to make the most of this new family tradition, we’ll wring everything we can out of the place where berries are.

The shore of Conesus Lake