Cherry Garcia

On grief, memory and childhood

Today is the birthday of Neal Keven Benzel, my former husband and the father of my two courageous and beautiful girls Anna and Willa. He died by suicide six years ago. There is not a day that goes by that he is not in their thoughts, he had a very silly sense of humor and on the day of his birthday I want to honor his memory, his obsession with Jerry Garcia and my kid’s beautiful childhood by publishing this essay, written by Anna Benzel:

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I am ten years old, watching old reruns of Hannah Montana with my dad and younger sister, Willa. We were at my dad's, which meant it was the weekend. The sun is setting and we are glued to the couch passing around a pint of Ben and Jerry’s Cherry Garcia back and forth. I roll my eyes as my sister hogs the pint and cringe at how close her lovey is to it. Her lovey, a small square blanket with an animal head at the end, wreaked of her saliva, as she would rub it on the tip of her nose while she sucked her thumb. Can you tell she’s the baby of the family?

Each time I lean over to steal the ice cream from Willa, my eyes are met with the hanging portrait of Jerry Garcia above the TV. It was my father’s favorite picture, a reminder of the two hundred-plus Grateful Dead concerts he had attended throughout his lifetime. (see photo above and below)

In my 11-year-old mind, this photograph was one of the most consistent parts of my day. Garcia’s smile in this photograph is captivating like I was being greeted every time I stepped into the apartment. Seeing where my attention had been redirected, my father put down his spoon after my sister and I begged him to tell us the story of how Jerry Garcia’s brother accidentally chopped his finger off while splitting wood.

Each time we heard the story we would stare at my dad like a deer in headlights, “Why was his middle finger so unlucky?”, we could not understand. “This is why you shouldn’t put your middle finger up,” my dad would tell us as a cautionary tale. The unlucky middle finger became a recurring joke between the three of us.

During the summer of 2018, my father passed. It was a long hard summer and while I felt just as lost as my younger sister, I knew that she needed me to be strong for her. Driving through the brisk air and breathtakingly green woods of Shelter Island, New York, I looked next to me in the car, my aunt driving, my mom in the passenger seat, and my sister and I in the back seat each gazing out of the window. I sat there hoping to telepathically communicate to my sister that everything would be okay.

Despite the circumstances, my mom decided to go through with our summer travel plans. That summer we spent basking in the sun telling our favorite stories of my dad and biking to our ritual evening ice cream at The Tuck Shop. Raspberry ice cream with chocolate chips: this was the closest I could get to Cherry Garcia. As we reminisced on how my dad used to insist on renting tandem bikes every summer, I quietly mutter to Willa, “Remember how annoying that was and how we always wanted the pink sparkly kid's ones instead?”, knowing she needed that extra reassurance and comfort to keep her from losing it. Despite us knowing exactly what one another was going through, it was hard to talk about and was slightly uncomfortable.

Confronting those difficult conversations together made it all real, so we avoided it, but my mom's extroverted and people-pleasing personality did not let us shy away from it. “Girls, this was your dad's favorite song, he never got sick of it,” my mom would say playing Eyes of the World by the Grateful Dead, the anthem song of that trip.

Instead of being at the receiving end of his stories, it was my turn to provide the sweet moments in her life, and it is no coincidence that when she and I think back to childhood, it is always connected to the familiar taste of Cherry Garcia. Spiritually, cherries symbolize a period of sweetness and love, and that’s the best way to describe this childhood time for me. But as I have gotten older, this ice cream has also come to represent the part of myself that has felt real pain, the tart parts of life. This tartness is not so bad when it is surrounded by sweetness, a harmonized balance of the two. You cannot have one without the other.

There are not two people more exemplary of the older sister-younger sister dynamic than Willa and I. “Mommy, Anna doesn’t ever let ME be the teacher!”, my sister would cry out each time we played classroom and I assumed the permanent role of the teacher. From a young age, I took on adult-like qualities. “Anna please go sit with your sister and your cousins,” my mom would plead while I pushed her wine glass over, attempting to make room for my plate at the adult table.

Losing my dad only stimulated these qualities of myself even more. To my sister, it was overbearing at times, but I felt an obligation to assume parental responsibility over her, it was my way of honoring my dad’s protection over her. It was difficult to navigate our dynamic at times, and I was frustrated with myself for feeling the same protectiveness a parent has.

One summer night, I sat outside enjoying the warmth of the ocean breeze in my friend Hannah’s tiki hut. My friends and I enjoyed each other’s company, listening to music and drooling over the three large boxes of Domino's thin-crust pizza we ordered.

The tiki hut was lit to perfection, the pizza was warm, and the air sweet but I anxiously stared at my Life 360 app knowing my sister and her friends were at a party. I couldn’t help but be distracted by this, preoccupied with hoping my sister was ok and safe. My mom would help me stay grounded and assure me that my sister had my mom, she was more than okay, and I had the fun responsibility of being her friend and companion. It was not that I wanted to act this way, it just happened.

Despite my departure to California to attend my four years at Berkeley, we grew closer than ever. Now eighteen, standing at 5’10 with a model-like figure, and balancing her secured spot on both the Principal’s Honor Roll and guest list of Miami’s hottest clubs, Willa is doing just fine. Being further away from her was what I needed in many ways.

Willa Begonia Benzel doing just fine.

The love my mom my sister and I have for each other is so immense, it’s almost suffocating at times. We cling to one another knowing that we are the only immediate family each of us has. Every time I’m back home in Miami, I think back to the fruitfulness and sweet times of eating Cherry Garcia. A wave of sadness and nostalgia floods through me, but I am okay. My relationship with ice cream to cope with sadness is surely not the same as most people, but I think it’s pretty great.