Monthly Archives: September 2026

Not there yet …

Leave a reply

On the 2 train back to Brooklyn, Photo credit: Malissa Smith

I am so not there yet.

Tears brim. At anything really. A nice photo of a cat. An episode of Deep Space Nine. A line from Joyce (yes trying to read him since returning from a brief trip to Dublin to see Katie Taylor’s last fight at Croke Park). Memories. Jed’s name. Any conversation with my new therapist, Jane and so on.

There is, however, a discernible difference to the grief I have felt.

The seemingly forever grief. The loss I felt after Jed was diagnosed with dementia, and the crushing sensation of fear and pain at such a horrible diagnosis. The years of loss as he disappeared into the morass of receding brain cells. Plus all the guilt about thinking he was being a total jerk during the previous few years when he was quick to anger, spent days in bed, and showed not the least bit of empathy about anything.

This new grief feels more present. Palpable. As if it were a huge, steady pop of a vein, just waiting for a bloodletting. For vial upon vial upon vial of red corpuscles and plasma and platelets to get the current read on all things Malissa Smith. My hemoglobin count, my liver and kidney function, how my thyroid is doing, and all the minute tests taken every six months or so to ensure my various this-and-that are nice and status quo.

The grief, though, is felt everywhere. I am all things in it and through it.

The little girl who felt abandoned. The bigger girl who was raped. The young woman who fell in love too easily and accepted mere scraps of affection when I really deserved kindness, respect, and love.

That younger girl and older girl and young woman is me now. Touching grief as a catalog of the leftover bits of things that haven’t been worked out yet. The things still left dangling—despite all the analysis, therapy, and meditation retreats—when Jed and I embraced and formed our oneness. My broken bits and his broken bits alive but forgotten as so many invisible carbuncles; attached and enclosed infections that bring discomfort but can be passed off as just the regular stuff. Painful but easily ignorable when it is not quite painful enough. Like a dull muscle ache easily forgotten in the stream of things.

The two of us. Fully adults. Accomplished. Wedded. Parents. Having formed our places in the world. Not our dreams, but not, not our dreams. But most miraculous of all, having found each other.

We knew we wouldn’t live forever, but time seemed infinite as it does when love is in the air and of the air and gets breathed in and becomes the very oxygen of existence.

For him to cease to be seems a betrayal of all of that promise. The truth, though, is harder. That sense of omnipotence is, anyway, always an illusion. More a betrayal of being present than anything else, because we do live and then cease to exist, and clinging to a sensation of omnipotence traps us in infinite pain. Of not seeing past the end of existence as we come to know it.

Grief is the wending of that trap. The series of moments. The reflections. The recognition of the horrible chthonic deep. The unrelenting stabs at the heart that do lessen with time. That don’t hurt as much and yet are as constant as the tears that leak. Tears that no longer heave. No longer feel as earth-shattering. No longer give an unmistakable sensation of flailing at the skin and bones of being.

I remain at sea. I don’t have my place yet, but I do smile. Enjoy my plants and my kitty boys. Seeing friends and acquaintances. Communing with people over shared passions: boxing, music, salsa dancing, or marveling at new landscapes of sights and sounds.

I can feel joy, Photo credit: Malissa Smith

I can feel joy. A sense of deep peace will come every time my tuxedo kitty boy Milo curls up next to me and, with his head on my wrist, begins to purr.

It reminds me that life is only ever here and now. And that even though grief is a part of that experience, it just is.

 

 

 

twenty-five years … 9/11

Leave a reply

The Twin Towers … view from New Jersey pier. Photo credit: Unknown

This anniversary hits hard.

Missing friends, former colleagues hits hard.

Going to an event at FDNY headquarters recently, I stood in front of the memorial wall. The added names of first responders who have succumbed to a range of cancers and other chronic lung and soft-tissues illnesses hits especially hard.

At the Fire Department, we always honor the 343 members who died on the day, but all the extra deaths. The men and women of the Department who labored on the pile for weeks and months searching for the fallen have passed as well, leaving more families devastated by grief and sorrow.

The Fireboat Three Forty Three was named to honor the fallen on 9-11. The Three Forty Three was sailed up to New York Harbor from Eastern Shipbuilding, Panama City, Fl., on April 30, 2010, Photo Credit: Malissa Smith

With the release of about 170,000 9/11-related documents, New Yorkers feel a different kind of attack. Survivors and victims’ families spent over two decades in court to see those documents after one city administration after another failed to provide access. Before the 25th anniversary, the Mamdani administration has created a 9/11 document portal with search capabilities, the first to heed the call.

New Yorkers ask, why so long?

Why the added pain?

Why not tell us just how toxic the pile was? Or describe how particulates clung to our bronchial systems? Why not issue masks and gloves, knowing mere days after the collapse of the Twin Towers that the pile was a toxic soup? When anyone within a few-mile radius of the pile had the cough? Inhaled the damp fire smoke that lingered for months and months. Washed away the fine mist of ash that seeped in through the windows onto our furnishings, day after day after day, causing a special kind of ache knowing so many of our fellow New Yorkers had perished so horribly.

Every one of those days hit hard.

Going to funerals.

Feeling the gut punch on the R train on my way back to Brooklyn. I would forget for a moment and look out the subway window at Cortland Street, the World Trade Center stop, which was nothing more than an open, gaping wound with bits of blue sky visible through twisted beams and rubble. Or fighting back stinging tears when I walked past the pile and saw the plaintive photos of the fallen hastily taped to makeshift fencing. The notes asking if anyone had seen this woman or that man. The flowers. The old wilted ones and the new ones that kept coming. Soaked by rain. By weeping. By the pain of loss for our friends and family. For our neighbors and colleagues. For our city. For our sense of who we were. Feeling the overwhelming grief that the hole in the sky represented.

The WTC Oculus designed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava, Photo credit: de Zeen, 29 August 2016

It’s still there for me. Every time I look west from the Brooklyn Promenade, or when I am downtown on Fulton Street and environs. I can walk near there now. Sort of. I go to the Apple Store at the Oculus – a ribbed structure with design elements that harken back to the original WTC building skin designed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava in the shape of a dove. The museum, however, remains a no-go. As is the reflecting pool with all the names and the blue beams that cast their light into the night to commemorate the anniversary.

As I write, I hold the memory of Pete Mardikian and Andrew Fischer in my heart.

May the memory of all who have fallen be for a blessing.

The last dance: Katie Taylor

Leave a reply

From L to R, Eddie Hearn, Katie Taylor, Amanda Serrano, Jake Paul at the February 2, 2022 press conference announcing the Katie Taylor-Amanda Serrano, main event at the Mecca of boxing, Madison Square Garden. Photo credit: Malissa Smith

“I think that’s real legacy, someone who left my sport in a better place,”

Katie Taylor, August 28, 2026

I admit I have been a Katie Taylor fan-girl since I started writing about women’s boxing in 2010 and even before that, when I was training at Gleason’s Gym, and boxers such as Mischa Merz would talk about how amazing she was to watch in action.

In particular, Taylor’s stance on the then-international boxing association, AIBA’s insistence in 2011 that women compete in skirts set a tone for her participation in a sport that has been uncomfortable, at best, with the inclusion of women in its ranks.

In an October 2011 interview with RTÉ’s Ryan Tubridy, on the RTÉ One program, Taylor said, “I want the boxing to be the focus … [not] what I’m wearing.”

She also had no problem walking away from the sport if the rule requiring skirts passed. Her father, Peter Taylor, put it succinctly when he said, “She won’t box. Simple as that. We’ve got morals that go above marketing.”

As a side note, writer Michael Rivest, reporting for the Albany Times Union, wrote that AIBA President, C. K. Wu wanted women to wear skirts so viewers could tell the girls from the boys in the ring. Apparently, with helmets, loose shirts, shorts, and, most importantly, though left unsaid, equal skills, some viewers couldn’t tell the difference!

Oh my.

That notion of boxing abilities so fine honed as to belie the construct of boxing as a gendered sport really did give pause and has been Katie Taylor’s story writ large: A girl from Bray who pretended to be a boy to compete and win because it was otherwise illegal for her to don the gloves in her native Ireland.

Years later, and after boxing became legal for women, in her same native Ireland, she was invited to serve as Dublin’s Grand Marshal for its 2011 St. Patrick’s Day parade.

That honor did not come from nowhere. Her boxing skill earned her gold at the 2010 World Amateur Championships in Barbados the previous year. This added to her collection of titles, including earlier world amateur and European championships, helped her play a pivotal role in securing women’s boxing as an Olympic sport set to debut at the 2012 London Games. She was also an elite two-sport athlete. From 2006 to 2009, she played for Ireland’s senior women’s soccer team as a striker and forward, including scoring goals in 2007 and 2008 against teams from Hungary and Italy, respectively.

Speaking in a Sky Sports interview in 2019, Taylor said, “I did have a chance to get a football [soccer] scholarship over in America when I left school, but boxing was always my number one passion. I knew I had to choose between the two sports and I obviously chose boxing.”

She spoke after winning the inaugural Women’s Boxing Lightweight Gold Medal in 2012, setting a record for the highest decibel levels ever recorded at the ExCel Exhibition Centre. After winning multiple championships as a professional in the the sport.

So yes. Her choice.

Her passion for boxing.

These are the hallmarks of the Katie Taylor we have come to revere and love. Plus her dogged determination to make history in a sport that first denied her a place. The Katie Taylor who never takes no for an answer. Who overcomes each obstacle with perseverance and faith.

Her pursuit of greatness became magic and legend in Ireland and around the world. And the world will come to Croke Park, Dublin’s legendary stadium, to watch Katie Taylor in her black gloves, tinged with white or gold, one last time. Where all 82,300 seats will be filled to watch her boxing spirit soar for one last dance in the squared circle against a young, hungry fighter named Flora Pili (12-0, 2 KOs), who will no doubt box with heart and gumption for the right to be called undisputed women’s super lightweight champion.

Katie Taylor faces off with Flora Pili at the announcement of Taylor’s last fight set for Croke Park, Dublin, Ireland on September 5, 2026. Photo Credit: Inpho Sports Photography

If Taylor’s active fighting career ends on the night of September 5, 2026, to the cheers and tears of the stadium fans and the millions who will watch on DAZN Boxing and RTÉ, her place in boxing and the legacy she has already given the sport will continue to make their mark for generations to come.

Just look at where professional women’s boxing is now, a mere ten years after Taylor’s heartbreaking loss at the 2016 Rio Olympic Games. She licked her wounds, overcame her disappointments, and went on to sign with promoter Eddie Hearn’s Matchroom Boxing as a professional boxer. Shortly thereafter, she won her first bout, a six-rounder, by TKO at 0:58 of the third round on November 26, 2016, against Polish fighter Karina Szmalenberg.

By Taylor’s fifth fight in April 2017 and sporting a 4-0, 2-KOs record, she was on the undercard of the infamous Anthony Joshua – Wladimir Klitschko fight at Wembley Stadium, defeating the 5-0, 1-KO, German hopeful, Nina Meinke by TKO in the 7th round of their non-title ten-rounder.

Katie Taylor, DAZN Boxing launch, July 17, 2018, New York City, Photo Credit: Malissa Smith

The stuff of legend is how she brought a generation of fighters with her. Fighters such as Olympian Natasha Jonas said Taylor helped her see that a boxing career was possible.

As a generational elite women’s boxing amateur and Olympian, Taylor insisted on destiny. She knew she had to make her mark as a professional. She set out to show what it meant to fight the best. To model the daily workouts in the gym that are the chapter and verse of the work to come. The routine—dynamic stretching, jumping rope, shadow boxing, hitting the pads, sparring, hitting the heavy bag, cool-down rounds on the speed bag, wind sprints, weights, more stretching, pool work, road work, shadow boxing, and slipping under the shower head after an ice plunge bath—becomes the tool of passion. Being in the ring is the ultimate experience. Facing an opponent with equal skill and desire demands performance. It means making a mark. It means being of the ring, in the ring, and part of the boxing life that rises above gender and the other prefixes that mean nothing once the fight begins and there are two or three minutes to outbox an opponent, round by round, until an arm is raised at the end of the bout.

Taylor gave us many dances.

She became a lightweight champion, boxing the likes of Eva Wahlstrom, Natasha Jonas, and Jennifer Han.

Then an undisputed champion, fighting the Belgian title holder, Delfine Persoon, and winning in a very close contest by split decision.

For her next dance, Taylor became a two-weight champion, winning a super lightweight title after defeating Christina Linardatou.

Amanda Serrano (R) boxing Katie Taylor (L) fought the first women’s boxing main event at the Mecca of boxing, Madison Square Garden on April 30, 2022, in front of a sold-out crowd for the undisputed world lightweight championship. Photo credit: Malissa Smith

In the first bout of what became a legendary women’s boxing trilogy, Taylor and her dance partner, Amanda Serrano, thrilled the world at the Mecca of boxing, Madison Square Garden. They turned their women’s boxing premier main event into a fight for the ages before a sold-out crowd that openly shed tears at the brilliance of their efforts.

In another first, in May 2023, Taylor chose Chantelle Cameron as her dance partner for her first professional fight in Ireland and the chance to be called undisputed super lightweight champion. It was not her day, as she suffered her first professional defeat, but six months later she battled back to win the crown.

She had two more dances with Serrano in 2024 and 2025 bringing her to a 25-1, 6-KOs professional record to add to her 170-10-1, 35-KOs, amateur career.

Turning 40, however, and still full of fight, she had one more dream to fulfill: to return to Ireland and fight for an undisputed championship at Dublin’s legendary Croke Park.

That dream, the first championship bout at Croke Park since Mohammad Ali defeated Alvin Lewis by knockout on September 20, 1972, and the chance to say goodbye to the crowd, to the boxing community, to her fans, and to the world, is the stuff that dreams are made of and will be realized before the people who love her best.

Since she announced her impending retirement, many have spoken of her achievements, her role as an inspirational figure, and, importantly, her deep Christian faith as road signs of her commitment to ensuring women have a place in boxing.

What I’ve always loved most about Katie Taylor is the “dog” in her.

That rascally spirit that takes over from time to time and reminds us that she is still that girl from Bray who loves nothing more than to mix it up and scrap.