One year ago, it was clear and golden and dazzling, and I was holding the hand of my friend as she died. And then I was watching them disconnect her, de-intubating her, taking her finger out of the monitor, settling her arms and head and sheets. It was quiet, the beeping done with.
I came to work today. There seemed no point in not coming. I don't know why I did.
That day, I went home, after being with her husband, her friends, her family. Witnessing one brother's pain, because he missed her last moments. I sat on my couch, insensible to the Poobahs, and I knew they smelled her on me, smelled the hospital, smelled death. They were subdued, and I was inert to even their gentlest, inquiring, sweet attentions. The next night, my mom came over with food, and we ate, and we gave out candy to the neighborhood kids. I am grateful.
Jesus, babe. I miss you. My girl.
Showing posts with label love. Show all posts
Showing posts with label love. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 30, 2019
Wednesday, October 23, 2019
Morning walk
The alarm went off at 5:30 a.m. instead of 5:40, and I rolled over out of habit, then found I actually felt like getting up. Pum came to the bedside in the dark, her ritual morning greeting, and I felt the strong, tight curl of her tail on my wrist as she padded away again, back to her bed.
Dressed and hair wrestled down, the kit and pup kibbled, I pulled on a sweater coat and light gloves, and we were off.
Penelope is a good girl on walks, and today was so quiet I had time to notice the tall oak to the southeast was not lit from below, as it usually is on autumn and winter mornings. Against the fathomless teal just outside the bare halo of sunrise, its bent branch and filigree were achingly lovely. I had time to muse - is that quiet sound, of minimal sand on damp asphalt under my soft shoe, is that a crunch, or something gentler? I had the time to muse, but did not find the word.
Just last night, talking with mom about her puppy and my now older baby girl, I'd said how funny it is: dogs' communication is most chancy not in the dark, but at twilight and dawn - when light is there, but they can't quite see the cues dogs signal each other with. This morning, we passed a shepherd going our way briefly, but across the street, and though she clearly saw the other dog, Penelope had no response at all. No pulling, "Mom, I want to go see the other dog - and thereby make friends with its person."
Dark, still, when we got home, Pum had her sniffs and her business done, and I had all my shoulder and back muscles intact. Seven years old now, she's powerful and big enough, this still is important.
***
One week from today, it will be the first anniversary of my best friend's - my sister's - death. Someone who loved her hard has gone to a place the rest of us who love her can't join him, and it is heartbreaking. Two of us - two of the three who made up our little Musketeers - cling to each other, and count ourselves blessed we ever had her. We are angry still, and yet able to laugh at the ways she haunts us.
Mostly by sending Def Leppard songs at incongruous - or entirely TOO congruous - moments. She remains an inveterate smartass. And she remains with us.
I will mark her passing in a couple of ways, across the miles with our third sister, and alone - and in figuring out exactly how to dress for Hallowe'en. She always LOVED Hallowe'en, and if dressing up is memorial to her now, it is a joyous celebration.
***
The dark season has begun, and that means not just winter's advent. It means not just cooling and sweatering and cozying and contemplating. It means BOO, it's Hallowe'n. It means grappling and reckoning with her loss. Trips to the cemetery, and always, always down memory lane.
Dressed and hair wrestled down, the kit and pup kibbled, I pulled on a sweater coat and light gloves, and we were off.
Penelope is a good girl on walks, and today was so quiet I had time to notice the tall oak to the southeast was not lit from below, as it usually is on autumn and winter mornings. Against the fathomless teal just outside the bare halo of sunrise, its bent branch and filigree were achingly lovely. I had time to muse - is that quiet sound, of minimal sand on damp asphalt under my soft shoe, is that a crunch, or something gentler? I had the time to muse, but did not find the word.
Just last night, talking with mom about her puppy and my now older baby girl, I'd said how funny it is: dogs' communication is most chancy not in the dark, but at twilight and dawn - when light is there, but they can't quite see the cues dogs signal each other with. This morning, we passed a shepherd going our way briefly, but across the street, and though she clearly saw the other dog, Penelope had no response at all. No pulling, "Mom, I want to go see the other dog - and thereby make friends with its person."
Dark, still, when we got home, Pum had her sniffs and her business done, and I had all my shoulder and back muscles intact. Seven years old now, she's powerful and big enough, this still is important.
***
One week from today, it will be the first anniversary of my best friend's - my sister's - death. Someone who loved her hard has gone to a place the rest of us who love her can't join him, and it is heartbreaking. Two of us - two of the three who made up our little Musketeers - cling to each other, and count ourselves blessed we ever had her. We are angry still, and yet able to laugh at the ways she haunts us.
Mostly by sending Def Leppard songs at incongruous - or entirely TOO congruous - moments. She remains an inveterate smartass. And she remains with us.
I will mark her passing in a couple of ways, across the miles with our third sister, and alone - and in figuring out exactly how to dress for Hallowe'en. She always LOVED Hallowe'en, and if dressing up is memorial to her now, it is a joyous celebration.
***
The dark season has begun, and that means not just winter's advent. It means not just cooling and sweatering and cozying and contemplating. It means BOO, it's Hallowe'n. It means grappling and reckoning with her loss. Trips to the cemetery, and always, always down memory lane.
Saturday, July 20, 2019
A story
"My dad used to take us camping," she said to the curious group at the booth in the bar. We began to quiet down to listen to her. "We would hike up this mountain all morning in summer. It took hours, and we would be so hot, and so tired and hungry by the time we got where he was taking us. You had to go up rocks, and through these trees. But then, breaking out into the sun ... there was this lake. Perfectly clear. The most amazing blue. It was beautiful..."
The story, as my friend K once told it, was actually several minutes long.
It's the closing line I can never forget.
"And that ... is the color of Diane's ex-husband's eyes."
All I ever managed, in praise of his startling, Nordic baby-blues was to say they were "like Windex." Even that I stole off of Carla Tortelli.
My mom once amusedly scoffed that he must wear contacts. I countered with Paul Newman. Even just a few years ago, I showed a somewhat recent pic of him to my Aunt, and the exclamation she made indicating how good he looked was a familiar, memory-claiming, "Those eyes!"
Beloved Ex's eyes are still that shade of extremely bright, clear blue. But it got weird, too. Not so long after that pic I showed my aunt, he was in an accident and injured, and suffered what he and I generally just refer to as Bowie eye. No eerie, glamorous alien rock god, BEx *has* been a hellacious front man in his day; even just last year, seeing him perform for (my) first time in 24 years was a revelation. He's a great performer.
Last year was also the first time I ever saw him with the eye dealio. Dear as our friendship is, neither he nor I ever pretends we're not exes, so we talk and email and text, but we haven't visited in many moons. He wanted to come for dad's memorial, and had car trouble, and so the last time we were in the same room before last year had been in 2002. (He did get to see dad before he died; maybe that is right, and better.)
The Bowie eye thing is cool, of course - but BEx isn't much of that opinion. What many of us might feel as a distraction to people we meet, he feels as an embarrassment - and, too, he certainly has to squint more than he used to. The shades stayed on a lot. And, not actually doing the rockstar thing after all, one does understand how he doesn't embrace the visual oddity. Like most things people dislike in themselves, or worry about anyway, this isn't as exceptional to see as it is to own.
Lately, I keep running by movies we saw together, when I flip channels. They take me back, not so much to Ohio, or even particularly the late 80s/early 90s, but just to him.
If it seems hard to understand why someone I like so much, and love so much, is in any case still an "ex", rest assured it's been brought up to me before. Given how he talks about those people in his life who haven't met me apparently respond to him talking about *his* ex, I assume that I am not alone. And, as old age with nobody but a cat and a dog in my life looms, the fact is I query myself whether I could live in Ohio again after retirement. Once mom goes (assuming I actually outlive her; it's just possible), I will be essentially alone in the world wherever I am. Of course, I don't expect to be able to retire before age 78.
At the end of the day, though - and as much as seeing him last year was GREAT - it also reminded me of a fundamental way we are incompatible.
BEx was not raised in a house of yes. Even going back to college at what he feared was the "old age" of like 28 came in part under the influence of my dad - not his. His default expectation is of frustration and failure.
During the year or so of our functionally being married, we ran up against ... me. I was restless. I wanted to see some "other side" to Ohio - to get out - to not be so poor we had to discuss, "Hey, can we afford toilet paper?"
I also saw myself turning into a pretty awful person. This probably owes to sabotaging us: I wanted out so badly I flailed. When a cherry business offer came from his then-employers - "Buy our music store, we'll make you a deal" (they were lovely people and really cared for him) - I saw two things. One, that I didn't want to stand in the way of that. And two, that it meant a pretty deep root in Ohio.
Restlessness turned to nagging and discontent and nastiness. I went home, got work, we stayed married and hoping, but I also succumbed to that most impossible of urges - I wanted "to grow."
That was 25 years ago, and I am still at it of course, but what revealed itself relatively early is the major problem between me and him. He is wary and wise, facing life with bets hedged and expectations low. This is completely right and fair.
But I became, somewhere along the line, not only a practitioner of gratitude, but actually spiritually invested in counting my blessings.
Last year, watching his progress through an iffy day up to that Really Big Show, I was powerfully reminded: BEx can't take yes for an answer. The weather was perfect, the crowd was GREAT, the band was tight. It all was sensational - and a good time. But even afterward, his focus was on details he wasn't satisfied with. As I said at the time, "He can't take yes for an answer." Never could.
Which means that BEx, as it turns out, is a striver. Maybe "a little depressive" as he and I actually used to have a personal joke about. But very much in service of his ambitions, his needs and hopes and expectations.
I am decidedly *not* a striver.
I need to be happy with what is (and, no, the irony isn't lost on me). In nearly twenty years' homeownership, this is why the hardwoods REMAIN un-refinished. It's probably why I abide in loving Mr. X, at that - someone who ruined all the other boys for me, but who also may literally never reappear, physically, in my life. The fact that I don't quite believe that doesn't mean I don't comprehend it's possible.
Not unlike BEx, Mr. X is not easily prone to taking yes for an answer.
Me, apparently I'll take "no" till the day I die. Pollyanna, just too busy to be distracted by failure, or insistently practicing that gratitude that keeps me focused on what actually does work in my life (think what you may about romantic delusions - what actually does work in my life is remarkably extensive). All of the above.
BEx is hardly monomaniacal on the subject of what doesn't work in *his* life. It's just that my need to thank my lucky stars makes his entire perspective irksome.
I would get in the way of his pragmatism and ambition. He would get in the way of my practice of gratitude - and it is, a practice.
And so, we are exes, and friends, and I actually do still think he is the ginchiest.
As, all those years ago, my friend K also did. Eyes like deep, still mountain lakes. Or Windex.
The story, as my friend K once told it, was actually several minutes long.
It's the closing line I can never forget.
"And that ... is the color of Diane's ex-husband's eyes."
All I ever managed, in praise of his startling, Nordic baby-blues was to say they were "like Windex." Even that I stole off of Carla Tortelli.
My mom once amusedly scoffed that he must wear contacts. I countered with Paul Newman. Even just a few years ago, I showed a somewhat recent pic of him to my Aunt, and the exclamation she made indicating how good he looked was a familiar, memory-claiming, "Those eyes!"
Beloved Ex's eyes are still that shade of extremely bright, clear blue. But it got weird, too. Not so long after that pic I showed my aunt, he was in an accident and injured, and suffered what he and I generally just refer to as Bowie eye. No eerie, glamorous alien rock god, BEx *has* been a hellacious front man in his day; even just last year, seeing him perform for (my) first time in 24 years was a revelation. He's a great performer.
Last year was also the first time I ever saw him with the eye dealio. Dear as our friendship is, neither he nor I ever pretends we're not exes, so we talk and email and text, but we haven't visited in many moons. He wanted to come for dad's memorial, and had car trouble, and so the last time we were in the same room before last year had been in 2002. (He did get to see dad before he died; maybe that is right, and better.)
The Bowie eye thing is cool, of course - but BEx isn't much of that opinion. What many of us might feel as a distraction to people we meet, he feels as an embarrassment - and, too, he certainly has to squint more than he used to. The shades stayed on a lot. And, not actually doing the rockstar thing after all, one does understand how he doesn't embrace the visual oddity. Like most things people dislike in themselves, or worry about anyway, this isn't as exceptional to see as it is to own.
Lately, I keep running by movies we saw together, when I flip channels. They take me back, not so much to Ohio, or even particularly the late 80s/early 90s, but just to him.
If it seems hard to understand why someone I like so much, and love so much, is in any case still an "ex", rest assured it's been brought up to me before. Given how he talks about those people in his life who haven't met me apparently respond to him talking about *his* ex, I assume that I am not alone. And, as old age with nobody but a cat and a dog in my life looms, the fact is I query myself whether I could live in Ohio again after retirement. Once mom goes (assuming I actually outlive her; it's just possible), I will be essentially alone in the world wherever I am. Of course, I don't expect to be able to retire before age 78.
At the end of the day, though - and as much as seeing him last year was GREAT - it also reminded me of a fundamental way we are incompatible.
BEx was not raised in a house of yes. Even going back to college at what he feared was the "old age" of like 28 came in part under the influence of my dad - not his. His default expectation is of frustration and failure.
During the year or so of our functionally being married, we ran up against ... me. I was restless. I wanted to see some "other side" to Ohio - to get out - to not be so poor we had to discuss, "Hey, can we afford toilet paper?"
I also saw myself turning into a pretty awful person. This probably owes to sabotaging us: I wanted out so badly I flailed. When a cherry business offer came from his then-employers - "Buy our music store, we'll make you a deal" (they were lovely people and really cared for him) - I saw two things. One, that I didn't want to stand in the way of that. And two, that it meant a pretty deep root in Ohio.
Restlessness turned to nagging and discontent and nastiness. I went home, got work, we stayed married and hoping, but I also succumbed to that most impossible of urges - I wanted "to grow."
That was 25 years ago, and I am still at it of course, but what revealed itself relatively early is the major problem between me and him. He is wary and wise, facing life with bets hedged and expectations low. This is completely right and fair.
But I became, somewhere along the line, not only a practitioner of gratitude, but actually spiritually invested in counting my blessings.
Last year, watching his progress through an iffy day up to that Really Big Show, I was powerfully reminded: BEx can't take yes for an answer. The weather was perfect, the crowd was GREAT, the band was tight. It all was sensational - and a good time. But even afterward, his focus was on details he wasn't satisfied with. As I said at the time, "He can't take yes for an answer." Never could.
Which means that BEx, as it turns out, is a striver. Maybe "a little depressive" as he and I actually used to have a personal joke about. But very much in service of his ambitions, his needs and hopes and expectations.
I am decidedly *not* a striver.
I need to be happy with what is (and, no, the irony isn't lost on me). In nearly twenty years' homeownership, this is why the hardwoods REMAIN un-refinished. It's probably why I abide in loving Mr. X, at that - someone who ruined all the other boys for me, but who also may literally never reappear, physically, in my life. The fact that I don't quite believe that doesn't mean I don't comprehend it's possible.
Not unlike BEx, Mr. X is not easily prone to taking yes for an answer.
Me, apparently I'll take "no" till the day I die. Pollyanna, just too busy to be distracted by failure, or insistently practicing that gratitude that keeps me focused on what actually does work in my life (think what you may about romantic delusions - what actually does work in my life is remarkably extensive). All of the above.
BEx is hardly monomaniacal on the subject of what doesn't work in *his* life. It's just that my need to thank my lucky stars makes his entire perspective irksome.
I would get in the way of his pragmatism and ambition. He would get in the way of my practice of gratitude - and it is, a practice.
And so, we are exes, and friends, and I actually do still think he is the ginchiest.
As, all those years ago, my friend K also did. Eyes like deep, still mountain lakes. Or Windex.
Thursday, July 18, 2019
Paradise, Sugar, summer, and X-ness
The time was gone when we'd actually sit in someone's family room and watch MTV, but Paradise City's images still made up a big part of listening to that song. We knew Axl was a jerk, but the *song* was still summertime. That was the year we cruised DMV drive.
Val had taken me to Grace Street before, and I was used to venues, dating my rock star at college, going to gig after gig with him and all our musician friends. So cruising really seemed pointless to me, just driving around a wide block, traffic at a standstill, and only one stretch of it really populated. It was usually impossible to get a spot on that stretch; so you'd crawl through the crowded, merc-lit street, and then it was half an hour around a boring circuit to get back again. If you *could* get a spot, though ... it was a fun way to blow an hour before actually going somewhere.
That year, it was Paradise City - Axl in his white jeans; the ageless avatar of Slash stripped out of black and hat, actually sexy under there - and Pour Some Sugar On Me. Every idiot with a too-large spoiler and giant speakers rigged in a hatchback serenaded the entirety of the cruising audience, and I can't remember a single other track that dominated. Those two songs were THAT. SUMMER.
Valerie died to the strains of Paradise City. And Def Leppard was her favorite band.
It is my punishment, and my poignancy, that Axl's damned white jeans will make me cry forevermore.
I miss my girl. She was my sister. Her husband, now - I guess he's my brother.
The orangey light outside the huge HQ building for the Division of Motor Vehicles. Me and Val being cute and using fake names. I was Sabrina because I'd liked that cartoon as a kid, and the name seemed exotic to me. Valerie used Penelope.
Sometimes, now, loving on my dog Penelope, it's not just her I am hugging. She's my girl too.
I never did know why she used Penelope - just, it amused her. It was so unlikely. And boys. Boys trying anything will believe anything. I mean - Sabrina? We both dared 'em to disbelieve. They never bothered to; honesty beside the point, when you are cruising.
Pour Some Sugar On Me.
Both the songs are anthemic, and impossibly catchy. Cryin' is playing at me right now - and we loved us some Aerosmith. (Val had a story about being a groupie and chewing gum.) But Sugar and Paradise, that was all anyone ever heard. When your car was inching forward, and the heated dark breeze of a Richmond summer night carried the distant strains of either of those songs back to us on the long slog through the boring 75% of the circuit - that was the promise. "You're almost there." Almost to the relevant part. The part that is lit, and full of people (boys) and music. The interesting bit.
Scent of hot asphalt hanging in the air, and not a little exhaust, including diesel. Voices, shouting, unrestrained singing. That kid on the skateboard, the first person I ever TOLD I was named Sabrina.
Valerie's laughter.
My girl.
We'd make a few turns. Or park, if we could. Then the lateral move, more parking, more crowded blocks, and The Jade Elephant, or Newgate Prison (hilariously, a dive bar unbeloved by Virginia Commonwealth University Police - now their headquarters - I guess they won). Dirt Woman sitting on his porch. "You can get the dirt off Donnie, but you can't get Donnie off the Dirt!" The Lee X theater, I think defunct already by the early 90s. Grassy scrub lots. The 7-11, maybe convenient for some, but impossibly distant and useless for those of us in heels.
That guy who made his friends drive him around in an old limo. He was cute. He'd give us rides to our cars. Every boy Val ever dated, or was thinking about it. The night I brought The Elfin One, and she laughs to this day about how I zeroed in on someone and said, "I want THAT one" and got his attention. It's all in the wrist - you just pick the one who appeals and is most likely *to* pay you some attention. He was tall. Dilliest smile you ever saw. He was ... unfortunate. Sigh.
My Val.
It's funny. Since she died, I talk to her - "Vally" I call her. I NEVER called her this in life. Some part of it is necessary now, and some part of it almost offends me for being unprecedented. Too cutesy, perhaps. But she's so dear. She was so damned small, in her hospital beds. I miss her.
Summer nights.
Right now, it's so humid in Richmond you just feel WET. Even walking the dog at 6:45 a.m., the humiture is intense. Even at ten o'clock at night, letting her out for the last time, dark - maybe even breezy - it is HOT outside.
Summer used to be what my dad called "soft" nights. Oh, it was still warm, even back then. But it didn't seem punishing. Maybe nothing does when you're half the age I am now, healthy, and ignorant of the future. Not that our future was bad. Val found the best husband she ever could have had. She had joy and SO much love. She and he knew what could come, and agreed.
No regrets.
That summer. Not regrettable. Not even a guilty-pleasure memory. I'm not ashamed we were hair-band chicks, into that kind of guy, brash, loud, laughing. As much as Val's laugh still rings, I never ever faded beside her. Neither of us ever did second-fiddle. We were the Cinderella twins from their old videos. We were catty, and open, and good in our skin, and interested and interesting. We were the 80s. We were the 90s. We were good with it all (and, no - neither of us was ever into the big-hair thing for *ourselves*).
The one time V ever faded into the background around me.
She was with me when I met Mr. X. It actually took about a year or two, that meeting.
It was the crack of the new millennium, and as an 80s throwback we went up to a bar in Springfield, to see the Bullet Boys, who sucked and had ZERO crowd. It wasn't even any fun for making fun of those who'd never gotten the memo that the 80s were over, because almost nobody was there. One other table - us two girls, maybe three guys. I don't remember most of them, because a *CLICK* happened. Mike. It wasn't sexual, but I've rarely experienced chemistry like that. He was fun to talk to, we stayed in touch on email and by phone, tried dating ever so briefly, then he met his wonderful, gorgeous, immensely generous wife.
November, 2002. I've just broken up with the "should be good on paper" guy with the SOUL PATCH (good grief, I though I was getting old at 34, and shouldn't be "picky"), and Mike's band is playing that same club, opening for - I think - Blind Guardian. The line this time wrapped around the building, and it. was. cold. Val and I get out of the car and end up in an alley around back, walking by hundreds along our way, wondering why the doors haven't opened, and hearing lots of grumbles. Only one attractive guy in the whole lot, and he's probably way too young. We take our places. And wait. And wait. I actually sent her back to the car at one point, to get my big wool coat. I hadn't wanted to wear it in the bar, but out here, waiting interminably, a little plastic jacket is not doing the job. The cold stabs from below. Val and I are shivering, miserable.
It turns out, BG's equipment was not compatible with American electrical systems. Which one might have thought could have been solved before several hundred people ended up stranded in the cold, but so-eth these things go-eth. Once we are inside, I go to touch up my face, and find the blackberry lipgloss in frozen shards, bleeding, and recalcitrant about remediation. I feel annoyed and Of Constrained Attractiveness for the rest of the night. And just as well, for the most part I can't find that hot guy anyway. We hang with Mike and the lovely (seriously - she gave me a FOOT MASSAGE, that wonderful woman) Mrs. Mike, and the night ends up being a lot of fun. Good company goes a long way.
At the end, coming out of the venue itself, there is an outer bar. Pool tables, flourescent lighting for my already not-so-flossy-feeling self, and ...Val pulls on me, "Diane, get a load" - and it's that guy. Definitely too young.
I dither and linger, Val takes a bathroom break, I'm on my own by some pool table, make eye contact, smile. He still doesn't come over. When she comes back, I grab her and make a beeline because it is late and we've got a hundred miles to go.
And, not being but so selfish, I leave the opportunities (between chicks hitting on him) open. "We just have to know. Are you single?"
"Sure!" he says.
And, Val told me, she might as well not have been there. "He lit up." "He was only looking at you."
I got his email and we booked it.
That's how I met Mr. X. Who turned out not to be 25 after all. What his age *was*, relative to my 34 at that time, we shall not discuss, because he's a coy one. But I won't say I wasn't glad he wasn't a baby.
Ahh, my Vally.
She was fun.
Val had taken me to Grace Street before, and I was used to venues, dating my rock star at college, going to gig after gig with him and all our musician friends. So cruising really seemed pointless to me, just driving around a wide block, traffic at a standstill, and only one stretch of it really populated. It was usually impossible to get a spot on that stretch; so you'd crawl through the crowded, merc-lit street, and then it was half an hour around a boring circuit to get back again. If you *could* get a spot, though ... it was a fun way to blow an hour before actually going somewhere.
That year, it was Paradise City - Axl in his white jeans; the ageless avatar of Slash stripped out of black and hat, actually sexy under there - and Pour Some Sugar On Me. Every idiot with a too-large spoiler and giant speakers rigged in a hatchback serenaded the entirety of the cruising audience, and I can't remember a single other track that dominated. Those two songs were THAT. SUMMER.
Valerie died to the strains of Paradise City. And Def Leppard was her favorite band.
It is my punishment, and my poignancy, that Axl's damned white jeans will make me cry forevermore.
I miss my girl. She was my sister. Her husband, now - I guess he's my brother.
The orangey light outside the huge HQ building for the Division of Motor Vehicles. Me and Val being cute and using fake names. I was Sabrina because I'd liked that cartoon as a kid, and the name seemed exotic to me. Valerie used Penelope.
Sometimes, now, loving on my dog Penelope, it's not just her I am hugging. She's my girl too.
I never did know why she used Penelope - just, it amused her. It was so unlikely. And boys. Boys trying anything will believe anything. I mean - Sabrina? We both dared 'em to disbelieve. They never bothered to; honesty beside the point, when you are cruising.
Pour Some Sugar On Me.
Both the songs are anthemic, and impossibly catchy. Cryin' is playing at me right now - and we loved us some Aerosmith. (Val had a story about being a groupie and chewing gum.) But Sugar and Paradise, that was all anyone ever heard. When your car was inching forward, and the heated dark breeze of a Richmond summer night carried the distant strains of either of those songs back to us on the long slog through the boring 75% of the circuit - that was the promise. "You're almost there." Almost to the relevant part. The part that is lit, and full of people (boys) and music. The interesting bit.
Scent of hot asphalt hanging in the air, and not a little exhaust, including diesel. Voices, shouting, unrestrained singing. That kid on the skateboard, the first person I ever TOLD I was named Sabrina.
Valerie's laughter.
My girl.
We'd make a few turns. Or park, if we could. Then the lateral move, more parking, more crowded blocks, and The Jade Elephant, or Newgate Prison (hilariously, a dive bar unbeloved by Virginia Commonwealth University Police - now their headquarters - I guess they won). Dirt Woman sitting on his porch. "You can get the dirt off Donnie, but you can't get Donnie off the Dirt!" The Lee X theater, I think defunct already by the early 90s. Grassy scrub lots. The 7-11, maybe convenient for some, but impossibly distant and useless for those of us in heels.
That guy who made his friends drive him around in an old limo. He was cute. He'd give us rides to our cars. Every boy Val ever dated, or was thinking about it. The night I brought The Elfin One, and she laughs to this day about how I zeroed in on someone and said, "I want THAT one" and got his attention. It's all in the wrist - you just pick the one who appeals and is most likely *to* pay you some attention. He was tall. Dilliest smile you ever saw. He was ... unfortunate. Sigh.
My Val.
It's funny. Since she died, I talk to her - "Vally" I call her. I NEVER called her this in life. Some part of it is necessary now, and some part of it almost offends me for being unprecedented. Too cutesy, perhaps. But she's so dear. She was so damned small, in her hospital beds. I miss her.
Summer nights.
Right now, it's so humid in Richmond you just feel WET. Even walking the dog at 6:45 a.m., the humiture is intense. Even at ten o'clock at night, letting her out for the last time, dark - maybe even breezy - it is HOT outside.
Summer used to be what my dad called "soft" nights. Oh, it was still warm, even back then. But it didn't seem punishing. Maybe nothing does when you're half the age I am now, healthy, and ignorant of the future. Not that our future was bad. Val found the best husband she ever could have had. She had joy and SO much love. She and he knew what could come, and agreed.
No regrets.
That summer. Not regrettable. Not even a guilty-pleasure memory. I'm not ashamed we were hair-band chicks, into that kind of guy, brash, loud, laughing. As much as Val's laugh still rings, I never ever faded beside her. Neither of us ever did second-fiddle. We were the Cinderella twins from their old videos. We were catty, and open, and good in our skin, and interested and interesting. We were the 80s. We were the 90s. We were good with it all (and, no - neither of us was ever into the big-hair thing for *ourselves*).
The one time V ever faded into the background around me.
She was with me when I met Mr. X. It actually took about a year or two, that meeting.
It was the crack of the new millennium, and as an 80s throwback we went up to a bar in Springfield, to see the Bullet Boys, who sucked and had ZERO crowd. It wasn't even any fun for making fun of those who'd never gotten the memo that the 80s were over, because almost nobody was there. One other table - us two girls, maybe three guys. I don't remember most of them, because a *CLICK* happened. Mike. It wasn't sexual, but I've rarely experienced chemistry like that. He was fun to talk to, we stayed in touch on email and by phone, tried dating ever so briefly, then he met his wonderful, gorgeous, immensely generous wife.
November, 2002. I've just broken up with the "should be good on paper" guy with the SOUL PATCH (good grief, I though I was getting old at 34, and shouldn't be "picky"), and Mike's band is playing that same club, opening for - I think - Blind Guardian. The line this time wrapped around the building, and it. was. cold. Val and I get out of the car and end up in an alley around back, walking by hundreds along our way, wondering why the doors haven't opened, and hearing lots of grumbles. Only one attractive guy in the whole lot, and he's probably way too young. We take our places. And wait. And wait. I actually sent her back to the car at one point, to get my big wool coat. I hadn't wanted to wear it in the bar, but out here, waiting interminably, a little plastic jacket is not doing the job. The cold stabs from below. Val and I are shivering, miserable.
It turns out, BG's equipment was not compatible with American electrical systems. Which one might have thought could have been solved before several hundred people ended up stranded in the cold, but so-eth these things go-eth. Once we are inside, I go to touch up my face, and find the blackberry lipgloss in frozen shards, bleeding, and recalcitrant about remediation. I feel annoyed and Of Constrained Attractiveness for the rest of the night. And just as well, for the most part I can't find that hot guy anyway. We hang with Mike and the lovely (seriously - she gave me a FOOT MASSAGE, that wonderful woman) Mrs. Mike, and the night ends up being a lot of fun. Good company goes a long way.
At the end, coming out of the venue itself, there is an outer bar. Pool tables, flourescent lighting for my already not-so-flossy-feeling self, and ...Val pulls on me, "Diane, get a load" - and it's that guy. Definitely too young.
I dither and linger, Val takes a bathroom break, I'm on my own by some pool table, make eye contact, smile. He still doesn't come over. When she comes back, I grab her and make a beeline because it is late and we've got a hundred miles to go.
And, not being but so selfish, I leave the opportunities (between chicks hitting on him) open. "We just have to know. Are you single?"
"Sure!" he says.
And, Val told me, she might as well not have been there. "He lit up." "He was only looking at you."
I got his email and we booked it.
That's how I met Mr. X. Who turned out not to be 25 after all. What his age *was*, relative to my 34 at that time, we shall not discuss, because he's a coy one. But I won't say I wasn't glad he wasn't a baby.
Ahh, my Vally.
She was fun.
Monday, June 24, 2019
I miss ... and therein lies everything
I miss her. She and I weren't truly close until our twenties, but we knew each other from the age of twelve. In high school, we shared that certain world of boys we liked (I have never been famed for liking the same boys as everybody else, so this actually does have specific meaning). She seemed brave to me, more daring. Once we got out of school, and were together because we wanted to be, we were daring together - more and more often, until she was my sister.
Sister.
She's in my DNA. And she is gone. And I hate that. Even practicing gratitude, even counting the blessing that she was - that she IS, dammit. Even being glad I got to love that girl, and was loved by her. Nope. It's not enough, because I was only good enough on my own schedule. I was too little, and too late, and we both did that, but the last too-late was mine.
She's left us all to deal with these scurrying circles. She, bless all of her ashen bones, is at peace, I pray.
Today, I listen to old music, and Dokken seems to be transforming to make me think of her. Alone Again and Heaven Sent, no longer cis/het/sexual love songs, but longing strains of my lost friend.
I miss her.
She was SO alive.
***
I miss him.
Even in a dream, all I have left is "that you ARE" - telling myself in a dreaming brain, that it is enough only knowing he exists, and telling myself that by way of "telling" a chimera of him: "just knowing you exist."
It *is* enough - knowing whom I have loved, knowing I was loved. But distance. Depression. Distortion. They make it hard. He's a Daemon of air and darkness, and I miss him. It's all we have, to make life bearable.
If only he could be alive as she was. I pray it for him. Never sure if it does any good.
He's in my heart and head and soul. He isn't "gone" - not dead; only curved into himself; too distant. I can't even know whether to love that or hate it. The wall I am pressed against is blank.
Scurrying circles. Small ones. Vicious.
I shift to Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here - and it is nothing like him. And its drawn-out softness, its langour and melancholy and desolate gorgeousness transform me. And I am quiet.
I miss him.
***
I miss writing.
It means so much, and it means nothing. Gets me through, and on the other side of "through" I find nowhere.
Even so.
I miss writing.
Sister.
She's in my DNA. And she is gone. And I hate that. Even practicing gratitude, even counting the blessing that she was - that she IS, dammit. Even being glad I got to love that girl, and was loved by her. Nope. It's not enough, because I was only good enough on my own schedule. I was too little, and too late, and we both did that, but the last too-late was mine.
She's left us all to deal with these scurrying circles. She, bless all of her ashen bones, is at peace, I pray.
Today, I listen to old music, and Dokken seems to be transforming to make me think of her. Alone Again and Heaven Sent, no longer cis/het/sexual love songs, but longing strains of my lost friend.
I miss her.
She was SO alive.
***
I miss him.
Even in a dream, all I have left is "that you ARE" - telling myself in a dreaming brain, that it is enough only knowing he exists, and telling myself that by way of "telling" a chimera of him: "just knowing you exist."
It *is* enough - knowing whom I have loved, knowing I was loved. But distance. Depression. Distortion. They make it hard. He's a Daemon of air and darkness, and I miss him. It's all we have, to make life bearable.
If only he could be alive as she was. I pray it for him. Never sure if it does any good.
He's in my heart and head and soul. He isn't "gone" - not dead; only curved into himself; too distant. I can't even know whether to love that or hate it. The wall I am pressed against is blank.
Scurrying circles. Small ones. Vicious.
I shift to Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here - and it is nothing like him. And its drawn-out softness, its langour and melancholy and desolate gorgeousness transform me. And I am quiet.
I miss him.
***
I miss writing.
It means so much, and it means nothing. Gets me through, and on the other side of "through" I find nowhere.
Even so.
I miss writing.
Wednesday, April 17, 2019
... wait for it ...
... because, for my writing friends, this is a REALLY good column about writing.
It's also good for the advice-column that it actually is.
Layers. Mmmmm.
It's also good for the advice-column that it actually is.
Layers. Mmmmm.
Monday, March 4, 2019
Sturm und Traum
This morning, it was one of those utterly implausible, plausible, detailed dreams. I was shot in a mass shooting - four times. My right flank, side (right in the imaginary tattoo - though I do have one on my left), shoulder, and right below my eye. As happens in dreams, I was initially terrified of death, but my dream kept going. Something about getting to my house (the one I grew up in, but now mortgagetually "mine"; that address seems to have appeared more, through the past year, hmm), getting to my mom, protecting someone else, and failing, failing, failing, failing to get ME to a hospital. At some point I was driving myself, again through the old neighborhood, not apparently to get care.
In the dream, the medical upshot of my injuries was unclear apart from bruises rising up from each bloodless bullet hole. One wound, indeed, couldn't be seen for the bruising and the tattoo. Even in the dream, I dismissed the caliber as a small one, since I could keep moving. For what seemed like hours.
The thing is, the real impact of the dream was that first moment: that fear of death. The shock.
The stunning truth of it.
I'm not special. ANY of us is subject to dying this way, in the United States. Land that I love. Sigh.
2019 has not been the worst year, for me, in recent memory. Yes, we still endure under the increasingly authoritarian and demented regime of the puppet Drumpf. Yes, there is much still to do. But even with that, much is happening, too. HR8 passed last week, and in a time of inured sensibilities, Cohen's testimony was scathing. (His redemption narrative, I could personally live without, but perhaps the benedictions he has received are not positivities best dismissed.)
And but personally, so far this calendar year is kicking 2018's ass.
The time I have taken off (quite a bit, so early in the year) has been for VACATION, not illness and death and mourning. So far.
I have spent time with far-flung friends, and family-by-adoption, people I love, and a new puppy I don't have to train. Mom's doing better, and my house has not fallen down around my ears. Yet.
Three four-day weekends in, I have celebrated a birthday, a bar mitzvah, and a long-distance visit.
2019 ... well, to quote something I said about 2009: it's been better than it had a right to be.
Breathing is good.
Now if I can just avoid being shot.
In the dream, the medical upshot of my injuries was unclear apart from bruises rising up from each bloodless bullet hole. One wound, indeed, couldn't be seen for the bruising and the tattoo. Even in the dream, I dismissed the caliber as a small one, since I could keep moving. For what seemed like hours.
The thing is, the real impact of the dream was that first moment: that fear of death. The shock.
The stunning truth of it.
I'm not special. ANY of us is subject to dying this way, in the United States. Land that I love. Sigh.
2019 has not been the worst year, for me, in recent memory. Yes, we still endure under the increasingly authoritarian and demented regime of the puppet Drumpf. Yes, there is much still to do. But even with that, much is happening, too. HR8 passed last week, and in a time of inured sensibilities, Cohen's testimony was scathing. (His redemption narrative, I could personally live without, but perhaps the benedictions he has received are not positivities best dismissed.)
And but personally, so far this calendar year is kicking 2018's ass.
The time I have taken off (quite a bit, so early in the year) has been for VACATION, not illness and death and mourning. So far.
I have spent time with far-flung friends, and family-by-adoption, people I love, and a new puppy I don't have to train. Mom's doing better, and my house has not fallen down around my ears. Yet.
Three four-day weekends in, I have celebrated a birthday, a bar mitzvah, and a long-distance visit.
2019 ... well, to quote something I said about 2009: it's been better than it had a right to be.
Breathing is good.
Now if I can just avoid being shot.
Saturday, March 2, 2019
Collection
I am a fifty-one year old woman, and this very blog reflects that experience. Take a look at the history of the vanity tag; it tells a story.
Yep. This is, more and more, informative of my spirituality.
My personal favorite Hawai'ian deity is Kamapua'a, but this guy actually does hang on one of my walls. (My print is definitely worth less than $5k.) Another interesting tale of repatriation and also a story about provenance.
Sigh. When you check your stats, and all the Russian and UAE bots seem to be swarming to the post you wrote about your best friend, who just died. The post you wrote in 2015, when that wasn't even conceivable.
Ahww, man. Guilty ...
A reduced sense of visibility does not necessarily constrain experience. Associated with greater empathy and compassion, invisibility directs us toward a more humanitarian view of the larger world. This diminished status can, in fact, sustain and inform—rather than limit—our lives. Going unrecognized can, paradoxically, help us recognize our place in the larger scheme of things.
Yep. This is, more and more, informative of my spirituality.
My personal favorite Hawai'ian deity is Kamapua'a, but this guy actually does hang on one of my walls. (My print is definitely worth less than $5k.) Another interesting tale of repatriation and also a story about provenance.
Sigh. When you check your stats, and all the Russian and UAE bots seem to be swarming to the post you wrote about your best friend, who just died. The post you wrote in 2015, when that wasn't even conceivable.
Ahww, man. Guilty ...
In this moment of political division, Garry sees a spiritual test. The temptation to discard others has always been strong, and in some ways it is stronger than ever. But this is an old problem, maybe the oldest, he says. The Bible is all about overcoming the temptation to discard, to dismiss, to unfriend. If it were always easy to love your neighbor as you love yourself, it wouldn’t be a commandment. “We trust anger. We believe anger gets things done,”
Wednesday, November 7, 2018
I have eaten the plums
The sun is back out. America's midterm elections are over. My friend V ... well. Losing her is awful, it's cruel. But she is not hurting now. Doctors can't use her body to experiment now. And those who love her - I am humbled they embrace me. Her husband, her family, her beloved friends: beautiful, beautiful, wonderful people.
This time has been hard. Like so many families, the remains of our nuclear unit - just me, mom, and my brother now - endure terrible political strain in these times. But, just for this morning, it's virtual hugs and three courses of "I love you." Because these strains have everyday, real consequences - this has, in some ways, been even harder than watching my lifelong friend die. Or, perhaps, it only got in the way of comprehending and mourning. I only know this has been the hardest thing to bear, over this past week.
We are all enduring a confluence. My brother is traveling to the memorial of a friend of his, and beautiful V's will be remembered on Saturday. As her kids do this, my mom is now watching her own oldest friend in town "giving back", as some say in the South. It may be we all suffer the loss of our dear Deebo, my stepfather - and each of our dear friends.
The light of inspiration peeked out not too long ago - unsurprisingly, after The Conference, but also very much under the influence of other friendships. Leila, especially, uniquely lights my creative way. She and I have so much in common, but we write such different works, and about the time I did a recent beta-read for her, I also happened to find the ENDING for a short work we began an embarrassing number of years ago in our writing group. It's been drafted two different ways, I let it settle in a certain direction, and for now it is sitting quietly, resting, rising, awaiting both her feedback and my final attentions.
Writing. Feels. So. Good.
There truly is nothing else like writing.
And so, with voting done and the sun out and my family whole ... I open up the WIP, the big dog, the "real" work. The novel. Just open it. I shall scroll about in it, find something to alight upon, and read a little bit.
Research feels like a good way to go. I fear it may have to be, at long last, the pogrom. (Yes, now, of all moments.)
Sometimes, the way writing feels "good" is different from other times. It's not always pleasure.
Sometimes, it's memorial.
This time has been hard. Like so many families, the remains of our nuclear unit - just me, mom, and my brother now - endure terrible political strain in these times. But, just for this morning, it's virtual hugs and three courses of "I love you." Because these strains have everyday, real consequences - this has, in some ways, been even harder than watching my lifelong friend die. Or, perhaps, it only got in the way of comprehending and mourning. I only know this has been the hardest thing to bear, over this past week.
We are all enduring a confluence. My brother is traveling to the memorial of a friend of his, and beautiful V's will be remembered on Saturday. As her kids do this, my mom is now watching her own oldest friend in town "giving back", as some say in the South. It may be we all suffer the loss of our dear Deebo, my stepfather - and each of our dear friends.
The light of inspiration peeked out not too long ago - unsurprisingly, after The Conference, but also very much under the influence of other friendships. Leila, especially, uniquely lights my creative way. She and I have so much in common, but we write such different works, and about the time I did a recent beta-read for her, I also happened to find the ENDING for a short work we began an embarrassing number of years ago in our writing group. It's been drafted two different ways, I let it settle in a certain direction, and for now it is sitting quietly, resting, rising, awaiting both her feedback and my final attentions.
Writing. Feels. So. Good.
There truly is nothing else like writing.
And so, with voting done and the sun out and my family whole ... I open up the WIP, the big dog, the "real" work. The novel. Just open it. I shall scroll about in it, find something to alight upon, and read a little bit.
Research feels like a good way to go. I fear it may have to be, at long last, the pogrom. (Yes, now, of all moments.)
Sometimes, the way writing feels "good" is different from other times. It's not always pleasure.
Sometimes, it's memorial.
Saturday, November 3, 2018
Getting the hang of Thursdays
Publishing late because ... that's how writing (even a blog) goes at times like this ...
Before me lies a sea of irritations. The thing I see is that they all ebb and flow in three currents, and all of these currents sway and merge, and the three are related.
On Tuesday morning, one of my oldest friends died. She has been there for me in situations where no other fried, not even Mr. X, could stand behind me. She has been quietly present, she has been raucously beside me, she has been kind and crazy and tolerant and irrepressible. She died with a hundred health issues, a good husband, a heart of gold, still fizzing electrically even after, really, our girl was gone from us.
Yesterday, I donned mourning - for a girl who loved Hallowe'en, I put on my looks-like-a-comic-character-makeup, and changed the dress to black. It was a hard day, but leavened by good people all around me (it will never stop being a blessing, how overwhelmingly human my colleagues and employer are), a good meal with my mom, and trick-or-treaters.
Today was harder.
Reaching the point, by 2:30, where I could not comprehend that the day was moving so slowly, I could barely pick up another envelope to open it. It took me all day long to open the incoming pile. Something far beyond "fatigue" pressed down on me, and I succumbed, I let it press. Exhausting and torturous. And it's strange, because last night and the night before, I have slept. Going to bed pretty early, indeed, and not getting up at the crack of 5:40.
I was putting off calling one of my guys. I knew he wanted to put me on a new project, and at the same time I was fighting off some niggling persnicketude from our "Services" center, and - did I mention about that succumbing thing?
My boss needed me to set up a call, so I toddled to his office, and the few steps that took, the conversation with a human, woke me up a little bit. So I called the guy back, and ... it turns out that he's fighting some niggling persnicketude from our "Services" center.
And a month ago, I was fighting a very related form of? Niggling persnicketude from our "Services" center.
Is it weird, that talking with my frustrated guy out in Texas, telling him that this is an "opportunity" for Operations wasn't even me taking a bullet or making a joke?
There is a sea of irritations, and there are three currents, and the currents are swirling in niggling persnicketude. And I can, perhaps - at least learn enough about the niggles to begin to deal with them.
I was in the hospital with V and her husband W two and a half weeks ago, when it looked like she might be dying. That afternoon, they "saved her life." She was transferred to a new hospital after that, maybe-diagnosed and then not diagnosed with yet another shockingly rare and dangerously mortal disease. They found a surgical complication we knew was a problem was worse than previously known. More surgery. More life support.
Really, though, no more *life*.
On Tuesday barely after four a.m., W called me and I caromed around my bedroom putting some clothes on my body and thinking what I would need at the hospital. I got there at five. And we sat. Watched the sun rise. Family and friends came.
It was the first I have been with V in too long. All these hospital visits; I have been a poor friend over the past year. And it is too late. Except to be there for her family, for W.
She died with music playing.
I still can't believe she is gone.
I still can't believe she is gone ...
Before me lies a sea of irritations. The thing I see is that they all ebb and flow in three currents, and all of these currents sway and merge, and the three are related.
On Tuesday morning, one of my oldest friends died. She has been there for me in situations where no other fried, not even Mr. X, could stand behind me. She has been quietly present, she has been raucously beside me, she has been kind and crazy and tolerant and irrepressible. She died with a hundred health issues, a good husband, a heart of gold, still fizzing electrically even after, really, our girl was gone from us.
Yesterday, I donned mourning - for a girl who loved Hallowe'en, I put on my looks-like-a-comic-character-makeup, and changed the dress to black. It was a hard day, but leavened by good people all around me (it will never stop being a blessing, how overwhelmingly human my colleagues and employer are), a good meal with my mom, and trick-or-treaters.
Today was harder.
Reaching the point, by 2:30, where I could not comprehend that the day was moving so slowly, I could barely pick up another envelope to open it. It took me all day long to open the incoming pile. Something far beyond "fatigue" pressed down on me, and I succumbed, I let it press. Exhausting and torturous. And it's strange, because last night and the night before, I have slept. Going to bed pretty early, indeed, and not getting up at the crack of 5:40.
I was putting off calling one of my guys. I knew he wanted to put me on a new project, and at the same time I was fighting off some niggling persnicketude from our "Services" center, and - did I mention about that succumbing thing?
My boss needed me to set up a call, so I toddled to his office, and the few steps that took, the conversation with a human, woke me up a little bit. So I called the guy back, and ... it turns out that he's fighting some niggling persnicketude from our "Services" center.
And a month ago, I was fighting a very related form of? Niggling persnicketude from our "Services" center.
Is it weird, that talking with my frustrated guy out in Texas, telling him that this is an "opportunity" for Operations wasn't even me taking a bullet or making a joke?
There is a sea of irritations, and there are three currents, and the currents are swirling in niggling persnicketude. And I can, perhaps - at least learn enough about the niggles to begin to deal with them.
I was in the hospital with V and her husband W two and a half weeks ago, when it looked like she might be dying. That afternoon, they "saved her life." She was transferred to a new hospital after that, maybe-diagnosed and then not diagnosed with yet another shockingly rare and dangerously mortal disease. They found a surgical complication we knew was a problem was worse than previously known. More surgery. More life support.
Really, though, no more *life*.
On Tuesday barely after four a.m., W called me and I caromed around my bedroom putting some clothes on my body and thinking what I would need at the hospital. I got there at five. And we sat. Watched the sun rise. Family and friends came.
It was the first I have been with V in too long. All these hospital visits; I have been a poor friend over the past year. And it is too late. Except to be there for her family, for W.
She died with music playing.
I still can't believe she is gone.
I still can't believe she is gone ...
Friday, September 21, 2018
Yet more reasons we call him "Beloved" Ex
He shared this with me, and the love is sensational. It's way out.
Enjoy.
The click beyond? Shine on You Crazy Diamond. Which is just worth it for SYCD, because seventies progressive trippy music is impossibly, irreplaceably magnificent. Memory, memories. Yes.
Enjoy.
The click beyond? Shine on You Crazy Diamond. Which is just worth it for SYCD, because seventies progressive trippy music is impossibly, irreplaceably magnificent. Memory, memories. Yes.
Sunday, September 16, 2018
Knowing, and not knowing
2018 spent, so far, wrapped up so tight in my own family, in our loss ... I only just found out a friend has been, essentially, widowed. The last time I saw her, late in May, was the last time she worked where I knew her.
Tears fall on my chest, and I think of Mr. X - about whom I have not even blogged now, maybe in years - and my whole soul begs ... please. Don't let this be us. Him *or* me.
It is a bruise, it is a guilt.
It is horror, the truest sense. Guilt must be the greatest horror.
A friend told me, "She was always excited to see you."
I had no idea. It means ... too much.
Tears fall on my chest. This brick, this fat, this bone, this blood.
Life is so brutal, and short. Surely, that is to some point.
Surely.
?
Tears fall on my chest, and I think of Mr. X - about whom I have not even blogged now, maybe in years - and my whole soul begs ... please. Don't let this be us. Him *or* me.
It is a bruise, it is a guilt.
It is horror, the truest sense. Guilt must be the greatest horror.
A friend told me, "She was always excited to see you."
I had no idea. It means ... too much.
Tears fall on my chest. This brick, this fat, this bone, this blood.
Life is so brutal, and short. Surely, that is to some point.
Surely.
?
Wednesday, July 25, 2018
Reunion
My vacation this year was a trip to go see Beloved Ex. Back in our day, BEx was in a band, and a few months back he mentioned to me they were planning a 30th reunion show, with the original lineup. Intriguing! I thought it'd be funny if I showed up, and ... ended up, somehow, deciding to actually show up.
I haven't seen that town or those guys in 24 years and a month. BEx and I split one week before our first anniversary, and though that wasn't quite the end of our marriage, it was the end of my time in Ohio. I never even saw my in-laws again, and only one of my friends from that time.
Driving into that city for the first time in all those years was cognitive dissonance extraordinaire. The old classic rock station was playing the same music they played back then (not "classic" at the time, I suppose ...). I knew how to get around, but the look of the place was alien to me. It was something like the reverse of a phantom limb - I could touch, I could see, but the sense was gone somehow. The texture, the earth from which the town rose and was built, was impossibly strange.
Being of a Certain Age, too, hormones got the best of me and I cried coming into town. Pearl Jam's "Black" didn't help, though the reasons for that are a bit personal to get into.
Before hitting my hotel, I spun briefly around my college campus - BEx was my "townie" back then - and was struck by how easily I found the places I lived and knew, and how strange they looked to me. And how TINY that campus is.
BEx and I had a date that night, and of course I wanted to look good. I got a bit of rest, cleaned up from the road, curled the oddly-colored hair, put on a dress. When he called to say he was on the way, I was ready. I saw him out the hotel window, and watched his car arrive, watched him get out and look about a bit, head inside. He looked good, but I knew that. How I look these days was a concern, but there's nothing you can do about that once it's time to answer the door.
I got a hug to "squeeze all the mean juice out of me" (he learned that one from my dad - aww), and we went to one of those places that was out of our price range in the 80s, has probably been there since the early 60s, and seems to have the same wait staff and decor it always had. The pizza was good, the service ... personal. Heh. Then we went for a walk on campus, through a night impossibly blessed with a lovely breeze and beautiful sky. He drove me around town until fatigue took over, and we called it an evening. I hadn't recognized much, beyond the walking-distance environs of my college years. Our stomping grounds after marriage, we didn't even get to.
Day two, something changed, and I operated more as if I were in a place I once called home. Whatever was different, my brain adjusted to, and it wasn't so strange.
I picked him up this time, and we spent a while with his mom. Let it be said here, if my Ex is "Beloved", so too were his folks. Though it made no sense on paper, his dad and I always liked each other, and his mom is a lovely lady it was always nice to have women's time with. They were generous, my F-I-L was really funny, and she was as sweet as BEx. Catching up on a drizzly morning was nice, and she seems to be well.
We wandered about for the day, among other things finding a GREAT bookstore, and came back in the evening to meet both his folks for chicken, which we brought along. Dinner was convivial, his dad more laid back than years back, and it felt like family. Maybe in some way it was family (hey, apparently I'm godmother to one of their grandkids; and we never did hate each other, so it works out). Even if not, it was just a nice, easygoing meal with people I enjoy.
The Really Big Show was Saturday, and the guys in the band had let BEx invite me to come see them and get the chance to actually hang out a little outside of the show. The drummer gave me the biggest, warmest greeting I got from anyone through the whole visit. Sweaty from loading out and some rehearsal, he grabbed me in a bear hug and rubbed his sweaty face on my face. Heh. He seemed genuinely happy to see me, and I've always loved the guy, so that was pretty great. Hey, and - sweaty drummers - what're you going to do, hate 'em? Nope.
All the guys were good to see, generous and still the great guys I remember with a lot of fondness. Sound check was impressive, and I sat through a couple songs before wandering off to let them do their jobs.
Campus is just up the hill from the venue, so taking some time to go up there, I was serenaded by the band in the distance - walking the student union, heading up the hill to the chapel.
The chapel on this campus is absolutely filled with mid-century design and really amazing art, and as the rain stepped up, I stayed in there for a good while, taking lots of pictures. The stained glass windows, the floor, the meditation chapel, the whole sanctuary. Even the lights. I even tried to go up the steeple tower, but it was locked at the top. No harm/no foul, I was very glad the chapel was open.
Back down to my car in the rain, the whole campus was empty. Not silent, of course, though the reverb from down the hill was low. Here, the familiarity was at its height, and when I saw the statue of the undergrad I had forgotten existed, I was genuinely happy to see it again.
In the brick walk were a few memorial items ... my creative writing professor and his wife ... a girl whose unique surname and year of attendance might have made her the daughter of the one single "boyfriend" I had from the school itself. Huh. He was a nice guy too. Physics major, actually.
The show was perfect, and two of my best friends from those years, the other "girl with the band" and a singer from our crowd I always remembered with a smile, were there. "Come to my bosom!" the first said, which was hilarious and so absolutely her a thing to say.
The whole visit kind of felt like coming to a welcoming bosom, really.
I've shed my prejudices about that town - my snobbery towards it was bitter for long, stupid years - and never did resent the people in it. Seeing the place again, and those old friends, was a balm.
One of the things several people said to me, unbidden, was how much I needed to get away. Some knew I'd lost my stepfather, but that they could see how much that and everything since has been "on me" was a bit of a surprise. I don't know that BEx troubled to say anything other than to family - I would be surprised - so apparently, my sense of relief to be out on my own was pretty palpable.
And it was a blessing and a blast.
He and I wandered around again on Sunday, one more great bookstore (this one with a cat; I do love cat-owned bookstores) and an indulgent dessert at the local dairy. And that was it.
I'm grateful to have been able to see my friends, even my old school (of which I am less forgiving than this city I used to hate, though the grounds are not responsible for that), and my old home. I was there for most of almost nine years, which astonishes me to count out on my stubby fingers.
Geez, all those YEARS I knew that place. It was my home, even when I wanted to deny that.
And it welcomed me back and said, "Come to my bosom!"
Good trip. Good vacation.
And now ... back to work.
I haven't seen that town or those guys in 24 years and a month. BEx and I split one week before our first anniversary, and though that wasn't quite the end of our marriage, it was the end of my time in Ohio. I never even saw my in-laws again, and only one of my friends from that time.
Driving into that city for the first time in all those years was cognitive dissonance extraordinaire. The old classic rock station was playing the same music they played back then (not "classic" at the time, I suppose ...). I knew how to get around, but the look of the place was alien to me. It was something like the reverse of a phantom limb - I could touch, I could see, but the sense was gone somehow. The texture, the earth from which the town rose and was built, was impossibly strange.
Being of a Certain Age, too, hormones got the best of me and I cried coming into town. Pearl Jam's "Black" didn't help, though the reasons for that are a bit personal to get into.
Before hitting my hotel, I spun briefly around my college campus - BEx was my "townie" back then - and was struck by how easily I found the places I lived and knew, and how strange they looked to me. And how TINY that campus is.
BEx and I had a date that night, and of course I wanted to look good. I got a bit of rest, cleaned up from the road, curled the oddly-colored hair, put on a dress. When he called to say he was on the way, I was ready. I saw him out the hotel window, and watched his car arrive, watched him get out and look about a bit, head inside. He looked good, but I knew that. How I look these days was a concern, but there's nothing you can do about that once it's time to answer the door.
I got a hug to "squeeze all the mean juice out of me" (he learned that one from my dad - aww), and we went to one of those places that was out of our price range in the 80s, has probably been there since the early 60s, and seems to have the same wait staff and decor it always had. The pizza was good, the service ... personal. Heh. Then we went for a walk on campus, through a night impossibly blessed with a lovely breeze and beautiful sky. He drove me around town until fatigue took over, and we called it an evening. I hadn't recognized much, beyond the walking-distance environs of my college years. Our stomping grounds after marriage, we didn't even get to.
Day two, something changed, and I operated more as if I were in a place I once called home. Whatever was different, my brain adjusted to, and it wasn't so strange.
I picked him up this time, and we spent a while with his mom. Let it be said here, if my Ex is "Beloved", so too were his folks. Though it made no sense on paper, his dad and I always liked each other, and his mom is a lovely lady it was always nice to have women's time with. They were generous, my F-I-L was really funny, and she was as sweet as BEx. Catching up on a drizzly morning was nice, and she seems to be well.
We wandered about for the day, among other things finding a GREAT bookstore, and came back in the evening to meet both his folks for chicken, which we brought along. Dinner was convivial, his dad more laid back than years back, and it felt like family. Maybe in some way it was family (hey, apparently I'm godmother to one of their grandkids; and we never did hate each other, so it works out). Even if not, it was just a nice, easygoing meal with people I enjoy.
The Really Big Show was Saturday, and the guys in the band had let BEx invite me to come see them and get the chance to actually hang out a little outside of the show. The drummer gave me the biggest, warmest greeting I got from anyone through the whole visit. Sweaty from loading out and some rehearsal, he grabbed me in a bear hug and rubbed his sweaty face on my face. Heh. He seemed genuinely happy to see me, and I've always loved the guy, so that was pretty great. Hey, and - sweaty drummers - what're you going to do, hate 'em? Nope.
All the guys were good to see, generous and still the great guys I remember with a lot of fondness. Sound check was impressive, and I sat through a couple songs before wandering off to let them do their jobs.
Campus is just up the hill from the venue, so taking some time to go up there, I was serenaded by the band in the distance - walking the student union, heading up the hill to the chapel.
The chapel on this campus is absolutely filled with mid-century design and really amazing art, and as the rain stepped up, I stayed in there for a good while, taking lots of pictures. The stained glass windows, the floor, the meditation chapel, the whole sanctuary. Even the lights. I even tried to go up the steeple tower, but it was locked at the top. No harm/no foul, I was very glad the chapel was open.
Back down to my car in the rain, the whole campus was empty. Not silent, of course, though the reverb from down the hill was low. Here, the familiarity was at its height, and when I saw the statue of the undergrad I had forgotten existed, I was genuinely happy to see it again.
In the brick walk were a few memorial items ... my creative writing professor and his wife ... a girl whose unique surname and year of attendance might have made her the daughter of the one single "boyfriend" I had from the school itself. Huh. He was a nice guy too. Physics major, actually.
The show was perfect, and two of my best friends from those years, the other "girl with the band" and a singer from our crowd I always remembered with a smile, were there. "Come to my bosom!" the first said, which was hilarious and so absolutely her a thing to say.
The whole visit kind of felt like coming to a welcoming bosom, really.
I've shed my prejudices about that town - my snobbery towards it was bitter for long, stupid years - and never did resent the people in it. Seeing the place again, and those old friends, was a balm.
One of the things several people said to me, unbidden, was how much I needed to get away. Some knew I'd lost my stepfather, but that they could see how much that and everything since has been "on me" was a bit of a surprise. I don't know that BEx troubled to say anything other than to family - I would be surprised - so apparently, my sense of relief to be out on my own was pretty palpable.
And it was a blessing and a blast.
He and I wandered around again on Sunday, one more great bookstore (this one with a cat; I do love cat-owned bookstores) and an indulgent dessert at the local dairy. And that was it.
I'm grateful to have been able to see my friends, even my old school (of which I am less forgiving than this city I used to hate, though the grounds are not responsible for that), and my old home. I was there for most of almost nine years, which astonishes me to count out on my stubby fingers.
Geez, all those YEARS I knew that place. It was my home, even when I wanted to deny that.
And it welcomed me back and said, "Come to my bosom!"
Good trip. Good vacation.
And now ... back to work.
Monday, July 23, 2018
Monday, July 16, 2018
Framing
Yesterday, my mom and I got together for lunch, sat and waited a little while I got my car cleaned up a bit, and shopped. The first retail excursion was to the crafts store, where she had recently left a couple things to be framed.
One of these is the circa-1960 map of her home county. It includes a legend of several local businesses, and in the top right corner are two images of bank branches; one, the new and super modern DRIVE THROUGH branch. The other, the older building: where mom worked when she was a single lady. She pointed to the second floor corner window.
"That is the window where I looked out and saw your dad when he came for our first date."
They were set up on a blind date, so this was where she saw dad for the very first time.
The other thing she had framed was dad's system. He designed a certain system for CEBAF, now known as Jefferson Laboratory, the national accelerator facility. After sketching it out, he had a student put it in a proper rendering, and this, now, is in a really nice frame.
Dad worked with Jeffy Lab when they first started calling it that, and you can see by the nickname how Virginians are about change. Heh. Plus, it's fun to say - Jeffy Lab.
The framing guy did a splendid job with both pieces. The map was pretty fragile, even had small holes in it, but ironed out and mounted with UV glass, it is a gorgeous faded color, but the blue ink is really pretty. The frame is wood, with a nice interesting grain. It's warm.
The schematic is less amber, though the paper was decades old - and you can discern, if you care to, where it was folded. There is one whiter spot, where it was stored for years next to some smaller piece of paper that left a paler, un-faded square where it had lain. It is in a black frame, white-matted, but with the thinnest under-mat of black, to create a little outline around the document.
For someone into industrial design, this would be a pretty cool design piece. For me, it is an image literally mined out of the mind of my dad; who, not that I've ever mentioned this before on my blog (hah), happened to be a stupefyingly brilliant teacher and scientist.
The system's exactingly thin lines and detailed intricacy are beautiful; not entirely unlike a flow chart, balanced, and filled with information I don't understand. It all comes to a result that ... is an ongoing piece of the scientific community of the world.
My dad did that. He is *still* a part of the mechanism of study and discovery. Gone fifteen years and more, he still lives - in this little avatar of his work, which is an artifact we can enjoy - and in his WORK, which is still a part of the engine of science and study.
It's easy to remember, as his kid, that my brother and I, his grandkids - and mom, who lived with him for over forty years, and started this branch of family - are the products of his life. But it's heart-swelling to think: dad contributed to so much more than just "me" in this world (as good fathers do, right?). That his being a teacher frustrated and challenged and maybe inspired hundreds of others. Maybe thousands.
My dad touched so many things, as curious intellects do. He *made* much more than I probably ever will. Which so few of us will ever be able to say.
And it's out that second-floor window ... where that all began, just before the blind date did.
One of these is the circa-1960 map of her home county. It includes a legend of several local businesses, and in the top right corner are two images of bank branches; one, the new and super modern DRIVE THROUGH branch. The other, the older building: where mom worked when she was a single lady. She pointed to the second floor corner window.
"That is the window where I looked out and saw your dad when he came for our first date."
They were set up on a blind date, so this was where she saw dad for the very first time.
The other thing she had framed was dad's system. He designed a certain system for CEBAF, now known as Jefferson Laboratory, the national accelerator facility. After sketching it out, he had a student put it in a proper rendering, and this, now, is in a really nice frame.
Dad worked with Jeffy Lab when they first started calling it that, and you can see by the nickname how Virginians are about change. Heh. Plus, it's fun to say - Jeffy Lab.
The framing guy did a splendid job with both pieces. The map was pretty fragile, even had small holes in it, but ironed out and mounted with UV glass, it is a gorgeous faded color, but the blue ink is really pretty. The frame is wood, with a nice interesting grain. It's warm.
The schematic is less amber, though the paper was decades old - and you can discern, if you care to, where it was folded. There is one whiter spot, where it was stored for years next to some smaller piece of paper that left a paler, un-faded square where it had lain. It is in a black frame, white-matted, but with the thinnest under-mat of black, to create a little outline around the document.
For someone into industrial design, this would be a pretty cool design piece. For me, it is an image literally mined out of the mind of my dad; who, not that I've ever mentioned this before on my blog (hah), happened to be a stupefyingly brilliant teacher and scientist.
The system's exactingly thin lines and detailed intricacy are beautiful; not entirely unlike a flow chart, balanced, and filled with information I don't understand. It all comes to a result that ... is an ongoing piece of the scientific community of the world.
My dad did that. He is *still* a part of the mechanism of study and discovery. Gone fifteen years and more, he still lives - in this little avatar of his work, which is an artifact we can enjoy - and in his WORK, which is still a part of the engine of science and study.
It's easy to remember, as his kid, that my brother and I, his grandkids - and mom, who lived with him for over forty years, and started this branch of family - are the products of his life. But it's heart-swelling to think: dad contributed to so much more than just "me" in this world (as good fathers do, right?). That his being a teacher frustrated and challenged and maybe inspired hundreds of others. Maybe thousands.
My dad touched so many things, as curious intellects do. He *made* much more than I probably ever will. Which so few of us will ever be able to say.
And it's out that second-floor window ... where that all began, just before the blind date did.
Thursday, April 12, 2018
Mourning.
I would hardly be the first, and it's hardly the first time I've thought this myself - but the loss, through the 20th century, of traditional mourning practices in the United States is also a loss of an important signal between us as humans. It's been tempting, since my stepfather's death, to find some way to communicate, without having to have awkward conversations with strangers or acquaintances, that I have just endured a loss. With even the black armband all but vanished, mourning itself is an awkward proposition anymore.
There has been an increasing sense, for me, that it's time to move on. Nobody has pressed this upon me, but with weeks passing at a clip (I almost cannot believe it's been nearly three now), there is an inescapable feeling that continuing to Have The Feels about my stepfather's death is already drama-queening. That, to be frank, there is only the briefest of periods we can get away with not being okay and getting on with the day-to-day.
It would be ... if not nice, then certainly convenient, to have an unspoken signal of mourning. If one is to get on with the day-to-day, not having to *speak* about the loss of a loved one would certainly facilitate that. But the human heart is what it is, and it still hurts when people you're not sure even "know about it" register no sympathy. There is confusion - do I tell this person I see every day? Why should I have to do that? It feels like dramatics to lay that on people - particularly when you're not sure whether they know already. Some people won't speak because it's been more than a few days, and the news-cycle of life has sailed. Some people won't speak because they are sensitive to the pain of loss. Some people won't speak because they are awkward with the subject. Some people won't speak because they do not know. As the bereaved, it would be easier to know - is this person in ignorance, or are they being kind? It HELPS to understand.
So much of communication is nonverbal.
And so, if I had a signal, I could at least understand the words that do come toward me. And I could also communicate this important thing about myself, without having to stop time in the workroom to say, "Yeah, my stepfather just died." And leave someone feeling VERY awkward.
My guess is, this is one more gift Americans have accidentally or heedlessly imposed upon the world. In the rush to imprint our informality, nonconformity, and expectations upon human interaction, we have obliterated some forms of signal someone figured wasn't necessary, and over time the social enforcement that is conformity (har) ended up killing off this branch of etiquette. Uncomfortable, restrictive, depressing, perhaps even importunate upon the carefree (har) lives of other individuals.
Goodbye, mourning. Seriously, has anyone seen real mourning since Jackie Kennedy? I can't so much as remember consistently black garb at funerals; my mom, as it happens, wore poppy-red over a red and black dress, to the funeral inspiring me to discuss this whole thing. She is a great believer in the reaffirmation of life in vivid (the word means lively, after all) color.
I wore black. He was a bit more traditional. And he deserves to be mourned.
Indeed, since he died, I have kept my wardrobe more on the sober side ever since. If I can't go around in mourning jewelry (that people will understand as such, as opposed to thinking I just picked coz I'm goth-ly tinged), at least I can calibrate my mien to less flamboyance. And wear *less* jewelry. I actually applied a shot of brown hairspray to cover the blue hair, in fact, before the funeral; and at least once or twice since. I'm not even wearing highlighting cosmetics these days; bright eyes just seem inappropriate. (And the simpler the eye makeup, the less smear when I slip and find myself crying. In the middle of a meeting. Because: dork. In mourning.)
Three weeks. And already, I find myself embarrassed to even SAY "I am in mourning" (except to that one actual human telemarketer who called, and I could not take it). In the culture I've grown up in, mourning itself is unseemly, because it imposes upon those around us the distasteful necessity of sensitivity, or just the reminder of mortality. Mourning for three WEEKS, well. That is just melodramatic.
And yet, I am impelled to say - at least here - he deserves more than weeks. And what he has taught me, perhaps especially in his own final week, which was horrific ... will stay with me for the rest of my life. I still don't understand everything I saw and experienced, and it's both something to process and also to extrapolate from: for all I went through the eternity and power and heartbreak of his deathbed, my mom has been enduring as a caregiver for years now. His decline, in fact, goes back eight years - I still remember the Mother's Day lunch we shared, when we had to hold his arm back out to the parking lot.
Mom is still learning, too. Just how long this road has been. How, bit by bit, her own liberty to move in the world was curtailed - sometimes by my stepfather's will (he developed terrified and aching separation anxiety), and always by his frailty. How she did it all herself, and kept him home.
Six months ago, I was firmly of the belief that I would NEVER die in a hospital. My own dad's death left me sure it was barbaric and awful. My own dad's death came fast, though.
Now, I am not so sure. Being home might be nice, if I could be assured of sudden death (and that The Poobahs would not starve). It has an allure - who would wish to be in a hospital at the end?
But a slow death at home ... knowing that I could be alone, is that something to sign up for in all eagerness? Not that I'm interested in artificial prolongation, but the variables in horror - if I were alone, and broke a hip (my stepfather's final crisis was a break, and this is often a precipitating factor for those already in decline), what would I endure, ensconsed at home yes, but immobilized, in pain ... ?
Even with caregivers, death at home isn't some peaceful slipping away in one's own bed. Indeed, a standard bed is a horrible, dangerous place. Only after a hospital bed was delivered did my stepfather subside from cruel restlessness and the torture of his broken bones. And by "subside" I do not mean he found comfort. Only some respite, and that incomplete itself.
I learned from him; and sat with him, and tried to give him silence. Sound made him uncomfortable, so I stopped even indulging myself telling him how much I loved him. Or that he could go on. We told him that a lot. He didn't need to hear it, he wasn't holding out for permission to die.
And this too, I learned from him ... death doesn't always answer to the pretty stories we apply to it. It's not always a saga of fulfillment, someone waiting until an important figure comes to their side and releases them. It's not even always a question of release. The man my stepfather was? He had life left, and he was going to use it all up. All of it. Where for six years, he literally begged for death, once it announced it was come, he wrung out of his body the last *iota* of life left to him. Death wasn't impatient for him; those of us around him were.
It is a harrowing thing, a week long deathbed. Human chatter becomes intolerable, and I understand his responses when it was pushed on him, or shot over him as if he were barely there. He was there.
Even outside the room where he lay, the prognostications of "when" ... the stories about crows haunting us, or passed family members coming to take him away ... were not merely exhausting, they became irrelevant quickly as he kept on living on ... and we undoubtedly crossed into distasteful territory, more than once. People coming and going, speaking loudly of meals once shared, or playing music he would have hated ... crossing with those who came to sing, to pray, to just be beside him.
I think (and this may just be a story I tell myself) I became more silent as the days passed, simply because that was the only gift I had left to give to him. I stopped typing one day, because I felt the sound of my keystrokes, even, were too much to bear. I didn't hold his hand constantly, I stopped telling him he was the best stepfather ever, or that I loved him, or how much he amazed me.
I just never stopped kissing his head. Breathing the smells of him - not all of them beautiful. And yet, I both miss the scent of him and find myself having a sort of PTSD series of flashbacks to the smell that seemed most emblematic of him in his last year or so. The smell of his death began long before he ever broke a bone.
I miss him, and I love him, and I mourn him, and just thinking it makes me weep silently.
One of the funniest people I ever knew.
Someone who, never having been a father before, took on our whole family when he was not a strapping youth, and who found ways to laugh alongside us. Great G-d, it was not always easy - for him, or for us. The first years were difficult.
But the past eight? The past six? The years since my brother's family moved, and it's been me, mom, and him? The time it took for me to go from reluctance, to content, to tenderness?
I am blessed to have had these years.
Their passing deserves observation.
My stepfather deserves mourning.
There has been an increasing sense, for me, that it's time to move on. Nobody has pressed this upon me, but with weeks passing at a clip (I almost cannot believe it's been nearly three now), there is an inescapable feeling that continuing to Have The Feels about my stepfather's death is already drama-queening. That, to be frank, there is only the briefest of periods we can get away with not being okay and getting on with the day-to-day.
It would be ... if not nice, then certainly convenient, to have an unspoken signal of mourning. If one is to get on with the day-to-day, not having to *speak* about the loss of a loved one would certainly facilitate that. But the human heart is what it is, and it still hurts when people you're not sure even "know about it" register no sympathy. There is confusion - do I tell this person I see every day? Why should I have to do that? It feels like dramatics to lay that on people - particularly when you're not sure whether they know already. Some people won't speak because it's been more than a few days, and the news-cycle of life has sailed. Some people won't speak because they are sensitive to the pain of loss. Some people won't speak because they are awkward with the subject. Some people won't speak because they do not know. As the bereaved, it would be easier to know - is this person in ignorance, or are they being kind? It HELPS to understand.
So much of communication is nonverbal.
And so, if I had a signal, I could at least understand the words that do come toward me. And I could also communicate this important thing about myself, without having to stop time in the workroom to say, "Yeah, my stepfather just died." And leave someone feeling VERY awkward.
My guess is, this is one more gift Americans have accidentally or heedlessly imposed upon the world. In the rush to imprint our informality, nonconformity, and expectations upon human interaction, we have obliterated some forms of signal someone figured wasn't necessary, and over time the social enforcement that is conformity (har) ended up killing off this branch of etiquette. Uncomfortable, restrictive, depressing, perhaps even importunate upon the carefree (har) lives of other individuals.
Goodbye, mourning. Seriously, has anyone seen real mourning since Jackie Kennedy? I can't so much as remember consistently black garb at funerals; my mom, as it happens, wore poppy-red over a red and black dress, to the funeral inspiring me to discuss this whole thing. She is a great believer in the reaffirmation of life in vivid (the word means lively, after all) color.
I wore black. He was a bit more traditional. And he deserves to be mourned.
Indeed, since he died, I have kept my wardrobe more on the sober side ever since. If I can't go around in mourning jewelry (that people will understand as such, as opposed to thinking I just picked coz I'm goth-ly tinged), at least I can calibrate my mien to less flamboyance. And wear *less* jewelry. I actually applied a shot of brown hairspray to cover the blue hair, in fact, before the funeral; and at least once or twice since. I'm not even wearing highlighting cosmetics these days; bright eyes just seem inappropriate. (And the simpler the eye makeup, the less smear when I slip and find myself crying. In the middle of a meeting. Because: dork. In mourning.)
Three weeks. And already, I find myself embarrassed to even SAY "I am in mourning" (except to that one actual human telemarketer who called, and I could not take it). In the culture I've grown up in, mourning itself is unseemly, because it imposes upon those around us the distasteful necessity of sensitivity, or just the reminder of mortality. Mourning for three WEEKS, well. That is just melodramatic.
And yet, I am impelled to say - at least here - he deserves more than weeks. And what he has taught me, perhaps especially in his own final week, which was horrific ... will stay with me for the rest of my life. I still don't understand everything I saw and experienced, and it's both something to process and also to extrapolate from: for all I went through the eternity and power and heartbreak of his deathbed, my mom has been enduring as a caregiver for years now. His decline, in fact, goes back eight years - I still remember the Mother's Day lunch we shared, when we had to hold his arm back out to the parking lot.
Mom is still learning, too. Just how long this road has been. How, bit by bit, her own liberty to move in the world was curtailed - sometimes by my stepfather's will (he developed terrified and aching separation anxiety), and always by his frailty. How she did it all herself, and kept him home.
Six months ago, I was firmly of the belief that I would NEVER die in a hospital. My own dad's death left me sure it was barbaric and awful. My own dad's death came fast, though.
Now, I am not so sure. Being home might be nice, if I could be assured of sudden death (and that The Poobahs would not starve). It has an allure - who would wish to be in a hospital at the end?
But a slow death at home ... knowing that I could be alone, is that something to sign up for in all eagerness? Not that I'm interested in artificial prolongation, but the variables in horror - if I were alone, and broke a hip (my stepfather's final crisis was a break, and this is often a precipitating factor for those already in decline), what would I endure, ensconsed at home yes, but immobilized, in pain ... ?
Even with caregivers, death at home isn't some peaceful slipping away in one's own bed. Indeed, a standard bed is a horrible, dangerous place. Only after a hospital bed was delivered did my stepfather subside from cruel restlessness and the torture of his broken bones. And by "subside" I do not mean he found comfort. Only some respite, and that incomplete itself.
I learned from him; and sat with him, and tried to give him silence. Sound made him uncomfortable, so I stopped even indulging myself telling him how much I loved him. Or that he could go on. We told him that a lot. He didn't need to hear it, he wasn't holding out for permission to die.
And this too, I learned from him ... death doesn't always answer to the pretty stories we apply to it. It's not always a saga of fulfillment, someone waiting until an important figure comes to their side and releases them. It's not even always a question of release. The man my stepfather was? He had life left, and he was going to use it all up. All of it. Where for six years, he literally begged for death, once it announced it was come, he wrung out of his body the last *iota* of life left to him. Death wasn't impatient for him; those of us around him were.
It is a harrowing thing, a week long deathbed. Human chatter becomes intolerable, and I understand his responses when it was pushed on him, or shot over him as if he were barely there. He was there.
Even outside the room where he lay, the prognostications of "when" ... the stories about crows haunting us, or passed family members coming to take him away ... were not merely exhausting, they became irrelevant quickly as he kept on living on ... and we undoubtedly crossed into distasteful territory, more than once. People coming and going, speaking loudly of meals once shared, or playing music he would have hated ... crossing with those who came to sing, to pray, to just be beside him.
I think (and this may just be a story I tell myself) I became more silent as the days passed, simply because that was the only gift I had left to give to him. I stopped typing one day, because I felt the sound of my keystrokes, even, were too much to bear. I didn't hold his hand constantly, I stopped telling him he was the best stepfather ever, or that I loved him, or how much he amazed me.
I just never stopped kissing his head. Breathing the smells of him - not all of them beautiful. And yet, I both miss the scent of him and find myself having a sort of PTSD series of flashbacks to the smell that seemed most emblematic of him in his last year or so. The smell of his death began long before he ever broke a bone.
I miss him, and I love him, and I mourn him, and just thinking it makes me weep silently.
One of the funniest people I ever knew.
Someone who, never having been a father before, took on our whole family when he was not a strapping youth, and who found ways to laugh alongside us. Great G-d, it was not always easy - for him, or for us. The first years were difficult.
But the past eight? The past six? The years since my brother's family moved, and it's been me, mom, and him? The time it took for me to go from reluctance, to content, to tenderness?
I am blessed to have had these years.
Their passing deserves observation.
My stepfather deserves mourning.
Wednesday, March 21, 2018
Meta-for
The old metaphor of life, like a candle, flaring up before it goes out ... really isn't strictly poetic. When you reduce them to lowest terms - that fire, and life, are energy processing systems - they are the same thing, fundamentally. A wick left on its own will burn until all its paraffin is gone or it sinks into its own matter, self-snuffing. Life seems similar; we eat, we burn - and, though human beings of course also do so much more than this processing, the end of fuel means the end of life.
What is rarely displayed is just how efficiently the human system burns, sometimes.
I put the blog on pause to wait out a system at its end ... and here, on day six, we still are waiting. Life is almost cruelly tenacious. And, like a candle, life can gutter by flaring up, by burning furiously and then flickering. And even then it may not be exhausted.
Life is *alarmingly* tenacious.
The sacred time we place, around birth or marriage or death, the most important things to us ... I have never spent so long, in my life, in this time removed from the world, from everyday life. I have been enclosed in sacred time so long now it may be time to emerge, at least for a day. Only, presumably, to go back inside. It is a dizzying prospect, even though the hermetic seal around us right now is itself rarefied and disconcerting/disorienting.
We are exhausted. The living, and the dying. But I have learned this: though I know I have had periods in sacred time before, thinking I wished it would go on and on ... now I understand in a more immediate way, the truly sacred part of time separated from the everyday, from the world: is that it must be finite. The truly sacred part is re-entering LIFE.
Tomorrow, I may have to do that. Let us see what tonight will bring.
What is rarely displayed is just how efficiently the human system burns, sometimes.
I put the blog on pause to wait out a system at its end ... and here, on day six, we still are waiting. Life is almost cruelly tenacious. And, like a candle, life can gutter by flaring up, by burning furiously and then flickering. And even then it may not be exhausted.
Life is *alarmingly* tenacious.
The sacred time we place, around birth or marriage or death, the most important things to us ... I have never spent so long, in my life, in this time removed from the world, from everyday life. I have been enclosed in sacred time so long now it may be time to emerge, at least for a day. Only, presumably, to go back inside. It is a dizzying prospect, even though the hermetic seal around us right now is itself rarefied and disconcerting/disorienting.
We are exhausted. The living, and the dying. But I have learned this: though I know I have had periods in sacred time before, thinking I wished it would go on and on ... now I understand in a more immediate way, the truly sacred part of time separated from the everyday, from the world: is that it must be finite. The truly sacred part is re-entering LIFE.
Tomorrow, I may have to do that. Let us see what tonight will bring.
Wednesday, February 21, 2018
Bitten
It's a day like many others, but not "any other." Productive, with excuses. I am ploughing through the work on my desk, but skipping this afternoon's "run" in our fitness room. Slitting envelopes, copying legal down to letter for scanning, uploads. Multi-tasking, but all one task - just different steps in the order, converging, week on week invading each other's time. Click-click.
Boom.
It swims up from nowhere, unbidden. Not necessarily unwanted. But unwonted. Unexpected. Half gorgeous, and half cruel.
Memory of two words, out of your mouth.
I miss you so much it makes me gasp. Missing you an old habit. Missing you a way of life. It doesn't define me, it doesn't maim me.
oh, but. oh but
smaller and smaller, too smallevenfortheshiftkey. Shrinking.
Constricted.
Two words, and I am all but weeping. Slitting envelopes. Copying paper. Near the end of the day, but not near enough. Constricted.
I miss you.
That's three. Your two were more profound.
Boom.
It swims up from nowhere, unbidden. Not necessarily unwanted. But unwonted. Unexpected. Half gorgeous, and half cruel.
Memory of two words, out of your mouth.
I miss you so much it makes me gasp. Missing you an old habit. Missing you a way of life. It doesn't define me, it doesn't maim me.
oh, but. oh but
smaller and smaller, too smallevenfortheshiftkey. Shrinking.
Constricted.
Two words, and I am all but weeping. Slitting envelopes. Copying paper. Near the end of the day, but not near enough. Constricted.
I miss you.
That's three. Your two were more profound.
Tuesday, February 6, 2018
Almost my birthday, and all I want is death
This post is a barely-edited version of an email I sent this morning. It's funny how trains of thought actually seem to create their own tracks and destinations.
Forwarded message to a best friend TEO...
"When bitching about a sweater gets REALLY dup and profiend.
Sometimes, being a writer is weird."
-----Original Message-----
Original email to Mr. X
Sent: Tue, Feb 6, 2018 8:06 am
Subject: Yep nope
The quest for the right wardrobe never seems to end. I bought a sweater maybe three months ago - it was definitely "recent" - but am deciding today, it has got to go. Which is especially irritating, as it's a GAP and I usually have good luck with GAP. (One red/black damask print v-neck has lasted me like six years now, it's woooooonnnderful.) But this simple blue rib knit: I'm not into that whole Marie Kondo thing, but this sweater is NOT GIVING ME JOY.
Which, ugh. This sweater made me use THAT phrase. This sweater sucks.
The thing is - it's really comfortable, it's the length I like, and the color is great on me. It is also pill--tastick (yes, with a K - like your name, it needs the consonantal emphasis), the "inseam" tag sticks out (and no, I don't cut out care tags because lord knows I'll louse up the laundry at some point), and the front hangs really weird at the bottom. Gah.
So, though I've worn this probably not even half a dozen times: I need to get rid of this thing.
Life is too short to wear unflattering (and prematurely RATTY) sweaters.
It's just a shame I happen to be wearing the thing NOW. On my fake-Friday, and family day. And with good jewelry, too! Blah.
Tonight is steak night at mom and Stepdad's. The filets from Christmas, which we didn't eat because everyone came down with the flu.
This'll be the way to spend some family celebration time with Step, but leave Wednesday free for me and mom. He's been in bed a couple days, and says he might not eat with us (he'll almost certainly eat with us, but how he'll be feeling today overall is up in the air). Sigh. Poor S. He just can't seem to die.
Bro and I were talking about him this weekend. He said it was something of a shame we came to love him after he lost his mind - I think there's a feeling akin to guilt, for Bro - but I feel like it's a blessing. We LOVE him. Neither of us felt like that was a possibility twelve years ago, and okay, it took dementia to loosen S up and give him this sense of humor we treasure. But he's loosened up. He is funny. We love him. That is enough of a blessing, and dementia is enough a part of life, I feel like it's worth just being grateful for the love and the blessing.
This is the power of a sense of humor, really. Laughter is so elementally *human*, I think, that the bonds it creates can't be trivialized. I mean: look at the way I talk about your face, broken up with laughter. It's in no way a small thing, the way that is beautiful to me.
It's in no way a small gift: S's immense grace in his sense of humor.
They always say there's no comedy without pain. I'd have to agree; that's fair. S's wit has come at such a price. Life itself, arguably. But his funny-ness has made all our lives just that much more wonderful. And just saying that squeezes my heart, and all but breaks it.
And as much as I am grateful for the incandescence of S's impishness and his smile, G-d I wish it could be taken from us all. I wish he could die. Because as long as we have his brilliance with us, HE has to endure such hideous, unbreakable pain. It is so unjust - and I know life is not fair. But nobody should ever suffer this. I would not even wish this on a Trump.
And even with all that, to feel *guilty* about loving his humor would be to waste it, and to negate the blessing it is. I just have to pray it is some amount of blessing for S. It looks like it is. It looks like, even if only a moment at a time, it takes him out of the pain. Even as selfish as it is: he takes *us* out of it. He invites us out of the reality he can't escape himself.
I've never seen grace quite like that. S is something so special.
Forwarded message to a best friend TEO...
"When bitching about a sweater gets REALLY dup and profiend.
Sometimes, being a writer is weird."
-----Original Message-----
Original email to Mr. X
Sent: Tue, Feb 6, 2018 8:06 am
Subject: Yep nope
The quest for the right wardrobe never seems to end. I bought a sweater maybe three months ago - it was definitely "recent" - but am deciding today, it has got to go. Which is especially irritating, as it's a GAP and I usually have good luck with GAP. (One red/black damask print v-neck has lasted me like six years now, it's woooooonnnderful.) But this simple blue rib knit: I'm not into that whole Marie Kondo thing, but this sweater is NOT GIVING ME JOY.
Which, ugh. This sweater made me use THAT phrase. This sweater sucks.
The thing is - it's really comfortable, it's the length I like, and the color is great on me. It is also pill--tastick (yes, with a K - like your name, it needs the consonantal emphasis), the "inseam" tag sticks out (and no, I don't cut out care tags because lord knows I'll louse up the laundry at some point), and the front hangs really weird at the bottom. Gah.
So, though I've worn this probably not even half a dozen times: I need to get rid of this thing.
Life is too short to wear unflattering (and prematurely RATTY) sweaters.
It's just a shame I happen to be wearing the thing NOW. On my fake-Friday, and family day. And with good jewelry, too! Blah.
Tonight is steak night at mom and Stepdad's. The filets from Christmas, which we didn't eat because everyone came down with the flu.
This'll be the way to spend some family celebration time with Step, but leave Wednesday free for me and mom. He's been in bed a couple days, and says he might not eat with us (he'll almost certainly eat with us, but how he'll be feeling today overall is up in the air). Sigh. Poor S. He just can't seem to die.
Bro and I were talking about him this weekend. He said it was something of a shame we came to love him after he lost his mind - I think there's a feeling akin to guilt, for Bro - but I feel like it's a blessing. We LOVE him. Neither of us felt like that was a possibility twelve years ago, and okay, it took dementia to loosen S up and give him this sense of humor we treasure. But he's loosened up. He is funny. We love him. That is enough of a blessing, and dementia is enough a part of life, I feel like it's worth just being grateful for the love and the blessing.
This is the power of a sense of humor, really. Laughter is so elementally *human*, I think, that the bonds it creates can't be trivialized. I mean: look at the way I talk about your face, broken up with laughter. It's in no way a small thing, the way that is beautiful to me.
It's in no way a small gift: S's immense grace in his sense of humor.
They always say there's no comedy without pain. I'd have to agree; that's fair. S's wit has come at such a price. Life itself, arguably. But his funny-ness has made all our lives just that much more wonderful. And just saying that squeezes my heart, and all but breaks it.
And as much as I am grateful for the incandescence of S's impishness and his smile, G-d I wish it could be taken from us all. I wish he could die. Because as long as we have his brilliance with us, HE has to endure such hideous, unbreakable pain. It is so unjust - and I know life is not fair. But nobody should ever suffer this. I would not even wish this on a Trump.
And even with all that, to feel *guilty* about loving his humor would be to waste it, and to negate the blessing it is. I just have to pray it is some amount of blessing for S. It looks like it is. It looks like, even if only a moment at a time, it takes him out of the pain. Even as selfish as it is: he takes *us* out of it. He invites us out of the reality he can't escape himself.
I've never seen grace quite like that. S is something so special.
Sunday, December 24, 2017
Christmas is When We're Together
Three years ago, my mom and stepfather, D, and I postponed Christmas a day because both of them had pneumonia, or the flu or something. I don't recall the problem so much as the beautiful day out with Pen-Pen, and the nice, quiet holiday the three of us shared.
The quiet time with just us three has been the nature of Christmas long enough that it is tradition now. But we are willing to change that, and this year the advent of my brother and nieces was a welcome change. D has been ailing for about seven years now, and at long last, the doctors have said it "won't be long." I'm not sure either my mom or I are genuinely capable of rasping that he ever can die, after so long doing poorly, but logically it's "real" enough we know this is the last family Christmas, probably.
So it was an extra pity when my brother, then both nieces, and finally D, all came down with the flu.
Christmas has ended up still being sort of a small affair for us, even with twice the population. My nieces have been great troupers, putting up with a huge houseful of relations yesterday, most of the day, and opening presents this evening almost as if they were not half-dying, missing out on snow at home, and far far away from their own comfortable beds and puppies.
Tomorrow is fake Sunday. Run the fam to the airport, come home, nap, eat something. We've had Christmas early, and - as far as this can be said given the circumstances - it was pretty lovely.
May yours, if you celebrate, be merry and bright.
As for me, it's about time for a long winter's nap. So Merry Christmas (etc./or not) to all, and to all a good night!
The quiet time with just us three has been the nature of Christmas long enough that it is tradition now. But we are willing to change that, and this year the advent of my brother and nieces was a welcome change. D has been ailing for about seven years now, and at long last, the doctors have said it "won't be long." I'm not sure either my mom or I are genuinely capable of rasping that he ever can die, after so long doing poorly, but logically it's "real" enough we know this is the last family Christmas, probably.
So it was an extra pity when my brother, then both nieces, and finally D, all came down with the flu.
Christmas has ended up still being sort of a small affair for us, even with twice the population. My nieces have been great troupers, putting up with a huge houseful of relations yesterday, most of the day, and opening presents this evening almost as if they were not half-dying, missing out on snow at home, and far far away from their own comfortable beds and puppies.
Tomorrow is fake Sunday. Run the fam to the airport, come home, nap, eat something. We've had Christmas early, and - as far as this can be said given the circumstances - it was pretty lovely.
May yours, if you celebrate, be merry and bright.
As for me, it's about time for a long winter's nap. So Merry Christmas (etc./or not) to all, and to all a good night!
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