In Sane Grief

    Here's one that I spaced. It's been with me for exactly a week. It has, in fact, provoked a fair amount of wondering and ruminating, a need to ask a question of three of my sisters, one with whom I've actually been in contact but forgotten, both times, to ask her. Maybe the reason I spaced mentioning it here is that I'm still working on it outside of here...or, you know, it's still working on me.
    It's from In Treatment; Gina: Week Four. "Yes, I'm a fan, are you surprised?" she asked, smiling wickedly. Toward the end of Paul's session with Gina, his psychotherapist, she is urging a very reluctant (middle-aged) Paul to see his father, who is old and ill. She uses a variety of approaches, trying to work him to an understanding of how important it is for him to see his father even though, and especially because, there are a variety of highly sensitive unresolved issues between the two men which were cemented into their future history when Paul's father left their family to marry another woman when Paul was young, leaving Paul with an emotionally compromised mother who committed suicide when Paul was a teenager. As I recall, there has been no contact between the two men since that time. Paul's brother, however, has been keeping Paul informed of his father's decline through old age. I'm going to repeat some of the leading-up dialog in order to give a sense of where the conversation has been before it comes to the piece of dialog which struck me, the last piece of dialog spoken by Gina, which I'll bold and italicize:
Gina: Have you seen your father?
Paul: I, I, I don't know how he is. Jesus, I...
Gina: Did you go to see him?
Paul: No, I didn't go to see him. I meant to, and...
Gina: Why not? Is he better?
Paul: I don't know. He may have...he may have taken a turn for the worse. He fell a couple of times in the hospital so they moved him into another room. He may have a fever. And I'm getting all this from and, and I'm getting all this from Patrick. I was busy preparing this week for, for, for the deposition. That was a treat. Let me tell you.
Gina: So you didn't go to see your father.
Paul: No, I didn't. And if you don't stop nagging me, I won't.
Gina: I'm not nagging you, Paul. I'm reminding you that bears do not live forever. And this bear, with whom you have very many unresolved issues, is dying.
Paul: My brother says he's dying. That doesn't really mean that he is dying.
Gina: Would you rather just get a call that he's dead?
Paul: Let them call my fucking brother!
Gina: Paul, you may think that you don't care about this, but you do. You know, if you didn't care, why would you have reacted this way when I brought him up? Paul, please sit down. Paul...you know you say you're not getting what you need from anyone but it's worse than that. It's as though you're a baby; and you woke up from a nap, and you started crying, but nobody's coming in to see what you need. And so you cry louder. And you shake the bars of the crib. And still nobody comes. The only problem is your father is there. He's in the room with you. But your anger at him is so profound that you can't see him.
Paul: My father can't help me now.
Gina: No, no, he probably can't. But until you acknowledge his presence in your life you're not going to understand anything about him. And you'll continue to shake the crib.
Paul: The crib? What are you talking about? I'm a grown man.
Gina: Well, of course you are. But what you haven't been in a grown son to your father. And until you do that, part of you is always going to stay a baby; or, at best, a teenager waiting for your mother to die.
Paul: My mother's already dead.
Gina: That's right. What you're afraid of, it's already happened. Neither you nor your dad could stop it. And the only thing you can do now is hope to heal this wound so then you can move on. Paul, we both know what it's like not to be there at the end. It's something you don't get over. Ever.
    Until I heard the last three bolded and italicized sentences of this dialog, it hadn't occurred to me to wonder if any of my three sisters had any feelings about not having been with my mother when she died, nor having been with her, at all or more than briefly, during the last months of her life when all of us knew she wouldn't be around much longer. The unofficial downhill slope of Mom's life started without any of us, including my mother, realizing it when she caught the flu in mid winter last year. It became official when she was diagnosed with lung cancer and the decision was made "not to treat" on May 21st of last year. From then on one sister and her daughter visited a few times through the summer and fall and she and her husband visited over Thanksgiving weekend.
    I have often wished that I had been at my father's bedside when he died. The last time I talked to him I knew he was dying. So did he. We both knew it would be the last time we'd speak to one another. Although we didn't acknowledge this in words, the profound understanding crackled through the phone lines and changed the timbre of both our voices before we said "I love you" and "good-bye". The wish that I had been at his side when he died, though, has never been a part of my grief over his death, nor has it become a regret.
    As my mother negotiated the last months of her life I kept all my sisters informed, on the phone and through my journals. A couple of times throughout the last five and a half months of her life, when Mom had a bad couple of days here and there, I'd call my eldest sister and alert her that I wasn't sure Mom would be alive the following day. Until the call I made to her on December 7th, 2008, at 4:44 pm MST, I was always wrong.
    Over the last week, though, since the above mentioned show aired, I've been wondering, do any of my sisters wish they had been "there at the end"? Certainly, even though I was only a bystander in each sister's relationship with our mother, I can say with confidence that none of those relationships was anywhere near as fraught with psychological pitfalls as the father/son relationship portrayed in the In Treatment; Gina: Week Four episode. Still, I wonder if any of my sisters feels somehow unfinished with our mother in a way they may not have felt if it had been easier for them to be here when Mom died? I wonder, too, if there was anything I could have done to make it easier for them to be here. Each of my sisters, at one time or another during Mom's downhill slide, had expressed to me that they all knew Mom was well taken care of and that, since Mom felt as though they were here, or had just been here, or were on their way, thus giving Mom a sense that she was always surrounded with family, primarily because I was here and she and I talked about family all the time, each of their concerns had to do with making sure that they were here for me when she died...and they all were. One of my sisters, as I remember mentioning, expressed an interest in viewing Mom after her death but changed her mind on her way here and the viewing was canceled. I never questioned her change of mind. I trust my sisters to know what they want when they want it and to know when they no longer want it, and to be clear about this.
    It has occurred to me that, since I was with Mom through her last breath and beyond, and, as well, since I wrote so meticulously and promptly in my journals about her entire life while we were companions, her last few days, especially Mom's last, and then, quickly after, her last hours, they may have felt as though they were here. I hope so. But, still, I think its a good idea to check in with each of them on this...just in case something remains unexpressed that each of them would like to say. If there isn't, they'll let me know.

Labels: Communication with Relatives, Death Quotes, Grief Quotes, Presence at Death

    Having lost someone to death with whom I was so closely entwined, it seems as though I've lost parts of myself, there isn't any part of my life that her absence does not touch; nor is there anything in my life that I don't, at one time or another, view through the shades of grief. Only this morning, as I was washing dishes and gazing out the kitchen window at the shrubbery on the south side of...hmmm...our?...my?...whose home is it now?...I noticed, consciously, that the peculiar deciduous shrub-tree whose name I cannot seem to find in my Field Guide to the Plants of Arizona but that is prolific in this part of Prescott is going through its perennial leaf shed. That's right, it sheds its leaves in spring, rather than fall. Apparently this morning was ripe for contemplation of this plant, which appears as a tall, dense shrub in our yard but lines our street in its tree form, rivaling the heights of the indigenous oak. It is the oddest feeling to drive through The Greening of Prescott, which is taking place as I write and hasn't yet peaked, and have the view littered by the equally commanding sight of trees whose leaves are turning burnt orange. If you're not familiar with the area I'm sure you'd think that a sudden, species specific blight is rampaging through the forest. As I drove to the local market to pick up my usual Sunday copy of the NYT (I can handle the online version every day but Sunday; on Sunday I must feel out-of-town newsprint between my fingers), I mused over how appropriate to me is this year's spring shed. That's what I feel like, I thought, parts of me, parts that nourish me, have died and are shedding. Probably a good thing, I continued, that duff cools and nourishes the soil, the tree refreshes itself, revs and buds...maybe this fall I'll feel releafed and ready for the rest of my life...just maybe.... This is one of the most optimistic thoughts I've had, lately. Because, you know, grief, this kind of grief, refocuses everything.
    It even refocused my reactions to the selections my book club was reading at the time I re-upped. The club was working through a spate of light, easy reads. I was still numb when I read through January's and February's selections. By the time I needed to begin reading March's book, The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett, though, my grief lens had turned panoramic. Despite the speed-reading its writing style encourages, I found myself catching on each death in the book, and there are plenty. I managed to privately laugh my way out of this unusually dour turn of mind by the time the book club met. I mentioned my uncharacteristic outlook to my excellent Prescott friend, also a member of the book club. She assured me that April's selection, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows, would not create a similar problem for me. "It's just lovely," she said, "delightful, you'll chuckle all the way through."
    I sobbed, sometimes blubbered, all the way through. Death after death after death, that's all I was able to comprehend. I cried for the relatives of each of the Todt workers; cried for the families of those who had died before the novel began; cried, too, for the families and friends of those who would die long after the novel ended. I was a sad case. I even called my excellent friend, confessed my problem (thank the gods, merely confessing it to her caused both of us to laugh) and apologized in advance for the possibility that I might sob throughout the entire book club meeting. Luckily, circumstances conspired so that I didn't. Only half of our small cadre showed up for the April meeting, which cozied the atmosphere even more than usual. At one point I did confess (without tearing up) my problem with the book. "I'm sorry," I admitted, "that the book had this effect on me, but I am still so overwhelmed by Mom's death that all I seem to register in these books is the deaths." Another member, who lost her mother two years ago and happened to be sitting next to me, leaned into me and nodded her head vigorously in response. "Oh my god," I exclaimed, "don't tell me I have years of this to go!" She laughed, so did I, and she said, "No, dear, you'll look at death, and life, differently, from now on, but you'll get used to it. Meaning, you won't cry every time you read about another death."
    Considering my current state, you'd think that I would have underlined every quote about death in both books, but I didn't...just some especially pithy ones that held my attention longer than it takes for me to squeeze out a few tears. Here they are:
Quotes from The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett:

1. Pages 270-271; End of Last Paragraph - First Paragraph:
   And sometimes it seemed that when he [Tom] thought like this about Agnes, [his freshly dead wife] he was not only missing her, but mourning the passing of his own youth. Never again would he be as naive, as aggressive, as hungry or as strong as he had been when he had first fallen in love with Agnes.
   I didn't identify with mourning one's youth, but I certainly identified with the idea that much of what I became as my mother's companion, while not gone, will have to be redirected...and I so enjoyed becoming my mother's champion, protector and intimate companion. I cannot imagine ever sharing life with someone in quite that way again. Sometimes redirection isn't just redirection...it's also having to turn away.
2. Page 376; Paragraph 3:
   Aliena was shocked. He [her father] had always counseled against oath taking. To swear an oath is to put your soul at risk, he would say. Never take an oath unless you're sure you would rather die than break it.
   This may seem fairly removed from death, but it has a great deal to do with certain thoughts that continually crop up for me in my grieving. They are, though, thoughts with a significant overtone of relief, such relief that feeling it brings me to tears. I feel, I noticed, when I came to this quote, that I did, indeed, risk my soul and the state of my life when I assented to my mother's request that we become companions for the rest of her life. There were times, not many and never long indulged but times, nonetheless, when, during our sojourn through the rest of her life, I feared for my survival after her death. At those times I expected, just as The Caregiver Literature warns (which is one of the reasons I pretty much swore off Caregiver Literature), that whatever life I still possessed after my mother's death would be a shambles which I would have to rebuild from the ground up and I feared I would not be able to do this. Yet, each time these fears threatened me, I rallied against them in the knowledge of my love for what we were doing, my love for her and my sense that this is my life, my life is not something I've put aside, thus, just as I am fully engaged, competent and fearless, now, I will be after my mother's death. Turns out, I was right. I remain fully engaged. I'm much more competent at continuing my life than I thought I'd be. I'm often forlorn with grief and sometimes fearful but I have an innate understanding that, if I give myself time, "...this, too, shall pass away." That, by the way, was another of my mother's favorite quotes.
3. Page 423; Paragraph 7:
   She cried hard, not just for him but for the life they had lived together...the life that would never come back.
   This one is obvious, I think.

Quotes from The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows:

1. Page 101; Paragraph 4; Quote from Past and Present by Thomas Carlyle:
   Does it ever give thee pause, that men used to have a soul—not by hearsay alone, or as a figure of speech; but as a truth that they knew, and acted upon! Verily it was another world, then...but yet it is a pity we have lost the tidings of our souls...we shall have to go in search of them again, or worse in all ways shall befall us.
   This quote gave me a bit more much needed courage to think and speak, (mostly) without apology, about the possibility of an afterlife for my mother...and for me, too; which remains hard to do in this day and age, 166 years after Thomas Carlyle published this passage.
2. Page 104; Paragraph 5; in a letter from Amelia Maugery to Juliet Ashton:
   When my son Ian died at El Alamein—side by side with Eli's father, John—visitors offering their condolences, thinking to comfort me, said "Life goes on." What nonsense, I thought, of course it doesn't. It's death that goes on; Ian is dead now and will be dead tomorrow and next year and forever. There's no end to that. But perhaps there will be an end to the sorrow of it. Sorrow has rushed over the world like the waters of the Deluge, and it will take time to recede. But already, there are small islands of—hope? Happiness? Something like them at any rate. I like the picture of you standing upon your chair to catch a glimpse of the sun, averting your eyes from the mounds of rubble.
   Although the speaker is referring to the sorrow of many after a war, I was astonished that this line also referred to a grieving individual's feeling that not just one's heart but the entire world has been "[deluged]" with sorrow.
3. Page 106; Paragraph 4; Regarding the Todt Workers:
   Thousands of those men and boys died here, and I have recently learned that their inhuman treatment was the intended policy of Himmler. he called his plan Death by Exhaustion, and he implemented it. Work them hard, don't waste vluable foodstuffs on them, and let them die. they could, and would, always be replaced by new slave workers from Europe's Occupied countries.
   Ah, this passage! It seems like it took me hours to move past the contemplation and mourning of so many prematurely stunted relationships, so much grieving.
4. Page 150; Paragraph 5; In a letter from John Booker to Juliet Ashton in which he describes his brief imprisonment at Belsen concentration camp during which he was enlisted to dig "great pits to bury the dead."
   I'll write no more of this, and I hope you'll understand if I do not care to speak of it. As Seneca says, "Light griefs are loquacious, but the great are dumb."
   Curious, the effect this had on me. At first I disagreed with it, thinking about my lack of muteness, here, in my journals, about my grief, knowing that my grief is "great". As I thought about this, though, I realized that writing out my grief is one thing; talking it out is quite another. Vocally, I am more than a little mute, unless I am asked directly how I am doing. Even then, I am more apt to say, "I'm fine," or, if pressed, "I'm having a bad day, today," or, if someone hears something in my voice and mentions it, "I'm a little sad, it's nothing." People rarely ask, though. I tend to be a bit more explanatory with close friends and sisters. Sometimes I'll even volunteer a sentence or two about my current state of mourning. Over all, though, I am mouth-quiet about it; as are my sisters about their grief. I find it interesting to contemplate, though, that I seem to run off at the fingers here in my journals about it. Some days ago, when thinking about this, I realized that I used have an audience in mind when I wrote in my journals; previous to my mother's death, that is. Now, when I write, I write to no one, or, better said, probably, to and for myself. So, why do I write publicly, I asked myself, if I am no longer imagining an audience? For the most quotidian of reasons: I'm in the habit, now, of keyboarding in journal format about my life with (and without, which is, in an odd way, to say "with") my mother. It is so habitual that, audience or not, imagining an audience or not, I'm more comfortable doing this than I am keeping a "hard copy" journal, which I used to do, before I discovered this format.

Labels: Death Quotes, Grief Quotes

    Although I never had the occasion to mention it over at the main journals, this was one of my mother's favorite quotes. She could also, and often did, quote the first verse of the poem. I don't know if she ever knew the rest. Considering when she went to common school, my guess is that at some time she was required to memorize the entire poem, and did.
    At any rate, I thought it would make a good title for this post. My intention, today, is to list quotes (and, if I can, link them to sources) I've been gathering since my mother's death. They all relate to ways that I've felt since then. Some of them have direct relation, some of them only oblique, but each of them evokes strong thoughts about my mother, our relationship, her death and/or my experience of grieving her. One of them, one of the first, is a self-quote which I just discovered. Although I can't necessarily and absolutely date when it was I stumbled across each quote, if I can I'll assemble them in a fairly accurate sequential frame. Quotes will be in this color. Copyrights, of course apply according to the source.
    A note about the poem, "The Raven", to which the title of this post is linked: I remember reading this poem in school, too...and not paying it much attention. I reread it today while listening to the spoken version and realized it is not only a poem about grief, how it endures, it is a poem about how grief, once truly experienced, leads to questioning of beliefs in afterlives, in being reunited with those who have died and about whom one feels strongly, leads to questioning one's beliefs in everything except what one can empirically sense. Interesting poem. More interesting that my mother quoted from it as long back as I can remember and as long forward as her life lasted.
    On to:
Collected Quotes in the Wake of My Mother's Death

1. From The Story of India, aired and watched some time in January, 2009:
   Identity is never static; always in the making and never made."
   When the host for the program spoke these words, I immediately thought of how my mother's identity is continuing to evolve after her death, through her survivors and how she might be continuing to evolve it, herself...
2. From The Story of India, aired and watched some time in January, 2009:
   Buddha's last words: All created things must pass. Strive on, diligently.
   When I first heard this quote I think I mistook its emphasis. I interpreted it to mean that one should "strive on, diligently" after death. Now, as I contemplate it, I'm thinking that it applies both before and after death...thus, suits my mother perfectly.
3. Something I wrote in my small Constant Companion notebook, dated 2/1/09, 11:09 a.m.:
   I will not know the true nature of my companionship with my mother for many years. All I know, at the moment, is that it is a great love story, perhaps one of my greatest...however, the details escape me in the fog of the loss to me created by her death. It is my choice of duty to remain aware of the fog, endure it as I must while incrementally blowing away bits of it until all the detail and enormity of our relationship are revealed to me. It may seem, from the outside, like a self-centered, self-contemplative exercise but all movement creates a corresponding movement of air from within and from without...and all wind dissipates fog, wisp by wisp.
4. Partial Lyrics from the song Forever Young by Alphaville heard on 2/9/09:
   Forever young
   I want to be forever young.
   Do you really want to live forever...
   When I first heard this, listening to the song as it breezed by on my radio when I was driving on an errand, it brought tears to my eyes because it sounded like a conversation I might have had subconsciously with my mother, her speaking the first two lines, me speaking the last. Now, when I reflect on it and hear the song (I decided to purchase and download it onto my iPod...and still listen to it frequently, and weep), the speakers are reversed: I am the speaker of the first two lines, my mother the speaker of the third. Just thinking about those lines, hearing them sung in my head, brings tears to my eyes, yet, as it is doing as I write this.
5. I can't remember where I heard this and can't seem to track a single source, but I heard it soon after hearing the quote immediately above, as I wrote it down in my Companion Notebook on the same page as the lyrics quoted above:Life is no small thing.
   I remember an immediate, ironic reactive thought when I heard this: That death is an even larger "no small thing".
6. Partial Lyrics from the song Pride by Syntax:
   There was always a moment there when I knew.
   You always gave installments,
   Always knew you concentrated and grew.
   And I believe in reinvention...
   These three lines perfectly describe how I feel about my mother, now, as she lived as as I imagine her living on after death.
7. From a Bill Moyers Journal PBS interview with Parker J. Palmer aired 2/20/09:
   Regarding the experience of depression, I honed into this quote because of the comparison Palmer makes to, well, you'll see as you read:
   ...you need other people. You don't need their advice. You don't need their fixes and saves. But you need their presence. I sometimes liken standing by someone who is in depression as being like the experience of sitting at the bedside of a dying person because depression is a kind of death, as is addiction and other serious forms of mental illness.
   You have to be with that person in an unafraid way. Not invading them with your fixes, not hooking them up to wires or whatever the non-medical equivalent of that is, giving them advice, but simply saying to them with your very presence, your physical presence, your psychological presence, your spiritual presence, I am not afraid of being with you on this journey of the — at the end of this road.
   This quote so reminded me of how I tended to my mother during her last few days and, especially, her last few hours, especially the last sentence. It so perfectly describes my devotion to my mother at the end of her life..."at the end of this road". With every moment, in everything that I did for her, in every way that I was with her, this last sentence was an implicit chant over her, to her.
8. From the HBO movie Taking Chance. This bit of dialog is spoken by the character Charlie Fitts in response to Lt. Colonel Mike Strobl's doubt that he has done anything important for his country or any of his fellow Marines:
   You brought Chance home. You're his witness, now. Without a witness, they just disappear."
   This quote sums up the way I feel about the importance of the journey I undertook with my mother through the last 15 years of her life.
   Further bit of dialog, a description how PFC/Lance Corporal Chance Phelps was treated during his journey home:
   Six of us held him in our hands all the way back to the base. All along the way Chance was treated with dignity and respect and honor.
   This quote sums up how I feel about the last few days and hours I spent with my mother.
9. From a funeral sermon delivered for a serial killer on an episode of the Practice entitled "Heroes & Villains aired in rerun sometime in late February or early March of 2009:
   To look on Stanley Deeks' time on earth, to consider his victims, we must know there to be an afterlife. Otherwise, life on earth is all there is. And it can't be that. It simply can't be that.
   I stumbled across this quote just as I was beginning to notice my fierce internal wrestling with the concept of life after death as it might or might not apply to my mother and all of us. It is a blatant emotional plea, perfectly suited to how I feel about the impenetrable mystery of Death.
10. A bit of dialog from an episode of House entitled "Occam's Razor" aired in rerun sometime in late March or early April, 2009:
    Wilson: "Beauty often seduces us on the road to truth."
    House: And triteness kicks us in the nads.
    Wilson: So true.
    House: This doesn't bother you?
    Wilson: That you were wrong? Try to work through the pain.
    House: I was not wrong. Everything I said was true. It fit. It was elegant.
    Wilson: So reality was wrong.
    House: Reality is almost always wrong.
    Although this quote may seem completely disconnected from Death and Grieving, I heard it soon after I heard the immediately previous quote. The last line of dialog, especially, makes sense to me in the context of trying to find some reason to believe in my mother's continued existence, in some form, but having no luck doing this.
11. Quote from an NYT interview of Maurice Sendak that I stumbled upon a few weeks ago. The quotes are in regard to his feelings in the wake of his partner's death:
    His latest book is one he started about four years ago, right after Dr. Glynn became sick with lung cancer. The illness and setting up of round-the-clock care in their home were just “so unbelievable,” he explained. Mr. Sendak is mostly finished with it, but he admitted that for the first time, “I feel extremely vulnerable.”
    He is afraid — not of death, which is as familiar to him as a child’s teddy bear — but of not being able to finish his work: “I feel like I don’t have a lot of time left.”
    After Dr. Glynn’s death, Mr. Sendak said he was “still trying to figure out what I’m doing here.”
    “I wanted to take his place,” he said. “His death became a demarcation.” He added that he lost touch with many of his friends, unable to return phone calls and reply to e-mail messages.
    All this applies strikingly well to my reactions when I find myself overwhelmed by yet another wave of grief.
12. Quote from a local PBS show Books & Co., with Peggy Shumaker:
    Peggy Shumaker: Do you think after death people stop being in your life?
    ...
    Definitely not. And leftover love that you carry around can be a gift that you bestow on others, or it can be a tremendous burden. But there are complex feelings that continue as long as you live. That's part of it.
    It didn't occur to me to consider that my relationship with my mother, "the love that [I] carry", might be a burden, a tremendous one. This quote struck me between the eyes. I'm still considering what its meaning is for me...whether it has any meaning for me...

    At this point, that's it, folks. You'll notice, though, that I tacked a "Part 1" onto the title of this post. I expect I will continue to find myself besieged with the words of others, or myself, in regards to my mother's death and my subsequent life. Thus, I'm making it easy for similar posts to appear, and be expected.

Labels: Death Quotes, Grief Quotes