Stopping for Magic

Turns out Christmas will come anyway, despite whatever balls (and keepsake ornaments) we may have dropped in these days leading up to it.  It won't be perfect.  But it will happen.  And as it so often does in movies and song, the magic we attribute to this time will heighten feelings and experience.


As I write this, my extended family is celebrating a new baby, born yesterday.  A distant friend is posting updates on Facebook from labor and delivery, having survived the last harrowing weeks of an over-40 pregnancy--too much like my own last incubation. 


A friend is mourning her son, not two months dead.  My husband awoke at 5 a.m. this morning, thinking of his father who died on Christmas Eve, decades ago.  And I am missing my dad, more this year than before.


My husband is home.  Our tree is up.  The last late-night online shopping delivery has arrived. My children have graduated from passive holiday audience to fellow makers of the occasion, contributing their outdoor lighting skills, and their thoughtful gift-giving, hatchet-burying and culinary talents.


In true procrastinator fashion, I will join my husband shortly in planning tomorrow's menu and making up one last shopping list, before heading out to the grocery store to join the throngs.  


But in this moment, I want to breathe and to, in my yoga teacher's class-closing words, "fill [myself] up with gratitude for all that [I] have, and all that is yet to come."


Whatever our traditions, and in the most universal sense, 
Merry Christmas!

Change of Plans, Change of Heart

Today was going to be the one where I didn't run all over the place.  The day I caught up on rest, and cleaning, and reading and meditating.  


And then my oldest son came to me with a coat "emergency."  He needs a new coat, he really does.  One that isn't bleeding down feathers, making him look like he's molting.  But he needed it yesterday.  And he would still need it tomorrow and the day after that.  


There's only one place he wants to go for a new coat.  It's far away, from the perspective of wishing to stay close to my couch today.  And it sells the kind of coat that appeals to him, and not so much to me.  I want to say no to the proposed trek.  (I'd send him with money, but this purchase has to go on my credit card, which they probably wouldn't let him use at the store.  Even though I've pretty much nixed credit card usage, this month is an exception.  The check that will fund our planned-for extras is sitting in an envelope in a pile of unopened mail, its counter-signer half way around the world for another 26 days.)  I really want to say no.  And I could.


But this morning I made one of my random visits to Facebook, and learned that a friend of the last few years, since we shared a long and bumpy plane ride, just lost her son.  He was the same age, with the same name as my coat-seeker.  He, too, was once a towheaded toddler.  His mother and I had commiserated about the challenges of raising sons in 21st century America, and celebrated the moments of fun and closeness.  I don't know the details of his death, and I don't need to.  But the devastation is lodged in my heart.


So plans and preferences be damned.  I am so lucky that my son is here to need a coat.  And that I am here to pay for it.


From my friend's Facebook post--

Be kind to everyone, practice patience and tell the people you love how important they are. Your life, as you know it, can change in the blink of an eye.

Happy Thanksgiving!  I am off to the store.

As If It Matters

This morning, I am returning to my fascination with Sisyphus, by way of my current absorption with Eric Maisel's (The Van Gogh Blues:  The Creative Person's Path Through Depression) thoughts about meaning.  (Sisyphus, you might remember, was doomed to spend eternity rolling a rock up the side of a mountain.  What's more, once he reached the top, the rock would roll back down, so that he would have to start all over again.)


The chapter I finished reading over breakfast, on "Reckoning with the Facts of Existence," concludes with this quote from the end of Camus' essay, The Myth of Sisyphus:

Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks.  He concludes that all is well.  This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile.  Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself forms a world.  The struggle toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart.  One must imagine Sisyphus happy.

My earlier post focused on the fact that Sisyphus is never finished with his work--a condition I identified with, and still do.  But today I am concerned, like Alfie, with meaning--with "What's it All About?" With the seeming futility of our hero's task.  And of human existence in general.


I am given to understand that these questions I am pondering are often part of grieving when we lose someone close to us.  Tomorrow is the third anniversary of my father's death, an occurrence I am taking my own sweet time in coming to terms with.  A troubling voice inside my head has been whispering "What's the point?" for a while now.  


I take comfort and instruction from Ellen Silverstein, songwriter and creativity coach, as she is quoted by Maisel (herself quoting Gandhi):

Gandhi said,"Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it."  I try to remember this crucial idea whenever I'm beset by the "Why bother?" blues, when I hear that whiny song in my head that says, "Who cares?  What's the point of trying?  The last thing the world needs is yet another unnoticed book/song/poem/painting.  What difference does it make?"

Well, it makes a huge difference to me.  [emphasis mine]

Silverstein goes on to speak of hearing from a stranger who was inspired by a story Silverstein wrote to re-establish contact with his estranged son.  This reminds me that none of us know what part we may play in the lives of others and in the world, but that it is not right--according to the ethics that are an essential component of the meaning I am coming to recognize--to withhold our energies, our voice, our talent, our unique contribution.


For now, I see only the silhouette of what my life might mean.  But I know I want it to mean something.  And that it is up to me to figure it out.  And to live--and to write--as if it matters.

Done for the Week: Into the Breach

This past week, I struggled.  Part of it was probably reentry, since I had been away the previous week.  Part of it, I imagine, was the emotional aftermath of visiting my mother in the home she shared with my father, whose death I am only now beginning to deal with.  And a significant part of it is living with three males who are themselves floundering in various masculine versions of angst.  

Whatever the cause, it was a keep-putting-one-foot-in-front-of-the-other kind of week.  But not without its blessings.

Done List--Week of Apr. 12-Apr. 18

1. Completed 9th and final week of Couch Potato to 5K training 
2. Finished  The Day My Father Died:  Women Share Their Stories of Love, Loss, and Life, ed. by Diana Ajjan; Swann, by Carol Shields; A Fatal Grace, by Louise Penny 
3. Took my blood pressure daily
4. Attended three meetings; scheduled none
5. Reconnected with four friends
6. Published 5 blog posts
7. Meditated 5 times
8. Spent two afternoons relaxing in sunshine with a book
9. Called my mother
10. Walked my dog daily
11. Made coffee for church services and meeting
12. Nursed sick pre-launch teenager, with a light hand
13. Put in extra hours at two part-time jobs
14. Began to recover my house from the chaos of several weeks of being sick and overcommitted

Last week's focus goal was to meditate 5 times.  Item 7 on my Done List, highlighted in green, shows that I met this goal, for the second week.  At the risk of boring myself and readers following this saga, I have decided to repeat this focus goal for at least one more week.  The stress in my life at present requires all the equanimity I can muster, and I believe that meditation can help.  And I have observed that I have difficulty giving it the priority it needs.  For whatever reason, I am motivated to achieve my focus goal.  So meditating 5 times this week it is.

I have identified in red text above what seems to me to be the most important thing I did last week--finishing The Day My Father Died.  I have been looking at the book for the several weeks that I have had it out of the library, through two renewals and into the grace period.  Planning to read it, but never making the time.  Retrieving it from under the chair I most often sit in to write these blog posts.  Replacing it in my current stack.  On Friday, it was time.

Since completing the book Saturday afternoon, I have felt particularly wretched.  Sad, and drained, and edgy.  In grief circles, this kind of bad is good--the "going through it" which will, theoretically, get me to the other side.  All I can do right now is trust.  And keep on going.  

Done for the Week: A Change of Venue

Last week I took my act on the road.  Five days away from my usual environment and out of my comfort zone took their toll on my body.  Yesterday afternoon saw me falling asleep on the glider in my backyard while reading the last few pages of a well-written mystery.  

I learned a few important things on my trip.  First of all, I found that being with my Mom in the community where my Dad had died and is buried was stressful--which probably means I need to go more frequently to make some progress in accepting his death and my need to grieve.  (See earlier posts Grief Postponed:  Part I, and Grief Postponed:  Part II.)

Secondly, I discovered a need I have to spend more time with my Mom.  Thirdly, I realized how extremely bad I am at relaxing.  And fourthly, I reconnected with my constructed ability to endure and even enjoy air travel, which bodes well for a possible trip out of the country later this year.  All of this led to, and/or stemmed from the following list of activities:

Done List--Week of Apr.5-11

1. Completed Week 8 of Couch Potato to 5K training (again!)
2. Finished The Lighthouse, by P. D. James; The on-time, on-target manager:  how a "last-minute manager" conquered procrastination, by Ken Blanchard and Steve Gottry  
3. Took my blood pressure daily, while on "vacation"
4. Attended no meetings; scheduled none
5. Published 5 blog posts
6. Meditated 5 times
7. Succeeded in napping resistant 2 year-old once
8. Finished my part of large volunteer project in time to leave for New Orleans
9. Attended Wicked in New Orleans, with attendant dinner out
10. Took my Mom to a movie
11. Got through airport security twice, lived through two last-minute destination and schedule changes due to flight delays
12. Made new friend on one long flight
13. Helped Mom with paperwork, repairs
14. Worked on relaxing in sunshine with Mom and her dog, for the better part of three days
15. Rescinded an unwanted commitment 
16. Participated in 2 Women's Ensemble performances in church
17. Spent time talking with my youngest teenager

My progress on last week's focus goal--to meditate 5 times, while on vacation--is highlighted in green above.  As we can all clearly see, my goal was met.  Because I was traveling, and at the mercy of planes and relatives, I had to squeeze my meditating into any available crevice in the days, so this was something of a feat. I have decided to keep the same focus goal for at least another week, so that I can continue to establish a practice that will support my need for a more calm and mindful state.   This week, I hope to try to implement my plan to meditate regularly (most days) after lunch.  

In red above, I have identified my most important achievement of last week--in my opinion. I think it speaks for itself.  

Now to bring some of last week's lessons back home. . .

Grief Postponed: Part II

In yesterday’s post, I wrote of not having “properly” cried since my Dad’s death in the summer of 2007.  Why did that post belong in this blog?  Why does this one?

The way I see it, coming to terms with my grieving process is one of the main things I wish, and perhaps need, to put to bed.  Not the grieving itself--which I accept will take the time it takes, and which I expect, to paraphrase a Patti Smith interview I heard this week, to survive as a wound that I will have with me always--but the way I have been doing, or not doing it.  I want to understand why my experience of this loss has, thus far, been so very different from what I imagined.   And what, if anything, I should do about it.

I loved my father.  There was never a moment in the more than half a century we had together when I doubted that.  Through anger, through irritation, across distances geographical and emotional, I never questioned the importance to me of this quiet, funny, smart, loving and too often tortured man.  So where are my tears now that he is gone from my life?

I have been reading about grief lately, bibliotherapy being my first recourse, as always.  My dabbling in the literature, mostly online, has yielded two general categories of assessment of grief without tears.  By far the most common view is exemplified by the National Cancer Institute’s treatment of the subject—and they should know from grief, right?   According to this paradigm, such reactions, or nonreactions, are a form of “complicated,” and in the terms of some, “pathological” grief.  It can be seen as

Inhibited or absent grief:  A pattern in which persons show little evidence of the expected separation distress, seeking, yearning, or other characteristics of normal [sic] grief

or, depending on where I go from here, as

Delayed grief:  A pattern in which symptoms of distress, seeking, yearning, etc., occur at a much later time than is typical.

But why delay grief?  The Rowan Tree Foundation site, dedicated to helping families heal after the loss of a child, describes a scenario where this response, perhaps a defense mechanism of sorts, might occur:

[I]f a busy mother with young children loses her husband unexpectedly, she may become so entrenched in keeping up with the normal day-to-day activities of running her household that she never gives any time to her own mourning. Alternatively, the loss might be so overwhelming that her ability to cope is diminished at the time. Both of these scenarios can lead to delayed grief.

The same site, relying on Dr. Therese Rando's How To Go On Living When Someone You Love Dies, tells us that 

there could be an inability to let go of the relationship by avoiding what the reality of the loss entails, or a refusal to express the feelings that the loss brings to the surface.

In my own case, my father’s death was followed, within a week, by a trip with my mother to a still-Katrina-challenged ER to rule out a heart attack; within two weeks, by yet another ER trip with my asthmatic teenager; within three weeks by a return to Louisiana to move my mother to a different, more appropriate assisted living facility; within a month, by my daughter’s emergency induction of labor, eventual c-section and the arrival of my two-months premature first grandchild; within two months, by my mother’s heart attack and procedure-induced stroke; and within five months, by the serious life-threatening illness of my other teenager.  At the time, I believed I could not “afford” to grieve.

But at what cost, if any, did I hold off falling apart?

Some hold that inhibited grief puts the mourner at risk.  For example, this assertion from Comfort-for-Bereavement.com that

Because of this [inhibition] the bereaved person’s grief tends to manifest itself in the physical body instead.  They become sick in some form or another. It can begin to exhibit itself in the form of migraines, stomach problems and other physical symptoms.

Or this dark warning, from the Rowan Tree Foundation, under another common umbrella term, "unresolved grief:"

Delayed grief can lead to serious physical and mental health concerns.

(Can't you just hear the bum-ba-bum-bump beneath those words?) 


I should admit that I haven’t been feeling so hot, emotionally or physically, the last few months.  Ever since my last trip to New Orleans, almost exactly two years after burying my father there.  I search for other explanations, but am open to the thought that my atypical grieving may be related.

But if it is, then what?

[W]hat does [inhibited grief] mean for the bereaved person? Did they just get lucky in that their grief is not disrupting their daily life? Have they found a way [to] control grief so they can just continue on with their normal activities without the hassle of doing their grief work? Of course, the answer to these questions is a firm, "No." [Rowan Tree Foundation]

We must do the grief work; we must walk the path in order to fully heal.  [Comfort-for-Bereavement.com]

So I have, perhaps, miles to go.  But I said earlier that I had found two orientations in my reading.  The alternative view is provided on the National Cancer Institute site, where they quote from an article by G. A. Bonanno, entitled “Loss, trauma, and human resilience:  have we underestimated the human capacity to thrive after extremely aversive events?” published in American Psychologist 59 (1): 20-8, 2004:

Empirical reviews have not found evidence of inhibited, absent, or delayed grief and instead emphasize the possibility that these patterns are better explained as forms of human resilience and strength.  Evidence supports the existence of a minimal grief reaction—a pattern in which persons experience no, or only a few, signs of overt distress or disruption in functioning. This minimal reaction is thought to occur in 15% to 50% of persons during the first year or two after a loss.

So maybe I could still be off the hook?  And just the amazingly strong person I apparently wanted to be?  

Hmmmm…..  Maybe not.  I am, after all, writing these posts.  And I did have a great deal of difficulty getting to it, especially this morning, after feeling kind of sad and edgy most of yesterday.  I considered, actually, changing the subject.  And I do feel a kind of pressure behind my eyes, as if something there is backed up.

Grief Postponed: Part I

I remember the morning, two and a half years ago, when it became clear that my father’s death was imminent. 

I had been making regular trips over the nearly twenty months since flying with my parents back to their home in the New Orleans area after their Katrina-sponsored sojourn with me.  My husband joked that I was commuting to New Orleans.  My father’s failing health, strained local resources in the aftermath of the storm, and the difficulty of ensuring adequate care for the less-than-independently-wealthy moved me to spend nearly a week of every month helping to care for Dad.  This was to have been another such visit.  But the night I arrived, a Wednesday, I saw immediately the deterioration in his condition in the weeks I had been away.  

I think he had been waiting for me, his eldest. It had become difficult for him to talk, but he stroked my arm for a long time and repeated how good it was to see me, and that he loved me.  He seemed to be saying hello and goodbye at the same time. 

Two days later he had stopped eating.  And then I knew. 

On Saturday morning, I sat on the sunwashed patio at the center of the assisted living facility where my parents had been for less than three months, and called my husband.  I cried as I told him what was going on.  We made tentative plans for travel for him and our kids.  When we hung up, I dried my eyes and went back inside, and upstairs to my parents’ “apartment,” through the halls of elders clinging slenderly to life.  And back to work, for the duration, spelled by my sister, my frail mother, the facility staff’s brief ministrations, and the daily visits of the hospice nurses.  I called the church my parents had been attending and asked for a priest.  I promised my father he would not be alone. 

By Monday, my father had been mostly unconscious for the better (worst) part of two days, surfacing intermittently as more family members arrived from distant states and from cancelled vacations.  The hospice sent grief counselors to prepare us.  Ancient family dynamics erupted, and were covered over.  Late Monday night, after more subdued family wrangling, and in the interests of peace, I went to my sister’s to sleep, leaving other family members with Dad.  My phone rang at around 6 a.m. to bring me the news of my father’s death.  To this day, I don’t know, probably can’t know, if my promise was kept.

The days following Dad’s death were filled with the commonly surreal events—sitting with his body as we waited for the ambulance the law required to transport him to the hospital where he could be “pronounced;” watching as he was zipped into a body bag; “shopping” with my youngest brother in a casket showroom; greeting relatives; hosting a wake; ordering the necessary death certificates that would allow my mother to continue to receive income. 

I cried, really, only one other time.  My daughter, who couldn’t travel because of a difficult pregnancy, had put together a slide show of pictures on my husband’s laptop.  He had set it up at the back of the church where Dad’s funeral was held.  When I walked over to look at it, just before the service began, I heard the strains of “Danny Boy” which my husband had added to the images.  I was transported to the morning that Dad had sung it for a small family breakfast gathering following his younger brother’s death.  And I began to cry.  A cousin I see only at funerals came up behind me and said “Let it out.  It’s time.”  But it wasn’t.  I stopped crying.  And haven’t cried since.