Year Three: A Space in Which to Watch and Listen

I've realized from a couple of comments and emails that not everyone has made it over to the new place, so I thought I'd cross-post this one (which perhaps should have been posted here originally):

And so . . .

Late yesterday afternoon my son and I drove the few hours to my husband's hometown for his brother's retirement party. We stopped at nearby Chautauqua on the way so that I could purchase a gift for another party today and also the Barbara Brown Taylor CDs from the summer - a Sunday morning service, a Sunday evening Vespers service which has become a traditional time in which the preachers of the week to share some of their personal stories, and five weekday services.

BBT is one of the reasons I have just graduated from seminary. She was "introduced" to me a couple of decades ago by one of my stepsisters who was a parishoner of hers in Clarksville GA, and I've heard her preach several times at Chautauqua. I had planned to go for one of the week-day services in July, but found that that beautiful place, with its memories of summer after summer with our children and of the last time there, taking some ashes down to the lake on Thanksgiving night two years ago, was not yet possible for me. I had hoped to make one drive around the grounds yesterday, but it turns out that Chautauqua is also too much for my son.

Car rides with kids, even 26-year-old kids, are great opportunities for conversation. My son shared some of his feelings about this past week and his fears about the party toward which we were headed. I told him that my brother had called to express apprehension about my attendance at this event on this particular week-end.

As it turned out, Matt spent much of the evening settled into a couch with a cousin and some other young men he doesn't know, watching football on tv. I spent most of it sitting around a table with my husband's sisters and their husbands and one of their daughters, who's just started college. I watched the new babies and their families out of the corner of my eye, and here's what I saw:

The babies are beautiful and peaceful and never at a loss for arms in which to be held ~

The young mothers look very happy, a little tired, and at ease in their new roles ~

The grandmothers and great-grandmother are ecstatic ~

It looks (and I recall that it is) much easier to care for one newborn than two, especially when you are surrounded by extended family ~

No one shared birth stories with me, no one tried to hand babies to me, no one mentioned what it was like when there were two babies in the family 26 years ago.

Which caused me to wonder:

Do I exhibit a terrible stillness that renders me unapproachable? Are they sensitive to my feelings? Or are they just scared of the woman whose own baby grew up only to die?

Probably no one even notices. Perhaps it's only me ~ because I am so aware that if Josh were here, I wouldn't be able to get enough of those babies and their mothers.

And so . . .

I am thinking that two years ago I would not have gone near that party. A year ago I would have gone and been outside in tears within five minutes. Last night I made it through three hours and managed, I think, to appear quite normal. (Perhaps when my husband comes home tonight, he will offer a different impression.)

I see that this is a year in which to watch and listen, to absorb and reflect. I wonder at the randomness of it all ~ how my sister-in-law has a happy marriage, a job she enjoys, a beautiful home, three grown children, and now two beautiful grandchildren, and how she smiles and laughs. I wonder how many times I have been, in my own happiness, oblivious to the concealed pain of others. (I am not commenting on my sister-in-law or anyone else ~ only on myself.

Matt and I spent a lot of our car time talking about how much you share, how much you don't. What does he say to new acquaintances in law school? I am still stunned, he says, that my brother is dead, and by suicide. What do I say to new people, some of whom might become good friends and some not? How do I tell stories about my life?

I tell him that I have no idea. I tell him that one of my best friends is a woman I met on the first day of law school all those years ago, and that she became a person who immediately flew back from California when his brother died and accompanied me to the crematorium. But how would I have predicted any of that when we were young women studying law together? I tell him that some years ago she told me that she remembers in great detail the moment when we were getting to know each other over our morning cookie snack, a few weeks into school, and I told her that my mother had died when I was a child. It was a simple statement of fact for me, a stunning revelation for her. I don't remember the conversation at all; it is burned into her mind. What effect do our words have on people? I am a preacher: I should know the answer to that one. I find that I have no idea.

I tell him that I do not know what to tell, what not.

(This blog, form instance, is probably too much sharing. But in truth it reveals little of the depth of this experience.)

And so . . . watching and listening, and trying to figure out how to live. What to share because it helps me. What to offer because it might help others. What to keep to myself.

Year Three begins.

Blogging Survivors of Suicide I

I'm going to a meeting tonight. I haven't been in over a year: I've mostly been out of town on Thursdays. I tried to go two weeks ago, but it was canceled, so . . . maybe tonight.

I'm in a very different place than I was a year ago. It's been about a year since the Hebrew verb "to kill" became a central feature of one of our three-hour classes (to kill, to be killed, to have killed, to kill oneself), at the end of which I dissolved into very public tears. A few nights ago I was at a meeting at which someone eagerly shared with us the "dry bones" verses from Ezekiel, telling us that it's one of the most important passages with which she prays on her annual retreat, a time each summer during which she seeks re-creation. That's one of the passages of which I now steer clear, being as how dead bones and sinews are not, in fact, ever put back together, but I found that I had no need to say anything. I just let her have the pleasure of sharing a piece of Scripture that has life-giving meaning for her. No commentary from me required or desired.

But I am terribly, terribly sad. I am sorting and clearing through our house and it's taking a very long time, because I find things, and memories pour through me and I am immobilized for the next few days. I've actually spent most of today doing the denial thing by reading a very good mystery, after a little meltdown last night. But this evening, as I started to get ready to go out, I found myself imagining early summer evenings in this kind of heat 20 years ago: bringing the kids home from the pool, no one changing out of already-dry swim suits, making sandwiches for dinner, my children running around with those from next door in the waning light, popsicles for all, an hour of stories, settling my daughter into her bed with a cat picture book and listening outside the door as the boys chattered to each other in the dark.

Another person's life?

There's no predicting what will happen at this meeting. But I am feeling the need for some connection.

Church and Girls and Their Moms

I was visiting another church, and at the end of the service a young-ish couple got up to make a stewardship presentation. They talked about how much the church means to them, and about how involved they are in the church and in its associated school which their three elementary-grade aged children attend. They were attractive and energetic and articulate, and bubbling over with the general goodness of life and their joy in their family and church.

It was pretty painful to watch, if you happened to be me.

I used to be that mother and my family used to be that family. It was hard to watch them as the person I am now. It was hard to think about myself having made similarly enthusiastic presentations in oblivion to their possible effects. It is hard to think about ministry and how to conduct church services in which the pews are filled with people experiencing all kinds of hardships as well as all kinds of joys.

After they stepped down, we sang the last hymn, and then it was time to leave. I was pretty near the front of the very large sanctuary and I wasn't in a hurry, so as I reached the back, few people were left. But among those who were still there was a small group in one pew: a young girl sobbing into the lap of the woman next to her, another girl about her age curled up in a man's embrace, and a couple of other adults looking fairly dazed and disconnected.

I felt as if I should understand the little scene playing out before me, but there was no reason that I would. And then I thought: I wonder if that's the family of the woman who died in a car accident a few weeks ago, leaving twin daughters behind.

If it was ~ how excruciating it must have been for those girls, to see another mother from their school laughing and talking about all the things that she does with her children. All the things their mother will never again do with them. To see their classmates smiling and waving at the congregation. It was hard for me and I am all grown up and I have had some time.

I wanted to stop and say, I know. I know what it's like to lose your mother in an automobile accident. I know what it's like to grow up without a mother. But of course, I didn't, because I didn't know anything at all about the family sitting there and, even if they were who I think they were, I am a complete stranger to them. But I do think about the family I know of, and pray for them often.

And then I drove home, and thought about a conversation my daughter and I had had earlier in the day, in which she had poured out some frustrations to me and had then begun to talk with delight about something else. And I thought about what it is like not to have those conversations with your mother. Not even to know such conversations exist until you have a daughter of your own.

I hope those girls have daughters someday.

I hope they get to wave good-bye as I did today, to a 22-year-old woman sporting a bright pink wig, off to meet a friend at her Montessori school's Halloween party, eight years after she last attended that party as a student. I hope they get to live as mothers the lives they are missing out on as daughters.

I hope they can someday find a way to be in church, filled with peace rather than with sorrow.

I hope I can, too.



Cross-posted at Search the Sea.

A Different Kind of Holiday

I am up and about to leave for seminary ~ a 2.5 hour drive ~ and my 10:00 am class.

In the dream I was having when the alarm went off, our family and Katie's family and Joey's family and Sarah's family were in a cabin in the snowy Colorado Rockies, having a loud and joyful Christmas Dinner together at 7:00 am because we all had to leave for the airport by 8:00 am to fly to Florida.

All of us. ALL of our children were with us.

October

I wrote this in my original blog four years ago. I entitled it "October Is The Cruellest Month," because as of then September wasn't.

**************************

I could fill reams of paper with stories of a family under seige, a family marked forever by that relentless stalker, grief. I could write about growing up without a mother, under the twin shadows of loss and alcoholism.

But for today, I simply want to do the events of October 5, 1960 the honor of recording them.

It was a perfectly ordinary day. Everyone says that, according to Joan Didion in the recent Sunday Times article in which she explores the staggering grief she has experienced since the death of her husband. Everyone begins the narrative of sudden and unexpected death with the same preamble. "It was an ordinary day." Even Joan Didion begins with those words, despite the fact that she had spent the earlier part of the afternoon on which her husband suddenly died visiting her daughter, who was in the hospital in a coma.

It was for us, however, really an ordinary day, exactly 45 years ago. I was late to school and missed the bus. I almost always missed the bus, because my mother wanted me to eat breakfast and in second grade I was never hungry that early. As she did almost every morning, my father's mother waved to us from her dining room window as we drove down the hill past her house.

A little later, as she would tell me when I was grown, my mother's mother, who lived a mile away, in town, walked into our house, calling the name of her daughter. Dishes had been left on the table and a load of laundry was running in the basement.

"Carol! Carol?" she called. It was an ordinary morning and she was going to spend it with her daughter and grandsons. She had begun to clear the dishes when my father's mother walked in.

"Oh, Dorothy," she said, in a pained voice that barely emerged from her lips. The two grandmothers looked at each other and thought, This is not happening. This communication that is about to pass between us cannot be.

After she had waved to us, my father's mother, still in her nightgown and robe, had turned back to her kitchen from her dining room. Before she had taken more than a few steps, she heard a thunderous crash from the road below the hill. She grabbed the telephone and called for an ambulance, saying urgently, "I think my family has been in an accident." Then she took off down the hill, running at breakneck speed down the drive and a quarter of a mile down the road.

My mother was already gone. My baby brother died a few hours later, having been transported to Children's Hospital with massive brain injuries. I lay in the ditch, screaming for my mother.

My other brother, who was four and has no real memory of ever having had a mother, is the only one left who has any recollection of the moments before the accident. He says that our mother glanced into the back seat where we were located, and then there was darkness. Apparently we swerved just over the center line as an oncoming car crested the hill in front of us.

When my brother woke up in the hospital four days later, his skull fractured and his elbow shattered, I had been lying there conscious for 48 hours already, weighted down by my full leg cast and abdominal stitches. And by other things. The adults wheeled my tiny brother out of the room to tell him what I already knew, and the hallway stiffened against a child's wails, just as it had two days earlier.

And then we began, my brother and I, murmuring in our hospital beds as the leaves outside the window turned yellow and red, to build our lives anew. We were children, and so we were brave and did not know that we were small.

**************

We are older now. My brother has called me almost every day since Josh died. We are still brave, but now we know that we are small.

My Family (A Gratitude Post)

Thesis Statement: I am inexpressibly grateful for my surviving family.

I practiced domestic relations law for a number of years and did a fair amount of pro bono work in juvenile court, which in our county is the place in which parental determinations in child abuse and neglect cases are made. I have no illusions about what can happen to marriages and families under stress, or about what people can do to one another out of frustration or anger or for no apparent reason at all. My husband gave me a very funny card early in our marriage and my legal career, a card which referred to what he insisted what was my naturally pessimistic nature. I used to tell him in response that my getting out of bed every morning was a sign of indeflatable optimism.

My family has been under some considerable stress for the past eleven months: mental, emotional, physical, spiritual, financial, legal. Most of us, I'm sure, don't think much about what our family and friends undergo in all realms of life as a consequence of sudden death. I remember my father talking about how, in the 1950s, no one thought of purchasing life insurance on women who were homemakers. Losing a wife when they were both 28 and being left with two small children impressed upon him the invisible but real economic value of the work performed by wives and mothers at home, as he found himself having to pay for the childcare, cooking, cleaning, laundry, transportation, shopping, and scheduling tasks that had been my mother's. I'm sure that when he ran into friends, they remarked with sympathy upon our loss, but had little awareness that his morning may have begun with a crisis due to a sick babysitter or a checkbook that would stretch no farther to cover expenses not previously considered, any more than people at seminary, concerned about assignments and tests, know that I may have begun my day with a heartwrenching email from an attorney or insurance company.

And so, I am, yes, inexpresibly grateful for the Quiet Husband and for the Gregarious Son and the Lovely Daughter, each of them steadily doing what needs to be done each day, each of them quietly supporting one another and me through both tears and smiles, through the unexpected conundrums that arise almost weekly, and through conversations no one should have to have. My husband's season as a girls' soccer coach has just begun, my son is making plans for an LSAT prep course, and my daughter has begun her Americorps orientation. I know that each of them is weighed down and disoriented by a considerable burden, but they are all looking toward the future as well as the past. It could be so much worse . . . .

I think they're all wonderful.

Reaching Out

Last night we hosted a little gathering to celebrate the college graduations of a fabulous foursome ~the Lovely Daughter and three of her friends from Montessori days. All of the girls, as well as all of their brothers and sisters, attended a small Montessori school through the eighth grade, forming friendships that have weathered the years and graduating in tiny classes of children who knew each other almost as siblings. I think there were 13 students in the Lovely Daughter's graduating class, and 15 in her brothers' class two years earlier. Small but cohesive groups, as Chicago Son's funeral sadly demonstrated, when young people who had met long ago over the pink tower showed up from New York, Oregon, and Toronto, along with teachers who had known them since they were three years old.

It has been such a delight to watch our girls grow into the wonderful young women they have become, and even more of a pleasure to see their friendships sustain and strengthen them through three different high schools and five different colleges. They are so appreciative of each other's gifts and differences, and they have so much fun together. And they have offered us as well the gift of friendship with a terrific group of parents, all of them (us) just quirky enough to seek out something of an alternative education for our kids and stick with it for as long as it was available.

Last night ~ sitting out in the yard as darkness fell and candles were lit, eating grilled chicken and strawberries and ice cream, all with people who have been friends to all of our children throughout their educational adventures ~ was a good first try for us, the very first attempt we have made to host anything at all in our home since Chicago Son died. I missed him every second, but I know he would have approved the laughter and memories of days gone by.

Stages -- We Are All Different

I would never presume to speak for another woman's experience of this dreadful journey. But it seems that I am in a new place, albeit still considerably warped from life as I knew and loved it. Well. That life is over. And some sort of new construction is in process.

Mother's Day was rough. Thank God for my two wonderful children who are still in this world, and for their honesty and compassion in the face of such hurt. I do not have many people who can absorb my candid self-expression, but they seem able to, and able to share a little of their own pain.

Yesterday I spend nearly three hours talking over a possible internhip position for next year with a senior pastor at a downtown church. He was stunned, of course, when I told him about our year, and seemed surprised that I am capable of lucid conversation. And then we went on to have a terrific time.

That interlude caused me to think back to last fall. We had to do some things -- the first week with the funeral and all the associated planning and events, a week-end trip south for my niece's wedding, a week-end trip west to visit The Lovely Daughter on Parents' Week-end, and those horrific two days in Chicago to empty our son's apartment. Otherwise, though, my life was lived pretty much in my bed. Phone, computer, dog, me. Sleep, cry, stare at ceiling. When I did venture out of my room, I was surrounded by family or close friends. People who knew, people to whom I had to explain nothing.

I see that now I am in a different place. I am taking breaks from grief. Last night a few of us stayed after class for an hour, engaged in an intense and animated discussion with our professor. I'm pretty sure I was the only one whose thoughts were elsewhere every few minutes, but I also enjoyed myself and was grateful for the chance to focus on debates and conundrums which I find that I still care about. Afterward, I realized that I was recovering from Mother's Day by returning to my regular life, altered as it is.

So. Who knows how I'll feel in another hour? But I am pretty much able to get through lots of days now in some kind of fashion that sort of works.

Five Things: Shock

I can talk only about what it has been like for me. My husband, my son, my daughter -- perhaps they would see things differently, perhaps they would be able to order them in some way. Perception , response -- no doubt even those earliest cave paintings in France tell us something about the variety of human perception and response. I have only my own story to share.

The shock. The suddenness of a loss that blots out your entire universe. I read a couple of weeks ago that only 20% of deaths in the United States today are completely unanticipated. I was surprised, since my personal experience has been so different. My 28-year-old mother and year-old brother killed in a car accident. My 48-year-old stepmother killed in a fall. My 49-year-old aunt dead almost instantly of a stroke or heart attack. My 24-year-old son, dead by suicide.

There is, of course, a sense of shock even when the death has been expected, even when its imminence has been the focus of life. That reality first became apparent to me when I was in law school and my husband's uncle died of cancer. He was at home, where his family had cared for him during the last weeks of his life, and his wife's response was one of such overwhelming anguish and agitation that I realized that even when you know what is going to happen, you can't quite accommodate it until it does. I saw the same thing over and over again during my CPE experience at Giant Famous Hospital last summer. Probably close to 75, maybe many more, of my patients died while I was actually there on the campus, usually with them. I can't think of a single survivor who wasn't visibly shaken, heartbroken, devastated ~ and it made no difference whether their loved ones had been in the hospital a matter of hours or a matter of months. The completeness of death startles and undoes us no matter the circumstances.

But a completely unexpected death brings its own set of horrors. The ground has shifted, the sky has turned dark, and the requirements of your life have been altered, all in a single second. You have to absorb information that you cannot find acceptable, you have to make telephone calls you will not remember making, you have to make decisions no one wants to make.

As far as I can piece together, in the first hour or so after learning of my son's death, which had happened the night before while while I was four hours from home at a retreat center, I talked by telephone to my husband who was at home and called to tell me, to my daughter's college advisor and then to my daughter in Oregon, to my brother and son en route to our house from the southern part of the state, to a detective in Chicago, to my spiritual director who was at home, to my son's girlfriend in Chicago, to our pastors who were at church, and to a good friend at home. Some of those calls I can remember, some I only know must have taken place because of information I seem to have acquired in the first hours. The only person I knew at the retreat center, where I had been for a little more than a day, was the Jesuit who was my director for the week I had planned there, and so I talked to him off and on through the late afternoon and early evening, as I waited for friends to come for me. He offered his office and computer, and so I sent a few emails to others to whom I am close, knowing that within another few hours I would be unable to manage anything of the sort.

I felt encased in some kind of impermeable shell, into which the faintest knowledge of an ominous reality had somehow seeped, a reality that was gathering the steam that would enable it to crash its way into every corner of our lives and explode that shell into thousands of pieces.

It feels as if that explosion is still reverberating. I guess it will always feel that way.

Calibrating? Muddling?

A fairly new acquaintance says to me, "I don't know how you've managed to come back to seminary this year. When my mother died, I took a quarter off. A child? I don't think I could have done that."

A good, longtime friend says to me, "I don't know how you're doing what you do."

What do those statements mean? Do people think I don't love my son enough? Do they think I'm in denial?

I don't think either of those things are true.

I am rather cheerfully pushing my cart through the grocery, thinking that while I feel like shit, I feel relatively ok. Better than a lot of days. Then some piano music wafts through the air. I have no idea whether I have heard it before, whether it is glancing off some subconscious memory. But I want to let the cart go, sink to my knees, and wail a long and piercing cry. I don't, of course. I keep pushing the cart, and wonder how many people we see in our daily lives out there in the world who are silently keening.

Three women in the coffee shop. One of us lost her father a year ago; after she cared for him for months, he died in her arms. One of us lost her son seven-plus months ago. One of us is accompanying her husband through his chemotherapeutic battle against a particularly virulent form of cancer. We are laughing and beginning to plan a college graduation party for four young ladies we know and love.

What does that mean? Strength? Resistance? Oblivion?

I think that mostly it means that I love the women I know.

Oh, and the wisdom thing I've been muttering about? I think I get it. What you learn from this kind of suffering is that you know nothing. I mean: really nothing. If you have reached the age of 50, you are probably already aware that you have never known or understood nearly as much as you may have once thought you did. But this kind of loss clarifies it anew: we know NOTHING.

That, I think, is wisdom.

Incapacity

I'm beginning to understand at a new level why we find hospital chaplains, spiritual directors, therapists -- anyone with the skill to ask open-ended questions and the capacity to listen to the answers without feeling compelled to comment, fix, teach, change, or make better -- so valuable in our lives. Anyone with the ability to name names and to hear feelings and experiences for what they are.

My father has been widowed three times, divorced once, lost a child. You might think that he would be one of those people.

He hasn't said my son's name aloud to me in months.

He called last night and peppered questions at me in a booming, jovial voice. How's school? Your exams are finished? Everything go well? New classes? How's your other school? What exactly are you studying there? How's the young lady in Oregon? When is her graduation again? The young man at home? The husband?

My answers: Fine. Yes. Fine. Yes. Fine. Spiritual direction. Fine. May 17. Fine. Fine.

The real answers: Very difficult. Two weeks ago. I did well and and what difference does it make? What difference does anything make? Yes, and I am appreciative of the chance to study Matthew with one of the world's great experts, terrified of attempting Homiletics at this juncture in life but possessed of enough of a sense of self-preservation to want to go forward, perplexed as I finally begin to look at Calvin in depth and address the endless series of paradoxes and dichotomies that mark my faith. It's wonderful and I am incredibly grateful to the people who urged me to go ahead with the spiritual direction program, telling me that I might find healing there. Would you like to know sometime what spiritual direction is and why I am investing two years of my life in formal training as a director? She's doing well and busy and productive and her heart is broken. He's confused and struggling to get a handle on life. He's sad and angry.

My father and my former spiritual director are almost exactly the same age. One of them could tell you quite a bit about me, before and after; sends me things that help sometimes; can absorb it all. The other can't even go there.

Settling In

I'm back at seminary. We are on a quarter system and my first class was yesterday.

Last night, my friends at home gathered after a Taize service, around an altar lit only by candles, to mark the year since Musical Friend's husband died. My husband described it as "terrible, somber, the family much less controlled than they had been at the funeral." That initial shock creates such a protective veneer, seared away a year later. And I had not really thought ahead to what it would be like for my husband, just as I had not thought ahead a couple of weeks ago to what it would be like for me to go into a funeral home. I keep forgetting that we are not who we were.

I have already written in other places that I had read that the sixth to eighth months are bad, really bad, as the shock finally wears off and the real reality sets in. Now, on the outside, we look functional. I go to class, I take notes, I laugh with friends over lunch. I have moments off and on all day when something reminds me of that real reality and I stop breathing and wonder whether I can get to the next minute, but I do. I had a meltdown during an exam a couple of weeks ago as I looked at the questions and the words swam off the page and I realized that I knew nothing, absolutely nothing -- but I was able to compose myself in a few minutes out of the room and return to fill a bluebook with -- something. Yesterday there was a moment in class when the professor said something, something meant to be encouraging and inspiring, and I wanted to flatten myself into the floor and melt away. Intention and effect so seldom merge these days.

Gal wonders whether the word trauma is too dramatic. Oh ~ no. I responded in her comments that if this were physical, we would be covered in bruises, our joints would be swollen, our bones cracked, our blood sometimes seeping through our skin. It only sounds like a melodramatic word because on the outside we look like ordinary people living ordinary lives.

**********

Last week-end, two of my friends, in two different contexts and conversations, referred to blogging as navel-gazing. I decided both times that it probably wasn't the moment to reveal that I have been blogging away for ~ I think it's five years this month.

**********

But I do hope I don't sound whiny. Grief is a self-absorbed process, but I am merely trying to record it as I experience it. I'm not under any illusion that I am the only one.

**********

I think I'll cross post at Search the Sea. I haven't actually navel-gazed there for a few days.

Early Morning

I got up earlier than usual this morning. The Quiet Husband was in the shower, and the dog jumped off the bed and began to roll around on the rug. Realizing that she wasn't going to be able to last until he was ready to leave for work, I sighed and got out of bed. We went downstairs and I opened the back door for her, then went into the downstairs bathroom to take care of my own needs before letting her back in.

Sun streamed through the kitchen windows and I thought about the many mornings I had gotten up, come downstairs after my own very early shower to let a different dog out, and started making lunches. Peanut butter sandwiches, goldfish crackers, fruit roll-ups, pudding packages, juice boxes. Then I would awaken my three little blond children and focus on clothes, breakfasts, backpacks, and coats and hats and mittens. Feed the dog, the cat, the guinea pig, the parakeets. Grab anything that needed to be taken care of in the way of errands after dropping the kids off. Completely routine mornings; I haven't thought about them in years. Load the kids into the car, make sure everyone is buckled in. Drive off to Montessori school.

For the last couple of years, with the kids all off in college, the suddenly quiet house, pretty worn and dilapidated after two decades of sheltering an active and intense family, nevertheless shined with potential. I wasn't sure whether that meant potential for a new young family or for us in a new state of life, but I thought that it would open up to new colors, new spaces and, someday, small bodies whirling around once again.

Now, midmorning, I sit in my living room. Sunlight dapples the couch, where the dog is once again sound asleep.

It seems so utterly empty here.

Observations

I am down in the southwest corner of the state, where I have come for tomorrow's funeral for my second stepmother's mother. I'm in my brother's living room, using his laptop ~ awake, as usual, long after everyone else.

Earlier this evening I spent about an hour at the visitation. I had forgotten to take into account that it might be difficult to be in a funeral home.

Lots of family there, people I have known my entire life. I had also forgotten to take into account that everyone would look different to me than they did six months ago. It's not them, of course. It's my vision. It's like looking out at a world populated by aliens. But the alien, I suppose, is me.

It's hard to explain. But my entire orientation has shifted. I stood there making small talk with my lawyer uncle and his son, my lawyer cousin, about the worldwide economic situation, and my cousin acknowledged several times, in deference to my new reality, that we need to keep things in perspective. How would we do that? I wondered to myself. My half-brother is also a lawyer, and I am a lawyer. Maybe if we got all of us into one place, we could figure out what kind of perspective we should have.

After the funeral tomorrow there will be a Methodist church luncheon. The last time I went to an after-the-funeral-luncheon-in-a-rural-church was four years ago, after my third-stepmother died. The church ladies had produced dozens of the most amazing pies and cakes.

Banana cream pies after a funeral. I'm trying to figure out what that might mean. And also the economy. And death, the relentless predator.

I wonder how the people who survived the medieval plagues retained their sanity. I'm betting that it was an elusive commodity.

They Swam Away

You should go over to the sidebar, click on A Slow Read, and take a look at the entry about the Midmar Mile.

It reminded me of a piece on NPR several years ago in which a woman reviewed her career as a swim meet mom. During the early years, she said, the moms all sat on the edges of their seats, and each one knew her child's rankings and times to the second. As the years passed, the friendships became much more important than the competition, and the moms visibly relaxed, finding much more to talk about than ribbons and medals, and re-discovering the things that are really important in life.

Now: a new stage. When some children have become ill or been seriously injured, and some children have died, the recognition of what is important shifts again. When there are mothers who look at the water and see only the swimmers who once were, the water changes color for everyone.

The Abode of Grief: Fewer Hours, Condensed Time

I used to live long, wide, and spacious days.

I would often be outdoors and walking three or four miles by 6:00 a.m. I worked hard all day and well into the evening. I was a teacher, I was a graduate student, I was a church committee chair. I was often asked to do things that required advance preparation. (Will you make this quick presentation on Sunday? a friend would ask. I know it doesn't take you any time at all. Look how easy that last one was. And my eyebrows would go up. Those two minutes? At least two hours of advance writing and revising and practice. But it looked so easy, he would say. That's how it's supposed to look.)

And I had three children in college, all of whom filled my thoughts and dreams and hopes, every day, every night. When they were small I would call home three, four times a day, just to find out what they were up to. When they were in college I would glance at my watch and think, it's noon in Chicago and 1:00 in Columbus and 9:00 a.m. in Oregon. Is he in class, is he at work, is she even awake?

And I had energy for myself, and energy for God. Lots of energy for reading and writing and breakfasts with friends. Lots of space in my life for prayer and journaling. Time seemed so full and yet so expansive.

Now. Now it is nearly 9:00 am and I am just getting up. I was awake three hours ago but I knew that would make for too many hours in the day and so I went back to sleep. I will be up late into the night because I won't be able to sleep then.

Now I have to pace myself carefully. I am doing things: going to class, studying, writing papers, working with a couple of people, planning for the future. Each takes so much energy and requires so much recovery time. I forget what I've focused on within five minutes of reading or hearing it. I look at notes and say to myself: We had an entire lecture on that? I lose everything, little things and really important things. I stumble across them later and can't imagine how they landed in the place they did. I write papers and have no idea whether they bear any resemblance to what is expected. I make schedules for accomplishing things and then I stare into space.

I am still writing thank-you notes. The cost of each one is so high. Only a few lines, but each reminds me of something else ~ a relationship, an occasion in the past, someone else entirely whose claim on my time is perhaps more urgent. I did not know, before, that when I received an acknowledgment from someone for flowers or words offered in a time of sorrow, that the note itself might represent a morning's work. Or a week's.

People send me emails and cards and books and little packages. Some of the things written by certain people fill my thoughts for hours, for days. They become little prayers, flickering sources of connection to other people, to the universe, to God.

I think about my lost son all of the time, as I have for 25 years. My brain tissue has grooves worn in it, and I cannot stop thinking of someone just because he is not here at all. But his absence fills every crevice of my life and makes impossible demands on my imagination. I keep waiting for time to go backward so that we can pick up where we left off.

I think about my other children and my son's girlfriend all the time, too. I want to wrap my arms around them all and take care of them forever and in a way that will enable them to heal. What does that even mean? I have a long scar smack down the middle of my stomach, from the car accident when I was seven. (No scans in those days to reveal ruptured spleens, which I turned out not to have.) It was a distraction during my bikini days, it stretched to accomodate a twin pregnancy, and then another one, and now it looks as crumpled and faded as you might expect. I don't notice it. But this jagged scar, the one which all these young people have to carry into adult life? How much time before it fades? There is nothing clean and precise about it; all those jagged edges seem more like tentacles than boundaries.

I have been writing this piece off and on for a couple of days. Not an original thought in it. And yet, like everything else, it has sapped hours and energy. I had not realized that time and energy were so closely entertwined, and not in any way that makes sense.

(Image: Picasso's Blue Nude.)

Blank Mind

Gregarious Son and I had dinner tonight with good, good friends. The son and Chicago Son were best friends for most of their growing up years. His mom is one of my very best friends. His dad has faced serious, almost impossible, health challenges for 15 years. The kind that remind you every day that there is nothing remotely fair about life.

In the kitchen, my friend and I talked about the day we learned that Chicago Son had died. I was on retreat, four hours from home. She says that I called and, seeing my name on the caller ID, she answered with delight. We had been meaning to get together for weeks. I said, "Are you alone?" and she immediately knew something was terribly wrong. He husband was out back, and so she said, "Just tell me," and I did.

"You were competely calm and articulate," she said. "And you asked me to go over to your house to be with your husband, and I said that I would go as soon as I got hold of my son. And then you just started screaming."

I don't remember that call at all.

Having Children

It was 25 years ago this month that my husband and I learned that we might be expecting twins.

We had waited awhile. My grandmother had told a friend, unbeknownst to me, that she despaired of my ever having children; she thought I had chosen a legal career over motherhood. Had she mentioned her concerns to me, I could have allayed her fears and, I suppose, added a new one. I was waiting until I turned 29, waiting to be through with 28, the age my mother had been when she was killed in a car accident. Talk about magical thinking ~ but what I did not know was that virtually everyone who loses a young parent thinks of the parent's age at death as a significant milestone, one which the child must pass before beginning to think of her life as her own.

We were in Albuquerque, I was about to turn 29, and I tossed the birth control pills. A year and a half later, the ultrasound depicted two small amniotic sacs, one with a heartbeat. "Don't get your hopes up," the doctor warned. "Often what looks like a second baby dissolves and vanishes." But four weeks later: two strong little hearts. May: two tiny boys. Late August: frantic medical practice. How could twins be overdue? Sepember 1: Perfection times two.

We were so lucky. So grateful. I never stopped being grateful. So sad, for what my mother and I had both missed. So aware of the gift of joy. So happy that we went ahead and welcomed the Lovely Daughter (and would have gone for more had not both my pregnancies been so physically gruelling).

The years did not pass easily. Three children in three years. A husband and father who traveled abroad frequently. You can fill in between the lines. Each of the children with significant challenges of his or her own. Each of them growing into a distinct individual, often apart but always intertwined. Our family.

And now one of them is gone.

I do not understand how this can possibly be my life.

I want him back.

Ashes to Ocean (Again)

I waded up to my waist into the warm waters surrounding the Florida Keys last week and scattered some of my son's ashes into the path cast by the sunlight across the Atlantic. An osprey soared overhead and the gentle swells of water carried some of him into the ocean he loved all his life.

After our son's death and the cremation of his body, we had to learn about the disposition of ashes. I discovered that some people, from a variety of faith traditions, are opposed to cremation for religious reasons, and some have no problem with cremation but insist that the ashes should remain together in one container and location. We were in neither of those camps, and knew that we wanted to leave our son's remains in a place or places meaningful to him. In that regard, the most helpful stories came from a woman whose friends had scattered some of her husband's ashes along the his favorite marathon route, and another who has found comfort in taking small amounts of her son's ashes with her to leave in various spots to which she has travelled around the globe. She was also the source of sound advice about how to manage the task discretely when travel is involved. Such were among the conversations in which we were engaged last September, in the funeral home, in meetings with my spiritual director, and around our kitchen table, and they helped us learn how to connect past and present into an unexpected and unwanted future.

We had first taken our boys to Florida when they were three months old. My grandparents had rented a house for the winter in Vero Beach, but my grandfather had become extremely ill. He was alert during the days and was able to spend that one of the last few weeks of his life enjoying his new great-grandsons. At night, however, he would succumb to the predations of dementia, and I would lie awake on the king-sized bed in the guest room next to his, where I was often alert at odd hours, as I was nursing two babies, and listen sadly to his confused ramblings. During the daytime he knew that it was 1984 and that Christmas was coming; late at night he was usually under the impression that it was the 1930s and thought he needed to get up and go to work.

That week was a chilly and windy one, so the photographs of the boys' first outings to the beach show a family of four bundled up in sweaters and hats. The next year we instituted our two decades of annual sojourns to St. Augustine, where we generally had better luck with the weather. A long sequence of photos shows my sons' growth from year to year, in and out of the Atlantic Ocean every spring. Lively toddlers, ecstatic first-graders, serious fifth-graders, long-haired middle schoolers, soccer-playing high schoolers, languid college students. When Chicago Son was a senior in high school, his first serious girlfriend joined us there for an unexpected trip at New Year's, and we took fireworks out to the beach for a midnight celebration. We were last there all together the next summer; after that college and summer job schedules took their inevitable toll on extended family vacations. I had hoped that he and Beautiful Ballet Dancer would meet us there last winter, but that was not to be.

The beaches of Florida are the locus of some of my best memories ~ times with my mother, long gone; times with the grandparents who cared for me so attentively after her death, times with my own children. And so I took my son's ashes there, to the ocean into which he had dashed so fearlessly as a child and to the waves into which he had dived over and over and over again as a young man, and I watched part of him merge with the salt and the water and the sunlight.