Calendars

I feel like I am in an emotional loop, moving from funerals to anniversaries to funerals to Mothers Day to Birthdays, Deathdays … maybe it is time to set the calendar aside or maybe it is time to mark different kinds of events. I don’t know. I just feel stretched thin, emotionally translucent, yet somehow numb.

Today is Malcolm’s Birthday. He would have been 30. I like to imagine what he would have been doing, where he would have been living.  Maybe teaching, with photography on the side. Maybe living in a cottage in Old Jefferson and coming over for Sunday lunch and leftovers to bring home.  I like this fantasy. It warms my heart.

If only…

Healing

Healing

Pain abhors words
thinks them trite
denies description
scorns consolation
mocks sentiment.

Pain gnaws at your bones
disfiguring,
emptying,
causing you to fade
from lack of substance.

But over time
(it’s true what they say)
imperceptibly softening.

Anger enters then,
and sorrow.

Pain accepts
the proffered hand of Grief
And at long last – weeps.

My Declaration, Tom Baxter

Gonna be someone, gonna give something,
I’m taking it on, I’m taking it on,
It’s gonna be my life, so I’m gonna live each day and each night,
Taking it on, I’m taking it on

’cause I can’t keep hiding, I can’t keep hiding, I can’t keep running away
So I’m gonna be stronger, I’m gonna be better made, I’m gonna give everything,
Just to bring me back again.

I’m gonna be a braver soul than this,
I’m gonna jump at all those many chances that I’ve missed,
I’m gonna live my life beyond these fears and forms of cowardice that keep leading me on.
I’m gonna shine out like a beacon in the night,
I’m gonna wrap my fingers round the stars tonight,
’cause I’m taking it on, ’cause I’m taking it on…

I can’t keep hiding, I can’t keep hiding, I can’t keep running away
So I’m gonna be stronger, I’m gonna be better made, I’m gonna give everything,
Just to bring me back again.
So I’m gonna be stronger, I’m gonna be understood and I’m gonna give everything
Just to bring me back again!

So I’m gonna be stronger and I’m gonna be better made, I’m gonna give everything,
Just to bring me back again…
’cause I can’t keep hiding, I can’t keep hiding, I can’t keep running away.

Christmas Musings

My mother never knew about the death of her grandson; in 2007 when he died she was fighting for her own life. Later, when she pulled through, it seemed unnecessarily cruel to burden her with a reality she need never have to face. After all, he lived across the ocean. But now I wonder, does she know? Are they together and getting to know each other?

At this unavoidably religious time of year, the faith of my childhood is easily stirred: images of mothers and infants are ubiquitous and the refrains of traditional Carols drift through the background of my thoughts. I have always loved singing Christmas Carols, not the American Christmas kitsch of Rudolf and Frosty but ”The Coventry Carol” and “In the bleak mid-winter.” When singing Carols I don’t hold back, I sing loud and harmonize freely.  My boys used to be a little embarrassed but then James starting enjoying the harmonizing fun himself. It’s good for those around me that I have a decent voice, but I’m not sure tone-deafness would stop me. Then again, maybe it’s just the no holds barred sing along that I enjoy.

In Ireland on the night of my mother’s funeral, the entire family group walked into the small town and, with permission from the owner who knew my Dad’s family well, took over the front bar and had a great musical evening.  Starting with Irish drinking songs we easily moved to more contemporary fare and even some original songs.  It was wondrous, joyous and something I didn’t realise I missed so much.

Maybe I need to look up that Carolling event this evening in town.

The First Christmas Without My Mother

It goes without saying: to love is to lose; to live is to die. Life is just that – love and loss.  If we dare to love, we will feel like dying when we lose our beloved. The only question about love and death is: Who will go first? I joke with my husband: If you go first I’ll kill you!

When my mother died a few weeks ago I didn’t seem to feel much. I’m catching up now! But it’s a confusion of feelings: sadness as intense as anger. Yesterday I learned how to scream. I have read about scream therapy and been advised about anger work. I have been encouraged to hit or throw or pummel something other than myself. But I have never managed to do any of this with much energy, so it felt pointless. And my attempts to scream, while driving my car and thus insulated from the hearing world, were always throaty, soprano screeches. Not so yesterday. Yesterday I tensed my chest and my throat and made an ugly, forceful, deep grrr sound. It felt good so I did it again…louder and throatier. And then I cried the rest of the way home. A barrier had been breached.

I am not sure which is worse –  having sweet, loving, memories of affection and tenderness, concern and affirmation, and being overcome with grief at her passing, or having no such memories.  I tell myself that my good memories are being held hostage by the bad ones I cannot recall; that perhaps as I face the bad memories the good ones will surface, too. That’s what I tell myself.

I do know that my mother cared for me in the ways in which she was capable. My mother taught herself to cook and parent as best she could. The child of upper-middle class parents, she was raised in a private boarding school from the age of about 4, and parented by nannies during vacations at home. Entering nursing school at 18, she was completely unprepared for independent living, but she could dress with taste, recite all the Catholic prayers, crochet and sew, and – of course – play tennis. She could also play piano well enough to have possibly pursued a career in music. But a high school trauma she would never explain caused her to refuse to ever touch the keys again. My mother was a woman of private pain.

My mother loved her children through her coffee cakes, butterfly scones, horseshoe biscuits. She loved them through her hand-washed laundry, not owning a washing machine until she was in her 70’s. She loved her children through her scrubbed carpets and wallpapered rooms – doing all the decorating herself. My mother loved her children by remaining faithful and committed to her husband, a loyalty that cost her the support of her own large family of 8 siblings, none of whom were represented at her funeral. None.

Now I am wondering, did I ever tell her thank you? Or did I just spend my life waiting for the signs of love that 50’s TV shows and James Stewart Christmas movies held out as tantalizing fantasy?  Did she know that I noticed her care and was grateful, even though I wished there had been hugs and soft words?  I have lost the opportunity to get over my childish, self-centered resentments and be an adult in relation to her. I left home at 18, too.  Maybe if I had learned to be angry and to scream 38 years ago I could have had an emotional confrontation and begun an adult relationship with my mother.

The passing of a friend

I was at work when the news came: Kitty had died. It wasn’t  a surprise but it was still an emotional shock. I was reading a T.S. Eliot poem  on-line, Little Gidding, searching for a quote I wanted, and when the words of  her passing came to my ears the poem became a prayer.

V
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always—
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

I have always struggled to understand Eliot but have not,  until today, tried to understand him with critical commentaries and scholarly  insights. But Friday, when I lost Kitty, the words themselves were enough,  speaking of endings and beginnings and oneness. And I thought about revelation  and scripture and wondered why the poetry was more consoling than the psalm or the gospel verse. And I wondered: isn’t God speaking in each and through each of these?  Writing that struggles to give voice to the mystery of life and death, give name to the Mystery of life and death, give meaning, give hope. Isn’t that what scripture is, what poetry is?

But here, in this blog I put aside religious  struggles and honor Kitty. Her professional commitment to education, her pursuit of personal  and institutional excellence, her devotion to her Jewish faith and community,  her love of literature and her desire to create. Her compassion, her heart, her  wonderful hugs. And I give thanks for the gift that she was in my life.

(For the full reflection about Catholicism see my blog: Catholicism in the 21st Century.)

Life is Loss; Life is Gain

Life is Loss. We begin life with the loss of the security of the womb, our first
loss, and then it’s downhill from there. Every day, every second we are losing time, losing a piece of our lifespan, losing opportunities.  Every year we accumulate more and more losses: relationships, jobs, friends, spouses, children, parents.

But life is also Gain. All is grace; all is gift. Undeserved. Unearned. With each
breath life animates every cell of our bodies, providing one more opportunity
to claim our joy, pursue our bliss, eat chocolate, make love, eat more
chocolate.

When I was first diagnosed with diabetes I refused to accept it. I didn’t feel bad. I was overweight, but I had been overweight since my first pregnancy and to tell the truth I had never in my life been skinny. I had curves when I was twelve.

After I accepted the diagnosis I became angry – at God mostly.  I used to joke that if God really wanted to mess with me God would give me diabetes. I have a suspicion that genetics and weight and a perennial sweet tooth have more to do with my diabetes than God, but I blames God anyway. Blaming God is convenient, more convenient than exercise and diet for sure.

So I had a reason for keeping God in the picture: God makes a great scapegoat.
Isn’t that ironic. We usually think God is using us as scapegoats – making New Orleans take the blame for the sins of the decadent South, for example. And all the time God is our scapegoat. We give God the blame for every bad thing, even things human beings are obviously responsible for:   pollution, the spread of Aids, the abuse of children.  If there is no God there is no excuse, and  I am left with diet and exercise.

Back to chocolate or the loss of it. To a chocoholic like myself that is no small
thing.  I can do without white bread, only ever ate it at parties – you know those crustless triangles of mayonnaisey goodness.  I can do without white rice,
and I have learned to deal with whole wheat pasta. I have always loved veggies
and whole grain bread. I can usually do without the cookies, and pass on the
ice-cream and cake (unless it is Death by Chocolate cake or those brownies with
thick fudge chocolate icing on top), but sugar-free chocolate is for the birds.
Actually, no! It’s not for the birds, because if their digestive response is
the same as mine I would need larger windshield wipers.

So…giving up chocolate,  is it a loss or a gain? Surely a loss, right?  Not necessarily.  I thought it was a loss for a long time and was very bitter about it. But now, every morsel of real chocolate I treat myself to after a low carb meal is absolute and unmitigated joy, or it can be if I do it right. Like oxygen to an asthmatic, chocolate has the power to bring absolute bliss to every cell of my being. When I eat my chocolate miniatures, malt balls, or Hershey kisses one at a time, slowly allowing a piece to dissolve on my tongue and the sugary sweetness to suffuse my mouth, instead of shoveling down a handful at once, I can enjoy each moment of the experience.  When I eat gobs at once I only taste the last one I swallow. So my gain is that I am learning to truly enjoy chocolate, to truly taste it. I am not saying that I am always able to control my shoveling compulsion, but I am getting better at it.  And as a result chocolate has become more precious to me and now gives me more joy than it ever did in my pre-diabetic days.

What a paradigm for life this could be. Of course we hear it all the time: slow down and smell the roses. But if you have allergies and can’t smell, or have no
garden, or have only smelled the indifferent vegetative aroma of store-bought
roses, the metaphor is lost on you. Chocolate on the other hand is pretty universal. So how about a re-write: slow down and taste the chocolate.

There is another gain, too: Self control. Not something we are very good at in the over-indulgent, fast-food eating, immediate gratification seeking, poor impulse controlling Western hemisphere.

Maybe there’s a new book in here somewhere: God and Chocolate, or, How I got Diabetes and Discovered my Bliss.