Yesterday, in the car home from our Valentine's tea, Z. asked about my friend Helen dying. For those of you coming in late on this story, Helen died by gunshot at the hands of a stranger who has never been caught.
Z. has figured it out--she put together my sensitivity about guns with Helen's death and she asked, a few weeks ago, if Helen had been killed by a gun. I said yes. A direct question, you know?
So now I had to tell her a story about a bad guy, a real bad guy, and Z. was already obsessed with bad guys, and weapons, and jails, and the various ways of neutralizing bad guys and unleashing your power against the more powerful. It's the kind of storytelling that we find unremarkable in small boys. Z., with her love of dresses and purple and fancyness, is all about the ways of violence in the world.
She wanted to know about the bad guy who killed Helen, and when a story enters Z.'s repertoire she wants to hear it again and again. I do not usually put limits on whether she can ask questions, but it was hard to keep going, and A. finally stepped in and said that she was too young for us to keep telling this story, and when she was older she could ask for it again. I don't know if that was the right way to handle it, but I didn't want to be telling the story, so I let that decision stand.
Instead, we talked about the mechanics of guns, how they work.
Today, when she was playing with A., Z. said that if Z. shot the bad guy one more time, he would have to go to jail. I guess she's still working it all out for herself. But god, it was easier to watch her at it when we were pretending it was all still make-believe.
Showing posts with label Grief. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Grief. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Muffled
Outside the store's window, the snow is sedately filling the air above the street, melting the moment it touches anything. There are no customers today. Behind the register, I'm knitting a baby blanket in fine-gauge merino for an old friend's newborn, and letting my own stillness fill me.
My wall calendar, newly changed to February, says "excavate," and shows hands on a shovel flinging up dirt from behind a mound of earth. January was "fix," with strong fingers making a tool usable again. Flipping one page too many, I read "resume," in March, but I tried not to see the picture. Time enough when we get there.
My wall calendar, newly changed to February, says "excavate," and shows hands on a shovel flinging up dirt from behind a mound of earth. January was "fix," with strong fingers making a tool usable again. Flipping one page too many, I read "resume," in March, but I tried not to see the picture. Time enough when we get there.
Thursday, March 27, 2008
New York City, there we were
We took a mid-week, one-night trip to New York last night to see a showing of some films. It was only Z.'s second time ever seeing a movie in a theater--her first time was last week, when we pulled her out of school early to see a matinee showing of a documentary about a kid we know from our neighborhood. She hasn't quite got the whispering thing down.
Here is something that might happen to you if you raise your child to be polite and to respect privacy by asking first. You might be in a quiet theater and she might ask to sit on your lap. And then she might ask if she can hold your breast.
*****
On our way to the car and home, I had the rolly bag and A. was herding Z. In the gutter of the driveway in front of the faculty housing where we were crashing: a bird's head, walnut-brown, long-beaked, red at the neck where it was severed. I bumped the bag up onto the sidewalk and went a few paces. I turned and waited to see what would happen when Z. got to the same place: would A. see it in time and head her off? But if I pointed it out, Z. would certainly see it.
Neither of them noticed it. I left it at that.
Here is something that might happen to you if you raise your child to be polite and to respect privacy by asking first. You might be in a quiet theater and she might ask to sit on your lap. And then she might ask if she can hold your breast.
*****
On our way to the car and home, I had the rolly bag and A. was herding Z. In the gutter of the driveway in front of the faculty housing where we were crashing: a bird's head, walnut-brown, long-beaked, red at the neck where it was severed. I bumped the bag up onto the sidewalk and went a few paces. I turned and waited to see what would happen when Z. got to the same place: would A. see it in time and head her off? But if I pointed it out, Z. would certainly see it.
Neither of them noticed it. I left it at that.
Saturday, March 22, 2008
Life and Woods
Back in the middle of December, I took a walk in the woods on a Saturday in the middle of the day, not my usual time and not my usual day. The woods were a very different place from what they usually are for me early on a weekday morning: there was a whole pack of people attached to a five year-old's birthday party, who were searching out snacks and party favors secreted in different corners of the path. There were friends to greet and people I didn't know greeting each other and stopping to talk at length. There was, improbably, a cyclist on a mountain unicycle, who stopped at the end of footbridge as I sat at my place on the bank, and bounced in place three times to hop onto the bridge. There were no birdwatchers and not nearly so many dog walkers, and on the two blocks I walk to and from the woods, there were far more people hurrying to the co-op and milling around the cafe.
One of the people I met that December day, at the beginning of my walk, was the artist who made this installation. She's not someone I know well, but she's a good friend of our neighbors-through-the-wall, and I knew her slightly when I had my first-ever full-time teaching gig, a quarter-long leave replacement I did nine years ago, at the same time I moved to this neighborhood. Neither of us has been at the school for years--it was not a school that was good for the soul--and since I was just a long-term sub with far shorter hair and far less weight on my frame, I'd be surprised if she remembered me from then, but I tend to hang on to details like that.
That day, we stopped and talked for the first time since we were both at that soul-strangling school, me because I hadn't yet said anything to her about the installation even though I had blogged about it, she because, well. She was grieving intensely and freshly, she needed to talk to everyone there was to talk to. She told me her husband had died the very day after the installation went up. He'd had cancer for months, but it was the chemotherapy that killed him, so it was in fact sudden, and the installation took on a meaning she hadn't expected it to have.
After I talked to her I went to those papier mache trees, melting and disintegrating into the loamy earth, and I watched the birthday party making its way through the live, leafless, hibernating trees, and I went home and revised the post I'd written a month earlier, adding a final sentence.
Today, A. and I took Z. to the woods after a naptime that we grownups had used to wear ourselves out with talk. Z. bopped along the path, wearing her Queen Esther crown, making up games, jumping over roots and picking up sticks and futilely commanding us to stop. At the footbridge, Z. ran from one end to the other while I sat and listened to the water in the creek. When A. was too cold to stand around anymore, we ventured down to the creekbed to pluck a dirty plastic bag from the rocks ("We did a mitzvah forw da wateuh!") and made our way home.
On our circuit of the woods, I made a detour to the site of the installation. The papier mache is gone. The ground is exposed, still dark and loamy. Five young oak trees are planted in a circle.
Edited: the artist has a lovely site up about the work, but I don't want to link and show up on such a well-publicized neighborhood site. But if anyone wants to see it, drop me an email, scallen3@aol.com, and I'll send it to you.
One of the people I met that December day, at the beginning of my walk, was the artist who made this installation. She's not someone I know well, but she's a good friend of our neighbors-through-the-wall, and I knew her slightly when I had my first-ever full-time teaching gig, a quarter-long leave replacement I did nine years ago, at the same time I moved to this neighborhood. Neither of us has been at the school for years--it was not a school that was good for the soul--and since I was just a long-term sub with far shorter hair and far less weight on my frame, I'd be surprised if she remembered me from then, but I tend to hang on to details like that.
That day, we stopped and talked for the first time since we were both at that soul-strangling school, me because I hadn't yet said anything to her about the installation even though I had blogged about it, she because, well. She was grieving intensely and freshly, she needed to talk to everyone there was to talk to. She told me her husband had died the very day after the installation went up. He'd had cancer for months, but it was the chemotherapy that killed him, so it was in fact sudden, and the installation took on a meaning she hadn't expected it to have.
After I talked to her I went to those papier mache trees, melting and disintegrating into the loamy earth, and I watched the birthday party making its way through the live, leafless, hibernating trees, and I went home and revised the post I'd written a month earlier, adding a final sentence.
Today, A. and I took Z. to the woods after a naptime that we grownups had used to wear ourselves out with talk. Z. bopped along the path, wearing her Queen Esther crown, making up games, jumping over roots and picking up sticks and futilely commanding us to stop. At the footbridge, Z. ran from one end to the other while I sat and listened to the water in the creek. When A. was too cold to stand around anymore, we ventured down to the creekbed to pluck a dirty plastic bag from the rocks ("We did a mitzvah forw da wateuh!") and made our way home.
On our circuit of the woods, I made a detour to the site of the installation. The papier mache is gone. The ground is exposed, still dark and loamy. Five young oak trees are planted in a circle.
Edited: the artist has a lovely site up about the work, but I don't want to link and show up on such a well-publicized neighborhood site. But if anyone wants to see it, drop me an email, scallen3@aol.com, and I'll send it to you.
Monday, December 31, 2007
Year to Come
On this day of last year I was walking around less than one cross-eyed look away from falling and crashing into sharp, jagged shards of myself, the result of living too long without sleep and compressed by the full, combined vulnerability of motherhood and small business ownership. But a day or two later, there was something about the turn of the year that encouraged me. Sometimes it does. The Fall was behind me and the just-finished retail season's numbers were very good compared to the previous year's. The store was closed for the first week of January, which gave me a break, and our first day of inventory seemed to go well. Major plumbing work happened that was long overdue. It seemed like even if I was still fragile, I was getting a little more functional, and that there was reason to think things would settle down enough for me to catch up on lost sleep, at least.
Then Helen Hill was shot and killed by an intruder in her home. A few of you reading this knew her and were rocked by her death as much as I was. I spent January in shock and tears, searching the internet for answers that weren't there. I read every newspaper article. I combed her memorial site constantly. I read every blog I could find. I listened in on message board discussions between her friends in Halifax and between slime who'd never met her but were willing to say that her political views led to her death.
Anything that mentioned her name or her husband's, anything that gave me a scrap I could use to understand what had happened, I searched it out, hour after hour for weeks. I wanted to spin those scraps into a story that would let me contain the shock of Helen's murder, but what I found instead was a map of the way one violent death in one doorway in one American city tore into person after person, uncontainable.
It tore into her husband and son more than anyone, of course.
I've been sending them care packages. I sent the first one the day I heard, a package of books that had in common that they held no mention of parents. The exception was Michael Rosen's Sad Book, a simple, searingly honest picture book about the author's anger and grief at the death of his mother and son. Charming Boy's father and grandmother later told me that during the weeks they stayed with Helen's family, that was Charming Boy's favorite, the one he wanted to have read to him over and over.
Since that first package, I have tried to send one box a month. I haven't quite met that goal, but maybe every six weeks, I've collected a few books and toys and added things Z. or I have made and sent them off. Z. is only a few months younger than Charming Boy--if he were going to her daycare, they would be in the same class, so she takes a close interest in these care packages. We usually have a box going, collecting things over the course of a few weeks, but after I sent the last one off--late, as usual, mailing out my blue-and-silver-wrapped tchotchkes a few days after Hanukkah ended--well, I haven't started a new one.
What could I possibly send for the beginning of January, the end of the first full year without Helen? The beginning of the next year? The beginning of all the next years? I'm stuck. All of a sudden that next package feels beyond me.
I think I need to send it anyway, though, and I think I need to get it in the mail before Friday and Helen's yahrzeit. But I have no box going and I can't begin to think about what to put in one. I sort of want someone to give me a shopping list this time so I don't have to think and can just do. So I'm asking you for one. Be my autopilot, will you? What should I send this time?
And, no, at the risk of sounding snarly, I don't want to be told about what a nice gesture the care packages are. I just want to get a push to get over the lump of my grief so I can keep going with them.
Then Helen Hill was shot and killed by an intruder in her home. A few of you reading this knew her and were rocked by her death as much as I was. I spent January in shock and tears, searching the internet for answers that weren't there. I read every newspaper article. I combed her memorial site constantly. I read every blog I could find. I listened in on message board discussions between her friends in Halifax and between slime who'd never met her but were willing to say that her political views led to her death.
Anything that mentioned her name or her husband's, anything that gave me a scrap I could use to understand what had happened, I searched it out, hour after hour for weeks. I wanted to spin those scraps into a story that would let me contain the shock of Helen's murder, but what I found instead was a map of the way one violent death in one doorway in one American city tore into person after person, uncontainable.
It tore into her husband and son more than anyone, of course.
I've been sending them care packages. I sent the first one the day I heard, a package of books that had in common that they held no mention of parents. The exception was Michael Rosen's Sad Book, a simple, searingly honest picture book about the author's anger and grief at the death of his mother and son. Charming Boy's father and grandmother later told me that during the weeks they stayed with Helen's family, that was Charming Boy's favorite, the one he wanted to have read to him over and over.
Since that first package, I have tried to send one box a month. I haven't quite met that goal, but maybe every six weeks, I've collected a few books and toys and added things Z. or I have made and sent them off. Z. is only a few months younger than Charming Boy--if he were going to her daycare, they would be in the same class, so she takes a close interest in these care packages. We usually have a box going, collecting things over the course of a few weeks, but after I sent the last one off--late, as usual, mailing out my blue-and-silver-wrapped tchotchkes a few days after Hanukkah ended--well, I haven't started a new one.
What could I possibly send for the beginning of January, the end of the first full year without Helen? The beginning of the next year? The beginning of all the next years? I'm stuck. All of a sudden that next package feels beyond me.
I think I need to send it anyway, though, and I think I need to get it in the mail before Friday and Helen's yahrzeit. But I have no box going and I can't begin to think about what to put in one. I sort of want someone to give me a shopping list this time so I don't have to think and can just do. So I'm asking you for one. Be my autopilot, will you? What should I send this time?
And, no, at the risk of sounding snarly, I don't want to be told about what a nice gesture the care packages are. I just want to get a push to get over the lump of my grief so I can keep going with them.
Sunday, November 25, 2007
One will spread our ashes round the yard
Home again, finally.
After too much time spent on living room couches or in the car over the last five days, and after far too little time spent paying attention to my own thoughts, I finally squeezed in a late-afternoon walk over in my little patch of woods.
Since the last time I walked there, before we went up to A.'s parents' house, the trees have gone from mostly covered to mostly bare, and the leaves that were up on the branches have settled down on the ground in an inches-thick carpet of gold, red, orange, green. The little shallow creek at the bottom of the woods is covered over with leaves, too; in places it looks like little more than a wet ribbon in the russet groundcover.
I came to the spot where I usually perch on the creek's bank to let my thoughts wander along while the water flows over its shallow bed. The place where I leave the path for my spot lies between the footbridge and the fencing that keeps the erosion-control project safe from wandering feet and paws. It's a favorite place for dogs to get wet, and suddenly I realized what it was that my eyes had just barely been registering without taking in, as I'd made my way down along the path.
Fine, grey dust lying on top of the leaves. Fine and grey, but not uniform in grade or regular in shape. Fine and grey, across the leaves on the side of the creek. On top of the leaves that carpeted the creek itself. Settled on the bottom of the creekbed. As yet completely undisturbed.
I walked along from rock to rock for a few yards, respectfully, carefully. I found more fine, grey dust on the opposite bank of the creek, another place where pawprints are common.
I stood there on the rocks in the creek for a few long minutes and thought of Smartest Dog, whose ashes I spread in the St. Mary's River years before I moved to my house near the woods. I thought of Diva Dog, whose ashes are buried near the gate to our garden, who loved this spot in the creek. I thought of the Iron and Wine song, "Naked As We Came," that made me cry this morning while we were on our way to a shiva visit.
I thought of how much longer it is, forever, with people than with dogs. Decades and decades longer, god willing.
I thought of how little I know of how you get there. To forever.
After too much time spent on living room couches or in the car over the last five days, and after far too little time spent paying attention to my own thoughts, I finally squeezed in a late-afternoon walk over in my little patch of woods.
Since the last time I walked there, before we went up to A.'s parents' house, the trees have gone from mostly covered to mostly bare, and the leaves that were up on the branches have settled down on the ground in an inches-thick carpet of gold, red, orange, green. The little shallow creek at the bottom of the woods is covered over with leaves, too; in places it looks like little more than a wet ribbon in the russet groundcover.
I came to the spot where I usually perch on the creek's bank to let my thoughts wander along while the water flows over its shallow bed. The place where I leave the path for my spot lies between the footbridge and the fencing that keeps the erosion-control project safe from wandering feet and paws. It's a favorite place for dogs to get wet, and suddenly I realized what it was that my eyes had just barely been registering without taking in, as I'd made my way down along the path.
Fine, grey dust lying on top of the leaves. Fine and grey, but not uniform in grade or regular in shape. Fine and grey, across the leaves on the side of the creek. On top of the leaves that carpeted the creek itself. Settled on the bottom of the creekbed. As yet completely undisturbed.
I walked along from rock to rock for a few yards, respectfully, carefully. I found more fine, grey dust on the opposite bank of the creek, another place where pawprints are common.
I stood there on the rocks in the creek for a few long minutes and thought of Smartest Dog, whose ashes I spread in the St. Mary's River years before I moved to my house near the woods. I thought of Diva Dog, whose ashes are buried near the gate to our garden, who loved this spot in the creek. I thought of the Iron and Wine song, "Naked As We Came," that made me cry this morning while we were on our way to a shiva visit.
I thought of how much longer it is, forever, with people than with dogs. Decades and decades longer, god willing.
I thought of how little I know of how you get there. To forever.
Friday, October 5, 2007
Generosity
S: Hey, Z., do you know what we're going to do today when the stores open?
Z.: (looks expectant)
S.: We're going to run some errands!
Z.: We're going to get new play-doh!
S.: And we're going to make a package for Charming Boy and take it to the post office. It's his birthday in two weeks. Not even two weeks. Do you know how old he's turning?
Z.: Two!
S.: No, Three.
Z.: (in tones of awe) Thrwrweeee! We can get him a thrwee.*
S.: Should we get him a three?
Z.: Yes! And he can hold it tight!!! in his hand so it won't get brwoken.
*a three-shaped candle.
Z.: (looks expectant)
S.: We're going to run some errands!
Z.: We're going to get new play-doh!
S.: And we're going to make a package for Charming Boy and take it to the post office. It's his birthday in two weeks. Not even two weeks. Do you know how old he's turning?
Z.: Two!
S.: No, Three.
Z.: (in tones of awe) Thrwrweeee! We can get him a thrwee.*
S.: Should we get him a three?
Z.: Yes! And he can hold it tight!!! in his hand so it won't get brwoken.
*a three-shaped candle.
Thursday, September 6, 2007
Can you spot the trend in our house?
Breakfast. Z. is resisting wearing the shirt she wore last week to the first day of class. We are using a variety of approaches to avoid switching shirts, because switching shirts is not something that Z. is allowed to do in the morning. We have arrived at discussing the new classroom, and how she feels about it.
S.: Do you miss your old teachers?
Z. nods gravely.
S.: Do you think your old friends miss your old teachers, too?
Z. nods.
S.: Do you think your new friends miss *their* old teachers?
(we discuss which new friends had which old teachers last year)
Z.: My old frwiends miss *my* old teacheuhs.
S.: They miss P. and C.
Z.: And R.! R. isn't dair anymorwe because she's sick.
S.: Yes, she has a big sickness, so she can't come to school anymore. If she had a little sickness she would be back at school.
Z.: And we can go to heuh house and put a band-aid on her sickness. And den she will get betteuh!
I was surpressing tears at this point. Teacher R. isn't back because she's dying of cancer. I was hoping that being out of her old classroom would let us sidestep the question, but it looks like Z. is going to cross that bridge somehow when we get to it.
* * * * *
Z.: When I'm a kid I'll get my kid teese, and when I'm a gwrown-up I'll get my gwrown-up teese, and I'll keep dem til I die!
S.: Do you miss your old teachers?
Z. nods gravely.
S.: Do you think your old friends miss your old teachers, too?
Z. nods.
S.: Do you think your new friends miss *their* old teachers?
(we discuss which new friends had which old teachers last year)
Z.: My old frwiends miss *my* old teacheuhs.
S.: They miss P. and C.
Z.: And R.! R. isn't dair anymorwe because she's sick.
S.: Yes, she has a big sickness, so she can't come to school anymore. If she had a little sickness she would be back at school.
Z.: And we can go to heuh house and put a band-aid on her sickness. And den she will get betteuh!
I was surpressing tears at this point. Teacher R. isn't back because she's dying of cancer. I was hoping that being out of her old classroom would let us sidestep the question, but it looks like Z. is going to cross that bridge somehow when we get to it.
* * * * *
Z.: When I'm a kid I'll get my kid teese, and when I'm a gwrown-up I'll get my gwrown-up teese, and I'll keep dem til I die!
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
I got to hurry up before I grow too old
Happy birthday to the late, great Joe Strummer, someone I now associate with Paul Wellstone, because I heard about each man's death in the car while listening to NPR, and had to pull to the shoulder each time until I was fit to drive again.
Saturday, August 4, 2007
Betwixt and between
I went to shul today. It used to be that I wouldn't have needed to say that--I'm in town, I'm fit to leave the house, of course I would be in shul on a Saturday morning. But I've, oh, I could say I've gotten out of the habit, but that would be a lie of ommission. I'm having a crisis of faith, if you can use the word "crisis" for something that's been going on for a year or so. I'm having a crisis of worship, too. Last High Holidays I had to leave in the middle of the first evening of Rosh HaShana because the liturgy reduced me to a weeping mess. My dog had just died; my water table had been a little high ever since Z. was born; all I could do was contemplate the faces of people whom I might have to mourn in the upcoming year. These are two names that didn't occur to me:
Helen Hill
Lana Schwebel
Both of them much too young. Both of them suddenly, through the wreckage of coincidences piling on coincidences. Both of them people I had not seen in years, but whom I was, in some basic way, trusting the universe to take care of, in the way you do when old friends are out of touch.
After Helen died, I heard pretty much immediately and after steeling myself to do it for a few weeks, I made it to shul just in time for the closing prayers, stood for kaddish, sobbed my way through, left immediately.
I guess I'm in better shape now. I heard the news only two days ago. I made it in time for the Torah service, took Z. and spent a little time with the other parents in the playground minyan, came back for closing prayers, stood for kaddish, did not cry, left immediately.
I've been Jewish for fourteen years. It's still less than half my life. In that time I've said kaddish for a lot of people, though thank god, none of such a close degree of kinship that I would be required to do so.
In saying kaddish for Lana today, for the first time in my life I formally mourned another Jew.
The kaddish is a responsive prayer, which is the source of its power. It's not alone in that: there are a few other prayers that also require a minyan (they are all responsive) and if you don't have ten Jewish adults, as jarring as it is to skip them, there is not a lot at stake if that happens for a week here or there. However, if you have lost someone sufficiently close to you, you are required to say kaddish for them daily for eleven months. If you undertake this obligation, you must join a minyan every day for that time, and synagogues struggle to gather minyans for mourners. It's a powerful connection to community.
It's not the mourning ritual of anyone on either side of my family. It is almost nonsensical that I would have said this prayer for the three of my four grandparents who died since my conversion. None of them would have counted in a minyan. But the other aspect of the kaddish being responsive is that you when you say it, you are leading the congregation in prayer. This is, in itself, considered to be a Good Thing, reflecting well on who you are and therefore on the people who raised you and influenced you. In saying kaddish for someone, you are showing the community and god that this person made you a better person. It is supposed to help the person with god during the year that their soul is being weighed--and that's why you stop after 11 months. You don't want to imply that god needs to take the entire year to make up god's mind.
Lana is the first person for whom I said kaddish who would have known all of that without my telling her. It was the first time I said it without also imagining the explanation I would need to make to the person I was grieving.
Helen Hill
Lana Schwebel
Both of them much too young. Both of them suddenly, through the wreckage of coincidences piling on coincidences. Both of them people I had not seen in years, but whom I was, in some basic way, trusting the universe to take care of, in the way you do when old friends are out of touch.
After Helen died, I heard pretty much immediately and after steeling myself to do it for a few weeks, I made it to shul just in time for the closing prayers, stood for kaddish, sobbed my way through, left immediately.
I guess I'm in better shape now. I heard the news only two days ago. I made it in time for the Torah service, took Z. and spent a little time with the other parents in the playground minyan, came back for closing prayers, stood for kaddish, did not cry, left immediately.
I've been Jewish for fourteen years. It's still less than half my life. In that time I've said kaddish for a lot of people, though thank god, none of such a close degree of kinship that I would be required to do so.
In saying kaddish for Lana today, for the first time in my life I formally mourned another Jew.
The kaddish is a responsive prayer, which is the source of its power. It's not alone in that: there are a few other prayers that also require a minyan (they are all responsive) and if you don't have ten Jewish adults, as jarring as it is to skip them, there is not a lot at stake if that happens for a week here or there. However, if you have lost someone sufficiently close to you, you are required to say kaddish for them daily for eleven months. If you undertake this obligation, you must join a minyan every day for that time, and synagogues struggle to gather minyans for mourners. It's a powerful connection to community.
It's not the mourning ritual of anyone on either side of my family. It is almost nonsensical that I would have said this prayer for the three of my four grandparents who died since my conversion. None of them would have counted in a minyan. But the other aspect of the kaddish being responsive is that you when you say it, you are leading the congregation in prayer. This is, in itself, considered to be a Good Thing, reflecting well on who you are and therefore on the people who raised you and influenced you. In saying kaddish for someone, you are showing the community and god that this person made you a better person. It is supposed to help the person with god during the year that their soul is being weighed--and that's why you stop after 11 months. You don't want to imply that god needs to take the entire year to make up god's mind.
Lana is the first person for whom I said kaddish who would have known all of that without my telling her. It was the first time I said it without also imagining the explanation I would need to make to the person I was grieving.
Thursday, August 2, 2007
For Lana
Peripatetic Polar Bear recently started commenting on this blog, so I did what I do when someone starts commenting, and added her feed to my reader. In reading back through her posts a little ways, I saw that she had recently lost a friend in a bus accident in Siberia. Since I was catching up on something a few weeks old already and I'd never commented on her blog before, I didn't really know what to say. I didn't say anything.
Today, I got word that Lana, my old friend from graduate school, died recently in a bus accident in Siberia. I feel tongue-tied about this still--her voice and her face are in my head, and I can't even imagine the words--and also there's nothing I can say about Lana that ppb hasn't already captured. Please, especially if you knew her--and I know some of you did--please, drop by The Ice Floe.
Today, I got word that Lana, my old friend from graduate school, died recently in a bus accident in Siberia. I feel tongue-tied about this still--her voice and her face are in my head, and I can't even imagine the words--and also there's nothing I can say about Lana that ppb hasn't already captured. Please, especially if you knew her--and I know some of you did--please, drop by The Ice Floe.
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Missing my dog
If you're just coming in now, for this whole story, I recommend you search on the tag "A dog's life," scroll down, and start with the oldest one that comes up. Or just click here and follow the links at the end of each post. Go ahead. It won't take you that long. When you wind up back here you'll know where I'm coming from.
* * * * *
This picture was taken down in Maryland at my parents' weekend house on the weekend before Labor Day of last year. Ilsa, my Diva Dog, was 6 weeks shy of 11 years old. Z. was one week shy of 18 months. 20 minutes after this shot was taken, Ilsa was lying behind me when someone--my mother, I think--asked "what's wrong with Ilsa?" I turned to see her legs were rigid and twitching, her tongue was lolling out, and holding her made no difference at all. Some part of me told another part of me, "this is what a seizure looks like." If you are up to speed on Rhymes with Javelin backstory, you will know that Z. had agonal breathing shortly after birth, was resuscitated and placed on a ventilator for a few hours, and the cause of her collapse was misdiagnosed as seizure. (There, now didn't I type that calmly?) This meant she was in the hospital for a week, and I was emotionally destroyed, and that's actually not putting it too strongly.
Faced with Ilsa's seizure, a part of me froze and another part of me switched into doing what needed to be done. Her brain had failed; during the seizure she was somewhere I couldn't reach her. When she came out of it she went into the house as though she was searching for the cool tiles of the bathroom, sheltering from the lightning in her head, but she went to the wrong side of the house and couldn't find it. I led her back to the tiles, I petted her and gave her all of my attention for the first time since Z.'s birth.
It was the first of several seizures that would reveal the brain tumor that was one of the myriad things that, all unknown to us, had been converging all summer to shut her down that weekend.
Not slowly but suddenly, her body stopped working.
She had been slowing down all summer, but not dramatically. And her last week was a fine one. The mouseyball reappeared for the first time in months, and she was thrilled to be reunited with it. I also inadvertently fulfilled one of her most cherished fantasies by putting up the dog gate while she was by herself in the kitchen and leaving the house for a few hours. Uncle Donor came for a visit that week, and of course we took the dogs with us down to Maryland, perhaps Ilsa's favorite place on the planet. She roamed around with all the other dogs and spent a blissed out afternoon lying under the hammock while my mother patted her. If we'd known how sick she was, she might not have had any of that.
When Ilsa started seizing, we had to find a hospital. In Southern Maryland on a Sunday. The nearest one was a 45-minute highway drive away. A. stayed with Z. and my father, while I held Ilsa in the backseat of my mother's car. When we got her out of the car, as we were pulling open the door, she sank down against me and onto the pavement as though she were melting. Seizing again. The techs came out with a rolling stainless steel cart to bring her back to the examining room and we sat down to wait and wait. I flashed back to the previous time Ilsa had been hospitalized, after a pit bull attacked her--the two waiting rooms are not distinct in my memory. I lost track of the hours. We talked to a vet who was worried about her hydration. He had no explanation for the seizures. As we knew from Z.'s hospitalization, too many things can cause them. Eventually, we had to leave her overnight.
They wanted her to go 24 hours without seizing, but she kept having them so in the end we settled for twelve.
We spent the extra day in Washington, going to the Natural History museum and riding the carousel just so the day wouldn't be all about tragedy. A. and Z. went home in our car, and I borrowed my mother's to drive the 40 minutes back to the animal hospital. I collected Ilsa, who was dazed and suddenly very frail looking, and collected a syringe of valium and two of saline that I would be able to inject into the port they left in her ankle just in case she seized on the trip up.
We stopped once so I could get a sandwich and give her a chance to pee, but after I lifted her out of the car all she wanted to do was lie down. I lifted her back in again. The ride was fast, but still over four hours. As the hours went on, she whimpered and whimpered and whined. God help me, I was impatient with her. I thought she needed to pee, since she hadn't taken the chance when we stopped, but actually she was dying.
I didn't take her home but directly to Penn, the same hospital where I dragged Smartest Dog's lifeless body, the same hospital where Hunter Dog was finally diagnosed with lupus at 11 months. I have, in short, a long history of going into hysterics at this hospital.
They took Ilsa straight from the back seat of the car into emergency. They told me that they didn't think she would have survived the twenty minute ride from there to my house. They found more things wrong than I knew could be wrong with a living organism. She had a tumor in her brain. Her spleen and guts and heart and lungs were all shutting down. Her blood pressure needed to be artificially maintained for her to survive the tests.
They kept her alive til the end of the next day, Tuesday, long enough for us to all come down to the hospital to say goodbye. The impossibly young doctor who was taking care of her was an Aussie owner, and in her way she seemed as upset as we were. A. and Z. said goodbye and left the room, and I held her and kept my hand over her heart and felt her heart beating until it faded away.
She was a good dog.
Coda: Remembering
* * * * *
This picture was taken down in Maryland at my parents' weekend house on the weekend before Labor Day of last year. Ilsa, my Diva Dog, was 6 weeks shy of 11 years old. Z. was one week shy of 18 months. 20 minutes after this shot was taken, Ilsa was lying behind me when someone--my mother, I think--asked "what's wrong with Ilsa?" I turned to see her legs were rigid and twitching, her tongue was lolling out, and holding her made no difference at all. Some part of me told another part of me, "this is what a seizure looks like." If you are up to speed on Rhymes with Javelin backstory, you will know that Z. had agonal breathing shortly after birth, was resuscitated and placed on a ventilator for a few hours, and the cause of her collapse was misdiagnosed as seizure. (There, now didn't I type that calmly?) This meant she was in the hospital for a week, and I was emotionally destroyed, and that's actually not putting it too strongly.
Faced with Ilsa's seizure, a part of me froze and another part of me switched into doing what needed to be done. Her brain had failed; during the seizure she was somewhere I couldn't reach her. When she came out of it she went into the house as though she was searching for the cool tiles of the bathroom, sheltering from the lightning in her head, but she went to the wrong side of the house and couldn't find it. I led her back to the tiles, I petted her and gave her all of my attention for the first time since Z.'s birth.
It was the first of several seizures that would reveal the brain tumor that was one of the myriad things that, all unknown to us, had been converging all summer to shut her down that weekend.
Not slowly but suddenly, her body stopped working.
She had been slowing down all summer, but not dramatically. And her last week was a fine one. The mouseyball reappeared for the first time in months, and she was thrilled to be reunited with it. I also inadvertently fulfilled one of her most cherished fantasies by putting up the dog gate while she was by herself in the kitchen and leaving the house for a few hours. Uncle Donor came for a visit that week, and of course we took the dogs with us down to Maryland, perhaps Ilsa's favorite place on the planet. She roamed around with all the other dogs and spent a blissed out afternoon lying under the hammock while my mother patted her. If we'd known how sick she was, she might not have had any of that.
When Ilsa started seizing, we had to find a hospital. In Southern Maryland on a Sunday. The nearest one was a 45-minute highway drive away. A. stayed with Z. and my father, while I held Ilsa in the backseat of my mother's car. When we got her out of the car, as we were pulling open the door, she sank down against me and onto the pavement as though she were melting. Seizing again. The techs came out with a rolling stainless steel cart to bring her back to the examining room and we sat down to wait and wait. I flashed back to the previous time Ilsa had been hospitalized, after a pit bull attacked her--the two waiting rooms are not distinct in my memory. I lost track of the hours. We talked to a vet who was worried about her hydration. He had no explanation for the seizures. As we knew from Z.'s hospitalization, too many things can cause them. Eventually, we had to leave her overnight.
They wanted her to go 24 hours without seizing, but she kept having them so in the end we settled for twelve.
We spent the extra day in Washington, going to the Natural History museum and riding the carousel just so the day wouldn't be all about tragedy. A. and Z. went home in our car, and I borrowed my mother's to drive the 40 minutes back to the animal hospital. I collected Ilsa, who was dazed and suddenly very frail looking, and collected a syringe of valium and two of saline that I would be able to inject into the port they left in her ankle just in case she seized on the trip up.
We stopped once so I could get a sandwich and give her a chance to pee, but after I lifted her out of the car all she wanted to do was lie down. I lifted her back in again. The ride was fast, but still over four hours. As the hours went on, she whimpered and whimpered and whined. God help me, I was impatient with her. I thought she needed to pee, since she hadn't taken the chance when we stopped, but actually she was dying.
I didn't take her home but directly to Penn, the same hospital where I dragged Smartest Dog's lifeless body, the same hospital where Hunter Dog was finally diagnosed with lupus at 11 months. I have, in short, a long history of going into hysterics at this hospital.
They took Ilsa straight from the back seat of the car into emergency. They told me that they didn't think she would have survived the twenty minute ride from there to my house. They found more things wrong than I knew could be wrong with a living organism. She had a tumor in her brain. Her spleen and guts and heart and lungs were all shutting down. Her blood pressure needed to be artificially maintained for her to survive the tests.
They kept her alive til the end of the next day, Tuesday, long enough for us to all come down to the hospital to say goodbye. The impossibly young doctor who was taking care of her was an Aussie owner, and in her way she seemed as upset as we were. A. and Z. said goodbye and left the room, and I held her and kept my hand over her heart and felt her heart beating until it faded away.
She was a good dog.
Coda: Remembering
Sunday, June 24, 2007
A sad story about Neighbor Dog
Z. stops at the storefront window our neighbor uses as a changing miniature display. Usually it's hedgehogs having picnics or conducting their treestump-house life, but right now both windows into the treestump-house are occupied by pictures of Neighbor Dog, and the miniature ceramic dogs that used to be having a pet parade in the display window on the other side of the street door have all gathered round to look. This is a composite of several conversations Z. and I have had in the week since the display went up. (Of course, we do not use the dogs' blognames when we talk about them.)
Z.: Can you tell me a sad story about Neighbor Dog?
S.: Neighbor Dog used to get so sad he would start howling. Then Hunter Dog and Diva Dog and all the dogs next door would howl, too. And Neighbor Dog would stop howling to listen, and he wouldn't be lonely anymore because he could hear all the other dogs. But Neighbor dog's hearing stopped working--
Z.: His listening broke.
S.: Yes, his listening broke. And then he couldn't hear when the other dogs howled. And so he stopped howling. And then slowly, slowly the rest of his body stopped working. And then he died. And now Neighbor N. and Neighbor M. are very sad.
Z.: And dey will have a party and Neighbor Dog and Diva Dog will come back.
S.: No, sweetie, they won't come back. When someone's body stops working and they die, they don't come back.
Z.: We have a picture of Diva Dog eating a BIG stick. In da woods.
S.: Yes, we do.
Z.: And we can put a Band-Aid on her.
S.: No, when someone is dead then Band-Aids don't help them anymore.
Z.: Hunter Dog and Annoying Dog's bodies still work.
S.: Yes, they still work. And they will work for a long, long time.
Diva Dog died last summer, a sudden two-day decline that began while we were on a long weekend down at my parents' house on the Chesapeake. We haven't been back there since, but we'll be going down there for a week starting Friday, and we'll be scattering her ashes, which have been in a box in the foyer for the past nine months, where they occasionally remind me of their presence by sending sharp spikes into my heart. I'm going to try to get some of the stuff from last summer out on the blog this week and then take a break until we get back. If things turn out to be a little sparse this week it's because I'm working on the drafts.
Next: A Diva takes the stage
Z.: Can you tell me a sad story about Neighbor Dog?
S.: Neighbor Dog used to get so sad he would start howling. Then Hunter Dog and Diva Dog and all the dogs next door would howl, too. And Neighbor Dog would stop howling to listen, and he wouldn't be lonely anymore because he could hear all the other dogs. But Neighbor dog's hearing stopped working--
Z.: His listening broke.
S.: Yes, his listening broke. And then he couldn't hear when the other dogs howled. And so he stopped howling. And then slowly, slowly the rest of his body stopped working. And then he died. And now Neighbor N. and Neighbor M. are very sad.
Z.: And dey will have a party and Neighbor Dog and Diva Dog will come back.
S.: No, sweetie, they won't come back. When someone's body stops working and they die, they don't come back.
Z.: We have a picture of Diva Dog eating a BIG stick. In da woods.
S.: Yes, we do.
Z.: And we can put a Band-Aid on her.
S.: No, when someone is dead then Band-Aids don't help them anymore.
Z.: Hunter Dog and Annoying Dog's bodies still work.
S.: Yes, they still work. And they will work for a long, long time.
Diva Dog died last summer, a sudden two-day decline that began while we were on a long weekend down at my parents' house on the Chesapeake. We haven't been back there since, but we'll be going down there for a week starting Friday, and we'll be scattering her ashes, which have been in a box in the foyer for the past nine months, where they occasionally remind me of their presence by sending sharp spikes into my heart. I'm going to try to get some of the stuff from last summer out on the blog this week and then take a break until we get back. If things turn out to be a little sparse this week it's because I'm working on the drafts.
Next: A Diva takes the stage
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Charming Boy
Charming Boy is the name I'm using for Helen's son. He was at the memorial this weekend, looking very, very much like her, as we all saw in her films because Helen had included footage from her own childhood in some of them.
I was struck by how he seemed to be protecting himself, evaluating the grownups around him with care. All these grownups, talking about his mama! Z. is a few months younger than Charming Boy--in fact, she is now the age he was when he woke up in the dark of the early morning because his dada scooped him up to go and investigate why his mama was crying out "Please don't hurt my baby!"
This is the same plea I made in the three words ("Oh, God, Z.!") that tore out of me while I watched Z. flying, crown-first, through the air to the concrete sidewalk last September. I was talking to god. Helen was talking to a man with a gun, but maybe god was listening because the only one of them not shot that morning was Charming Boy.
Thank god, all Z. suffered was a broken arm. But she regressed on every front; she played the game of putting a pretend cast on her arm until she could no longer fit an empty toilet paper roll over her hand; she is only now becoming confident of herself in space. I see 18 month-olds doing more adventurous climbing than she does at 27 months and I know this is not just her native caution. The world of stairs and high places has looked very dangerous to her for a long time.
Charming Boy's arm didn't break, his heart did. And so did his daddy's. There is no mama to nurse him better. Seeing him this weekend, seeing how he loves to run and play and climb, but keeps his words and his spirit hugged close to himself, I could hardly let myself think of how the world of grownup people must look to him.
I was struck by how he seemed to be protecting himself, evaluating the grownups around him with care. All these grownups, talking about his mama! Z. is a few months younger than Charming Boy--in fact, she is now the age he was when he woke up in the dark of the early morning because his dada scooped him up to go and investigate why his mama was crying out "Please don't hurt my baby!"
This is the same plea I made in the three words ("Oh, God, Z.!") that tore out of me while I watched Z. flying, crown-first, through the air to the concrete sidewalk last September. I was talking to god. Helen was talking to a man with a gun, but maybe god was listening because the only one of them not shot that morning was Charming Boy.
Thank god, all Z. suffered was a broken arm. But she regressed on every front; she played the game of putting a pretend cast on her arm until she could no longer fit an empty toilet paper roll over her hand; she is only now becoming confident of herself in space. I see 18 month-olds doing more adventurous climbing than she does at 27 months and I know this is not just her native caution. The world of stairs and high places has looked very dangerous to her for a long time.
Charming Boy's arm didn't break, his heart did. And so did his daddy's. There is no mama to nurse him better. Seeing him this weekend, seeing how he loves to run and play and climb, but keeps his words and his spirit hugged close to himself, I could hardly let myself think of how the world of grownup people must look to him.
Sunday, May 13, 2007
Who's reading today?
Often, my posts are influenced heavily by knowing that one of the "characters" in the post is one of the central people in my life and also one of the people reading it. If you've read my take on anonymity, you know that by and large I accept the constraints of having my readers know me in the world. I maintain semi-anonymity as a way of trying to keep my readers in two groups: the group of people who know me and are reading because I invited them to by actually giving them my url or by identifying myself on their blog (if they blog); and the group of people people who are reading and know me only as I present myself on the web. (Which is another way of saying that I hope that if anyone who knows me stumbles on this blog they will either identify themselves or stop reading.)
Usually it's the real-life friends who make me conscious of what I write. But today it's a circle of bloggers whom I've joined from a place on the edge--women who have lost babies. I found them via Niobe, whom I first met when she commented on my story about Z.'s stay in the NICU, saying that she read it expecting to find Z. had died. She thought she had been reading too many babyloss blogs, but you know? That's what Z.'s first week felt like to me--like a death, like grief in its purest, train-wreck form. Of course, Z. didn't die, but there is a way in which Z.'s survival is the thing that has pulled me through her death that didn't happen.
Which I know is messed up--why do you think I'm in therapy?
So. Today is Mother's Day. And I know that this day must feel like a punch in the gut to many of my readers. I was thinking to sidestep the issue entirely by doing an anti-war post, and maybe I still will, later on, but I don't want to do one just to avoid looking at how hard this day must be for someone whose motherhood was cut short. (Although Mother's Day was first conceived as an anti-war event precisely because mothers of soldiers had the authority of grief on their side.) The women I have met via Niobe's blog speak so eloquently of their grief and their isolation from people who don't share their experience of loss, even as they support each other beautifully online. I don't want to add to that isolation. It could have been me, so easily.
What I would love would be for everyone to head over to Julia's and read her post on being a mother to both of her children. And if you know someone who has lost a child, or children (most of us do, if we haven't strategically forgotten), please be gentle with them today.
Usually it's the real-life friends who make me conscious of what I write. But today it's a circle of bloggers whom I've joined from a place on the edge--women who have lost babies. I found them via Niobe, whom I first met when she commented on my story about Z.'s stay in the NICU, saying that she read it expecting to find Z. had died. She thought she had been reading too many babyloss blogs, but you know? That's what Z.'s first week felt like to me--like a death, like grief in its purest, train-wreck form. Of course, Z. didn't die, but there is a way in which Z.'s survival is the thing that has pulled me through her death that didn't happen.
Which I know is messed up--why do you think I'm in therapy?
So. Today is Mother's Day. And I know that this day must feel like a punch in the gut to many of my readers. I was thinking to sidestep the issue entirely by doing an anti-war post, and maybe I still will, later on, but I don't want to do one just to avoid looking at how hard this day must be for someone whose motherhood was cut short. (Although Mother's Day was first conceived as an anti-war event precisely because mothers of soldiers had the authority of grief on their side.) The women I have met via Niobe's blog speak so eloquently of their grief and their isolation from people who don't share their experience of loss, even as they support each other beautifully online. I don't want to add to that isolation. It could have been me, so easily.
What I would love would be for everyone to head over to Julia's and read her post on being a mother to both of her children. And if you know someone who has lost a child, or children (most of us do, if we haven't strategically forgotten), please be gentle with them today.
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Virginia Tech
When I was posting my suncatcher pictures yesterday, I wish I could say I was in blithe ignorance of the Virginia Tech shooting. But I wasn't--I had heard on the radio that it had happened, and that one person had been killed. At that stage, it didn't really engage me enough to stop me in my tracks. It was just part of the background of violence and sadness pumped out through the media to keep us afraid and sell the proverbial More Papers (and then look at the pretty ads so consumer culture can grind on unimpeded). After the first report, I noted how close the date was to the Columbine anniversary, and I thought, "thank goodness that's all, just one person." And I didn't feel upset enough by a school shooting with only one casualty to disrupt what I had planned to blog about.
How messed up is that? But I don't think my reaction was unusual. We need a lot of violence heaped on a lot more senseless violence to stop what we're doing and talk about it because there's so much of it coming at us every day. Usually at a remove, but damn, I know what it's like to be closer to it. I hate living in this violent, disjointed culture. This is the moment in the tirade of despair when Americans on the crunchy left say they want to move to Canada, which I don't, but I understand the impulse to say it. I feel like I'm trapped in this violent world I would never have chosen--where a school shooting prompts politicians to make public statments in favor of guns!
I know that the student who did the killing wasn't American by birth or nationality, but he was surely American by his actions.
For what a clear-eyed Brit has to say on the topic, head over to Relaxed Parents.
How messed up is that? But I don't think my reaction was unusual. We need a lot of violence heaped on a lot more senseless violence to stop what we're doing and talk about it because there's so much of it coming at us every day. Usually at a remove, but damn, I know what it's like to be closer to it. I hate living in this violent, disjointed culture. This is the moment in the tirade of despair when Americans on the crunchy left say they want to move to Canada, which I don't, but I understand the impulse to say it. I feel like I'm trapped in this violent world I would never have chosen--where a school shooting prompts politicians to make public statments in favor of guns!
I know that the student who did the killing wasn't American by birth or nationality, but he was surely American by his actions.
For what a clear-eyed Brit has to say on the topic, head over to Relaxed Parents.
Friday, April 13, 2007
For a reason
There was a time when I made an inchoate prayer out of finding small objects, things that winked up at me from the sidewalk. Inevitably, a lot of these things were toys children had lost--a rubber stamp showing Piglet with a balloon, a 1-inch pinched-clay teacup, marbles. Some were more grown-up: a miniature leather jacket meant as a key chain, a shrink-wrapped sample bottle of lubricant.
These are still arranged on my dresser with other bits and pieces I've accumulated. A piece of driftwood from a childhood beach, a rusty horseshoe I found in a creek when I was seven, a piece of rock my uncle claimed was from the petrified forest. A turks-head bracelet a friend made for my teddy bear, a wristband from the Michigan Women's Music Festival, the only year I went. A pin from the Red Cross for swimming 50 miles, most in a single summer. A clay pipe, never used, given to me by a ceramicist friend when I was coming out. A school token for the DC Metro, now out-of-date nearly thirty years.
I never fully thought out why I had these found objects, let alone put them in pride of place with other things that had clear sentimental meaning. It was consciously a gesture of mischief, of honoring chaos and attention as much as sentiment and history. I would say to people that I believed in a god of coincidence, and these were the traces I followed. There were series of findings: in my mid-twenties, I found playing cards. In my late twenties, I found bolts and screws. Both were remarkable in their diversity. Since I moved out here to the residential reaches of the city I walk less, and so does everyone else. There's less lost on the sidewalks, waiting to be found. And I think I have also stopped paying attention because the game doesn't really matter to me anymore.
I don't see god that way anymore, as an absent trickster. There was a time when I saw god as akin to an animating force, the purified essence of being, a Platonic ideal of existence. As I write this I'm understanding how hard it is to do theology, because what I mean keeps slipping away from the words I try to pin it down with.
Today my therapist told me she thinks everything happens for a reason, so that we can learn and grow. I admire her as a spiritual seeker--she has committed much more of her life to finding a path than I ever could--but this is not theology I can accept or use. It's self-evident that people do learn and grow when bad things happen, that is, if they don't self-destruct or tear their worlds apart or pass the legacy of bad things on to their children. I would be much more comfortable with leaving the intentionality out of it: okay, this bad thing happened, and learning and growth are the best of the shitty options available to us in our traumatized state. Let's see if we can make our way there.
I had a kind of a rockin' history teacher in tenth grade. I didn't appreciate him enough at the time. One of the things he laid out for us was the dilemma of an omnipotent, omniscient, benevolent god. You can't hang on to all three in the face of the truly bad things. I choose to hang on to benevolence. This is akin to the Belarussian beekeeper's small god. An omnipotent, omniscient higher power that is using the complex chaos and misery of this entropic world in order to dole out challenging life lessons is not benevolent. Yes, I know that free will has a place in any argument about divine omnipotence, but if we assume things happen for a reason than we have already assumed that free will is limited in that the will that apparently was operating freely was following a divine plan.
I would prefer to find divinity in the networks of people who help each other in times of crisis. This is why it is so powerful to me that the kaddish (mourning prayer) is responsive, requiring the presence of a minyan of ten adult Jews. A minyan is not actually such an easy thing to put together--you need a large community or a very dedicated one. You need a web of relationships to drawn on. You need to work against entropy to maintain them over time. This is mundane, limited, Sisyphean, and human--and also transcendent and holy.
From Pirkei Avot: It is not your responsibility to finish the work, but neither are you free to desist from it.
These are still arranged on my dresser with other bits and pieces I've accumulated. A piece of driftwood from a childhood beach, a rusty horseshoe I found in a creek when I was seven, a piece of rock my uncle claimed was from the petrified forest. A turks-head bracelet a friend made for my teddy bear, a wristband from the Michigan Women's Music Festival, the only year I went. A pin from the Red Cross for swimming 50 miles, most in a single summer. A clay pipe, never used, given to me by a ceramicist friend when I was coming out. A school token for the DC Metro, now out-of-date nearly thirty years.
I never fully thought out why I had these found objects, let alone put them in pride of place with other things that had clear sentimental meaning. It was consciously a gesture of mischief, of honoring chaos and attention as much as sentiment and history. I would say to people that I believed in a god of coincidence, and these were the traces I followed. There were series of findings: in my mid-twenties, I found playing cards. In my late twenties, I found bolts and screws. Both were remarkable in their diversity. Since I moved out here to the residential reaches of the city I walk less, and so does everyone else. There's less lost on the sidewalks, waiting to be found. And I think I have also stopped paying attention because the game doesn't really matter to me anymore.
I don't see god that way anymore, as an absent trickster. There was a time when I saw god as akin to an animating force, the purified essence of being, a Platonic ideal of existence. As I write this I'm understanding how hard it is to do theology, because what I mean keeps slipping away from the words I try to pin it down with.
Today my therapist told me she thinks everything happens for a reason, so that we can learn and grow. I admire her as a spiritual seeker--she has committed much more of her life to finding a path than I ever could--but this is not theology I can accept or use. It's self-evident that people do learn and grow when bad things happen, that is, if they don't self-destruct or tear their worlds apart or pass the legacy of bad things on to their children. I would be much more comfortable with leaving the intentionality out of it: okay, this bad thing happened, and learning and growth are the best of the shitty options available to us in our traumatized state. Let's see if we can make our way there.
I had a kind of a rockin' history teacher in tenth grade. I didn't appreciate him enough at the time. One of the things he laid out for us was the dilemma of an omnipotent, omniscient, benevolent god. You can't hang on to all three in the face of the truly bad things. I choose to hang on to benevolence. This is akin to the Belarussian beekeeper's small god. An omnipotent, omniscient higher power that is using the complex chaos and misery of this entropic world in order to dole out challenging life lessons is not benevolent. Yes, I know that free will has a place in any argument about divine omnipotence, but if we assume things happen for a reason than we have already assumed that free will is limited in that the will that apparently was operating freely was following a divine plan.
I would prefer to find divinity in the networks of people who help each other in times of crisis. This is why it is so powerful to me that the kaddish (mourning prayer) is responsive, requiring the presence of a minyan of ten adult Jews. A minyan is not actually such an easy thing to put together--you need a large community or a very dedicated one. You need a web of relationships to drawn on. You need to work against entropy to maintain them over time. This is mundane, limited, Sisyphean, and human--and also transcendent and holy.
From Pirkei Avot: It is not your responsibility to finish the work, but neither are you free to desist from it.
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
On protecting innocence
I sing Z. three songs to help her sleep--the special slow version of the ABC song, Goodnight Irene, and Down in the Valley.
Goodnight Irene is not exactly child-friendly, so I've changed some of the lyrics and omitted the obsessive pedophile verse. Z. loves this song and asks for it more often than the other two, and I made the mistake of pointing the song out when it was playing on the Folkways cd in the car the other day. Of course that version is for grownups and completely unbowdlerized: "Sometimes I have a good notion/to jump in the river and drown;" "I asked your mother for you/She told me that you were too young/I wish to god I never seen your face/I'm sorry you ever was born." They skipped the verse that ends "I'll take morphine and die," but otherwise it was pretty much not-okay for toddlers straight down the line. And you guessed it, today when I asked her what music she wanted, Z. asked to hear that version again. I think I'll have to "lose" the cd when Z.'s around--a straightforward and easy solution.
What is more complicated is knowing that at some point I will have to tell Z. that Helen Hill died. When I was really wiped out by Helen's murder, the first month or so after I heard, we told Z. I was sad because my friend got hurt. It's not that she doesn't know about death--when Diva Dog died last summer she learned about death close-up, at least on her then-18-month-old level--but the death of someone she's never met is beyond what she can understand. I also don't see a need for her to learn that parents die, not at her age. I wish intensely that Helen's son were still protected from this knowledge. (Even though his name is out there, I feel uncomfortable naming him here so I will call him Charming Boy.)
I've been sending care packages to Paul and Charming Boy. Z. has been involved in putting these packages together and even made a couple of things to send. She's also very interested in the packages, in how they get from the post office to Charming Boy, and she likes to look at the postcard of him that Paul sent us as a thank-you note. It's the two-year-old version of having a pen pal.
Yesterday a friend sent videos of Charming Boy from a recent visit, and forgive me Helen, forgive me Paul, I was relieved to have pictures of him to show Z. that would show him with just his papa. There are wonderful pictures of Charming Boy with Helen on the memorial site that Cristin put together, but I haven't wanted Z. to see them. Their beauty is in how Helen glows with her love for this little person who made her a mama--that's why I love seeing them, and why they're heartbreaking, and why I'm not comfortable with Z. taking them in. She will ask about Charming Boy's mama sooner or later: I hope it's later. I don't want to explain that parents die--sometimes much too soon--until she has the wherewithal to understand death without nightmares, though maybe that point never comes. I hate the violence of the culture I have to raise her in. I want to be a barrier for her for as long as I can. And I can't stand that Helen can no longer do that for her son, that Paul is left alone to reconstruct what protection is possible. It makes me weep.
Goodnight Irene is not exactly child-friendly, so I've changed some of the lyrics and omitted the obsessive pedophile verse. Z. loves this song and asks for it more often than the other two, and I made the mistake of pointing the song out when it was playing on the Folkways cd in the car the other day. Of course that version is for grownups and completely unbowdlerized: "Sometimes I have a good notion/to jump in the river and drown;" "I asked your mother for you/She told me that you were too young/I wish to god I never seen your face/I'm sorry you ever was born." They skipped the verse that ends "I'll take morphine and die," but otherwise it was pretty much not-okay for toddlers straight down the line. And you guessed it, today when I asked her what music she wanted, Z. asked to hear that version again. I think I'll have to "lose" the cd when Z.'s around--a straightforward and easy solution.
What is more complicated is knowing that at some point I will have to tell Z. that Helen Hill died. When I was really wiped out by Helen's murder, the first month or so after I heard, we told Z. I was sad because my friend got hurt. It's not that she doesn't know about death--when Diva Dog died last summer she learned about death close-up, at least on her then-18-month-old level--but the death of someone she's never met is beyond what she can understand. I also don't see a need for her to learn that parents die, not at her age. I wish intensely that Helen's son were still protected from this knowledge. (Even though his name is out there, I feel uncomfortable naming him here so I will call him Charming Boy.)
I've been sending care packages to Paul and Charming Boy. Z. has been involved in putting these packages together and even made a couple of things to send. She's also very interested in the packages, in how they get from the post office to Charming Boy, and she likes to look at the postcard of him that Paul sent us as a thank-you note. It's the two-year-old version of having a pen pal.
Yesterday a friend sent videos of Charming Boy from a recent visit, and forgive me Helen, forgive me Paul, I was relieved to have pictures of him to show Z. that would show him with just his papa. There are wonderful pictures of Charming Boy with Helen on the memorial site that Cristin put together, but I haven't wanted Z. to see them. Their beauty is in how Helen glows with her love for this little person who made her a mama--that's why I love seeing them, and why they're heartbreaking, and why I'm not comfortable with Z. taking them in. She will ask about Charming Boy's mama sooner or later: I hope it's later. I don't want to explain that parents die--sometimes much too soon--until she has the wherewithal to understand death without nightmares, though maybe that point never comes. I hate the violence of the culture I have to raise her in. I want to be a barrier for her for as long as I can. And I can't stand that Helen can no longer do that for her son, that Paul is left alone to reconstruct what protection is possible. It makes me weep.
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