Traveling along at 60 KM an hour on the Round Road of Iceland among the cracks, crevices and ditches that volcanos make on an island, we rounded the top of the bend and saw it. It was a dead volcano. Alone among the masses of glaciers, hot springs, fields, valleys, grasslands and tundra that make up the country that's called an ice wasteland by most. Only the interior can not be traversed. It's really the most beautiful island, more interesting than than the Bahamas, more colorful than Aruba, or any South American continent, Iceland is home to some of the most gorgeous landscapes that such artists as Kjarval (the country's famed painter) can produce. It's a painting of colors: black volcanic ash, green moss on the rocks and a rosy horizon among the glaciers represents the scenery that most people assume is just a block of ice.
We climbed to the top of the inactive volcano that once erupted and created the setting. Looking down at the empty hole, we said "This is where it was. A lasting footprint of a shaky, ferocious world."
And, after the hike up the volcano and back down again, I motioned to Billy to come look at moss on a rock. This hole doesn't exist in America. This particular land has not been touched by commerce, it leaks history. We imagined Erik The Red, a viking, had landed here and created a grass thatched roof to dwell in when he wasn't plundering other lands. We imagined a beach at Vik full of Icelandic ponies carrying wooden cooking tools and weapons to settle the area.
Down the volcano we crawled at a frog's pace, leaping across rocks and jumping through the dirt as if we were on a hunt, a mission to find the end of the foot path that led us up to the great hole. It was a lesson in patience as we traversed the rocky pathways that led to the opening of the hole. At the end we saw what had been the bubbling of an inferno, a fiery ruptering of molten gasses and lava. We could almost feel the heat that once existed at this grand place, a new and obscure event had made even the most weary travelers marvel at such a feat that the earth could create in this once flat area a hole so large, a mouth so agape that a city or town could fill it.
And that is my last memory of us in Iceland.
Monday, September 27, 2010
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
One Day
There are four key facts about grief:
The way out of grief is through it.
The very worst kind of grief is your grief.
Grief is hard work.
Effective grief work is not done alone.
From I’m Grieving As Fast as I Can by Linda Feinberg
Billy is dying. Today, November 7th, 2007, Dr. Bednar came in to our hospital room to see machines, wires, tubes, Billy’s exposed collar and chest bones, the morphine drip machine and the plastic pink puke bucket at the foot of his bed. The doctor is here to tell us to be “comfortable.” Billy will die today. I know this because it is the year-mark of his terminal, stage IV “you have one year to live” cancer.
I see a fly rummaging in the curtains of our private room with the lovely view of the hospital lawn, stone courtyard for other helpless visitors, and what look like weeds that masquerade as pretty yellow flowers along the window pane outside. I hope the fly does not shit on his frail immune system. So what do I do, at 35 years old, knowing that my husband will be dead in hours, maybe even minutes? Occasionally, I worry about the banality of insects flying around hospital rooms.
Here is what happens: The night the fly irritates me and visits your blood deprived graying skin, your nose, your pink bed sores, your ankles and the sweep of my hand over your chest, you are vomiting so much that you finally just look at me and say, “I just don’t know what to do?” At that point you are deciding that it is time to go. Your fever is 103.5. The nurse gives you oxygen. Your heart rate is 145; that’s as fast as mine gets when I run on a treadmill, but you are lying still in bed. It is 4am, long after Dr. Bednar has left us this time, and you keep looking over at me to make sure my face is on the pillow next to you, but where would I possibly go? I am lying right next to you wearing the sweater you got me the first time we went to Iceland 10 years ago.
The fingers of our left hands are intertwined so five fingers turn to ten, two hands into one. When the nurse comes to check on you she puts the oxygen clamp on my finger by mistake. Your gray sweatiness is rubbing off on my hair as I stare into your tired eyes. You keep looking both at me and over my head out the window when the sun stings through the bed sheets and up to our chins and cheeks. We laugh a little at the size of our private hospital room.
“Bigger than the one in Rejkavik, right?” you say.
“It’s a goddamm suite. I’m glad we decided to upgrade to a private room.” I snicker with that breathy helplessness one gets in the face of total loss.
You vomited again and again looked out the window.
“What are you looking at?” I ask.
“She’s here now. I need my pills.” You are mumbling, beginning to fade, to lose me.
Who is “she?” I wonder. Delirious.
It is time. I need to say it now, even though I’ve said it in a thousand different ways over the last year, because I know you will leave me soon. I’ve already said it by changing your feeding bag in our living room, sitting right beside you as we listen to the arrogant doctor at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia say “This is not a curable situation.” I said it by watching you sleep and thinking of our first date at an Irish pub as we laughed and made comments about patrons named Pinkie, Jimmy George, and the “Iron Irishman” O’MalleyHaniganMcMurphy. I must say everything now or it will be lost.
I skim the pillow with my cheek and whisper, “You have made my life so wonderful.” The last words I ever spoke to you came in a stuttered whisper by your left ear.
Morning comes quickly when Dr. Bednar makes another visit. Your oxygen mask slips. I quickly replace it. I take the metal bed guard down and gently roll myself out of bed, check the oxygen mask again and see the doctor waiting for me in the hallway. He is a young man capable of miracles. Surely he will say to me that this is just a fluke of enormous magnitude. As I walk the third floor hallway behind him, I think he will tell me you will come out of these new symptoms, these sweats and delirious talks about women with pills coming to give you relief.
We search for a private place to talk, which I know is a deadly sign. If we can’t have this conversation right her, right now, in this hospital room, in your earshot, then there is nothing else that can be done for you, but clearly a private room must be found.
There is a bulbous woman with a Real Simple magazine balanced on her large stomach sitting comfortably on stark and worn couch. The consummately polite and compassionate oncologist asks, “May we have the room please?”
Visibly upset, she mutters an obnoxious comment: “You know I just got here and I finally got to sit down and read this damn magazine.” Losing my temper, I quickly snap, “Yea, well, my husband’s dying and I need to talk to this doctor!” She turns sweet, immediately compassionate, lunges at me and tries to give me a hug as I pull back away from her selfishness. “Oh, I’m so sorry. God bless you, dear.” She exits the room in an apologetic waddle.
The room gets smaller with her gone and the doctor begins to peel away the layers of your state. “There is crackling and fluid in his lungs. We can bring the fever down. I have to ask you, Lori: Are you comfortable with the code, the DNR, or do you want to do more? Do you want to take him to the ICU?” Dr. Bednar asks. I can’t answer that. Billy, you and I never signed a DNR, we never talked about your death.
I go back to the room where your Chaines-Stokes breathing—the deep, hard inhale, and slow, submissive exhale—has already started. I have to know. I have to know what you want. You say in staccato, “I…love…you. Die.” The decision is made and then I continue to go through your death with you.
The blankets rise and fall as your swollen stomach holds the last bit of air. The fly is clicking on the window glass and I can’t decide whether to leave you to try to kill it, or to stay with you until I stop seeing your chest move. There is something disrespectful about a fly observing your death, but I choose to stay in your bed.
The nurses who have known you well from your many hospital stays come in one by one, stroking my hair and your hands.
“He is such a sweet guy” Charmaine’s throat cracked before she got the “such” out of her throat. Liddy, your favorite nurse, describes your politeness in the past tense even though you are not gone yet: “He always said “Thank you” after I drew his blood.”
Your blood oxygen goes to 82%. 80%, 78%. Your blood pressure is 40/20.
I see your chest stop moving and the resident is called. Time of death: 3:42 pm. One by one, all of the machines, oxygen, morphine and portable toilet are taken out of the room while I sit with you. I look, and look and look at you. Your fingers are already turning oxygen deprived blue. Your jaw is hanging open. When I try to shut it, it just drops open again. Then, I want to inhale as deeply as possible, put my mouth over yours and fill you up with oxygen for just a few more minutes.
After you died, I decided that I knew what love was. I was the expert, the resident Professor Emeritus on what it meant to love another human being so much that you will travel together through the process of dying. People make the vows every day: “in sickness and in health.” But, I want to say to those people: just wait until you’re tested. I want to tell all those people with 4 month marriages and silent dinners “here is what love is.” Love is wiping blood from a nose, sleeping in an uncomfortable chair in a hospital room, dressing the exhausted who was once charming and actively hiked up inactive mountains in foreign countries. Love is going to doctors’ appointments and hearing “I’m sorry, but you have about a year.” Love is holding a hand and watching the last rise and fall of the last breath of the last minute of someone’s life.
And so I become the most judgmental person I know. Watching couples eating dinner in restaurants I want to know simple things like is he good to her? Does he do the laundry when she’s tired from work? Does she make dinner for him when he’s had a long day? Does he wrap his arms around her and bury his face in her hair while they sleep at night? Does he call her if she’s driving in the rain just to make sure she’s safe? When friends at work say things like, “Mike was such a bastard last night, he wouldn’t stop playing on-line poker” I think, is he still breathing? Will he come to bed when he has finished playing? I become consumed with the minutia of day to day couples’ lives, with what I think others should be doing and saying because, of course, I know what love is. And then it all becomes important. A toilet seat left up, the garbage not taken out, an anniversary forgotten are all just pockmarks. They are healed over scars that reveal an organism still alive and breathing not appreciated for simply being alive. Then I hate myself for this judgment.
Two years later the carpet near the door of our apartment still has the oil stains from the work boots that I simply can not place in the purple mouth of the donation box outside our grocery store. Your flannel work shirts now serve as my blankets on nights that I most miss you. I would like to form them into a quilt, stuff them like a body and make believe you are with me still. When I walk the dog I look for your shadow on the sidewalk next to mine. When I don’t see that second shadow, my chest expands and sharp achy pai go through my stomach. But, sometimes when I am driving, I can hear your Chaines-Stokes breathing rhythms, see your jaw open, your nails turning blue. Then, I go back to the first time you stopped swallowing food. The romantic lemon butter flounder dinner I made for our anniversary ended up floating in the toilet as you vomited while your esophagus began to fail earlier that year. Now, the brakes of the car hiss as I almost hit a truck because I have, for just moments, glided back to the hospital on the day I went through your death with you, and the year that made us split apart so abruptly.
When we first found out about your cancer, we thought it started at the kidneys and that you would have one removed. You said, “Damn, Lori, I was going to sell a kidney on E-bay for my retirement.” Never taking anything seriously was your forte and your simple smile and hands on mine saved me when we were most desperate toward the end of your life. You were a quiet man, never slamming doors, or raising your voice. That part of your stillness remains in my apartment (mine, no longer ours) and I revere silence now as your presence at the empty dinner table, the vacant couch in front of a foreign film I will watch alone. I can’t ask you what you’re reading these days, but you remain on my shelf alive in photographs, but dead in your ashes, locked up in a black box, that I was asked to spread on a black sand beach in Rejkavik. When I am able to take that black sealed box to Iceland, travel to Vik beach alone and revere your life on this earth, I will do this for you.
At my local bead store, I sit around the glass table that sparkles with beads like unwrapped presents: seed beads, rocailles, teardrops, Swarovski crystals. I have been taking beading classes for a year now, the year since you left me. I have learned patterns and stitches that create beautiful pieces of woven jewelry. I am learning spiral stitch today. At the end of this class, I will have a thick rope necklace spiraled with two different colors.
I thread the needle, pick up an 11mm round seed bead and thread through the next bead. I do this again and again until a pattern starts to form and I am left with what looks like a spiral staircase of blues and purples. I am building this necklace using skills that I have just learned. Spiral stitch is one of the easier stitches; it only requires that I combine two or three colors of beads, know how to use a needle and thread and weave the colors to sit next to each other. There is a pattern of one central or core bead and three outside Czech crystals which spiral around the core creating that two-color look. The other women in my class begin to speak among each other.
“Where did you meet your husband?” Jan asked. Oh, this woman does not stop asking personal questions and my stomach begins it’s churning; I don’t want this conversation to start, but I am alone in this class and will be forced to speak, I just know it!
“Blind date. And it’s been 41 years since.” Says Laura, a kind-eyed woman with little to say suggests that it’s not a happy marriage.
“And you Laina?” She’s the young one, the world is ahead of her, no illness in sight, so tragedies have marked her life; what does she possibly know!
“We were childhood friends. I knew him when I was like 10 and he was 13.”
“I met Doug at college. We were cheating on our significant others back home.”
“Mark took over my job when I quit, but my old company wanted me to keep coming to their social events, and we just hit it off.”
No one asks me. Perhaps I wear my grief on my skin, and maybe, just possibly, they all know. But, then, suddenly, I want to tell them “Ask me! Ask me too. As long as I can still remember what I had, I am alive.”
The way out of grief is through it.
The very worst kind of grief is your grief.
Grief is hard work.
Effective grief work is not done alone.
From I’m Grieving As Fast as I Can by Linda Feinberg
Billy is dying. Today, November 7th, 2007, Dr. Bednar came in to our hospital room to see machines, wires, tubes, Billy’s exposed collar and chest bones, the morphine drip machine and the plastic pink puke bucket at the foot of his bed. The doctor is here to tell us to be “comfortable.” Billy will die today. I know this because it is the year-mark of his terminal, stage IV “you have one year to live” cancer.
I see a fly rummaging in the curtains of our private room with the lovely view of the hospital lawn, stone courtyard for other helpless visitors, and what look like weeds that masquerade as pretty yellow flowers along the window pane outside. I hope the fly does not shit on his frail immune system. So what do I do, at 35 years old, knowing that my husband will be dead in hours, maybe even minutes? Occasionally, I worry about the banality of insects flying around hospital rooms.
Here is what happens: The night the fly irritates me and visits your blood deprived graying skin, your nose, your pink bed sores, your ankles and the sweep of my hand over your chest, you are vomiting so much that you finally just look at me and say, “I just don’t know what to do?” At that point you are deciding that it is time to go. Your fever is 103.5. The nurse gives you oxygen. Your heart rate is 145; that’s as fast as mine gets when I run on a treadmill, but you are lying still in bed. It is 4am, long after Dr. Bednar has left us this time, and you keep looking over at me to make sure my face is on the pillow next to you, but where would I possibly go? I am lying right next to you wearing the sweater you got me the first time we went to Iceland 10 years ago.
The fingers of our left hands are intertwined so five fingers turn to ten, two hands into one. When the nurse comes to check on you she puts the oxygen clamp on my finger by mistake. Your gray sweatiness is rubbing off on my hair as I stare into your tired eyes. You keep looking both at me and over my head out the window when the sun stings through the bed sheets and up to our chins and cheeks. We laugh a little at the size of our private hospital room.
“Bigger than the one in Rejkavik, right?” you say.
“It’s a goddamm suite. I’m glad we decided to upgrade to a private room.” I snicker with that breathy helplessness one gets in the face of total loss.
You vomited again and again looked out the window.
“What are you looking at?” I ask.
“She’s here now. I need my pills.” You are mumbling, beginning to fade, to lose me.
Who is “she?” I wonder. Delirious.
It is time. I need to say it now, even though I’ve said it in a thousand different ways over the last year, because I know you will leave me soon. I’ve already said it by changing your feeding bag in our living room, sitting right beside you as we listen to the arrogant doctor at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia say “This is not a curable situation.” I said it by watching you sleep and thinking of our first date at an Irish pub as we laughed and made comments about patrons named Pinkie, Jimmy George, and the “Iron Irishman” O’MalleyHaniganMcMurphy. I must say everything now or it will be lost.
I skim the pillow with my cheek and whisper, “You have made my life so wonderful.” The last words I ever spoke to you came in a stuttered whisper by your left ear.
Morning comes quickly when Dr. Bednar makes another visit. Your oxygen mask slips. I quickly replace it. I take the metal bed guard down and gently roll myself out of bed, check the oxygen mask again and see the doctor waiting for me in the hallway. He is a young man capable of miracles. Surely he will say to me that this is just a fluke of enormous magnitude. As I walk the third floor hallway behind him, I think he will tell me you will come out of these new symptoms, these sweats and delirious talks about women with pills coming to give you relief.
We search for a private place to talk, which I know is a deadly sign. If we can’t have this conversation right her, right now, in this hospital room, in your earshot, then there is nothing else that can be done for you, but clearly a private room must be found.
There is a bulbous woman with a Real Simple magazine balanced on her large stomach sitting comfortably on stark and worn couch. The consummately polite and compassionate oncologist asks, “May we have the room please?”
Visibly upset, she mutters an obnoxious comment: “You know I just got here and I finally got to sit down and read this damn magazine.” Losing my temper, I quickly snap, “Yea, well, my husband’s dying and I need to talk to this doctor!” She turns sweet, immediately compassionate, lunges at me and tries to give me a hug as I pull back away from her selfishness. “Oh, I’m so sorry. God bless you, dear.” She exits the room in an apologetic waddle.
The room gets smaller with her gone and the doctor begins to peel away the layers of your state. “There is crackling and fluid in his lungs. We can bring the fever down. I have to ask you, Lori: Are you comfortable with the code, the DNR, or do you want to do more? Do you want to take him to the ICU?” Dr. Bednar asks. I can’t answer that. Billy, you and I never signed a DNR, we never talked about your death.
I go back to the room where your Chaines-Stokes breathing—the deep, hard inhale, and slow, submissive exhale—has already started. I have to know. I have to know what you want. You say in staccato, “I…love…you. Die.” The decision is made and then I continue to go through your death with you.
The blankets rise and fall as your swollen stomach holds the last bit of air. The fly is clicking on the window glass and I can’t decide whether to leave you to try to kill it, or to stay with you until I stop seeing your chest move. There is something disrespectful about a fly observing your death, but I choose to stay in your bed.
The nurses who have known you well from your many hospital stays come in one by one, stroking my hair and your hands.
“He is such a sweet guy” Charmaine’s throat cracked before she got the “such” out of her throat. Liddy, your favorite nurse, describes your politeness in the past tense even though you are not gone yet: “He always said “Thank you” after I drew his blood.”
Your blood oxygen goes to 82%. 80%, 78%. Your blood pressure is 40/20.
I see your chest stop moving and the resident is called. Time of death: 3:42 pm. One by one, all of the machines, oxygen, morphine and portable toilet are taken out of the room while I sit with you. I look, and look and look at you. Your fingers are already turning oxygen deprived blue. Your jaw is hanging open. When I try to shut it, it just drops open again. Then, I want to inhale as deeply as possible, put my mouth over yours and fill you up with oxygen for just a few more minutes.
After you died, I decided that I knew what love was. I was the expert, the resident Professor Emeritus on what it meant to love another human being so much that you will travel together through the process of dying. People make the vows every day: “in sickness and in health.” But, I want to say to those people: just wait until you’re tested. I want to tell all those people with 4 month marriages and silent dinners “here is what love is.” Love is wiping blood from a nose, sleeping in an uncomfortable chair in a hospital room, dressing the exhausted who was once charming and actively hiked up inactive mountains in foreign countries. Love is going to doctors’ appointments and hearing “I’m sorry, but you have about a year.” Love is holding a hand and watching the last rise and fall of the last breath of the last minute of someone’s life.
And so I become the most judgmental person I know. Watching couples eating dinner in restaurants I want to know simple things like is he good to her? Does he do the laundry when she’s tired from work? Does she make dinner for him when he’s had a long day? Does he wrap his arms around her and bury his face in her hair while they sleep at night? Does he call her if she’s driving in the rain just to make sure she’s safe? When friends at work say things like, “Mike was such a bastard last night, he wouldn’t stop playing on-line poker” I think, is he still breathing? Will he come to bed when he has finished playing? I become consumed with the minutia of day to day couples’ lives, with what I think others should be doing and saying because, of course, I know what love is. And then it all becomes important. A toilet seat left up, the garbage not taken out, an anniversary forgotten are all just pockmarks. They are healed over scars that reveal an organism still alive and breathing not appreciated for simply being alive. Then I hate myself for this judgment.
Two years later the carpet near the door of our apartment still has the oil stains from the work boots that I simply can not place in the purple mouth of the donation box outside our grocery store. Your flannel work shirts now serve as my blankets on nights that I most miss you. I would like to form them into a quilt, stuff them like a body and make believe you are with me still. When I walk the dog I look for your shadow on the sidewalk next to mine. When I don’t see that second shadow, my chest expands and sharp achy pai go through my stomach. But, sometimes when I am driving, I can hear your Chaines-Stokes breathing rhythms, see your jaw open, your nails turning blue. Then, I go back to the first time you stopped swallowing food. The romantic lemon butter flounder dinner I made for our anniversary ended up floating in the toilet as you vomited while your esophagus began to fail earlier that year. Now, the brakes of the car hiss as I almost hit a truck because I have, for just moments, glided back to the hospital on the day I went through your death with you, and the year that made us split apart so abruptly.
When we first found out about your cancer, we thought it started at the kidneys and that you would have one removed. You said, “Damn, Lori, I was going to sell a kidney on E-bay for my retirement.” Never taking anything seriously was your forte and your simple smile and hands on mine saved me when we were most desperate toward the end of your life. You were a quiet man, never slamming doors, or raising your voice. That part of your stillness remains in my apartment (mine, no longer ours) and I revere silence now as your presence at the empty dinner table, the vacant couch in front of a foreign film I will watch alone. I can’t ask you what you’re reading these days, but you remain on my shelf alive in photographs, but dead in your ashes, locked up in a black box, that I was asked to spread on a black sand beach in Rejkavik. When I am able to take that black sealed box to Iceland, travel to Vik beach alone and revere your life on this earth, I will do this for you.
At my local bead store, I sit around the glass table that sparkles with beads like unwrapped presents: seed beads, rocailles, teardrops, Swarovski crystals. I have been taking beading classes for a year now, the year since you left me. I have learned patterns and stitches that create beautiful pieces of woven jewelry. I am learning spiral stitch today. At the end of this class, I will have a thick rope necklace spiraled with two different colors.
I thread the needle, pick up an 11mm round seed bead and thread through the next bead. I do this again and again until a pattern starts to form and I am left with what looks like a spiral staircase of blues and purples. I am building this necklace using skills that I have just learned. Spiral stitch is one of the easier stitches; it only requires that I combine two or three colors of beads, know how to use a needle and thread and weave the colors to sit next to each other. There is a pattern of one central or core bead and three outside Czech crystals which spiral around the core creating that two-color look. The other women in my class begin to speak among each other.
“Where did you meet your husband?” Jan asked. Oh, this woman does not stop asking personal questions and my stomach begins it’s churning; I don’t want this conversation to start, but I am alone in this class and will be forced to speak, I just know it!
“Blind date. And it’s been 41 years since.” Says Laura, a kind-eyed woman with little to say suggests that it’s not a happy marriage.
“And you Laina?” She’s the young one, the world is ahead of her, no illness in sight, so tragedies have marked her life; what does she possibly know!
“We were childhood friends. I knew him when I was like 10 and he was 13.”
“I met Doug at college. We were cheating on our significant others back home.”
“Mark took over my job when I quit, but my old company wanted me to keep coming to their social events, and we just hit it off.”
No one asks me. Perhaps I wear my grief on my skin, and maybe, just possibly, they all know. But, then, suddenly, I want to tell them “Ask me! Ask me too. As long as I can still remember what I had, I am alive.”
Sunday, September 12, 2010
It Goes On
"I'm crossing that bridge with lessons I've learned. Playing with fire and not getting burned. I may not know what you're going through, but time is the space between me and you. Life carries on. It goes on." Seal.
Listening to a "Prayer for the Dying" and thinking of how much time has come between Billy and me, I've realized that healing takes time. Grief is a process that time changes. When Billy first died, I did not believe anyone who told me time would heal me, but now I am starting to see that adage come true. Perhaps because I am busy; school has started and I have more to focus on than Billy's death, perhaps because I am surrounded by people who are incredibly giving and optimistic, or maybe it's just that so much time has gone by (nearly three years) that I realize Billy's death can not control me in ways that it did in the past. Seal is such a funny song to be inspired by because he's not even one of my favorite musicians, but that line is so telling. The cliche of the bridge being crossed almost seems immature and cliche; however, it's true. I have crossed some threshold, some line now. I don't cry as much as I used to, and I certainly have stopped feeling sorry for myself. Those days are behind me, but the loss is still so great and virtual. This is a short post, simply just inspired by a song I was listening to the other day. But, it needed to be written and I will remind myself of the quotation when I find myself taking backwards-steps into grief-land.
Listening to a "Prayer for the Dying" and thinking of how much time has come between Billy and me, I've realized that healing takes time. Grief is a process that time changes. When Billy first died, I did not believe anyone who told me time would heal me, but now I am starting to see that adage come true. Perhaps because I am busy; school has started and I have more to focus on than Billy's death, perhaps because I am surrounded by people who are incredibly giving and optimistic, or maybe it's just that so much time has gone by (nearly three years) that I realize Billy's death can not control me in ways that it did in the past. Seal is such a funny song to be inspired by because he's not even one of my favorite musicians, but that line is so telling. The cliche of the bridge being crossed almost seems immature and cliche; however, it's true. I have crossed some threshold, some line now. I don't cry as much as I used to, and I certainly have stopped feeling sorry for myself. Those days are behind me, but the loss is still so great and virtual. This is a short post, simply just inspired by a song I was listening to the other day. But, it needed to be written and I will remind myself of the quotation when I find myself taking backwards-steps into grief-land.
Friday, August 20, 2010
What Beaders Do
I bead because I think it's cool. I bead because it's fun. I bead because when I create I feel alive. I bead because when I finish a necklace, bracelet, or pair of earrings, and there is something tangible and beautiful in my hands, I feel like I have given birth to something unique. I also bead to heal.
People say that the oppostite of peace is war, but I think the oppostite of peace is creation. I heard the phrase used in one of my favorite musicals, Rent. When someone close to you dies there is an overwhelming numbness initially, but as time wears on, you seek out life in any shape you can find it. I sought life in creation. Bringing to life beaded works of art is the only sound way I know to live again in an inspiring way. The initial blurb about myself on this blog is that "I don't live my life as well as I used to." That includes not going out and doing the things that once made me happy...that is, until I realized that beading makes me happy.
Billy used to look at my work and praise it, and criticize it. I welcomed his criticism because his taste was impeccable. I never knew that such a man, this blue collar, hard scrabble, welder could actually comment on the aesthetic of beading, but he could and did. He was my best critic commenting about a necklace once and proclaiming that it looked like I hung a cracker from the center--that memory always makes me laugh because it was so true. The necklace resembled a hanging Ritz cracker on a chain of woven, colored beads. Those fragile memories are ones that make me bitterly happy.
I bead for so many different reasons that most of the time I don't even realize it's actually grief relief. Now, when I create a new piece, it has to pass the "cracker test": Does the centerpiece hang like a piece of food, or does it look like art. So Billy continues to inform even my hobbies these days and, for that, I can be happy.
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Tech and the Brain
This summer has been technology overload. Although I am comfortable with most things techie, I am nervous about the new year; starting with new technologies and new students is never easy, but I am also excited about the possibilities. Diigo is an interesting way to gather great websites for kids to peruse as they are taught new ways of learning language skills. Twitter is the most bizarre but perhaps most fun social networking site. What can you say in 140 characters? Not much, but OH so much! It also has the ability to link to other websites so it's another way to make sure that my students are viewing websites that are both relevant and inspiring in some way. We can teach them to surf the web in ways that will make them productive and engaged, but it can also be social. Diigo also allows for "mark-ups" and teaching good reading strategies of sites that may be challenging and not something they would normally read. I also have become more interested in blogging in general. I began using this blog as a healing process, but it has also turned into a record of what I notice, learn, read, and engage in myself.
I want my kids to use their blogs to practice their writing in the same way that an artist uses a blank canvas to practice, play, create and inspire. During my own grief period I was unlucky in that I shut down completely. I turned off. I was unable to read, write or think for several months. Then, slowely, and much more slowely than I wanted, it started to come back. I read a paragraph at a time, 20 minutes at a time. My pace was slower, I was slower in general. My normal quick, rapid fire thinking went away and I feared it was the curse that comes with great loss, but it's coming back to me as I write this and as I know I will read tonight little by little.
I engrossed myself in an abundance of TV viewing, lying on the couch, or bed and watching nothing at all really. I didn't really watch, I simply gazed and thought about other things. But, I'm coming back bit by bit. I'm seeing colors again. I'm tasting things again. It's all part of the bigger grief picture. My loss is total and engrossing and it has changed the way I view my world, so everything is different, but I'm moving on as best I can. This blog is just another way.
I want my kids to use their blogs to practice their writing in the same way that an artist uses a blank canvas to practice, play, create and inspire. During my own grief period I was unlucky in that I shut down completely. I turned off. I was unable to read, write or think for several months. Then, slowely, and much more slowely than I wanted, it started to come back. I read a paragraph at a time, 20 minutes at a time. My pace was slower, I was slower in general. My normal quick, rapid fire thinking went away and I feared it was the curse that comes with great loss, but it's coming back to me as I write this and as I know I will read tonight little by little.
I engrossed myself in an abundance of TV viewing, lying on the couch, or bed and watching nothing at all really. I didn't really watch, I simply gazed and thought about other things. But, I'm coming back bit by bit. I'm seeing colors again. I'm tasting things again. It's all part of the bigger grief picture. My loss is total and engrossing and it has changed the way I view my world, so everything is different, but I'm moving on as best I can. This blog is just another way.
Sunday, August 8, 2010
Images That Remain
My parents went away this weekend and I did the isolating thing again, but forced myself to leave the house. Thursday and Friday were the worst days; I sat, ate, watched TV, tried to read and beaded a little, but not much. My energy was just zapped completely. I was watching the dog for my parents while they were away and I realized that if they died, I would become a hermit. Bad idea! For some reason, I was again back at the hospital in my memory. I keep thinking about the doctors and nurses that watched us as Billy slowly faded away. These occasions come to me every now and then. His hospital memories are very fresh still. I often wonder if I will be 70 and still thinking about him and his illness, but I never know. Perhaps I'll move on one day, but that look on his face when he decided to die is just so stung into my brain. I can't seem to look back into the 15 years we were healthy, alive and thriving in this world. I'm still stuck on his death for some reason. This seems tragic, but I don't get panic attacks when I think about that day anymore. He was lying in bed and left in a matter of minutes. The oxygen just went out of him and that was the last I saw of his life. Everytime I pass Holcombe Fisher funeral home I also remember him because that was the last time I saw his face. I would like these images not to remain, but they do in and out of consciousness. I had two recent dreams that tell me I'm healing. One: Billy is holding my hand. And two: he is in the room and walking around my bed, I could hear his footsteps. Considering I never dream of him, it is amazing that I had such dreams as these.
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Tin House
I did it; I stepped out of my comfort zone as I have been told to do over and over again for the last year: get out, do more, see people, get involved with your life. A plane took me 6 hours out to Oregon and there I met the most fastidious and intelligent group of writers I have ever encountered. These people appeared unblemished by life's losses; I admit I was jealous of the talent, but I learned more than I ever expected. I met writers, yes. I met friends, sure. I met literary agents, wierd. But, more than that, I realized that human suffering comes in all shapes, sizes, ages, wisdoms, and talents. My writing group was amazing to put it mildly. There were losses of all kinds: body parts (a cancer survivor), spouses (me), children (poor woman), and friends. These losses composed the workshop of Creative Non-Fiction with Ann Hood. A phenomenal leader, Ann tore our pieces to shreds so that we could build them back up to something that resembled good writing. I am trying so hard to get back to the writing I used to do as a regular practice, but am still struggling with times of blockage, unknown white page demons that regale me at all times of the day. The white page is my least favorite color. But, I got started again and I will not stop because it helps. Billy would call my adventure this summer heroic and he would say he was proud of me for going to a writing group, sharing my story and moving forward with my life by meeting new people that fulfill me. I'm proud of myself as well, but hope to write more, and better, as time moves forward. The days without him are simply not forgotten. Everyday something, somewhere (a sign post, a road, a song) reminds me.
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