Tag: Love

Sparks of Joy, Embers of Sadness

The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo is a wildly popular little book that has been sitting on the bestseller list for a few weeks. It’s a bit wacky and wonderful, and somehow, incredibly motivating. Basically, the author suggests that you get rid of anything that does not spark joy in you. I confess, I’d read only a few chapters before launching full speed ahead into sorting out the joy from no-joy in my closet. Doing this with Winter clothing was easy — especially after this year’s grueling season. I was all too happy to give a heave-ho to my woolies and packed up 3 garbage bags.

Hidden in the behind my clothes was also something I’d been ignoring for 11 years – since my husband’s death. An oversized blue duffle bag full of papers documenting symptoms of his demise including collection letters, bank notices, recovery books and saddest of all, his return plane ticket to England for May 5, 2004.  He never got on that flight, instead, in the early hours of May 1st, he chose to end his life.

I’d held onto this bag of sadness for more than a decade. Why? To remind myself of what a lost cause our marriage had become? Proof I had done what I could? I don’t need that kind of reminder any more. As the years have passed, it’s gotten easier to remember the wonderful things about the father of my daughter, the man I’d once been wild about. The funny, warm, generous guy he was before addiction swallowed our marriage and eventually, him. Time has delivered healing, allowing me to better remember the laughter, adventure and love we shared. On a recent balmy night – too warm for a fire, I sat in front of the fireplace feeding the flames with sad history, sparks flying up the chimney into the night sky.

The Focus Turns From Death to Life

On the front page of last Saturday’s New York Times, the headline read “As Ebola Ebbs, Focus Turns From Death to Life”. Norimitsu Onishi’s article is about life returning to normal in Liberia, featuring wonderful images of people on the beach, a newborn, a wedding. Smiling faces, normal life. So different from the heartbreaking photos of the disease ravaged scenes we’ve become accustomed to seeing out of West Africa.

The focus turns from death to life. A simple line that strikes me as being a key to healing after loss. Of course this will have a hollow ring to the newly grieving. Moving beyond heartbreak when we are deep in the trenches of sadness feels impossible. We cannot imagine we will ever be able to do anything but focus on the pain of our loss. We wonder if a feeling of normal will ever be ours again. Forget about joy, ever feeling normal again seems inconceivable.

But with time, the focus does turn. I know this to be true. If you’ve tangled with grief but some time has passed hopefully, you do too. I think it’s less a ‘getting over’  but rather, with time, allowing ourselves to look elsewhere. Away from sadness. The thing that happened remains with us forever but the grip on our psyche, our heart, can loosen. Pleasure and even joy are indeed possible. I have experienced this and witnessed it in others. Perhaps it’s this focus shifting from death to life that’s necessary to continue on with our own.

For close to a decade my life was dominated by my husband’s addiction and then, his suicide. Loss felt long and drawn out, even while he was alive but fading away from us. After the violence of his death, my grieving was complicated. Since then, ten years have passed again and now this is mostly a story. Mine (and my daughters because we lived it together) but a story. When I think for long about the painful times I can evoke some tough emotions. I rarely do.

Over the years, many people reacted by saying “I can’t imagine.” but as many have their own tales as terrible or worse than mine. Like the loss of a child. I cannot imagine this – and hate to even write it as if doing so might make the possibility more real. And yet, loving parents lose their children and go on living their lives.They find a way. WE find a way. Us remarkable humans. How the hell do we do that? How do we go on to choose life?

Inspiring stories abound of generosity and purpose born out of loss and grief. Parents who vowed to remember their children by reaching out to others, lending support to others, creating scholarships, foundations. Like the incredible human spirits, rising from the ashes to create something new and good out of  loss: the families of Sandy Hook whose children were killed on that hideous day in December 2012.

Our focus turns to life. Maybe it’s as simple as that for those of us without some structure or core of belief. Our losses will only increase with age. What are we to do we do as we lose more and more people (and pets!) we love? How do we continue moving on with our lives even as we know there will be more losses ahead? We turn our focus to life, remember love and continue to love. Love. It’s a start and if we’re lucky, it will be our finish too.

Conjuring Mothballs

umbrella

I prefer ushering summer in, more than I do out.  Packing away shorts, and cotton shirts is a melancholy activity – unlike the joy of pulling all these garments out after a long winter. It seems I wore only half of my summer dresses this cooler-than-usual summer, and now I am folding them up for another year.  From the basement, I haul up the heavier load of winter clothing – darker tones and heavier weaves.

I learned this ritual of switching my wardrobe, from my mother. I remember the smell of mothballs permeating our apartment as she pulled out our stored clothing from the massive suitcases wedged into the top of the coat-closet. I laugh thinking about oh! my dread of my older sister’s hand-me-downs and how now, she and I relish each other’s rejects.

I survey each piece of clothing: to keep or not. This is a good time to purge the barely worn frock with the velvet bits. And certainly the linen pants I’ve been hanging onto with the illusion my waist line will ever be that size again. Times up on that one! I pile my has-beens on the bed, trying to embrace advice from the anti-hoarder experts — something like if you haven’t worn it X amount of time in the last season, it’s time to let it go.

Although I took a good load to Goodwill today, it should really have been bigger. I still cannot part with my faded cotton bathrobe – now ripping in places. It would be a good rag, or if I were crafty, maybe I could turn pieces into a quilt. But I’m not, so it gets packed away so next year, I can find it again and remember when my husband brought it to me, then lovely crisp and too-expensive, the day after I landed in the hospital on a sweltering June in Italy when I delivered Molly 2 months early. That was 19 years ago and I still can’t part with this now tattered robe.

There’s also a very pretty dress, although not really me, that I wore to N’s memorial service.  He’d bought it for me one day for no reason I knew of, about a year earlier. I’d barely worn it even then, because it’s a little too dressy and not the nicest fabric – but I can’t get rid of it. I like to think of him shopping for me, looking for something that I might like, that would suit me. He liked to shop and had expensive taste he indulged, even when he had no money and that was most of our marriage. But, I imagine him lovingly thinking about me — not trying to make up to me or distract me from maybe being coked up.

Anyway, I focused on him that day at the Unitarian Church – remembering him and his life and death on another day in June. It was the first day since his suicide a month earlier, that I was able to move past my fury and shock and begin to think of him with love and to mourn him.

The anti-hoarders would have me get rid of it perhaps, because all summer this dress has hung in my closet unworn. But instead, I’ve packed it away for another year.

The closet and drawers are emptier. I’ve yet to unpack any sweaters, the wooly socks, the corduroy pants. Not yet. It’s still warm enough and for now, I enjoy the space that lies between.

snow tree

If Only…

The beach was almost deserted on this spectacular Saturday morning. The tide more out than in – no lapping waves. Only an occasional gull broke the quiet. I joined a yoga class on the sand, stretching, inhaling the beauty of the spot, savoring the gentle breezes, the coolness of the morning air, the sun’s warmth – life. Focused on breathing, the poses, then resting on my back, sand running through my fingers, I relaxed into a dreamy joy.  And then, I remembered AW’s death. She will never feel a beach breeze again. Every moment since hearing this news on Monday, there’s been a hovering dark cloud on the sunniest of days.

But she was not my daughter.  For me, the pain will ease, the sad fog will lift within weeks, becoming a terrible memory. Not so for her family. How long will it take for them to feel any kind of sustained joy again? My heart breaks for them.

Protecting our children is any healthy parent’s strongest impulse, in some ways, our very reason for being. The cliches: ‘we’re only as happy as our unhappiest child’, ‘they cut, we bleed’ — are all true. The thought of losing a child a worst nightmare. I am afraid to even imagine the pain.

A blogger who writes movingly about depression (here) noted about Robin Williams, “He died at the age of 63 after a lifetime of depression… his age was testament to his tenacity.” This beautiful line comforted me the other day, even 10 years later, thinking my husband made it to 48 with all his anguish – that was something. And, it guts me to think of AW only 25 years for her.

We no longer can be delighted by her goofy, infectious laugh.  Did she not know how we loved her and basked in the warmth of her kindness, her disarmingly clear and beautiful gaze? When we worked together, my impulse was to protect her. Sometimes I found myself warding off the men who might mistake her universal kindness as interest. She seemed so vulnerable.

Suicide strikes a chord for any of us who have experienced loss in this terrible way – like a gong – triggering memories, feelings. But the reverberating toll of this has cut me close, this sweet girl’s death. We were not much more than work friends — but of course all of us felt more so because AW did not do superficial. Even knowing better, I engaged in magical thinking — that I might have been able to do something. If only. Just the week before, I’d almost sent her a text – wanting to introduce her to my friend’s daughter — going so far as pulling up our last texts from more than a year ago – to continue a conversation, make contact again. And then, did not. In my mind she was well settled into a life she’d worked so hard to create for herself. Succeeding. I didn’t know.

Robin William’s death, like other beloved celebrities before him, brings suicide out of the shadows, if only for awhile, and this spotlight is welcome. The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention runs walks around the country – Out of the Darkness Walks where the community can come together to comfort each other and raise money for the cause. While we will never end suicide but we must try to save lives – even one. How I wish that it could have been AW’s.

night waves

 

 

Over the Hill

My birthday is this week. Again. Since I slipped over to the downward slope, everything goes so much faster. Once again, it’s time to celebrate. But didn’t we just do this?

March 9

I’ve never been particularly coy about my age, but this year’s number does sound a little shocking when I say it. I’m how old?! It’s hard to believe. And I cannot ignore how our society perceives this number. I am increasingly less employable with every year. My age group has the most difficult time getting hired and most of us, still need to work. Retirement? Ha! So I better hang on to my job. And how many years left there? In a bookstore? While I still feel confident in my company’s ability to survive the Amazon storm, I’m also not stupid. And as my bones become brittle, will I really be able to hauling boxes of books to schools? Oh yeah! Students are, or will be soon, using tablets so I won’t have to, right? So much to keep up with! If only I could get paid just to keep reading. I’m so good at it.

Red Leaf

And then there’s the memoir I’m writing that I hope to sell to a publisher. Yes, I’m still working on it and it’s becoming a better book — really. But have you looked at the back flap on any book jackets lately? New authors are (attractive) youngsters. Who wants to read about the adventures, the romance, struggle and resiliency of a geezer? (Okay, I know I’m not quite a geezer – I just like that word.) But publishing, like much in the world, is the realm of the young. First time fifty-something author? Not so many of us.

05383a260d10a9e0927ec52c5d3e43dd

And I can’t ignore the physical dimensions of aging. I know there are things that I can do to look younger for my author shot – like color my hair. But since I suck at maintenance I’d soon end up with one of those skunky-stripes across the top of my head – right up there with crazy-clown lipstick as a bad look for an older woman. See, it’s not that I lack vanity, I’m just realistic. Besides the fact that coloring my hair is not what I want to spend my time or money on, better to look like a sea-hag from behind. When I turn around I can get the reaction “oh, she looks good for her age” rather than have the hair of a sixteen year old and a face of a, well, 55 year old. I’d rather hang onto my silver strands than risk that cringe factor.

snow tree

At this point, as long as nothing major fails in the body department I’d like another 3o years or so. Preferably with the ones I love. I know that’s a tall order – the people we love don’t always stick around and that’s heartbreaking.  I won’t even go there (for a change!).

I don’t mean to be depressing. I am not depressed, rather, I’m contemplative. We humans are a marvel of nature and in nature, everything has a season and all that. I’m glad to be here to keep marking the seasons.  I’m not horrified at the prospect of aging. I embrace it and intend to do it as well as possible. Like the New Year, I think of my birthday as time to take stock. Where and what do I want to be doing in X number of years from now?

crocus

Oh, never mind all that. Better to savor the moment, seize the day. Pay attention. That I can do. Cheers and happy birthday to me. And while we’re at it, happy birthday to you too – it will be here before you know it!

Some Winter Joy

snow tree

I have always identified myself as a Winter-hater. When the rich Autumn light thins into icy-grey and nights grow long, I fall into a funk. I mourn the passing of warmth and resulting ease of moving from inside to outside – no coats necessary.  As the garden gets lost to frosts and buried in banks of snow, I miss plucking flowers and herbs from my garden. I hate slipping and sliding down the streets. But this year as we edge towards Spring, I’m beginning to savor aspects of this usually dread season about to end. There are things I love about Winter.

pjs

My pajamas. I change as soon as I get home from work into flannel-y, soft pants. They’re my ‘I ain’t going anywhere’ garb matched with fuzzy socks and a sweatshirt. How decadent to be dressed for bed at 5 PM!  I’m ready to climb into bed with a book. What I do instead is lovelier: I snuggle up with a blanket on the corner of the couch in front of the fireplace. R is the master of fires and we have a blazing one every night, cranking our heat down and keeping this baby stoked – this room heats up quickly. Once settled in front of these sweet flames, it’s impossible for me to pull myself off the couch so I nod off in place, prodded up to bed when only the glow of embers remains.

tet n fire

 

We’ve had a crazy amount of snow this year – a tough one for the birds. Our feeder has been a popular spot for visitors like this. Bliss is sitting by this window with endless cups of tea, pretending to write while a flurry of feathered friends visit us. When I’m too old to do anything else, I’ll still be happy if I have a view of the birds.

bird feeder

 

Winter allows me to read guilt-free. It’s so miserable outside, I can’t do anything else, can I? I better just finish a few more chapters. When things warm up there will be so much to do outside, I won’t let myself just disappear behind a book all day. There will be garden beds to clear and so much to do to get this place in shape not to mention the veggies to plant for the groundhogs. For now, these patches are buried in snow and we are cloistered here inside, windows shut tight. The silence is lovely – no sound of the highway traffic, usually our background noise during the months of open-windows.

crocus

While it is still February and the temperatures remain frigid, the light is changing – growing warmer and the days, longer. The branches on some of the trees are beginning to swell with the suggestion of buds. It won’t be long. So for now, I savor these last harsh days in the warmth of my home walled in by my piles of books and a view of the birds.

My Canine Love

Weekends, even when I’m inclined to linger in bed a little longer, Tetley, my Cairn Terrier, gets me up. Now that he’s an older dog, he’s more of a sleeper himself, staying curled at the foot of the bed later than he used to. But he’s still going before 9, sidling up beside me, nudging me with his wet nose. I can buy myself more lazy time by scratching his ears and usually, he’ll rollover onto his back so I can rub his belly. Soon, squirming upright, he shakes and starts pawing at me, sometimes punctuating his gentle punches with little guttural pleas to get the hell out of bed.

Tet color profile

Especially during these winter months, I’m inclined to hibernate, but Tetley gets me outside a few times a day – at least for a walk down the street. I feel the weather, taste the air, notice the changes of the seasons, the comings-and-goings of the neighborhood. I pay attention. This morning the roads were slick with black ice so I stepped carefully, walking only on the snow covered part of the street.  He pees his way up and down the street, sniffing and sometimes barking at phantom or real squirrels. These days, with the branches bare, I watch the birds – Nuthatches, Cardinals, Woodpeckers – darting around the wood. Mourning Doves were perched around like clergy waiting for their flock to show up on this Sunday morning – I still hear their insistent cooing an hour later. I look up at the sky – today, beautifully blue and clear after yesterday’s snow. At night, I watch the stars, where the moon is, whether waxing or waning. These little jaunts, I notice the world in a way I might otherwise not. Thanks to my beloved dog, these walks become a kind of meditation.

Tet on wintry walk

Tetley is getting old. Molly was in second grade when he entered our lives and now she is in college. He’s the only dog I’ve ever owned – my only canine love and as true a love as I have ever felt. I purposely forget his actual years – we’ve been saying ‘about ten’ for awhile now.  Small dogs can live quite long lives and I trust (and pray) Tetley lives to a very ripe old age. He’s still fit, although his teeth aren’t great and his breath smells like a swamp. He prefers not to have to leap up on the bed anymore, (I lift him) and he sports a distinguished white goatee. Recently, we’ve noticed he gets underfoot and I’m beginning to wonder if he’s just a tad blind. That’s okay – I’ll lead the way, aging too with my aching love for him.

tet glasses

The Light of Venus on a February Dawn

There is a bright glow in the dawn sky on this cold morning. At first I think it is the light of a plane passing and I imagine the sleeping passengers heading home to loved ones or departing on adventures. I watch, waiting for the plane’s glow to disappear across the sky but instead the light remains, slowly rising away from the horizon as the earth turns towards the sun and fading only as the morning light moves in. Venus.

venusglobe

The planet Venus, named for the goddess of love, after the Sun and the Moon, is the brightest planet in the sky. Only slightly smaller than Earth, and with densities and chemical compositions similar to ours, Venus’ surface is so windy and hot, speculation is that any water once there, all boiled away. Venus is sometimes called the morning star. That’s what I thought, this early morning when I realized I wasn’t looking at a plane. Maybe it’s a Nova – one of those stars that burn so hot they explode. Like people sometimes do.

It’s Philip Seymour Hoffman’s kids I can’t stop thinking about. The older two are about the same age Molly was when her father died. A tough memory from that nightmare blur of a morning, when I told her that her father, who she’d been watching a movie with before she fell asleep, was dead. How? She wanted to know. Rather than tell her that he’d put a noose around his neck, I said: drugs. She knew about his drug problem – we’d been living with that struggle for years and she’d known for at least this last one. Tough stuff for an 8 year old. That morning it seemed liked ‘drugs’ inferred an element of accident rather than stating the truth of his intention to die.

Besides, I wasn’t lying. His addiction did destroy him. It took me years to finally step away, to stop trying to find a way to fix him. Eventually, to even let go of hope. That was the hardest. I rode that roller coaster of hope and disappointment until it was one too many times. Yet even in deciding to finish the marriage, I harbored a touch of magical thinking that in doing so, I was giving him the ‘bottom’ – the wake up call he needed to finally get clean. I still deluded myself I might possess that kind of power. I still hoped.

So I look at those kids and I think of mine. And, I think of their mother, his partner, and remember myself. I remember the dark months, weeks and days leading up to my husband’s end. I lived for so many years with lies, sometimes even knowing I was making a choice to believe them, as if that might make them true. Did she do that? What ultimatums did she give him? Did she feel relieved when he moved out of their home, feeling that bitter relief of not having the risk of drugs in the house, of being better able to protect their children from being with him when he was high?  Of, while heartbroken, relieved not to have to wonder why he wasn’t coming to bed yet? Or worry why he was still in the bathroom? The not-knowing. Ever.

After all, if this can happen after 23 years of sobriety. Once there, even if for a glimpse, how can we ever trust our addict is clean? Our addict. We all have at least one addict that is ‘ours’ because we love them. They can never really be ours.

And we wonder why? Why our love, why the love of our children provides no cure? As much as I learn about addiction and accept that it’s a disease, there will always be that tormenting truth that nothing I ever did was enough. So yes, as the death of yet another celebrity throws a spotlight on addiction, I welcome the attention being paid to this complicated issue, although there are no answers here, we have to keep asking the questions. The heartbreak continues, with only a terrible comfort in the knowledge we are not alone. The loss of this great actor and good man saddens me too, but it’s those kids and their mother that I think of as I watch the morning star of love fade away at the break of another day.

Musings on Love

soap blanket

I have a front row seat to holidays thanks to my job in a bookstore. I track the changing seasons by displays with holiday relevant books and gewgaws almost as much as I do by observing nature. Christmas hoopla, we all agree, starts way too early. The arrival of merry product the retail cue for imminent insanity, makes me groan when it shows up in September. St. Patrick’s Day stuff of dubious Irish humor books and clover chotchkis, is pretty lame but the sight of it still makes me happy. Like sandals displayed in the shoe store next door even though snow still blankets the ground, the green of St. Patrick’s day signals that the end of winter is near. Of course Easter and Passover bring with it lovely garden books, so what’s not to love?

But Valentine’s Day is my favorite. Vibrant red blankets and boxes of chocolate, heart shaped candles, stones and French milled soaps, pocket sized Pablo Nerudo Love Sonnets, gorgeous displays celebrating the warmth of love to get us through frigid-February. I am almost as much a sucker for this Valentine stuff as I am for love.

I think, it’s why we are here.

Pete Seeger died this week at 94, only months after the death of his wife of 70 years. Toshi Ota was Pete’s anchor throughout his well-lived life, so off he floated after her, following the love of his life. Moving stories of devoted couples dying months, days, minutes apart, abound.

Not all of us are lucky enough to discover and keep such a love. Sometimes it takes decades and many, many false starts to find ‘the one’, if we ever do at all. While I now blissfully share my life, I had plenty of false starts. (In fact, my guy and I reunited 20 years after such a start – but another time for that story.)

I’ve always been love-crazy, maybe even a little obsessive. When I began writing this post, I thought love might be a nice break from my usual musings on addiction and grief. But then it dawned on me that for most of my life I was a romance-junkie, pursuing impossible notions of true love across the country, even around the globe. Plenty of grief got mixed into the soup.

My addiction started in early adolescence with serious crushes on my older brothers’ and sister’s friends, unattainable because they were either oblivious to my 13 year old designs or just decent guys. My best friend Rita (who shared my affliction) and I spent long hours sprawled across the bed in her purple bedroom listening to Cat Stevens after strategically prowling the streets, hoping to encounter our current obsessions. That sense of pining with an edge of pain stayed with me through high school where my most serious romantic episode could have landed the guy in jail. Early on, I associated the thrill of love with an element of danger.

There is danger. We risk getting very seriously hurt. Perhaps that was the thrill for me. My version of psychic cliff-jumping, the madly intense feelings, the brew of first attraction that I was convinced was love.  Of course, in a healthier person this is where things start – and go somewhere or nowhere. For me, it was that very intoxication of questions, hopes, dreams swirling in a crazy alchemy of beginnings where I got stuck.

ti amo blanket

I can conjure the weird drop in my stomach still. Will this be the one? With no roadmap to what a healthy relationship with a man might be, I regularly got lost, mistaking those mixes of passion, wine, fantasy for something that might last. And mostly, they didn’t.

But I never stopped hoping. Finally, I discovered what the gift of real time together means and that after that first rolling boil of love slows — a delicious, long-burning simmer begins.

How does a first encounter turn into 70 years? What a mystery! While we no longer have a chance at 70, R and I are shooting for 30.

The Not-So-Small Club: Children Left Behind by Suicide

I drove Molly back to college on Friday. We laughed much of the drive, happy to be on this road trip on a fine, bright day, enjoying the landscape and each other’s company with a soundtrack acceptable to both of us (Amy Winehouse Pandora station). Occasionally I turned the music down to better hear Molly’s stories about friends and random school anecdotes including this one that put a lump in my throat.

A buddy recently asked her advice – cautiously – with the caveat that Molly needn’t answer if she didn’t feel comfortable. Oh, no, Molly thought, what weirdness will this be about? The friend wanted to know what she could do for a friend whose father had just died. She said, “I just feel so awful!” Molly, relieved not to hear anything weird, and not in the slightest bit uncomfortable, gave her friend great advice.

“Remember that this isn’t about YOU. It doesn’t matter that you feel awful or that you’re sorry. It made me mad when people told me they were sorry. Why were they sorry? It wasn’t their fault – why should they say they are sorry? What was I supposed to say to that? There is nothing you can say that will make it better for someone. Just let them know you are there. That’s it. Just don’t make it about you. And don’t tell them about when your hamster died!”

Molly’s understanding of grief impresses me – although it will always make me sad she acquired it so young. She gets it that grief is a place unto itself. There is no rescue possible – not at first. I credit her understanding and the roadmap to peace, largely to The Den for Grieving Kids where she realized that there were plenty of other kids her age who’d lost their parents, some, also by suicide. She learned early that she wasn’t alone and how it is possible to talk – or sometimes not – about loss. (More about The Den in this post.)

Today’s New York Times Magazine has is this fine piece by a woman whose mother committed suicide. The author was just 2.  Unfortunately, she lacked Molly’s support system and instead lived unnecessarily with her sad secret until now. Imagining the child she was breaks my heart. Here from Jessica Lamb-Shapiro’s lovely essay: “...I’ve told this story a few times since then. Sometimes I like to entertain the grandiose notion that I’m doing something noble by telling it, teaching the world’s silent orphans an important lesson about openness and connecting with others. But the real reason I tell the story is that I still need to hear it.”

Yes, we must let the light in on secrets. We need to tell and hear each other’s stories because there is comfort in knowing we are not alone.

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