Tag: Grief

Moral Injury after War

Last week at the library, I picked up a book from a display set up for Veteran’s Day. Soul Repair: Recovering from Moral Injury after War by Rita Nakashima Brock and Gabriella Lettini. The authors, themselves having lived with the consequences of living with family affected by war, wrote this insightful book on the damage done to hearts and souls in war.

Moral injury after war – not PTSD, something else – a “…deep-seated sense of transgression (that) includes feelings of shame, grief, meaninglessness, and remorse from having violated core moral beliefs.”  Invisible to rest of us, the conscience of a returning soldier can create havoc on the lives of these men and women — and those who love them  — forever. I am sure that just such damage was done to my husband.

Think about it: we raise our children with certain basic moral lessons, then we send them off  to war where they experience, witness and sometimes do, terrible things. Their stories may be so awful, they feel they can never tell those of us at home, instead living in silent shame with terrible torment.

This was the case for my husband who joined the British military at 17 – the age my daughter is now. He was a soldier in Northern Ireland and also sent off on furtive missions in Africa that his government would never claim. I remember being woken up by his nightmares of violence. He was vague about what he’d done, as soldiers usually are, and I didn’t press him for details, not really wanting to know.

The following passages captured what I think my husband struggled with, suggesting possible answers to questions still with me since his suicide:

“The consequences of violating one’s conscience, even if the act was unavoidable or seemed right at the time, can be devastating. Responses include overwhelming depression, guilt, and self-medication through alcohol or drugs. Moral injury can lead veterans to feeling of worthlessness, remorse, and despair; they may feel as if they lost their souls in combat and are no longer who they were. Connecting emotionally to others becomes impossible for those trapped inside the walls of such feelings. When the consequences become overwhelming, the only relief may seem to be to leave this life behind.

The tired truism, “war is hell,” is also true of its aftermath, but the aftermath can be endless. War has a goal and tours of duty that end; its torments are intense and devastating, but they are not perpetual. War offers moral shields of honor and courage. Its camaraderie bonds warriors together around a common purpose and extreme danger. War offers service to a a larger cause; it stumbles on despair. On the other hand, moral injury feeds on despair. When the narcotic emotional intensity and tight camaraderie of war are gone, withdrawal can be intense. As memory and reflection deepen, negative self-judgements and torment a soul for a lifetime. Moral injury destroys meaning and forsakes noble cause. It sinks warriors into states of silent, solitary suffering, where bonds of intimacy and care seem impossible. Its torments to the soul can make death a mercy.”

Little attention is ever paid to the injury done to the conscience, the soul — at least in our society. As number of veteran suicides continues to climb, it is past time for us to do so.

How Much Does It Hurt?

I been having thinking about what I wrote in my last post, suggesting that hurricanes are not as terrible as war. It’s the suffering-comparison part that I’ve had second thoughts about.

Over the last few post-storm days, as neighbors share damage notes (mostly just lack of electricity around here), they almost always say, “I really shouldn’t complain, it could be worse.” We feel guilty about complaining when we know our not-so distant neighbors have endured more loss. And while having this perspective can help move us beyond a very low spot, when it hurts, it still hurts.

In a moment of pain, when we stub our toe, all we know is the pain in our toe. It does not help to hear, “at least you are not having a heart attack.” Last Saturday, I brought my daughter to the hospital to make sure her foot was not broken. Throughout our visit she was asked multiple times what her level of pain was on a scale of 1 to 10. She said 6 and an x-ray revealed there is no break. How can they judge an individual’s capacity for pain? Everybody has their own threshold, don’t they?

During some of my darkest hours, I found tremendous comfort in groups like Al-Anon and grieving groups. Hearing other people’s stories, the terribleness of life with their addict, their child — seemed infinitely worse than my struggles with my spouse. And after his suicide, deaths of a partner by accident or heart attack seemed more awful than those of us who’d been living with our mate’s sickness for a long time. We reluctantly admitted that death also brought an element of relief, whereas an unexpected loss of a loved one seemed it must be harder to bear. And maybe these fellow survivors felt the same about my story. That’s the way it seems to work — paying attention to other people’s pain can lift us beyond  our own, inspire compassion and most of all, make us feel like we are not quite as alone.

Regardless of the root or severity, pain still hurts and deserves recognition. And I think, that’s often all we want.

I went through a spell where I felt very sorry for myself and wished my troubles might somehow be visible out in the world.  A few months after my husband’s death, I went for a mammogram and discovered I had breast cancer. The most innocuous, benign cancer one can have — needing only a lumpectomy and radiation. I mostly felt lucky during my weeks of treatment, that things weren’t worse, that I didn’t need chemo.

But there were bad days when I wished everyone could see the psychic pain I was in. I felt ashamed at the time, (and even writing this now) that I briefly wished I had experienced the hair-loss of chemo. I would have hated it of course, because of my vanity and also because sympathy from strangers makes me uncomfortable. Yet there it was — a desire to complain about my lot, to tell my sad story – not as sad as some – but it definitely sucked. At the time, I think I wanted the world to know so I could get cut some extra slack. I wanted extra kindness – because no matter the level of  pain, it helps.

Light On Here

From our little house on a hill, the relentless, howling winds of the hurricane were terrifying. I dug out the heavy winter drapes to protect from possible storm shrapnel breaking through the wobbly windows. I left one curtain open just enough to keep an eye on the trees – the fine old trees on our little plot of land. They held up brilliantly as did this creaky old house. Damage was limited to only a few branches, the only casualty: the chimney guard to keep critters from crawling in. Our chimney is overdue for a cleaning anyway so this will force me to call the sweep.

We lost power for about 12 hours – the milk did not even have a chance to go sour.  In fact, I welcomed the reprieve from watching television news coverage of Sandy, the monster storm that just hammered us here on the East Coast. But now the lights are on again and I continue watching. Like a train wreck, I cannot take my eyes off the heartbreaking scenes. Amazing how much the footage resembles images from war zones. Blown transformers look like exploding mortars, images of residents returning like refugees to find their homes decimated in all too-often battered Queens neighborhood. Maps show huge swathes of color indicating areas across the Northeast without electricity. Pictures of stores show empty shelves. Lines, darkness, people filling plastic jugs from fire hydrants. These images bring back so many memories of Sarajevo.

But the endless press conferences with mayors and governors pledging government remind me we are not at war. Cooperation is the order of the day.

Switching the channel, news of Syria, the violence of man-against-man howling through the lives of the innocent every day with not a promise to be heard.

Look What Happened!

Not so long ago, the age I am now seemed impossibly old. But I don’t feel old. I refuse to join the AARP – not yet. Still, I have to face it – I am aging – and mostly, it’s okay.

My gray hair doesn’t bother me much and is easy to camouflage; a bout of vanity hits every six months or so and I get highlights. Although the occasional joint gets achey, especially my hips, and sometimes my back threatens to act up, but I blame that on too much sitting at work. Immediately reviving my erratic yoga practice gets me back to normal. I’m pretty fit and my weight is good. I’ve cut way back on how many glasses of wine I imbibe and I mostly get enough sleep. But look what I discovered last week —

This is my mouth in repose. Okay, the jowly bits are an unfortunate family trait, but I’ve already had a few decades to get used to them.  The pinched look of my lips isn’t the worst of it, although it is as if my flesh is drawing inwards to better secure my teeth (getting long) in my mouth. The general slackness of my skin is also not very attractive, but still, that’s not what disturbs me.

What upsets me is that when I am in thought, just going about my day, walking down the street, driving my car, RIGHT NOW, my mouth settles into a doleful expression. Look! In a few more years, mine will look like a marionette’s mouth, with lines creeping down along either side of my chin.  How did this happen? In spite of quite a few years of incredible stress and sadness, I am a happy person. And yet, there it is: when I am in an unselfconscious state, mine is a sad face.

I suspect the state of my mouth disturbs me more because it reminds me of my mother’s. From a way-too-early age, my mother internalized and defined herself by unhappiness. She certainly had her own, but she also glommed onto other’s losses and betrayals, almost taking pleasure in co-opting their tragedies as her own to grieve, to tell. My mother died at 64. That’s only 10 year more years for me. I am determined to keep smiling through whatever I have left.

So if you see me with a foolish grin on my face, I may be thinking of something funny or I might just be doing mouth calisthenics. I want my face to reflect my joy and damn gravity!

Hope, Despair, the Seasons

It seems counter-intuitive to plant and transplant when the leaves are falling and winter is headed our way, but experts say, autumn is the best time to do this. I find this  inspiring. Just when plants are fading, turning black and collapsing into the earth, we hopefully settle our transplants into a new patch scratched in to the soon-to-be-frozen earth. How do they make it through the winter?

Yesterday I moved a little pine tree that had gotten lost under the bullying boughs of the neighbors’ forsythia. It was easy to dig up – pines have shallow roots, that’s why so many succumb to storms. This is the only survivor of a pair Bosnian Pines I planted about 2 years ago. There was something so Charlie Brown’s Christmas-tree-like about them, I couldn’t resist. And the fact that they are Bosnian.

Can’t you imagine the wind relentlessly blowing through the needles, pulling the branches so that even in stillness, you can feel the mountain gusts?

We had a serious frost the other night, shutting down what was left of my relatively sad garden season. I retrieved the few green tomatoes and packed them away in a brown bag with the hope they might ripen. The basil and dahlias turned black. Good thing I retrieved this lovely beforehand.

As I was saying about inspiration — although this year was rough in the vegetable patch — with voracious furry and slimy creatures gobbling up the good stuff and tomato plants that grew huge and bushy but yielded few tomatoes — transplanting the little pine and a sage, I imagine next year. I notice the blueberry bushes – mostly just sticks these past seasons – have grown and filled out to be fine bushes. Next year, maybe I’ll get more than a berry or two.

See? My despondency about my garden losses is fading and I’m already starting to feel hopeful again about the future. Nurturing my Bosnian pine, keeping an eye that the needles don’t begin to crumble, can remind me that it is possible for hope to win over despair. Then, soberly, I realize this a luxury of my peaceful life.

I recall my short stint with the UN in Bosnia during the war, the winters of despair. Comparisons have been made to Syria — the world watching civilians get bombarded in their homes. Children maimed and killed. I will not pretend to have a solution — but I have a sense, a remembrance of the spirit crippling despondency of isolation, the sense that no one cares. A memory of biting cold winter that seems impossible to survive.  I will watch my transplanted tree carefully, remember and hope.

Paying Attention for What’s Next

What next? I’ve been batting this question around quite a bit, especially inspired by seasonal changes. Back-to-school activity, Monarchs frenetically flying around in migration prep, evening and morning temperature drops, these shifts into autumn prompt my own search for another gear.

‘What next?’ has recently been a question I particularly ponder about my writing. I’m ready to let go and get my memoir out into the world. While there are certainly still rewrites ahead on that, the question is, what to write about? I needed to write about my husband, our time in Bosnia, my daughter’s premature birth in Italy, struggling with his addiction, navigating Molly and myself out of the shadow of his suicide. The compulsion to tell that story got me up on the coldest of mornings, 7 days a week.

And the discipline stuck. For the past few years I religiously rose before dawn, before setting off to my day-job, rewrote, rewrote, rewrote. Now, it’s time to move on. I need to find a new story-itch and I think if I pay attention to the clamoring voices inside of me, I will. Perhaps that’s one of my best insights from years of living with insanity. Paying attention leads me to a feeling of serenity. Focused, present in a thoughtful way – that’s the state I aspire to be in as much as possible.

Writing helps me get there, especially if I do so with the expectation/hope of being read. So in a kind of letting-go exercise, I’m setting myself the challenge to come to this space each day rather than revisit old pages. If even briefly, to write — as a kind of meditation, or perchance to find my next story. It’s a start.

About Grief

During the run of Joan Didion’s Year of Magical Thinking  in June, I was invited to write a guest post on grief for the Westport Country Playhouse’s blog. Here it is:

A story not so different than my own
June 27, 2012

My husband died when he was 48.

Photo by Leslie Datsis

The lurking question with a death so young is: How? Was he ill? An accident? We can’t help but rubberneck. Rebelling against the urge to bow to the stigma of shame associated with addiction and suicide, I usually spill my story pretty quickly. I tell them exactly what happened. “I’m so sorry,” is the usual wincing reaction. But often, there is recognition and relief because they have a story not so different from my own.

My daughter was 8 years old when it happened. She felt sure all of her classmate’s lived normal, happy lives. I assured her nobody gets to escape sadness, and brought her to The Den for Grieving Kids in Greenwich. There she gathered with other children who had lost their parents and I joined the surviving spouses. We found comfort in baring our raw hearts. Our own particulars seemed terrible to my daughter and I, but we learned those left behind always have painful and complicated feelings. Over the years of going to The Den, we received and, I like to think also gave, solace to our groups. As lonely as we sometimes felt, it helped knowing we were not alone.

Indeed, memoirs of grief outnumber even celebrity reveal-alls on bookstore shelves. Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking came out a year after my husband’s death. I recognized her language of grief, the trance-like telling of numbness and eventually, the glimmer of feeling again. I still read memoirs of loss compulsively, as if I might find an answer to the myriad of lingering questions I will always bear like a ragged scar. My life is full of joy but not a day passes without at least a passing shadow of memory.

But books like Didion’s or Nina Sankovitch’s elegantly written, Tolstoy and the Purple Chair, remind me that the survivor’s intimate knowledge of mortality is not an awful thing. I know to breathe deeply the air I share for some finite time with my loved ones. To pay attention, to cherish moments and do my best to never be blithe about leave-taking, even for sleep.

Beloved Tetley

Tetley tore his ACL. Who knew dogs could do that? I am not even sure what this is except that it seems to happen to people who play sports. And these humans get surgery. The vet was keen to put Tetley under the knife. But surgery is not cheap. And Tetley is no longer a youngster. Nor does he seem like he is pain. In fact, within 2 weeks of injury he now walks slowly on 4 legs again, albeit with a bit of a limp. When he chases squirrels (he just can’t resist) he lifts it up and uses 3 legs. Tripod is his new nickname.

While I was concerned about having him cut open for any procedure at his age (about 10), I confess that it is mostly the money. Paying for such an operation would take too big of a chunk out of my very thin cushion of savings. Maybe if he were to die without it, I would shell it out… I think. Thankfully, this is not a question I have to ask myself now. But it did get me thinking about humans and their pets and the need, at some point, to let go.

What Could They Know?

I can’t help it. I’ve been compulsively reading about the suicide of Mary Kennedy. I follow the family’s sad story as if I might find an answer to my own. Disconcertingly similar: addiction, depression, debt, imminent divorce, hanging. I imagine terrible details again. I picture her tying knots in a rope and wonder if she always knew how to do that? N sometimes showed off his fancy rope tying skills. Should I have seen that as a warning?

Grocery shopping this morning, I paused at the newspapers to read the front page of the New York Post, of course featuring photos of anguish and heartbreaking details. My cart full of fresh corn and strawberries, bread and yogurt, I read. Then, pushed my food through the checkout in a gutted daze. I feel it all again. The despair. I recognize Robert’s face — the last possibility of hope, now gone. The eruption of accumulated grief. Years of grief. Not the shock of sudden death, nor the exhaustion of death after cancer. I see a look of pain from a long-festering, ugly, terribly sad wound, exploding. His children, masks of control perhaps learned, like Molly, after living with what craziness?

And the wrath of her family. They blame him. I know about that too. One of N’s sisters phoned me a few months after his death. It was a summer day. I took the call outside. I could tell from her tone that she was not calling to find out how Molly and I were doing. “You as good as put the noose around his neck,” she said.

From England, she knew nothing of our life together. Nothing about the years of anxiety and despair. Nothing of the years I pleaded with him, bullied him, tried any possible way into recovery, begged him to reclaim his life, us. Our love, his home, all his — if only he could free himself from the cocaine, literally driving him insane. None of this, we – were not enough. She did not know what our lives were like in this little house in Connecticut. She’d lost her handsome, loving, big brother. That’s what she knew.

I forgive her for saying such a hideous thing to me. Only N’s two older daughters in England — who, like their little sister Molly, bear scars of broken promises and missed love, remain in my life. Having lived with him, we know. We are veterans of the same battle, our injuries invisible and mostly, unspoken.

 

Another Terrible May Day


This past Tuesday, May 1st, was the anniversary of my husband’s death. I went to the wake of my friend’s sister. Another suicide. I entered the hush and muted light of the funeral home, letting the door close on the cruelly beautiful spring afternoon. My friend stood with family and friends in front of her sister’s casket and as she turned towards me, we recognized each other in a terrible way. We held each other and wept. My tears were for the unimaginable loss of her beloved sister (the anguish!) but also for the fact that she has been thrust over into this terrible place. The terrain of suicide survivors is harsh.  The wound left by the self-inflicted death of a loved one is ragged, violent and festers in a place so deep and dark, that getting to a place of healing or peace seems an impossible journey. Despair is complicated by anger and our memories forever haunted by unanswerable questions. I am sorry for my beautiful friend. I am sorry for anyone joining this awful club. We are already too many – the why?’s and what if…’s, endlessly echoing between us.

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