Tag: healing

A Lesson in Relaxation at Half-Price

I know I’ve mentioned before that indulging does not come easily to me. I wonder if it is an Irish thing? Or Catholic or a class phenomenon?  Maybe if I had lots of money, I’d think less of spending $100-plus to make myself feel good. But maybe not. Still, I’d have to carve out the time to get pampered. That’s what’s hard for me — there’s so much else to do, so much else that’s needed… and that little voice says, “really?” I suspect it’s genetic. My sister shares this quality and we sometimes discuss it.  I recall proudly giving my mother a gift certificate for a spa treatment only to see it gather dust on her cluttered dresser past expiration. But I’m determined to reform and this is easier at half-price.

Recently I took advantage of such a deal from  Born of Earth where Heidi gave me a magical massage.  We began the session chatting pleasantly, (Something else I feel compelled to do — like I need to entertain the person working on me while they probably want me to shut up and just get on with it.) but after a few minutes, Heidi wordlessly silenced me. Her power – her ability to converse through her hands with a sense of healing beyond language. With her first touch she found the clench and ache of twisted muscles tucked beneath shoulder blades and running along my spine.

When my hour was up I floated out of the salon to my car where I sat for a few moments feeling too inebriated to drive. A lesson beautifully learned and next time, I’ll even spring for full price.

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.

 

Without Requirement

Today is Mother’s Day. Growing-up, my family pooh-poohed Hallmark holidays. There was no pressure for us to give presents or buy flowers.  I still don’t take these holidays very seriously. I certainly prefer not to vie for a seat in a restaurant on Valentines or Mother’s day. Don’t get me wrong – I love flowers and gifts are nice and any excuse to be spoiled is welcome. But I don’t want my daughter or sweetheart to feel like it’s required.

The other day I helped my friend buy flowers for her mother’s grave. We chose petunias that will spread across the plot in bursts of pink and purple throughout the summer, thanks to her devoted father’s watering can. My mother has no grave. My siblings and I discussed perhaps getting a memorial bench in a beautiful spot, but for a myriad of reasons, never followed through. I’m glad. I need not be worried about whether the wood is rotting or if a creepy bigot has chosen it as their favorite spot. I am gratefully free of the guilty feeling of worry and obligation that so permeated my relationship with my mother. I can simply – remember her. I imagine her spirit not in a plot, but everywhere. She is wherever the hell her cantankerous soul wants to be. I think of her as much happier than in life – much easier without clouds of guilt hovering over me. I remember her as doing her best and ultimately, loving me unconditionally. Sometimes, I miss her.

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.

Another Anniversary

This is a fraught time of year for me. Vivid morning light, the new green of trees against an impossibly blue sky, porcelain beauty of the Dogwood blooms and the perfume of Lilac in the air are all stunning — but for me, all are triggers. Even before my mind, the cells of my body remember – my shoulders knot, my jaw clenches and my heart beats faster with an anxiety I can’t account for. During these last days of April, an echo begins like a breeze turning into a wind, as vivid and weighted as the light and branches. A darkness hovers even with all this light — leading up to May 1 when my husband ended his life. Even 8 years later.

A friend who has worked with me since that terrible time told me the other day that I was a different person before and after. The wound-up stress of this week reminded me of how I felt before: always wondering what bad thing would happen next. For years I stayed, feeding a hope that seemed impossibly locked away in the sad cage of my imagination – that my husband would get well and our life would be normal. Normal was all I wanted anymore – not extraordinary. My friend said, after his death, I just blossomed – became lighter and joyful. It almost feels wrong to write that – but it is the truth. I felt lighter. Of course there was anger, shock, sadness, anger, anger, and an awful grief — but also relief. His terrible, final act did free me from the awful life he had woven around us in his crazy drug quest. And with time, I felt joy again – joy I’d forgotten could exist. Still, each spring, an ember of sadness – once hope, is fanned by spring breezes and memories of the tortured soul I once loved.

Chicken? Falcon? …Turkey

I’ve thought of calling this blog: Walking the Dog because it’s often where I get my inspiration. Our little neighborhood jaunts together are often the closest I come to meditating. I am mostly internally focused but still aware of the seasons, the little changes day-to-day in the trees, the garden, the woods along my walk. Sometimes, Tetley and I have real adventures like the other night when we encountered a neighbor also walking her dog — and what appeared to be, a chicken. 

It wasn’t really her chicken – so not for the first, nor last time, we got ‘the box’. The box for water, food, the shirt no one wants and the promise of a night in our breezeway. The more we looked at this little guy, the less we thought it a chicken – or any domestic bird. As it fluffed its wings and strutted about on very talon-like feet, we decided it must be a raptor. Except it was awfully friendly.

It particularly liked hanging out on shoes – although I think if it could have climbed into my lap it would have. We called a 24 hour wildlife hotline and the guy said, put it back. So we carried the little bundle of feathers back across the street to the neighbor’s newly mulched patch of a few yards, set it down and quickly walked away. The thing followed us, practically tripping me as I crossed the street. Street. That’s where we found it. Not the woods. Cat-hunting ground. So of course, we did not leave it.

The next morning, still thinking it was a little falcon baby, (we fed it dry dog food moistened with warm water – it ate it) I brought it out and it picked at the grass. I hoped it might try and fly away back to mommy. I kept my eye on the sky looking for the amazing hawk (or whatever it is) I often see in the trees and circling the sky around here. Only airplanes and robins soared by. Finally, shortly after 9 AM, Wildlife in Crisis, a volunteer run organization in Weston that maintains a “nurture center” called me back and said, “It’s probably a wild turkey.” He dismissed our falcon identification because raptors wouldn’t be walking. And this thing was like a puppy under my feet.

So, it’s there now, with other baby turkeys, a full grown deer laying on a stretcher because of a birth defect that left its feet all mangled. (it was expected to live for only a few weeks and instead, has lived as this strange invalid for years. Ah, the power of love) Also perched around the small room are sea gulls, a spectacular wood duck, teeny cages of hummingbirds. And this was just in the reception area – there are other buildings housing other creatures. I’d actually been there a few years ago with an injured sea gull stuck in the B&N parking lot. Such patients are accepted with little fan-fare by this serious crew of volunteers and donations are encouraged.

A Different Color

We are painting the exterior of our house for the first time in the 15 years I have lived here. Actually, to be clear, Rob is painting. While he climbs the ladder, I stand guard and hand him buckets, drenching the roller in the Rookwood-Jade as needed. Like the musician he is, he has composed the entire job to be done, in his head. And dancer-like, he moves around the house, stretching his long arms in fluid movements. The peak is done, and this part, just visible over the hedge, makes it already look like a different house. The happy house it is.

I wonder why we didn’t do this sooner? Apart from the fact that the paint had worn off so much of the aluminum siding (yes, we are painting aluminum siding) that sometimes, the reflection of the sun was blinding, our home begged a new look. For many of the years I lived here, these walls defined a space of pain and sadness. Behind these walls I worried, I railed, I yelled and finally, I grieved about my husband’s addiction, his suicide. Living that way became so a part of me that I fear proclaiming the sweet serenity of now, might jinx it.

But as the shabby-white becomes a meditative green, the house seems to fuse with the landscape –  the lush hedge, the maples and oaks.  Spring is emerging like a profound exhale, and our sweet abode breathes deeply too.

Books to Show Me the Way

I am reading two books that happened to be reviewed in this week’s New York Time’s Book Review. Birds of a Lesser Paradise: Stories by Megan Mayhew Bergman and Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed.  The reviews are good and I feel glad for the authors for the attention they are getting — as if they are  my friends. Isn’t this the kind of connection and loyalty a good book inspires?

Birds of a Lesser Paradise is a collection of exquisite short stories that I have been savoring for more than a month. Like expensive European chocolate I want to make last. Rather than race through, the book sits by my bed for times I am alert enough to fully indulge. The writing is gorgeous, full of sentences that demand to be re-read. Not to beat the food imagery to death, but lest you think I am talking about bon-bons, these stories are like salty-sweet concoctions. They are deep. Against the backdrop of fantastic landscapes of nature and animals, we glimpse lives of loss and loneliness. Thoughts of them linger long after the story is done, demanding time to fully resonate.  Polly Rosenwaike ends her review of Birds by saying she “… wished it would send us deeper into the woods, and more fiercely stalk the mysteries that elude us, disturb us, tear us apart.” Of course readers’ experiences vary — but I disagree with Polly. For me, it is the subtle echoing quality to these stories that gives them their power. They don’t bash you in the head – they are not fierce. And need not be. And there is also the sheer joy of reading such fine writing.

Dani Shapiro‘s review of Cheryl Strayed’s memoir Wild, about a grief-driven, remarkable journey of hiking the Pacific Crest Trail is an author’s dream. The review is thoughtful, quite moving — and makes me want to drop everything and just read. Forget the laundry, the rest of the Times and curl up with Wild for the rest of the day. I am not quite 20 pages into the book but am already struck by the honesty, the intelligent yet raw writing. And she certainly is fearless: would you head off alone on a 1,100 mile jaunt in the wilderness? The results are riveting. Dani Shapiro writes “”Wild” isn’t a concept-generated book, that is, one of those projects that began as a good, salable idea. Rather, it started out as an experience that was lived, digested and deeply understood. Only then was it fashioned into a book – one that is both a literary and human triumph.” When I read that I thought, “That’s what I want a reviewer to say about my book.”

Bravo to these writers — and thanks for the inspiration. I feel galvanized to go back to my revisions and more bravely bare my heart.

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