Tag: time

I Read the News Today, Oh Boy.

The Sunday New York Times this week has three front page stories that disturbed me:

President Claims Shooting as a Hobby, and the White House Offers Evidence

By  and 

Pete Souza/The White House

In a photo released by the White House on Saturday, President Obama is shown skeet shooting at Camp David in August 2012.

This somehow feels like pandering to the creeps. “See, I shoot guns too!” Ugh. But then, I suppose this is what is necessary to reach the level of ridiculous but scary, gun people who cling to this archaic 2nd Amendment of the Constitution. Whatever.

In Hard Economy for All Ages, Older Isn’t Better … It’s Brutal

By 

David Maxwell for The New York Times

Susan Zimmerman, 62, has three part-time jobs.

Then this article – of course struck close to home because, um, that’s me they are talking about, at least, could be. Of course, as that annoying mantra goes: I’m “lucky to have a job”. In fact I am lucky to have a job that I love – but when I thinking of my fellow ‘boomers’ under or unemployed and struggling, it sucks. And, as bookstores struggle to survive against the Amazon tide, who knows how soon it might be me.

Drowned in a Stream of Prescriptions

By 

Before his addiction, Richard Fee was a popular college class president and aspiring medical student. “You keep giving Adderall to my son, you’re going to kill him,” said Rick Fee, Richard’s father, to one of his son’s doctors.

But this article affected me the most. Beautifully, it was given front-page-center.

Unlike Richard Fee’s, my husband’s addiction was kickstarted not by doctors but by the choices he made during his life-in-the-fast-lane 1980s. But the story I share, along with so many families across the country, is how we were so badly failed by the professionals who were supposed to help us, and how tragically undermined we were by the pharmaceutical industry.

Before I knew why my husband couldn’t keep a job, slept for 12 hours at shot, spent too much money and behaved so erratically, we went, upon my insistence, to a string of psychiatrists who prescribed a rainbow of drugs, including anti-depressants. He happily took them, adding them to his other cocktail of cocaine, Nyquil and whatever else. When I found out about the cocaine, we went to another shrink who prescribed more pills including anti-psychotic drugs that he popped at an alarming rate — I admit, I counted them. When I called the shrink, he brushed it off despite the dire warnings on the bottle. Once I brought went to a walk-in clinic and ranted at a doctor who’d prescribed oxycotin. “He’s an addict!” I yelled. “You just hand this shit out like this?” Yes, they do.

A few months after my husband’s suicide, the posh rehab place where my husband had spent a (useless) week, sent me a bill of a few hundred dollars not paid by insurance. I insisted they send me his records first, then I’d pay the bill. (If I recall correctly, I had to send them a copy of his death certificate.) Reading through the fat file was heartbreaking for it’s lack of information. Multiple choice boxes as diagnoses, rarely a comment and rarer, any insight. He had the doctors, (who I remember he said, he rarely saw) as he had me for so long, completely snowed. They’re good like that, addicts are.

I understand that an addict must want his recovery. My husband saw those doctors only because I insisted he do so. He wanted to appease me, to keep things going – the illusion of a normal life. I think he thought one day he would be able to quit, that he’d get his life back – but twenty years was just too many – the man he had been, might have become – was gone.

I don’t mean to bash the entire psychiatric or pharmaceutical industry as I have benefited from both — but I have many questions and suggest that everyone should.

Off the Couch

 

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Do you ever wake up with great intentions to be productive – for me that meant writing, cleaning, organizing – and then spend most of the day lolly-gagging? This was the kind of morning and early afternoon I had. For a start, my blogging intentions went down the drain – instead I spent my morning reading dubious internet news and gossip. Waiting for the kettle to boil for another cup of tea, I chiseled away at the weekend New York Times.

Outside, even though the sky was blue-blue like it hadn’t been all week, the wind howled. The house felt chilly so I pulled blankets over me and picked up the book I’ve been reading, Canada by Richard Ford. I wish I could say I loved it — but it was a bit of a shlog. Still, I wanted to know what happened to Dell, the narrator. I gave myself permission to skip over the draggy bits. More than once I thought I’d lost my place, that I was rereading something I’d already read but that’s just the way Ford wrote it. Anyway, done with that.

At this point, with the sun was pouring in and warming the corner of the couch where I sat, Tetley, cuddled up next to me, I thought I might snooze. But then the pooch began to paw me, asking to go out.

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I bundled up against what sounded like a bitter wind, clicked Tetley’s leash on and headed out where it turned out to be gorgeous. The wind was indeed whipping, but the warmth of the sun made it feel good. I took a route through wind protected streets, enjoying the shadows and the fresh air.

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Walking briskly with my beloved dog, the air filling my lungs, I looked around my neighborhood, marveled at the light, the knotted vines and felt glad for this winter day and that I got off the couch.

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Naked Suicide

Recently, the number of visitors to my blog increased incredibly.  Why? The piece on the Newtown tragedy perhaps? It wouldn’t be my Department of Motor Vehicle post…who from Columbia, Romania or Turkey would be interested in that?

No. The hits from countries around the globe were actually looking for a tattooed woman in (and out of) sexy underwear. Not me, silly. My flesh has no ink and I assure you, my lingerie is not even remotely titillating.

The search term that brought this wild number of visitors my way was ‘tierney suicide’.  At first I thought a famous Tierney (can you think of any besides the long-dead, Gene?) must have committed suicide.  Nope. Tierney is the name or moniker of a young woman who is part of the SuicideGirls. (here is Wikipedia‘s description if you’d rather not click on the link.) “SuicideGirls is the nationwide art sleaze phenomenon.”  according to the Los Angeles Times. I doubt many of these accidental visitors stuck around for long on my modest blog.

It may be generational, but the idea of posting naked photos of even the younger, cuter me across the world-wide-web, makes me squirm. In college I sometimes paid my rent modeling for life drawing classes in the art department so it’s not that I am really that much of a prude – just a bit of one. Besides, times are different – scarier, more exploitative. But I try not to judge. Hey, to some extent, I too ‘get naked’ on my blog.  The kind of writing that interests me, requires I reveal more than most people are inclined to do.

No, it’s not the nudity that disturbs me – it’s what they call themselves: “SuicideGirls”.  I get they want to sound edgy, alternative, cutting edge, but it is a weird association.  There are over 30,000 suicides a year in the United States and for those of us left behind, the word suicide does not evoke sexy. And if  suicide searches are bringing the voyeurs to my blog, the survivors in looking for some understanding and solace, must also be stumbling onto the naked-girl site. Hmm.

Avoiding the words or images that trigger traumatic memory is impossible. For the first year or so, the moment I found my husband seemed branded behind my eyelids. Time has help fade this picture but flashbacks are unpredictable. A new title faced-out in the history section of the bookstore I work in, features an image of a noose. I can’t tell you the title because that’s all I saw. A pit opened in my gut and now I know to avoid walking past that shelf. Even those seemingly benign ‘hangman’ games remind me. I’ve learned to swallow and move on.

I choose to still look into and explore my dark, sad place – but prefer to do so on my own terms, on my time. That kind of control is not always possible. I cannot hide book jackets or edit scenes of movies or television shows. Nor can I protest the name of this girly site.

After the horrible shooting in Newtown, a town only 30 minutes away from here, many customers in the bookstore complained about the piles of gun collector books long gathering dust in our remainders section. Rightly so, the company I work for doesn’t censor – but nor is it insensitive. We took the books off display.  It was a simple thing to do in this raw time.

Survivors learn to live with randomly provoked memories. We must: reminders are everywhere. What some see as amusement, sport or even ‘art’ — can painfully elicit our memories of tragedy, of violence and can be hard to swallow. I guess that’s why I’m not thrilled by all the passing traffic — it’s just that they took a wrong turn.

“What Saves Us All Is Love”

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Shadowed by the deaths of little children and their teachers, the holiday season in Connecticut passed heavy with sadness. Thoughts of grieving neighbors tempered every day. As I moved through my days at the bookstore, acknowledgement was shared in the minutes spent with strangers while finding or bagging their books. These usually frantic exchanges before Christmas, slowed slightly by a connection of shared sorrow. The season, while bleak, had a poignancy. Customers were kinder. As if feeling the rawness and wonder: how do we go on after these unbearable losses?

Healing seems impossible. How will those parents ever again smile, feel any joy? Yet look: here is the face of the mother that last Christmas of 2011, who woke to a house in flames that killed her three beautiful girls and her parents. In these photos she looks beautiful, smiling, surrounded by her friends who all draw close to her, loving her. Yes, there she is, a year later, living life. In pain, of course — but surely glimpsing a light. For these past 365 days she has carried on with that unbearable weight of her horrible loss — as others have before her. How has she done this? How will the others?

Love, Madonna Badger, the grieving Stamford mother says, saves us all. When we are in the dark night of grief, it seems that light might be smothered, but somehow – lit it stays. This remarkable essence, this life, makes us extraordinary. Inevitably, we all will experience deaths of our loved ones. While quietly we are grateful that this time, this terrible story is not ours, that it is not our beloved, we glimpse the truth that it might have been. And so, a very little bit at least — it is. Helpless to make anything better, we still want to take action, to comfort. Even knowing there are no words, we reach out to our friends and strangers alike, sending messages – because in this world of grieving, no one is really a complete stranger, not for long.

Out of this longing to do something we shower the Newtown community, with toys for their children. Chances are, those families did not need more under their trees but the rest of us needed to do something. To show our love. We drive through blizzards to gather around parents mourning the death of their child. No words can comfort, but we can fill a room, our faces glowing with tears, we can acknowledge and share the one thing that we hope may keep our friends, our fellow humans going forward: love. It is what saves us all.

No Words

Reflecting on loss and moving beyond sadness is a theme of my writing, of this blog. The passage of time since my own experience makes it possible for me to write of it. Today, drowning in grief, I feel ill equipped.

Sandy Hook is not far from my home — less than half-an hour. Those parents are my neighbors. They are all of our neighbors.

The early news alert came to me as an email at work — a shooter now dead and one other adult also killed in a school. Terrible and crazy, I thought. So close and such an unlikely spot – an almost rural suburb compared to my city and other towns on the coast. I had not heard the full story yet and went about my morning. Less than an hour, news of the horror of the children’s deaths shifted everything inside of me to an impossible place. The intentional murder of children: unfathomable.

I know no words of wisdom on how to move beyond such loss. None exist.

Joy at the DMV

I had the day off today. I spent a few hours of my morning at the DMV. (Department of Motor Vehicles) I can hear your cyber-empathy – but I assure you, I had a lovely time. For slightly more than 2 hours while I waited to register my daughter’s newly-bought-but-very- old-car, I read.

What else was I to do? Gab loudly on the phone like the obnoxious lady sitting amongst us? Continually groan and sigh in exasperation like countless others? Stare up at the television screen full of DMV fun facts? (I was too busy reading my book to catch any – sorry.) I felt grateful for this time to just sit and READ. Rare bliss, these busy days.

I try and read before bed but rarely make it past a few pages before conking out. I rarely mind waiting for Molly when I have to pick her up from somewhere, as long as I have a book — but I guess I won’t have those stolen moments any longer now that she’ll have her own wheels. My friend Nina Sankovitch knows about reading everywhere and anywhere, having read  (and written about!) a book a day for a year. Read about her remarkable journey in her memoir, Tolstoy and the Purple Chair: My Year of Magical Reading. 

I am half-way through this year’s National Book Award winner by Louise Erdrich, The Roundhouse and am very fond Joe, the 13 year old narrator. He’s the kind of son I would hope for were I to have had a son rather than my perfect daughter. The novel has a beautiful tension, some suspense and sentences you’ll want to read twice. I read and read again this sentence while standing in line to get my number so I could go sit and wait some more: “When you are little, you do not know that you are screaming or crying–your feelings and the sound that comes out of you is all one thing.”

To add to my delight, (yes, I am talking about my hours spent at the DMV) when my number D269 was announced with directions to proceed to window 17, a youngish man — early 30s tops — who reminded me of science fiction guys who regularly browse that  section of my store, asked me what I was reading. While he processed my paperwork, barely glancing at it before handing over a spanking fresh set of license plates, we talked about books. We don’t read the same stuff – he’s a horror and as I guessed, sci-fi reader – but it didn’t matter. We recognized our book-kinship and spent what might have been inconsequential or even irritating moments of bureaucracy, connecting and raving about reading.  On my way out, book and plates tucked under my arm, I passed the long line of dour faces with a grin on mine.

Exquisite Pain

A full moon still glowed in early morning sky as I stepped into the cold to take Tetley out for his walk. Something about the quality of the light or the air or the moment, brought me back to a scene from more than twenty years ago.

The man I loved had married another. Heartbroken, I retreated from my life in NYC for a weekend at a yoga ashram in upstate New York. After a few days of solitude and meditation, surrounded by winter fields and more sky than NYC allows, my every pore seemed to vibrate. On a frigid early morning with a moon still on the horizon, I walked out into the surrounding fields of the ashram.  I felt as if I had been cracked open, I imagined my sadness might flood the frozen pastures.

Yet, I felt a healing. With every breath, I consciously sent the wrenching pain squeezing my heart off with the disappearing clouds of my exhalations.  The moon seemed to speak to me as did the frozen grass crunching underfoot, each step, now a comfort. Even as I felt like I might die of a silent hemorrhage of the heart, I felt completely and beautifully alive. My pain brought me there – a pain that now, I perceive as exquisite. Certainly, it is the twenty years time that allows me to remember it so, rather than be swept away again into the desperate sadness that at the time I feared might drown me.

The thought of anguish as a road to spiritual understanding – as something exquisite – sticks with me, inspired by this random memory of a wintry morning. Pain of the heart and spirit is certainly on any map we choose to follow in life. There is no alternative route, no way around it. I still dread those turns in the road. But today I am reminded of the incredible clarity and beauty, almost a kind of spiritual trance that can lead us, if not away from our pain, to a place of peace. Like that morning so many years ago: the crystalline threads of my breath disappearing into the cold morning air, held the promise that all things must pass.

Ruminations on the Holidays and a Retail Life

This year I received a pin marking my 15th year working for my company. How lucky am I to have a job I love for all of these years? It’s just around this time of year – working in a store is tough. Look – if I won the lottery today I’d still work through the holiday season rather than leave my dear colleagues in the lurch. But I would be joyous – not only because of my great winnings (I have a rich fantasy life) but because, it would be my last. Fifteen years of my 17 year old daughter’s life around the holidays, have been experienced through the prism of me in retail insanity. I mostly come home exhausted and full of bah-hum-bug, a grouchy cookie baker, reluctant to listen to yet more Christmas music. Poor kid.

Don’t get me wrong — there are parts of the madness I love. It’s great to have the bookstore bustling with energy, readers delighting in discovering new books. What I don’t enjoy is the sense of exaggerated emergency that seems to linger like a frost from ‘Black Friday’ until New Year’s. It’s like everyone has imbibed too much coffee. This year, that amped-up feeling seems even more intense around here because of Sandy the hurricane, everyone is scrambling, anxiety twisting our gut.

I hate that feeling. And I wonder why I am susceptible to it? I have lived through real emergencies and know to my core that not being able to get the right book on time hardly counts as one. This manic-mode is not necessary, nor even helpful – yet, here I go again.

But not yet. Today is Thanksgiving and — I do give thanks. After roasting vegetables, making another pie, stuffing, cranberry sauce and green beans, the three of us will walk across the street to celebrate with our dear friends. I’ll do my best to hang on to the sweetness of this shared celebration – to seize this day as the start of a busy, but mellow and joyous holiday season. Because who knows – I still might win the lottery.

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.

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!

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