I wish I knew what to say. Sometimes there are just no words.
Tag: mourning
When You Reach Your Goal
I am a very goal-oriented person. That’s part of the reason that I started working at age 10, and I’ve been to 22 countries. I prioritize savings for my objectives over instant gratification or fancy electronics or a nice car or the latest smart phone. I never started smoking, not only because it’s a disgusting, life-threatening habit, but also because I had other plans for my life and my money.
And there is nothing, nothing at all, like the high you get when you achieve a goal that you’ve shed blood, sweat, and tears for, over an unbelievably long period of time. It’s better than winning the lottery, because it’s your sacrifices that make it happen. It’s like standing on a mountaintop, enjoying the view, after having crawled up there inch by inch, month by month, all on your own. There is no more beautiful view than that. Excelsior!
Recently, I achieved a goal that I had all but given up hope on. My little free library was made into a pokestop on the Pokemon Go app. This might seem trivial to many of you, but after having achieved the goal of having that library, I then wanted to draw as many children to it as possible, to encourage reading and literacy. Pokemon Go is very popular with young people. To play the game, one goes to pokestops in the real world. If my library is one of those pokestops, more children will visit it.
Achieving this goal took many months and hundreds of hours of dedication. I figured I’d have to play the game to suggest the pokestop, so I put the app on my phone and started playing. Then I found a suggestion form on the Niantic website (the creators of Pokemon Go), and filled it out. They responded, politely, that you have to be at level 40 in the game to make a pokestop suggestion, and that they only choose a few countries at a time, and that at present the US wasn’t one of those countries. I was crushed.
But I figured that I could at least work up to level 40 in the game so that if the US gets chosen, I’d be ready. Well, I’m at level 32, and that took forever. And each level takes longer to achieve than the last.
Meanwhile I figured that my suggestion had been discarded. Well, recently there was a Pokemon Go upgrade, and I installed it, and blink! My pokestop was there! Just like that.
But after going back to the Niantic website, and reading the requirements for pokestop suggestions, it seems that I may have just gotten lucky. Some level 40 person must have made the suggestion for me. And in retrospect, the description attached to the pokestop is in different words than I’d have chosen.
But still, goal achieved. Woo hoo! I’ll take it!
But after that “Excelsior!” moment, I experienced a little bit of a letdown. I had been working toward this goal for so long. Now what?
Once a goal is reached, especially if it’s reached so unexpectedly, you kind of go through a period of mourning. Life will be different, now. You have to find another purpose. You have to let go. You have to move on. Change. It’s really disconcerting.
And then there’s the awkwardness of knowing that I’m now addicted to Pokemon Go, and I no longer have a “legitimate” reason to play, other than the fact that it’s fun.
That should be enough, right? But it was ever so much nicer to have a loftier purpose. Now I kind of feel like a creepy adult who refuses to grow up.
I’m sure I’ll get over it, though. At least until I focus on the next goal, whatever that turns out to be.I guarantee there will be one. For me, there always is.
Maybe I should continue to try for level 40, and then suggest that every little free library I come across as a pokestop. That would increase literacy, too. Hmmmm…
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A New Future
The older I get, the more people I know who are mourning the loss of a partner. Along with that, inevitably, comes the mourning of the loss of your future. Because couples make plans. That’s what they do. They have an image of what they’re working toward. When your partner dies or you get divorced, that image turns to dust.
That’s unsettling. Suddenly you have absolutely no idea where you are going. It is as if you’ve been blindfolded and spun in a circle. You spend a lot of time swinging your arms around in attempt to orient yourself and avoid crashing into things. And while you’re doing that, it seems as if the rest of the world is cruising merrily past you, intent upon one destination or another, not even having to rely on a GPS. You feel as though you can’t keep up. You’ve been left behind.
It can take many years before you’re able to find the strength turn your face toward the sun again. And when you do that, it feels really strange at first. What is this warmth I’m feeling? It feels good. Do I deserve to feel good? Should I feel guilty?
And then a funny thing happens. You start doing things that you like to do that you perhaps had abandoned because your partner wasn’t into them. And you stop doing things that you only did because your partner enjoyed them. In other words, you begin to take back your individuality.
Being an individual takes strength and courage. It takes confidence and creativity. At first you’re going to feel like a newborn giraffe. Not quite steady on your feet. A little confused about how you got here and why you’re suddenly towering over things that you never knew existed. The world will seem new.
But with any luck, one day you’ll wake up and you’ll realize that you’re actually kind of excited about the fact that the world seems new. Colors are brighter. Smells are more intriguing. Food has regained its flavor. Everything seems rife with possibilities.
And just like that, you begin to plan a brand new future. It may not look anything like the future you once imagined for yourself, but my wish for you is that it’s an adventure that you’re eager to begin. Onward!
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Giving Up
Not every dream you have is going to work out. Not every person you fall for is going to love you back. Sometimes you will make the wrong choices, life will get in the way, or things will be out of your control.
That was made abundantly clear the other day when I was unpacking boxes that I had been storing in my guest room. I was confronted with about 25 pounds of notes that I had taken when I was pursuing my Dental Laboratory Technology degree. Despite graduating with honors and having high hopes about buying a cabin in the mountains of North Carolina and starting my own dental lab out of the garage, here I am, a bridgetender in Seattle.
I wanted that dream so badly I could taste it. But I couldn’t convince anyone to hire me so that I could gain the needed experience, and I certainly couldn’t control the fact that 6 months later I needed surgery on my wrist that would make it physically impossible to do that work.
The death of a dream. Hate when that happens. I think I went into mourning for about a year, and despite the fact that I’ve since moved on, I couldn’t quite bring myself to get rid of those notes. I lugged them all the way across the country with me, even though I knew, without a doubt, that I’d have no use for them. I just wasn’t ready to let go.
So here was this massive pile of emotionally-charged notes that were taking up space in my guest room. But this was ridiculous. The last thing I need is a 25 pound albatross around my neck. So, trying not to think too much, I pitched them all into the recycle bin.
Well, no, not all of them. I kept my orthodontic notes. And textbooks. And tools. Because that’s what I wanted to do—make orthodontic appliances, like retainers. I know I’m being silly. I know that dream isn’t happening, ever. But it’s a part of who I was, who I am. And those tools might actually come in handy. You never know.
But it was rather cleansing, getting rid of all the other stuff. It felt like another step toward healing. It was high time.
Giving up on something or someone after you’ve exhausted all viable avenues of pursuit isn’t necessarily defeat. It isn’t abject failure, either. It means, quite often, that you’re being a mature adult who is being realistic and moving on.
There’s no shame in that. It’s a huge part of life. And if you’re lucky, like I’ve been, you can look back from a good place and realize you actually wound up right where you were supposed to be all along. You may not have been able to see it in the past, but things have a funny way of working out the way they should.
Sometimes you have to give up in order to get something spectacular. Sometimes giving up is the right thing to do.
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False Starts
I remembered something last night that I hadn’t thought of in years. I went to travel agency school! I had recently gotten my Bachelor’s Degree in Spanish and Latin American Studies, and my Associates in Sociology, and it was becoming increasingly obvious, to my horror, that I was not going to be able to do a thing with either one of them.
So I got it into my head that one of those fly-by-night train-you-for-a-career-in-next-to-no-time schools was the answer to my problems. And hey, I absolutely LOVE to travel. I adore everything about it. And travel agents get cool perks like free trips to Madrid and things like that. Sounded good to me! Sign me up!
What those career schools don’t tell you is that their goal is not to get you a career. Their goal is to prey on your desire for a career in order to separate you from your money. Don’t believe me? Ask the admissions office for placement statistics for their graduates. I guarantee you, they won’t provide them.
Regardless. I attended that school faithfully, graduated with honors and then… never got a job in the travel industry. You see, by the time I showed up, that industry was already dying. Computers were starting to rear their ugly heads, and now everyone makes their own reservations. When’s the last time you even saw a travel agency? They’re as rare as hen’s teeth.
I did get an interview with Eastern Airlines. They even flew me first class to Miami. That was the first, and probably last time I’ll ever fly first class, unfortunately. But it’s a good thing I didn’t get the job, because Eastern Airlines went belly up about 6 months later.
I seem to do that a lot– Hop onto a trend when it’s already on its downhill slide. I got 8 tracks when everyone was already moving on to cassettes, and cassettes when everyone was getting CDs, and now I have all these CDs that I never listen to, taking up space in my closet. I also went to Dental Lab Technology School and got a third degree at a time when labs are starting to automate. I’m off trend in romance, too, falling for guys who are either not ready or no longer interested or were never interested in the first place. I’ve also made a lot of friends who turned out not to be friends. That hurts like hell.
False starts suck. While you are backtracking, you’re also experiencing a sort of mini mourning period. Then you have to gather your strength to start over. That isn’t so bad when you’re young and you think there will always be a new opportunity just waiting for you, but as you get older, you realize that isn’t always the case, and even if it is, you only have so much energy and time and money to start fresh. And you therefore start to get a little gun shy.
Learning when to go for it and when to listen to your voice of reason and give something a pass is a fine art that seems to elude me. I think moving from Florida to Seattle was my last big hurrah. But I don’t want to turn into one of those people who does less and less until one day I wake up on the couch with daytime television blaring in my ear, a room full of cats, and a serious lack of Vitamin D. That would be tragic.
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‘Til Death Do Us Part
Most married couples have included that phrase in their wedding vows. But how many of them actually think about it? I suspect that it gets thrown in there because they want to stress the fact that they’re not planning on a divorce. But the truth is, if your marriage truly is for life, unless you both die in a plane crash or something, it’s only going to be for life for one of you.
Yep. Death will part you. And even though we all know that on a basic level, it still comes as a great shock to the person who is left behind. The grief of losing the person you love most in this world is indescribable. You don’t truly grasp it until you’re in it. There’s no real way to prepare for it. There are no shortcuts. You will either be the one who dies or the one who mourns. Frankly, I’m not sure which one is better off.
It’s a really strange feeling to have your future all mapped out with someone and then one day, poof, it’s gone. It’s unsettling. It’s like having the tablecloth ripped out from under your feast. It’s messy. It’s destructive. Shit is gonna get broken. There will be stains in the carpet that will never come out.
Why am I telling you this? Because it’s important to have this conversation. Not that it will mitigate the damages. But at least you’ll get a sense of where each of you stand, while both are still standing. Just a thought.
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Xantolo
One of my biggest regrets is not taking advantage of the opportunity to celebrate the Day of the Dead when I was living in Mexico. I didn’t understand what a cultural and spiritual treasure this celebration is, so I skipped it. Ever since then, I’ve been meaning to go back to have this experience, but something keeps getting in my way.
Day of the Dead is a Mexican tradition that reaches back thousands of years, to an Aztec celebration called Xantolo, which used to last for an entire month. It is a time when the dead and the living interact. Basically, it gives you a chance to spend time with the dearly departed.
This concept most likely makes the average American very uncomfortable. We don’t like to acknowledge death. We struggle to come up with things to say to people who have lost loved ones. We spend a lot of time trying to achieve immortality, even though death comes to us all sooner or later. It is the great equalizer.
The result of this puritanical, squeamish attitude toward a natural, inevitable conclusion to life means that grieving in America can be even more difficult than it needs to be. People tend to avoid you. It’s as if death is contagious. No one wants to hear about it. Mourning in this country is a very isolating experience. We prefer that the dead rest in peace. In other words, “I won’t bother you if you don’t bother me.”
One of my favorite authors, Barbara Kingsolver, described Xantolo in her book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle like this:
“I’m drawn to this celebration, I’m sure, because I live in a culture that allows almost no room for dead people. I celebrated Dia de los Muertos in the homes of friends from a different background, with their deceased relatives, for years before I caught on. But I think I understand now. When I cultivate my garden I’m spending time with my grandfather, sometimes recalling deeply buried memories of him, decades after his death. While shaking beans from an envelope I have been overwhelmed by a vision of my Pappaw’s speckled beans and flat corn seeds in peanut butter jars in his garage, lined up in rows, curated as carefully as a museum collection. That’s Xantolo, a memory space opened before my eyes, which has no name in my language.”
I think Xantolo is a very healthy way to come to terms with the loss of loved ones. They may be gone, but they still have an impact on your life. Their absence changes who you are. That ability to effect change, to have an impact, is life of a sort. So why not acknowledge it?
You’re probably wondering why I’m writing about Xantolo in January. It’s because I celebrate Xantolo all year round. When I look skyward and say, “Yeah, I feel you. I know you’re close,” that’s Xantolo. It’s also the butterfly that lands on my knee, and the remembered joke that still makes me laugh. It’s that smell that brings me back to that particular day, or that song that I can still hear you singing.
Xantolo is the ongoing relationship that I have with people I can no longer reach out and touch. As with other relationships, sometimes it’s welcome, sometimes not. But I get a great deal of comfort from the fact that these people that I loved and still love are never very far away. We may have no name for that in our language, but oh, it’s there.
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RIP Sisters Creek Bridge
A friend of mine just sent me this picture, and it made me really sad. To me, this feels like a death. It is the last gasp of a drawbridge that is about to be torn down because it has been replaced by a much higher fixed span.
I used to work on the Sisters Creek Bridge in Jacksonville, Florida. I spent many peaceful nights there, gazing at the moon and stars, and listening to the dolphins as they came up for air in the Intracoastal Waterway, on their way to, I’m sure, much more exciting places. I watched ospreys mate and nest and hatch and fledge there. I once saw an albino skunk standing as if in a trance in the middle of the road. I wrote and cried and laughed and dreamed of my future in that special place. Now it’s gone.
I’m sure most people will be thrilled. It means no fear of delay on their way to the beach. It means getting home on time.
But it also means the loss of jobs. And it means something else, too: one less opportunity to stop, for just a moment, to look about you. Gone is that chance to get out of your car for a second and feel the sun on your face. And that, in my opinion, is a reason to mourn.
Good bye, Sisters Creek Bridge. On behalf of 64 years of bridgetenders, thank you for more than we can possibly say.
Grieving Alone
Christmas comes, then my birthday, then the new year. At this time of the year, I’m always acutely aware of the passage of time. I’m looking forward to all things new, missing much of the old, and wondering what it all means in the overall scheme of things.
It’s been almost two years since the love of my life died quite unexpectedly while I was out of town. It still hurts. But I am past the very worst of it. I don’t think I’ll ever get over it, but I’m becoming used to it.
As supportive as people try to be, everyone grieves alone. It’s a deeply personal experience, and one you can’t really explain. But I came across a really interesting document on my hard drive the other day. For a about a month after Chuck’s death, I wrote daily about what I was feeling. I’d forgotten I’d even written it. I’m a little surprised that I had the presence of mind to do so. But then, writing has always brought me comfort, and I knew there were things I couldn’t really say to others. They wouldn’t understand.
I entitled it “Grieving Alone” and tucked it away. I’m glad I did, because with the passage of time, I can barely remember just what a devastating emotional desert I had been walking through. In retrospect I’m rather proud I survived.
Here’s a little tiny bit of what I wrote:
- It feels as though I’ve been struck by lightning. More than anything, I feel utterly, completely, and totally alone.
- He died all alone.
- That can’t be right. No. That makes no… wait. What?
- I will never travel without Xanax again.
- I woke up, and for a few precious seconds it seemed like just another day. Then the reality of everything came crashing in. Chuck was dead and I was now a different person than the one I had been 24 hours ago. I felt like I had been dropped from a great height. I felt battered and bruised.
- It’s all so fragile. It can pop like a soap bubble.
- Between chest heaving tears, I feel like I could sleep for a thousand years.
- I can’t breathe. I want to go home. But he was my home. There’s nothing to go home to, now.
- Suddenly I was a person who couldn’t listen to love songs without crying.
- Oh, look at that sculpture! Chuck would love that. I can’t wait to tell him about it. Oh… wait.
- Tell me what to do. I can’t think. Do I sit? There? Okay. Now what?
- I’ll never feel his leg hooked over the small of my back again. I’ll never feel his body heat. He’s cold. I wonder where his body is now? Are they treating it with dignity?
- I’m looking at everyone around me, with their cares and concerns and their… lives… and I realize I’m on the outside. I’m looking in and I can’t feel.
- As we pull into the driveway, I see that Chuck didn’t get around to fixing the side view mirror on my car. Figures. “You always were a procrastinator.”
- I wonder when I’ll be able to speak about Chuck to people without them looking uncomfortable.
- Just get through one more work day. Then I’ll have days off. To what? Sleep. Blessed sleep. But also a huge, yawning mass of time to fill up with Chuck-less stuff. Too much time. And not enough time.
- So many things we worry about don’t matter.
- Sleeping is the hardest part. I miss his snoring, his body heat, the feel of his leg on the small of my back. I started crying, wailing. “Take me with you!” “I don’t want to be here without you.” “I can’t do this.” “I’m so alone. Please, take me with you.”
Hoooo. All of that is very hard to read. But it was harder to live. I can tell you that if you’re going through something like this right now, it does get better. It really does. It never goes away completely, and I still have rough moments at unexpected times, but it gets better. If I could do it, you can do it.
Letting Go
I once knew a young girl whose mother had died, and her father, although living under the same roof with her, was making himself emotionally unavailable. So this 15 year old only child found herself basically all alone. It was heartbreaking to watch.
And then her father moved on. He got himself a girlfriend. He got engaged. They decided to sell the house and move to another state. My friend could move with them. Of course she could. But by now she was 17.
She did not want to leave the house where her mother died. It felt like betrayal to her. It felt like abandonment. So she was running around, desperately trying to figure out a way that she could buy the house from her father. She would get a job, she said. She’d get roommates. She’d take in boarders.
So I told her my deodorant story.
One of the last things my mother bought me before we discovered that she was dying was a stick of deodorant. Nothing sentimental. Just, “Honey, do you need anything from the Walmart?”
After she died, and once the deodorant was used up, I found it impossible to throw it away. I’d hold it over the trash can in a death-like grip, and then I’d put it back on the shelf. I just couldn’t let it go. It was as if throwing it out would be like throwing my mother out. Disposing of that deodorant would mean a lifetime of deodorant that was not purchased by my mother. That seemed even more final than her death, somehow.
I held on to that stupid deodorant for a couple of years. Then one day, I realized that my mother was not in that deodorant. She wouldn’t be further from me if I threw it out. So I tossed it, burst into tears, and the next day… nothing had drastically changed. Except that I had a little more shelf space.
Sometimes you just have to let go.
I told my friend that her mother wasn’t in that house, she was in her heart. I also told her that her mom wouldn’t want her to get stuck with that mortgage at such a young age. It would be an albatross around her neck. I told her that her mother would want her to live her own life and go to college and have adventures and explore new places.
Often when you cling to things, it’s like holding onto a rock in the middle of a raging river. It might seem like the safest, smartest thing to do at the time, but all it does is cause you to get beaten up by the current. Sometimes it’s better to just let go and float downstream to where the water is calmer and the view is new and delightful.
It’s hard to see what’s around the bend in the river before you go down it. It’s a lot more obvious when you look back at it from over your shoulder. Letting go takes faith. Have faith.
