In Sane Grief

    Although I never had the occasion to mention it over at the main journals, this was one of my mother's favorite quotes. She could also, and often did, quote the first verse of the poem. I don't know if she ever knew the rest. Considering when she went to common school, my guess is that at some time she was required to memorize the entire poem, and did.
    At any rate, I thought it would make a good title for this post. My intention, today, is to list quotes (and, if I can, link them to sources) I've been gathering since my mother's death. They all relate to ways that I've felt since then. Some of them have direct relation, some of them only oblique, but each of them evokes strong thoughts about my mother, our relationship, her death and/or my experience of grieving her. One of them, one of the first, is a self-quote which I just discovered. Although I can't necessarily and absolutely date when it was I stumbled across each quote, if I can I'll assemble them in a fairly accurate sequential frame. Quotes will be in this color. Copyrights, of course apply according to the source.
    A note about the poem, "The Raven", to which the title of this post is linked: I remember reading this poem in school, too...and not paying it much attention. I reread it today while listening to the spoken version and realized it is not only a poem about grief, how it endures, it is a poem about how grief, once truly experienced, leads to questioning of beliefs in afterlives, in being reunited with those who have died and about whom one feels strongly, leads to questioning one's beliefs in everything except what one can empirically sense. Interesting poem. More interesting that my mother quoted from it as long back as I can remember and as long forward as her life lasted.
    On to:
Collected Quotes in the Wake of My Mother's Death

1. From The Story of India, aired and watched some time in January, 2009:
   Identity is never static; always in the making and never made."
   When the host for the program spoke these words, I immediately thought of how my mother's identity is continuing to evolve after her death, through her survivors and how she might be continuing to evolve it, herself...
2. From The Story of India, aired and watched some time in January, 2009:
   Buddha's last words: All created things must pass. Strive on, diligently.
   When I first heard this quote I think I mistook its emphasis. I interpreted it to mean that one should "strive on, diligently" after death. Now, as I contemplate it, I'm thinking that it applies both before and after death...thus, suits my mother perfectly.
3. Something I wrote in my small Constant Companion notebook, dated 2/1/09, 11:09 a.m.:
   I will not know the true nature of my companionship with my mother for many years. All I know, at the moment, is that it is a great love story, perhaps one of my greatest...however, the details escape me in the fog of the loss to me created by her death. It is my choice of duty to remain aware of the fog, endure it as I must while incrementally blowing away bits of it until all the detail and enormity of our relationship are revealed to me. It may seem, from the outside, like a self-centered, self-contemplative exercise but all movement creates a corresponding movement of air from within and from without...and all wind dissipates fog, wisp by wisp.
4. Partial Lyrics from the song Forever Young by Alphaville heard on 2/9/09:
   Forever young
   I want to be forever young.
   Do you really want to live forever...
   When I first heard this, listening to the song as it breezed by on my radio when I was driving on an errand, it brought tears to my eyes because it sounded like a conversation I might have had subconsciously with my mother, her speaking the first two lines, me speaking the last. Now, when I reflect on it and hear the song (I decided to purchase and download it onto my iPod...and still listen to it frequently, and weep), the speakers are reversed: I am the speaker of the first two lines, my mother the speaker of the third. Just thinking about those lines, hearing them sung in my head, brings tears to my eyes, yet, as it is doing as I write this.
5. I can't remember where I heard this and can't seem to track a single source, but I heard it soon after hearing the quote immediately above, as I wrote it down in my Companion Notebook on the same page as the lyrics quoted above:Life is no small thing.
   I remember an immediate, ironic reactive thought when I heard this: That death is an even larger "no small thing".
6. Partial Lyrics from the song Pride by Syntax:
   There was always a moment there when I knew.
   You always gave installments,
   Always knew you concentrated and grew.
   And I believe in reinvention...
   These three lines perfectly describe how I feel about my mother, now, as she lived as as I imagine her living on after death.
7. From a Bill Moyers Journal PBS interview with Parker J. Palmer aired 2/20/09:
   Regarding the experience of depression, I honed into this quote because of the comparison Palmer makes to, well, you'll see as you read:
   ...you need other people. You don't need their advice. You don't need their fixes and saves. But you need their presence. I sometimes liken standing by someone who is in depression as being like the experience of sitting at the bedside of a dying person because depression is a kind of death, as is addiction and other serious forms of mental illness.
   You have to be with that person in an unafraid way. Not invading them with your fixes, not hooking them up to wires or whatever the non-medical equivalent of that is, giving them advice, but simply saying to them with your very presence, your physical presence, your psychological presence, your spiritual presence, I am not afraid of being with you on this journey of the — at the end of this road.
   This quote so reminded me of how I tended to my mother during her last few days and, especially, her last few hours, especially the last sentence. It so perfectly describes my devotion to my mother at the end of her life..."at the end of this road". With every moment, in everything that I did for her, in every way that I was with her, this last sentence was an implicit chant over her, to her.
8. From the HBO movie Taking Chance. This bit of dialog is spoken by the character Charlie Fitts in response to Lt. Colonel Mike Strobl's doubt that he has done anything important for his country or any of his fellow Marines:
   You brought Chance home. You're his witness, now. Without a witness, they just disappear."
   This quote sums up the way I feel about the importance of the journey I undertook with my mother through the last 15 years of her life.
   Further bit of dialog, a description how PFC/Lance Corporal Chance Phelps was treated during his journey home:
   Six of us held him in our hands all the way back to the base. All along the way Chance was treated with dignity and respect and honor.
   This quote sums up how I feel about the last few days and hours I spent with my mother.
9. From a funeral sermon delivered for a serial killer on an episode of the Practice entitled "Heroes & Villains aired in rerun sometime in late February or early March of 2009:
   To look on Stanley Deeks' time on earth, to consider his victims, we must know there to be an afterlife. Otherwise, life on earth is all there is. And it can't be that. It simply can't be that.
   I stumbled across this quote just as I was beginning to notice my fierce internal wrestling with the concept of life after death as it might or might not apply to my mother and all of us. It is a blatant emotional plea, perfectly suited to how I feel about the impenetrable mystery of Death.
10. A bit of dialog from an episode of House entitled "Occam's Razor" aired in rerun sometime in late March or early April, 2009:
    Wilson: "Beauty often seduces us on the road to truth."
    House: And triteness kicks us in the nads.
    Wilson: So true.
    House: This doesn't bother you?
    Wilson: That you were wrong? Try to work through the pain.
    House: I was not wrong. Everything I said was true. It fit. It was elegant.
    Wilson: So reality was wrong.
    House: Reality is almost always wrong.
    Although this quote may seem completely disconnected from Death and Grieving, I heard it soon after I heard the immediately previous quote. The last line of dialog, especially, makes sense to me in the context of trying to find some reason to believe in my mother's continued existence, in some form, but having no luck doing this.
11. Quote from an NYT interview of Maurice Sendak that I stumbled upon a few weeks ago. The quotes are in regard to his feelings in the wake of his partner's death:
    His latest book is one he started about four years ago, right after Dr. Glynn became sick with lung cancer. The illness and setting up of round-the-clock care in their home were just “so unbelievable,” he explained. Mr. Sendak is mostly finished with it, but he admitted that for the first time, “I feel extremely vulnerable.”
    He is afraid — not of death, which is as familiar to him as a child’s teddy bear — but of not being able to finish his work: “I feel like I don’t have a lot of time left.”
    After Dr. Glynn’s death, Mr. Sendak said he was “still trying to figure out what I’m doing here.”
    “I wanted to take his place,” he said. “His death became a demarcation.” He added that he lost touch with many of his friends, unable to return phone calls and reply to e-mail messages.
    All this applies strikingly well to my reactions when I find myself overwhelmed by yet another wave of grief.
12. Quote from a local PBS show Books & Co., with Peggy Shumaker:
    Peggy Shumaker: Do you think after death people stop being in your life?
    ...
    Definitely not. And leftover love that you carry around can be a gift that you bestow on others, or it can be a tremendous burden. But there are complex feelings that continue as long as you live. That's part of it.
    It didn't occur to me to consider that my relationship with my mother, "the love that [I] carry", might be a burden, a tremendous one. This quote struck me between the eyes. I'm still considering what its meaning is for me...whether it has any meaning for me...

    At this point, that's it, folks. You'll notice, though, that I tacked a "Part 1" onto the title of this post. I expect I will continue to find myself besieged with the words of others, or myself, in regards to my mother's death and my subsequent life. Thus, I'm making it easy for similar posts to appear, and be expected.

Labels: Death Quotes, Grief Quotes