In Sane Grief

    Having lost someone to death with whom I was so closely entwined, it seems as though I've lost parts of myself, there isn't any part of my life that her absence does not touch; nor is there anything in my life that I don't, at one time or another, view through the shades of grief. Only this morning, as I was washing dishes and gazing out the kitchen window at the shrubbery on the south side of...hmmm...our?...my?...whose home is it now?...I noticed, consciously, that the peculiar deciduous shrub-tree whose name I cannot seem to find in my Field Guide to the Plants of Arizona but that is prolific in this part of Prescott is going through its perennial leaf shed. That's right, it sheds its leaves in spring, rather than fall. Apparently this morning was ripe for contemplation of this plant, which appears as a tall, dense shrub in our yard but lines our street in its tree form, rivaling the heights of the indigenous oak. It is the oddest feeling to drive through The Greening of Prescott, which is taking place as I write and hasn't yet peaked, and have the view littered by the equally commanding sight of trees whose leaves are turning burnt orange. If you're not familiar with the area I'm sure you'd think that a sudden, species specific blight is rampaging through the forest. As I drove to the local market to pick up my usual Sunday copy of the NYT (I can handle the online version every day but Sunday; on Sunday I must feel out-of-town newsprint between my fingers), I mused over how appropriate to me is this year's spring shed. That's what I feel like, I thought, parts of me, parts that nourish me, have died and are shedding. Probably a good thing, I continued, that duff cools and nourishes the soil, the tree refreshes itself, revs and buds...maybe this fall I'll feel releafed and ready for the rest of my life...just maybe.... This is one of the most optimistic thoughts I've had, lately. Because, you know, grief, this kind of grief, refocuses everything.
    It even refocused my reactions to the selections my book club was reading at the time I re-upped. The club was working through a spate of light, easy reads. I was still numb when I read through January's and February's selections. By the time I needed to begin reading March's book, The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett, though, my grief lens had turned panoramic. Despite the speed-reading its writing style encourages, I found myself catching on each death in the book, and there are plenty. I managed to privately laugh my way out of this unusually dour turn of mind by the time the book club met. I mentioned my uncharacteristic outlook to my excellent Prescott friend, also a member of the book club. She assured me that April's selection, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows, would not create a similar problem for me. "It's just lovely," she said, "delightful, you'll chuckle all the way through."
    I sobbed, sometimes blubbered, all the way through. Death after death after death, that's all I was able to comprehend. I cried for the relatives of each of the Todt workers; cried for the families of those who had died before the novel began; cried, too, for the families and friends of those who would die long after the novel ended. I was a sad case. I even called my excellent friend, confessed my problem (thank the gods, merely confessing it to her caused both of us to laugh) and apologized in advance for the possibility that I might sob throughout the entire book club meeting. Luckily, circumstances conspired so that I didn't. Only half of our small cadre showed up for the April meeting, which cozied the atmosphere even more than usual. At one point I did confess (without tearing up) my problem with the book. "I'm sorry," I admitted, "that the book had this effect on me, but I am still so overwhelmed by Mom's death that all I seem to register in these books is the deaths." Another member, who lost her mother two years ago and happened to be sitting next to me, leaned into me and nodded her head vigorously in response. "Oh my god," I exclaimed, "don't tell me I have years of this to go!" She laughed, so did I, and she said, "No, dear, you'll look at death, and life, differently, from now on, but you'll get used to it. Meaning, you won't cry every time you read about another death."
    Considering my current state, you'd think that I would have underlined every quote about death in both books, but I didn't...just some especially pithy ones that held my attention longer than it takes for me to squeeze out a few tears. Here they are:
Quotes from The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett:

1. Pages 270-271; End of Last Paragraph - First Paragraph:
   And sometimes it seemed that when he [Tom] thought like this about Agnes, [his freshly dead wife] he was not only missing her, but mourning the passing of his own youth. Never again would he be as naive, as aggressive, as hungry or as strong as he had been when he had first fallen in love with Agnes.
   I didn't identify with mourning one's youth, but I certainly identified with the idea that much of what I became as my mother's companion, while not gone, will have to be redirected...and I so enjoyed becoming my mother's champion, protector and intimate companion. I cannot imagine ever sharing life with someone in quite that way again. Sometimes redirection isn't just redirection...it's also having to turn away.
2. Page 376; Paragraph 3:
   Aliena was shocked. He [her father] had always counseled against oath taking. To swear an oath is to put your soul at risk, he would say. Never take an oath unless you're sure you would rather die than break it.
   This may seem fairly removed from death, but it has a great deal to do with certain thoughts that continually crop up for me in my grieving. They are, though, thoughts with a significant overtone of relief, such relief that feeling it brings me to tears. I feel, I noticed, when I came to this quote, that I did, indeed, risk my soul and the state of my life when I assented to my mother's request that we become companions for the rest of her life. There were times, not many and never long indulged but times, nonetheless, when, during our sojourn through the rest of her life, I feared for my survival after her death. At those times I expected, just as The Caregiver Literature warns (which is one of the reasons I pretty much swore off Caregiver Literature), that whatever life I still possessed after my mother's death would be a shambles which I would have to rebuild from the ground up and I feared I would not be able to do this. Yet, each time these fears threatened me, I rallied against them in the knowledge of my love for what we were doing, my love for her and my sense that this is my life, my life is not something I've put aside, thus, just as I am fully engaged, competent and fearless, now, I will be after my mother's death. Turns out, I was right. I remain fully engaged. I'm much more competent at continuing my life than I thought I'd be. I'm often forlorn with grief and sometimes fearful but I have an innate understanding that, if I give myself time, "...this, too, shall pass away." That, by the way, was another of my mother's favorite quotes.
3. Page 423; Paragraph 7:
   She cried hard, not just for him but for the life they had lived together...the life that would never come back.
   This one is obvious, I think.

Quotes from The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows:

1. Page 101; Paragraph 4; Quote from Past and Present by Thomas Carlyle:
   Does it ever give thee pause, that men used to have a soul—not by hearsay alone, or as a figure of speech; but as a truth that they knew, and acted upon! Verily it was another world, then...but yet it is a pity we have lost the tidings of our souls...we shall have to go in search of them again, or worse in all ways shall befall us.
   This quote gave me a bit more much needed courage to think and speak, (mostly) without apology, about the possibility of an afterlife for my mother...and for me, too; which remains hard to do in this day and age, 166 years after Thomas Carlyle published this passage.
2. Page 104; Paragraph 5; in a letter from Amelia Maugery to Juliet Ashton:
   When my son Ian died at El Alamein—side by side with Eli's father, John—visitors offering their condolences, thinking to comfort me, said "Life goes on." What nonsense, I thought, of course it doesn't. It's death that goes on; Ian is dead now and will be dead tomorrow and next year and forever. There's no end to that. But perhaps there will be an end to the sorrow of it. Sorrow has rushed over the world like the waters of the Deluge, and it will take time to recede. But already, there are small islands of—hope? Happiness? Something like them at any rate. I like the picture of you standing upon your chair to catch a glimpse of the sun, averting your eyes from the mounds of rubble.
   Although the speaker is referring to the sorrow of many after a war, I was astonished that this line also referred to a grieving individual's feeling that not just one's heart but the entire world has been "[deluged]" with sorrow.
3. Page 106; Paragraph 4; Regarding the Todt Workers:
   Thousands of those men and boys died here, and I have recently learned that their inhuman treatment was the intended policy of Himmler. he called his plan Death by Exhaustion, and he implemented it. Work them hard, don't waste vluable foodstuffs on them, and let them die. they could, and would, always be replaced by new slave workers from Europe's Occupied countries.
   Ah, this passage! It seems like it took me hours to move past the contemplation and mourning of so many prematurely stunted relationships, so much grieving.
4. Page 150; Paragraph 5; In a letter from John Booker to Juliet Ashton in which he describes his brief imprisonment at Belsen concentration camp during which he was enlisted to dig "great pits to bury the dead."
   I'll write no more of this, and I hope you'll understand if I do not care to speak of it. As Seneca says, "Light griefs are loquacious, but the great are dumb."
   Curious, the effect this had on me. At first I disagreed with it, thinking about my lack of muteness, here, in my journals, about my grief, knowing that my grief is "great". As I thought about this, though, I realized that writing out my grief is one thing; talking it out is quite another. Vocally, I am more than a little mute, unless I am asked directly how I am doing. Even then, I am more apt to say, "I'm fine," or, if pressed, "I'm having a bad day, today," or, if someone hears something in my voice and mentions it, "I'm a little sad, it's nothing." People rarely ask, though. I tend to be a bit more explanatory with close friends and sisters. Sometimes I'll even volunteer a sentence or two about my current state of mourning. Over all, though, I am mouth-quiet about it; as are my sisters about their grief. I find it interesting to contemplate, though, that I seem to run off at the fingers here in my journals about it. Some days ago, when thinking about this, I realized that I used have an audience in mind when I wrote in my journals; previous to my mother's death, that is. Now, when I write, I write to no one, or, better said, probably, to and for myself. So, why do I write publicly, I asked myself, if I am no longer imagining an audience? For the most quotidian of reasons: I'm in the habit, now, of keyboarding in journal format about my life with (and without, which is, in an odd way, to say "with") my mother. It is so habitual that, audience or not, imagining an audience or not, I'm more comfortable doing this than I am keeping a "hard copy" journal, which I used to do, before I discovered this format.

Labels: Death Quotes, Grief Quotes