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

...a "sweet thing" (family talk), banana bread. It was a re-do. I baked some banana bread a little less than a week ago and the result seemed to indicate that I didn't bake it long enough. Even though a skewer inserted near the center came out "clean", as the loaf cooled the center dropped. When I sliced the loaf down the middle it was clear the loaf hadn't baked all the way through. I dismembered the bread, froze the good ends after letting them sit for 24 hours and, since I had enough bananas for two loaves, decided to try again in a few days...that day being today.
    I added an extra 10 minutes onto the baking time, today. Again, the skewer, this time inserted into the very center of the loaf, came out "clean". And, yet, as the bread cooled the center dropped, again, although the crater in this loaf isn't as large as was last loaf's crater. So, I'm doing the same with the bread as before, dissecting out the center and freezing the rest. It's a good thing I have no bananas left, because I'd feel obligated to try again. I don't think that would be emotionally productive. This is the third time in the last month I've had crater problems with baked goods. Before the first I replaced my baking powder. After the first I replaced my baking soda. After the second I extended the baking time. I'm not sure what to do, now, without burning the bread around its perimeter.
    As I stood at the sink, after today's semi-disaster, washing the utensils I'd used, I mused about how many times I used this recipe successfully when my mother was alive. "Hmmm..." I wondered, "...can grief be so heavy that it affects not only how one does things but the product of what one does? Are my baking products responding to my grief?"
    I doubt this is true, although I consider it as worthy of pondering as just about anything else at this point in my life. While I was considering this puzzle, though, I also wondered, assuming my mother is watching my sudden lack of talent for baking, what she might be thinking about this. The solution I used, dump the gooey centers and keep the good ends, is one that I can trace to my mother's baking philosophy. It's right up there with another of her baking credos: If the turkey falls on the floor while you're taking it out to baste it, pick it up, put it back in the pan, figure that know one will know the difference and, anyway, the continued baking will kill whatever it picked up off the floor.
    Pondering this launched me into a flight of fancy about exactly how my mother might be able to participate in my experiences since she's no longer physical. I came up with an amusing supposition: Let's posit that, once a person is dead, taking my mother as an example, because what remains of her, whatever that is, existed previous to her death, since it enlivened her, and she has the ability to enter into the genetic elements of those to whom she's related, thus being able to continue to participate in physical, one step (or, perhaps more) removed. Two reasons why she might be able to do this:

1. The "substance" of which she is comprised, now, is the same as it was before her death. It just no longer has a physical home.
2. But, her descendants and other relatives (two of her cousins are still alive) share acute genetic commonalities, implicit in their cells, making it very easy for my mother's current "substance" to slip into the physical elements of those to whom she's related, just as she was slipped into her own physical elements, but, in this state, with far more individual determination.

    I know, I know, there are lots of non-fantastic problems with this fantasy, all of which assure my sane brain that this is merely a fantasy. Consider, for instance, the fate of the souls of the dead who have no living relatives. Would they be exempt from participating in this activity? What about what we are discovering about human genetics: That it's beginning to look as though we are, really and essentially, all related, in the sense of all of us all being able to be traced to a common ancestor (which isn't such a startling thing, if you think about it from an evolutionary point of view)? Would the amount of common genetic material one shares with someone else (say, a direct descendant, a daughter, for instance, versus a cousin versus someone that we would ordinarily consider "not related") have anything to do with the quality an quantity of the experience in which one was able to participate? Is it possible that the insubstantial "substance" of someone who's dead could conceivably slip into just about anyone, granting, of course, that the level of experience granted through this slipstream would be different? Could that substance also slip into the physicality of closely related animals? What about distantly related animals? I'm not talking, of course, about reincarnation...I'm talking about, hmmm....what would be a good phrase? How about "borrowed incarnation"?
    It would make a fascinating premise for a speculative fiction novel, I think. More important, though, it gives me another metaphor for guessing about where my mother could be, depending on her abilities and proclivities, and how capable she is of being aware of this system, of which she was formerly a part. This puts it into conflict, of course, with the idea that life after death, if there is such a thing, is rather like life after birth...it's so different that not only does one not hang onto the memory of being a fetus, one has no reason to remember that state. Still, it's fun to imagine. It gave me pleasure shivers when I was at the sink.
    It's also, of course, completely insane, but, you know, the longer I live the more quotidian insanity seems. If, in the extreme, insanity is considered a coping mechanism for those we choose to label "insane", it seems likely that insanity is a coping mechanism the less obviously touched among us use every day...especially when grief over loss is dumped into the mix.

Labels: Afterlife Metaphors, Death Analogies, Effects of Grief, Grief Fantasies

...in Meghan O'Rourke's Slate series on the death of her mother and its effect on her life is this one entitled Finding a Metaphor for Your Loss. Like a somewhat more literary version of women's magazines self-"help" quizzes, the essay prompted me to think about how I "visualize" my mother, now that she's gone.
    I have what I call an analogy for what happened to her when she died (what happens to all of us when we die) and my thoughts about the chasm between the dead and the living. I formed this analogy a few years ago and my mother's death didn't change it. It doesn't, though, explain my imaginings when I consider whether my mother, or something of her, remains here, more than in my thoughts (an explanation which I, too, like O'Rourke, find tiresome).
    Unlike O'Rourke and her friend (cited in the article), I haven't placed my mother in anything so concrete as the wind and the water. For awhile I thoughtlessly assumed that I identified her with this house, then, more specifically with the living room, which became the heart of our house and home during her life. When I began serious work on the yard after her death, though, one of the hardest aspects of being "out there" was that my habit of keeping my being trained on the house during her life when I was out in the yard was not only no longer necessary after her death, it made me feel her loss all the more because, well, each time I automonically listened to our home I confronted her absence, which was, depending on the day, anything from mildly depressing to paralyzing.
    Soon after reading O'Rourke's essay I began to observe sightings of units of existence, you know, animals, states of weather, that brought my mother to mind. Crows, for instance. We have a noisy, prominent population of large black crows in this area in which both my mother and I delighted. When she was awkae and I heard crows cawing around our home I'd rally us outside to check out their activities. During the last few years of her life, when she was no longer interested in literally venturing outside but continued to imagine herself going and being outside, I'd spot them through one of our many windows and maneuver her, with her walker or in her wheelchair, to a prime observation post. I don't, though, I noticed a month or so ago, imagine that she is a crow, or even with the crows (which she may be, you never know).
    The same situation occurred when our first herd of spring deer meandered into our front lawn this year snuffling for tender shoots. When Mom was alive, observing the deer was such a treasured activity that I'd awaken her for an appearance (unlike for the crows). But, I've also noticed, I don't imagine that she is visiting me as one (or more) of the deer.
    A few days ago when I was indulging in some late day, early spring baking (best to get it in before the weather turns warm and the heat of the oven, even in the deep evening, becomes irritating), I noticed that I am, indeed, imagining my mother here, with me, just below my conscious awareness, most of the time, but with me. I imagine her, in her rocker, immense, shot through with thought-form but without substance, behind me and a bit to the right of my right shoulder. Sometimes I imagine she is attending to me. I haven't talked to her much, yet, so her attention is on what I'm doing, not on what I might say to her. Sometimes she is simply there, here, continuing to experience the world as part of the her-and-me team that had its beginnings long before we became companions. At times she's thinking her own thoughts and I'm wondering about the direction in which those are wandering. At others it seems that she and I are thinking in tandem and she's adding her considerations to mine. Sometimes I believe she is observing me...and wondering...
    When I am aware of her, I notice that I experience myself immense and gauzy, too, so neither of us is dwarfing the other, although I tend to think of her as extending "above" me, "beyond" me to the right...as though she has achieved a state that lies implicit but not yet possible within me.
    As I've mentioned in previous posts, I also imagine her as cavorting with relatives and friends who share her state...but, when I imagine her with them that is different than imagining her with me. Not that I consider her absent from her over-my-right-shoulder perch when thinking about her with those who died before her and who waited for her, probably without a lot of patience, knowing her relatives, but with ardent hopes that she would "keep at it" as long as she could. I imagine them saying to her, under cover of dreams and her timeless states when she was alive, "No hurry, dear, yes, we're anxious to be with you, again, but you'll get here, don't rush it." Her family believed in the life long and well lived...even those who lived neither long nor well believed in it.
    The more I think about my post-death considerations of her, the more aware I become of times, when she was alive, that I imagined her with me in much the same way, when I was running errands while she slept. Or, perhaps it was that I was concentratedly with her; staying tuned, knowing (which often happened) that my ulterior State of Alert, focused in her direction, would signal me if she was rousing and I needed to put aside this or that errand for another one of her sleep periods and hurry home.
    So, nothing, and everything, has changed with her death. I cannot be with her in any way that makes sense to me, rather like an unborn child who is of her mother but doesn't know of her mother. It's incredibly frustrating, since I know of death in a way that unborn children likely don't know about birth, but I continue to imagine her with me...with a state of me, that state that floats like a baby in the womb of post-birth life, having no idea what awaits me once I burst through this physical state but knowing that, whatever else awaits, I will, again, be able to experience being in touch with her in some unknown way because we will have, finally, shared the fate of all the living.

Labels: Afterlife Metaphors, Death Analogies, Slate