Category Archives: grief

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7 Sins and friends

My blogging from A to Z this year is titled 7 sins and friends….. sins? I am thinking about emotions and how many our culture says are bad or that we should not feel. Men are encouraged to be strong and silent and women are encouraged to be nice. “Feel good all the time!” says our culture. But we can’t, won’t, don’t.

People say, “Try not to feel that way.” Now when someone says that to me, I think, that is a feeling that they are not comfortable with, but I am comfortable with it, enough to express it. We label feelings with value judgements. Happy is a good feeling, anger is terrible, but really it is all neurological information. It is part of our system for exploring the world, just as touch and taste and sight and hearing help us explore the world. Imagine if we could not feel fear: a toddler walking off a cliff because they have no idea to be afraid. And without pain, we would not pull our finger back from being burned. If we can’t grieve, we can’t truly love.

I sat down yesterday and made a list of emotions and feelings, from A to Z, and I have more than one for each. I will only choose one for each letter, at least that is the current plan, but think of the richness and complexity of human feeling. Why don’t we celebrate it instead of excoriating it? And doesn’t every human have the full spectrum of feelings? We may not be comfortable with a feeling or have a name for it, but I think we all have all of them.

The photo is from Halloween, 2005, dressed up for church.

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Costume

My sister loved to dress up in costume. She died four years ago next Tuesday and her birth day is tomorrow.

The photograph is me and her daughter, in costume, at Lake Matinenda in Ontario, Canada, in 2009. I brought a rather demented flower fairy costume. The gloves are my mother’s: crocheted, uncomfortable, romantic and impractical. The whole outfit was entirely silly and impractical for the woods. My sister would bring long ball gowns up to the woods. We played dress up at my grandmothers with our cousins, in my mother’s 1950s prom dresses, in the middle 1970s. We thought her dresses were ridiculous. So were ours, of course.

I am not sure exactly what my niece is dressed as: a boy, I think, and maybe she was being a rapper.

At any rate, it is fun to dress in costume…. miss you, sisty.

 

 

 

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Dream: loving and loved

I read this article yesterday: The rise of American authoritarianism.

I ask for a dream about loving and being loved before going to sleep.

I dream of a prison. I am there as a consultant. There is a woman there, younger than me and beautiful, and the men want to know how to get her out of the prison. It has thick walls and iron bars and security exits and alarms. It is clean, modern, bare, and smells worse than a hospital. But it is the men who run the prison and work in it who want to know how to get her out. How to rehabilitate her. She does not listen to or obey their instructions.

They will not let me talk to the woman or go in the cell with her. They hand me a tablet, where I can see her live. As soon as I have the tablet, I know that she is not trapped in the prison. I turn the tablet around slowly, so the image is upside down. Light appears in the center of the tablet. She can leave any time she wants and she frequently is gone. She walks into the light. The connection is with her all the time. I am so glad that she can walk into the light.

I do not tell the men. They built the prison. They are in the prison, though they think that they are keeping her there. The prison is built of what they think should happen, their authority, their rules.

I am sorry for the men, but they would not believe me even if I told them. I have tried many times.

They don’t see that they are the ones who are in prison.

I give the tablet back.

I wake up.

I took the picture in the sunrise mist in 2006, Lake Matinenda, Ontario, Canada.

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Sink

Sink

I tried for a long time but now I am back in the water. My tail is back. I am so happy with it that for 20 minutes I just swim and dive and play with my own tail, chasing it. I am ready, strong again. I call my people and the waves.

I tried awfully hard on land. I hid the knife that my sisters bought. He married the other one and kept me in the little building in the garden. Everyone knew including her, it was normal for them. She didn’t enjoy his tidal pull, his pounding, the waves. It gave me so much joy. I sang without my tongue. My tongue was not cut out, that is a myth, one of those stories. It’s just that that is how they like the women: voiceless. Silent. Obedient. Admiring. Wounded: oh, he would kiss the poor feet, mangled jangled feet that I am forced to wear on land.

All for love. But: she had children. Three. And I watched as he treated the males as princes and ignored the girl. Mere princess, valueless, to be trained for a strategic wedding. Added value for the land, a pawn in training. She found me. And I pitied her and raised her and told her tales of my home, where people are people, not a gender. Not raised as a separate species.

She disobeyed and her father had her beaten, only where it would not show, and locked up. Bread and water. Cold and cruelty. And suddenly my love was slain. It was as if I was awakened and looked about and saw his cruelty to women and to his wife and his daughter and to me. I was a toy, an amusement, loved only if I kept silent and was crippled by my feet.

I rose and called the waves. The land flooded and the castle was broken and I reached the little princess in time to change her, to give her a tail too.

She is so surprised: in the water. She keeps trying to go up and breathe air and it chokes her. She swims in wild panicky circles, choking on the air, as I drag her out from the castle.

Now we are in the sea and the waters recede, full of broken bodies. Male bodies. I changed every woman I could find and the children if they were young enough and the girls. I called my family, my people. They came and each grabbed one, to drag towards the sea. The ex-humans fight and cough and wail and cry, but we drag them.

And now we sink, each holding one. We sink into the depths. They hold their breath, fighting, but we are so used to our tails and are stronger. And one by one they let the air go and breathe: and breathe the ocean. Breathe. We are entering the dark and the phosphorescent fishes come to see.

Soon we will be home. Just a little further into the ink black: sink.

 

I took the photograph in 2012 at the Pacific Northwest Synchronized Swimming Regionals. This is a young team routine with eight swimmers. These two are each lifted by three teammates, using only swimming, never touching bottom……

 

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Songs to raise girls: My name is Samuel Hall

The last time I visit my sister in hospice, my cousin is sitting by the bed when I arrive.

My sister looks terrible and like she is suffering. She is in renal failure and her eyes are slitted against the light. She is in a hospital bed and barely eating. It takes me three days to figure out how to make her comfortable.

But when I first arrive, I say hello and hug her. She laughs and it is dark.

She doesn’t want to talk. “Shall I sing to you?” I ask.

She nods.

I start singing a lullaby: I gave my love a cherry.

She shakes her head: no.

I study her. “How about Samuel Hall?”

She smiles and nods.

“My name is Samuel Hall,
Samuel Hall, Samuel Hall.
My name is Samuel Hall
And I hate you one and all
you’re a bunch of buggers all
damn your eyes, damn your eyes
you’re a bunch of buggers all
damn your eyes.”

Another song to raise girls. We adored it, because it is unrepentant, horrible and had swears.

I killed a man tis said
and I left him there for dead
with a bullet in his head
damn his eyes

My cousin’s eyes widen. “I haven’t thought of that song in years.” he says. He starts singing along, remembering.

They took me to the quod
They left me there by God
With a ball and chain and rod
Damn their eyes

My cousin has two children. I guess he is not raising them with the dark songs we were raised with….

The preacher he did come
And he looked so goddamn glum
As he talked of Kingdom Come
Damn his eyes

My sister is smiling, eyes slit against the light, angry.

The sheriff he came too
With his boys all dressed in blue
They’re a bunch of buggers too
Damn their eyes

To the gallows I must go
With my friends all down below
Saying “Sam, I told you so.”
Damn their eyes

I see Nellie in the crowd
I am shouting right out loud
I shout “Nellie, ain’t you proud!
Damn your eyes!”

“Let this be my parting Nell
Hope to see you all in Hell
Hope to Hell you sizzle well
Damn your eyes!”

And my sister laughs and then she sleeps for a while, angry, angry at death.

My name is Samuel Small: http://www.wtv-zone.com/phyrst/audio/nfld/02/sam.htm
My name is Samuel Hall: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSpk1t4WYNY
My name is Samuel Hall: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxiPCw21T-w
and Johnny Cash: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ss_KyPfM1es

This is not the suffering photo. I can’t bear to post that….

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Crossing

This is the Staircase hike on Monday. It was not slick enough to make me turn back, but if the water had been higher or there had not been a railing, I would have turned back. I thought about rising water on that hike.

And the same day, I received a county email that an 18 year old slipped crossing a creek and was swept away.

Love to his friends and family and I am so sorry.