Category Archives: loss

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There is no blame

This article came up yesterday on Facebook:

http://articles.latimes.com/2013/apr/07/opinion/la-oe-0407-silk-ring-theory-20130407

How never to say the wrong thing….

Well, now, wait. What the hell is your goal? To always comfort people? To always say the right thing? Peaceful and sweet and niceness all the time?

Why?

And isn’t it dishonest?

Isn’t a true friend that loves you the friend who says, hey, this guy you are dating sounds just like the last one, didn’t you say you weren’t going to do that again?

Even if it makes you mad. And you forgive them because damn it, they are RIGHT. You might not forgive them right away. It might take a while. You might shun them and then have to do some crawling and apologizing.

Our society is terribly afraid of emotion. Don’t say the wrong thing. Do not make someone angry, afraid, never ever hurt anyone.

Except…. I am a physician. And I’ve had my mother and then my little sister die of cancer.

With my mother, we did what she wanted. She was home for 6 weeks in hospice. My sister and I cried for two minutes after I told her the surgeon said feeding her iv would kill her faster. We took her home on iv fluid and morphine to starve. She was tough tough tough. We had over thirty visitors from as far away as London.

My partner was her doctor. She did a home visit and she cried. Afterwards my mother said, “I didn’t appreciate that.” So we did not cry.

My sister did one day when I was at work. She started crying after my mother was asleep in the hospital bed. She called me. “I started crying. And everyone left. Everyone left the room. Not one person stayed with me.”

Ouch. Now I can see that once my sister started, everyone was afraid that they would start too. So they all left.

I stopped talking. In the fifth week, family called and I was handed the phone. “How is she? Are you ok?” I just held the phone. I knew I was supposed to say reassuring things, I am ok, she is ok, but I wasn’t and she wasn’t. She was dying and I was broken, weeping inside. So I just held the phone, silent.

My mother died. We were all exhausted. And for the next two years I thought about it…. and one thing that I thought was, I wish she had let me cry. I did what she wanted. We all did. But in the end, I never got to cry with my mother and say how much I was going to miss her.

And maybe she would not have appreciated it. But I am her daughter! Don’t my feelings and wishes matter? There are two of us in this relationship!

Then my sister got breast cancer. At age 41. Stage IIIC. And this time I thought, I will be different.

I refused to do what she wanted. I told her I loved her, I told her when I was mad at her, I told her when she was hurting my feelings and when she was being wonderful. I held BOTH of us close. I held her close but I refused to let her go into the cancer bubble where no one was telling her the truth.

I was dating a man who complained. He told a couple’s counselor: “I want her to do what her sister wants or cut her off.” I explained about my mom. I explained about the cancer bubble, where people stop being honest and only do what they think you want. The counselor defended me.

And I think I did the right thing. For me. AND for my sister. Because our last day together, she thanked me and she even apologized for something… and I got to say “I love you anyhow.” I meant it to my bone marrow. People yelled at me for being grumpy, bitchy, not doing what she said…. but I was my real self with her. And she knew it. And she also knew I love her and stayed real with her.

In the hospital when someone is very sick, families fight. They argue. They get angry. The emotions are running high. The doctors, the nurses, the janitors, the desk people, we are used to it. People yell, they cry, they behave badly. But their hearts are breaking, why would we expect them or order them to behave well? Honestly, sometimes they work off some of the anger part of grief by fighting with each other.

In clinic sometimes I am handling a room: a person with cancer with a spouse and one or more children. Adult children. People handle death in different ways. Siblings fight before and after a death, “You aren’t doing right.” We are all different. The way I grieve is different from the way you grieve. There is no wrong, there is no blame.

My sister wanted to handle her cancer with grace. Grace, it’s complicated. For me, the greatest grace is honesty.

I want to die singing, crying, going to see the people I love that are gone, and honestly. The I Ching sometimes says there is no blame. Think if we could all accept each other’s honest emotions. The most beautiful harmony is sometimes the resolution of dissonance. Goodbye, goodbye, I will miss you so….and there is no blame.

 

For the Daily Prompt: harmonize. I took the photograph of my sister four days before she died.

 

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diy

The other thing that I think of with Sam is tools and do it yourself. He told me once that when he went to college, he wanted to learn everything. He had tons of both practical and esoteric knowledge. I took these pictures at Lake Matinenda… so for those of you who don’t know, what is this? Can you guess?

That summer I helped wire an outlet attached to this and helped float the raft in the correct position, which fine tuned my motor boat driving skills. I had to hold the boat in position in wind and waves, while Sam yelled over his shoulder at me and connected lines and wires and an anchor.

705matinenda&walnut 070

 

 

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play

I took this in 2005. My daughter is going after our friend Sam. She is wearing glow in the dark vampire teeth. He is going along with it and playing along. Three of us are playing because they are my glow in the dark vampire teeth. I have a strong connection with that playful inner child part and so I always have some toy in my dopp kit. Glow in the dark vampire teeth. Temporary tattoos. Glue and glitter for temporary tattoo stencils. A friend once looked in my dopp kit and was very surprised. His only contains toothpaste and toothbrush and razor and practical things.

Blessing on Sam and all the adults who play when the time is right….

dopp kit: http://shop.wingtip.com/why-is-it-called-a-dopp-kit

 

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prayers for children

This is my daughter, five years ago, at Lake Matinenda in Ontario. I cried when I read about the baby thrown from the London fire.

Prayers for the children in the London fire and their parents and grandparents. Prayers for the refugee’s children, that they are not lost and drowned. Prayers for the Congresspeople shot yesterday and their families and friends.

Prayers for all the children in the world.

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Lessons in letting go

It interests me
this letting go

done at the height of vulnerability
or perhaps these are depths

why would a friend walk away
when I cry

when I have lost a financial battle

and in the past
the weekend my sister died

friends come
friends go

do not take it to heart
when they go

I am not lying to myself
that this person loved me

and left when I was in the blue deeps
left me additionally shattered by going

they tell themselves and others
too emotional too dark too dramatic

and I am startled out of my grief
to more grief loss

death is final
but I can talk to the dead

when the living have left
there is a gaping wound

Beloved comforts me
and it is not about me

they tell themselves and others
but they are running from their own

depths, grief, emotion, darkness
they cannot stand by me in darkness

I forgive again
and I am content

alone with the Beloved
in the depths

and there is such beauty here
if my friends were still friends

I could show them the pearls
in these deeps