Tag Archives: grief

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burnt

This is for photrablogger’s Mundane Monday #129.

We were two of the three first responders to a house fire across the street and two doors down two weekends ago. The house was an inferno when we got there. Both the resident and two cats got out. The fire was in the morning. We returned in the evening and walked around. It is terrifying to see what melts, what explodes, how fast the destruction can happen.

And sending love to the injured and lost in Las Vegas and still thinking of all of the hurricane victims.

I wish today were mundane.

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release

For the Photo Challenge: layered. And today’s poem.

 

release

I can’t do it, Beloved

or no
I don’t know how, Beloved

release old grief, I am told

I am to have the intention daily
to release old grief

it sits in my throat
aching lump, knot, old
I don’t know how old
is it from before birth
I haven’t looked up whether antibodies
to tuberculosis
cross the placenta
attacking

Kell kills
that is one of the antibodies
that can kill a fetus

I have the grief
a tiger by the tail

at first I was afraid
that releasing it would lose
some core part of myself
that the me I have built
is the nacre, a pearl
wrapped around a core of grief

but Beloved
I try to listen
I try so hard to listen
to have faith
why pay for help
without attempting to follow
the ideas
unless they are so clearly wrong

conversation
with myself
the past the woman the girl the child the fetus
let the grief go
gently

Beloved
maybe I am not gentle enough
full speed ahead
maybe I need to cradle the grief more
rock it, comfort it, thank it
grief, you protected me so much
from the patterns in the family

Beloved
maybe I need to thank the grief
before I let it go

 

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flooded

I wrote this after the tsunami in Japan. I was thinking about PTSD and triggers and being overwhelmed. And the flooding now in Texas….

Flooded

I cry because
the laundry overflowed
the sewer blocked again
we might have to pull up the floor
and lay it down a third time
I hate the laundromat
water runs across the floor
as fast as the tsunami
crossing the fields
crushing the houses
catching the trucks
in Japan

I cry because
I have to ask for help again
Help comes
but the memories of asking
when it didn’t
help didn’t come
and I was abandoned or humiliated
rise up and overwhelm me
I am flooded
I am helpless
someone help those people
The shaking earth is bad enough
But the ocean rolling inland
Over all
Breaking all
Beams to toothpicks
Those are the memories that rise up
And flood me
I think of the soldiers
and victims of wars and disasters
and PTSD
tsunami
of memory

 

previously published on everything2.com

For the Daily Prompt: memorize. In PTSD, the memories are not what people want to memorize.

music  Randy Newman Louisiana 1927

 

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without earbuds

Here is a mystery.

This picture is for scale. I went for a walk three days ago, without earbuds. I walk without earbuds so I can listen to the birds. And I mimic their calls.  I have a series of photographs of the latest bird who flew closer to see who the mimic was. See if you can guess the bird. She is not visible in this picture.

When I started the walk, a person ran by with earbuds. I feel so sad, seeing that they are cut off from nature even when they are outside. I grieve for the disconnect. And then I have a magical mysterious interaction with a very unexpected bird and joy returns…

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the tide going out

I am thinking about the term “white trash” and choices.

Is “white trash” a discriminatory term? A derogatory term? Is it a type of person or is it a “lifestyle choice”? Or is it a sum of choices?

A friend tells me that it is not discriminatory. Not an insult. A lifestyle. Then the friend says, “Some people would assume that I am white trash because I live in a trailer (manufactured home) and don’t own my own land. I rent.”

Would this person be white trash to you? Does it make a difference if they are male or female? Over 60? Under 30? Single? Have children? Would you feel differently about a single male parent than a single female parent? Would you feel differently if they are widowed instead of divorced?

And at what age do we become responsible?

If I am a child growing up in a household with alcoholism, verbal abuse, parents with mental health issues or grave illness or abandonment, where is the line where I become responsible for myself?

I surveyed my smokers for years, what age did you start? The men mostly said age 9. There was more cultural pressure on women, but the youngest started at 11 or 12. And then the horrific stories, where the parent is offering whiskey to a child under 10. My sister and I wandered around peoples’ houses in the dark when we were under ten. She was three years younger. I was a kid who did not trust adults and was careful. Scared. So we did not get into drugs or alcohol and I hated my father’s unfiltered camels. My parents would not touch illegal drugs, thankfully. I took care of my sister, but we were entirely unsupervised in barns and houses and outside….

I think that our teens are making choices at far younger ages than parents want to admit. I see parents check out when the child is fourteen or even younger. Teens who are nearly living at friends. Teens who already seem lost. And sometimes the parent is wrapped up in a divorce or a parent is sick or dying or a parent is in jail or abandons the family.

What age did you make choices? Did you make good ones? And is white trash hate speech? If you made bad choices, were you able to change later on?

What is the line between free speech and hate speech? And what is the line between love and enabling?

I am still searching….


Over the Rhine: Fool and Let it fall

For the Daily Prompt: rhyme. No, it doesn’t rhyme. But I am thinking of the phrase: no rhyme or reason….

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moon in morning

For the weekly Photo Prompt: Ohh, Shiny!

But, you say, it isn’t shiny.

No, it isn’t. Because even shiny things today are not distracting me from my grief about our country, the lack of ethical morals in our government and twitterpated tweets going out daily.

And here is the moon watching as the sun rises and light and warmth fall over the earth. The mood matches mine: quiet and still thinking of the dark and of love and of hatred and of grief.

Moon in mourning.

 

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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.