Tag Archives: grief

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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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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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I miss your skin

I miss your skin

the planes of shoulder blades
layers of muscle overlying them
the trapezius sweeping up to the base of the skull
and down to the tenth vertebrae
like a wing pointed inwards
on your back
and attached to bones

more and more in clinic
I pull out Netter’s beautiful drawings
and show people the bones
and that the bones are not just floating
in a sea of muscle and organs
every bone is attached to muscles
to tendons to ligaments
together in an elaborate
beautiful
working system
and if one muscle is torn too loose
or tightens to protect itself
and heals scarred calcified
too short
it pulls on the other muscles
and tendons and bones

I miss your skin
your muscle
your tendons
your ligaments
your bones

and all the rest

 

I took the photograph in the boatyard in 2016. Sometimes I dream I have feathers….

 

 

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Dream log: June 20, 2017

I am with my father and my sister. My mother is not around. I am not sure if she’s gone or dead. Dead, I think.

My father has gone off. My sister is 3 or 4 and I am 6 or 7. I am taking care of her. We are at a park and I am trying to get food. It is Thanksgiving. It is not cold, it’s warm. There are large family groups at picnic tables.

My technique is to move in on a family group. We play near them and I listen for adult names. We play close enough that I can hear but not close enough to impinge on the group. When they start to clean up and take things to the cars, I am ready. I slip in and hold my hands out for a bowl. The adult looks at me. “Aunt Norma’s.” I say confidently, because I know which bowl belongs to each adult. And which bowl I want. The adult hands me the bowl. They can’t remember which kid I am, but I know Aunt Norma’s name….I head confidently with the bowl towards the cars and quickly slide it under my loose sweatshirt. I bypass the cars and head around to my sister.

Now the game changes a little. We have a couple bowls so she guards them. I work the next table alone and score a left over turkey.

The problem now is that we cannot carry it all to the car in one trip. I debate about safety. We are living in the car. I tell my sister to stay with the rest of the food and I leave her, carrying the turkey. It’s still light and there are still a lot of people around. She is sitting on the curb, bowls behind her, between two family groups. I will get the turkey to the car and then run back to her. The two of us can carry the rest of the food in one trip. Then we will have food for a while. She should be safe.

I wake up.

I took the photograph within the last month. What and where is it?

 

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screen door

For Thursday doors. This is one of the cabins that my family owns at Lake Matinenda. I don’t think anyone has stayed in it since my sister died in 2012. That summer my daughter and I went and tried to clean some. There were too many things that were out where the mice could get them. We bought plastic containers and crated things up. We took all the beer bottles in the boat to the car and 17 miles to town to recycle them. We took loads of mouse nested clothes and shoes to the dump. We took a guitar that belonged to my sister home to my niece.

We were too raw to make decisions, to take the clothes and wash them and give them to a charity. It is time to do that.

A door into memory and how much my daughter helped, with no complaint.

 

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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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portal cup

If this cup is a portal,Β  where does it take you?

I took the photograph at the Renwick. I asked the guard if I could take photographs. He smiled and said, “We encourage it.” And it’s part of the Smithsonian….free. I could not take my tea inside, and that seems entirely fair….but, free, that is, paid for by the citizens of the United States with our taxes and welcoming people from all over the world to step in and see what is there…..

…..and where does this cup take each of us?

…..and does this fit the Daily Prompt?

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damage

This is not about one patient. It is about many. I have permission from the person I gave a copy to: one of many.

what do you say
to the person
with the terrible childhood
with addiction and chaos
and suicide attempts and hospitals
and that was the parents
that they ran away from

and then numbed themselves
in addiction for years
multidrug and chaos
and now stable
working their 12 steps

and grieving
their lost years
and their behavior
unforgiven, it takes time
to build trust after
thirty years of damage

and grieving
the next generation
following the same
path and feeling helpless
to stop them
and guilt for their
contribution

it is not a matter
of a pill
of a diagnosis

the simplicity of stopping
of getting clean
joy and pride
yes

and then the hard work
of grieving
begins

 

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I took the photograph at the Renwick Gallery.