You can tell the academic in me is on home turf when I start talking about structure and function, about la lengue and la parole, about emic and etic. ( Note: This is a most semiotic post.)
I have been writing posts non-stop this month. These past week has seen a lull in my posting. So I failed at Na Blo Posting Mo. There needs to be Na Blo Wri Mo. Writing is distinct from posting. The thing versus its label. Maps and territory. Process and praxis. I have written some personally significant pieces over the last couple of weeks, but they require rumination and reworking before posting them or works derived from them. Some things are just too raw to share. They are elemental pieces. These need to be crafted into examples of the thing rather than the being the actual thing. But it has to be real. A real example. I think I am finding my way into being able to write about my life without bleeding ink all over the page. I think personal writing is about allowing others to connect with enough of your experience that they can emote their own stuff all over your stuff without having to own it completely. That, too, is about the thing, versus of the set that contains all the possible permutations of those things, versus an example of one of those items in the set that is not the raw, essential thing itself.
At one point I also had some concern about creating ill-will, or embarrassment, within my family should my personal writings be discovered by them. I do not have to worry about that any longer. My natal family is no more. All but two of us are gone and the other person besides me cannot assimilate new information. I attended the funeral that no one thinks about attending until the experience unfolds. The the body in the casket had belonged to the last person I knew well, who knew me well, as child. The solitary, isolated childhood, being the youngest of five with a huge space of 9 years between four and five, and being born to parents in their forties, as well as being in a family with a genetic predisposition to cancer that was apparently triggered by many of the agro-chemicals that were used on the farm before awareness of the carcinogenic nature of them eventually became known; these all contributed to my experience of what is not talked about prior to the event. A cultural taboo.
My eldest brother who lives does so with an impaired memory. Traditional old folks senility at age 75. He knows who I am, and I cherish that recognition, but his being the eldest of the five kids with me being the youngest means the 18 years between us created a family relationship more akin to that of a niece with her uncle than a little sister and brother.
My parents and all the siblings I remember living in our home when I was small are gone. I knew this feeling a few years ago when severe dementia took hold of the youngest of my brothers. Great care at the VA hospital, next to the military cemetery where his body now lies, allowed my brother to recover a bit and regain some of his mental functioning. But that initial experience of knowing that all the shared memories of youthful home and family were hit me hard back then. I grieved. But then there was a reprieve, and some of my brother returned. So when he actually passed away this month, I had already had time to accept his inevitable outcome. But I had not realized how alone I would feel, how strange it would be when I was only person from my natal family left to attend a memorial service for another member.
Sometimes I feel like I am twenty years older than my peers. Being sandwiched between generations was years and years ago for me. Now I am watching my sibling pass on. A nephew has already passed on. Most of my friends are not in this stage of life. Many still have vital active parents. I think this is exacerbated by my husband not understanding the impact of this phase on me. He was an only child. His father passed away when he was 16. His mom died when he was 30. He cannot quite grasp this family connection thing. Even dysfunctional families are family. Looking back on what should be with you is just weird. The anthropologist in me would say that I am emerging from a liminal phase.
I think I am coming to terms with this new state of being. I have written a great deal about it. I am just starting to post about it. I may pre-date some posts so they are in a sequence that makes sense.
And that is okay. My writing friends will understand if I cannot complete this Nablopomo. There will be other opportunities.
Some Thoughts on Death and Mourning
My brother passed away last weekend. Roger left us forever at five minutes after midnight on Sunday November 9th, 2014. I was on my way to the All Soul’s Procession, a wonderful contemporary community sharing of celebration of people’s lives and supportive public sharing of grief when I got the news via text on Sunday night.
Needless to say perhaps, I am thinking a lot about death, death rituals, death culture, and my personal views of death.
Death is the most personal experience there is. Birth is shared, but death meets us alone.
NDE
I should say that I have not been all that concerned about what will happen to me after death since December of 1977. I was in college, my best friend from High School, Kim Marie Sanders, was in a horrific car crash on November 6th, 1977, seven days after her 21st birthday. Her brain stem was crushed. A few weeks later I was at home, a solid but worn, two story house, a rental on Greenbush Avenue in Lafayette, Indiana where I lived in Junior year of college when I had what I have to describe as a classic NDE experience.
As I walked into a bedroom I passed out, I guess. But it was different, quite distinct, from when I usually blacked out which I had some experience with as I had very low blood pressure back then. Normally, when I would pass out I would just have my vision narrow in as in the iris of a camera, as a circle, graying out.
But this time I did not see that, I saw a tunnel of light. As I began to travel in the tunnel or beam of light I felt as though my energy or essence was draining from my body through the back base of my skull. Then there was bright golden white light. At the end of the tunnel I knew there was just LOVE, complete accepting love. I did not see individuals although I felt like there was someone there. I did not consciously get to the end of the tunnel but I remember thinking, “Wow, this was death and it was not bad at all.”
I think I woke up about an hour later. I knew my friend had changed, but I wasn’t in touch with her family until a few weeks later. It was then that I found out that she had come out of the coma she had been in since the wreck on the same afternoon I had the encounter with the light. She was in the coma until mid-December, Friday December 16th I think. She died on Friday, January 13th, 1978.
I had a very difficult time with her death. I grieved for years. But I was not afraid. I have never been able to reconcile this disparity except that I can accept my own death, but not that of another person.
I think it is that I am selfish. I just do not want to be alone without my friends and family.
Something Amiss
I’ve always thought something was amiss with what people told me about death and how they really felt about it. I was three years and two months old when my mother came in to me in the morning, crying and obviously very upset. She said, “Grandma died during the night.” My analytical self was already present within me apparently as I distinctly remember being confused that I had been told that when you die, you will be with Jesus. From everything I had been told as a toddler, this Jesus guy was a really good guy and Heaven, with Jesus, was a good place. So what was up? Grandma was with Jesus. That was a good thing. Why was Mom crying? Incongruity. Someone was not telling the truth.
Selfish Loss
I think what I experience as grief, and thus mourning rituals, is an incredibly selfish indulgence. How does our grief add up to anything but our experience of loss. It really has very little to do with the person who died. It is all about the pain we the living experience. Everything we do, for the dead, is really for ourselves. I think I learned this from my dad. I think I have finally figured out that Dad viewed cemeteries as parks where you talk about the past, teach kinship, consider the impacts of life and living in various ways. This from a man who said that when he died we should just, “toss him over the fence to the hogs.” Historical markers were okay but the obsession with body preservation was over the top in his view.
Shift in Perspective
These are some of the things I’m thinking about today. I couldn’t wait any longer to grieve. I had to take today off to just feel, think, ponder, and cry. Normally I would tell stories of the person recently deceased with others who loved or knew him, but I’m 2000 miles away and the only one left in my generation of close family. My eldest brother Jim is 75 and has memory problems. So I’m having my own private remembrance.
Perhaps I am just being selfish, but I have a lot of information I need to share. I’ve decided that information exchange is the most important ritual. If I have information that might help someone with a question or concern or just to create an understanding, I need to get it out there. I have several years until I am 60, but much information would be lost if I died before I got it into the cultural information collective. These are the things that matter to me. Distilling lives into stories. I have much work to do.
The Books of Our Mothers' Mothers
One of the best things about living in the future, as I refer to the 21st Century, is access to information that has come before. And I in my feminist way, of course, am referring to the bits and pieces of daily life that get lost along the way to posterity, notoriety, and history… the daily stuff of the lives of families, women and children.
I love being able to flip through the pages of a catalog or a Ladies Publication from 100 to 150 years ago. These acts give me a sense of connectedness to the culture of my foremothers. My maternal grandmother was born in 1883. She began having children in 1910 with the birth of my Uncle Carl. The last of those children, my Aunt Alice, passed away early in September of the year at the age of 92.
How on Earth can I convey the sense of connectedness and continuity of family to my 4-year-old grand daughters when the generations in my part of the family tend toward the long side?
I can read to them from children’s literature of the time when my mother was being read to by her mother, 100 years ago. My mother was born in 1914.
This morning I surfed on over to archive.org and found A Book of Cheerful Cats. I downloaded a PDF of this delightfully illustrated tome to read to the twins when they visit. I will also print out copies to color, cut, glue, glitter and with which to generally have fun.
Somehow I find the search for images from other times and childhoods to be relaxing and rewarding. When I was little I would look through my mother’s tattered memorabilia from her childhood. I was the fifth kid of my mom’s who pawed through her stuff, and it was worse for the wear. While the tactile experience is gone, the rich content of books from those times, minus the allergy inducing dust and mildew, is out there waiting for new generations of family and rainy or snowy afternoons.
Black Friday Re-examined
There is a divide in the United States that will play out three Fridays from today, as it does every year, that typifies the chasm between Black Friday and Buy Nothing Day.
Black versus Buy Nothing may not be the first divisive pairing you think of when you think of opposing groups in the U.S.
You probably think of is one of the following:
- Republicans versus Democrats
- 1% vs. 99% dichotomy
- Liberals versus Conservatives
- “Real” Americans versus Immigrants/people of color/and-or countless “others”
- Religious Fundamentalists versus Members of Religions of Tolerance
But the real divide which I and many, many others actively work toward bridging is much more difficult to describe and is somewhere between the two extremes. Confusion, ignorance and straw men have eroded what used to be an easily hopped over trickle of a stream of difference into a vast canyon with a raging stream of misunderstanding and distrust.
I still have hope that we the people can build a more perfect union. This time of year is a time when we can clearly see the interplay of the economy in so many of the supposed issues that divide us. I am not saying that issues are not real causes of division, but issues are not the root of the problem. Money is the root of the problem.
Last year, during the season of giving, love, and celebration the Pope called for recognition that:
The great danger in today’s world, pervaded as it is by consumerism, is the desolation and anguish born of a complacent yet covetous heart, the feverish pursuit of frivolous pleasures, and a blunted conscience. Whenever our interior life becomes caught up in its own interests and concerns, there is no longer room for others, no place for the poor. God’s voice is no longer heard, the quiet joy of his love is no longer felt, and the desire to do good fades. This is a very real danger for believers too. Many fall prey to it, and end up resentful, angry and listless. That is no way to live a dignified and fulfilled life; it is not God’s will for us, nor is it the life in the Spirit which has its source in the heart of the risen Christ.
— APOSTOLIC EXHORTATION EVANGELII GAUDIUM OF THE HOLY FATHER FRANCIS
I am not a Catholic. In fact I describe myself as a pre-Nicean Goddess Christian. I am not writing to discuss religion, don’t worry. For someone who sees a reflection of the feminine divine, as well as the male, and the asexual, when I look at the divine, and as someone who thinks that the religions that no longer have names because Christianity over-wrote those beliefs through incorporation of “Pagan” feast days and rituals when it conquered new lands and peoples on the journey Christendom made with its its politically and economically expansionist brothers of Rome and Spain… do not we all see brothers and sisters when we look out our windows? Don’t we remember we all want the same thing exemplified by what our culture calls The Golden Rule?
I am amazed that I am writing this because, although I believe in the spiritual connection of all beings in the universe and in the oneness and truth of love, I never thought I would be moved to tears by reading something from this amazing Papa Francis.
Money is the root of all evil. Greed is the personification of this truth.
I know we won’t change Consumerist Christmas, fueled by capitalism and Kochs and junky plastic kitsch for kids, all at once, but if we acknowledge and disengage from greed a bit this season, say by buying whatever you absolutely have to purchase in the next few weeks, or your kids will go absolutely freaking mad, from local, small businesses where you just might run into a friend or neighbor, put money into your local economy that tends to recycle itself several times to your benefit and others before it leaves your community, and which probably will be better made or better for you than some mass merchandised thing. If you have to buy something that is mass-produced try to purchase it from a local vendor or at least a local franchise; you may not find it for the lowest possible price, but you can probably find it for a fair price, and you will be putting a few cents or dollars into a positive economy and environment for your grandchild’s children. And that lessens long-term costs.
What if we banded together as intelligent women and said,on the day after Thanksgiving, “You know what? I’m going to stay home. Want to bake some cookies with me? Want to play a board game? ” Or even, “I’m not shopping for things I don’t need and would not want to receive. I’m using today to think very carefully about what I would like to give to each person I care about as a symbol of love, affection, or friendship? Then I am going to make it, write it, or find a local vendor for it. Baked goods, hand written greetings, and nice thoughtful presents.
So that is what I am doing this year? Who is with me?
This is a rewritten version of something I wrote last year. I feel even more committed to it now!
On What Would Have Been 100 Years
Today is my mother’s 100th birthday. She is no longer living, but still, today is her birthday. I think of the last time she and I had cake. It was on my 50th birthday, just a bit over one month before she died. It was chocolate. I bought it for myself. I was alone in Indiana with her. One friend remembered what day it was — and sent me a bouquet of irises. No one in my family remembered. No one called and there were no cards or gifts. Mom was deteriorating and couldn’t really converse. But she loved the cake.
I can all too easily slip into a “poor me” mentality when I think of that time. I learned that behavior from Mom. There was a sad and angry little girl inside my mother. Her wrath, when loosed on the world, was in turns both uncaring and viciously spiteful. Not everyone saw this side of her. Few people spent as much time with her as I did.
I still am hesitant to put down the really mean things I saw come from her. Poison pen letters. Hurtful, truly nasty words intended to cut an innocent to pieces. Aloof back-turning when someone figuratively was standing on a high-rise ledge outside her window inconvenienced her or impinged on her view of an imaginary landscape. I cannot write a survivor’s tale about what I call the Family Münchausen without speaking about these aspects of her as she parented me.
There is a reluctance to sully her reputation, though most of the people she knew as peers or friends are gone from this world. I no longer have a hard time saying true things about her, although I lived the first 40 years of my life unable to say such truths. But now there is a part of me that knows that living a life that was so filled with sadness and anger must have been a horrible experience for her, and that part of me hurts for her.
Before my therapist retired last year, she told me that she thought I needed to get really angry at my mother. My therapist, Ann, helped me with rebuilding, with integration of many shattered parts of myself, and helped me while I was learning to nurture myself. She never saw me vent the anger. But it came out. I remember three times when rage filled me. The first was when I confronted Mom about the Münchausen by Proxy behaviors though I had not come to call them that. She was very angry that I could “do such a thing.” The second time I was depressed and angry and I remember choking and screaming through tears to my husband that my mother intended to outlive everyone she knew or had given birth to so that she would have the last word. Then there was the time I was beyond words, simply raging, and I picked up a very sturdy kitchen chair and repeatedly pounded it against the floor until a leg broke in two and went flying across the room.
Now I just feel sad that her inability to cope with aspects of her life ruined much of her life and the lives of quite a few other people. I’m sad that she never experienced happiness for more than a fleeting moment of time. I saw other aspects of her, and those are what I will choose to remember the rest of the day. Baking with her, picking wild strawberries, and her helping me rescue a little tree that had sprouted but never could have grown to maturity at the shaded base of another tree in the woods across from our house.
Our relationship improved the last 10 years of her life, though it hit rock bottom just before that time. I wanted to heal, so I did, and this helped her. I am glad I was able to make peace within myself and with her. Because of that I can now say with sincerity, “I miss you Mom. I love you and miss you. Happy 100th.”
Conversations with a Ghost
Now before you go all logos or pathos on me, I have not been seeing any wraiths or spirits, at least not more than I usually do. Where I live, in Tucson, this month is a lead up to the All Souls Procession. This month, in my life, is a month when I think a lot about those who have left the world of the living, because of the many birthdays I would be celebrating with those people whose absence truly does create a void in my life.
I think my dad is the person in my close family with whom I most miss conversation, discussion, and story-telling. I didn’t really get to have all that many conversations with my dad when I was an adult. He was gone before I had a child and before I realized in mid-life that he and I were very much alike. A perfect impossible day would be spent with him under a split trunk box elder tree looking over the farm fields I knew as a youth . There would be lemonade and angel food cake. History, philosophy, and religion would be discussed in depth. Paradox and inconsistency would be noted. Eyes would twinkle. Family history and folklore would be dissected. Possible revisions would be made. It would be grand.
But, as I cannot live that impossibility, other than in pleasant thoughts, I have been listening to The Evolution of God, by Robert Wright, and The 4 Percent Universe: Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and the Race to Discover the Rest of Reality by Richard Panek.
So you see, I am not really having conversations with a ghost. I am listening to and having thoughts about books that recreate, for me, the mind space that I’d like to think Dad and I would be sharing if we could talk. A ghost, a shade, a shadow of him is with me as I do this. It is comforting.
With so much of the universe missing, is it any wonder that we little humans try to construct meaning from the voids we note in our lives?