Signs and Settling

Last April, my mom and I went to an open house that was somewhat uninspiring. I liked the price and location of the house and the street was planted end-to-end with the most spectacular trees but, the house itself was in dire need of updates. Having recently moved from a handyman's special, I had no interest in becoming a servant to another dysfunctional dwelling.

I said something politely non-committal to the seller's agent and headed for the car. As we drove out of the neighborhood, I pointed to another house that sat immediately behind the one we had just toured. It was essentially the same building and floorplan but looked somehow more inviting. “I wish that one were for sale.”

Flash forward to August 26, 2009.

Rather than spend the second anniversary of R's death slumped in front of my computer, filling my cubicle with kleenex and misery, I took a sick day. Aside from our visit to R's playground, we didn't really have a plan for the day--planning and focusing are two things in short supply with the mommicked family anymore. We just loaded C in the car and drove around town...to the neighborhood we hoped to relocate to...down a street planted end-to-end with the most spectacular trees.

I think you know where this is going.

The house. My house. For Sale! Jesus Christ on a Triscuit! Fates, stars, and planets aligned!

So we bought it.

I won't bore you with the details. I think I've already mentioned some of my opinions on real estate dealings and I seem to have misplaced my soap box and my copy of Marx's manifesto (just kidding--I'm not now, nor have I ever been, a communist). The bottom line is that I'm sitting in my very own dining room typing away as Snowmageddon 2010 rages outside.

The dog is a little out of sorts and the couch we ordered is still in parts-unknown but, it seems that we are finally settled.

*****

The spectacular trees are sycamores. In the mid-twentieth century, disease wiped out most American Elm trees and left many urban and suburban areas completely devoid of canopy cover. The sycamore, prized for its heartiness, was a favored choice for replanting. They aren't the most graceful of trees...certainly no match for a lovely, vase-shaped elm. But, they are tough. More importantly they grow fast. They grow so fast, in fact, that their bark peels off in great chunks, unable to stretch to accommodate the rapid expansion of the trunk beneath. They are literally bursting out of their skin with life.

Outside of our new home, the branches of 'my' sycamores stretch to reach each other, forming a cathedral-like peak over the street. Beautiful and resilient, they shelter us and welcome us home.

Day 11 or 741

August 25, 2007

They bustle about the tiny room, moving the wires and tubes that now constitute her major biological functions and I feel my body dissolve into static.

There’s information, hushed tones, more information, paperwork, a surprisingly casual atmosphere.

I kiss her little forehead and give an empty assurance that she’ll be ok. She doesn’t turn toward my voice.

The driver stands-up slowly, stretches and yawns. I can't decide if I'm reassured or terrified.

Now they’re gone and I re-enter my body—jerked back to reality by a hand on my shoulder.

“Two years from now, when she’s running around just like any other toddler, you won’t even remember this,” the nurse says and smiles. I stare at her and try unsuccessfully to transport myself to this magical future.

****

August 25, 2009

I know that I went to work today. I know that I attended one scheduled meeting, two impromptu meetings, and one farewell lunch. I know that I sent out memos, scheduled future meetings, dialed the phone and answered the questions. I know only because my inbox and my calendar tell me so. I can't really remember any of it.

Most things don't even make a dent anymore.

Tomorrow I won't remember what we discussed in the meetings or how I answered the questions or what I agreed to do next. I might remember what I ate at lunch but I probably won't remember what I said.

I'll remember dancing around the living room to showtunes with C.

I'll remember exactly how the sunlight made R's eyelashes sparkle.

I'll remember reading this and thinking, “Maybe that's my problem.”

Disclaimer

I'm going to add this blog to the Glow in the Woods blogroll this week to commemorate C and R's second birthday. This means that someone else (other than me and my ever-supportive spouse) might actually read it...yikes!

A few notes for anyone who may be reading--

1) I'm a grammar disaster. I probably shouldn't even use the word 'grammar' to modify 'disaster' but there you have it. I fling commas and fragments around like confetti and can't figure out the difference between a dependent and independent clause. My inner thoughts and feelings spilled out in electronic form for all to see...no problem. My poor grasp of the English language--shameful. (yes, it is my native tongue)

2) It's been almost two years since R died. My condition, therefore, is downgraded from distraught madwoman to shower-crier. If I had attempted to write about any of the events surrounding C and R's birth in real-time it would have been a train-wreck--piles upon piles of rage and contempt--not helpful for anyone. I'm amazed by folks who have the presence of mind to write thoughtfully as the flames are licking at their heels--amazed.

3) I'm not really like Ms. Mommicked in my everyday life. I come here to vent the less-than-happy thoughts rolling around in my head. Remarkably I've gotten to a place where I think about things other than R's death and C's safety/welfare/mortality during the course of the day. Yesterday I injured my foot while dancing to this. Someday I may progress enough that I'll remember to warm up first.

So, what's a lousy writer with waning grief issues doing writing a blog?

We have to support each other.

I may not be the most eloquent writer. You may not agree with my opinions. At some point I'll run out of things to say and dust bunnies will collect in my corner of the internets. I may, however, have traveled the same path that you're on right now.

You're not alone--even if you're stuck with a blowhard who can't use a semi-colon properly and lets her precious, surviving child watch frenetic TV programs.

You're not alone.

Reality, Departures from

Every July, like all good Philadelphians, my family members gather for a week long vacation in Ocean City, New Jersey. We’ve been vacationing “down the shore” for almost a century and my family’s history, both good and bad, is tied up in the place.

My mother still tells stories about the summer she spent in Ocean City between her junior and senior years of college. I celebrated both my first and thirty-first birthdays (and many in between) in rented apartments blocks from the boardwalk. My brother and I played on the beach together as children and got tattoos in a neighboring town as young adults. After his first chemo treatment my Dad scored 7 holes-in-one at Tee Time mini-golf.

I had my first emergency room visit at Shore Memorial Hospital. After the final surgery to scrape all of the cancer cells from his skin, Dad shuffled along the boardwalk and contemplated his foreshortened future. When bedrest precluded my visit two years ago my Mom made the trip for me and returned with a tub of caramel corn to hold back the mounting dread in my hospital room.

When R got sick I chased death away with a vision of her on the beach, chubby and sand-covered—a happy, healthy one-year-old.

In Ocean City, reality is just a vague notion. Old-fashioned candy stores occupy nineteenth century buildings. The boardwalk restores the spring to aging knees during a morning jog. Laughing children fly through the air on ancient carnival rides. Everything is enveloped in the heavenly aroma of fried delicacies and salt air and there is no such thing as a “bikini-body”. It’s paradise…New Jersey-style.

This year marked C’s first visit as a fully-functioning human and I was excited for her initiation into the wonders of the shore. On our first morning I anxiously prepared her for the beach—thick coat of SPF 60+, wide-brimmed hat, long-sleeved bathing suit, toys, and all of the requisite equipment. We loaded up the wagon and trekked across the burning sand to a perfect spot near the lifeguard stand. My brother set up the chairs and umbrellas while my mother, sister-in-law, and I wrangled the kids. By the time we were ready to hit the water I was almost as anxious as C and the Dynamic Duo.

Then I turned around and saw them. Chubby, sand-covered twin boys frolicking on a blanket with their beaming grandfather.

The sight of twin toddlers feels more like an exceptionally painful stubbed toe these days than a shotgun blast to the chest. Happy grandfathers barely register anymore. Still, I felt a jolt of envy and anger.

My mind leapt into action, fighting to hold on to my mellow vacation mentality. Within moments the poor parents of these beautiful boys had faced numerous miscarriages prior to the miraculous arrival of their babies. Grandpa became a great uncle, standing in for a father tragically killed in Vietnam and Grandma a victim of early onset Alzheimer’s.

For me this is the most miserable side effect of loss—feeling bad feels good. Some drown their sorrows with alcohol or turn to drugs for relief, I self-medicate with sad stories. Normally the universe (or at least the internet) is happy to oblige with real tragedy. Occasionally I have to cook something up from scratch to get my fix.

Is this behavior normal? Probably. I doubt my little brain has come up with some previously unknown way to grieve. Is it healthy? Probably not but it helps me function. (By the way, the boys escaped unscathed. I haven’t sunk so low that I have to construct calamities for children to float my decrepit ship of hope)

Anxious to get some distance from the poor family being decimated by my overactive imagination I walked C down to the water. I helped her jump over the waves--a time-honored family tradition. We dug in the sand and I showed her how to make a drippy sand castle--just like my Dad taught me so many years before. Gradually my anxiety drifted away, lifted on a warm current of fabricated sympathy and nostalgia and carried out across the water by C’s screams of delight.

Ocean City is the perfect place to escape reality. Developers build high-rise condos on shifting sands. Entire families bathe nearly naked in UV radiation. Diesel-powered carnival rides spew fumes into crowds of children with developing lungs. People chow down on artery clogging funnel-cake and frozen custard for dinner.

But look at them smiling.

Geology

For several years one of our best friends, S, has been inviting us to join her family on their annual vacation. We’ve declined the invite in years past for various (obvious) reasons. This year, despite many scheduling conflicts, we decided to go ahead and join them for a week at S’s grandmother’s house in the Casco Bay region of Maine.

I spent the drive from PA in a mild state of panic over spending an entire week in the company of S, her family and the other, unknown guests.

T and I first met S when we bought the house we lived in ‘before.’ She and her husband, K, had purchased the house across the street a few months prior and were eager to meet the new neighbors. Soon after that first introduction we were pulled into their orbit and joined an assortment of friends and family members that attended S’s elaborate dinner parties and various holiday celebrations. S’s easy sociability and complete lack of self-consciousness was the perfect antidote to my surly, homebody ways. As neighbors we shared countless meals, discussed numerous home renovation projects, debated issues, lamented the sorry state of our crumbling inner-ring suburb neighborhood, and generally shared our lives. They kept an eye on our house when my father’s death required an extended stay in PA. They were among the first people to know we were having twins and then, later, among the first to know that we had lost R.

We started to drift apart somewhat ‘after’. First S stayed away because she was afraid that her daughter might pass a communicable disease to C. Then we decided to move back to my hometown when C was just under a year old. We’ve stayed in touch via email, facebook, and occasional visits but it’s been a while since things have felt easy and comfortable. The fact that they’ve been more fortunate with their childbearing has played no small part in this distancing. They’ve had two perfectly planned pregnancies and two successful homebirths and are now the proud parents of two healthy girls--just like we would have been if things had gone differently. Although they have been nothing but caring and supportive over the past two years envy is poison to friendship.

Upon arriving in Maine my anxiety dissipated somewhat, eclipsed by our new surroundings. The weathered cottage sat atop a rocky hillside overlooking the ocean-- roughly a century old and wearing its age like an eccentric dowager. The stair treads worn with use, the plaster cracked by a settling foundation, and the mismatched dishes chipped by generations of vacationers, yet it all came together somehow in a quirkily elegant way. The view over the water brought to mind a piece of moth-eaten lace—water dotted with land fragmented by seismic activity, the scrape of ancient glaciers, and the harshness of wind and water. The enthusiastic welcome from S and the other guests and an offer of ice cream sundaes mitigated the stress of an eight-hour car trip. We settled in for a relaxing evening and an excellent night’s sleep.

On the first morning of our visit I went for a walk on a path running between the cottage and the water. The rocks, which had looked sturdy and uniform from the house, gave a completely different impression from this closer vantage point. Huge chunks had been flipped end over end and broken into pieces by the awesome forces at work in the Earth’s crust. Striations created by sedimentation marked the rocks as siblings but the lines met at crazy, vertigo-inducing angles, a testament to the power of tectonic collisions. Far below, waves crashed against the rocks continuing the tortured process of transformation. Venturing even closer I could see yet another landscape among the tumbled boulders. Water had collected in the spaces between and within these tiny pools, sheltered from the surf by the upended rocks, plants and animals had made their homes—a nursery formed by violence, balance brought about through chaos.

During our week together, watching C run around the yard with S and K’s older daughter and play peek-a-boo with their baby, I started to feel a resurgence of comfort and ease. Though our friendship may lack the bright shine of the days when we were full of optimism about the future and plans for our unborn children it’s taken on the patina of something old and valuable. Though our peaceful lives were set awry by loss and tragedy they will eventually return to a state of rest. The jutting edges of disaster and grief will be worn smooth by the caress of friendship. The dips and gullies that have opened between us will nurture a new kind of understanding. A relationship begun in shared experience will grow richer through difference. And I will learn to make the most of what is rather than long for what could have been.

Congratulences?

When I was younger and considerably more carefree my friends and I would make up words that we felt were missing from the English language. These creations corresponded to the challenges and trivialities of our days and then found their way into our everyday use.

Several of them were developed at the outdoor education center where I worked immediately following college and are fittingly British schoolboy humor-ish. Spluff – when the tide is rising and comes to just-barely crotch level. Lunx – time between two events that is empty but too short to be filled with anything other than ass-sitting. Congweff – doing something (ahem) 4 times in a 24 hour period. I met my husband around this time and he brought a word of his own to the conversation—tamardiggan – finishing a long and arduous task, normally shouted triumphantly.

These were the words of my youth--the language that was needed to capture and codify our exuberance.

Since R died I’ve felt the need to create more new words, maybe even a whole language, to capture the new reality.

Out here in the grieving parent blogosphere the wordsmiths are hard at work, twisting our surprisingly optimistic modern English to fit these new purposes (since when does awesome only apply to things that are overwhelmingly good?) A lot of work has been done on new adjectives to harness knowing rage – craptastic, suckitude, fucktacular. I use all of them frequently but haven’t been able to make any of my own contributions. Compared to most of the folks writing on the subject of loss and misery I’m quite the hack but, I don’t think that’s entirely the problem. Our situation is fairly unique, even in these circles--thus, the lack of words to describe it.

What do you say to someone simultaneously having the most amazing and most horrid day of their life?

What is the name for a twinless twin?

What is the word for missing someone whom you never really met?

The New World

Somewhere in my mind I've decided that I have until C's 2nd birthday to finish constructing my new world. If I'm being generous with myself I'll add in the 12 extra days and make it the 2nd anniversary of R's death. The point is, however, that grief will likely be my constant companion for the rest of my life and I should figure out how to wear it comfortably.

I'm starting to think that the only way to cope with the memories I carry and revisit daily is to deposit them somewhere outside of myself. Chances are this blog will basically be an echo-chamber for my private musings but there's always the chance that someone will stop by--maybe someone who's just lost a parent or a child and needs to know that they aren't alone.

Grieving, remembering, moving on...it all takes a tremendous amount of energy. The question is do you just let the heat build up inside until it's unbearable or do you direct the force outward and put it to work?