No False Strength

21 Aug 2013 20 Comments

by Denise in Death, Faith, Motherhood Tags: , , , , , , ,

My grief counselor, John*, is a friend of Ram Dass. In one of my first sessions he read a letter to me that Ram Dass had written to a couple whose child died. A short time after that, my friend Melanie came across that same letter and emailed it to me. I thought it worth sharing with you all.

People who’ve lost loved ones often say how others think grief has a timeline, how they’ve been told it’s time they “move on.” Or whatever words were used to say, “enough.” That just tells you how scared and unprepared whoever’s saying that is to deal with loss. Phil never said anything like that to me, but he had a hard time talking to me about Philip. His way was to push forward, and he knew my grief weighed more than his resolve. I think it’s that dynamic that makes people say things like that; they want to get on, they want to get comfortable.

Of course, they could just be callous assholes. But on the whole, I bet not.

Anyway, that’s not been my experience. Once someone who couldn’t have known any better said to my daughter – a mere eight months after Philip’s death – that she couldn’t bring her brother into everything. Natalie did not and does not do that.  I saw the comment as a deflection from the real thing my daughter wanted to talk about.

The closest anyone came to suggesting an “enough” factor was my mom, who kept telling me to “go out.” But that was her worrying about me. For the better part of a year I only went out if  I couldn’t help it. I spent most of my time in the same corner of the couch I scrunched myself into the night I found out that Philip died. Knitting. Watching TV. Any series I could get my hands on. I watched 13 and half years of ER in as many months.

I brought this up because of something Ram Dass wrote in that letter: “Now is the time to let your grief find expression.  No false strength.”

That’s why I was on the couch for a year. Much as I hated this monstrous partner called grief, I couldn’t be parted from it.  Every trip to get groceries or gas or even the meds that were helping me though this was agony. My only business was mourning.

Now, a year-and-half later, I can and do “go out.” But I am not done mourning, nor am I part of the world in the way I was. And it seems a lot of my “going out” has more to do with responsibility than pleasure. Where do I go? To work. To therapy. To walk the dogs, to run errands. But I do go out with Natalie, and I do spend time with friends who get it, who’d never say, “enough.” I don’t have to talk nonstop Philip, but when I need to talk about him, I do. There is nothing – nothing – more important than Philip and Natalie, and nothing more momentous than Philip’s dying and how I’m supposed to live with it.

Here, then, is the letter:

Steve and Anita,

Rachel finished her work on earth, and left the stage in a manner that
leaves those of us left behind with a cry of agony in our hearts, as the
fragile thread of our faith is dealt with so violently. Is anyone strong
enough to stay conscious through such teaching as you are receiving?
Probably very few. And even they would only have a whisper of equanimity and
peace amidst the screaming trumpets of their rage, grief, horror and
desolation.

I can’t assuage your pain with any words, nor should I. For your pain is
Rachel’s legacy to you. Not that she or I would inflict such pain by choice,
but there it is. And it must burn its purifying way to completion. For
something in you dies when you bear the unbearable, and it is only in that
dark night of the soul that you are prepared to see as God sees, and to love
as God loves.

Now is the time to let your grief find expression. No false strength.
Now is the time to sit quietly and speak to Rachel, and thank her for being
with you these few years, and encourage her to go on with whatever her work
is, knowing that you will grow in compassion and wisdom from this experience.
In my heart, I know that you and she will meet again and again, and
recognize the many ways in which you have known each other. And when you
meet you will know, in a flash, what now it is not given to you to know: Why
this had to be the way it was.

Our rational minds can never understand what has happened, but our hearts
– if we can keep them open to God – will find their own intuitive way.
Rachel came through you to do her work on earth, which includes her manner of
death. Now her soul is free, and the love that you can share with her is
invulnerable to the winds of changing time and space. In that deep love,
include me.

In love,

Ram Dass

*It was John who said to me, “A broken heart is open to receive.”

© 2013 Denise Smyth

Choosing

20 Aug 2013 12 Comments

by Denise in Addiction, Death, Faith, Motherhood Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

After 15 years of living in a house, Natalie and I have to think apartment-style. We are overstocked with groceries we have to eat through and shampoo and conditioner we have to wash through. It’s Costco and its coupons that’s turned me into a hoarder. Excess disappears into the nooks and crannies of a house. Here – what am I to do with the 50 or so vintage chenille bedspreads I’ve collected to cut up and make into pillows? I could sew for the next 20 years and still not run out of fabric.

I’m swirling in the chaos of the newly-relocated; there’s nowhere for my eye to rest. And I’m still not done moving. This week, Natalie will pick up the last of what’s left at Nadiya’s. Except for the dozens of books I bravely decided to get rid of. What am I supposed to do with them in the short time I’ve left to decide? Have I ever considered that each thing I buy needs a place, that I am responsible for where it goes and where it winds up when I’m done with it?

At home, I’m taking out the photographs, taking out the urns. I found out urns came in different sizes when the funeral director handed me a catalog full of them. You can put all your ashes in a big one, or distribute them among varying styles. You can put some in mini-urns to give to family and friends. They even sell necklaces with charms to put them in so you can carry them with you all the time. Natalie and I sat browsing the catalog one day to choose. Is this fucking crazy, I asked? We’re picking out urns like we’d be picking out our next pair of skinny jeans. I wanted the large rose Cloisonné since I’m all about flowers, but decided to try something different, gold with a band of Mother-of-Pearl inlay. Phil couldn’t deal with looking, so I chose a smaller, more masculine-looking one for him; a rich, deep blue with a matted, etched silver top and bottom. Natalie chose a tiny one similar in style to Phil’s; charcoal gray shot through  gold, with a matte coppery-gold top and bottom.

Phil hasn’t taken his so I’ve given it a place here. Natalie’s is in its velvet box in a drawer. Me? I should have gone with the rose Cloisonne.

There used to be a commercial where a decent if neurotic-looking woman was speaking into the camera with desperate earnestness about all the reasons you shouldn’t smoke. By the time we realize she’s speaking to her kid, the camera pans back and we see the kid’s just a quizzical babe in a high chair, more interested in sticking his fingers up his nose than anything his mom had to say. The message, of course, was to start planting those seeds early and all will be well.

I did that. I am an addict. I told my kids the things I was supposed to tell them about smoking, drugs and alcohol and the science that says alcoholism can be passed along in your genes.  I thought my loving attention would be enough to stay addiction’s hand. I drank because life was unbearable. I thought all I had to do to keep that from happening to my kids was to remove the misery factor. Happy kids don’t drink or do drugs, right? And they certainly don’t die before their parents do.

When Philip was maybe 16, Phil and I found out he was smoking both pot and cigarettes. I was more surprised by the cigarettes than the pot. Who does that any more, especially without a job to afford it? As far as the cigarettes, Phil and I talked to him and he promised he’d stop. Then I got a call from a friend. I was uptown, she said; I saw Philip smoking and I thought you should know. When he came home that day, I told him I knew he was smoking and where he was when he was doing it. He shrank. How do you know, he asked? Because I know, I answered; there are more things I know about you than you realize.

Which wasn’t true, of course. I was trying to strike the fear of God into him. Or of Me, which really wasn’t necessary.  Philip wasn’t a sullen, rebellious kid; he didn’t want to risk my anger, much less my disappointment. I never knew how much he needed me.

And as far as the pot, a week after we found out about it, the three of us sat down with a therapist whose specialty was addiction. The following week, two home drug tests arrived in the mail and Philip was seeing the therapist by himself. It took one visit for her to tell us this was not a kid with a problem. Still, we did one random drug test on him a couple weeks later. It was negative. We kept the second one in a drawer as a threat.

Ed says I feel tremendously guilty. My therapist says the same. Since I do not believe I could’ve done anything differently, I don’t see why they should say that. I mean, a different mom might have grabbed Philip by that long, curly hair she so lovingly encouraged him to grow and not let go until she knew he was safe. Until she knew he stopped hanging around with the kids she didn’t want him hanging around with. Until she got him so interested in books and music and ideas that his mind would have been full of the richness of life instead of being fucked by drugs. But I am not that mom. I am this mom and I did the best I could so what do I have to be guilty about?

See, what I don’t understand is all this talk about what a good mother I am. Philip was sweet and funny and responsible and if you met him, he’d shake your hand and look you in the eye. That didn’t come from nowhere, I’m told. But if I’m to take credit and comfort for the loving face he presented to the world, where does my responsibility lie for the drugs and the alcohol and the poor choices he made that led to his death? I am not God is another thing I’m told. Fair enough. But I am his Mother. Wasn’t my job to teach him enough to choose better? This is the knot I can’t untie, this is where my thinking twists and turns and wraps around itself because no matter my love for him or his for me it wasn’t enough to set him on a path that would have kept him here.

I’m only just realizing the depth of the guilt that’s been running my life. It’s hitting me now how deeply ashamed I feel that Philip’s dead whenever I see a mom and her son doing whatever everyday things a mom and son might do. And if this was your story and you were telling it to me, I’d tell you just how much you didn’t have to feel that way because I’d see it so clearly. But to see it about myself – not so much. It’s going to take faith to see that life means something and discipline to stop my monkey mind when it says otherwise. Faith and discipline, both of which turned to ashes when Philip did. Thing is, how come I believe Philip’s spirit doesn’t lie in those ashes, yet not believe that mine doesn’t, either?

© 2013 Denise Smyth

Wantings and Warnings

12 Aug 2013 16 Comments

by Denise in Addiction, Death, Faith, Motherhood Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

I’ve been nominated several times for blogger awards, most recently by dear Lucia from Luminous Blue. I want to take a moment to say thank you; I am honored. And I haven’t meant not to “accept” the awards so kindly offered. It’s just that there’s a whole long process involved, and I haven’t had time to sit down to do it. But I am grateful for even being considered.

**********************

Natalie and I have officially moved. We have no internet service, so I haven’t been online in days.

Just sayin’.

There’s a story about Philip I’ve been wanting to tell, but I couldn’t figure out why except for thinking it shows just what a swell mom I am. I was working on it last week. Turns out maybe I am a swell mom, but that’s not what the story is about. It’s getting complicated, so I’m taking a break because it’s been hard to concentrate. I am not feeling so very well. See, Philip’s dead and my stomach’s threatening to hurl its contents. How to live in a world where such things happen, where every moment parents all over the place are getting whacked into this appalling reality? How many times can I say it’s unbearable, even as I get up and bear it anyway?

Ed’s been talking to me about a young man and woman he’s working with at the college where he teaches. They’re a couple – she’s 21 and has her Master’s Degree; he’s 25 with two Masters from Columbia and will probably go on to his Doctorate. Ed says they are beautiful and brilliant with a future to envy. They are all three passionate, with Ed wanting this future for them and teaching them what he knows to help them have it.

That’s the story as Ed tells it. I listen, then make my own story. The one about these beautiful, brilliant kids who have life by the balls because something was granted them that wasn’t granted Philip. To say “granted” is me having a tantrum. Truth is there isn’t any answer why people are the way they are. I thought my efforts to raise my kids would yield a certain kind of future; I thought if I loved them, fed them and read to them, they’d be good to go.

A couple days ago I thought about a story I read when Philip was a baby. It was in a magazine called “Mothering,” which was (is?) the go-to manual on birthing/raising children au natural. You know – born at home, nursed, cloth-diapered, fed organic foods, carried around in calico cotton slings that fit across your torso. Vaccinations and circumcisions were hot topics, with writers on the side of nay to both. See, that was me; wanting to live down to the bone, wanting to stay at home and hand-raise my babies. Thinking that would make them into some version of what I wanted to but couldn’t be. Philip had the same innate intelligence I had when I was a kid; but he was generous, kind and friendly and so I thought his world richer than mine, me with my troubled, emotionally crazy responses to Life. So what makes some kids beautiful and brilliant and other kids dead from heroin?

I know that’s not the question. But I can’t help feeling sick with envy at beautiful and brilliant while my son is reduced to ashes in an urn.

But the story. The story was written by a woman who had five kids. All born at home, all nursed, all taken care of by a 24/7 Mom. But one of her kids, a son – he didn’t do so well. He was an addict, he was wild. One day he disappeared. She didn’t know where he was, didn’t know if he was dead or alive. A warning that all the breast milk in the world won’t guarantee your children will live longer than you do.

I thought of that story many, many times over the years. I got what she was saying; I really did. I was touched and humbled and so very sad for her. Still, that was her life and I didn’t consider the possibility of something like that happening to my son. What parent would? That kind of stuff happened in magazines and newspapers; what had that to do with my life? Thing is, for all the years I read “Mothering,” that’s the only story I remember. It’s another piece of what I’ve already written about, that in some larger sense I was being prepared for Philip’s death.

How is it that I believe in the pattern I see evolving, yet so often feel on the edge of unhinged? And get what happened yesterday:  First off, for anyone who doesn’t know, there’s a woman’s clothing store called Forever 21 (it’s written “XXI,” and it’s the reason the name of my blog can’t also be its address). The clothes are trendy and not made so well. Neither Natalie, Nadiya or I shop there.

I still have stuff at Nadiya’s, and yesterday I was packing some of it up. I made a decision to get rid of something I’d been holding on to for a long time. It was a hard decision, but I’m in letting go mode, so I took a breath and released. Getting rid of this something involved tearing up papers. Lots of papers. So I took a stack of them, sat on the bottom stair in the foyer and started ripping away, wondering if I was really doing the right thing, scared I was going to be sorry for this one day. Then I noticed something on the floor, next to the garbage bag. I looked closer, picked it up and son of a bitch if it wasn’t a clothing tag from Forever XXI.

I think I need to go think about that; I need to really, deeply think about that.

© 2013 Denise Smyth

 

 

 

Gratitude

04 Aug 2013 13 Comments

by Denise in Addiction, Death, Motherhood Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

In AA there’s a lot of talk about gratitude. Make a gratitude list. Replace guilt with gratitude. Put some gratitude in your attitude. All I ever felt about that was resentful. Gratitude for what, exactly? And it wasn’t my circumstances so much as the way I felt. I didn’t take my first drink at 11 for nothing.

Things were difficult with my parents. But I’m not talking about abuse; I was an emotionally precocious kid with a mom and dad I felt I had to manage. At 55 I see they did the best they could; back then, it wasn’t enough.

In the nature/nurture debate, I stand on the side of both. We come into this world with what to work out, and our parents don’t always help us in the way we want them to. Sometimes we can only learn what we need through difficulty, starting with the Moms and Pops. And as far whether we carry either light or grief (or anything in between) into this world, I can speak to this because of my pregnancies. With Philip I felt the same light and ease about him as I did for all the years he was here. With Natalie, I felt a heaviness, and a stubbornness. And she and I have talked about what it is she feels she carries because there are times and ways she’s troubled that seem to just be part of her.

And she is both wonderfully and exasperatingly stubborn.

Regardless of how I got wherever I was, when I was 24 I walked into AA  and thought I found the answer. Back then, I thought there was an “answer.” A one thing I was missing that maybe could be found there. I went to meetings nearly every day for ten years. I watched people come into the rooms and get sober and get earnest and get God and I just didn’t understand why I didn’t get it, too. After two years of not drinking, a man I knew said to me, “This is the first time I’ve seen you at a meeting and you aren’t crying.” Crying has been a big part of my life. It was the only way I knew to ask for help.

I refused gratitude because something always felt wrong. I didn’t want to live and I didn’t think that was normal. I figured most people were happy to be alive but had their moments when they struggled. Not so me. Depression was my baseline; anything else was an aberration. I had a job, a nice apartment, I was making friends in AA; none of it mattered because of what I felt. No matter what I did, I was unhappy. And angry that I was following the rules but God didn’t reach his hand inside my gut and wrench that misery right out once and for all.

I didn’t consider that vomiting on a daily basis had anything to do with my state of mind. I’d started doing that when I was 22, and continued for the first three years or so after I stopped drinking.  I stopped when I met Phil, who seemed quite sane in the face of my crazy and who I didn’t think would stick around if I kept flushing all dinners he treated me to down the toilet. So I dragged myself to the city to attend the Bulimic/Anorexic stepchild-meeting of AA and got control of not only eating, but of letting the food stay in my belly once it got there.

But AA remained the main front. One day I did my fourth step. That means I “made a searching and fearless moral inventory” of myself. There isn’t any one way to do it, but at my sponsor’s suggestion I looked at all the troubled relationships of my past and wrote about them as honestly as I could. Four hours later, I’d learned something. Every relationship I wrote about was the same. I could’ve save 3 hours and 45 minutes had I just changed the names. It couldn’t be that all the people in these relationships were the asses I thought they were. I had a part in all of it, but I couldn’t yet see it.

Of course, all that did was cement the idea that there is something wrong with me.

It’s been a torturous route to gratitude, and it isn’t the fullness and peace I imagined it would be. And I would really appreciate it if someone could explain to me why so much of what matters in life is learned through suffering. Is it the curse of living in a world of opposites? I mean, how do we know except by contrast? If everything was, say, red, then we wouldn’t know not-red. If I’m “happy” all the time, how would I know that I am, except by its unhappy opposite?

Ironically enough, I’ve learned of gratitude through Philip’s death. See, I know how much worse this could have been. If he had to die, at least there was the clarity of love between us.  And I do believe I was being prepared for his death. The images of him dead, picturing myself at his wake, the terrible vulnerability I felt in him and the desperation I had to let him know that I loved him. The joke about finding him dead of an overdose.  That apology I made to him, that seemed to come from nowhere. Philip’s answer to that was, “Mom, I love you and I’m grateful for you.”

He was 21, and he knew gratitude. When I was 21, I sat in a bathtub  and hacked at my wrists with a razor. Yet he is dead, and I am not. Am I the only one who finds this bizarre?

I am grateful that much as Philip’s dead, he’s not gone. He’s not here the way I want him to be, but he’s here in the way I need him. I’m blessed to feel him, to hear him enough to write down what he’s trying to teach me. I’m grateful for the people he’s brought into my life since he died, and for forcing me to feel the heart I didn’t know I had.  He is my muse. And I am grateful that he cracked me wide open because something had to jolt me into the reality I’ve spent my life trying to avoid.

But gratitude is a place I visit, not the home that I yearn for. I’m still struggling with things I’ve struggled with long before Philip died, before he was even born, things that seem insurmountable now that he’s gone. And if my life felt hard more than good when he was alive, it feels impossible to cope with now. Philip’s trying to teach me how to do that. Then you shouldn’t have left me, I tell him; you shouldn’t be gone.

© 2013 Denise Smyth

What for?

28 Jul 2013 15 Comments

by Denise in Death, Faith, Motherhood Tags: , , , , , , , ,

I’ve been working on a post about gratitude, which is sounding more like a post on ingratitude. But I wanted to take a time out to say I found an apartment last week. The rent is less than the apartment I lost,  I can bring my dogs, the location is great. It’s unoccupied, so they gave me the keys on Friday and I’ve been moving some stuff in. Wednesday the movers come, and then it will officially be Home.

It all fell into place beautifully. People help me. Life helps me. I see it, and I work to accept it. I don’t know how to ask, and when I do, I am ashamed. I don’t know what that’s about, but I’ve been like this forever. I’m too tired to think about it.

And I don’t mean physically. I mean I am tired of what I feel because my son is dead. The move is exciting; I’ve been running around packing, organizing, making arrangements. Natalie and I are working together, talking colors and painting and how to put what where and what we need to fill the empty spaces. Then I go home, home to silences filled with my son’s death. My son. He is my son, and I can’t have you meet him. He is my son and he isn’t here. And I can talk to you all about this but when I am out in the world I feel shame. Is there something about me that made my son dead? I have never had anyone say anything stupid to me about Philip’s death. All people have done is care. But I can’t work this shame out, I can’t help but put my head down when I see families, when I see mothers and their sons. It’s not that I think there was something I could have done; it’s just a sense of, “well, of course, I mean – what did you think?”

Who the hell’s voice is that?

Philip’s answer to that is, “Mom, don’t make my death into something it isn’t.” His death is not about me. I am not to use it to justify old habits of despair and unwillingness, to return to thinking I want to die because what I want is not to feel. I have said I want to grieve honestly; there is nothing honest about mixing up Philip’s death with the the things I had to deal with while he was alive.

Still – the other day I wrote to Stephanie, “I just sort of sink and shrug because what for, if your child can die?”

I think maybe feeling his death so keenly has something to do with moving, starting this different life with Natalie and that makes Philip more gone.  August 1st, 2009, I left my home to move in with Nadiya. Philip was there to help me. We were both making changes:  me to a new home, he to his freshman year at college. Exactly four years later we should have again been moving on together: He as a Graduate of Rutgers, me to my new apartment with my daughter. But I’m moving on without him, away from the house where he came to visit, away from the room I grieved in and wept in and slept in and tucked myself away in to mourn the incomprehensible. My therapist asked if I feel guilty because I am happy and excited to move, and how could I allow anything like “happy” because Philip is gone? Maybe I am, but it doesn’t feel that way. It feels more like helplessness and despair because of what is. Life goes, I’m going with it, my son isn’t coming with me and my heart is hurting for loving him so much.

© 2013 Denise Smyth

Days 3-4

21 Jul 2013 11 Comments

by Denise in Death Tags: , , , , , , ,

I thought that if I had to live with Philip’s death, I could live with anything. Natalie aside, what could matter enough to upset me? What could matter at all? But that’s not true, not really. I don’t think this gypsy life suits me. I’ve been at Kirsten’s since I got back from California, will be here til I find somewhere to live. My dogs are still at my mom’s. My home is a Ghost Town, a huge storage bin for what I have and what I have to get rid of. Last week I had minor surgery with not-so-minor recovery. On my back the whole of the week, I found out the apartment I thought I had fell through, like the job I thought I had fell through. I have no job, I have no apartment was my uncontrollable mantra.

And for a while, I lost my voice.

So things happen for a reason, I’ll land where I’m supposed to. And I can flip all of this on its head because I might have lost my home, but I have friends who’ll take me in. I might have lost my job, but I have some income to help as I look for another. I might feel like I’m walking on shifting ground, but at least there is a ground; I am not as lost as I was a year ago, I’m not traveling in the Netherworld where I lived when I found out that Philip died.

I’m not in the interregnum of Days 3-4. The purgatory before the real hell started. I was out of time, out of mind, out of space; walking beneath roily waters, seeing and hearing and moving in some grotesque aquatic ballet. I looked at people as if I didn’t comprehend, but I did. Denial was never a part of this. My son was dead.

I surfaced when I was spoken to, surprised myself by answering back. Waited a second or two before I went under again, just in case someone was going to say something that mattered, something that had to do with Philip but didn’t have to do with death. But whatever anyone said, all I heard was, Philip is dead Philip is dead Philip is dead. So what was anyone talking to me for, then? It was hideously comic that I was supposed to do a certain type of normal because things needed to be done, phone calls had to made, arrangements had to be taken care of. To Phil I said, “I can’t.” To me he said, “I will.”

Because that’s what men do; they do, and Phil did it all.

What to say about 3-4? I can tell you that Ed came over and my parents came over and my phone rang a lot. I can tell you that after being awake for 38 hours my body took over and I went down for the night.  I can say that with Natalie’s help I materialized at Phil’s on Saturday where there were people milling around and that late in the afternoon, Phil said, “Maybe you should take a shower.”

I looked up at him. “Do you think I should take a shower?”

He looked kind and weary and so very sad and he gently said, “Yes, I do.”

Like a child, I was. Wearing the same clothes I had on since Thursday. Shocked and awed by the magnitude of what happened. Finding myself standing in rooms or sitting in chairs and not knowing how I got there or why I was there or what I was supposed to do. I made no decisions because there wasn’t any me to make them. And the longer that day went on and the more people came and the more hugs and kisses and tears made Philip more dead. Maybe no one should have come. Maybe if I hadn’t called anyone and sat quietly for a while there was a chance something could have changed. We didn’t give it a chance; we told people and they came with their bruised hearts and stunned disbelief and they made it impossible for Philip to come home. His death had taken on a life of its own.

© 2013 Denise Smyth

No Way Out

12 Jul 2013 17 Comments

by Denise in Death, Faith, Home Birth, Motherhood, Pregnancy and Birth Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

I’m on a crying jag; I’ve a lot going on, and it keeps hitting me that Philip has died. I can’t even say, “is dead.” And people are kind, and that makes me cry even more. Yesterday I wrote to Lucia, Elizabeth Blue’s mom, “And I am overwhelmed at the moment; Lucia, I miss him so. Sometimes I feel like I’m being slowly strangled. I try to remind myself that the moment when I face death I’m going to think it all went so quickly, so let me love my son where he is and my daughter where she is. None of us are here forever. But when I miss him like this, that’s exactly what it feels like. “ And in the worst possible sense.

Which brings me back to Elizabeth Blue’s incredibly prescient and powerful, “Bird’s Nest.” In part:

“Five days ago I watched two birds mate.
Yesterday I watched as they began
in unison
to build their nest.

Today it occurs to me
that I will be gone
by the time they lay eggs
and the eggs make way
for the new life
within them.

Today it occurs to me that I will be gone
The lines between body and land have blurred
and the land will miss my body.
Perhaps it will be lonely
I think it will weep.
I think it will miss me
more than my mind or body
could miss it,”

Reading that poem is like watching Elizabeth discovering something, and what a something.  Nature has much to teach us, if we pay attention. How often we don’t because we’re so busy thinking, as if thinking is going to solve our problem when it mostly is our problem. The mind, it is said, is a wonderful servant, but a terrible master.

Elizabeth recognized that maybe the world needs us more than we need it. How different from raging at death because this goddamn world gets to go on while we or those we love do not.  But what is the world, if we are not there to witness is? A world of form requires our recognition. It’s such a big place, this world, such an overwhelming place. And the terror of death is that we’re leaving it behind, and it still gets to be, while we turn to dust. Or does it?

Life is relentless. Death isn’t enough to stop it, but it’s more than enough to wreck those of us who are here to witness it. This is what I mean: maybe death is forcing us to confront just what we think Life is. Forcing us, because we don’t like to think about death. And if we don’t think about death we will become shallow and brittle because nothing will matter except what we look like, what we have, whatever is external to us, whatever draws us farther from ourselves.

I am aching, aching for Philip. Try telling that part of me that, “Death isn’t enough to stop it.” But there’s another part of me that’s struggling with faith and acceptance and the certainty that there’s something else going on, stuggling to understand it and articulate it in a meaningful way.  And there is my constant communication with Philip, who is there for me in a very real way, and who’s been teaching me things always.

I was never afraid of childbirth. In high school I’d  tell my friends, “I’ll have the babies, but you have to raise them.” Back then, I didn’t much like kids, couldn’t imagine even liking my own. But labor seemed like an act of bravery, a jump into the void; confronting the uncontrollable, wondering if I’d come out the other side.

When I was pregnant, I felt the same (about labor – not kids). My kids were born at home with no doctors telling me what to do, no fetal monitors strapped around me, no someone I didn’t trust directing me. I was searching for authenticity through my femininity, and what could be more feminine than giving birth? I wanted to deliver my child with the help of a midwife who trusted that my body could do what it was supposed to, and who knew what to do if it didn’t. I wanted a woman to help me give birth, one who had borne  a child of her own. Barbara, my midwife, turned out to be that person.

Since attitude is supposed to affect experience, I thought my good one meant labor wouldn’t hurt too much. I might’ve gone in blind, but at least I went bravely. Labor was ferociously, savagely painful; I was scared. I let loose with moaning and yelling and pleading for Barbara not to leave me. Of course she didn’t leave me. Even when I bit her. I wasn’t in control of what my body was doing, how it was doing it, or the pain I felt. I couldn’t say, “Could we just take a break and rest for a few minutes please?” Labor is the relentless force of Life as it takes shape, and in those terrible moments I realized there was no way out but through.

That’s what Philip taught me during his birth, and what he’s trying to teach me through his death. Thing is, when labor ended my son was born, the pain was gone, and every second of it was worth it. What of Philip’s death, then? What kind of “end” could there be; what do I get to hold in my arms, what will ever make me say this pain was worth it? I’ve been told now it’s me that’s being born. It’s not enough. I feel less than I ever was without him here because he took a part of me with him when he went.

He brought me full circle, this child of mine. See, I understand why women choose not to feel that pain. But had I chosen differently, I would not have had his guidance then, and I wouldn’t have been able to see that he’s helping me now. Because I do see it, even if I don’t always accept it.

© 2013 Denise Smyth

The Place of No Goodbyes

09 Jul 2013 13 Comments

by Denise in Death, Motherhood Tags: , , , , , , ,

I don’t usually post twice, but I had a lot of down time today…so lucky you! (heh)

Actually, I’d been talking to some people about this and so thought I’d post it. A couple months after Philip died, Phil and I joined an 8-week parents’ bereavement group. We met once a week, and the therapist who ran it would sometimes give us assignments to do, if we wanted. Like the first was to bring in pictures of our children to share with each other.

The second meeting she asked us to go home and write a letter to our child, then write one back from her/him. We could bring them in the following week to read out loud, if we wanted. I thought that was a good idea, and I did it. I’m posting the letters here – they’re not very long. What’s most striking to me is that when I went to write Philip’s letter, “I” wasn’t writing it. I was listening to him, taking dictation. And I find the last line particularly lovely. It contains a phrase I’ve never heard before, a little gift from Philip.

I’ve mentioned that I keep journals where I write down what he’s saying. This is what gave me the idea. It’s a valuable tool, something anyone can do to try to reach a loved one. And even if you don’t think you’ve “reached” them, chances are you’ll feel how much they love you as you write what you know they’d be saying.

So these are our letters, dated April 23, 2012, exactly two months to the day that Philip died:

Hey you,

I feel kinda weird writing this because now you know what goes on with me more than when you were here. What can I tell you that you don’t already know? I miss you, to borrow a phrase, truly madly deeply. I can’t accept that you’re not here and we both know that’s what I have to do; that’s my work in this life of mine. But I don’t think I can, nor do I want to. I’m like a child who had something taken from her and thinks tears and tantrums will help her get it back. I’m afraid if I stop crying, you’ll really be dead. This grief binds me to you like a live wire and I don’t know how to let it go. What will be there, then? What good to say that’s not our real bond, that there won’t be a void? My body says otherwise. My stomach churns and my chest is tight and the tears are in the back of my throat when they’re not being cried. There’s nothing that isn’t colored by your death. Your death – what does that mean? If I am to give meaning to my life, how am I supposed to do that with you gone? How do I bear the unbearable? I don’t know what to do with this rage and sorrow. I can’t undo what’s done and I am helpless here.

Everyone says time. And the world keeps spinning as if you’re still here. The world doesn’t care. I’m responsible for my inner state but I keep going down the rabbit hole in free fall. Then I stop for a while, then I go down again. It’s like that movie Ground Hog Day; I keep waking up and you’re not here. And I keep getting desperate for someone to tell me what to do. No one can tell me what to do; there isn’t anything to “do.” Because what I want is you to be here and you’re not and I don’t know how to live with you gone.

I love you. Your turn.

Hi Mom,

I love you, too; I didn’t used to call to tell you that in the middle of the night for nothing. I’m still here and you know it. I told you we were growing up together, and now you’ve got to finish what we started. You knew soon as you heard I was gone that the work you were doing was what you had to keep doing. You’ll get there. You know that under it all there’s a floor – there’s a place of peace that abides in you as it abides in everyone. I know how hard it is for you to be happy. It made me sad, sometimes, that you felt things were so hard for you. And I know I was a respite from that; I still am. It’s like we’re more in touch than ever. You certainly think about me more than you used to. You talk to me more, too. Have a little faith. You’ll see. I’m still the light you always thought I was; I didn’t go out, as you keep saying. You just have to look a little harder. The light’s all around you even though you feel you’re in the dark. Light is stronger than dark, mom. When the light shines, the darkness goes away. Think of the light you felt from me and live in it. Just a little, like when you crack the door open, until you’re ready for more. You’re afraid; you don’t need to be. The light is where the peace is and where I am. I’m sorry for your grief but this is what is. You know what that means and what to do about it. For the rest of it, you’ll figure it out. I’ll be right behind you as you do. Watch how this unfolds. You’ll be amazed, if you let yourself.

Okay? So I love you. I’m in the place of no good-byes so we can talk whenever we want to.

© 2013 Denise Smyth

It’s What I Have

09 Jul 2013 10 Comments

by Denise in Death, Faith, Motherhood Tags: , , , , , , , ,

I have stories since Philip died, stories about the way he’s still in my life, what I hear him say and how I hear him say it. I’m blessed because really, he’s always around. It’s not weird or spooky, either. I just talk to him in my head, and he talks back. I also keep journals where I’ll listen to what he’s saying and write it down. Call it Philip, call it my love for him allowing me to tap into a deeper wisdom that’s “inside” me, a wisdom that’s available to anyone who’s willing to seek it – no matter. To me it’s Philip, to me it’s part of the bond I have with him.

I’m mentioning this because I just read a post on behindthemaskofabuse about a lost dog, which reminded me of something and I’m in the mood to write about something that makes me smile. I have a wanting to be chronological about things, but if you follow along at all, I’m not, not really. Theres’s a narrative thread but it comes out as it does. I’m not in control. The writing sort of leads me, and I get it out best I can.

This happened a couple months ago, when it was still getting dark by 7:30 here on the east coast. I’d been working on a post and felt stuck, when something told me to take a break and go for a walk. Now, we all have intuition that we’d do well to pay attention to, and the more we do, the stronger it gets. Me? Meh. I don’t listen as much as I’d like. And in spite of the fact that when I walk, the writing comes rolling through my brain, I didn’t want to go. I’m a homebody. Stick me on my couch with my books and my computer and a basket of knitting nearby, and I’m good to go. Er, to stay. So I’m ambivalent; if I need a break from writing I can just stop, what’s with the going out business? But since I’m trying to pay attention to that “little voice” inside of me, I said to the doggies, guys – let’s go.

(Have I said anything about my dogs other than that they’re my dogs? I have two shih-tzus, Zoe and Pippin, and one day I’ll get my act together and post some pictures of them.)

It was probably around 7:00, probably just before the gloaming , and I decided since we’re going for a walk, it would be a long one. We could all use the exercise. Before going downstairs, I went looking for my wallet. I didn’t need it to go out, I just realized I didn’t know where it was which makes me crazy so I started running around looking for it. And I asked Philip where it was because I cannot begin to count the times I’ve asked him where things were and then promptly found them.

Not this time.

Downstairs I went with the dogs, and I started running around there, too, frustrated because I couldn’t find it and really frustrated because Philip wasn’t helping. Then I ran back upstairs and looked again, and again back downstairs. Then I remembered I had laundry in the washer in the basement that needed to go into the dryer so I went to do that, hoping that when I came back up I’d find my wallet.

Nope.

By then it was almost 8:00. I decided to just cut it out, forget about it, ask Natalie to help me look when she got home from gymnastics. I leashed up the dogs and went out, thinking I’d still go for a long walk because even though it was now dark, it was warm outside. I took my time heading toward the corner where I wanted to turn, letting the dogs sniff and pee because once I started walking, I wasn’t stopping. So they’re rooting around the grass and I’m stargazing and that’s when I felt a tug. Looking down, there was a little doggy, sort of like a Boston Terrier but mostly all black, sniffing around with my two. She wore a pink harness, without a tag. There was no one around but me. And while it occurred to me to just go on ahead with my walk, the saner part of me realized you don’t leave a dog out in the dark that looks like she doesn’t belong there. This one definitely did not belong there. So I took Zoe’s leash off and put it on Stray Dog, because Zoe – being a girl and all – would not leave my side, while Pippin – being a somewhat blind, somewhat deaf boy and all – wouldn’t have noticed I was gone until he found himself staring up at the bottom of my neighbor’s Lexus.

First thing I did was ring the bell of the house we were standing in front of, thinking maybe she escaped from there. The woman that answered never saw her. Next I asked some guy who happened to be walking his own dog on the other side of the street – he couldn’t even see her in the dark, much less know who she belonged to. So I decided to bring her home for the night, call the police to let them know in case someone was looking for her, and deal with what to do with her the next day.

The four of us turned to walk back home, moving real slow in case someone happened by looking for her. Sure enough, I saw a van come onto my block, driving slowly, window opened. Hey, I yelled as he got near, are you looking for a dog?

Turned out he’d been driving around for half an hour looking for his dog, thank you very much. We briefly chatted about how she got away, where all he’d been looking for her. I was just glad I had her because he lived on this side of Bloomfield-major-thruway-Avenue and he was looking on the other side of Bloomfield-major-thruway-Avenue and had he found her on that side, it might have been in various, scattered body parts. Off they went and I was happy to have done my good deed for the day.

I turned back again to head toward the corner, unsure of what to do. I’d been out a while and maybe it was enough. Or maybe not. Maybe I should go for a short walk. Or maybe not. Maybe I should stay on my block. Or maybe not. And while I’m dithering over this most important decision, I heard Philip say, “Mom, you know what to do.”

I’m going home, aren’t I? I felt him smile.

And I’m going to find my wallet when I get there, aren’t I?

You get why you didn’t find it sooner, he asked?

Of course I went home and of course it was there, right there on the first floor, right on the table where I’d left it.

The story I’m telling about Philip and me doesn’t have a simple narrative. It could start and end with the story of his death, but it doesn’t. It’s a living story that keeps evolving even as I’m writing. There are happy things along the way, there are clear ways I know Philip is around and many ways he makes me smile. Not least of all do I rely on his confidence, encouragement and wisdom. I am blessed with this easy access. If Philip had to die, this was the best way it could be turning out.

But that’s just it. Philip has died. The other day I wrote to Ed, “When Philip died…” and if I wasn’t already sitting I would’ve been knocked on my ass. Did I really just write that? Will it ever stop shocking me? Because in all the ways life’s swirling around me and in all the ways I imagine it turning out, the one mad true thing in all of it is that Philip is dead. Please, I want to say; please. Please what, please to whom? I’d made sure to remind my kids that “please” was not the magic word they might’ve heard it was. Using it didn’t mean you got what you wanted, it was just the civilized way to ask for it.

And if the answers to my please are the living connections I make along the way, then there’s where I need to place my faith. For sure that’s what my son is asking of me, for sure it just doesn’t feel like enough. Please, then, may it be, because it’s what I have.

© 2013 Denise Smyth

So Tell Me

06 Jul 2013 27 Comments

by Denise in Death, Faith, Motherhood Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

From Fourth of July:

Today is Natalie’s birthday; Happy Birthday to you, my sweet girl. I love you so.

Today I found us an apartment; Happy Birthday again, Natalie. It’s small, but we’ll make it work. It’s located exactly where we want to be, the rent is okay, and – the big one – they’ll take the dogs. Around here, that’s a Godsend. My application is in and I’m waiting for approval. The manager who showed me around wants us there. Assuming all goes well, we’ll move August 1st.

Today, I’m wondering how it got to be July again, without Philip. I didn’t want to use this blog to whine, but here I am. I think of him, my stomach churns, the tears at the back of my eyes spring forth, my voice has to fight its way out of my throat and the dark place is all there is. Natalie just turned 20; she’s closing in on him and I’m scared. One day she will be older than him. Do I have to add, ‘God willing?’ And I think I say this stuff because I’m reaching out for help, and I know people care, but no one can take this from me because if they took my grief, they’d take my love. And there is nothing that can “take” my love for Philip.

                                                    *******************************************************************

 So I piece together all that has happened and continues to happen. It’s the grace of connection I’m yearning for, the light of meaning, the knowing of what it is I am waking up for. My son – I don’t know how to live with him dead because the feeling is too much to bear. But these bits and pieces along the way tell a story, a story whose meaning I’m struggling to find and whose end won’t come until my own does. If, even, then. I’ve talked about some of it already: Philip, not yet two, saying his grandpa was, “In the light;” the day at the beach, when I almost lost him; the desperate need I had that last year to let him know how goddamn much I loved him;  my “all bets are off” conversation with Natalie; my “dead in a ditch” message, which ironically enough makes me smile because that’s the sort of joke Philip and I would laugh at. And I feel him, smiling back at me.

Then the fact of where I was at spiritually, emotionally, psychically. For the six months or so leading to his death, I’d crossed a line, chosen to live, chosen to stop asking why I was here and accepted the fact that I was. Tried to figure out what I wanted to with the life I was given. Began to understand my inner state was up to me, that my emotions did not, in fact, control me. And I had the tools to work with all of this. Take a breath, take a mental step back from inner turmoil, look at it. No resistance, I’d say, which is the same as “accept it” except those words meant something to me in a way “accept it” didn’t. “No resistance” was a big, deep breath to which I had a physical response. My chest would relax, my arms and shoulders followed. My stomach remained tense and knotted. My stomach was always knotted; it was a question of it being background tension or being whacked-in-the-solar-plexus tension. “No resistance” helped me manage myself.

And, of course, I kept reminding myself, “Accept it, leave it, or change it.”

A year before Philip died, when he was a second-term sophomore, he took a creative writing class. He liked me to read his work and one day sent me an essay about a kid walking down the street, high on LSD, what this kid saw, what he felt like. Shit, I thought.

A week later he came to visit. You know that story I sent you, he asked? That kid walking down the street? That was me.

Well, duh.

“Philip,” I said, “listen; I know you drink, but now you’re doing drugs. Drugs are dangerous. I can’t force you not to take them, but I am asking you please, please, do not do drugs.”

To which he said that he’d done LSD twice, that he didn’t like it, wasn’t going to do it any more, not to worry.

“This is great,” I answered. “I’m your mom, you tell me this stuff, I can’t do anything about it, and when they find you dead of an overdose, they’ll blame me.”

We laughed.

And then there’s this:

The months leading up to Philip’s death, I kept seeing him dead. An image of him would float up in my mind, from the waist up, in a soft yellow button-down shirt (??), his eyes closed,  dead. I didn’t get upset, didn’t think I was having a premonition. I just saw him, dismissed it. Except for the couple times I thought about it a bit, thought about myself at his wake, pictured myself waist down, wearing exactly what it was I wound up wearing when I was actually there. And when I pictured myself, I wondered how I would act. If I truly understood “accept it, leave it, change it.” Because if I did, I’d have to be at peace. But how would it really be?

Since I’m not Jesus or Buddha, I’ll tell you how it really was. I was wrecked. I walked into that funeral home with Phil and Natalie and my brother and outside the room he was in was a plaque that read, “Philip Smyth Jr.” which made me just a little more sick and a little more dizzy.  The name that so touched me when I saw it on a birth certificate or passport or high school diploma or fencing award or even in his own uneven handwriting, now turned on me. Are you telling me that the last time I saw my son we were saying good-bye in the restaurant where we’d just eaten dinner, and the next time I’ll see him is when I walk through that door and he’s lying a coffin? Phil went in first. I waited a minute to follow. And there he was, handsome boy, lying dead, looking exactly like he always did and I fell to my knees and sobbed and all the wide world was Philip, dead. There was no life in that body. What am I to do with this? What the fuck is this? What does it mean to be dead? That’s not an academic question, it’s a blood-and-guts question because Philip was just here, just around to talk to and laugh with and eat with and hug and just like that he wasn’t. So where was he? Don’t tell me he’s in my heart, don’t do that. Of course he’s in my heart, he’s my son. He has been in my heart since the night I woke from my sleep and heard  – I heard – the whisper in my ear: you’re pregnant. It is not enough that he’s in my heart. He has to be where I can touch him, watch him, call him, hold him. Where I can feel he protects me because I know he’s got my back. What is this dead body, what has this to do with my son? I am his mother, I carried him alone before he was born and I’ll carry him alone now that he’s dead. Don’t tell me you’re there to help me because I don’t even know what you’re talking about. If the dictionary-def of help is, “to give or provide what is necessary to..satisfy a need,” then tell me what can be done to bring my son home because that – that – is my need.

So tell me what you’re going to do to help me, and don’t leave me alone when I say that you can’t.

© 2013 Denise Smyth

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