Elizabeth Blue

18 Jun 2013 4 Comments

by Denise in Death Tags: , , ,

I’m posting a poem from Luminous Blue. It was written by Elizabeth Blue, a young woman who’s taken my breath away and made me cry the kind of tears that need to be cried. I don’t want to tell you her story – you can read about it on Luminous Blue, and I would urge  you to do so. Her mother, Lucia, is as extraordinary as Elizabeth, and I’ve been blessed to meet her through our blogs. Elizabeth died at 22. What hurts my heart is that I feel the love between her and her mom, so evident because of the way they are present to each other. Read what this child had to say; she knew more at 22 than most of us learn in a lifetime. I want to post a poem she wrote; a poem that’s so layered it deserves – it needs – many readings. Keep in mind she was 20 when she wrote it.

Lucia, thank you for sharing Elizabeth with us.

Elizabeth Blue's Bird's Nest

The Risk I Took

17 Jun 2013 10 Comments

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

Here’s how I know I’m getting better:

A couple weeks ago, I was at Cindy’s house when her decorator-friend came to put up some curtains. DF and I were alone, so I asked her about her life instead of talking about mine (that’s number one). I asked her how she got into the decorating business, not about how many kids she had (numbers two and three). And then – number four, the really big one – when she (through no prompting on my part) said, “I miss my son,” and I asked, “Why?” and she said, “He went overseas for a term to study Arabic and now that he’ll be home in a week, I realize just how much I miss him,” I did not say, “Lady, you don’t know how fucking lucky you are.”

And on a maybe more minor note (maybe), when Cindy’s, em, “friend,” found out the wrist she thought was sprained was actually broken and required six weeks in a cast followed by physical therapy and characterized the whole freakin’ thing as “A Nightmare,” I did not ask her how many of her three children were still alive since, well – oh wait; they all are.

Of course, then there’s days like Friday, when I spent four morning hours watching the final season of “The Big C – Hereafter” and then cried to  Rene, the construction guy who was  in my TV room fixing some water damage on the ceiling. It wasn’t Laura Linney’s fault. If I’m watching morning TV I’m already gone. Turns out Rene had a daughter with his first wife and she died the day after she was born. He’s remarried and has no kids and I’m sure he had hours worth of story to tell me, but how do I ask when I don’t know if he’d want to tell? “Not everyone’s like you, mom,” Natalie likes to say when she thinks I’m too quick to share what she considers private.

It’s just that I’m as interested in other people’s stories as I am in my own. I want to be in your world for a while, to see it the way you do because even if it’s in some small way, I will recognize me and that means we are connected. Once I asked someone I cared very much for if I was still there if he didn’t see me. I knew I was pleading for something he couldn’t give me. Now I know I need to see as much as I need to be seen. I need to tell you about Philip as much as I need you to tell me what’s true and authentic in your life because if I cannot live in what’s true and authentic, even if the true and authentic is grief, then I will become one of the walking dead and that is not what Philip wants.

What Philip “wants?” After Philip died, Phil said to me that he wanted to carry Philip’s kind and generous spirit into the world and that I should too; that Philip would not want me to be in the grief I was in.

“How do you know what he wants?” I shot back. “Maybe he’s lonely. Maybe he wants company. Maybe he wants me with him.”

Phil didn’t answer, but months later he told me that after I said that, he thought, she is fucked up.

But here’s the thing. Some point during The Wilderness of the two days between when Philip lay dead in his room and then dead in a coffin, I was out driving somewhere for something.  Stopped for a red light at the corner of Park and Chestnut in front of  Montclair High School, I thought, I am done. I have had it. I am going to do it. I don’t know how, but I will do it. I have had it; I have had enough. And for the second time I heard my son and he said, “Mom, you have to find the joy. It doesn’t work that way.”

I knew what he meant. I knew that whatever it was I had to work out, I had to work it out where I was and that killing myself wouldn’t matter. I had to work this out. And Philip asked me if I wanted to take the way I was feeling, pick it up and give it to Natalie. Because that’s what killing myself would do. And I had this weird vision, like I’d crossed over and was standing next to Philip, unable to get to Natalie, and the grief I carried was now for her.

See, I took a risk. I took the risk of having children and what I had was one that was dead and one that was alive and needed me. I chose that responsibility –  I chose it. But all that made me feel was trapped. It was my love for Natalie that would give me the strength to lay my burden down, but I couldn’t feel it. The heart that loved was gone; without it, where could I find what I was supposed to give her?

“For I am just a troubled soul
Who’s weighted…
Weighted to the ground
Give me the strength to carry on
Till I can lay my burden down
Give me the strength to lay this burden down down down
Give me the strength to lay it down.”

From “Little Bird” by Annie Lennox

© 2013 Denise Smyth

Maybe God, Maybe Not

15 Jun 2013 16 Comments

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

When I joined AA I had pretty low opinion of God, if I had one at all. He wasn’t much of a factor in my life. If He created me, He must’ve gotten interrupted by a phone call or needed a bathroom break so that when He got back to it, He forgot what He was doing and left a piece out. If He existed, why wasn’t I happy? It didn’t seem fair that I walked around wanting to die while every day millions of others actually did.

God made no difference in my life, but drinking did. Why waste time on my knees when The Answer was limitless, close and affordable? And fast. If there was a God, He took too long, what with all those people he had to care for. So I took care of myself, starting with Boone’s Farm Apple Wine when I was 12 (those days I could take my 12-year-old-self into the liquor store and buy what I wanted) then graduating to rum, vodka or gin (mixed with soda so it wouldn’t taste so bad), pot, quaaludes, amphetamines and whatever I could find in any bathroom I entered that had a medicine cabinet.

God was a nonstarter until January, 1983, age 24, when I took my beaten self to an AA meeting. Instead of finding smoky basements filled with the old and the wet-brained, I found a group called Young Winners* and met people my own age. Younger, even. The group met on Friday nights, which made sense because Friday was drink-your-ass-off night. After the meeting, we’d go out to a diner. I didn’t do God and I didn’t do diners but I was doin’ what I was told because I believed it would make me better.

AA gave me the idea that maybe it was God that I was missing. I thought if I changed His name to Higher Power, it would change the way I thought about Him. Except HP As I Understood Him was still pretty much as distant and pissed off as my parents used to be. I was told prayer was talking to HP, and meditation was listening, so I tried both but I still felt like the only one I was talking to was myself. I was told not to worry, to “believe that we believe.” After a couple years, that’s exactly what I did. Praying got me nowhere so I let everyone else believe and concerned myself with keeping sober and trying to find the right group or the right book that would lead me to some version of a Benevolent Being just right for me.

What I didn’t know was that I was looking for something Out There that only existed in here. The connection I wanted was with  myself which sounded like some platitude until I understood what it meant. I thought I had a connection to my-self, a worthless, shameful self I devised and despised and so when I wasn’t drinking to destroy that self, I tried to do it by vomiting or starving myself (name me one addict who has only one addiction). I didn’t know that the “self” I hated was born and nurtured from the voices in my head which, powerful as they were, were just, well, voices, and since they were in my head not only could I choose not to listen to them, I could make them say something else. Something nice, even, weird and uncomfortable as that felt.

Which brings me back to Simple Isn’t Easy, but at least it’s clear and sensible. And revelatory.

Feeling more connected to a self that I was starting to like let me feel more connected to my kids. I was never as close to Philip as I was when he died. I might’ve tormented myself when my kids were growing up, but I didn’t torment them. My heart hurt for loving them and for not being able to feel how much they loved me back. And when I would tell Ed that in a show of love, Philip did this or Natalie did that, he’d say, “Why do you act so surprised every time you realize how much your kids love you?”

In the couple years before he died, Philip grew more tender than I’d ever seen him. Or maybe I just noticed it more because once he left to live on his own, he no longer had to come if I called, but he did. He’d often get in touch with me in the middle of the night to tell me he loved me. One night he called and said, “Mom, you fascinate me.” What the?? I was living on the top floor of my friend’s house ‘cause I couldn’t afford an apartment, I hated my job, I was manless and restless and still wondering what meaningful thing I could do when I got up in the morning, so what the hell was so fascinating?

“Because you’re growing up,” he said. “And I’m growing up. And we’re doing it together.” `

To which I said nothing because he’d taken my breath away.

The year before Philip died I found myself desperate to tell him I loved him. He was sweet and vulnerable and I didn’t know what I meant by that except I felt a hole in him that I was trying to stuff with my love. I told him that when I was a kid I was struck by the idea that an inch was such a tiny thing, but if you divided it, it became infinity. “I am that inch,” I told him, “and inside this body, my love for you is infinite.”

And a few months before he died, I sent him a text that read, “I am sorry for any time I was ever angry at you or made you feel bad about yourself.”

There was something between us, me and my son. Something relaxed and familiar and right. Something like we fit together, and all it ever was was easy. And that is why on the landing, when I finally stopped crawling and screaming and gave Phil a moment of space to say what he had to say, and what he had to say was, “They found him…” I didn’t hear the rest of the sentence because what I heard was Philip, and what he said was, “Mom, you gotta go deeper.” In the hot, swirling, sinking, stinking mess my world had become, I heard my son and I knew what he meant but all I could think was, fuck you, are you fucking kidding me, is this some fucking cosmic joke? and it occurred to me that right then, right that very second, there were people all over the world who were finding out their children were dead and they were feeling exactly what I was feeling and if it was possible to feel like this, what was the point of being alive?

Accept it, leave it, change it. Somebody, anybody – please, tell me; are there any other options? Because these are not going to work for me this time; these are most definitely not going to work.

*I’m not sure if anonymity only applies to people, but just in case, this was not the real name of the meeting.

© 2013 Denise Smyth

What I Chose

09 Jun 2013 6 Comments

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

“When I chose to live
there was no joy
it’s just a line that I crossed
It wasn’t worth the pain my death would cost,
so I was not lost or found.”
–Dar Williams

Two weeks before Philip died, Natalie and I were talking. It was a Sunday night, and we were headed south on the  New Jersey Turnpike, driving back to Rutgers. Some weekends she’d take the train from there to New York City to visit her boyfriend, James, at Columbia University. On Sunday, she’d take the train home to Montclair. We’d have dinner, then I’d drive her back to Rutgers. I liked that time with her. I liked any time with her. Driving home, I’d think about the things we’d spoken about.

It was good.

That particular night, we were on the subject of stability. Or lack thereof. How nothing would be here forever. This highway won’t be here one day, I told her; this car we’re riding in – gone. Nothing stays the same. Including us. We won’t be here one day, either.

And then I said something like , as far as  what happens when we die – who the hell knows? But I believe something remains. I think the energy that animates us remains. I’m not talking about heaven or hell, reincarnation or afterlife. I don’t know what I think about any of that. But I do think something remains, and that’s as far as I’ve gotten.

“Of course, if anything happens to you or Philip,” I added, “All bets are off.”

Naturally I’d say that. What parent wouldn’t? My kids’ dying was an abstraction, something I knew would be nightmarish but I didn’t really know.  Thinking back on all that’s happened is sort of like watching a movie. In the theater, you sit in the dark and you know something bad’s going to happen. The damn rabbit’s too cute not to end up dead, even if you didn’t know it’d be boiled.

What a relief; it’s not us. Even better when it turns out well, when they don’t get divorced and he’s learned his lesson and the kid gets another rabbit and and we get what we think is a Happily Ever After. Afterward, back in the sunlight, we adjust our vision, our world safe because the bad’s already happened and been resolved and what we don’t realize is that the ruby red sands of time are running out on us. And our kids, and everyone-and-thing we care about.

On February 23rd, 2012, I did not yet know things were converging, things were in motion, things I couldn’t imagine. Choices were being made, choices that could create life or destroy it. And before 10:00pm or so, this was my mental/emotional/spiritual condition: I’d finally decided to start living life instead of fighting it. Not because the thunderbolt of enlightenment finally zapped me awake, but because I’d had enough of wondering what the hell I was here for. What did matter? Point is I was here, and it was up to me what I did with what I was given. I chose life, and it was a choice I had to make every day. I knew I was part of something greater than me, something maybe people called God but I called Life. That maybe I couldn’t see the why of things, but there was some sort of order and my part was to accept it, leave it, or change it. That was my version of faith. I was workin’ it. And on February 23rd, 2012, I was workin’ the shit out of it as my son lay dead in his room, and I didn’t, couldn’t, know that the hell I thought I didn’t believe in was headed my way.

© 2013 Denise Smyth

Simple Isn’t Easy

04 Jun 2013 4 Comments

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

One day Krishnamurti told his followers he was going to tell them his secret. I can imagine the excitement rippling through the crowd, the expected relief, the gratitude that they must be his Very Special Followers since they were the ones present at this much-unexpected announcement. I imagine many of them thought their journey was over, that once they knew this secret, their suffering would end. And I expect it would, if they could really understand what he said. Because what he said was, “I don’t mind what happens.”

Truth is simple. That doesn’t make it easy.

I already said that Natalie was unhappy at school. She was a freshman at Rutgers in New Brunswick, the same college where Philip was a junior. This wasn’t a matter of oh-she’ll-be-fine-in-a-couple-of-months. In February of 2012, she was in the middle of her second semester, and I was still talking her off the ledge. She was working on transferring, and I was trying to encourage her to hang in and just finish the semester.

Conventional wisdom says “Going away to college is good for them.” CW isn’t always – if ever – wisdom. CW easily turns into something she said so he said so everyone says but not many give much thought to what they’re saying. Some kids do well at college, some don’t. There’s more than one way to live a life, and SAT brilliance coupled with a $60,000-a-year Ivy League education doesn’t mean you or your kid are going to have the fantasy future you think it promises. If you have a future at all, that is.  But it sure is fun to tell your friends about it. Even more fun than telling them about your last raise or your new Mercedes or any of those other things that make us really proud to be us until we need the next proud thing because the first proud thing is well, just so yesterday.

Philip took easily to living away, but Natalie did not. Many of my conversations with her were to remind her that there were three options in any situation: Accept it, leave it or change it. She was trying to change it by applying to other colleges; but on the way to leaving Rutgers, all she could do was accept that she was there for the short term. To do that is to take responsibility for your life, for what you’re feeling and how you’re thinking. Blame your circumstances all you want, all you’ll get is more suffering. Which isn’t to say you “accept” any kind of crap that’s thrown at you. You recognize it’s crap and figure out how to clean it up and stay out of its way once you do. And not once; it’s never once. It’s the work of a life, the work that matters most, the work that every degree in the world isn’t going to ensure you’ll have mastered.

Not to suggest this is any sort of easy. See, I’d been grappling with How to Live forever. The first time I drank I was 11, which is just to say how early I was unhappy, how early I was looking to escape. At 24 I joined AA, but nearly 30 years later I still didn’t get what was so great about life, why after 30 years of therapy and 10 of antidepressants I still didn’t want to be here. But I’d spent the year-and-a-half or so before Philip died listening to Eckhart Tolle CDs whenever I drove anywhere – and often, to listen was the reason I got in the car in the first place. Accept it, leave it or change became my credo because it gave me a way to think about a given situation instead of reacting to it.

And I paid attention to the 24/7 film festival that was going on in my head, which was mostly playing reruns. Stories of vengeance, hate, anger, victimhood, all of which I wrote, produced, directed and starred in. Worst of all, I believed them, and my emotions acted accordingly. It wasn’t the situation that was causing the feelings; it was the endless, looping, dog-chasing-its-tail stories that kept my gut churning.

So I stopped. I became a spectator instead of a participant, stopped the show when I didn’t like it. Simple, but not easy. But the work was to stay here, in the present. Not in the past that was gone or in a future that never came except as the now.

When Philip was little, I used to tell him that I was going to paint on his wall, “Be here now.” I was so busy noticing he wasn’t present that I didn’t get that I wasn’t either.

Accept it, leave it, change it. This was the work I was doing at the moment of impact, the moment I crashed and burned on the landing.

© 2013 Denise Smyth

In The Desert*

01 Jun 2013 8 Comments

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

In the desert
I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
Who, squatting upon the ground,
Held his heart in his hands,
And ate of it.
I said, “Is it good, friend?”
“It is bitter – bitter,” he answered;
“But I like it
Because it is bitter,
And because it is my heart.”
–Stephen Crane

This is the kind of poem I live for. It is a tender and terrible look at the nature of Self and suffering and acceptance. Acceptance is not happiness. It’s living with the bloody bitterness of life without wanting it to be something else.

I thought of the poem because these last few days I have cried bitterly; on awakening, on the bus, at my desk, in the bathroom. I can do nothing for it. I’m tense and anxious and I just want the relief of my son coming home; I want to hear his voice and touch him and meet him for dinner. I want to watch South Park with him, watch him fence, watch him him rip off his helmet and tip it to his opponent, which he did with grace and dignity whether he won or lost.

Round and round I go, wondering how I’m to live with this, round and round, wanting Philip to be here but not wanting to be in anyone else’s shoes because it is my bitter heart. It’s just that the enormity of my loss has been hitting me again, and I’m starting to go under.

One of the ways my Very Own Personal Background has informed my grief comes from believing myself to be part of the Scotty-Beam-Me-Up crowd. My skin doesn’t wear well here, and I have a hard time inhabiting it in some peaceful way. Before Philip died, I decided to start fresh, to stop asking myself what the hell I was here for. It didn’t matter why I was here – the point was, I am here. So what do I do with the life that I have? I started by narrowing my focus to what I loved, because that’s what’s worth living for. First, my kids; as long as I have my kids, I’m okay, I told myself.  But before I could figure out what next, Philip died. My focus became so narrow I could thread it through a needle: Philip, Philip, Philip. I told myself I had to go on for my daughter, but what to do about going on for me?

I need to go back to the landing in order to go forward with the rest of my story, back to the night Phil came to me and said the unsayable. Something happened there, something I’m still trying to find language for. If I am at all a spiritual person, it lies in the fact that I believe there is a meaning to our lives beyond the events that happen in it. Our situations are the form; the meaning is in the content of those situations. Your car can get stolen and my car can get stolen, but beyond the inconvenience of it, what it means to me is not what it means to you. It can’t be. What happens in our lives isn’t separate from the context it occurs in.

Whatever faith I have is a culmination of what I’ve been searching for since I was old enough to ask about the why of it. There was AA, Buddhism, A Course In Miracles, Rebirthing, Past Life Regression, Reichian Breathing, Shiatsu, Yoga, Homeopathy, Eckhart Tolle. Therapy. Lots and lots of therapy. What I believe comes from what makes sense to me; from what I’ve studied and what I’ve lived. It doesn’t fit into a box that I can name, like Buddhism or Alcoholism or any other -ism. It’s evolving, because coming to consciousness isn’t a place you get to. It’s realizing you’re already there.

I believe in the simple law of Karma. On the physical level, it’s easy to see the consequences of our actions. I stick my hand in the fire, I get burned. It’s no different on the spiritual or psychic level. If, say, you live a life of greed, you won’t be at peace. An unhappy life is consequence enough. That’s it. I’m not talking great metaphysical platitudes. I’m talking common sense. And the fact is that we are the ones who decide what’s good and what’s bad. The death of a child is the worst thing that can happen to a parent – but it’s not a punishment. It is a fact. A hard, brutal fact. If I decide Philip’s death is a punishment for something I did, then – as my therapist pointed out – he becomes a prop in my life instead of a person in his own right. His death is not a punishment. It is a tragic blow, and the question is, now what? Because in some sense there is a big “supposed-to” about all this. A familiarity. Something I’m supposed to know or learn and that I couldn’t and wouldn’t if Philip hadn’t died.

The odd thing is that Natalie feels the same. He cheated death once, she said to me – at the beach. She’d had a feeling something was going to happen to him. Two weeks before he died, she told her boyfriend she was afraid that he was going to.

But here’s the thing. I don’t believe in destiny.  We are free to choose. So what do I mean by saying “supposed-to?” I am holding conflicting ideas because I have to. I am not talking logic, the kind of logic we apply to what we see in front of us. I am talking about the deeper meaning beyond the logic, the meaning that no one can find for us although certain people can guide us. I can say there’s something “supposed-to” about Philip’s death as well as say we are free to make choices and that he did not have to die. I have to be able to hold these conflicting thoughts and not settle for the false and ultimately deadening comfort of thinking I’ve got it figured out. It is my Mind that wants to know, while my Spirit wants to wander.

And this is part of what I have to tell you before I can get back to the landing.

*This is actually part of a longer poem by Crane, “The Black Riders and Other Lines.”

© 2013 Denise Smyth

What I Know

26 May 2013 28 Comments

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

I haven’t talked about this part of the story because it’s fucking hard to write. Harder than screaming down the stairs and pulling my hair and drowning in my cousin’s coat and all of it because that was about me. This is about Philip and what I know and what I imagine and I’m skittish as a cat about what it sounds like. This part’s focal point involves heroin, which is so Requiem For A Dream-ish that maybe it leaves nothing but Jennifer Connelly on her hands and knees and Jared Leto’s gruesome, festering, amputated arm as your tableau vivant.

This is what I know:  The night of February 21st, 2012, in celebration of the unfortunately-named Fat Tuesday, Philip went to a party. Last thing Natalia said to him was, “Don’t do anything stupid.” He did. Last thing he said back was, “I’ll call you in the morning.” He didn’t. At the party, he drank. Back home, he went into his room, locked the door, snorted some heroin. Wednesday he didn’t show up for lunch with Natalie. Thursday night, Max,* a housemate and Philip’s friend since elementary school, asked another housemate if he’d seen Philip, that Philip’s car was in the yard and hadn’t been moved in a while. The two of them went to his room, found it locked, broke into it, and saw him lying on the floor. Max started yelling, one of them called 911. The operator asked them to touch him, check his pulse, but Max was yelling and saying he couldn’t; he told me he tried to touch Philip with his foot, that he was freaked out.

‘’He was my friend since I was a kid,” he told me; “He was my best friend, and I found  him. How am I supposed to live with that?” So at the wake, when Max cried and said to me, “It’s my fault, I’m the one who brought it into the house, I’m the one who gave it to him,” I answered, “Look, you didn’t shove it up his nose. You can’t spend the rest of your life feeling guilty about it.”

A week later, raw as if my skin’d been peeled off with a razor, maybe I was thinking Max should feel guilty. I called him up to ask him why he didn’t tell the cops where he got the heroin. I’d get in trouble, he answered.  Well maybe if you told them, I answered, some next kid wouldn’t have to find his best friend dead and some next kid’s mother, father and sister wouldn’t have to spend the rest of their lives suffering about it. And if you don’t, I added, you get to spend the rest of your living with it.

I didn’t consider what I was really asking, that ratting on a heroin dealer isn’t like turning in the creep on the corner selling $2 joints, that we’re talking some serious Sopranos-type shit here. I saw Max, a couple months later, working behind the counter of a convenience store with narrow aisles lined with canned Vienna Sausage and 3.5 ounce containers of Bumblebee Chunk Tuna,  the counter crammed with Tic-Tacs and Tastykake Honey Buns and where there was always at least one customer doing some serious Lottery Ticket Buying. How are you, he asked. How do you think I am, I answered. And in case you’re wondering, when I got to back my car and sat gripping the steering wheel like a Mac truck was coming at me, thinking how Max had started the whole heroin thing and wondering if Philip’d be alive if he hadn’t, I did not wish that it had been Max instead. I thought about it, wondered why I didn’t wish it. I didn’t wish it because that’s a fantasy, and fantasies are dangerous. If I fantasize I’m living in a world that doesn’t exist, trying to solve a problem where it can’t be solved. I didn’t wish it because Philip is my child, dead or alive, and dead or alive I have a relationship with him. His death turned our relationship into sacred space, and thoughts of vengeance don’t belong there. I can’t get lost in whys and wishes. What would wishing Max dead mean? Only that I was furious and not doing the work that is required a parent do when she loses her child.

My son is dead and that’s forced me into a reality I do not want, but is what’s been given me. I can want it to be different, but it’s delusional to think that I can orchestrate one part of Life and not all of it. I don’t want the responsibility of all of it, and besides, it’s not an option. The only sane option is the one that feels like it’s driving me crazy: Philip has died, and how the bloody hell am I to live with it?

*NB: Natalia notwithstanding, I do not use real names when it comes to Philip’s friends.

© 2013 Denise Smyth

Aftermath

21 May 2013 6 Comments

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

It’s over, all but the aftermath. Which isn’t ever really over, just the New Normal. The priest at my dad’s funeral mass told us not to believe that time heals all wounds. I don’t and haven’t and was glad to hear a Holy Man whose business is Hope say the same.

I wrote my dad’s eulogy, and one of the things I said was, “My dad has suffered the deaths of two of his grandchildren, two who should be here to mourn him, but instead are there to greet him,” and that “We take an anguished comfort that Nicole and Philip are with you.” I think that last might not be true. I think there’s no comfort I take from Philip’s death. Plenty of people die without their kids or grandkids or whoever else they thought would outlive them not being “there” first. It is our elders who should pave the way.

That’s two “shoulds” in one paragraph. I don’t believe in “shoulds,” even if I feel them. This is what Death does. It forces you to look at your beliefs and assumptions and what you took for granted vs. Real-Time Reality. When I start “shoulding” it means I’ve not been paying attention. And even now I find myself clucking and disbelieving every time someone shoots themselves in the head after shooting their girlfriend in the head and why do I do that? Is there any form of terror or degradation left that is still shocking or stunning?

But maybe it’s good that we can be shocked. Maybe that’s our humanity, maybe that’s the best part of us, the part that wants peace more than fear or anger. The part that recognizes that we can feel just as violent as the next guy – “God! Did he really just do that?!?!? I could kill him!” – but we really wouldn’t want to back up most of what we say about someone when we forget the someone we’re referring to is part of that humanity. We are the recipient of whatever kindness and humanity we offer.

Dad, Philip, Nicole – again and always, rest in peace. You are loved and missed. I promised you I would find my own peace. I am not so sure now. It’s my hurt and restless heart I’m trying to listen to but I can’t always hear what it’s saying.

I haven’t written much this week – understandable, but I couldn’t figure out how to continue because I kept thinking, “I have to get back to it. How do I get back to it? Where was I?” But I’m not going back to anything; I’m going forward. I’ll continue to write from now, and the New Now is that my dad has died.

I think I left off  that first night, balled up in my couch, holding on for my goddamn life. Freefalling down the rabbit hole. I don’t know if or when I hit bottom, but I do know I got off the couch. More on that next.

© 2013 Denise Smyth

R.I.P.

14 May 2013 11 Comments

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

Neither Philip or Natalie were “there” for all of my life. But loving someone can do strange things to the space-time continuum. It’s hard to remember I had a life before my children. I can remember scenes, of course, but I don’t remember what I felt like then, how I lived without the love that has both brought me to my knees and given me a reason not to stay there. Phil told me about a friend of his who lost her son. She has a place where she’s set some things of his, and every morning she spends some time with him. Then she gets up and lives her life, reminding herself she had a life without him even when he was alive. Phil used that as a model.

But we all bring what we bring to the situations in our lives. There is a sameness to I-lost-a-son-and-you-lost-a-son. But it’s circumstantial, is all. We aren’t each other and we didn’t lose each other’s sons. And maybe you were pretty damn satisfied about where you thought you were headed, maybe you had a sustainable marriage or work that made you feel useful and productive or a burning desire to do x, y or z with the time that you had that was free for choosing.

I was trying to figure all of that out, and when it was hard or I got scared because I felt so alone, I’d think, “I have my kids.” They were my place to rest. But that place has to be my place; that place cannot depend on who is or isn’t here or what anyone does or doesn’t do.  Yesterday I said that Philip’s love is mine and so it doesn’t leave. Not so with my peace of mind. Maybe just not yet.

On Sunday I read something someone had written for her mom on Mother’s Day. She’d written the standard, “You were always there, etc.,” but not just because it’s what you say. It’s because – and this was clear – she meant it. Her mom meant to her, and she wanted her mom to know. But all I could think of when I read that was Philip. I might have been “here” first, but I wasn’t here the way I was after he was born. I want to say to him, ‘You were always with me,” because he’s just as gone as if he had been.

My dad died. On Mother’s Day, around 11:30 or so. His heart was so very tired. Today is his birthday – He would’ve been 83. It’s also my parents’ anniversary. 58 years, I think? I have to check.

My dad loved to bowl. Laura, Philip’s ex and good friend, knew my dad. She sent me a text that read, “It’s comforting that he will be able to spend time with Philip…they can bowl together.” For whatever reason, I laughed; how good to laugh. And Nicole, go join in and kick their asses!

Dad, Philip, Nicole. I love you, we all love you. And what we wish most is for you all to rest in peace. We will try to do the same. We need time, so be patient with us. We’ll get there. I promise.

© 2013 Denise Smyth

Still the best day…

12 May 2013 11 Comments

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

It’s Mother’s Day, and I am reminded that my children are the best thing I’ve done in my life. And I do know they’re not “mine,” not really. They came to the world through me, and I’ve guided them as I’ve let them go.  All letting go of them ever meant was allowing the bond between us to grow longer. They are, truly, the people I love most.

It might be more precise to say that they evoke the most love from me. That is my comfort; that this love is deeply me, and in that sense, I “have” my children. But I miss my son and I love him so much, so very, heart-achingly much. Still; it’s my love, and always will be.

This is my second Mother’s Day since Philip died. I have the last Mother’s Day card he’d given me on my desk. That year he and Natalie picked out particularly lovely cards, so I laid them flat on my desk, fan-style, as a decoration. This is what the front of Philip’s card says: “You are not only my mother, you are the woman who shaped my life.” He signed it, “Yeah, it’s corny. But it’s true. I love you.”

There is a reason – a very real reason – people say, “Don’t go to bed mad.”

So here are some stories because I very much need to talk about him right now.

Two weeks before Philip turned two – and while I was four months pregnant with Natalie – his Grandpa Bill (Phil’s dad) died. I took Philip to the wake. Death is a fact of life and I don’t think it should be hidden from children. The question is how to tell them? There isn’t any right answer. There’s you and your child and your capacity to know what s/he can handle and some imagination about how to broach the subject. I wanted Philip to begin to understand that sometimes the people in his life would no longer be there. I didn’t want to say his grandpa was sleeping and I didn’t want to say he was dead. One was a lie and one was too difficult to explain. There’s only so much an almost-two-year-old can grasp. So I knelt down to face Philip with a belly full of Natalie and said, “Philip, we’re going to see Grandpa Bill. He’s going to be lying down, and he’s not going to get up. Is that okay?”

Who knows how much he understood of what I was saying? But he was a calm child, so I wasn’t worried. I got him dressed, then picked him up and stood him on the kitchen table to straighten his little shirt, smooth his little pants. As I was being  a (slightly) fussy mom, I asked, “Philip, do you know where Grandpa Bill is?” to see if he’d say, “Sleeping.” Instead, he raised his little hand high in the air, index finger pointing toward the ceiling, smiled, and said “In the light.”

Whoa. I stepped back and stared at him, this sweet, innocent, amazing little boy, standing there with his hand in the air, full of smiles and secret knowing. I didn’t know where the hell that came from except to say that children are closer to something that gets lost for most of us as we get older.

After Philip died, Phil, Natalie and I went to the house he’d been living in to get his things. I took his notebooks, and it was just a couple of weeks ago that I looked through them. I found a short essay he’d written about his childhood, and he talked about two things. The first was the apartment we lived in until he was seven, which he described as small, dark and cramped. It wasn’t. It was a big, bright apartment, the entire first floor of a house. But the room he shared with Natalie was small, and maybe that’s what he was remembering.

The second thing he wrote about was the wake. He thought he was four years old, said that he saw his grandpa lying in a coffin and it was creepy, but that he looked around and saw people talking and laughing and then he knew it was okay. Being there struck him deeply, more deeply than I ever knew.

And this is what I mean about Philip being a calm kid:

We were a “traditional” family. Phil worked, which meant I got to stay home with the kids. They were my “work.” I nursed them because it was a way of loving them, washed their diapers because I didn’t like fuzz and plastic, made clothes for them because I love what I can do with fabric. I put them to sleep when they were tired and stayed up with them when they weren’t. And when they were ready for solids I made their food, which mostly meant throwing whatever I cooked for dinner into a blender. I don’t get buying Designer Baby Food packed in teeny, expensive jars. I can mash my own bananas, thank you very much. And what was the point of made-for-baby-applesauce when Mott’s-no-sugar-added served the same purpose? Earth’s Best came from my kitchen and not from a jar, no matter how many green fields, fresh fruits and diapered-only toddlers its adorable label had.

But traditional doesn’t mean popular, and the few friends I had went to work soon after their babies were born. My world was small and lonely before I had Philip, and shrunk to mostly me and him after he was born. By the time he was a year and toddling around I hadn’t changed my mind about staying home, but I was bored and frustrated which I attributed to my lack of imagination and not my circumstances. Most of my conversations were the ones I was having with myself, which is pretty bad news since I do not keep myself very good company.

One thing I did was set up a nook in the corner of my dining room where I could sew. Which involved pins. Lots of pins. When I worked, I’d wind up spreading out to the floor and the dining room table and I took my pins with me. Carefully, because pins in the hands of a child are weapons, which they’re likely to turn on themselves in ways I still don’t like to imagine.

But I wasn’t careful enough. One day Philip toddled over to the dining room table. One determined hand grasped its edge while one curious hand went searching until it found a box of 200 pins which made a slightly pleasing tinkling sound when he knocked them down and they scattered all over the hardwood floor.

Drastic times call for drastic measures, and it seemed to me that picking up the nearest chair and banging it repeatedly on the floor while yelling, I CAN’T TAKE IT ANY MORE! was the exact right thing to do. Except no matter how much I tried to lose my mind, a piece of it remained. “What the fuck?” it asked. “Your kid is watching you and you’re scaring him to death.”

Philip was behind me, and I imagined the terror that must be on his face, his eyes tearing, his mouth turned down and trembling, ready to open up and start howling. Goddamnit. I stopped with the chair and turned around expecting to gather him up to shush and reassure him, except he didn’t need any of that at all. He was watching me, little Buddha, waiting for me to stop, and if he could’ve talked I swear he’d have said, “Better now?”

I was, enough to laugh and pick him up and forget about sewing pins for a while. Which makes me think of the saying, “Little kids, little problems. Big kids, big problems.” It never occurred to me what they were talking about.

© 2013 Denise Smyth

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