Whats and Whys

09 Oct 2013 21 Comments

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

Nothing real can be threatened
Nothing unreal exists
Therein lies the peace of God
—- A Course In Miracles

I guess you can say it’s all about perception. Philip says, “Mom, my perception is different now. Let me help you see.”

Elizabeth Blue helped me see, too. She wrote, “…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 body or mind/could miss it.”

First off – she’s right. If we are the world, then look at how Lucia misses her daughter. Look at Elizabeth’s dad and sister, all her family and friends, who goddamn miss her. Hell, I miss her, and I never even met her. But when Elizabeth speaks to Lucia, when Philip speaks to me, there’s no sorrow. There’s light and wisdom.

Although Philip once asked me how I felt when I’d see him sad, troubled upset; wasn’t my heart wrenched? How do you think it is for me, he said, watching you suffer like this? And he asked me what responsibility means to me. Which gave me pause to think how once he died there were certain responsibilities I threw away. What does it matter anymore; he’s dead? So what if I don’t act like the mom I was when he was alive?

I’m saying this seriously; I’m talking about the ways I stopped taking care of myself, the ways I tried to hurt myself, because Philip died. Things I’ve not yet talked about here. Why did I think any of that was okay because he was dead, but it wasn’t okay when he was here? Not to mention that he isn’t my only child. What about Natalie – didn’t I still have a responsibility to her?

But perception, and Elizabeth. To take what she wrote a little further. What is the world when we’re not here to witness it? How real is it then? And before you say, “Are you freakin’ crazy? It’s obvious the world is still here when you die – people die all the time and the world’s still here,” don’t listen to what I’m saying with your mind, listen with your heart or whatever you call the place in you that has room for wonder. The mind wants the kind of proof that makes it impossible to believe anything other form is real and it’s completely dismissive of space. Which, by the way, is necessary for form to occur in. But who ever thinks about that? What do you look at when you’re looking? Space, or the objects in that space? Space can’t be nothing, since without it, there can’t be anything.

What’s this have to do with perception? Just that we don’t see it all, literally or figuratively.  We dismiss space as nothing because we can’t see it, yet it’s essential. Which is to say that what we can’t see is not nothing.

How many different ways are there to perceive the world, and which one is real? An animal, an insect, a bird – they don’t see the world the way we do. But we have a higher consciousness, so our perception is correct, would be the argument. Fair enough. But think about this.

An ant goes on about its ant-life without knowing anything about us. It scurries around all day doing its ant-things according to however it’s perceiving its ant-world, which we happen to share with it. It knows nothing about us human beans. See, we have the bigger picture. We see the ant even if it can’t see us; we exist even if the ant isn’t aware of us, even if what we do doesn’t figure into the ant’s life. Which it mostly doesn’t, unless, say, we step on it, which I personally am especially prone to do when it’s the big, juicy black-carpenter-ant-type. And I’d bet if an ant could think the way we do, it’d be thinking it’s the Big Cheese of the Planet, Lord and Master of every other non-ant form.

Well…what, then, makes us so sure there isn’t some other consciousness hanging around here that we can’t perceive? And if the world is based on perception, what’s the truth? The “truth” can’t be anything that changes. If what’s true for me isn’t what’s true for you, then how can it be truth? Relatively speaking, it is; but absolutely? No. So if the world depends upon our perception…and if differing perceptions give rise to different realities…what is the true nature of reality??

Could I even pretend to answer that? Of course not. I’m just trying to put words on what all I’ve been thinking about since Philip died. What he’s trying to teach me, what he’s asking from me. And seeing how much I don’t know. It’s the willingness to not-know that makes room for the miracles.

I’m trying to tell a story and it’s textured and layered and I keep backing up before I go forward. When I ended the post about signs, I said I had more. Which got me to writing a story I wanted to tell you. Which then got me writing another story that had to precede that first story because it needs some context to be effective. And somehow, I wound up writing all this.

And I think it’s because the fact of Philip giving me signs or experiences doesn’t leave me making fists with bent elbows, pulling them down to my hips and uttering a loud, self-satisfactory Yessssss! Philip told me early on that signs were pointers. In themselves they are not “truth,” but pointers to that truth. Reminders to pay attention. So what does this mean? What does it mean that the things Philip communicates are visible, but he isn’t?  Signs, listening, dictation, direct experience; these don’t take away the grief. Always the duality. Always. I weep for him every day; yet he’s all around me, always reminding me that he is.

But I’ve so many questions. What is Death? What is Life, for that matter? What’s it mean that we’re born to die? What’s it mean that so many people communicate with their dead loved ones? The “is-ness” of Philip, of Elizabeth, is palpable, but I want to ask what can’t be answered: Where are you??

In other words, what the hell is going on here?

© 2013 Denise Smyth

I Disagree

05 Oct 2013 16 Comments

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

Today I’m wishing to be a poet. Today I’m wishing I could write elevated language; like what I want to say I just can’t get to in simple sentences. Because I’m trying to say what I feel when I look to my left and see Philip’s headshot on my desk, to the right and see the portrait of me, him and Natalie. The helplessness, frustration and continual shock of those moments caught in time, that this child of mine is to live in my memory but not in the flesh. I want to say it in such gorgeous language it’ll pierce your heart the way mine is; I want to give shape to our shared humanity. Because I’m standing out here in a way that feels alone in the way that only Death can leave you, and that’s not where I’m wanting to be.

I’m not a big reader of poetry. I don’t always have the patience, don’t always understand what I’m reading. But when a poem moves me, I stay moved. Like Stephen Crane’s, “In the Desert,” which I already wrote about. Like Yeats’ “Leda and the Swan.” Talk about gorgeous language, about language painting a living, trembling picture. Like Jane Kenyon’s, “Having it Out With Melancholy,” – depression elevated to art. Tell me there isn’t something in it that won’t have you saying, “Yes, yes.” Or anything by Louise Gluck.

My friend Ed is a poet. We met when I was 36. Philip was three and Natalie just turned one, and I decided to go to college and get the degree I’d never gotten back when everyone else I knew did. I still don’t have it, but I have Ed.

Ed is an English Professor, and he was teaching the Shakespeare class I’d signed up for. It was somewhere around the first minute he started speaking when I thought, “This is the teacher I’ve been looking for.” Bam. Sometimes you just recognize someone even if you’ve never met them before. And nearly twenty years later, I can tell you he’s saved my life. My emotional, spiritual, psychic life. The life underneath the busyness of what it looks like we’re doing when what we’re really trying to do is hang on for another day.

Last week Ed was talking to me about John Keats. Ed is a serious man, Keats is a serious poet. “Have you seen the sketch of Keats on his deathbed by Joseph Severn?” he asked. “Go look at it.” So I looked at this beautiful boy, 25 and dying, caught in a moment of rest and peace, and then I emailed Ed. Did you know he died the same day as Philip, I asked; did you know the year was 1821? 18-21?? I did not, he answered. Then, a few days later, this, from Ed:

Sonnet: A Poet, A Boy

He died the day the poet John Keats died,
whose tormented lungs finally gave way.
He was twenty-five, superbly alive,
inventing language to preserve the day,
the instant of the living human heart.
With words he seized a handful of water–
impossible, I know–but his great art
achieved this, as he, dying, grew gaunter.
The other one was an older child,
twenty-one on the day he lost his heart.
He was–I knew him–clever, loving, mild–
but becoming lost had become his art.
Two beautiful males share the same death date–
a poet, a boy, who rushed to his fate.

And I am collapsed again because that boy – my boy – “rushed to his fate.” It’s all our fates, no? To die? It’s a fact we don’t face until we’re forced to. Philip was racing to his death unaware and it is precisely his vulnerability that’s killing me. I’ve been asked if I’m angry at him for taking the drugs that killed him; I’m not. He didn’t know. Yes, he made poor choices but he wasn’t able to do otherwise. Like all the poor choices I’ve made – and I’m talking serious shit, alcohol-drugs-anorexia-bulimia shit. I couldn’t choose otherwise until I was ready, and I happened to live until I was.

You can’t not love the light because he’s died, Ed says. But I’ve always preferred the night, the gloaming and the gray. Yet sometimes, at a certain time of day, when that light hits the trees in a certain way, I think he’s right. But other times, like when its harshness wakes me from a dreamless sleep to remind me once again of what I’ve lost, I disagree. And even though I know Ed knows better than me, for tonight – I disagree.

© 2013 Denise Smyth

Year Two

28 Sep 2013 47 Comments

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

Last Saturday I was out with Natalie at a local Arts and Crafts Fair. We ran into G., a woman I know from a former job. She’s  also the mom of Natalie’s friend. G. is, in a word, rich.

What’s that mean, to me? Nothing simple, for sure. It’s too easy to say envy, jealousy. What does it mean to envy or be jealous? It’s in my reactions to the world that I learn how to live in it.

There is something exotic and fascinating about That Much Money, but I don’t envy G. In fact, never have I more not wanted to be anyone else or have what anyone else has since Philip died. What I want is Philip here and Natalie safe and sound along with him. I love Philip too much to want to be anything other than his mother. Any wanting for what I don’t have means I lose Philip. Because in order for me to know and love and have had 21 years of Philip, my life had to be exactly as it was.

And I can’t imagine a scenario where I would have done something differently so he wouldn’t have died. There’s the day I could’ve lost him, the day I wrote about in The Story. That would have been disastrous. That would have left me a hollowed-out wreck of a human being. But when Philip died, he was out of the house and mostly on his own. He seemed okay – but he’d gotten mixed up in something bigger than he was, and I’ll never know if the heroin was cut or if his body was compromised or if it was a straight-up overdose. Doesn’t matter. He died, but our relationship didn’t.

So – Saturday. G., who I last saw at Philip’s wake, asked how I was. I’m okay, I answered. Good, good, she said, nodding firmly, as she turned to Natalie. Which is right about when I split, like those people who have NDEs and feel like they’re up high watching what’s going on below them, which, of course, includes themselves. I understood that to G, being “okay” and soldiering on was what mattered. I wasn’t so sure I agreed, but I’m not so sure about a lot of things any more. I stood there doing the work of talking and listening while wondering who the fuck am I because what I am is not okay but I can talk and listen and be at this A&C Fair while my son is dead. My son is dead. And there is some profound crisis I’m in that I don’t know how to write about and that I certainly didn’t want to talk to G. about but it’s some next – what? Phase? Stage? I’m so changed I don’t know what call things, how to say what this is. But if I had to give it a name, I’d call it, “Year Two.”

G. has 5 kids. She told me about the daughter who’s graduated and works in D.C., about the one – Natalie’s friend – who’s been traveling all over the world, about the three kids that are still at home…I don’t know if what came up can be called “envy” or “jealousy,” but I do know the ghosts of guilt and shame were involved, at least for the few minutes I stood there trying to listen. Because she gave her children experiences I wasn’t able to. A lot of what bugged me about money, I told myself, was not about the things it could buy, but about the experiences it could offer. And with the exquisite antenna I had to to find things to make myself miserable about, the ways I couldn’t broaden my kids’ world because I didn’t have enough money became endless.

My kids grew up in a neighborhood with families that were pretty well-off. The people that lived around us vacationed several times a year, did endless home renovations; they had high-end cars, full-time nannies,  and money for college tuition for the expensive colleges that their childrens’ expensive tutors ensured they’d get into. And lest you think otherwise, I had some damn good neighbors. It’s just that I’d moved into a world that was different from the fantasy I’d had about it. I went to the suburbs thinking my kids would be out running up and down the block with a horde of other kids whose parents moved and thought the same. I had to get with the program. Who had time to run around? After school meant sports like soccer because my town’s big on soccer and one mom on my block told me Philip had to play soccer because, well, all the kids played soccer but what did I know of soccer? I came from Brooklyn. We played softball. And even that wasn’t something Philip particularly liked to do.

And summer? The school year hadn’t ended when the exodus to summer sleep-away camp began. Which made me feel like I was doing something awfully wrong because I wouldn’t have sent Philip and Natalie away for two months even if money had nothing to do with it. Life lasted longer than childhood. I wanted my kids around while I could have them.

Which was prescient on my part. Philip’s life lasted longer than childhood, but not by much.

Now, I knew enough to tell myself that whatever I thought I couldn’t give my kids because of money wasn’t what really  mattered. It nagged at me anyway.  I felt a little different, a little inadequate, a bit of a nobody. And “a little” was enough to make me feel like my kids deserved more than I could give them.

You know what? It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter how many vacations we went on or the size of our house or that Philip didn’t want to play baseball or soccer and that when he did, he wasn’t very good at it. The things that used to nag at me even though I told myself they didn’t matter, really didn’t matter.

What matters is the poem that Philip wrote in second grade, where he said that out of all of his friends, I was his best. What matters is giving birth to him exactly the way I wanted to, and the months of nursing him when all the world was his eyes locked with mine. What matters are the stories I haven’t told yet, the things I remember because even if it was just for a moment there was nothing but the truth of love between us, moments that even his dying can’t take away.

To elevate another cliche to the status of truth, all the money in the world can’t buy what matters. And yes – I had to learn it the hard way.

© 2013 Denise Smyth

A Smidgen

21 Sep 2013 26 Comments

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

Here’s how it started.

Right after Philip died, I’d managed to drag my battered self into my car to drive wherever. I’m not sure how I got anywhere I was going if Natalie wasn’t driving me because I did more staring than looking – that is, when I wasn’t hunched over the steering wheel howling, my son…my son…my son… so that even the air around me reeked of grief. But I managed to stop at red and go on green and not run anyone over while I was at it, so I’d say there was an angel or two hanging around with me. Because it seemed to me that I wasn’t really in the world, but aware that I could still cause consequences in the world. Like running over a kid in the street and putting that kid’s parents in the same hell as me.

Misery loves company? Oh, I think not. Please, God, give it all to me, I’d think; I can’t feel any worse, so just give me everyone else’s grief and let them go on in peace. Arrogant, if you will, but I meant it in the best way possible.

So I was driving and thinking over and over, I want I a sign, Philip; I want a sign, I want a sign. I was desperate and crazed and when I stopped for a light and saw the license plate in front of me, the chill that blew through my body must’ve lowered my temp a degree or so and it was that that caught my attention before I really saw what I was looking at. The plate read, “PWS201T.”

Philip’s full name is Philip William Smyth. His birthday is the 20th**, and he died when he was 21. Hence, 201. And he was born on 1/20, which is 201 mixed up. I sat there in a haze of holy shit.

(“T” means nothing; I mean, Tuesday was the last day he was alive and Thursday I found out he’d died, but that seems a stretch.)

What do I make of this? Connection. My yearning for a spiritual path is about connection. And I might cry out, “God” much as the next lapsed Catholic, but I don’t call “God” what I’m looking for simply because the word’s been so personalized it’s become polarizing. My God, your God, their God, no-such-thing-as-God. Like someone knows better than the next person about this thing they call God. Whoever said man made God in his own image was right.

But there’s something I’m wanting to know, and maybe I can’t put words on it but I’ll know it when I see it. And I knew what I was seeing. Besides the fact that Philip died when he was 21, the 21st was the last day he was alive. The last text I sent him was at 11:02. My phone extension at the job I left when he died was 201. It was April 20th** when I started to work a day a week for Cindy. Her office is on the 20th floor, her suite number is 2010, her parking spot is #21 and the address of the garage she uses is 1120. I wrote my 21st post on this blog on May 21st. I found my apartment on July 21st and I got the interview for my new job on August 21st.

And I’ll be damned if I don’t get nudged by Philip every day, several times a day. I’ll be thinking of him and hitting a low, or listening to him with love and gratitude, or worried and unsure about what the fuck next and 21 or 201 will catch my eye. I don’t look for it – if I walk around looking, I don’t see, and it wouldn’t mean as much. Because I look with my mind, but I see with my heart. If nine times out of ten when something catches my eye, if when I happen to glance up or down or over or around and there it is, it means something. And the simplest thing it means is that Philip is dead but our relationship is very much alive.

So here are some of my stories:

I talked about going to Key Biscayne last year with my cousin; a gift from her, to get me away. Like I didn’t take myself with me. When we got to the airport, I looked at the flight number on the boarding pass. Four digits that meant nothing. Couldn’t you have made it some version of 201, I asked my son? Flight number on the way home:  2110.

Phil and I had a thing for David Lynch’s “Twin Peaks.” The night Philip was born, while I was in our bedroom with my midwife, wailing and whimpering because how the hell was I supposed to split open wide enough to push what felt like a bowling ball out between my legs, Phil was watching Agent Cooper being seduced by Audrey and dreaming of Bob and Midgets and the One-Armed Man. Thus my son was ever associated with “Twin Peaks.”

A couple months after Philip died, I was looking through Netflix Instant Watch to see what next series I could get lost in, and there it was. “Twin Peaks” is odd and bizarre and wicked and I wanted to find a world that trumped what had now become my own odd and bizarre and wicked. Of course, why I thought watching a show that starts with a guy finding a  dead teenaged girl washed up on shore would be a good thing is a question I still cannot answer.

However. Turned out Laura Palmer – said dead teenaged girl – died the same day I found out Philip died – February 23rd.  Turned out both of them had a thing for cocaine. Turned out the population of the town as written on the “Welcome To” billboard in the intro is 51,201. Turned out upon further investigation the population was originally supposed to be 5,120.

When my dad was in the hospital, the room numbers in the CICU ward went from 201 to 210. When it was time to see him, the nurse led us past 201 and headed toward the end. Maybe 210, I thought. No – he was in 209. Okay.

Once in the room, the nurse asked everyone to step back from the bed. The hospital beds had built in digital scales to weigh bedridden patients, and she didn’t want anyone touching the bed and skewing his weight. So we all backed it up and she pressed the button and the thing did its calculating and when it was done, turned out my dad’s weight was 201 lbs.

First Mother’s Day: Driving, thinking, trying not to cry because Natalie’s in the car with me. I noticed the license plate in front of me: PWS. I got a chill, and a second of clouded vision; then I noticed a car passing me on the left. Its  license plate read 2ND LIFE.

Second Mother’s Day: I went to the movies with Kirsten, before having dinner with my daughter. Halfway through the film, I thought, “Philip, it’s Mother’s Day. Can you please give me a sign?” Turned out one of the characters went to a motel. Turned out the room number she stayed in was 201.

Sitting in the waiting room while Natalie had a doctor’s appointment, I was on the brink. Tipping over, about to go down. Then I heard my son. “Mom, there are signs here,” he said. Okay. First thing I did was look to my left. There was a magazine rack. I looked up the row and at the top saw a magazine called, “201 Family.”

This is just a smidgen of all the things I wrote down until I stopped writing them all down because it’s too much and too often and I no longer have to write everything down to remind myself it really happened.

And it’s not only about numbers. More on that next.

**My birthday is April 20th; Philip’s is January 20th, Nicole’s is March 20th, and Gerard’s – who I’ve mentioned and will talk more about – is October 20th (as in, 10/20).  Three I love deeply, and who left this world just way too quickly.

10/19/13 Update – I don’t normally change a blog post after the fact, but I have to add: I was re-reading this post tonight and I realized that I posted it on September 21st. And I swear to God I didn’t know it when I did it.

Just sayin’

© 2013 Denise Smyth

Gone?

04 Sep 2013 87 Comments

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

When my dad died I got off the writing track briefly, wondered how I was going to get back to it, realized there wasn’t any “going back,” there was just continuing. But it can be a long time back from that break in the continuity. Losing focus becomes its own excuse. I regress to, “I have nothing to say, and who cares, anyway?” It’s seductive and it’s familiar. Time to pay attention.

It’s exciting to have a new job and a new apartment. I’m busy with sorting and dumping and organizing and buying. And rushing. Hurry up and put up the shelves, install the closet pole, get the new bureau for storage. Get rid of the boxes. One more box and I’ll breathe, I tell myself.  Just one more.

I’m rushing to stop. To the finish line and the space I think I’ll find there. I’ve still not learned that I have to breathe every breath and the space I want isn’t about having ten less boxes in the dining room. But I got caught up in movement, and in that movement there were times I thought I outran Philip. Stayed just a bit ahead of him. Don’t think, don’t feel. But I am sitting on my couch with portraits on my left and portraits on my right and I just found a black and white head shot taken when he was two-and-a-half, all dark curly hair and sweetly innocent face. A time he was under my fierce protection.  I hadn’t yet learned from Nicole that I couldn’t protect my kids from what I really feared.

If the past is gone and the future only ever comes as now, what do I do with the memories of my son?

The quality of the relationship you have with a loved one who dies is the quality of the relationship that you continue to have. And I’m not saying it can’t evolve into something else. It’s harder, if only because the cacophony of grief and doubt will leave you a mad and crazy thing. I know this. I also know I’m graced with having the relationship I had with Philip while he lived because it’s so easy to have the relationship I have with him now. You know, mom, he says; you certainly talk to me more now than when I was alive.

It’s true.

I don’t mean there was anything mystical about me and Philip. We didn’t finish each other’s sentences or pick up the phone at the same time to call each other. I mean our hearts were open and the context of our relationship was  one of deep love. For anyone who didn’t read the post about what happened on the landing, when Phil took me by the shoulders and said, “They found him” and I heard my son say, “Mom, you gotta go deeper” I wasn’t surprised or confused. It was Philip, I knew exactly what he meant, but I’d be goddamned if he thought there was anything left for me but the shocking madness I’d now have to call my Life.

Since Philip died another dimension of reality has become obvious, if not satisfying. Nothing’s going to satisfy me except him rising from the dead. But if I’m to find peace, I’ll have to trade satisfaction for interesting. “Interesting,” at least, when I can stop resisting the twin terrors of loss and grief and try to do that thing called living.

I’ve long been fascinated by the mystical and obscure. I believe there are things beyond what my own five senses are aware of and that there are people fortunate enough to have access to those things. In high school, my friends and I decided we wanted to be witches, and our local library had just the book to show us how to do that. The spell we chose to practice was the one that would get us the guy. We bought the triangle incense and correct color candles, waited for nightfall, sat in a circle in the dark. Forty-five minutes later we were trying to figure out how to hide the burn marks on the parquet floor in my bedroom because no one told us incense needed a holder. Maybe that’s why none of us ever got the guy.

Later on, this interest led to the New Age movement, affirmations and Louise Hay. Now, I know people love Louise Hay. And I’m sure people have had wonderful things happen because of Louise Hay. But no matter how many times I walked around mentally chanting the thing that I wanted for my reality (I love my new job! I love being thin! I love my new love!) nothing changed. Because nothing changes when you’re trying to grab something you think is outside so you can shove it inside, no matter what Madonna and her Kabbalah or Tom Cruise and his South-Park-Scientology-Episode-Killing lawyers say.

(By the way – it’s a hoot. You can watch on Youtube ;o)

Don’t get me wrong. We all need help along the way, and if Dianetics or Buddhism or seeing God in your doorknob do it for you, go for it.

What I’m getting at with all of this is that Philip died a short time after I finally understood that my power and sanity lie in me. Life is a force and we are its expression in time. So what do I choose to do with this force, how do I live the life I’ve been given? No one else could tell me how. And I didn’t have to walk around despairing. I was okay. I was responsible for my inner state, for the way I felt and the way I reacted. Nirvana it wasn’t, but I had a way to work with every waking moment. A way that made sense to me. For the first time I can remember, I relaxed.

So it made perfect sense to me that Philip would say, “Mom, you gotta go deeper.” Because that’s the role he has in my life now. I am blessed to have the connection with Philip that I do. He is my guide, my protector, my muse. Many people have stories like mine; others say they feel their loved one not at all. I’ve no idea why one and not another because all of this happens in the larger context of life. I already said that sometimes things feel like they happen because they’re supposed to; I also said we make choices that affect outcomes. I am still holding those conflicting thoughts. Just like I’m struggling with a sickness called grief because this child of mine is not here, yet getting clear and constant communication from him that he is very much here and will I please stop staying he’s gone, thank you very much.

I want to talk a bit about what exactly I mean by “signs.” Another time.  For now, I’ll just say that I feel like I left for a while and it’s so very good to be back.

© 2013 Denise Smyth

It’s Easy?

25 Aug 2013 13 Comments

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

“It’s easy to have faith when you’re with someone you love.”

That just came out of the episode of ER I’m trying to get lost in. Of course it made me think of Philip. And it made me think of a text conversation we had three years ago. I typed it into Word so I wouldn’t lose it. See, my faith came in part from Philip. He had my back. When I’d get shaky at just how alone I was I’d say, “I have my kids.” I could feel my son behind me, steadying me. It’s that male energy of protection I longed for. That was where our relationship had evolved to; he hadn’t caught up to me yet, but he was getting close.

Then he goes and dies. WTF?? But if I am honest, I have to say that he is everything but visible. He cracked me open and I am gushing things I’m desperate to put words on. If I can say it, I can contain it. So I think. But it’s not to be contained; it’s to be flowing and I’m to go along for this ride because this is my reality. Fighting it doubles the grief.

Still – I am scared. And I wonder what this need is to be witnessed; to show you that Philip really was here and really did love me. I’d mentioned that I was writing a post about what a “swell mom” I am, and that need is part of what I’m writing about. It’s difficult; I haven’t been able to get it right. But I also haven’t had time to think. I just moved, the apartment needs work, I’ve been distracted by looking for a job.

Oh. I didn’t tell you all. I got a job. I. Got. A. Job. I interviewed Friday, got an email with an offer on Saturday. I didn’t even have to wait the weekend ;o) More on this another time; just let me say that beyond the relief of having a job, I actually want the job. There’s much to say about how it all happened…

I’m going to post the text. Philip was 19, had finished his freshman year at Rutgers, was living in New Brunswick. It was a Friday night that had turned into Saturday morning; I’d trained to be an EMT and was doing my weekly overnight shift. He was thinking of me, decided to get in touch. In the conversation, I heard him trying to figure things out, trying to express them. I’d been separated from his dad for a year, and we talked a bit about the divorce. Philip seemed to be handling it well, but he hadn’t really told me how he felt about it. This, then, was a first.

(Much as I’ve been determined not to make excuses, I’ll say that what he said at the end was a loving joke that I’m not sure anyone would get but me; I understand it was also an honor. It was said in the context of me being alcoholic.  And “M” stands for Me.)

Saturday, July 3rd, 2010, 12:59am:

P:  I appreciate you mom :)

M:  Hey – what was that for? Love you ;o)

P:  Drunk discussions haha. I obviously love you but appreciation means more. I feel like I’m the only one on your side :)

M:  Well, I thank both you AND Johnny Walker. Heh. You are my light and I love you no matter what.

P:  Hahaha no hard liquor for me tonight, just beer. But I mean it. I love and appreciate you and love you to death. I hope everything’s ok, it seems like it. As much as I’m your shining star, you’re my fucking inspiration for life.

M:  How funny you should say that. I think I’ve been unhappy for a long time, and I’m sad to think of how that affected you. I don’t mean recently – you know what that’s about. I mean a long time before. I don’t know what things looked like to you, but what matters is that you know how much I love you and always, always have.

P:  No, you were both great parents and raised me very well. Admittedly the divorce fucked me up bit it’s ok, I think marriage is a silly institution. I’m happy with my life as much as I’m disappointed with the current state of things.

M:  Do you mean disappointed in the divorce? I don’t think marriage is silly, I just think it’s difficult, especially if you think about how long people live and how long they’re expected to remain together. But I don’t think lack of commitment works so well, either.

P:  Yeah, but it’s fine. I don’t know – humans are very social and the idea of devoting yourself to one person forever is absurd, but devoting yourself to raising a family makes sense. I don’t know, but don’t blame yourself for my views.

M:  I don’t “blame” myself because there’s nothing wrong with your views. I think it’s better for children to be raised in a committed family. It’s just difficult to stay with one person for life because if we’re committed to finding the truth of our lives, we’re going to discover the patterns that drive us. And sometimes the changes we have to go through to get to the other side means we cannot stay in the same relationships, even if that’s scary. It takes courage to live a fully realized life. Most of the time we’re flying blind. Things don’t get figured out once and for all; life doesn’t work that way.

P:  Good and I know you stuck it out as much as you could. You raised me and Natalie great, and I hope she realizes that. I know she has to deal with it more than I do, but I don’t mind, I understand things change, emotions change, and I feel that that has made me more ready for the future than any bullshit fucking family ever will.

M:  If by “bullshit” you mean continual pretense, then yes. People stay together for all sorts of reasons that have nothing to do with love. Faking happiness doesn’t lead to real happiness; and sometimes people stay together at their own expense because they need to feel needed. It’s harder to live a happy life than a miserable one.

P:  Exactly. People feel that they have to maintain some sort of image and that’s not what life is about. I don’t know about miserable vs. happy, but the traditional idea of happiness is much harder to achieve. But I don’t know. I’m gonna go to sleep. I love you so much I wanna be drunk in person with you hahaha. Night :)

M:  Hey, it’s a date. ‘Night and love you.

P: Haha you too, I’ll see you at noon

M: ‘Kay.

© 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

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