Unwinding

06 Nov 2025 1 Comment

by Denise in Buddhism, Death, Death of a Child, Government, Politics, President, Spirituality, Trump Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

George Eliot: “When death, the great reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness that we repent of, but our severity.” 

That’s the second time I’m mentioning this quote because it makes me uncomfortable. In 2015, Natalie and I took our 14-year-old Shih Tzu, Pippin, to the vet to be put down. In other words, we had him killed. I am fond of saying words matter which is maybe why I balk at using “put down” for “kill.” It amounts to the same thing. Pippin was old, blind, barely eating, had to be carried up and down the stairs and when he was put outside on the grass he lay there, refusing to walk or relieve himself. It was the kindest thing I could do. Our vet agreed. Does the euphemism make me feel better about taking responsibility for Pippin’s death? I did not want that responsibility but when it comes to my animals I will take it, if that’s what they need. Life was not the better option for him so I had him killed.

When I write about death, when my ego gets the best of me,  I think I’m some kind of expert. I am not. Philip has died and I’ve spent nearly 14 years living and breathing it and 13 years writing about it. I’m still trying to get it right. I won’t, ever. There’s no “right” to it. It’s an unwinding with its twists and turns, like anything worth exploring is.

I’d grown irritated with Pippin as he aged. He didn’t do what I wanted him to do. In the months before he died, while he was still able to walk outside, I’d carry him up and down the stairs. No problem. But when he didn’t want to walk, I’d drag him in annoyance as he tried to brace himself backwards. You have to walk, I’d be thinking, you have to. Period.

That came back to haunt me shortly after he died. I am going to remember this when I least want to, I thought. There will be a reckoning. It was shameful and I am embarrassed. And maybe coming to this is a by-product of Philip dying, but he was already dead when I was dragging Pippin. 

 Zoe, my other, Shih Tzu, also lived to 14. She’d suffered vestibular syndrome, which I can only liken to a stroke. She was losing weight, as well as her sight and her balance and her ability to wait for her walks to pee. I bought wee-wee pads for her and placed them all over the apartment. Once, when I saw her peeing on the rug, next to the wee-wee pad instead of on it, I jumped up in a frenzy and yelled, picked her up and placed her on the pad. Natalie was a witness. She didn’t say a word, but when, months later, I told her how ashamed I was, she tried to soothe me.

I’m among the millions who find animals easier than people. They are innocents. To me, that gives us a moral duty to them. To others, a dominion which includes cruelty, abuse and murder.

The incidents with Pippin and Zoe are visceral. They haunt me when I judge others’ cruelty. It might seem trivial to be writing about a couple of indiscretions with dogs when there are many humans I’ve either lived with or crossed paths with and have shown that same cruel streak. It’s not trivial. The point is cruelty’s existence, not where it flares up. If it’s there, it will flare. And as A Course In Miracles points out, “A slight twinge of annoyance is nothing but a veil drawn over intense fury.” The degree doesn’t matter. If it’s there, it’s deep, and it is what keeps love away.

Nearly two years ago I adopted an 11-year-old, one-eyed Shih Tzu named Susie. Can I wipe out my Karma with her? Is that how it works? I don’t think so. We create Karma with our actions. Susie is easy to love and difficult to be angry with. There is lots of good Karma going on now. Will it continue when she doesn’t do what I want her to do? I think it will. The difference is I have a patience now that I didn’t have then. It’s from the time and death I mentioned in my last post. I haven’t the energy it takes to rage.

I cannot condemn the cruelty I see without taking a look at my own. It is easier to see it in relation to my animals because there is no excuse. I cannot say they were cruel first. Because that is one of the ways we justify our own inexcusable behavior. We didn’t start the thing, what were we supposed to do?

I’m thinking of cruelty and its underlying rage because of the abject cruelty of this abomination of a regime that is currently in power. Trump has made cruelty and viciousness the norm and it isn’t something to get used to. 

I mentioned that I started posting on Facebook and amidst the two or three “likes” I’d get was a, um, “friend” who went nuts because she supports Trump. I was called all sorts of names and accused of all kinds of things which resulted in me blocking her  and re-thinking what the heck I was doing on Facebook. Wanting to be heard, was my answer. But she was the one mostly listening.

The next day she sent me a text, bringing up how she’d cried when Philip died and “politics shouldn’t Trump friendship.” (Yes, capital T). The short version of what I told her: You don’t get to act one way online, and another when you actually see the person you’ve degraded. Friendship is a privilege, one she no longer had. 

That whole exchange was a symptom of what is happening, led by people that were elected to powerful positions. They degrade and demean, equate wealth with wisdom, have no impulse control and no consequences. They are loud and crass and they bully. Their true-believers think they get to do the same. Sometimes I find myself aghast and speechless. Sometimes I think I must say something. Sometimes I think there must be a right way to deal with this. But it is as I said earlier in this post: There’s no “right” to it. It’s an unwinding with its twists and turns. And figuring out how to hold onto our humanity in the face of so many who’ve lost it is the work of the moment.

When I am wanting to find a way, I turn to Buddhism. I do not pray – if any of you think praying to god helps, bless you and keep at it. Something’s got help. Practicing Buddhism allows me to feel the force of good that is within and often untapped. I have too much communication with Philip to think that there isn’t something else. I just don’t think that something else is a being outside of me that either grants my whims and wishes or doesn’t. I think the power of our love and goodness is to be found within. It requires work, harder for some, easier for others. I believe myself the former.

The Buddha gave ten actions for wholesome Karma. Four of them have to do with speech. We are to abstain from false, malicious,  harsh/vulgar and frivolous speech. Think about that. All day we are speaking but how often are we considering what we’re actually saying or our motivation for saying it?  To the people we come across daily, our speech can be fairly benign. But “frivolous speech” includes gossiping, something seemingly as banal as giggling with one coworker about another coworker’s fashion choices.

That seems like nothing in the face of what people say to each other on the internet. Of what our leaders say and write publicly. The Young Republicans who praise Hitler, think it okay to rape women, disparage Jews and use the term “watermelon people?” Vance’s response was, ““I really don’t want to us to grow up in a country where a kid telling a stupid joke, telling a very offensive, stupid joke is cause to ruin their lives.” These were not kids. They were 18-to-40-year-olds. Yet he was quite willing to deprive Jimmy Kimmel of his livelihood for joking that Trump and his allies were “desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them.”

Of course, to anyone who was paying attention, Kimmel’s real crime was following his remark with a clip of Trump being asked how he felt about “his friend” Kirk’s death and responding by talking about the ballroom he was having built.

I am baffled as to how to respond to this regime with wholesome speech. Yet if I do what they do, am I not just as bad? This is a moral dilemma of the ages. J.R.R. Tolkien, who wrote Lord Of the Rings, said, “You can’t fight the enemy with his own ring without turning into an enemy.” How much evil can one inflict without becoming evil?

The “ring” he’s referring to is Sauron’s ring of power. Sauron is the antagonist of the book, the ultimate evil. He created a ring that would give him dominion over everyone and everything. He lost the ring during battle and for many years, its power lay dormant. But power wants to be used and the ring is found by Sméagol and his friend Deagol. Sméagol wants it and kills Deagol for it. Sméagol did not yet know its power, but he was drawn to it. The ring means mastery. It is a symbol of intellectual and moral corruption. It brings out the worst in whoever bears it. The more it’s used, the more addictive it is and the more dehumanized is the one who’s wearing it. And so Smeagol’s coveting of the ring turns him from a hobbit into Gollum, a gaunt, slimy creature who lives in dark and damp caves and cares for nothing but the ring, which he calls his “precious.”

The story becomes one of the clash between Sauron and his armies and the rest of Middle Earth to possess the ring. Except there are those who understand that the ring will corrupt whoever has it and so want it destroyed. This is inconceivable to Sauron, who covets power above all.

There are critics of the book who call it a simple good-and-evil story. I don’t see it that way. It’s a story of loss. I think the ending rather bleak, which is, in part, why I’ve read it so many times. It has a realism to it because when one walks through fire to get the thing done and comes out the other side, things are changed and not necessarily for the better. Yes, the ring is destroyed. But Frodo, the hobbit who had a hand (literally a finger) in destroying it, is no victor. He has seen too much and something is lost. His journey home is a heavy one. He arrives to a vastly changed and degraded landscape, one he is no longer part of. So he joins the last of the elves who are leaving the world of men to sail to Valinor, the Undying Lands, where they will live in peace.

I am happy with the Democratic election victories. They are a good thing. But we have not passed through the fire that is Trump and his regime. So much has been destroyed in its wake. It can be rebuilt and made better. That is not a given. No, it’s not over, and no one knows where we’re headed. There isn’t an end to this, just a continued unwinding.

Valinor, anyone?

© 2025 Denise Smyth

How Then?

18 Oct 2025 2 Comments

by Denise in Democrat, Politics, President, Racism, Republican, Trump Tags: , , , , , , ,

I have had a hard heart. Time and death have tempered it. Still, it grieves me when I feel its sharp edges. Why aren’t I less reactive, where’s my compassion? I’m not the first to gaze down the long road from head to heart.

I believe that hard heart explains why, at some point in my late twenties/early thirties, I became a Republican. Not in any social sense, but for fiscal reasons. I had an attitude back then, and my choice of political party had not much to do with reality but with this attitude. With what I am calling my hard heart. The story went something like this: Government should be small since it has to be paid for. I work and my husband works and we support ourselves and so should everyone else. Handouts should be kept to a minimum and only for those who really need them. And if able-bodied people needed help, it should be limited and the government should be training those people to help them get jobs.

I was independent, I needed no help. I was good at at taking care of myself. I believed this was the spirit of the Republican Party. What I couldn’t see then was I’d developed disdain for neediness out of the shame I had for my own. This had nothing to do with politics, but that’s where I projected it. In this, I am not alone.

As far as social, issues, well, they were mostly settled, weren’t they?. Of course woman could choose to have an abortion. Of course gay people could marry. Of course blacks and women and every other minority should have equal rights. It was ridiculous that that even had to be said. We were all human beings. Why should skin color or sex determine what your rights were?  I just assumed we’d continue to progress along those lines. And didn’t the election of Barack Obama prove we’d come a long way?

I find my naïveté shocking.  

As I write this, my Waking Up app just sent the following quote from George Eliot: “When death, the great reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness that we repent of, but our severity.” 

I grew up in New York City. I never discussed politics with my parents. We were mostly silent at dinner, the roots of which I’ve sometimes discussed in this blog and am not going to get into now. I assumed my parents and extended family were Democrats, like the majority of the city. That’s how out of touch I was. I was surprised and pleased to find that they were, in fact, Republicans. At last, I could fit in with them!

A few years later, my friend Ed shook his head. “You’re a liberal,” he said. “You just don’t know it.”

Then Philip died and nothing else mattered. Particularly politics since it was all a never-ending argument about who was right. What did I care about that? My hard heart was shattered, maybe all the more for its brittle severity. 

In 2016, the Republicans nominated Donald Trump as their candidate. I was stunned. What were they thinking? They weren’t thinking, actually, or such a thing couldn’t have happened. That day I sent a letter to the RNC notifying them I was resigning from the party and registering as a Democrat because of their unfathomable choice. I had no idea just how lethal to our democracy that choice would become.

I grew up in Brooklyn in a white neighborhood. When I was 11, a black family moved into an apartment building nearby. Their windows were broken. My parents did not disapprove. I did. I didn’t understand. There were plenty of black kids in my school. I didn’t think about where they lived. I figured it was somewhere in the neighborhood. I also didn’t think about the fact that none lived on my block, which is where I mostly played after school.

As an adult, I have heard family members call black people names I will not repeat. When my husband and I bought a house in Montclair, I was asked by a family member if I knew there was a black family across the street when we bought it. Out shopping on Church Street, she said, with disdain, “There are a lot of black people around here.” I was angry but, as usual, I remained silent.

I find what I don’t know stunning:

I did not know that race is a construct. There is no such thing as “white.” Of course there are different skin tones, but white is not a race. Human beings are about 99.9% genetically similar. This matters because of the way we group people, assign them traits and then treat them according to those social constructs. What we do to each other in this regard is not new. That we continue to do it is a disgrace. We look at skin color, we listen to unfamiliar accents, we decide what those things make a person and treat them accordingly. We thought it okay to bind and chain black people, to own them, to enslave them, to beat them because of their skin color.

Even as a kid I found this appalling but it was a distant past, no?  Back then I thought that if black and white people kept marrying, eventually everyone would look the same and our troubles, at least as far as racism, would be solved. I thought racism was only about black people.

I wish not to speak like this. Black people, white people, brown people. But this is the language I have to use.

Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote, “race is the child of racism, not the father.” I had to sit a while with this to understand what he was saying. Racism, which involves the exploitation and hierarchy of people, came first. Race was invented to justify it. Skin color and hair decide where human beings fit into the hierarchy. And in this country, exacerbated by this president, we know what that looks like.    

 In his book, Between the World and Me, Coates talks of racism as visceral. It involves his body. And all bodies subjected to racism. It’s not only what was done to blacks when they were enslaved. It’s the beatings, lynchings, shootings and all manner of brutality that people whose skin is darker than mine deal with to this day. I can’t imagine having to tell my children how they should behave because the color of their skin is a liability. I can’t imagine then sending those children out into a world where there’s no god to protect them from people who think their “white” skin gives them license to make violence upon anyone who looks in a way they deem inferior. And a system that will often agree.

All of this has gotten worse under Trump as he rambles out of both sides of his mouth. I’m not racist, he will declare. The evidence to show otherwise is easy enough to find. He’s used words like “animal” and “rabid” to describe black prosecutors. He uses DEI whenever he can to assign blame to a situation before investigation. At the 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville he said, “There are very fine people on both sides.” In debating Joe Biden, he refused to denounce the Proud Boys. He called African countries “shit holes.” He wants to overhaul the U.S. Refugee system to give preference to whites. And right now the Supreme Court is deciding whether to further gut the Voting Rights Act.

You don’t need me to go on about this. It’s all out there.

Ed sent me a link to a conversation between Ezra Klein and Ta-Nehesi Coates, which I would urge you to listen to. At one point, Klein quotes the Buddha:

I am of the nature to grow sick
I am of the nature to grow old
I am of the nature to lose the people I love
I am of the nature to die
How then shall I live?

That is what it comes down to – how, then, shall I live? This has been an uncomfortable post to write. Turning the lens from the page to my-self, I am unsettled at what I see. I’m afraid I wrote it wrong, I’m unsure of what I sound like. What else am I going to find that “I didn’t know?” I can’t answer that any more than I can answer the question of how I shall live. It’s to be asked every day because the frame of reference changes. How will I live now that I know race is a construct, that things suffered by others are so much more visceral and complicated than I understood? How will I live now that I’ve discovered my country is not what I thought it was? 

I don’t know, but it will be different than it was yesterday.

© 2025 Denise Smyth

“Chaos is a Ladder”

14 Oct 2025 3 Comments

by Denise in Facebook, Government, Politics, President, suffering, Trump, Writing Tags: , , , , , ,

I’m not much active on social media. Other than my blog, I’ve thought it best to steer clear. I’m not even particularly active on this blog any more. I’m focused on writing a book and that takes about all the energy I have. And for a long time I refused to write anything political here. This was about living with the Philip’s death, not the never-ending, un-winnable political arguments about being right. I chose peace instead

I started a Facebook page in 2009 – rather, Natalie started it for me. I never posted anything on it. It allowed some people from my past to “find” me and in each case it was a win. But when Philip died and I started this blog, I linked it to Facebook so people would be notified when I posted. Then Facebook  changed that. I’m not sure what they did, exactly, except that my blog, Forever 21, now has its own Facebook page. I doubt it ever gets read.

Of course, social media has its uses but damn if it isn’t a swamp out there. Yes, I watch Youtube videos of Lee Asher and the wonderful ways he rescues animals. I sometimes watch monologues from Stephen Colbert and Seth Meyers. I don’t have cable so that’s the only way I can see them. But what is going on in this country is a call to action and what I know how to do is write. So I took half of my last post – the Trump half – and posted it on Facebook. A few friends commented, I got a few thumbs up. I didn’t expect much since I don’t have many “friends” nor am I active. But damn it felt good to add my voice to those who are protesting the degradation and radicalization of this country.

What I truly didn’t expect was the unhinged rant I received in a comment by someone I know, followed by several angry text messages. She attacked and accused me of not wanting to “listen to the other side.” Said person is a Trump supporter. We are generally friendly, don’t see each other much  and when we do, we don’t discuss politics. She posts about her support for Trump on Facebook. I don’t read what she writes and wouldn’t comment on it if I did. What for? There’s a difference between a thoughtful conversation and a rant and I’ve no interest in the latter.

Still, this struck a chord. The left has been accused of TDS, but it’s the right that needs to be treated for it. 

I live a pretty quiet life. I’ve written a lot in this blog about my struggles. I had a difficult childhood, I’ve dealt with alcohol, drugs, anorexia and bulimia. I found marriage difficult, I find maintaining friendships difficult. I’m estranged from most of my family. My son has died and no matter how ineffable the grief I continue to try to put words on it. I write to connect because I think at its core, it’s all relatable. We might not be suffering every moment, but we are no strangers to it.

I’ve stayed away from social media as it’s full of bile and rage. People get to say what they want without actually looking into the eyes of the person/people they most want to say it to. They think it brave, I think it cowardly. I well know how much easier it is to write what I want to say to someone instead of actually saying it. People have been hurt by things I wrote, which was never my intent. I write about life as I experience it and I’ve no control over how anyone hears it. “We see the world not as it is, but as we are,” wrote Anais Nin.

But there’s a shift in the world and I’m off balance because it’s leaning right while I’m straining toward the left. I’m not so sure any more about assuming someone’s going to fix this while I concentrate on Buddhism and meditating and figuring out how to be kind when I don’t always feel that way. Or how to love when I’m so often angry. And those things do matter. I’m also not sure if my silence is because I find the world too hurtful and hateful to be part of or if it’s because I can’t figure out how to be an effective part of change. Or because I don’t want people to be mean to me which makes even me want to give myself a thorough shaking and say, “Are you fucking kidding me?”

I have done a spectacular job of protecting myself. In a word: withdraw. But I am restless now. Trump and his sycophantic administration’s bullying was meant to scare people into submission. What he’s done, instead, has woken us up. “Chaos is a ladder,” said Little Finger in Game of Thrones. What he meant was the person who created it would climb it to power. But I don’t think Trump is going to get there first. I think the ladder’s going to be climbed by the millions he’s taunted and betrayed. It’s part of the struggle that’s as old as the human race. And as John Steinbeck wrote, “It’s not that evil wins—it won’t—it’s that it won’t die”

© 2025 Denise Smyth

It Matters

28 Sep 2025 4 Comments

by Denise in Authoritarian, Death of a Child, Government, Politics, President, Trump, Writing Tags: , , , , , , , ,

“If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer. And a people that can no longer believe anything cannot make up its mind. It is deprived not only of its capacity to act but also of its capacity to think and to judge. And with such a people you can then do what you please.”
Hannah Arendt

Writing keeps me company. It’s the one way my thoughts and I actually work together. Without writing, my undisciplined mind goes on the attack in spite of the daily mediating I do or the wise words I read from those who know better or even the practice of noticing what my mind is doing and saying, “Oh, yeah, that again.” 

Philip, too, keeps me company. He’s there when I turn to him and after nearly 14 years I still hear him, I still take dictation from him. This, I think, is no special skill. I think anyone who has lost someone can pick up a pen and a piece of paper and listen for them. Much as I’ve been doing it for all these years – some years less so than others – I do understand  how hard it is. I still wonder every time I open my journal if he’ll be there, if I’m kidding myself, is this going to be the time there is…nothing? It never turns out that way. He’s always there and the things he says are often things I’ve never thought. I’d think there a thousand ways anyone reading this could explain it away. It doesn’t matter. I listen, he speaks, that is enough for me.

Back in February, my friend John suggested I go back to writing the book I started about Philip and that I should ask Philip to help me. I’d started a memoir and really can’t say why I put it down. Not writing begets not writing and for a long time I did nothing. But not writing also begets an illness of sorts, one that corrodes my mind, my soul, my psyche and is so potent that I look fine and mostly act fine, but that unseen corrosion is hell bent on driving me toward that final, that terrible, that very last crash.

So I took myself to Greece in June for a writing retreat and then to upstate New York in August for another at a Buddhist Center. I’ve reduced my hours at work and am finally writing every day. I am closer to Philip than ever as he helps me navigate this, closer to Natalie because she is the one I share his death – and my life – with the most. 

None of this is what I meant to write about. It’s easier, though, than trying to write about what I see happening in this country because that is so big and so awful and seems to require an intellect far greater than mine with a grasp of history and politics that I do not have. So I sat with Philip before I wrote this and he reminded me there are all kinds of readers for all kinds of writers and my job is to find my heart. It’s nothing more than what I work toward no matter what I’m writing about. What else can I do – it is rotten out there, the stench of this administration is overpowering and putting the covers over my head to keep out the rankness isn’t working. It is exactly what Trump et al are going for. Manufacture crises to divert attention from the real problems, lie, lie and then lie some more, make “the other” the enemy which means anyone who disagrees with Trump, degrade institutions, ignore courts and precedents, surround yourself with sycophants who fawn over you, turn the economically disadvantaged into losers – and illegal losers at that! – who are taking advantage of YOUR hard earned money so let’s take away their health care and their SNAP benefits and that will show them.

And that’s just in our country. If the administration sees no moral imperative to take care of their own, they’re certainly not going to help anyone else. So USAID is withdrawn and people all over the world are suffering, dying. Yet Trump came up with $20 billion to prop up a right wing government in Argentina. Where’s the outrage? He’s spending over $1 billion to outfit an illegal gift of a plane for Air Force One from Qatar. And he’s building a ballroom while the cost of groceries and daily essentials rises.

What is happening? How is this happening? How does any sane person listen to Trump’s unhinged ranting and proudly think, “That is the president of my country, the greatest country in the world!” How can anyone watch a cabinet meeting where everyone at the table, one by one, fawns over Trump, stopping short of kneeling and kissing his ring? It’s like watching a terribly acted play except it isn’t fiction. It is actually happening. There are no adults in the room with Trump. The one child missing is the one who would know enough to cry out, “The emperor has no clothes.”

Maybe once we were the greatest country in the world, maybe one day we will be again. But a country that could elect a Trump has lost its moral authority. Under his rule we are living in an authoritarian state. If an election doesn’t go the way of the ruling power, it is challenged (check). Civil servants have to profess loyalty to dear leader (check). Supposedly independent government officers – prosecutors, inspectors general, federal commissioners – have to do dear leader’s bidding or they are replaced with inexperienced loyalists (check). Private institutions have to do as dear leader says or they are punished (check). Independent journalism is attacked and threatened if it reports what dear leader doesn’t want to hear (check). Even our comedians – COMEDIANS! – are under attack as the thin skin of dear leader is so easily wounded. What kinds of countries take their comedians off the air? And which party are the “snowflakes” now, which party is the party of cancel culture?

I could go on and on, but to what end? There’s plenty of information about what Trump is doing if you want to know, and if you don’t, nothing I say matters. But this is what does matter. Words matter. Trump has made a mockery of this and his administration follows suit. He is cruel. This matters. He is heartless and soulless. He thrives on divisiveness and has not a clue nor a care about how to bring the country together. He is not a serious man except in his will to destroy and his rigid hold on power. Our national landscape is littered with the corpses of justice, equality and freedom. Decency – there is no decency. And if these concepts don’t matter to you, perhaps the cost of groceries or the loss of healthcare or the freedoms of the wealthy that are denied to the rest of us, do. Something of his gross unfitness to be president must matter to you. It simply must.

 I’ve never felt particularly compelled to “do” anything politically. I vote, of course. But this is different, this is urgent. I can’t say I know exactly what to do, but I made a start by writing this post. I’ve joined a political group called Third Act for people over sixty who want to make the world a better place. I read and listen to Heather Cox Richardson – she is a brilliant historian and a voice of sanity and reason. And the one thing I know not to do is to give in to exhaustion and like so many, I am plenty tired. That’s part of Trump’s playbook. We are whacked daily, we are whacked multiple times daily, with his degradations. This not only creates exhaustion, it creates a storm of chaos that blinds us to what this is administration is doing to us, to our institutions, to our way of life. And I’d like to end with some grand conclusion, or at least a witty last sentence. I haven’t any. I would just ask that we pay attention, that we all wake the fuck up.

© 2025 Denise Smyth

On Family and Me, Part One

08 Apr 2023 Leave a comment

by Denise in Alzheimer, Death of a Child, Family, Gun Violence, Politics Tags: , , , , , ,

I have been careful not to get political on this blog. I became aware of that when something I was writing about was getting near the topic and I chose to avoid it. This is not about politics, I thought. I do not want to alienate anyone. I started this blog to deal with Philip’s death. Eleven years later I am still dealing with it, as I will always be. But this caution about politics, given what is happening? I say fuck it.

Yesterday I woke not only to find that Tennessee, founding state of the Ku Klux Klan, made good on their promise to expel several house members because they joined a protest against gun violence, but of the three reps who were facing expulsion, the two who were expelled were black. Yes, that’s correct. The white member was not expelled. I suppose I should thank the idiots who took this action as they made martyrs of these two young representatives, Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, as well as given them national attention. Another stunning example of the way Republicans want to rule. Disagree with them and you’re out. Two elected officials who took part in a protest against gun violence were expelled. Can I say it again?

And how about Tennessee State Rep William Lamberth, addressing students protesting gun violence and referring to a ban on AR-15s and other assault rifles by saying, “If there is a firearm out there that you’re comfortable being shot with, please, show me which one it is.”

This is but a sound bite of what this country has come to since electing that demented excuse of a human being called Trump to be president. And after all that has happened since that time and all that continues to happen, there still exists a core group of MAGA supporters who think he is the second coming. If Jesus had a grave he’d be spinning.

This is where it gets personal. I realize now that the reason I was careful to stay away from politics is my family. My (mostly) Trump supporting family. The three cousins I can think of who might not be I haven’t spoken to in a long time. I used to think that reasonable people can disagree, and that surely not all Trump supporters are crazy, but given what I see, Trump and sanity do not coexist. And my family’s support of Trump is the simplest way I can think of to explain my differences with them.

It is my mother’s side of the family that has consumed me. Makes sense, since my mother ruled. Every Sunday was spent at my maternal grandmother’s along with my six uncles, six aunts and various cousins. They were a loud and gregarious group, funny, outspoken. Working class. Traditional values, which by no means goes into the positive column. I have always felt an outsider, down to the fact that they were all Espositos and I was not, since my mom was the only female and therefore changed her surname when she married my father, who I grew up despising. 

I was different. A quiet kid, smart, uncomfortable in my skin, always reading, always unhappy, at a loss as to how to make a joke or have a witty comeback. Small boobs and a fat ass, so unlike my beautiful cousin Maria, born nearly two years to the day ahead of me, as close as sisters at times and yet the bane of my life as I could never be as funny, sexy or outrageous as she.

I came to politics late in life. It was not something discussed at the dinner table. That, coupled with the fact that since I started drinking when I was 11, my formative years were spent devising ways to get my next nickel bag of weed or bottle of Boone’s Farm Apple wine, not in forging a political identity. In fact, I was so far removed from anything political that I assumed my family were democrats since we lived in New York City. At some point in my 30s I became a Republican and that’s when I realized my family was, also. I don’t know if all politics is identity politics, but looking back that’s what it felt like for me. I was never a social conservative. I believed abortion should be legal, gay people should marry, and the fact that there needed to any kind of equal rights bills for minorities was a travesty because dear God, why don’t minorities have equal rights?

What I identified with was being fiscally conservative. I was, and probably still am – though hopefully less so – naive about it all. In my mind, I went to work and my husband went to work and so everyone should go to work and just take care of themselves. No nuance there, no humility, no compassion. Just a tough minded arrogance of how things ought to be.

Then Philip died. Politics, along with everything else, was just too painful.  All the arguing, the condemning, the self-righteousness – my son was dead and what else was there to give a fuck about? Four years later, the ever present shapeshifter grief changed into something that lived alongside me rather than consumed me. Still much on the outside of anything political, I was present enough to see the Republican Party had nominated Trump as their presidential candidate and like it or not, I had to pay attention. So I left the party and became a Democrat.

Trump, politics – this is one form of the discord with my family, not the content. My despair has always been that I don’t fit in because there is something wrong with me. I have made what I love about them matter and what I don’t a deficiency on my part. But the combination of working for my cousin for two and a half years plus my mother’s diagnosis of Alzheimer’s has forced me to engage with my family in ways I have not for many years. I’d long moved away from them, saw them mostly at family events, did not reach out to keep in touch. That includes my brother who was swallowed up by his wife’s family the moment he got engaged. That is a story for another time. I mention it by way of saying that her family mirrors my mother’s side of the family so there was no solace to be found there.

I have written here about my mother’s Alzheimer’s and I have struggled to understand what it is I owe her. Early on I participated in getting her what care we could and made trips to see her in Brooklyn to get certain things done. My brother, R, and sister-in-law, M, have borne most of the burden. They live closer to her, M doesn’t work, they don’t carry the emotional garbage I do. M sees to it her bills are paid, her groceries are delivered. R stops there after work, is there when something goes wrong. I have stepped further back these last months. I have not been to see my mom for a long while. M has become increasingly outraged. I have wasted much of my emotional life hoping they wouldn’t see me the way I did – selfish, uncaring, a daughter who did not do her duty to her elderly mother. If I called my mom enough times, if I checked in with my brother enough times, maybe I could fend off the inevitable. And when I realized I couldn’t, I wrote to R and M to thank them for all they do and to acknowledge what was going on with me. Which really counted for nothing as far as they were concerned. I wasn’t, after all, offering a solution. So my brother accepts, my sister-in-law rages. And my mother feels like a weight around my neck.

Or so she has. Because last week, after yet another deadening 30 second conversation with her, I did something I haven’t done in a while. I wrote a letter to Philip. When he first died I used to sit and listen and write down what I heard him say. Call it what you will. Call it grief giving me access to a deeper wisdom we all carry within. I heard him talk to me and it was revelatory. So I wrote to him of my mother and listened for an answer and what happened next was an experience and not a thought. I felt what I can only call love and it broke the hypnosis of that particular spell. My mother’s constant anger is the voice in my head that takes the form of whoever, real or imagined, is angry at me. I always find someone who is angry with me and I always believe what I am hearing. I have tried talking myself out of it. It does not help. This time the voice was M. Seeing me through her eyes was not pretty. But seeing me through Philip’s eyes was glorious. And I say what I experienced was “love” or maybe it was acceptance but whatever the word I was released. My life, my choice. No shoulds, no have-tos. The voice? Now it’s mine. The family who matters? Natalie. 

Part two tomorrow

© 2023 Denise Smyth

I Am, They Are

16 Oct 2022 2 Comments

by Denise in Alzheimer, anger, Family, loneliness Tags: , , , , ,

During the summer my brother and I, after speaking with my mother’s doctors, took her car away. There was no choice in this. She is 90 and has Alzheimer’s. She was getting lost driving to places she’d been going for years, she would park her car and forget where it was. That was the least of it. Driving is deadly dangerous for her and anyone who might come in contact with her. And though we needed no proof, when my brother pulled her car out of the garage the driver’s side fender was bashed in from something she hit, and hit hard. The other side of the fender was also banged up. When asked, my mother didn’t know how it happened.

Back then I was enlisting the help of Uncle M. At 88, he is her younger brother, one of two who remain alive. My mom worked for him for years and he had been giving her $1500 a month for a long time, money that went a long way toward supplementing her social security and the small pension left to her since my dad died nine years ago. Uncle M was also the only uncle I felt close to. For years I’d dreamt of what my life would have been like if only he’d been my dad. When we had to take my mom’s car away, I told him we’d set up car service and Uber on her phone, asked if he’d help out, maybe take her to her weekly hair appointment on Fridays. Of course I will, he said.

Except that a few days later he called to say that my mother is an excellent driver, and really, we shouldn’t take her car away. I explained – again – that there wasn’t a choice. We had it on her doctors’ authority, but common sense alone dictated. This only agitated my uncle who insisted that if we take her car away, we were going to kill her. “She will be dead if you do this,” he said. He went on to say that he wouldn’t have to take her to hair appointment because if we took her car away, she would be dead by the time Friday rolled around. My last shot was to explain that she could not only hurt herself if she kept driving, she could hurt, maybe kill, other people. “That is not my concern,” he informed me. “My sister is my concern. And if you take her car away, you will kill her.”

It was after that that he stopped giving her money. I can make no sense of this except that he is angry at both my brother and me, so he stopped giving money to my mom…to spite us? Since the summer, we have had to find an aide to go to my mom’s house as she needs company and she needs help getting around now that she has no car. My mother has to pay for this aide. I tried to appeal to my uncle to keep giving her that money as things are very tight for her without it. His answer was that she should spend all the money she has and then we will talk. “All the money she has?” My mom has next to nothing. There’s a reverse mortgage on her house which is mostly spent. There’s a small amount in her savings which isn’t going to stave off much of anything. I wasn’t asking anything of my uncle except to keep doing what he’d been doing. And I would add that my uncle is a wealthy, single man with no children.

I would like to say I see how sick my uncle is – I have seen this for years, but never had it directed at me. I would like to say that, seeing him as sick, I treated him with empathy. But that would be a lie. I told him exactly what I thought about this craziness and then some. I said things to him that others could not believe I said when I repeated the conversation. Nothing that wasn’t true, but things designed to hit below the belt. Things that, according to any 12-step program, I should be making amends for, because my intent was to hurt, to wound, to scar.

I have taken a good look at all this. I have written about my resentments, I have tried to see my part (it always takes two), I have spoken about this to others. I have asked Philip to help me let go of this damn resentment because it only hurts me. Then last week I found out my uncle took my mom out to dinner and I had a moment of grace. Because instead of seeing my uncle as the enemy, I saw two elderly people going out for an early dinner. I wondered what they talked about, what they were thinking about. I wondered if my uncle was watching my mother, who’d taken care of him in so many ways since he was a child, slipping away. My uncle is a recluse, does not have many people in his life. He’s gone from five brothers to now only one – the one he doesn’t get along with – and my mom is just not who she was. My heart hurt for all of it, for inevitability and what often seems the impossibility of life. And I decided I’d rather my heart break than live in rage and resentment. 

Which lasted a couple days until my sister-in-law called to tell me that my uncle had my mother drive to dinner. He what? Your mother told me, she said. He had her drive to dinner and back. Re-enter eye-popping, jaw-clenching, stomach-churning outrage.

My impulse was to call him and chew him out, or call my cousin Maria to have her chew him out. Get her on my side, once and for all. My uncle calls Maria when he wants to know about my mom. I have asked her multiple times to tell him to call either me or my brother (he is angry at both of us) if he wants information. And I have believed my cousin would do that. Except that over the summer, I was there when my uncle called her for just that reason. Her phone rang, her eyes widened when she who it was, she looked at me, looked back at the phone, back at me and said in a strangled voice, “It’s him.” I’m right here, I told her. If he asks about my mom, tell him I’m here and I’ll speak with him. 

Except she couldn’t. She stuttered and mumbled, and wound up saying that I was there but I was in the other room, did he want her to get me? His answer was shouted loud enough for me to hear. I could not understand – how could she betray me, how could she let him off the hook? Are you afraid of him, I asked when she hung up? She shrugged. No – he just yells and yells and then I can ’t think straight.

I have to wonder how long I will continue to look for love and acceptance where it cannot be found, why I have not yet learned that no matter how hard I squeeze a stone not a single drop of blood will flow. As furious as I was, that was the moment the shift began. My anger, my sense of “betrayal” was born of my refusal to open my eyes to who I was dealing with, something I should have learned a long, long time ago. Insisting anyone behave the way I want is exercising a control I do not have. Being smart about someone is knowing who they are and understanding what to expect. It is not only smart, it’s the only way to take care of myself. I was raised in a family prone to outrage and drama. I have distanced myself from them. Yet when I’m with them, there go I. Just because I indulge less does not absolve me from behavior I abhor in others.

I have suffered this. I have reeked of self-pity. I have seesawed between believing I am “better” than they to being unfit to grace the bottom of their shoes. And I am lonely because they all get along, don’t see as I do, and I feel invisible. It’s past time to get my head on straight. In truth I haven’t much in common with any of them. I have a romantic notion of how it was growing up in this big, loud, boisterous Italian family with our every-Sunday dinners and wasn’t it wonderful to have all of us together? But it wasn’t always so wonderful. Even then I didn’t feel I belonged and since I didn’t yet have the ability to reason why, I blamed a big part of it on my dad. All my cousins had the same last name, but since my mom was the only female, she changed her name when she married, black-and-white proof of my difference.

Truth is, I am, they are. Given my mother’s condition, there will be times I’m forced to deal with my family. Like when I found out Uncle M let my mom drive. Something had to be done, no? So I did it. I breathed, then I breathed some more. I spoke to my sister-in-law, to my brother. We agreed there was nothing we could do about it, that screaming at my Uncle would upset us and probably satisfy him.  I cannot control this. I cannot make my Uncle see the danger, I cannot make my mother understand. And I sure as hell can’t sit and seethe with resentment over something I can do nothing about. 

© 2022 Denise Smyth

Undone

08 Oct 2022 3 Comments

by Denise in Addiction, Death, Death of a Child, Faith, God, Religion, Spirituality Tags: , , , , , ,

I find no comfort in God. Nor am I an atheist. And maybe what I believe is what one would call God, or some form of it. But the idea of some being greater than ourselves who requires rules or rituals or ceremonies or has caused us to be born with a sin we need be delivered from…a God who requires specifics which exclude those who don’t adhere to them…I find that a form of insanity. I find people -relatives – who fear that certain of their behaviors will bring the wrath of the Almighty upon them yet their blatant disregard of those who are different is baffling, if not cruel.

A couple weeks ago, Natalie and I brought our shih-tzu Zoe to the vet. She was nearly 15 and ailing. Natalie moved out in July and took Zoe with her. I was happy to let her go – Zoe was in need of more attention than I could give her. I believed Zoe’s time was up, Natalie did not. We were a long while at the vet that day, Natalie, Zoe and Dr. K on the floor of the exam room, me on a stool, mostly observing. Zoe walked in circles, bumped into walls (she’s blind), panted, was unable to relax or orient herself. Dr. K did not tell us what to do. She asked Natalie questions, she spoke of Zoe’s quality of life, her spirit. Her happiness vs unhappiness. Until Natalie looked at Dr. K and said, “When she is not sleeping, she is agitated. I think…I think…it’s time.”

Zoe had always been “my” dog. I raised her from a pup and I was the one she sought out. Until some point last year when she had an episode which changed her, which she never fully recovered from. I kept thinking how I was going to fall apart when she died, but I did not. Natalie cried and cried. Then she cried more. I withdrew. I saw it, could do nothing about it. I have been withdrawn for a long time. A combination of the complete cessation of any mood medication I was taking, the stress of my mother’s Alzheimer’s and the family dynamics I’ve been thrust into since has helped bring me somewhat back to life. At least, to feeling, even though much of it has been difficult. So I was able to catch myself shutting down. My thought was to write.

We hadn’t planned on putting Zoe down that afternoon – we thought we’d discuss, go home and discuss some more, call back and make the final appointment. But we were the last ones in the office and better we did it then. Better, other than the fact that the next day we were going to a wake for my dear friend C’s son B, also Natalie’s friend, who had died on September 18th from the addiction he’d battled for years. I do not know all the details. He had been sober for four years, but five months ago something called him back and now he is gone and his family is devastated.

C is one of the people who saved my life after Philip died. A few years ago she sold her NJ home and moved to NYC, but when Philip died she and her three boys lived 5 minutes away from me and Natalie and I spent much time at their house, something Natalie was already used to as the boys were her friends long before and she’d already considered C her second mom. With my blessing, I might add. I spent the first Thanksgiving and Christmas after Philip’s death at her house, sleeping there, cooking with her, and it became what we did every year for 6 or 7 years until she moved. 

Saturday the 24th I found myself in church with C and all those who came to grieve. Philip, too, had had a funeral mass, was rolled down the aisle in a casket covered by a white cloth with a gold cross on top, stopped in the aisle next to the pews toward the front. C looked worn and tender and fragile and all I could think was how this could not be undone. And how much she would have to go through before that became a reality she could recognize and live with. She has two other children, they are who she lives for now. For a while, it might not be enough.

At mass, I listened to what the priest said. I remember two things from the priests at Philip’s wake and mass. At the wake, the priest said, “They say time heals all wounds. It doesn’t.” And I was grateful for this truth. At at the mass, when the priest said, “Please kneel,” he looked directly at me and said, “If you can.” A kindness I did not expect. So I sat until my mother’s disapproving finger poked me so hard from behind that I sank to my knees. 

I couldn’t say what the priest talked about during Philip’s mass. I’d never found comfort in anything to do with church and the only thing that existed then, all that my senses were aware of, was that Philip was dead, was lying in that coffin, was never to be as I had known him. But at B’s funeral I listened. The priest was a nice looking man with a short grayish beard, somewhat young for a priest, with a clear and earnest voice. So sure of himself as he asked us to remember the most important day of B’s – the day he was baptized. For that, you see, opened him up to the other sacraments and assured his place in heaven next our lord and savior. And we were to take comfort in knowing that that was where, even as he spoke, B was.

A glance at Natalie that was returned by her told me we were thinking the same thoughts. I do hope there were those who could take comfort in those words because there is nothing worse than losing a loved one – a child – and I know when Philip died I found comfort in nothing. But were we to understand that B is now is with the lord, which is where one wants to be in death (?) but that the only way one could get there was by being baptized? So where did one wind up if one wasn’t baptized? Did believing your loved one was a member of the right club make it all better?

I was fuming and in that, I might be missing much. This argument is old for me. The first time I came across it was when my four-year-old niece was dying and my brother was, for a time anyway, born again. He’d told me only those who accepted Jesus Christ as their savior would go to heaven. “Well,” I answered, “what about…oh, I don’t know – what about Chinese people?” “Ignorance is no excuse,” he answered.

And what about YOUR ignorance, I wanted to scream? It’s religion that does itself in with it’s rules, cruelties and inconsistencies. It is religion that causes me to turn from God, and I am not alone. The path to God need not be marked so. It cannot be marked so, not if it holds love, tolerance and compassion within. And if not love, tolerance, compassion, what is it for? So many will say, “I am spiritual, not religious” to distance themselves from what religion is teaching. So many will suggest calling God something else – Higher Power. What I recognize as the power, the force greater than myself is what I call Life. And when I need to talk to Life, I call on Philip, who might’ve been taken from me in body, but never, not ever, in spirit.

© 2022 Denise Smyth

Reckoning Part 2

05 Sep 2022 7 Comments

by Denise in Alzheimer, Death, Death of a Child, Family, Money Tags: , , , , ,

I have a habit of thinking that death solves things. Mostly my own, because that would take are of it all. If asked, “what did Philip’s death solve?” my answer would be that is not what I’m talking about here. But the question intrigued me enough to forego listening to my usual podcast this morning during my walking and instead think about this. Soon as I the cross T’s and dot I’d on this mostly-finished post, that’s what I’ll write about next.

 Philip is my son, he is not, was not ever, something to be solved. He was something to live for because love is what there is to live for. I am not someone who particularly feels loved whether or not I am, and maybe that is why life has always felt too hard. But before I go down that road, I want to get back to my mom. Writing is the way I look at the thing instead of wishing it dead to avoid it.

It came as a surprise to both my brother and me to realize my mom’s financial situation. We had to consider if assisted living was something that might be necessary for her. There is no clear answer and since it’s unaffordable maybe there doesn’t have to be. Other than the fact that Alzheimer’s progresses, there is too much uncertainty about it. My mom’s short term memory is shot. But she isn’t doing things like leaving the oven on or getting up in the middle of the night and wandering around. She’s angry that we’ve taken her car away and is constantly berating me and my brother to others for doing this to her. It doesn’t matter how many times we tell her this is what her doctors want, how many times we ask what, exactly, is the advantage of this to me or my brother? She’s resentful – and who could blame her – that her independence is being eroded, that she’s paying someone to go to her house and keep her company three times a week. That’s what’s so hard about where she’s at right now – she’s enough in the disease to warrant attention, but not enough to make her forget what she’s losing. 

Assisted living sounds like a good idea – she’d be in her own apartment but have people around to help her as well as people to keep her company. My mom is alone most days. Before her diagnosis, I don’t know what she did, but she kept herself busy. I would go weeks without talking to her. I have a strained, difficult relationship with her, always have. The last time I tried to address it with her – to what end, I do not know – was a couple years ago, before Alzheimer’s. She looked at me and said, “What do you want from me? I am who I am, and I’m not going to change.”

That was the exact right question to ask me, and I still have not looked to find the answer.  

These last six months or so I’ve had to be in contact with her in a way I never have, especially since I moved out of her home forty years ago. I remind myself I do it for R, my brother, and M, my sister-in-law because it is not fair to leave this all the them. In terms of actually seeing her, they are more involved. They live closer to her and R works in Brooklyn and so can stop by at times after work. Plus neither of them are awash in resentment toward her. It’s the classic story of siblings being raised in the same house but each one having a different story to tell. It doesn’t help that I am four years older than my brother or that I went to public school, he went to Catholic. Our lives even then were separate. At the time, Catholic School was considered “better.” But I didn’t want to go school with nuns and uniforms so my parents let me go to public school. R didn’t have a choice and I have to wonder, looking back, what that says about my family. Certainly it strengthened my conviction I was an outsider, but in a way that made me feel I had some power. I got to go where I wanted, R could deal with the nuns and their disciplinary rulers (at the time word was if you didn’t behave the nuns would whack you on your backside with their rulers. True? Who knows?)

Being in contact with my mom is not pretty. It might, in part, be one of the many reasons I am finally able to write. Because what I am seeing is bringing up feelings so overpowering I don’t even know who to talk to about them, at least not in any kind of depth. Timed three-minute AA or AlAnon shares doesn’t do it, the culture I see at my small office is concerning, and I am trying too hard to to understand this to be distracted by anyone who might make some off-the-cuff suggestion that might too easily cause me to think that I am making a big deal out of nothing or that I need more compassion because my mom is elderly. It has been too long since I’ve been able to sit and face what is happening and while talking has its place, writing is how I discover.

My mom is a social creature. Before I hear, “we all are,” let’s agree there are degrees. I am introverted, my mother is not. When I was growing up, she used to work for my Uncle M at his lumberyard. Even after he closed it years ago there were still things she did for him, right up until a few months ago when we took her car away. I never thought much about what she did to keep herself busy, even after my dad died. We led separate lives in separate states and interactions with her were awkward if not painful. I never cut her out of my life, but I did keep it to a minimum. Having to be in contact more lately has given me a look into her life and it’s painful. I see now my mom kept herself busy shopping and meeting friends, getting her hair and nails done weekly. Other than watching TV, she has no interests, She doesn’t read nor does she have any hobbies. She takes great pride in her appearance and in discussing her mental deterioration with others who need to know what to look for, I have heard, ‘What are you talking about? She looks terrific!.”

Maybe this helps to answer the question my mother posed: What do you want from me? I want you to show me. How am I supposed to live? How do I love? What matters, what truly matters? How, at 64, how do I live a life that will make me understand it was worth it, that I figured out what matters? Because I am not going to find it in my hair or nails or the skin I resent for wrinkling. And I am not going to find it from my mom who has always been disappointed in me – my hair, my hands, my face, my feet, my choices. And now, rather than condescend to her because of what I consider her vapid choices – I am falling apart because even though people come and regularly take her out, even though she has more friends and contacts than I do, what she mostly does is watch TV and talk about how boring life is. Her biggest pleasure is being told how good she looks and is this really what it’s come down to for her? And what have I learned? Sure, I’m “different.” I’ve no interest in manicures or pedicures. I do love clothes, get my hair done every three or four months and yes, I love it when I’m told I look younger than my years. But what else? I spend my days working, then going home and reading. I love my daughter as much as I can, keep her in mind always, find ways to show her my love. But there are ways in life I’ve given up and there are things about the kind of life I want to live that I try not to think about, that I’m frightened to consider because I believe it’s not possible. Am I really no different than my mother?

© 2022 Denise Smyth

Reckoning Part 1

04 Sep 2022 5 Comments

by Denise in Alzheimer, anger, Family, Money Tags: , , , ,

(I am posting this in two parts as after I finished it, it seemed too long.)

Of course everything changes. Since I’m here for ten days I figured the constant would be spending early mornings in this rocking chair by the bay, thinking and writing. When I was sitting here earlier it seemed money would be the thing today.  Then it all got twisted – phone calls from both last night and this morning haven’t changed the fact that I need to deal with money but have pissed me off so I’m not sure how to begin. And it pulls in so many situations, with so many people…the bay is still here, the clouds both harmless and threatening, I’m still rocking in my chair, trying to breathe. Serenity cannot be forced.

I’ve lots of fear around money which tells me I haven’t a whole lot of faith. I don’t mean the kind of faith that says “Don’t worry, everything will be all right.” Because my definition of “all right” in any given situation might not be what is so. That doesn’t mean the outcome was wrong, just different. If I insist only my way is correct I’m in for a world of sorrow, disappointment and rage. A better definition of faith is, “I will be able to handle this and there is help to ask for if I need it.” I’d do well to stick with that when it comes to money. Of course, that also requires my willingness to admit I need help and the humility to ask for it. I prefer to do things on my own. I have an attitude of “who needs you?” born from needing to take care of myself best as I could since I was a kid. Early example: first day of Kindergarten meant all us little ones were brought to the school cafeteria and assigned to tables based on who our new teacher was to be. I walked in happy and confident and looked around at the myriad of crying kids clinging to their parents. What babies, I thought. Who cries over their parents? I took my seat at the head of the table and never looked back.

By 5-years-old I’d learned the value of “not needing,” which was really a survival skill. It’s also a hindrance as no person is an island. Insisting that’s true requires denial and self-deception. But back to money, and to start with, Alzheimer’s. My mom’s Alzheimer’s has forced my brother and I to look at her finances. My mom has always been independent . My dad died nine year ago and she’s been living in their single family home since. She has a family friend who sees to any repairs that she might need. She has a car, so she comes and goes as she pleases.  My brother and I have never been on top of her finances but there was never a need to be. She’s got Social Security and a couple of pensions from my dad. She has my uncle M (her brother) who (we thought) she could rely on who lives close by, and another decades-old friend who’s an accountant who helps her pay her bills and file her taxes.

A friend of Maria’s here at the shore has met my mom and adores her. You probably would, too. You didn’t grow up with her. She’s a friendly old lady who looks terrific for her age and that has big cachet. But not as big as it drawbacks. Last April my mom spent $800 at her hairdresser, which doesn’t include the $200 gift certificate given her as a birthday present that month. That is an outrageous amount for someone on a small fixed income. She goes to her hairdresser every Friday – for all she forgets from Alzheimer’s, that she never does. I’m sure it’s because she’s been doing it for decades. I called her hairdresser to set limits. Then there’s her nails. We found out she’d been going two – three times a week to get tips put on at $80 a pop, going home and pulling them off, forgetting she did so and going back a day or two later and doing it again. My mom’s friend M reported this to me, and told me the woman at the nail salon kept trying to talk my mom into a simple and less expensive manicure but my mom became belligerent and insisted on her tips. I went to the salon and spoke to the owner myself, then had to tell my mom no more. She didn’t believe me, insisted she didn’t pull them off, insisted she wanted her tips.

My brother and I have since had to take her car away as both her GP and Neurologist say she can no longer drive. In case we needed proof, R pulled the car out of the garage a few weeks after we took her keys away and discovered a huge dent in the driver’s side fender that went from the top of the hood to under the bumper, along with a hole in the fender. She didn’t know it was there. And when R brought the car to the body shop to appraise the damage, the mechanic asked if we also wanted to fix the dent on the passenger side, the one we we hadn’t noticed. 

We’ve hired a companion who drives my mom around and who has instructions that she is only to get a manicure and only once a week. We’ve been working with a senior advisor to set up a trust so she can get Medicaid which will pay for home care in a way that her Medicare won’t. We are working to get her the VA benefits she’s entitled to since my dad was a veteran during the Korean War. We’ve had to look into her reverse mortgage which means her crazy expensive one-family-semi-attached-home-with-a-tiny-concrete-backyard is worth a fraction of its value to her since she spent most of what it’s worth. I don’t exactly understand reverse mortgages, don’t want to. All I know is money I thought would be available to take care of her in her old age should she need it is not there. Neither is what I also thought would be both my and my brother’s inheritance.

Talking about inheriting is embarrassing. When I think about it I automatically look at it from the outside in, meaning what it is you all (whoever “you-all” might be) will think of me. That I am callous and greedy. That my mom has Alzheimer’s and I am worrying about the wrong things. It doesn’t, of course, matter what anyone thinks. It matters that I look from the inside out, at what is driving the way I react. This is a tough one – a really, really tough one – because there is a lot of pain here, pain I’ve managed to put off dealing with because I never thought I’d be in the position of having to deal with my mother in this way. I come from what people call “good genes.” My family is pretty healthy and for whatever my uncles who’ve passed have died from, no one has gotten Alzheimer’s. I just assumed one day my mom would die, my brother and I would sell the house and split the money. And not that it would be a terribly lot of money, but enough that I could finally buy something for myself somewhere that I’d actually want to live.

Next, Part 2

© 2022 Denise Smyth

His Ashes

02 Sep 2022 2 Comments

by Denise in Death, Death of a Child, Grief Tags: , , , , , ,

When Philip died I wanted him cremated. I thought Phil might argue – we were both raised Catholic, and from what I understood the church did not allow cremation. We married in a Catholic ceremony, had our children baptized, had them make their communion and confirmation. I did what I thought I was supposed to do for my kids as far as religion was concerned, especially because Phil was serious about it. I was not. As a child, I was let out of public school at 2:00 on Wednesdays to attend religious instruction. Even then I was no believer and decided God was something grown-ups made up to explain what they couldn’t. 

Phil would take the kids to church on Sunday. I refused to go. We had one argument about it, with him insisting I should go because what would we tell the kids if he was going but I was not? The truth, I answered. Mommy and Daddy think different things about God and it’s important to Daddy that you go to church. I don’t know that we ever actually had to have that conversation, but we were ready.

 As of 2016, the church’s guidelines on cremation changed. It was allowed, but you were not to scatter ashes or keep them at home in an urn. They should be kept in a “sacred” place, such as a church cemetery, which I’m sure one would have the privilege of paying for. At any rate, Phil did not object to cremation, so Natalie and I pored over a catalogue of urns to pick the right ones. We should not have to do this, I told her. If we are catalogue-shopping it’s supposed to be for shoes or clothes or the very best in cookware. But we all know where “shoulds” and “supposed-to’s” leave us, so we did what we had to. Natalie chose a tiny urn in a blue velvet box that could travel with her, I chose a small, elegant slate blue with a muted silver top for Phil (who did not want to be involved in the process) and the bulk of the ashes went into a large gold urn with a band of inlaid white material for me. I chose it over the floral cloisonné urn I preferred, and I am still trying to figure out why. There was a reasoning going on in my head that I can’t articulate. All I can come up with is maybe I thought what I wanted was too feminine, maybe I thought the gold was more dignified…it bothers me terribly, both as a  mother and a writer, that I cannot come up with the words to explain this, and that my choice here might have been based on a “should.”

I do know that I thought that once I actually received the urn it would look better in person and I would be happy (is that an appropriate word for my feelings regarding the container of my son’s ashes?) with my choice. I wasn’t. At the time it was low on the list of Things I Am Grieved About. I put the urn in my bedroom and put Phil’s in my living room as he said he wasn’t ready to take it. 

There were a couple times over the years when I made an effort to find an urn I’d like better. The floral cloisonné was no longer available and I couldn’t find anything else I cared for. I still have Phil’s urn as he never asked for it and at this point, I am hoping he doesn’t. Because the last year or two I was starting to feel the need to let go of my urn and Philip’s ashes but I’d like to keep the small, elegant urn in the living room as it feels like just what I need to have.

I couldn’t figure out what to do about the growing need I had to let go of Philip’s ashes. Stories about people getting rid of loved one’s ashes center around the favorite place that person had so there’s some meaning to the thing. I don’t know of any special place of Philip’s except Underground 8 – now called The Meat Locker – in Montclair and spilling ashes on the floor of a music venue isn’t something one does. That I knew of no place shamed me. If I was a better mother, we’d have had a place, a perfect place, something we shared. If we were as close as I say we were, why wasn’t there a place? I can see now how I would torture myself about this, how easily I shame myself. Plus I didn’t talk to anyone about it so it festered.

A few years ago Maria’s friend developed leukemia and within about six months of her diagnosis, she died. When I was at the shore back in June, I overheard Maria talking about taking her ashes out on her boat and scattering them in the bay. And there was my answer. Maybe Philip didn’t have a place, but I did. And not only a place, but a person. In the beginning days of this blog, when telling the story of finding out about Philip’s death, I’d written how Maria was the first person I called when I found out he died and I knew she was in her car before I hung up the phone. Who more fitting to do this with?

So on a Saturday afternoon back in July, Maria’s husband M took us out on the boat. I walked down the pier with the urn, heavily laden with his ashes, hugged in my arms round my belly. M helped me into the boat, Maria following behind in tears. All I can say about the way I felt was small. I think that speaks to powerlessness, the way, as a child, choices were not mine to make. Because while I was choosing the time and the place to let go of Philip’s remains, I had no choice that all that was left of my son was a pile of ashes.

We rode in silence into the bay until M stopped the boat where he thought it appropriate. Is this okay, he asked? I nodded my approval, but really, what about this was okay? The ashes were in a huge, thick, unwieldy plastic bag inside the urn. I took care in pulling the bag out, in making sure the ashes went into the gently lapping water and not onto the boat or blown back in my face. If you’ve never seen them, cremation ashes are gray and fine and powdery and they left a trail as the boat, motor off, bobbed along with the water. When it was finally done I looked up and nodded. The boat started up again and as we swung around, the ashes trailed along on top of the water and Maria and I waved our good-byes.

I thought I was okay but by the time I woke up on Sunday morning I was not. The world was hostile and I was without words. There was too much life around me. Three of Maria’s grandkids, 11, 16 and 18, were also at the house that weekend. And where Maria and her grandkids are, drama reigns. That means life is loud and evident, that meant there was no room for me. So while I originally planned – as I always do when I’m here for the weekend – to go straight to work from here on Monday morning, I quickly packed and headed home as soon as I finished my coffee. And once I got there, I went into my dark bedroom, got under my covers and cried for the rest of the day.

That’s what was needed. I am not, and even then was not, sorry for what I’d done. I wasn’t prepared for my reaction but how does anyone prepare for a possible adverse reaction? I do not know what that means, never did. I can’t predict when I’ll be overcome. When Philip’s birthday or death day rolls around I don’t necessarily go into a funk. That’s more likely to happen afterward, when spring rolls around, because January, his birth month, and February, his death month, at least make me feel his presence. Every spring I lose him again as time is relentless and that’s the season things start coming to life, but not Philip. Never, not ever, Philip.

© 2022 Denise Smyth

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