Category Archives: GRIEF WORK & Writing on Topic

Writings on various aspects of grief and loss

Guest Post By Jesse Abbot

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This post is the exclusive property of Jesse I. Abbot and may not be copied or reproduced. It is posted here with the permission of the author. More of his work can be found at http://www.jesseabbot.com

from the book of common care – sometimes darkness mates with light

Aug 31, 2011

We all clamor for light instead of darkness.  .  .except when we want to catch some sleep, and we draw the curtains or blinds. Most often, though, we bend toward light as a sunflower does – as many creatures on the earth do.

Yet sometimes there is intermittent light and darkness; sometimes darkness mates with light. We cannot stop this coupling, and so we must keep vigil in order to receive the light when it does come our way. We can use the darkness to sleep ’til we are refreshed, but we must not assume that illumination will not come amid our nights.

Of course I am using metaphors, but whether I am speaking of spiritual darkness or literal night, the images persist, and we can find our way with them. Sometimes we look for a flashlight or our eyeglasses in the dark – and literally all we need to locate them are a flashlight or glasses! In other words, sometimes there is no immediate path through this flashing on and off of light, and we need to contend with paradox. We cannot lord over the progression of darkness and light and darkness again; we cannot have dominion over what emerges in our worlds.

Of course there is prayer, and that carries its own flame or light. Prayer can help us navigate through what we cannot control, and know that goodness does not always come in happy moments; goodness and holiness are color blind and light-and-dark-blind. I pray that you may find your hope and goodness in all kinds of weather, and in all gradations of light and darkness. I pray that sometimes in the moonlight, you may see a reflection of the sun, and know that the deepest Sunday or Inner Sabbath is near.

Prying Open the Bud

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Prying Open the Bud

                 -Iris Arenson-Fuller

“And the day came that the pain it took to remain tight in a bud was greater than the risk it took to blossom.” -Anais Nin

when we feel the waves crashing against the windows
despite living in a land-locked town
sand grits up the mind, waves whisper secrets
not heard by others, growing louder in the head

     it’s time to bolt from rooms
    that engulf us in smoky dark
    time to blink into the sun that warms
    earthworms, budding flowers
    and tortured souls alike

time to do it when limbs are just long, pale pouches
with pounds of pebbles sewn inside, weighing us down
when our cell nuclei, not our ears
hear the haunting music
of the evil snake charmer
who tells us there is no hope

    time when we want to run from the high-def
    big screen picture,
    our personal horror show
    turning on relentlessly as we try to relax
     into tiny moments that let us breathe

If we don’t force ourselves to exit and find the light
our children will be orphans, forever dreaming
of unfulfilled promises that sit in a box upstairs,
memories fading fast, lemon juice ink on paper

    we must seek elusive brightness under the veil
    must push ourselves out with the contractions, not resist.
    true the soul feels fragile, unreal,
    but is as real as your foot,
    part of God’s essence, impossible to kill

who will keep repeating to us that all is temporary?
those who love us and fear we won’t listen?
the face in the mirror that knows the truth
but shrinks from it out of fear and guilt?

     some guru, merely as human as we are,
     though we resist our own humanity, fight the wind
     with an inside-out umbrella, then just give up?

we sometimes learn too late that punishment
meted out by demons we create is far more ugly
than any real demons hiding under rocks
those who believe in the Next World of Truth will tell you
even there, only the most truly wicked make eternal payment

     the average bear gets a ticket
     to watch his life play back
     to feel the pain of squandered potential
    keeping him from Oneness
    but only till the lessons sink in
    and his spirit is freed

it’s time to bolt, urging unwilling limbs to move,
reluctant brains to unstick the needle caught in the groove

     time to blink into the sun that still warms
    earthworms, budding flowers
    and tortured souls alike
    if we force open those buds,
    risk living, thumb noses
   at those who would try to trap us
   into squandering our potential.
   we will see spring flowers blooming
    in dead of winter, I promise

I Can’t Want It

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Public Domain Photo-pdclipart.org

My  2 1/2 yr old granddaughter says, “I can’t want it” and shakes her head obstinately when you offer her something good to eat that she has no intention of tasting. She says the same when she is ill and you attempt to give her a spoonful of medicine to make her feel better.

This makes me wonder how often we all say to ourselves, “I can’t want it”.

We retain some automatic thoughts like these from our childhoods and from negative things we have endured as adults too.  Some of the thoughts have  planted themselves firmly, due to past disappointment and hurt.  Such thoughts linger in the shadows, waiting to pounce if we don’t recognize them quickly enough. When we don’t challenge them, and when we permit them to take over, they influence our adult behavior.  If they stick around for a long time, there is evidence that they actually change the chemistry of our brains.  It is important to be alert to these, but they are not always easy to overcome, especially when the words, “I can’t want it“  keep replaying in our heads like a sub-conscious invalidating incantation. We are mesmerized and trapped by the negativity of the messages we keep giving ourselves. When we revert to our inner two-year-old, we tell ourselves things like:

          ”I can’t help myself.  I can’t feel better. I can’t want my soul to awaken and with it, my hope for the future.  I can’t want to get over my loss (whatever it was).  I can’t want to be over my pain.”

     When we send ourselves such messages, it is usually because we don’t feel we deserve to be better.  We stubbornly hang on to feeling bad, somehow validating our sense of self, even when it is not a productive or mature sense of self.  We don’t always know this is what we are doing because we won’t take a good, hard look at what keeps us in hell. So we remain in a hell that may not have been self created, but that we continue to furnish with misery, demons, fire and brimstone to punish ourselves, far better than the furnishings any Satanic interior decorator could ever dream up for us.

There will be still some days when we wake up in the morning and feel a gentle swelling of unfamiliar  excitement, almost like a bud ready to open. The mind and heart begin to spin out ideas and possibilities. Excitement and hope start to form little bubbles, fragile, filled with iridescence and a bit elusive.  They float over us. We try to pin them down, to catch and turn them into something concrete that we can hold and better understand, before they break and dissolve. We are usually afraid that these bubbles will be gone before we can determine that they are truly present, and not simply figments of our wishful imaginations, longing to feel whole and happy once again . 

Girl Blowing Bubbles by Petr Kratochvil

We identify a surge of energy that we may have not have experienced for a time. We gingerly climb out of bed and with some trepidation, we contemplate the feelings of hope and possibility that have been absent if life hasn’t been going well for us lately. Hopefully we can ban the “I can’t want it” from shouting out, even if we are fearful.

 A French proverb says, “Hope is the dream of a soul awake”. If you have been sitting like moldy, stale tea leaves, steeping yourself for a very long time in a cup of despair, you may believe your soul has fogotten how it feels to be awake.  You may resist the stirring you feel as a new day dawns and as hope struggles to take shape.  If your soul has been wrapped tightly in grief, shame, fear, loneliness and even self-loathing, mummified by pain and circumstances that have befallen you, or even that you have created for yourself, it isn’t easy to wake up one day and find the soul fully present and ready to be whole again.

You try to do all the correct things. You get help. You listen to advice that sticks to your head as though it were flypaper, but the advice never penetrates or lights the way to feeling different, or to making changes.  You ask all of the questions that mankind has ever asked. You know that struggles such as yours, with conflict, guilt, desire, loss and death, are age-old ones and not yours to bear alone. Yet you suffer and you ask repeatedly why you must do so.

I can’t answer your question.  I can’t tell you how to make things better instantaneously.  I can’t demonstrate with a how-to video, the way to shake off the fitful sleep of anguish from the back of your being, flinging it into a far-away pit from which it can never again crawl out to haunt you. I truly wish I could tell you how to do that, and how to wake up your soul, finally letting the sun back into an existence that  has felt cold and rayless.  I have lived through things I believed at the time to have been “the worst that could possibly happen”.  Unfortunately, there have been multiple “worst things”, but thankfully I did not know it during the dark times when I was certain I had reached the nadir of my existence.  I have somehow found my way out of deep pits, using whatever internal and external tools and magic I could  access.  I know that within each of us exists the ability to do so.  Even if there are no guarantees that life won’t pour on us more bitter potions to try to kill our  joy and souls,  I know that in the cracks and crevices of  the most formidable and terrifying mountains, there is undiscovered joy waiting for each of us and perhaps the trickle of a fresh, clear mountain stream.

If you find yourself thinking or saying, “I can’t want it”, please keep on asking yourself why you can’t. Then write down ten things you really do want with all your heart. Don’t be afraid. Until you claim them, there is little chance of your soul awakening.  It’s time to get out of hell.  The Indian Buddhist monk, Vasubandhu, said that “the wardens of the hells merely proceed from the minds of the ones who are there suffering in torment.  They are projections, just like many other features of existence.  Hell is a kind of hallucination.”

BOMBS THAT DROP

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Bombs That Drop

Iris Arenson-Fuller, June 2011

(If you’re wondering why the photos don’t at first seem to fit the poem’s title, I invite you to read on!)

 

I have been both the bombardier and the debris
left standing after dropping of the bomb.

Sometimes life looks  like Joplin, sad victims pacing,
tears flowing through the streets making rivers.
You see bits of great aunt’s blue china floating
in runnels of tears, a monkey sock doll,
a dog’s dish, empty, beseeching the sky
for something to fill it, for a small creature
to come bounding and barking out of the rubble
at dinnertime.

I have been the one sitting under willows,
writing sad poems accompanied by bee music.

Life buzzed by taunting with singsong rhymes
on willow days when poems were born gasping for air
after birth, some never claiming rightful life
because I, too, was reluctant to claim it.

I sat hiding from the sun, dreaming fitfully
of a green, fertile past, long gone.

I used to search the land for targets to destroy
on orders from my brain, untrained in peace.
My normal was long days of constant guard-duty
stuck in a foxhole, muscles tense, watchful
for new heartaches threatening to crash,
no idea that I was the enemy, not life.
Joy was my hostage, carefully contained,
tightly bound.

A friend said yesterday, “Life just sucks,
but then gets better and then it sucks again”.

She isn’t wrong but now I know a little better
how to find the sweet spaces in-between,
where we sink in and marvel at the quiet.
I can sit watching the trumpet lilies, peaches, pinks,
spreading over the day, delicious marmalade,
and not be so afraid of what’s next.

When life looks like Joplin on the news
I admit I wait for the waters to rise.

I do my best to turn off shape-shifter dreams
that fast become nightmares where bombs explode,
though the horizon was peaceful moments ago.
It’s not easy but I prefer dreams that float in,
leaves gently stirred by breezes, a lover’s touch,
barely there, promising greater pleasures.

TO HARRY, THE GREAT, ON FATHER’S DAY

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     I imagine some of my friends and family will find this amusing because I am always saying how much I don’t like doing what everybody else does. Here I go, though, writing a post in tribute to my late father, Harry, on Father’s Day.

      Harry Arenson was a complex man.  Of course, I didn’t realize how much so until I was an adult.   I always knew he was special and that he was usually a lot more fun than most of my friends’ fathers. He has been dead since May of 1981. When I look at his pictures, I can hear him telling me joke after joke and making  his outrageous puns, as though he were right in the room with me.  He had such a quick, clever wit and an excelllent command of the English language. He did not truly believe this, being ashamed of his lack of formal education. I learned after he died that he had never finished high school. He was forced (as were many in those days) to leave school to help support his parents and brothers.  It simultaneously touched and saddened me that I was the only one in the family who had not known this. He had not wanted me to know, for some reason.  Losing my father really shook the foundation under my legs.  When he died, I had no idea that within the next year we would also lose my young nephew and then that I would become a widow, joining my mother in that role. 

     During my first husband’s illness, my father was my shoulder for crying. My mother was the practical one who provided strength and who helped me to be strong too.  My father found ways to help us laugh when there were scant reasons for laughter.

     One of the things I most loved was what a tender-hearted, compassionate person Harry was.  Although he did not always approve of all of the causes in which I was involved during my teens and young adult years, he was really my model. He hated to see injustice and railed against it at every opportunity.  He had self-esteem issues stemming from his childhood and from his own father, (who was in many ways tyrannical, even though we all adored our Zaida or Grandfather) but Harry was the first to stand up for someone he felt wasn’t being treated properly or with fairness.  When my Girl Scout Troop no longer wanted me as a member because I had proposed membership for one of the (then) few girls in our neighborhood of African-American background, my mother was horrified that I wrote a letter to the troop leader and quit in defiance, saying that I wouldn’t be caught dead in their company after the revelation of their bigotry.  My father was so proud and took me out for a huge ice cream sundae at Jahn’s Ice Cream Parlour, home of the amazing “Kitchen Sink” sundae.

     Harry was poet at heart, though I don’t know that he ever wrote a poem in  his life. He was a workingman, a staunch union supporter,  a newspaper routeman in Manhattan, delivering stacks of newspapers from a truck from the age of 16. He worked for the Hearst Corporation at the N.Y. Journal American, for 41 years till they went out of business and then went to work at a slightly different job for the New York Times, until his retirement.   From the time I was a small child, he recited poetry to me, with great feeling and encouraged me to memorize the same poems. I can still recite most of them.  He was thrilled when I began writing poetry at the age of three, dictating what I wanted to say to my parents, or to my much older sister.  Every spare moment my father had, and there weren’t many with long work hours and constant extended family crises and obligations, was spent reading his beloved books and listening to music of all types, but mostly classical.  Like most parents of his day, he hated early rock music, but he loved folk songs and very much enjoyed the Beatles.  He came from poverty, but his books and records were his pride and joy, along with his cameras. During the Great Depression, as a newlywed, he supplemented the family income by taking portraits and even won some prizes.

     Any chance for an excursion into the “country”, which included suburban New Jersey or Long Island, as well as more rural areas in  Upstate New York or Connecticut, was a great delight to Harry.  He would get lost in his own world, setting out on long walks with his cameras. I have a closet full of boxes of his slides that  I need to digitalize.  He enjoyed photographing his kids and grandkids too, but probably not as much as capturing the beauty of nature. We would all tease him about his endless pictures of what looked to  us like empty country roads going nowhere. He said walking along country roads and observing nature gave him a chance to think and to resolve things that worried him.  I don’t much enjoy being photographed now, but I have to say that the photos my father took of me in my teens and early adulthood were the best.

     Harry often recited Shakespeare to me, having committed an astonishing amount of his works to memory.  In fact, when I was quite small,  part of our bedtime ritual was that he always said,, “Goodnight, goodnight! Parting is such sweet sorrow that I shall say goodnight till it be morrow.”   My mother, impatient and always practical, would wave him off and tell him to just let me go upstairs so she could relax for the evening.

     Harry blubbered easily. He definitely wore his feelings on his sleeve and so do I.  He was born in 1909 and in many ways, he bought into typical gender roles and stereotypes, but he was not in the least ashamed of, or embarrassed about being so emotional and crying so easily.  In fact, he was mostly proud of being this way, except when in the presence of his own father.  My father taught me early that humor and pathos were very closely related and sometimes inseparable.

     The  role as “breadwinner” was one Harry took very seriously, so he was traditional in that respect. He did not want my mother to work outside the home and she was fine with that. He did not abide by definitions of women’s work in other ways. He remained very much in love with my mother till his dying breath and he always wanted to help her and to make things easier for her.  He regularly assisted with shopping, vacuuming, washing walls, windows, and draperies.  He did not see this as unmasculine behavior. He absolutely loved buying gifts for my mother. There was a good deal of plotting and happy planning around these purchases.  My father would  turn over his paycheck to her because she managed the household budget, but he kept a few dollars for his own expenses. Somehow, he saved money out of his small self-alottment, and from this, he bought my mother jewelry, handbags, clothing and flowers. He recognized and appreciated fine quality and had to do a lot of convincing to have my mother accept his gifts.

     My father maintained a tiny garden in front of our Brooklyn home. He planted my mother’s favorite flowers.  Peonies, lilacs and sweet williams were among her favorites. He loved them for the pleasure they provided her.

     Very little kids enjoyed my father so much because sometimes he was so  absolutely silly and knew how to relate to them. It might not sound too appealing to you, but he enjoyed the giggles he invariably got when he took his false teeth out of his mouth and sucked them back in again.  He adored playing with toys along with the youngsters in the family.   It was his chance to be a kid again and I am just like that. I still get super-excited at toy stores. I will never forget that he was almost as excited as I was when I got my first bike, an amazing reddish-purple J.C. Higgins English racer with a wonderful brown leather tool bag holding miniature tools.

      My father was a master at making up silly words in pretend languages and I confess to this “talent” as well. There must be something in our genes because my eldest son invented his own Slavic-sounding language and actually once created and performed a comedy routine entirely in his private language.   I have incorporated some of Harry’s  ridiculous, but hilarious words and expressions into my own vocabulary.

     Again, though he was traditional about some things, he wasn’t with others. He preferred my mother to dress in a “feminine” fashion and hated it when I dressed in what he considered a provocative or undemure way when I was a teenager. That said, he argued with my mother sometimes about the activities he and I shared and enjoyed together. He grew up in a family of five boys and didn’t know much about paper dolls or makeup. He  taught me how to build crystal radios, how to make boat and airplane models, and how to use my woodburning set, even though my  mother said those things were for boys.

      My father’s family had been ultra-poor when he was a boy, so it was important to him to dress well. He wore work pants, work shirts and a cap most days, but when he wasn’t working he sported expensive suits and cashmere topcoats and he always wore a dress hat, or fedora. He was meticulous about his shirts, ties and cufflinks too. I have one of the gold cufflinks with his initials on a chain and wear it as a necklace.

     Harry wasn’t perfect and he didn’t pretend to be. He lost his temper and shouted (though never lifted a finger to hit anyone, ever).  He bore grudges, he gossiped with his brothers and was over-protective of his kids, sometimes to the point of interference, he was highly superstitious, had a number of phobias, was nervous and borderline obsessive-compulsive.  He had little confidence in his abilities, though he was clearly very intelligent. He was born with six fingers on one hand, as was his youngest brother. His brother had his extra digit removed when he was a young man, but my father was terrified of doctors and could not. For all of his life he suffered from the delusion that everyone noticed it and that it was, in fact, the first thing they noticed about him. 

     Loyalty was probably one of Harry’s most memorable qualities. He spent most of his limited spare time with family on both sides, but he had lifelong friends, Tommy Moran and Petie Embarrata. He used to joke at times that we were Irish and our name was Erinson, or Italian and our name was Arensino.  My father would have done anything for his friends and they , in turn, for him. He never tired of telling me that family and trusted friends were more important than infinite riches and without the first two life would not be worth living.

     Many Father’s Days have passed since Harry’s death in 1981.  I spent a lot of years trying not to feel too blue on this day, and trying to find ways for my kids not to, since three of them lost their father pretty young. Today, Father’s Day also coincides with the birthday of my eldest son, who has many qualities of both his grandfather and his father.  Life isn’t always easy, but I know my father would have understood and liked the Native American saying, “If the eyes had no tears, the soul would have no rainbow”.

     On his gravestone, it says, “His love and beauty are immortal”. As I sit here today,  writing this, I know this is true.

Is It Normal to Grieve a Deceased Spouse When You Remarry?

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      One thing I have learned from losing so many people (and pets) is that everything you feel is normal, for you.

 

      I have been remarried for over 15 yrs, after nearly 15 yrs before spent as a widow raising my kids (and adding a fourth child as a single adoptive parent).  My current husband is a wonderful person and the way in which we found each other, as well as the commonalities we found in each other were clearly (to us) decreed by destiny.

 

     Still, on the anniversary of the tragic, untimely death of my first husband who died in his 30′s, I often have a very bad day.  I remember him by lighting a candle and saying a prayer of remembrance that is the memorial ritual of my religion, even though he was of a different background.   I don’t follow all of the other traditions of my birth heritage, but this one I do.  Sometimes, though not often, I visit his grave and have some quiet moments there.  On holidays and special family occasions I sometimes find myself  overcome with sadness, thinking that my first husband is not there to share the moment, has missed so much of the lives of his children and has never known his granddaughter, the talented and bright teenaged daughter of our only biological son, my eldest.

 

     A cousin told me that it is not appropriate for me to visit Kim’s grave. I don’t know whether she meant she didn’t personally find it appropriate for someone who has remarried, or whether she felt there was a prohibition against this in our religion.  My culture is important to me and our holidays hold fond memories and special meaning for me, but I can’t pretend I am very observant in the faith of my forefathers and foremothers.  My cousin meant no harm when she said this, but she made me a little curious  about whether it was simply her opinion that what I did and the way I felt wasn’t appropriate, or if there is some law or rule in our faith that addresses this issue for widows and widows.  I can’t say I have ever bothered to find out because I know how I feel is “normal” for me and is ok.  In my life and through my work I have also known many other widows and widowers who still grieve a deceased spouse even when they are very happily and successfully remarried.

 

      I don’t live in the past and in the last decade have consciously worked quite hard on learning to live more and more in the moment.  That doesn’t alter the fact that I have a good memory and that there are many wonderful and vivid images and stories etched in my head that are very much a part of the person I have become.   I treasure these memories and don’t want to obliterate and forget them.   The life that I lived with my first husband created  precious and happy memories, in spite of the struggles we had with his illness the last few years of his life and the horrific way he died (in a fire) that caused me to suffer for years from Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, much diminished now in severity, but still there.

 

      I cannot forget, and don’t want to forget, our time together at college, our first summer on Martha’s Vineyard and subsequent visits there, our life in San Francisco as young adults, the birth of our son, the adoptions of our other kids, our early years of parenting, the purchase of our first home together.  I will not forget our transition from the Haight Ashbury to the more traditional life we began in Connecticut, or all of the other small, commonplace, everyday events we lived through, as well as the momentious ones that fill pages of photo albums and that occupy space in my brain.

 

     When you are fortunate and blessed enough to find a new love after losing someone  through death or divorce, your new partner is getting a person who has been pounded and transformed by the waves of  loss and life.  Who you are is a composite of who you were and what you have  become as a direct result of all of your life experiences.  In most cases your perspectives have changed and your maturity, compassion and wisdom have deepened because of what you have endured.  Your new spouse also has a history.  You must accept each other and forge a new path together that doesn’t dwell on the past, but that recognizes and even honors it.  There is no place for jealousy in a healthy, committed relationship.  Some dictionary synonyms of the word “jealousy” are envy, resentment, covetousness, suspicion, wariness, watchfulness, mistrustfulness and these surely don’t sound to me like good characteristics on which to build a successful marriage or relationship.

        If your new spouse or partner is upset by your signs of grief for a deceased spouse, perhaps you can provide him or her with this article in order to open up an honest and heartfelt conversation about both of your feelings.  This may help your spouse or partner understand that love and grief are not really finite or easily explainable. Both love and grief make twists and turns, ebb and flow, even mutate. What you feel about your past is indeed normal for you and doesn’t diminish what you feel for, or your commitment to your present and your future.  I believe that when you truly love another you share in their joys and also in their suffering and that you feel and demonstrate  true compassion for them.

 

      Thich Nhat Hanh, the Buddhist monk, teacher, poet, peace activist said,

             “We really have to understand the person we want to love. If our love is only a will to possess, it is not love. If we only think of ourselves, if we know only our own needs and ignore the needs of the other person, we cannot love.”

      

Losing Mama or Papa Again and Again

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Images of Aging, Agency on Aging

 

      Losing a mother or father is a pivotal and life-changing event in most people’s lives.  When we lose a parent as a child it shapes our development in a number of ways and when it happens at a young age, often changes the way we view the world.  When we are adults and we lose one or both parents, most of us still experience intense emotions, regardless of the age of our parents at death.  Naturally the type of relationship we had with the parent has an impact on the level of intensity and whether or not we still have personal issues to work through that were never resolved about the relationship.  Many feel “orphaned”, in spite of being mature adults and often find a lack of understanding about this feeling from others (See Alexander Levy’s The Orphaned Adult).

     When a parent suffers from dementia we experience the loss while he or she is still with us in body. The sense of being “orphaned” becomes familiar to us, though our parent is still alive.   We find ourselves searching our parent’s face, voice and comments for a shred of something that used to be there.  At times we are able to hear a tidbit or see an expression that comforts us and reminds us of the past.  Often though, we are stunned anew, as though just realizing that the mother or father we used to know is mostly somewhere else. We are forced to feel the sharp smack of loss repeatedly.  A look, a word, a tantrum, an anxiety attack during what began as a pleasant visit with mother or father before the winds swiftly changed with no warning, sends us crashing back into reality.

     We stride into the elevator at the facility, laden with offerings that are also props to help us get through the visit we hope will be appreciated and pleasant for us and for our parent.   Armed with cookies, candy, or a new sweater,  we gird ourselves for the expected and the unexpected. We may be greeted with enthusiasm at first. if the parent is still able to recognize people.  My husband’s mother, tending to be a bit of a drama queen, will usually shriek loudly with delight on first glimpse of us. Sometimes she says, “Oh God, I thought you were dead.  I haven’t seen you in so long”, though our previous visit was probably only a couple of days earlier.  Sometimes the wires get crossed and the words come out all jumbled, interspersed with her screams of pleasure, or she begins to cry. I watch my husband’s smile start to fade and see his body tighten up. 

     When we visit with my mother-in-law, we  present our offerings, usually met with more extreme exclamations and then we settle in for a chat.  If we are lucky we find a topic that holds her interest a little. Mostly, we just listen to her ramble, complain, or make loud observations about the other residents. Many of these folks are out of it enough so that they don’t seem to notice.  Some wander back and forth, pausing to thrust their faces into ours and smiling, but not saying anything. Others shriek or curse.   A few are introduced anew at every visit and they extend their hands in greeting, telling us they are pleased to meet us. 

     The conversations with my mother-in-law begin harmlessly enough, but soon the emotional lability shows itself and tears are shed, along with loud moans and laments.  Sometimes there is enough insight so that my mother-in-law knows she is “throwing a fit”, as she calls it but she says she doesn’t know why and can’t stop herself. We do our best to address her concerns and to calm her.  If we are lucky she provides a running commentary on the other residents, usually pointing out with disdain the things she observes, but not always realizing that all of the other residents there also have some form or degree of dementia.  At every visit, she shares with us that one woman is getting ready to leave the facility and go back to another area of the country because she is tired of having people tell her what to do.  My mother-in-law relies on this woman’s help (often to the concern of the staff) and calls her an angel, asking us for pen and paper to write down the forwarding address of her friend so she can correspond with her when she moves out. We don’t bother to remind her that she doesn’t remember words or numbers long enough to be able to write them down.   It’s doubtful that the friend is going anywhere, but we aren’t sure of that.  

     My mother-in-law has flashes of sharpness and memories of the past that fly past the radar of her dementia and surprise us.  She will tell an amusing anecdote about something that happened when my husband and his brother were youngsters. In the next breath she won’t remember how old she is, thinks she has three different rooms to sleep in, doesn’t remember where we live or who our children are, and thinks that her women caregivers are men. She says she doesn’t want them being friendly to her, asking her questions or trying to get her involved in activities, because “she has no interest in them sexually.” Last week she looked at some photos I had brought and she thought one of her sisters who is still very much alive, had died a long time ago.

       The other day, she could not remember her deceased husband’s name and thought she had five previous husbands.  However, when reminded of the facts (gently) she proceeded to talk about the last months of her late husband’s life and how he had made the decision not to continue with dialysis, though he knew he would soon die.  My husband was stunned as he had previously been told that his father was too weak to continue with the dialysis and not that stopping had been his father’s choice.  His mother seemed quite articulate in relating this and even demonstrated excellent awareness when she apologized that she might have been upsetting her son with this information. He reassured her. Then in the next breath, she reverted to a jumble of gibberish and became agitated because one of the women residents stopped to chat with us and was perceived as interloping on the  time with us.

     Shortly thereafter, we needed to leave for home.  When we got into the car, my husband looked pale and we sat in silence.  I understood.  Every time he thinks his mother is doing “ok” or demonstrates some understanding or a level of reasonable function, we get the ice water shock of reality thrown in our faces.

     It’s not that we are deluding ourselves about my mother-in-law’s mental/cognitive status, or that you are doing that regarding your own parent with dementia.   We may believe we have come to terms with the situation, and, for the most part, we have.  We may have found a “comfortable” routine that enables us to visit, find topics to chat about and we do our best to offer our support.   We  make decisions that need to be made, but when the chips are down and we sit in a moment of quiet, the feelings of loss come rushing back at us.   

     I think the trick for those of us going through this is to find  a way to not feel too drained and in too much emotional turmoil after our visits, so we can get on with our lives and get back to the things we want and need to do. Sometimes we get an attack of guilty conscience when we skip a bunch of days and realize we haven’t visited in quite a while.  We know my mother-in-law is well cared for, though no facility is perfect, but we have witnessed a level of care above and beyond our expectations.  We have noticed lately that it seems to make little difference if we visit every couple of days, or if we stretch out visits and go every four or five days.  That might sound awful to some of you, but we are also noticing more and more that we need time to recover from the visits.  It is pretty hard to be cheerful and to find small ways to make this shared time enjoyable for my husband’s mother if our dread and discomfort are obvious.  It boils down once more to the rule of taking care of yourself when you must be caregivers for others.

     Many years ago, in 1994 to be exact, I saved a copy of an article someone gave me, called “My World Now” about notes found by a son in his mother’s nursing home room after her death. The article was in Newsweek and the woman who had written the notes and who died that year,  was Anna Mae Halgrim Seaver.  The article was very touching, but also made me quite sad, though it was years before my own mother began her slide into cognitive loss and physical decline.  I never forgot the article and still have it.

     Ana Mae Halgrim said, “Am I invisible?  Have I lost my right to respect and dignity? “  She spoke in her article about trying to make her feelings known to her staff of caregivers but that she was then labeled “crochety”.    She mentioned the loss of privacy and the fact that she needed to be treated like a human being.    Obviously, Ms Halgrim Seaver still had a functioning mind, though her health was not good, but her wisdom has stayed with me all these years.

     When we return from a visit with my mother-in -law, of course we need to acknowledge our feelings of loss, sadness and our fears about our own future. We need to deal with these feelings, rather than ignoring them.  I think  it is also quite important for us to honor our elders and to model healthy choices for our kids by living our  own lives as much as possible.  I am sure my husband’s mother wanted that for us in the days before she became so needy and self-focused.   Sometimes she still demonstrates that concern for us, though it may become confused with other emotions.  I know that my own mother continued to care and to worry about me and my sister until her very last days.  

     When we do commit to spending time with our elders and particularly those with dementia, we mustn’t forget that they are still worthy of respect and dignity. We don’t always understand or at times even have a clue about what is really going on inside of their heads, but there is a person in there who will one day be gone forever. Let’s not forget about ourselves, but let’s not forget that fact either.

When Life’s Lessons Clobber You Over the Head

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       Yeah, we’ve all had these moments.  We pointed out to another person something  that we considered useful or helpful.  At other times we have been the recipients of someone’s wisdom.  The most surprising moments though, were ones in which we had a sudden realization or a flash of insight and life once again clobbered us over the head with some knowledge it thought we sorely needed.  In these cases, both the teacher and the student was ourself.   We sat up quickly and our brains clicked into gear. We  focused. We knew or understood something we hadn’t just a moment or two before, or maybe it was something we thought we  understood, but then we saw that wasn’t the case at all. We were just going  about our business, doing a very mundane task,  fulfilling our job responsibilities, shopping, having a cup of tea, when the “epiphany”  hit us.

      When this has happened to me, it has thrown me off guard for a bit.  This was especially true if  my new-found awareness reminded me I was missing  or ignoring something pretty obvious that  I “should have known”. (Those shoulds always get us into trouble and erode our confidence and self-esteem, don’t they?)   

     Have you ever been struck by a situation or piece of information about which you thought you had a pretty good grasp and all of a sudden knew that you had not truly grasped whatever it was?    Perhaps you saw that you had forgotten this thing and how it made others feel, because life may have been going too smoothly for you for a while.   I guess that is what life lessons are about. They make us catch our breath, feel things more sharply and think of them differently.  They remind us in a big way of how very human we are. 

       I have lived through a great deal of loss and have gone through periods of depression, as well as times of extreme, practically unbearable grief.  If you live long enough, it’s  unavoidable.   An outside observer might not have considered me lucky in terms of many of the things I have endured, but I have taught myself how to be grateful for what is positive and good in life in spite of this not having been my orientation for a long while.   Somehow I  managed to pull myself out of the deepest, darkest pits.   I had help with this at times and was always  able to find a core of strength within myself that I used in order to boost myself up and travel to a new and more tolerable or happier place.   I think most of us can do that in one way or another,  but we just need the right support and for the universe to be lined up in a way that lets us  get help and help ourselves.

     I don’t mean that people who suffer from dreadful demons, who trudge through the muddy riverbeds of grief and/or serious clinical depression and just can’t seem to pull themselves out no matter what, are to blame. I would never, ever think that.   I know that when you are paralyzed by fear, sadness, shame and anxiety, and are in the throes of pain and suffering, it is hard to feel anything but agony.   I know this personally and professionally and have had more than my share of experience with the topic.   I guess that’s why I feel so good when I get to help someone find a ray of light in what might feel like a hopeless situation.  I truly like  assisting  people  in reframing how they view things and in finding  tools that are already present within themselves, but with which they have perhaps lost connection.  Sometimes the toolbox is old and rusty and a new key needs to be made, or we have to find a practical way to pick the lock if necessary, to access  what it takes to change things.  I know for a fact that you can turn grief into growth and loss into lessons that lead us eventually to some light.  I am a life coach, I have been coached and also have been in therapy at various times in my life, because I believe it is a useful and healthy thing to do.  I believe people shouldn’t suffer alone. That’s why I also have always been a proponent of  support groups.    I believe in asking for help and in encouraging others to ask for help.

        Nonetheless, I   have still been taught some life lessons that took me by surprise.  When I ran the adoption agency I co-founded, I derived my greatest satisfaction from working with people who had been through the mill, in trying to create their families. Sometimes after riding the roller coaster of infertility or even the horrendous loss of a child,  clients endured some negative experiences with other agencies or adoption providers before coming to us.   Though the “perfect” families were easier to work with, I usually enjoyed the challenging ones.  The more complicated and sad their stories, the more committed I was to helping them, once they had met the prerequisites dictated by law.  I was often disgusted by the obstacles erected by bureaucrats in different countries, including our own, when there were so many needy children and parents ready and willing to adopt them and eventually my disgust reached a level of my just not being able to tolerate the work, as rewarding as it once was to me.  I felt the most rewarded when finding families for children with unique challenges in the form of disabilities and/or traumatizing histories. I digress here, just to give you a glimpse into what adoption work meant to me.  My point is that I was  pretty much perceived of (and perceived of myself) as someone with a great deal of compassion, empathy and understanding about the suffering my clients (parents and kids)  had endured.

     Then one day I was taught another lesson by life.   I won’t detail it here, because it is highly personal, but suffice it to say that  even though I had thought I was one of the more sensitive, caring adoption workers/agency directors  I discovered myself in a situation that tested me and that increased my empathy a hundredfold. Very suddenly, the lens through which I viewed clients became much more clear and I think this helped me to do an even better job than I had previously done, once I had sorted out all of my feelings. At first, though, I was shocked with myself for feeling the things I was feeling, as well as surprised and dismayed that even with all of my experience in the field (and as an adoptive parent who had been through the process multiple times) I had not fully realized or felt emotionally what became known to me one fateful day.

     What brings me to this topic today is that I recently had another similar eye-opener.   Life decided I had lost true awareness of something again and needed to hit me over the head a bit to reverse my memory loss.  Someone  close to me has been undergoing some truly hard times..   The circumstances have deeply affected me and worried me.  In my characteristic way, I sprang into action, seeking out resources, trying to understand.   I don’t do this because I am a wonderful, selfless person, but I think it’s often because this is how I get through stress and how I cope with trials, though I also seem to be good at helping.    However, when I was alone, I felt my anxiety begin to escalate and a lot of my own loss issues and fears began to recyle, as they tend to do with most of us.   I wanted very much to help this individual dig down and find some tools to use to take even some small positive actions,  but there I was letting my own imagination and fears carry me to unpleasant fantasy lands. 

     So last Saturday,  I decided I needed a little time by myself and a little distancing.  My first mistake was to pick a task and a place I do not normally enjoy.  Instead of doing what I suggest to clients and finding a locale and activity that has worked in the past to relax me and to help me recharge my depleted batteries,  I went to the mall to buy a need new pair of sneakers.   I figured it would be a good idea not to sit alone thinking too much and to use the time getting some practical things done.   It seemed like a simple task, but when I arrived at my destination, the noise, the hustle and bustle of people rushing about, the superficiality that hit me over the head, was just too much.  Without warning, every bone  began to ache with fatigue,  my mind wandered, tears began flowing intermittently and I needed to get out of there fast.  What had felt easy, practical and therapeutic in my head  began to feel like a form of torture I had prescribed for myself.

      The fact of the matter was that my worry and depression over the other person’s pain had taken hold of me in every respect.  My “epiphany” was that when we are in the throes of depression or grief, we simply cannot do the normal things that we expect of ourselves and that others expect of us.   We cannot just “buck up and be strong”, no matter how much we want to.  It has nothing to do with the strength of our wills or our characters.  Sure, I knew that,  but I had not felt it on a personal level for some time, so I guess I conveniently “forgot”.  I beat a hasty retreat, got myself home and took a nap.  When I awakened, I started to think about all we try to do to help people who are going through personal difficulties and I realized with renewed clarity that the most important things actions we can take when someone is depressed, seriously ill, or grieving are to let go of “shoulds”, to be present, to listen, to care and to do some simple, practical things without waiting to be asked.  I felt the impact of the message I always do my best to convey to others,  which is to take care of ourselves too, when we are under stress.  Again, my intellect and instincts knew this, but I very nicely ignored it and set myself up for a fall. 

     So this past week I made sure to fill my own prescription and to do things that reduced my own stress.  The worry was/is still there as big problems are not solved overnight, but in small increments, with help, determination and, in my opinion, prayer.  My consciousness, though, of how to just be there for others, and how to do better at taking care of myself has been greatly heightened.  I let go of some tasks I did not feel were imperative, and even a few that I might normally think are.  I pushed back or canceled some appointments and spent time just resting, reading and writing, as well as cooking, which I often find therapeutic.

      My head aches a little from being clobbered again.  I will recover, as will you, when life rushes in for a session of show and tell, sometimes welcomed and sometimes not.

P.S.  A person I admire who has learned many life lessons and has taught me some,  my friend Ruth Deming  had her kidney transplant on Friday, in Philadelphia. I hear from her son that she and her donor, her daughter, Sarah, are doing very well. (I blogged about her here and you can look for my tribute to her-http://coachirisblogs.com/2010/11/23/thinking-learning-laughing-crying-reflections-continued/).  If you get a chance, do check out her blog,  Belle of Cowbelle, The BiPolar Therapist at http://ruthzdeming.blogspot.com/- Ruth Deming’s thoughts, poems, recipes, and links.  As soon as she feels up to it she will be blogging about her surgical experience right from her hospital bed.  Ruth wrote an article about her situation and the journey of her daughter’s kidney, named Odysseus. You can read about it on her blog and also her article that can be located at http://uppermoreland.patch.com/articles/part-i-april-first-i-get-a-new-kidney-no-foolin#photo-5427414.  Please send your positive energy to her for a quick recuperation and a bright and healthy future, and to her daughter, Sarah. Thanks!

Machete Magic-Seeing Kim (Oct 1, 1943-March 12, 1982)

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                      -Iris J. Arenson-Fuller

Machete Magic-Seeing Kim (October 1, 1943-March 12, 1982)

I-
      I see him out in the yard, no shirt
sun imprinting rays on naked back,
etching an Aztec calendar in skin.
The small silver one I bought him
used to tarnish from his acid sweat.
I made a ritual of polishing it.
From kitchen window, I admire muscles,
bull neck, robust arms, thick, reassuring calves.
Machete in hand, he dances, attacks brambles,
strategizes against weeds that will not win.
A smile spreads, batter-like over his face,
oozing into hazel eyes with flecks of orange.
The mower in the shed, dejected,
expensive German steel he had insisted on,
pushmower bought on one of many whims.
He refused to stand behind a power machine
along with the neighbor-clones.
He choreographs his moves, muscles recalling
Zen football in Golden Gate Park.
He becomes an artist, pretends to paint poppies
with the blade, but cuts them down instead.
For a moment, he is sad, then resumes the planned offense.
Resting, he chugs water, between swigs, sings a loud song
hidden in his head from a years-ago acid trip.

II-
     One day he announces no more machete.
 He wants vines and weeds growing fast,
crawling over doors and covering windows,
undulating snakes protecting us from outsiders,
blocking out wind and troubles that threaten chilled bones.
We are sweetly huddled together by the soapstone hearth
listening to endless Oz Tales on the worn striped couch
in the big white house on Unicorn Hill.
I think about machete magic, how it up and left.
When I tried to solve the trick of cups and balls,
no matter how fast my eyes raced to catch the magician
at his game, I saw the dull thud of death.
The magic just went away for too long,
leaving a  new joyless madness that paralyzed us all.
True, we survivors walked again, hanging on to trees
with thin bark, breath forming flimsy questions and sighs.
There were no pills but only time and light
sneaking in slyly through cracks in the armor.

III-
     When new fears swell, larger than Coney Island waves,
I cry and roar internal prayers that lips quickly change
(for survival’s sake) to soft musical pleas.
I am mother, interloper by nature in their adult lands,
also founder and keeper of what was native and safe,
I can uselessly dig for maps that lead to fresh magic
till doomsday peeks through the bedroom curtain.
What is hiding in folds of invisible cloth is like poems in Braille
waiting to be touched and read.
They must first find the cloth and will to live
 without aid of mother-midwife.
The machete rusts in the red shed. 
I watch for Kim’s ghost wondering if he sees us too,
wishing he could block out wild wind
 and troubles that threaten to chill bones.
Eyes seek light that is slow but will arrive.
I dream of us sweetly huddled together by the hearth
in the big white house on Unicorn Hill.

Photo by Zoe