Now and then I have some thought that I want to hold onto, some thought that I want written down. Something that I think you may want to read, too. Maybe these thoughts will transform iinto my next book, or my next essay. Visit my blog, receptacle of all those thoughts. It's lonely behind this computer monitor. Please write back!
I had the Beatles wallpaper, I had – and still have – the Beatles dolls. Like millions of others, I recall the very first time I heard a Beatles song on the radio: I was sitting on my bed doing my homework one school night and knew instantly this was something new, different, exciting and great. I know exactly when I saw the Beatles live: September 2, 1964, in Philadelphia’s Convention Hall. My parents had gotten tickets for my older sister and me.
My older sister was supposed to be my guardian, but she wasn’t a very good guardian because after going in together, she left me there to watch John, Paul, George and Ring by myself. Following the evening performance, when the thousands of happy young teens and screaming hordes emerged after the concert to their waiting parents and reconstituted themselves as human beings, my parents located me but my sister was nowhere to be found.
Hours later my parents and I were at a local Police Station to retrieve my sister. I recall the horror of seeing her being let out of this holding cell. She was all of 14 years old. What was her crime? These were the days long before cell phones, let alone every teen having a cell phone. To this day I don’t know what happened between when when she left Convention Hall and when the Police picked her up. She’s not available to ask.
Everybody had a favorite Beatle back then, and over the years one or another of the Beatles has, in some eyes, risen while one or another Beatles have fallen.
Ringo was my favorite.
One blogster has written: (H)onestly, is Ringo anyone’s favorite?”
Excuse me.
My question then. was “Why is Ringo my favorite Beatle?” Now that I’m over 64, dig the garden and pull the weeds, I think I have an answer.
I have gone through my admiration of George, of Paul and of John, seeing the unique and deeper qualities of each. I’ve watched “Get Back”. And time has brought clarity. I’m pretty certain that I chose Ringo back then because he was quiet. He appeared in the background.
Back then, I too was quiet. Ringo was quiet but boy did he make some great noise back there! He was quiet but not unimportant. John and Paul’s talent, and George’s talent, required Ringo’s talent to make the group whole. And did Ringo ever hold the group together.
Maybe Ringo embodied, and inspired, the confidence of people, millions of little girls, quiet like me, who favored him over the two lead singer-songwriters who sang in the front at the mikes. Later I came to understand that Ringo was left-handed playing a right-handed drum set, that he understood on a deep level what it was that John and Paul wanted to create with their songs; that he was confident and talented enough to not over-play but play just enough to allow the group as a whole to shine.
Sixty – six oh – years have passed since that concert and I bought my Beatle dolls, two of which I still have. With the rollout of Get Back, we have a chance to see our favorite Beatles all over again, not just closer but close up and pretty close to unedited. In Get Back, you often see Ringo either quiet or making a joke to the camera. He is quiet but not shy, not lacking in self-esteem. He is always listening, and creating a perfect and inimitable backdrop to John’s, Paul’s or George’s music. You rarely see Ringo without a cigarette. In fact, he’s heard asking for the band to “Hold it!” so he can put out his cigarette butt before the final “Get Back.”
“Mr. Peace and Love” overcame many of his tests his life presented him with.
Some pretty amazing people admit to starting out being shy. And there’s a reason why – without understanding what’s going on at the time – young shy, quiet girls like me find successful and talented adults who appear to be shy, or quiet, whom we can identify with and who inspire us, and go on to become the adults WE ARE.
And oh. I never did know who my sister’s favorite Beatle was. I don’t even know that she had one.
This begins – from personal experience – my series on addiction, on how it eats away at an individual, at a family, and at those who care and love.
I live in an affluent community. One of the zip codes in my current community is a zip code in the 10 most expensive communities in the country, which means one of the ten richest. I was raised in an affluent community, which was in the top ten of highest per-capita income. This relative was also raised in the same top ten communities. So if you think that being from an affluent community will protect you from these realities, make you immune, you are wrong, and sometimes dead wrong.
What brought me to write today was an “Ethicist” contribution to the New York Times Sunday Magazine. Name Withheld is writing that she discovered that a house-sitter of hers had left a controlled substance behind. Name Withheld was agonizing over whether or not to tell house-sitter’s sister, with whom she is very close, and from whom she knew the house-sitter had a history of substance abuse.
In today’s world everybody is worrying about privacy and invading ones privacy, and in this case privacy was the monster that reared its ugly head, privacy the manipulator.
The first time my dear relative was in prison on a controlled substance charge, he phoned from the prison phone one evening and told me he needed underwear. If you’ve never received a call from a prison phone, it works like this: You are home and the phone rings. The caller ID says ” …COLLECT” or something, depending on where the person is incarcerated. You hear a voice message, “(So and so) is sending you a collect call. Do you accept the charges?” (It’s your beloved’s voice that’s plugged in there.) The mechanical voice doesn’t tell you what the rates are. You don’t have much time to think about it. You press 1 for yes or 2 for no. If you press 1, the call begins instantly. Once every 60 seconds, there is a message “Your call is being monitored.” In one of these calls, between the interruptions, my relative said he was bored, nothing to do. I of course asked him to ask to go to the prison library, and he responded he doesn’t have reading room privileges. There are other calls, many of them.
I spent many hours on the “send clothing to an inmate” website.
On more than one occasion, which means – I’m telling you right here – more than one incarceration, I spent hours deciding what books would be best to purchase for a young man, a talented smart musical young man with an addiction, a young man incarcerated, and then via Amazon sent them. You cannot send books directly, only from an accredited web retailer. (Most of the books I ordered were autobiographies from rock and roll legends who had at one time been addicted to heroin and cocaine, and then gone on to overcome their addictions.) Upon arriving at the prison, the books are moved to a central location where they are inspected for contraband and their being within prison guidelines. (No books telling you how to commit a crime, or escape prison, I imagine.) The process takes forever. Once, through Access Securepak, I even purchased him a little radio that inmates were allowed to have. He read one or two of the books then said he couldn’t concentrate.
Each time he was arrested and imprisoned I purchased a new round of clothing. Sometimes I would send him clothing and then in another collect call (of course) he would tell me that other inmates had stolen his shoes, his towel, even his radio. The message was “Send again.”
On one occasion, I even visited him in prison – hundreds of miles from my home – during a blizzard. It’s no joy to drive in a blizzard but we do it only for the end result, which is to visit our loved one, to reduce some of his loneliness and isolation, to hopefully bring some joy that our loved one can hold onto, to let the person know we care. We do it – including the removal of all jewelry, rings and subsequent personal inspection – because we assume it will make a difference. Maybe this time.
Years later, given the persistence of this addiction, the mother of a long-time friend of his, whom I shall call Roberta, wrote and mailed me a typed and scathing letter telling me I didn’t care about my relative (or mother!). Roberta expressed how she would send my relative clothing and books while he was in prison, while I was just ignoring my own flesh and blood. She said how she and her son were the only people to visit him in prison.
This is one of the first time I realized to what extent an addict will go to compartmentalize their relationships.
An addict relies on one person not telling another. An addict will tell one person one side a story, and tell another a different story so nobody has the whole piece of the truth. An addict will compartmentalize his or her relationships. If you live in different cities, as we did, it’s a perfect opportunity to keep the ruse – the pretense – going, and for years. My relative told his friend’s mother that nobody was caring about him or sending him anything, or visiting him, while he was telling me the same – and thus receiving from both of us. Just telephoning an addict can bankrupt a poor family.
Home Screen from Access SecurePak. See all that junk food on there?
It was only years later, and recently, in some moments of quiet, that I realized the prison game: My relative would likely receive items my husband and I had purchased, and then sell them to other inmates for….for what? Perhaps he sold them for cash or tokens for commissary food, perhaps he sold them for cigarettes, perhaps even drugs. Then repeat. He would get clothing and books from both Roberta and from me again, neither of us knowing about the other, each of us believing we were the only ones who cared. What I realized one day is that it was a ruse, and she and I were both caught in the addict’s trap. Sometimes he claimed that the book inspectors kept something you had sent. You wondered whether to believe him or not, whether that was the truth. Now I wonder.
And then one afternoon at 1pm, Roberta and I found ourselves face to face in a cemetery, at his funeral, at his burial (which I, incidentally, paid for). As I was mentioning this or that that I had done for him, she said “I had no idea! I had no idea!” Of course she hadn’t. Time after time my relative would tell her one story, and me another.
For certain this is only one example, one of many, from my experience.
Name Withheld is worried that she and the sister “don’t have the right relationship to broach such a topic.” She is wondering if talking to the sister would “violate (the addict’s) privacy.”
I understand how she would agonize over the choice before her. I understand why she would write in her question to “The Ethicist.” But that’s only because addicts – as much as we love them – are counting on our having morals and compassion.
For sure if Name Withheld tells the sister, and the brother finds out, the brother will be angry at both. He will cry about invasion of privacy. He will find ways to lie and try to make the homeowner feel badly that she has done something awful. He will try to manipulate her feelings and what she knows to be true, to confuse her about the truth, and about right and wrong, and responsibility. Maybe he will tell her that she owes him an apology, a total reversal and inversion of the truth. The homeowner will need to be certain and firm about her path and her actions. The sister will need to be strong, and receptive to the friend’s message.
Professionals have to care about privacy, under The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, better known as HIPAA. The methadone clinics, the therapists, the Buphenorphine physicians (even if you’re paying for the sessions) all have to regard privacy issues.
When it comes to concern for an addict’s welfare, we family members, friend and neighbors, don’t. We have to tell the truth.
I suspect I’m not alone – especially in the midst of Covid – in this psychic pretzel off holding on to letting go. Did you ever wonder if, in an attempt to let go, you’re not extending the letting go?
I know that, for example, since my dad, my mom, and my nephew all died within the last several years, the shredder has over worked. My office has more space, and the I have more time to myself, for myself, my husband, and other projects.
But then…
Let’s take for example the health record of my mom, who died 17 months ago. I was my mom’s caretaker, and I had opened an online account with her medical provider so all her health records were there. Do I need to keep this site open 17 months later? No, I do not. So I downloaded the health file onto my computer as a .pdf file. That .pdf is over 450 pages and not easy to review as the online files. So now I have that file and the online file too. Do I need both? No, I do not. Then why do I not just close out the online account?
What am I holding onto it then? I’m holding onto my anger toward the nursing home nurses and want to keep the files as evidence for one day when I – in my fantasy – I confront them about how they ignored signs of my mom’s infection and ignored the clear results of her urine text. Of course the confrontation will get me nowhere. Mom is gone, mom has been gone, and this nursing home is, let’s face it, one face of a big corporation and although they’re in the healthcare field, their bottom line is the dollar. Nothing would change.
I had a shredding party in which I shredded all the paperwork from early in my parents’ marriage. But ‘m also holding onto electronic copies. I’m also holding onto the paperwork about her divorce from my dad at the ages of 88 and 90 and the sale of the home I grew up in. Why am I holding onto that? My dad left my mom when I was in high school and (skipping to a different state and creating havoc and never showing up for court dates) 50 years later he still refused to allow her to divorce her until she got frustrated and just stopped pursuing it. And we all got older. We married, got college degrees, moved to different states. This meant of course that for all those years Dad still had claim to the home that Mom had worked for years to pay off, as the property value rose and rose. It was a huge celebration 8 years ago when the divorce finally happened. I also celebrated the sale of the home and distribution of those assets.
So why am I holding onto not only the paper trail but also the electric trail, much of which duplicates the paper trail?
Sitting in a plastic folder in a box are all my mom’s correspondence with various lawyers from when I was a young adult, about how to proceed with a divorce; it is, to me, evidence of the extreme frustration she endured for years. In my safe are the original papers from the divorce and the sale of the home. In electronic form on my computer are copies of all the paperwork from the eventual divorce, sale of the home, distribution of assets. Backed up every day is all the abundance of email correspondence with her lawyers who successfully handled the divorce and sale of home and who allowed the chains to be broken and her life to move forward. Why? In case I ever, in my fantasy, confront the lawyers about how for months she overcharged my mom by ordering me to spend my days and nights creating documents that she never used in court, never was going to use in court, and billed me for all the hours she spent telling me to do them and to answer my questions regarding them.
Do I really still need the contract with the apartment house that she moved to, after the home was sold? To me, it is a sign of her long-yearned for independence. Do I need need the contract with her senior living place? Probably not. No, I DO NOT. I DO NOT NEED THESE.
I have original photos of her as a young and beautiful woman, whch are – high res – backed up daily with Carbonite. I have the electronic scans on my computer. Then I have the photos on Google, in case somebody some day wants to see them. I am not alone in either backing up not enough, or too much.
Which reminds me. It’s not just photos of my mom. There’s Dad, too. As he was aging and downsizing, he entrusted me with his most precious photos, photos of his army days, his secret missions in Asia, of which he was so proud. I could never destroy or throw them away. But spending days scanning these photos, for nobody to ever see?
I also have bags of my mom’s bank statements, financial forms, and tax returns (going back 10 years), reminding me of how hard she had worked full time for years, until she was in her 80’s, and that she once had money, until somebody else – to remain nameless – finagled it all from her and left her almost penniless. Do I need this?
Of course when going through all my mom’s papers, I also found her correspondence with a cousin in a faraway land, a source of pleasure for her, and have been in touch with that family in that faraway land, and that has brought new meaning to my life. The gaining of this new family in a faraway land helps ease the pain of losing my mom. I found correspondence with a man she had met on a vacation with me, and had once loved (even though the fantasy of that love long remained). I hold onto that correspondence, and his business card, because, though it was a fateless and long-distance romance, it was good to see my mom love and have love returned. Til the end my mom insisted that her little embroidered-with-flowers handbag was from him. I doubted the veracity of that claim, attributing it to my mom’s wishful thinking. Then I read, in letters I recently found, written on that thin pale blue airmail stationary that people my age remember, him repeatedly asking if she had received the handbag he sent her.
The funny thing is my husband doesn’t have any of these issues. We have hundreds, if not thousands, of photos of his parents, a records of the sale of the condo when his mom passed. He has his father’s old Polaroid camera, some household items we saved from the condo when we sold it. And one day we will give the photos all to his younger brother.
One day I’ll have that grand shredding party in which all – and I mean all – of this paperwork will be cleansed and chart a new fate. Maybe it will be recycled as baby diapers, or a wedding certificate. That would be nice.
If you don’t recognize the word fentanyl, consider yourself lucky that you haven’t had to know it.
I just saw the Oscar-winning documentary, My Octopus Teacher. The octopus, with its 8 tentacles, frightening to many, is much gentler than fentanyl; the octopus can recognize human warmth, and embrace it. The shark with its teeth is much more humane; the shark only kills and eats when it needs food and the animal is in its food chain.
I remember years back when our beloved Chocolate Labrador Retriever, Joey, had escaped from our yard and gotten hit by a car, survived, and managed to elude the crowd and limp his way home, on a broken ankle which, in a big dog, is quite large. The surgeon had placed a large rectangular transdermal patch on the site, and told us to remove it in so many days. He didn’t release Joey to us before giving us gloves, and under strict rules to wear the gloves when we remove the patch, and place it in a certain bag that he also gave us, to discard. What was this patch, I asked later, which was so dangerous to the touch.
Fentanyl, was the response.
Fentanyl is back in our vocabulary, this time because it killed my nephew last year.
Fentanyl is much more powerful than heroin, and it acts faster. Even if somebody had come in ten minutes after he had injected (or snorted, we’re still not sure which) it, it would have been too late.
Unlike the shark, fentanyl is not selective.
Naloxon can help as long as somebody else is around to administer it. And with fentanyl the Naloxon spray has to be administered within five to ten minutes. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, fentanyl is 50-100 times more potent than morphine. I remember when medics administered morphine to somebody whose ankle had just busted due to a crazy fall down steps and her foot and leg hit a wall. She had been screening in pain. Within 30 seconds of that injection, the pain ended. Imagine fentanyl, 50-100 times more potent, and deadly.
While some addicts ask for fentanyl, many who buy opioids don’t know what they’re buying is laced with fentanyl. But these drug labs now producing synthetic opioids, lace so much with fentanyl. The Sinaloa cartel in Mexico laces its cocaine and heroin to boost its punch. Punches the user right out of this ever-expanding universe.
The coroner who did an autopsy on my nephew said fentanyl is a big problem due to Covid, because the distribution of these opioids has changed; it’s not just the Mexican synthetic drug labs now. Illegal opioids coming from China have increased and she’s seeing so many more fentanyl death than even in years prior, when the number of drug-involved overdose deaths due to synthetic opioids other than Methadone–primarily fentanyl — is now #1 (has skyrocketed.In 2020, the number of deaths from drug overdoses approched that from Covid-19.
My nephew had been counting clean days.
Now I am counting the months – which will turn into years – since he’s been gone.
I have no idea why Tom Petty’s lyrics always pop into my mind at this time. It’s ironic that “It’s Wakeup Time” comes out, when I’m about to write about designing the granite markers for my mom and my nephew.
My mom died – wait til I count on my fingers – 10-1/2 months ago. Almost a full year. My 36-year old nephew died – wait while I do the finger-counting – 6. It’s really tough to keep track. Sometimes it seems like so long ago, sometimes it feels like it just happened and you feel the shock all over. And the pain and the grief. And we know that there have been so many other deaths since theirs, and births too.
I’ve been putting off this task for many months. You count. I would have continued putting it off had not the cemetery emailed me last week and said, “HEY!” I was just going through some stuff and I noticed you hadn’t done the headstone,” with the forms attached to the followup email. The cemetery has made it that much more difficult for me to avoid what I cannot avoid.
Maybe Tom’s music is pinching me.
My mom was my nephew’s grandmother, and when nephew died I chose a burial site him right by her. So I have two headstones to do. And when the headstones are completed and shipped and installed, I will do two unveilings, two grievings, at the same time. One for somebody who lived a long life, one for somebody who died too soon.
And what's in there waiting
Neither one of us knows
You gotta keep one eye open
The further you go
Writing even one headstone is no easy job. It’s not for the squeamish! (And I know that for all the people who died of Covid-19 in this last year, down the road there will be many headstones.) You cannot write every since sentiment you have. And who really are you writing this for? Who cares if I write on my mom’s stone “Never forget when we were barefoot in Paris.”
My dad’s headstone stone was three years ago. It was different. He was buried in a military cemetery so we were given a max # of lines, max # of characters per line, and we had two weeks to do it in, or they would just engrave the basics. We chose a few lines of Walt Whitman’s poetry. End of story.
So maybe a poetic line from mom’s favorite song from her favorite CD, John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman: “And with the moon up above” from “They say that falling in love is wonderful…” which I would play every night when I was putting her to bed for the night. I spent hours today listening to the music,for inspiration, each line a new memory, drawing me close to our love, each line a new possibility. For my nephew, my husband suggests we engrave “Drummer Extraordinaire”. I knew my nephew was a drummer, but it wasn’t until after he died when his friends sent me videos that I knew what an extraordinary and talented drummer he was. If there is such a thing now as “what Neil would want,” I know he would want his talent and his drumming to be remembered and honored.
The truth is we only get 50 letters on each headstone. Over and above 50 letters we have to pay per letter. So we have to pay $10 per additional letter. I want to be express myself in some unique way, and with truth, truth about who my mom was, and who my nephew was, but now it’s business. It’s love, and it’s honor, but it’s business too. I wonder if a comma costs ten dollars. My husband says if they didn’t charge $10 for a simple comma, they would have to make the “W” more expensive.
My husband suggests we use the European method of writing the dates. Instead of “Feb. 20, 1924”, we write “20 Feb 1924” and save twenty bucks, and then twenty bucks doing the same for date of death. And there goes “Drummer Extraordinaire”. In its place goes “Dearly Loved Deeply Missed”. No comma between the two phrases, just two spaces to separate them. Nobody will notice the comma is missing, I suggest. And if they do, so what?
My husband suggests saving $20 in one location allows me to use those letters elsewhere. I suggest we can just save the $20 bucks.” Do I keep my nephew’s middle name in? Or is it out? I learned after he died that he was named after his great-grandmother. I feel that because he died young, it’s important to include stuff from this world like that.
I notice that the military doesn’t bother with commas, periods, or dashes. They put the date of birth to the extreme left. The date of death to the extreme right. I like this…. The space in between is what you’ve done with your life.
“Beloved Mother” could be tedious. It is on every other mother’s gravestone. Besides, I never called her “mother.” Instead, I can write “Beloved Mom.” Saves $30 bucks and that’s what I called her, anyway. So it becomes “Beloved Mom, Granny, Sister”. Works for me. But even the word “Beloved…” – Who uses that word these days? Except on gravestones (and to begin funerals?) On the military marker, “Beloved Papa” looks good. It’s intimate.
On the other hand, Mel Brooks lightened his up a little with, “That’s all, folks!”
I take my time through this process, these granite love letters.
And it's wake-up time
Time to open up your eyes
And rise
And shine
Mom was falling asleep right in front of me, across the little table-for-two, with its little white table cloth, in the dining room at the assisted living facility, the kind of dining room in the advertisements that scream “nothing here ever goes wrong.” Everything was very nice. The servers were my favorites, kind, pleasant, respectful, and easy to interact with. They worked long and hard hours to build good lives and to raise their young families, to give them futures to look forward to. I had not been back to see Mom in a few months, because I lived so far away, and these servers were good to see again. It was personal. They also made my mom smile.
Despite that, right now my mom was not smiling. She was falling asleep. Every time you come back to see your elderly parent who has a diagnosis of dementia, it’s a new person you have to interact with. Each time you must get to know that person again. And sometimes the changes from one visit to the next are huge.
For months she had looked forward to seeing me. Now that I was here, was there anything I could say anything to get her to keep her head up and eyes open? You’re entirely alone, trying to find a way to do this.
I was really hoping the food would arrive to give mom some energy and the drinks would arrive to give her some hydration. But I had to be patient. I had traveled too far to just sit there in silence.
Food servers moved all around us. In silence I sat.
Soon they brought her her fresh cut fruit, egg salad with one slice of whole wheat toast, plus diet root beer. She ate.
“How’s the fruit, Mom?” as she gently plucked a grape or a piece of pineapple and nodded in approval.
“How’s Dad?”
I did not expect this question. Nope, I certainly did not expect this question. There’s no time to think. No time to make it sound nice.
”Dad died, Mom.”
Her eyes opened larger. So this is what it took to get her eyes to open.
She had another grape.
”When?”
”About a year ago, Mom.”
“Of what?” I was stuck in the images of my dying father, with me standing next to his bed. We don’t see the cancer but we know what it does. I knew it had eaten away his internal organs.
”Some sort of intestinal cancer or something. They tried to operate… I heard they got the cancer out, but the surgery left him bleeding, which they couldn’t stop.”
The pineapple seemed to please her too. But I knew to just wait. She would let me know where this conversation was going. And there was more she wanted to know. She got extremely intent.
”Did I talk to him before he died?” That one hit me, because despite the fact that she could’t stay awake it indicated that she was quite aware that her memory was failing big time, and that she might well have spoken to him – the man she was married to most of her life, even if the last 50 years of which they spent estranged – one last time. My job here was to supply her memory.
”Yes, Mom, you did. I held the phone up to his ear, and you said something to him which I couldn’t hear but you said what you wanted to say.”
”Did he hear it?”
”Yes, Mom, he did.”
”Did he say anything?”
Now the details and sequences of my dad’s death, so many months earlier, were coming back. “Well, the day before he had spoken some, but on this particular day he was not talking. However, I did put the phone to his ear and he heard you.” All of that was true.
”And did he say anything?”
”Well in this day he was not talking anymore.” All of that was true.
“But I know he heard you and was pleased because he smiled.”
Even in those moments, people want to – need to – know that they mattered and have mattered to others, and have mattered to the people who mattered the most to them, that they made and have made a difference in someone’s life.
One should rest in peace, and one should live in peace.
A few years back on a Friday morning I received a phone call from my brother one Friday morning. “Dad’s dying. I thought you should know.” Brother was to the point, no word wasted. I got the picture, exactly.
The three of us, my brother, my nephew Neil, and I, worked hard to choose words for his headstone; we had to work quickly because the Veterans Administration gave us 30 days maximum. The words we voted for in December 2017 for our father’s and grandfather’s headstone had no words about death or even love.
More recently, in May, I got a phone call from the nurse in the nursing home where my mom resided. “Your mother is nonresponsive.”
“Non-responsive, I asked? What’s that supposed to mean?” She followed up with a checklist of what, in the physical world of medicine, non-responsive means. It was up to me to draw my own conclusions. “So, is she dying?” That the nurse could not – would not – answer.
Four months later, which was two months ago, there was a call from my brother again, most surprisingly because it was a Sunday morning and he never phones me on a Sunday morning. “Neil’s dead.” Forget about an option called “denial.” There was shock, but there was nowhere to run to. I knew immediately I had heard him correctly. That word has weight.
Around the clock and around the world somebody is communicating to somebody that death has overtaken somebody who is and has been loved, and alive.
But once that one-way portal is crossed, the living have to tell the story, sometimes over and over again. Sometimes my telling of the story wants to convey my sense of hope that somehow my mom, or my nephew, or my dad, will live on – or have lived on – in some spiritual world, even if I don’t absolutely believe there is one. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t believe in that spiritual world; after all, what proof do I – or can I – have? “He passed away,” I say, to reserve some hope. These days, I wish it were so even more. Pass on is becoming more and more popular with me.
Most obituaries commonly begin with “So and so passed away…” It’s soft. And it’s non-committal. Buddhist obituaries begin “so and so has died.” Buddhists don’t believe in a soul.
A Jewish friend of mine was describing her parents’ death recently. She wrote the Hebrew word “p’tira” over and over and admittedly I had to look up the translation for this word. “After Mom’s p’tira….” Its meaning so clearly expressed to me that my friend had an absolutely believe that each of her parents had left this world and was on to the next. P’tira means “to pass…” as in from one place to another, or one time to another. Her parents didn’t pass away; they passed on.
Neil’s next would-be birthday, his 37th, would have been a few weeks ago. His FB friends expressed their certainty that he had found peace. One FB friend evoked the hope that he was now with this FB friend’s brother, who had apparently himself made an early exit from this life – and to where we know not, but presumably and hopefully into an eternal realm. I like to think and imagine that my mom, who would have preceded my nephew (her grandson) up there, was surprised to ‘see’ him, but welcomed him with metaphorical open arms. I have yet to receive any ‘messages.’
The words I chose to talk about these deaths have reflected a message to my nephew’s unnaturally short life has not been for naught and perhaps there is a world where he is not encumbered by the weights of this world. When my belief is stronger, I’ll say “he passed on….” because that infers passed on to somewhere: another place or world or existence where he’s perhaps happier.
In December 2017, the three of us – my brother, my nephew and I – had worked hard to collaborate and come to consensus, something each of us would be satisfied with. As tersely as President Lincoln wrote the 719-word Emancipation Proclamation that had the enormous effect of abolishing slavery in the United States, Walt Whitman wrote his ode, the 206 lines of When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d. These lines were written in 1865, after the Civil War had ended, after the Emancipation Proclamation heralded hope to the weary nation and a newly emancipated population, and after President Lincoln was assassinated. Alternating verses between using images of nature, flowers, birds, and the celestial sky, he acknowledges life, and sings to O death, with its far-reaching breath. The three of us had considered using, from the 14th stanza:
Over the tree-tops I float thee a song
But we voted against it. Three times in the 16th and final stanza Whitman uses the word passing.
Passing the visions, passing the night,
Passing, unloosing the hold of my comrades’ hands,
Passing the song of the hermit bird and the tallying song of my soul,
Victorious song, death’s outlet song, yet varying ever-altering song,
And then…
Sadly sinking and fainting, as warning and warning, and yet again bursting with joy, Covering the earth and filling the spread of the heaven,
As that powerful psalm in the night I heard from recesses,
Passing, I leave thee lilac with heart-shaped leaves,
I leave thee there in the door-yard, blooming, returning with spring.
Ten minutes ago I got word that our niece just gave birth to a little girl. It’s very easy to say “Jessica just had a baby! Mother and baby are alive and healthy.”
But when it comes to death, don’t expect me to use the same expression twice in a row. But either way, I’ll be praying.
Nature is the great balancer. Nature is in constant motion, even when it seems still. Nature is also sensitive. It supports our world, and reflects the world around it: If the Earth is unhealthy, you can see it in the size of your squirrels, the fungus on your trees, hear it in the songs of the birds, and even smell it in the breeze.
Nature can be our old reliable, the spring buds, winds from the northwest, the winter frost, the empty robins’ nest; we can set our mental clocks to its rhythms, tell us when to plant, when to prune, when to preserve and can, and when to bless the new moon.
It can also remind us that nothing stays the same and that there are limits to what humans can control.
But a walk in the woods, even these days a walk outside on a city street, the feel of snow under our feet, the crunch of browned leaves, or the sunset’s breeze, can balance our inner restlessness. I’ve been taking a lot of walks lately.
Sometimes look up.
Sometimes look closer, and see what’s right in front of you.
Sometimes you learn to read what’s written right in front of you, the secret code. It can be a sign of destruction and construction at the same time.
Sometimes you wake up early and see the new day come in. (Photos of Rincon, Puerto Rico, taken by and provided here with permission of Julie Shore.)
Sometimes you wake up early and everything just looks colds. It occurs to you to skip that walk.
Sometimes you look down. Some teenagers or adolescents may have left rocks as love letters.
Some very small things are hiding before your very eyes, and are very busy.
The bug on the headstone might be looking for another meal – or might be the incarnation of somebody you’ve loved and recently lost.
“I saw six bunnies on my jog this morning,” my husband likes to tell me when he comes home from an early morning jog. I respond: “You actually count these things?”
Our entire neighborhood for years has been complaining about an infestation of rabbits eating our plants and flowers, and we’re not farmers. Every year we swear it’s worse this year than ever. The neighborhood is on my side.
The other day we were getting in our car, which was parked on the driveway, and I saw a fat earth-toned little thing in our driveway in what would be the path of our car. I told my husband – as is typical when it comes to my finding a small critters. Just like I tell him when I find a dead chipmunk, which has happened three times this summer. On closer inspection this particular it fit in a palm, and its eyes were closed tight, clearly having never opened. OH HOW CUTE!!! I said. He said, ‘It’s a baby rabbit.” Cute little ears! Tiny little body.I have to admit this tiny soft thing with its eyes shut closed was adorable.
Now I knew our neighbors’ vizsla was always finding rabbits, and especially in the rock garden between our two homes. Maybe this newborn was a lucky survivor of her instincts to hunt. We knew there was a rabbit “nest” somewhere hidden in the neighbors’ rock garden. But where? Where had this animal come from?
As my husband cradled this baby, I sought the nest, as the sun was setting picking through the large leaves of elephant ears, caladium, and coleus. I texted my neighbor. “Where’s the rabbit nest?” She didn’t want to tell me – they grow all their own vegetables! – and she shrugged.
Hubby found a foil pan and added milk, then added baby rabbit.Meh, was the baby’s response. We looked around more and could find no nest, it was getting later and later. So we put this baby into the rock garden, hoped for the best, and drove away.
A few days later as I was walking around just like Waldo, the baby bunny nest revealed itself to me. There they were, four tiny bunnies, no mother. Still eyes shut. So cute! I wondered if one of these four is the one we saved last week. few days later I returned. I hoped that he or she had survived.
Now the little monsters had their eyes open.
I saw the future. I saw these hopping through our flowers, chomping on my geraniums, verbanum, impatiens and all the other flowers that are supposed to be “rabbit-unfriendly.”
I saw myself chasing them away.
And then it happened. One day the nest was empty. One day I saw rabbits all over our lawn, hopping away at the sight – or smell – of me. And there was one half of the petal of our newly planted Black Eyed Susan.
“HEY!!! GET AWAY RABBIT. LEAVE MY FLOWERS ALONE.
Then I felt the unmistakable beat of the completion of my transformation. I heard the unmistakable Tom Petty: “Whatever you’re looking for
Hey! Don’t come around here no more Don’t come around here no more!
… I’ve given up, stop, you tangle my emotions I’ve given up, honey please, admit it’s over … Whatever you’re looking for Hey! Don’t come around here no more Hey!
I now understood Tom Petty on a much deeper level.
We human adults aren’t the only ones dealing with our kids, restrictions around schooling, and social distancing. Robin moms have to deal with their kids, too, and we soon found ourselves in the middle of an aviary parenting session. The issues may be different, but the birds don’t just fly away from their responsibility to their kids.
No matter what noise I made, that baby did not budge. Chirped, but didn’t budge. Pretty soon we noticed the mommy robin flying from our roof, where the family has its home, to sit by her baby. She would dance around, chirp excitedly, then fly off. Over and over. At some point we decided to give them some privacy, and shut the door, and watch from the other side.
As a kid, I had been challenged by the adage “It’s as easy as putting salt on a bird’s tail” and saw that as a challenge: Out into the woods I went with a salt shaker. Back home I came – empty handed except for the salt shaker. But here it was a freak show of nature to have two robins come to us!
Mother Robin Red Breast would then fly back, with something in her mouth. A worm!I I initially thought she was trying to feed her baby, who showed no interest in eating. But I was wrong. She was offering food to coax her baby back up into the nest.
Still grounded! I think I could have reached out and touched this fluffy, and fearful, ball of yellow down and speckled browns.
Now I’ve seen some frustrated parents, and I’ve seen some great parents, but this one really impressed me. I’m sure she didn’t read about parenting from a book.
Her next move: Atop the sun umbrella, to coax the baby to take to the air.
Still not. Sounding like some kid you know? We are now talking at least ten minutes, long enough to start maybe wash the car (or the baby).
Finally baby robin got up the nerve to turn around!
But that didn’t last too long. Maybe looking off into the distance frightened her again. Maybe she felt more secure close to home – our home! So she managed to turn her frightened self around.
About 15 minutes had passed, and we were about as close to the life of a bird in nature as we were ever going to get – or ever hoped to get. It was enough. We left mother and child to iron out their issues.
I keep hear Bob Dylan singing in the background, in his throaty voice. Might Mama have been singing some version of Bob Dylan, like:
‘Won’t you come home with me?
Baby, Won’t you come home with me
Yes, I’ll do anything in this God-almighty world
If you just come home with me.’
Soon the rail was empty, and we lost track of them.
A few hours later, we saw mother and child walking across the street, crossing the street, going into another yard.
I can see it now: What I Did on My Summer Vacation…
Now and then I have some thought that I want to hold onto, some thought that I want written down. Something that I think you may want to read, too. Maybe these thoughts will transform iinto my next book, or my next essay. Visit my blog, receptacle of all those thoughts. It's lonely behind this computer monitor. Please write back!
You Reader, Me Jane 
