The Great Interview Experiment: Barb of Bloggo Chicago

I signed up to do Neil Kramer’s Great Interview Experiment as a way to meet two new bloggers. I love the widowed and grieving bloggers who I spend most of my online time with, but I figured this would be a true experiment and a way to stretch my wings that is a little less strenuous than NaBloPoMo.

It was – but it was still hard. It takes me FOREVER to write, I usually have a dozen half-written posts lying around and scores of fragments, and it’s great that I’m not accountable to anyone for either the timing or the content of what I write.

But if you are dealing with someone else – well, you have to be there.

It’s taken me more than a MONTH to collate my interview with Barb from Bloggo Chicago. For the other half of the Experiment, I was interviewed by Elise of Elise’s Ramblings.

I enjoyed reading Barb’s blog, which mostly deals with her daily life, funny observations, and trenchant thoughts about living with a disability. She has a sense of humor, enjoys writing, and is really honest about her challenges. I can imagine her being one of the fun people I sit next to in church, passing an occasional snarky note. I liked talking with her, back and forth by e-mail (I find simple questionnaires are so static for an interview… but then, see how long this took me?).

Barb's blog is not only worth visiting for her perspective, experiences, and sense of humor (and cats), but she also provides a great list of support resources for folks living with bipolar and mental illness in general. Knowing her is a great way to tap into a new community!

When Barb and I opened our conversation, she was barely recovered from posting every day for a month as part of NaBloPoMo. I could identify with her pain!

Hi Barb! I loved reading your blog. It’s really neat to see how you cope with living with bipolar, and how aware you have to be. It seems like a pain and a lot of extra work to manage, but you seem to have a great attitude and a lot of creativity about what you need. You really know yourself very well, something many of us are still working on. So I admire you and your courage in sharing all the different aspects of your journey.

I'm interested to know how blogging has affected your life and whether it’s helpful with managing bipolarness? How has your blogging changed over the years? Do you have different feelings about sharing based on what's happened because of sharing with the blog?

Hi, Supa! Bloggo Chicago began as a blog about life in Chicago: early on I blogged about our neighborhood and gave Chicago Living Tips, some serious, some silly. At some point, I started a Star Wars blog (can't remember the title); one just for those silly quizzes and memes that used to be so popular (quiz-a-day); a cat blog (cat-o-bloggo); and finally a bipolar blog (bipolar bloggo). I don't know what I was thinking, starting all those blogs and -- surprise, surprise! -- they became too much to handle, and I imported all of the posts into Bloggo Chicago, which, though you can't really tell from my recent posts, isn't solely a bipolar and/or cat blog. Or hockey blog, a couple of years back.

I started blogging about my bipolarness as my own small way of fighting the stigma towards the mentally ill. I want people to see that we aren't the stereotypes portrayed in film and on TV. Although I've been hospitalized for suicide attempts and overdosing on medication, I've never worn a straitjacket nor been locked in a padded room -- though that could happen if something went wrong with my medications (they stop working, I need a higher dose, I stop taking them) or, possibly, if I have a full-blown manic episode. I have never in my life worn a Hannibal Lecter mask and don't think that I will. I have, however, undergone electroconvulsive or, shock therapy (ECT) and it’s nothing like it’s portrayed in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, the remake of The Manchurian Candidate, or A Beautiful Mind, though I believe they used insulin shock treatment in that last one.

Most importantly, I want people to see that the mentally ill aren’t different from anyone else and to those readers who also have bipolar disorder or depression, I want them to know they're not alone and that whatever they may be going through, others have also been there and can relate; those who leave comments assure me of this, as well. I'm not without my own shortcomings, however -- I have trouble seeing past my own stereotype of what a person on mental health disability “should be like” and wrote a post to that effect. As a direct result, I learned that there are others out there who have had an even higher “fall from grace” and have accepted it. Even so, I've been on disability for 3 years now, and I'm still struggling to accept that.

Blogging has affected my life in that it's been a source of support, though I do have other sources such as my psychiatrist, therapist, and Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance (DBSA) meetings. I’ve forged some very real friendships and this past September, finally met one of my blog friends. As my depression improves, I hope to be able to meet more of them.

I definitely feel that you are a regular person with many interests, not just a patient, and the way you write about your life makes it easy for me to relate to you.

It’s also neat because finding peers and dispelling stereotypes motivated me to start my blog about being a young widow, too.

I love this aspect of blog-as-testimony, blogging-as-representing.

You have mentioned your other writing a couple of times. Tell me about those projects and how they complement or are different from your blog writing.

No problem! I like to think that I'm like most other people, though in many ways I’m not, at least when I'm not well -- at the moment I have trouble leaving my apartment and driving, for example. Lately, simply getting into the shower has been a struggle.

People have told me that I sometimes write the way I talk, which is what I try to do in the blog because it’s supposed to be fun and casual and reflect my personality. However, in the post entitled Disability Acceptance, I used a more formal tone than usual, maybe because it's a societal issue, and maybe because I wanted to sharpen my other writing skills, which is a nice segue to your question about my writing:

I only began blogging about writing this past year, because it’s only last spring that I took it up again -- writing, that is. I always feel cheesy saying this, but I’m a poet. I went to grad school for creative writing and my concentration was poetry. I was in the process of applying for teaching jobs when my once-well-managed bipolarness came crashing down on my head and I had to stop teaching. I also stopped writing. That's when I began blogging. There was less pressure to “hone my craft.” It was my blog, I could write however I wanted about whatever I wanted, and if the grammar wasn’t perfect, so the fuck what.

Then I had ECT, which affected my long- and short-term memory, and this included my vocabulary. You know how sometimes you have a certain word right on the tip of your tongue? Well, it was like that almost every day and was incredibly frustrating. I was constantly consulting the dictionary and thesaurus for words that I already knew but couldn't remember, and that made me angry. So I continued to not write.

With some encouragement from my writer friends, I decided to try again. This past April, which was National Poetry Month, a blog called Poetic Asides held a challenge to write a poem a day for the entire month -- like NaBloPoMo. I surprised myself by actually doing it. The poems earlier in the month are a little clumsy but they improve later on. There was another challenge in November that I didn’t complete, but the poems I did write were even better.

This past fall these same friends convinced me to start submitting my work to literary journals again; I sent poems to one journal in October and more poems to a different journal in November. Though I got a rejection from the first place I submitted, one of my poems was accepted by the second one. Right now I'm 1 for 2, which isn't bad. Rejections are normal and expected.

There’s a huge difference between my blogging and my poetry writing. As I said, I can write posts in any way I want and post them that very same day. No matter what, they're going to be published by me on my blog. With my poetry, the process is longer. I may write a poem in one day -- I may even write 3 -- but there's no way I’d send them off to a journal. I like to sit on my poems because what may seem “perfect” today, I may find flawed in 2 months. The poem that was recently accepted was from my thesis, which I finished in 2002. I didn’t do any major revisions before submitting it, but I did tweak it a bit. Unlike blogging, the publishing isn’t instant, and that’s if the poems are even published at all.

What is your favorite post from all time? From this past year?

Because my blog is several years old, there are so many posts, but the ones that first come to mind have to do with Walgreens. I don’t know why -- maybe because there's one located about every 4 city blocks (1/2 mile), maybe because we're there so often, maybe because they originated in Chicago and are somewhat iconic. It was started by the Walgreen family and the store itself doesn’t have an apostrophe before the “s.”

Having said that, I think my favorite post of all time is called Your Local Walgreens. It shows a slice of everyday life with my husband and a snapshot of our relationship.

My favorite post from 2009 is All Walgreens Are Not Created Equal. That post refers to I Hate the Nearby Walgreens, although at the time I wrote the latter, I couldn't remember why I refused to stop going to that particular Walgreens. This post explains why.

I know you've written a few posts since then, but the last post I read had to do with finishing that Godforsaken NaBloPoMo. LOL I could totally relate, but I’ve proudly displayed my “I did it, so there!” badge because it features Borat. :-D And, sucker that I am, I’ll probably do it again next year.

Barb, thanks for your thoughtful answers. I've really enjoyed getting to know you, both here and by reading your blog! I'll think of you every time I hit my local CVS deodorant aisle for sure (They do NOT lock them up. But they do lock up razors around here)!


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T.G.I.O.

Thank God it's over. November, the month of great suckage. People died. Memories arrived and churned and therapy was skipped. Friends announced divorces. Lights dimmed, I got lost, we moved house and spent money. Exciting projects began, then sputtered as their parts were too hard to find among the many boxes. I managed to blog EVERY DAY this month and thus fulfill NaBloPoMo, but I think I broke every other promise I had outstanding.

Yes, thank you, I do expect a trophy. Polly Pocket scotch-taped to a maraca will do nicely.

NaBloPoMo wasn't easy, but I learned stuff. Posting daily greases your wheels, forces you to think different, to reach a bit. Mostly? I just really don't want to talk about it anymore. I read the victory posts of other bloggers today and I hear the same word-fatigue, senseless quiet, silly satisfaction everywhere.

I'll admit I made many new friends and cemented my interest in some important topics, gained a wee bit of traction on my next life, but I'm too tired to think about it, and my back is starting to go again.

Upcoming posts: lots of dark true tales, a few bright insights, and a review of a movie that stars cute little fuzzy toys with weapons.

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Echoes: Another Husband Sent Home

I don’t know how people survive in this world without a church. When Gavin was ill, we got so much out of the personal announcements at the beginning of services. It was a great comfort to be reminded in human scale and real time of the great circle of life: not only were other people fighting disease, busy being born, and learning to appreciate the world around them, but smaller things happened too: kids would announce that they’d adopted puppies, seniors might share that they’d found tango lessons alleviate Seasonal Affective Disorder.

As we faced the worst, we felt part of a rich and wonderful world, one in which everybody hurts sometimes. As time went on I felt grateful to share good news many times with those whose eyes had met mine over and over when things were sad.

Today, nearly five years later, one of those announcements hit me just right. It had two parts and the whomp snuck up on me.

“We’ve just heard from Sue that Freddie Sampson will be sent home tomorrow... for hospice care.”

Freddie is a sweet fellow in his 80s who’d been hit by a car a few weeks ago. We’d been spared most of the updates but I know from my friends’ stories that multiple operations after a major impact like the one he suffered don’t mean that he’s expected to come out of it.

His wife, Sue, is one of those grandmas who always has a twinkle to spare: she’s Miss November, lifting a champagne flute in a soaking tub full of bubbles, in the calendar of nude church ladies we’re doing for 2010.

Yes, I advocate for hospice. I talk about end-of-life decisions and bandy cancer statistics about at cocktail parties (and yes, I do sometimes get invited). But it doesn’t get any easier to hear that this lovely woman will be joining our club.

Closing in on the longest night of the year, with flu season’s worst still ahead of us, waiting for our mortgage to be approved in the worst economy of a generation, all I can feel is very, very sad to share in this loss.

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A Clean Slate

Maybe I’ll never unwrap the memories? We have art by many of Gavin’s friends, some of whom I never met, a few I actively disliked. But we hung what was framed, mostly his choices, and had two or three times as much as we could use. I kind of like having them here, in the new house, still wrapped up like ghosts.

To me, this looks like a spoof on the Pottery Barn catalog: maybe there are people who are afraid to unwrap their art, the same ones who cover their couches in clear vinyl? With decorator shades of white, as long as they’re wrapped, this platter of artwork counts as neutral.

It’s rather exciting to see how all my stuff looks in this house. (Olivia’s furniture looks far better in my old house, with the dark wood trim: she likes things overstuffed and antiquey. This house suits my mid-century and later aesthetic.) I’m lucky to have tons of art, most of it with personal connections, and of course we’ll hang a few of Gavin’s pieces (it doesn’t count as tacky now that he’s gone). It’s as if I have fresh eyes for the same pieces.

This scene on the mantel is something Gavin would have delighted in painting: the subtle colors, layers of meaning, hint of sentiment, room for personal interpretation.

The greatest irony is that this new house is a split-level and Gavin would have really loved it. He did a few drawings of this house model, sourced, I’m sure, from this same neighborhood. I’ve at least one left, perhaps that will hang in the space next to this mantel soon?


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Full Circle

I cherish a snapshot* of Gavin with his long thin arms loosely around me outside a hip brunch place in the college town next door. It’s a sunny day and I’m wearing the flowing skirt and fuchsia top I’d worn to graduate from college a few years before. My arms are toned from sword work, pushups, and youth. That photo, transferred to silk, is in a pillowed cartouche on the front of our wedding album and preserves one of the happiest smiles we had.

I remember always the feeling of his arms around me. I felt encircled, sealed tight but comfortable, binding me loosely inside a pure shape and close to his body. Gavin was a calm man and that state was contagious when he held me this way. I felt safe and energized.

From the start, nearly two years ago, Mr. Fresh has loved to hold me, join his strong arms around me when we’re lying in bed, my back to his front. Our hooks and crooks find each other and go soft. I feel nestled and nuzzled. I know I’m safe because he’s so strong and he means it.

It’s comfortable for me, but deeply, richly comforting for him. He needs this peace, it doesn’t follow him otherwise. If you look into his pool it’s roiling, even when he’s happy. He’s restless.

I love that I can do for him what Gavin did for me, even though I have no idea what it is, because I know how delicious it is and how necessary.


* The picture above is of the same hug but in 2005, with Short Stack in the huddle.

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Wordless Wednesday, Holiday Schedule

National Day of Listening

This may not work.

But I am going to try to talk to my damn mother for the Story Corps project, the National Day of Listening, on Friday. Maybe you can do it, too. It's a great legacy to leave, to include in the history of our real country, and a fantastic opportunity to connect with a loved one in a different way. The website offers tips as well as starting questions for your "interview."

There are a million ways and reasons I love what storytelling has become: a significant method that we use to frame our lives and our history. I never thought I'd see the day that ordinary people were recognized for their experiences and perspectives. I always thought that was the job of the Great American Novel, not reality TV, not computer networks, but things have changed. Thank God.

I love that I spent an hour on Monday selling a corporate client on how we'd help put faces to their "story," which they already value as a central part of their brand. I love that I have a chance to sell without lying, and use my skills to accomplish something rewarding while getting paid.

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The day after Thanksgiving, if I follow through on my National Day of Listening pledge, I'm supposed to listen to my mother for a full hour. We have a difficult relationship, but she is here for the holiday anyway.

Why don't I turn away when opportunity knocks like this? Maybe I'm strong enough to plunge right in to a challenging learning experience, perhaps flowers will pour from her mouth in a surprise fit of something-or-other. Could be that this process is just part of some rebellion I'm having against being healed, maybe this is my way to insist on banging my head against a familiar wall one more time.

I know part of my mother's annoying behavior is caused by illness, but after 43 years I still have trouble being around it and making room for my real live self.

Around her I feel like the child I was, the one who was constantly asked to be different; at other times I'm in the shoes of her parent, whose job it was to take care. The one who failed so miserably. If I saw my mother as a child who needed only love and empathy, I'd probably accept her and feel more sad than angry.

The sadness is like a well. I don't want to shine a light down there.

But an hour? With my ears? I'll try. Wish me luck.

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Engage With Grace: Your End-of-Life Wishes

I'm participating with many other bloggers in a blog rally for Engage With Grace – a movement aimed at having all of us understand and communicate our end-of-life wishes. At the heart of Engage With Grace are five questions, often shown as a single Powerpoint slide, designed to get the conversation started. We’ve included them at the end of this post. They’re not easy questions, but they are important.

Engage with Grace targets a time of year when most of us are with the very people with whom we should be having these tough conversations -- our closest friends and family. To help ease us into these tough questions, and in the spirit of the season, this year's Engage With Grace conversation might open with five parallel questions that ARE pretty easy to answer:



Silly? Maybe. But it underscores how having a template like this -- just five questions in plain, simple language -- can deflate some of the complexity, formality and even misnomers that have sometimes surrounded the end-of-life discussion.

So with that, we’ve included the five questions from Engage With Grace below. Think about them, document them, share them.




To learn more please go to www.engagewithgrace.org. This post is based on text written by Alexandra Drane and the Engage With Grace team. If you want to reproduce this post on your blog (or anywhere) you can download a ready-made html version here.

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Jumbled Former Shrine, #3

At one time this Virgin by the Aguilar sisters of Oaxaca was working on Gavin's cancer, along with some favorite fabric bits, milagros, pictures, a candle, and other souvenirs. Over 3+ years it's been joined by my perfume, lost toys, and jewelry I don't bother to put away. The candle was lit for every night of nookie with The First, sometimes Mr. Fresh and I bother to light it, too. And then a pile of Mr. Fresh's old receipts, discarded drawings by Short Stack are all piled on top.

This is one of my last pictures from the old house.

I look at this prominent chaotic neglect in my bedroom and think of Robert Venturi's oft-quoted statement:

"I am for messy vitality over obvious unity. I am for richness of meaning rather than clarity of meaning; for the implicit meaning as well as the explicit function..."

and I wonder if it's that, or if I'm just lazy. Or whether I didn't want the prayers to work, because the shrine didn't look a whole lot better for very long even when it was supposed to be on duty. (Your deity expects a clear view of what you'd like. I'm sure an old toilet paper roll, as great an art supply as it is, isn't something devoutly to be wished).

It's a fragment, archaeology of five years' accretion between dreams that transcended and stuff that got done. A little taste of life in that place, at that time. Nothing big.


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Schmaltz Pan Sequelae

Perhaps I went too far yesterday with my post about The Pan.

(1) Maybe I’m the only one who thinks this crazy way about cookware as investments linked to real estate. Likely, I’m the wife with the worst cleanup skills.

However.

As Olivia walked me through some kitchen features on moving day (reader, meet Olivia, Mr. Fresh’s former spouse. Yes, it’s all amicable. Yes, this is the house they lived in for 20 years) she cracked open a drawer and said, “Oh, and here’s The Pan that came with the oven, it’s here if you want, but I’ll take this other one since it’s the one I’ve always used...”

(2) I told him the gist of the Pan post (I published it nearly a week after the fight) and he thought it was a cute idea. He insists he doesn't read this blog, or worry what I might say about him.

However.

Tonight he brought home a supermarket rotisserie chicken and I think it gave me food poisoning.


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Married Life: Schmaltz Pan Spiel

[Mr. Fresh and I had a fight about something move-related and while I was cleaning up from dinner I schemed this rant. It's supposed to be funny. Just so you know.]

No, really, honey, thanks for making dinner. And it was delicious. Your plain roast chicken was way better than the rotisserie ones. THANK YOU. You’re great.

But fuck. The Pan. I can't believe you used that aluminum two-part grilling pan that you’re never supposed to use. What? You know, THE PAN. The one that came with the stove that came with the house. Yeah, no one ever uses those pans.

Why? WHY, motherfucker? Because it’s a piece of crap. It’s made to work exactly with this size oven but it doesn’t fit into the sink at all. It’s really hard to clean. All those holes. And it’s a flimsy material.

Dishwasher? What are you, crazy? That piece of shit would MELT in the fucking dishwasher.

You’re never supposed to use that pan. Everyone knows! Come on! Didn’t your Mom have “the pan?” She probably just didn’t want to tell you about it. I don’t blame her, you would have suggested she put it in the dishwasher!!!

What are you SUPPOSED to do with it? Put it aside or at the very bottom of the drawer and make sure no one ever uses it! That's what everyone does.

Waddaya mean "throw it out?" This pan, mister, is part of the stove, and when we sell the house, we’ll sell the stove with it and if the original pan is missing it’s not worth as much. And now, we’re moving out so there is no way I can leave the pan coated with chicken grease for the tenants. Okay, it’s not completely covered. But they shouldn’t be able to smell our last week’s dinner, you know?

What do you mean, “my usual cleaning standards?” Of course now I have to clean it better than I’d do for us. I don’t want the tenants to think we are total losers!

I'm sure they'll tell the whole neighborhood. Yes, the neighborhood we are moving out of. Why in the world are you laughing? Fuckhead. You wouldn't know community if it bit you in the ass.

And anyway I just heard this piece on NPR about grease and oil. You’re never supposed to put them into the sewage system, neither by dishwasher or by sink or by garbage disposal in sink. Well, as little as possible. You can drain it into a can and then wrap that up thoroughly when it’s full and throw it in the regular trash the evening before trash morning. Or, save it in the freezer and take it out mid-winter to make redneck suet for the birds. I know, pretty much every spring I find that I’ve forgotten it. But we’re not composting anymore, so why be THAT green?

Anyway, if I did compost now, I’d be making compost for the tenants and that’s just plain stupid.

No, I said I don’t want it going down the sink. I’ll wipe the grease off The Pan with paper towels… Trees? Smartass, you got a better idea? Oh yeah? Do you have any old shirts I can turn into rags? NO, BECAUSE YOU’RE WEARING THEM. “It’s my favorite,” “It’s so soft,” “It still fits me,” wah wah. And you think I’m ridiculous about “stuff?”

So I’ll stick the greasy paper towels in the can (it’s a whole damn chicken’s worth, thank you very much) and then use the sharp spatula to scrape off the big chunks of grease and stuck skin, and then maybe a big lump of baking soda will cut through what’s left… huh? No, well, SOMETHING has to go down the drain, I’m not CRAZY.

Or maybe vinegar if I have to. And then soap. And then maybe more baking soda or vinegar. That schmaltz shit is persistent. It’ll take a few hours. I’ll let it soak and watch some CSI with you. It’s going to be a lot of scrubbing though. Just want to make sure you know for next time.

No, Martha Stewart doesn’t have any better ideas about what to do with The Pan. She probably has a special warehouse full of things like this that she has to save. Like the mattress tags. Yeah, I think she pulls them off, but she keeps them in case there’s a rebate or something.

I can’t believe your mother never told you about The Pan. Or even your Grandma.

No, don’t ask your Dad, obviously he’s not gonna know, right? But you could ask him about the clitoris sometime. Maybe you had the flu when he was telling you that part.

Well, you know now. So when we get to the new house, I really do want you to feel comfortable in the kitchen, and that was delicious chicken, really, but can you just ask me before you pull out a pan?

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My Anissa Post: Prayer Isn't Enough

[Background on Anissa Mayhew here or here]

Leave it to the widow to say what no one else will: Prayer and love are great. But they are NOT ENOUGH. Whatever happens with Anissa, and I hope as strongly as you do that the outcome is whatever is best for her, things are NOT going to be okay.

So I’m going to give it to you straight: Send up those winged hopes. But plant roots, too, please: add something like this to your prayers and posts and intentions: "Whatever happens, I will help her family for the long haul." They -- Anissa’s husband and three children -- are going to ACTIVELY need your positive energy (and time and money) for at least the next three years.

Widows' Index

One of my many Big Ideas is a site that puts all the widow bloggers’ content together through an index.

It started after I left support group and started reading the huge variety of blogs produced by widows and widowers, especially the young ones. Despite our diversity, we share many of the same experiences so there tend to be common topics:
-- When they removed their wedding ring.
-- Their feelings at having to check “widowed” on a form, or God forbid, “divorced.”
-- When they sent their spouse’s belongings to the Goodwill (on my blog, this very casual post that is among my most visited).
-- And of course, the ever-popular, impossible-to-beat, post about First sex after death.

And then Michele Neff Hernandez told me about her project of interviewing many widows, asking the same set of questions, some of which were similar. See, that’s how I can tell she’s a genius. (Too.)

An index that connects our entries by the topics widowed people are looking for would generate traffic and share the commonalities more easily. For those of us writing blogs, it would be a great way to continue the conversations we all have informally, non-linearly, without interrupting our own narratives.

And it feeds into my other hypothesis: that young bereaved people are an underserved group, socially, economically, with certain needs that could be identified and dealt with. But that’s a Big Idea for another day.

I’ve started a list of the topics that might be included in a “widow index” of blogs – a “W-Index,” if you’ll forgive me. (No one ever does.)

I won’t bore folks with the logistics or technical details. The project could be self-building or we could each index other blogs as we wish.

This is probably too many topics, but what do you think?
Advice
Anger
Anniversaries
Anti-depressants
Art
Being single
Birthdays
Blogs and bloggers
Career and job
Church
Communities
Dating stories
Dating, online
Death
Depression
Divorce
Faith
Finances
Friends and friendships
Grief counseling
Grief, anticipatory
Grief, competiveness
Grief, complicated
Grieving Kids: age 0 to 3
Grieving Kids: age 4 to 5
Grieving Kids: Grown children
Grieving Kids: high schoolers
Grieving Kids: K-5 gr
Grieving Kids: middle schoolers
Grieving Kids: over 18
Home
Loneliness
Losses during bereavement
Loss of a child
Loss of a parent
Love
Marital status on forms
Meals
Mental Health other than depression
Milestones
Movies
Moving house
Music
Neighbors and neighborhoods
Other culture
Parents, yours
Parents-in-law
Peers
Practical advice
Religion
Remarriage
Sadness
School, your children
School, yourself
Sex
Siblings
Siblings-in-law
Skin hunger
Step parenting
Stuff, spouse’s
Support groups
Survivor guilt
Therapy
Time management
Triggers to grief
Wedding ring
Writing
Year 1
Year 2
Year 3
Year 4
Year 5
Year 6+

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Kid Theology, Part 2

My daughter will only listen to women vocalists, and I make mix CDs for the car every few weeks so it’s not All Pink, All the Time. At 5, she comes up with some funny ideas about the songs, like in “Dancing Queen” she heard the lyric as “Cheetah girl, watch that scene, digging the dancing Queen” so we had to play along and refer to ABBA as the Cheetah Girls for about a year. (We did tell her it was ABBA at first, and she got angry. So PEH! And I kept the lie going, partly because it would save me from even being tempted to buy anything by the Disney act. We lived in dread of the day she’d find us out: sing “Mamma Mia” and come home pissed. That day never came.)

Like all kids, she’s very musical. And like all kids her age, she’s starting to wonder where things came from. Since age 2 or so she’s been fascinated by inventors, robots, and how things work. Now she’s beginning to ask what made the seeds that made the grasses, flowers and trees: “Mommy, I came out of your tummy, but where did the world come from?”

“A lot of people have questions about that,” I straightened up, pleased to have a “teaching moment” just show up. “And so they study science to learn about where seeds, and water, and even the earth itself came from.”

“Wait, Mommy! I know! God maked the whole earth!”

I shuddered involuntarily.

“Well, no one really knows the answer for sure, but that is an interesting idea. Yes, many people study religion to learn about how the world was made. So people can do work using science or religion to answer these questions,” I offered, without giving her creationism, I hope.

“No! God did it.” Sensing unnapped, late-afternoon ferocity on the horizon, I let her idea stand. That week, I think her image of God was an old man with a white beard that she’d heard about at school.

But come Sunday, I knew she had options. This year’s religious education program in our Unitarian Universalist church is about world religious traditions. In the past few Sundays she’s colored in Ganesh and Shiva, made a “stained glass” chalice out of tissue paper, and created a camel (part of a lesson on Islam) out of two humps of a paper egg carton and some pipe cleaners. And the questions, as you can imagine, are bound to keep coming.

And when she heard this song last week, she got very excited.

“If God had a name, what would it be
and would you call it to his face
if you were faced with him...?”

I’m pretty sure she thought the CD was reading her mind. “Mommy! What she singing is EXACTLY the same as what I am thinking!”






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Good Bye, House

Good bye, house.
Good bye, mouse ... traps.
Good bye, closet door that you can’t open unless the bedroom door is closed.
Good bye, single water line that means you can’t flush if there’s laundry going.
Good bye, crack in the wall that has the habit of sometimes looking like a rabbit.

Good bye, improperly installed storm door that moans with a cold northwest wind.
Good bye, hot water toilet that we fixed eight years ago.
Good bye, potential for that toilet to explode in an unheated bathroom (we added heat five years ago but I’m still bitter).
Good bye, giant hatch in kitchen ceiling that can expose the second floor plumbing.
Good bye, feeling that I ought to fix everything.

Good bye, dining room non-acoustical ceiling with unexplained hole.
Good bye, unfinishable basement.
Good bye, huge sunny garden a mother can't make time for.

Good bye, house with many expensive problems.
Good bye, busy urban street in a mostly sweet residential suburban neighborhood.
Good bye, bus stop across from living room windows, community gathering place, facilitator of loitering nuisances.
Good bye, frequent route for ambulances and fire trucks.

Good bye, incredible equity accumulation.
Good bye, future development as multi-family housing opposed by the neighborhood.
Good bye, uphill battle.

Good bye, Benjamin Moore 963, lovingly applied to the hallways.
Good bye, brand new, extremely expensive roof.

Good bye, house which I bought as breadwinner in my first marriage.
Good bye, first home I created for my child.
Good bye, house I came home to the night my husband died.

Good bye, house where I felt trapped with a crazy toddler.
Good bye, house I left each morning to go to work, a blessed distraction and relief.
Good bye, house where I learned to walk again, built up my strength, and hosted new friends.
Good bye, house where I rediscovered my bliss and found out some new joys, too.
Good bye, house that I left, hand in hand with my daughter and my second husband.

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Do You Have "The Pan?"

I am working on a funny post about this stupid idiot roasting pan, the one in the left sink above, the one that you’re not supposed to use because it’s a piece of crap but you have to keep it because it goes with your stove. You know “the pan?” You’ve got one, too, I’m sure. It came with the house.

But I can’t publish it because Mr. Fresh and I are having a fight about the move. He's upstairs in a huff. He doesn't read this, but no need to stoke flames with the universe.

Anyway, "the pan" is covered in chicken grease because someone didn’t know you are not supposed to ever use that pan.

I’m hoping the post will pass for Bloggess material when it’s done, at least in the amount that it threatens the author’s marriage, but in the meantime, you can look at the pretty picture.


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A Milestone in, or toward, Life 2.0

The milestones pile up, big and small, three years' worth, and they are all linked to loss: When I removed my wedding ring. The anniversaries, birthdays, child’s birthdays, ritual vacations. First Thai food without Gavin. First Mom, and 4-year-old, at a playdate who didn’t know I was a widow. First trip to the grocery store where I didn’t buy a lot of cookie comfort.

This one was new and it snuck up on me. I had my first parent-teacher conference this week with my daughter’s kindergarten teacher. First her speech teacher came in and summarized progress toward her goals. I had some questions (Should I correct her diction when she’s talking to herself? Which is about 2 hours of each day. “No.”) but overall the teacher said Shortie’s doing really well and may not be referred for services next year.

And then the teacher and I went through evaluating all her little successes: reading simple words. “Understanding statistics at a kindergarten level,” WTF is that? Social adjustment, managing her food allergy, etc. She is especially enthusiastic, as I know, about art, and excellent with scissors. In all things, my daughter looks to be flourishing. I smiled.

“Now, Short Stack has mentioned that her father died. Can you tell me some more about that?”

I hadn’t told the teacher.

A milestone that went unmarked at the time: The first time I didn’t mention the loss, at ALL, in meeting someone really important to my child.

I was shocked, sad, happy that I’d gotten away with it: and surprised it took me this long to see that back in September, there was at least one occasion when I didn’t need the attention devoted to a widow.

I blabbered my spiel in incredible surprise: her father, his illness, my general state, basics of grief in kids her age, support we’d gotten. I reaasured her that we talk about him and I’m always honest, and while experts have told me all her reactions so far are typical, she should feel free to let me know if she has any concerns. And I told her about other changes in Short Stack’s life: the death of one grandma, our move to a new neighborhood, Mr. Fresh joining the family. How she refers to him as “Dad” but also says, “I’m a artist like my Daddy,” meaning Gavin.

Everything was OKAY. I’d again escaped injuring my child despite incredible flakiness. I was again grateful for sensitive teachers who have to cope with all our parenting gaps. Grateful I’d avoided a single-Mom breakdown for three years and am now out of those particular woods (breakdown is still possible, but I’m not single ☺).

Is this a milestone of loss, or of Life 2.0? It’s a mark of the absence of loss, the mark death doesn’t leave, of me TRULY living with it and beyond it. Maybe a hint, if not the first, of defining myself as something other than a widow.

I’m just plain happy to be here. And I feel a little less skeptical to, maybe, call a life, at some time, a “New Normal.”


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What Is Grief?

Grief is a monster. It rips and roars. It has a thousand eyes and eight kinds of fur. It’s furious and it bursts into your home. Grief rapes and pillages, it spends you, but it never leaves you alone.

Grief is an embezzler, green-shaded and officious, sapping you from a back room where he carries on vital aspects of your business. You’re not sure exactly what he does but everyone seems to trust him. The first day he doesn’t show up you find you’re hollow.

Grief is a saboteur, a pickpocket, a bastard. A hurricane, an elevator shaft, a muddy puddle, a pie in the face. Grief stains you, breaks you, kicks you when you’re down. Grief surprises you and changes constantly.

But we often forget that early on, Grief is also a companion. Grief is true, constant, honest. It won’t run if you stare or yell. Grief is always up for a conversation or a really juicy fight. Heck, Grief even shares jokes, some of which must be kept just between you two.

Grief is your intimate, your confidante, your own.

It takes, but it gives back, too. It plays Good Cop, Bad Cop. You have no defense.

You think maybe Grief protects you from worse things. It’s hard to say.

Grief feeds you and slakes your thirst. It embraces you when no one else will. It will never leave you alone. It helps you feel special and keeps you apart when, sometimes, you need to be distant from the rest of the world.

Grief can be an object. It’s easy to blame Grief, and satisfying to beat the shit out of it.

It will step back a bit over time, and you two will grow apart. It never looks the same the same two days in a row. Like you, it learns.

But gradually your life will recruit new characters and more feelings. When you are busy with them, Grief begins to starve. You gain strength.

Grief is not the thing that hurt you, it's made out of you, so it will always be there for you when you need it.


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Three Cliches, Including "Till Death Do Us Part."

Leave it to me to question the truisms that everyone says without thinking. (For some reason, I am still fun at parties…)

“It didn’t work out.”
I never understood why people would say this about a relationship after it was over. What was supposed to be the endpoint, which didn’t end up fulfilled? Is it that they didn’t “close the deal” by getting married? Surely they could enjoy their time together without having an end in mind. Did it “not work out” because they didn’t stay married until one of them died? Is a marriage that ends in divorce like the sound of a tree that falls in the forest when no one hears it? Surely those years together were worth something in this world, at least in the small sphere of your time in it.

Is it just that it’s one of those nonsense phrases that everyone uses, of which I have so little understanding or tolerance? Or is “it didn’t work out” truly contemptuous of time? Whatever it is, I always take a step back from any friend who says it. (Did I mention that I still have friends? ‘Cause I do. I’m not even lying.)

“Happily ever after.”
Who cares what it’s “after?!” Yeah, I get that you’re closing the book, so “after” the cover’s shut. What is it until?

On the other hand, we cynics today, we sophisticates, make so much fun of “fairytale endings.” What would be wrong with just plain being happy until we each individually (don’t forget, we all do die alone) fade out, hopefully in our sleep and at a good ripe age. So much contempt. Don’t you deserve to have joy? Wouldn’t most of us be happy to remember one moment of bliss at the end as the chapters shoot past our fading eyes?

“Till death do us part.”
How much do any of us really contemplate this statement? Gavin and I thought we were pretty serious about our love in the face of Death. We married in defiance of his heart problems and several near-death experiences. We requested that our friend Pat, glamorous jazz singer, sing “One Hand, One Heart” from West Side Story (“even death won’t part us now”) at our vows (and, um, “Like a Prayer”). And then we went to Mexico for the Days of the Dead (including a cemetery tour) for our lunes miel.

But seriously, who wants to fulfill those vows? We love to picture ourselves on the porch, white haired or bald in last year’s hiked-up pants giving lollipops to sticky grandkids.

But being the caregiver to a dying love, whether old or young? Recovering alone from the shock of a car accident? Romantic? Pfah! Research shows it takes 10 years off your life.

We cherish the Norman Rockwell picture of “till death do us part,” but none of us is ready for the Norman Cousins one.

Should I be pleased that death parted me from Gavin? I’m not sure. I did enjoy entering dating with a “successful” relationship (ah! There’s that endpoint!) behind me, and I certainly hold it over your everyday divorcee. And look, widowhood is a big part of my identity. (Today.)

But surely a marriage in which my husband died didn’t “work out,” did it?

Mr. Fresh says he hopes I die first so that I don’t have to go through this kind of loss again. I’m not sure how much of a kindness this is. I joke back, “Yeah, um, no thanks. I love you too, but be my guest.”

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* (I’m not endorsing divorce. I think it’s a grand waste and injustice 90% of the time. But seriously? Marriage and death? Not really on the same page for any of us.)

** (Is that time only valuable if it’s permanent? If we are mortal, shouldn’t our feelings be mortal, too?).


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Really, Truly True Things: A Top Ten List

Perhaps these things are obvious to everyone else but it’s taken me 43 years.

1. You only get one body in this life.
2. If you don't talk much, people will think you are smarter.
3. Water is the best, but single malt Scotches rock.
4. True guru-style wisdom is always a surprise and it comes out of people you’ve started to tune out: Small children. Crazies. Your grandma who says the same thing over and over again. If you are paying for this kind of language (other than in books) or feedback (other than in therapy) you will not receive.
5. Fast music, even if you don’t like it, really does make you work out harder.
6. When you exercise, you will have more energy, yes, even that same day.
7. Caffeine really does make you smarter.
8. It is truly just as easy to fall in love with a rich man.
9. Driving and crossing the street are extremely risky behaviors.
10. April really is the cruelest month, but May, November, and January suck smooth red monkey hiney most years, too.


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