Funny that I started writing again when I did.
While I was writing my last post, I got a call that my very first "boyfriend" ever had committed suicide. I put boyfriend in quotations because this is how he became my boyfriend:
Setting: Tall Oaks Camp
His friend: Andy wants to know if you'll go with him.
Me: Maybe...(giggle)...I don't know.
A few hours later...
My friend (to his friend): Tell Andy Amy said she'd go with him.
His friend: Okay.
And that was it. I'm not sure I sat with him at a meal or anything after that, or if anything changed at all. I was 12.
I had my first kiss at summer camp, too, the next summer. It was a different boy that I kissed. I hadn't broken up with Andy. But our relationship had never been mentioned again after that camp. In fact, I STILL haven't broken up with Andy, and we both went on to marry other people. Oops.
I loved camp. I was really popular at camp. Because, when you're in middle school and even high school, being popular matters. A lot. I had never been popular at school. And I guess that really begs to define popular. I'm sure you know what it means...but do you know what it MEANS? If you went to school, I guess you probably do. It doesn't just mean that people like you. It means that you're in the A crowd. It means that certain boys and certain girls like you just because you're in that crowd. They may like you because you're you, too, but you get the edge of being able to skip the first step in friend making...the part where you have to go up to someone and convince them to like you. On the other hand, you have to walk the line all the time to STAY in the A group. So it's tit for tat, I guess.
I was happy not being in the A group...not being popular...in school. I had my good friends, Leslie, Brooke, Dama. I didn't need any more than that. And I was never very good at walking the line. But at camp I could play the part of a popular girl and I only had to keep up all the bits that made it work for two weeks, tops. I always had a boyfriend at camp. I never had a boyfriend in school. And, if you've been reading this blog in order, you know that I met Leslie at camp. Now that I think about it, camp was incredibly good to me. I met some of the most incredible people at camp. My current pastor is someone I met at camp. Weird.
Anyway, Andy took his own life. And I don't know why. I wasn't friends with him anymore. I wasn't his Facebook friend. I hadn't seen him in well over twenty-five years. But I go to church with his dad. I knew of him...the basics of his life...that he'd married and had a little girl who had some health issues...that he lived in the city still. But I didn't know that he was so sick with depression. I didn't know that a switch had flipped in his mind that didn't allow him to see his own reality anymore.
And that happened while I was writing my last post. Actually during the time in which I was typing.
And two weeks after I started writing again...IT happened again. Someone took a gun into a public place and shot people. But this time it's different, the newspapers say. They say it's different because the shooter was "popular".
I'm going to call the shooter by his name. You know how I feel about giving them a name. I'm not like the people who say that we shouldn't say the names of the shooters, only the names of the victims. The shooters NEED names. We need them as a society because, speaking of popular, this is, unfortunately, a "popular" thing to do...to publicly kill others. And there are a lot of them. We need their names to differentiate between them. Saying their names isn't going to make others want to do it, too, any more than the grossly unprofessional way the media reports this stuff already does. And the shooters were/are people. Before they became murderers, they were people who had mothers and fathers and friends and ate sandwiches and bought toothpaste and behaved like non-murderers.
So Jaylen Fryberg was "popular" and, according to the news, that makes him different than Leslie's shooter, David Logsdon. It makes him different than Adam Lanza and James Holmes and Eric Harris and supposedly the hundreds of other mass shooters. I call bullshit. He wasn't different. He might have lived a different kind of reality than some of the others. But the thing is...he was sick. Something inside his brain was terribly broken. And that makes him the same as the others.
David Logsdon didn't kill Leslie, Andrew, and Patricia because he wasn't popular. Adam Lanza didn't kill those beautiful children because he had Asperger's. Dylan Kleblod and Eric Harris didn't kill students at Columbine because they were bullied. They all did it because something in their brains was not right. Something in their thinking was broken. In some cases, it might have been fixable if we'd known. In some cases, maybe not. But I tire of hearing that bullying or autism or getting fired causes killers. Mental illness unchecked and/or sociopathic tendencies cause killers. (I want you to see that I put and/or between mental illness and sociopathic. Not everyone of these shooters is/was sociopathic. Some were.) Bullying causes pain. Being fired causes pain...I know that all too well. Sometimes, having Asperger's or autism causes pain. For the mentally ill, that pain may be more difficult to bear than for others. But it's the mental illness that caused these people to make their tragic choices...not the pain.
Jaylen Fryberg was no different than other mass shooters. Here's what IS different, though... Jaylen was 14 and lived in the age of social media. I'm a teacher. My students are 14. And I teach digital literacy. I KNOW about 14 year olds and twitter and snapchat and instagram. This is their language. Friends of Jaylen and his victims, Zoe, Gia, Shaylee, Andrew, and Nate, are on twitter right now speaking in their language about the most profound thing that has ever happened to them. I've seen it. And there are people who think they should stop. There are people who say that it's not the best way to grieve. Those people are WRONG. There IS no "best way" to grieve. You do it how you do it. And for most of us, grieving includes communication. If your language is social media, then that's how you're going to grieve.
The heartbreak for me is that this language is so public. I have no problem with it being available to strangers. I may not have been comfortable with that for myself in the days following Leslie's murder, but I wasn't 14 and I had never heard of twitter. Had she been killed yesterday, I might HAVE been more public in my grief. These kids are accustomed to a world where strangers see their thoughts. I don't even have a problem with the "trolls." Most 14 year olds with a social media account know how to deal with trolls. (Although if any of you are reading this, PLEASE don't respond to trolls. You don't have to tell them they know nothing about the situation. They know it. So do other kind hearted individuals. Just ignore them. Their purpose is to create reaction. If you give them none, they WILL go away.) My problem is with the disgusting media. They are like emotional paparazzi. They will do ANYTHING to get a bite of information, and if it's emotionally charged information, they're even happier. These public social media accounts leave you open to constant monitoring by the media. And they'll put anything you say on the news.
Seven and a half years after Leslie's murder, I still get phone calls from the media asking how I feel about certain things that they've decided relate to the murder. But in my case, all they have is my phone number. For friends of the victims of this tragedy, the media has every word they say...even when it's not said directly to the reporter.
THAT'S what makes this case different. And I'm sure that we as consumers of news will be affected by it. We already have been. Things will undoubtedly be reported on the news that will be changed later because some reporter found some heartbroken teen's twitter account and misread what she posted. I imagine that, in this age of public communication, it will actually take LONGER to know the full story.
And I don't know the answer to this. I'm working on finding one, but I don't have one right now. The teenagers who have been affected deserve to grieve in their own way with their own language. But their language is a show for the world to watch. For now, all I can do is beg of others to understand... Think back to a time when YOU were grieving. Did you talk to your friends? Did you think weird things that maybe now you don't think anymore? Yes, you did. That's all they're doing. The difference is that strangers couldn't hear you. We're all watching them.
Monday, October 27, 2014
Sunday, October 12, 2014
365 Days + Half
It's been over a year. And it's not that I haven't had a thousand things to say.
I began this blog because I wanted to be an "It gets better" voice. I've come so many years since Leslie's murder and it really did get better. My voice wasn't lying. But the part that I hadn't gotten to yet, and that you'll get to, too...it happens again.
That's why it's crazy important that we do this work. That's why we HAVE to grieve and be completely in it and come through it. Because we're never going to live a life without loss. The universe doesn't decide that we've had our fair share because we had a particularly violent and ugly loss. It still takes shit away from us.
The last time I wrote here I'd just lost my friend Stuart. And I hadn't even been able yet to write that a few months before that, about 18 months ago from today, one of my most best friends...my spiritual mentor, really...had lost her sweet nephew, Travis, to an ugly suicide at only 14 years old. We lost Travis.
I thought that those losses, while painful and aching, were maybe a good and healing thing. And you know how I feel about saying that the loss of a human being is a good thing. It's not. Ever. But they ARE lost. We can't change that. So I mean that the way that I handled those things...the opportunities I had to handle them were good and healing. I had this really amazing opportunity to be the guiding hand of love for my friends. I was able to be the very person for them that so many had been for me when I was in the darkest place I'd ever been in the days after Leslie's murder.
Probably within ten minutes of hearing about Travis's suicide, I'd fully transitioned into savior mode. I was on the phone buying plane tickets for my friend, Marianne, and her kids to get to Denver to be with Travis's mom. I contacted a clean-up company to come in and take care of the clean up of the house so that his mama would never have to go into that home again and see that. I was talking people I loved off of emotional ledges. I was getting things done that I knew they couldn't do...things that HAD to be done.
When Stuart died, I was at the house right away...as soon as I could. I helped with funeral plans and sat with friends and family. I mixed drinks. I shared my experiences. I knew they had been heard, and I knew that they helped.
Both times I remember thinking "This is what I have to offer now. This new me with a Leslie shaped hole in my heart has a new mission and a new purpose." I thought it felt good. It DID feel good.
I began volunteering with a grief counseling center after experiencing the loss of Travis with Marianne and feeling so empowered by my ability to help her and her family. It was an amazing place. (Solace House Grief Center in the greater Kansas City area, if you are a local...please donate your time and/or your resources, if you are able.) For a few beautiful months, I thought things were okay. I thought my purpose was found, and I was on a path. I had an amazing job in a school where I was permitted to love my students and show them grace. I had a remarkable boyfriend who understood my path with grief...or at least understood that I needed to walk it.
And then... Right?
Over time, days began feeling longer. Falling asleep and getting out my house took longer and longer. I couldn't face the grief center anymore. Sadness and confusion and the old questions of "Why?" started to linger in my brain regularly. Every part of my logical self knew that there is not now and never will be an answer as to WHY this crazy awful terrible SHIT happens to people. I had been in counseling for almost three years. Bi-weekly Mimi would remind me that why was irrelevant and what is the only thing that mattered. What next...what next...what next? Feel then move, feel then move. But logic stopped being the biggest part of me for the first time in a long time. It was scary. And that fear helped nothing.
I started to think about Leslie more. Even the seriously wonderful joy (and in the midst of all of this, I did feel this particular joy) of falling madly in love with and becoming engaged to my boyfriend, Zac, started to ache because I couldn't share it with her. I'd lie in bed at night next to this beautiful man and cry because I was imagining her sitting at a table drinking a cosmopolitan with him and me while we talked and Zac sat smiling in silence. In my imaginings he'd say very little except every now and then he'd say the PERFECT thing, and she'd look at me with the look I knew was approval. And it would make me cry. And then I'd cry some more because there was a time not long before that when these kinds of imaginings made me smile...not weep. I didn't know it then, but I was falling backwards on the grief scale.
Last fall, a serious medical issue I'd been fighting since I was 14 finally decided that it would kill me if I didn't take out all my lady parts. I was about to turn 40. Part of me knew that I would never bear a child. Part of me didn't really want to bear a child. ALL of me, though, hated the idea of not being able to decide that for myself. I tried to convince myself and everyone else that I had made the decision to have the surgery and that it wasn't fear of dying that prompted it. I still try to convince people of this. (If you're reading this and you're one of those people...surprise!) I talked about it all the time to a select few...not because I wanted the sympathy or to have them focus on me...but because the more I talked about it as positive thing, the less I had to face my fear. So in December 2013, I had a bi-lateral salpingo oophorectomy and hysterectomy. That means they took it all...ovaries, fallopian tubes, and uterus. A week before the surgery, Zac and I got engaged. Again, thank God that I was truly able to enjoy that love. And I will always be grateful to him that we made that decision when he knew that we would not have biological children of our own together.
After the surgery, physically, I felt better....as far as my illness went. Hot flashes, memory loss, emotions changing on dime....that happened and still happens. I'm hormone replacement free. Menopause SUCKS without hormone replacement therapy. And contrary to what you read on the internet, it doesn't last just a few weeks after radical surgery. I'm well past six months. And I started to have dreams. About little tiny people with my dark hair and Zac's full lips. I dreamed we'd name her Leslie...or him Leslie. Never in my life had I ever had those dreams. I would read feminist articles in my favorite feminist magazines and want to punch every single person writing in them because, all of a sudden, I was noticing this horrible (in my eyes) trend in feminism of motherhood equaling femininity. Grief? What was I grieving? Babies whom I'd never had or even dreamed of before the surgery? My uterus and ovaries? Why? They were trying to ruin me. Choices? I was grieving could have beens. And don't we all grieve those? Even when what we lose isn't human beings whom we love...the thought that maybe in the future, life without loss would have been much different.
In February this year, my 12 year old sheepdog, Truman, began the last stages of what had been a slow decline in his health. Truman is the dog in my profile photo, kissing on Leslie. He's been with me since he was just 3 months old. Truman and I were bonded in the strongest possible way that dog and human can be bonded. He came into my life when I needed to learn about love. And he taught it to me.
12 is pretty old for a sheepdog. I knew it was coming. But it didn't hurt any less to choose to end my boy's life. On February 24th, I took him to our sweet vet and held him. And I didn't bring him home. Losing a pet is hard when you're anyone. As you know, I'm big on one loss not being "worse" for someone because of circumstance or closeness or even species. Losing a pet is hard in a special way when you're single and lived alone with your pet for most of his life. It was difficult for some (some were truly understanding) people at work to understand the magnitude of this loss. There are no bereavement days for the loss of your child when your child is a dog. I took one anyway. My boss was less than understanding.
This is the tribute video I made for Truman. It's long...probably unnecessarily so. Feel free to look only to see what he looked like and then stop. Or not at all. Or watch the whole thing and bawl. :)
In April, my boss let me go. I lost my job.
I believe, to date, this may be the most profound loss of my life. And yes, that includes losing my best friend to a murderer. By profound, I do not mean that it was "more important." If given the choice of getting my job back or Leslie back, I think it's rather obvious that there would be no hesitation. I would choose Leslie. I do not compare the value of human life to the value of my job and call it equal. What I mean is that it has affected my daily life in a negative way more than any other loss that I have experienced. Losing my job left me truly heart broken. I don't believe I understood the meaning of broken until that day.
It's important (to me) to note that I still have no idea what I did wrong or why I lost this job. I was told why. None of the things that I was told were true. For the record, I wasn't accused of anything gross or criminal. I was told that I made mistakes that I could actually prove were not my mistakes. They happened, yes, but it hadn't been me who had made them. My bosses were completely uninterested in hearing this. When I said I had actual proof on paper that I hadn't been the person to make the mistakes, I was asked to stop being so dramatic. I wasn't actually fired. Being fired is bad news for a teacher. I was just not renewed. My position was dissolved. This was (and is, I guess) supposedly good because I would be able to find another teaching job without that ugly mark.
Because I lost this job as a result of things I didn't do and was not respected or believed, or even given the opportunity to defend myself, my logic went immediately to the only other possible reason: they didn't like me. They didn't like me so much that they wanted me to go away. And I loved that job. I should capitalize that to show my emphasis. I LOVED THAT JOB. I had actually worked there before (under completely different leadership) I went to graduate school and had been scratching and clawing my way to get back there ever since. I had been working there when Leslie died. That place was my family...my home. I truly believed it made me part of who I am. I worked for a private Catholic organization. It could have been (probably was) politics. Maybe someone's mother didn't like me. Maybe I wasn't Catholic enough. Maybe I wasn't God knows what. Whatever it was that I was supposed to be, I wasn't. And all that I ever identified with in a truly 100% positive light had been my career. And I "wasn't." I have never in my life found breath so difficult to take.
I was "not renewed" on April 3rd. On a Thursday. At lunch time. Because I was "not renewed" and not fired, I still had to finish out the school year. I had to finish out that school day...that school week. 36 school days. I didn't go on Friday. I took a sick day. But going back there every day knowing that I was not wanted...in a place that I had loved so completely...working with girls whom I loved with truth, even when they were teenagers and couldn't see it....God...going back there knowing, believing, that I was hated... It hurt in ways that I cannot adequately describe in words. And I can usually find words. It felt like I was sitting in that room being told by my boss that I was not wanted every single day. It was the same breath stealing pain.
And I couldn't tell anyone. First of all, I was TOLD not to tell anyone. I was told that THEY were going to tell everyone. Of course, they kept saying they would tell everyone and then never did. They'd give me exact dates, and I would gear up for the pain, and they wouldn't do it. And I didn't WANT to tell anyone. Like I said, teachers lose jobs for really shitty things, usually. I had no idea what people were going to think. And the self hatred had settled in. The last thing I needed was paranoia that everyone else hated me, too.
This grief was different than any grief I had ever experienced because with it came guilt. I knew I hadn't done anything wrong. Well, I knew I hadn't done the particular things they quoted wrong. But every single day...still today, even...I wondered if maybe I DID suck and I deserved it. That's part of the grief wheel that I can't stop spinning on this one.
Summer did finally come. I finally got to stop walking into the same cycle of loss at work every day. I also had to say goodbye to this place that I loved forever.
I don't have another job yet. But I do have a husband. And Zac's wonderful. He's everything that I need, but he also has these wonderful pockets of need within himself that I get to fill, too. I got married on a beautiful day in the street by my parents house with a gorgeous summer party in the yard afterward. The day was everything I wanted. Any kind of wedding would have been that because I married Zac, but the loveliness of this one was particularly nice. We were married in June, because, duh. :) June is wedding month! Afterward we went to a remote cabin up in the mountains in Colorado and watched falling stars.
When I came home, I had still lost my job. I wasn't a teacher. I had to face the beginning of a school year...the sharpening of pencils, the back to school sales, the school busses reappearing...for the first time since I was five years old when I wasn't a part of it. I was a person for whom a year was August to August, not January to January, for 35 years. And now I was not.
And I still "wasn't." So I couldn't face finding another teaching job. I was terrified that I would be "wasn't" there, too. I applied for job after job for which I either completely wasn't qualified was completely over qualified. Sometimes I got rejection notices. They burn a bit, but they helped spur me on to apply for more. Mostly I was just ignored. What is UP with that, by the way? In what world is it okay for people to just pretend like they forgot you exist, ESPECIALLY when you had an interview? But, I guess it's okay in some world, because lots of places do it. But, it's my blog, so I feel justified in saying lots of places also SUCK for doing it.
In July, I heard from Leslie's brother, Dwight, one of my close friends now, that his son, Nicky, Leslie's sweet nephew, had fallen from a cliff while hiking in Rocky Mountain National Park and died. Yes, you read that right. It seems so crazy tragic that even writing it sounds like part of a poorly written novel. But it happened. I thought immediately of this line in a Barr Brothers song..."if one of us had to leave this place, would the other come along?" I was terrified that we would lose Dwight, too. Amazingly, he's been strong beyond anything I could have imagined. He's given strength to me by simply continuing to breathe and walk. I found myself in the strangest place...with Leslie's family again...grieving. It was oddly familiar and safe.
In between all of these things...Boston was bombed by a teenager who lay frightened in a boat. After he'd murdered people he didn't even know. A Jewish community center less than two miles from my home was the site of a terrible shooting that killed a boy who was in the same debate club as Leslie at the high school we attended. Misguided misogyny (isn't it all misguided?) caused a college kid to shoot his fellow students. A policeman on the other side of my state shot a teenaged boy because he was big, apparently. And black. But no one admits that. And war. War. War.
Why am I telling you this? Well, first, I'm telling you this because I work that way. Telling heals me. Some people think it's over sharing. Some people think it's attention seeking. I say fuck some people. We do what heals us. If we don't, we end up the one someone else loses. Second, I'm telling you this because it gets better. Then it gets worse. And then it gets better again. I know that it does. What I know right now is that I've been in a cycle of loss for 18 months. I got on the grief wheel, and I started to do my work, and a new loss would find me long before I'd gotten far enough around the wheel to be ready for it. And I didn't even realize that was what was happening to me until recently.
But I know that now. And I know that the work will be hard because, well, it's always hard, but also because I've done it before. And I know that, someday, I will have to do it again. And we move forward. And we do what heals us, even when other people don't approve of the way we do it. And in front of us are great joys mixed in with more losses. Because that is our life. That is ALL of life.
I'm going to stop now. I made up for lost time, didn't I? Geeeeez...this is quite a post. Thank you for reading it, if you did. There is more to come, but not this long, I promise. I have some good things for me and for you up my sleeve and I plan to share them.
Don't ever stop trying to heal. You will not ever heal the scar, the hole, that is in the shape of your loss...but you will become a really incredible person who bears a scar. You will if you keep trying. I will if you will.
I began this blog because I wanted to be an "It gets better" voice. I've come so many years since Leslie's murder and it really did get better. My voice wasn't lying. But the part that I hadn't gotten to yet, and that you'll get to, too...it happens again.
That's why it's crazy important that we do this work. That's why we HAVE to grieve and be completely in it and come through it. Because we're never going to live a life without loss. The universe doesn't decide that we've had our fair share because we had a particularly violent and ugly loss. It still takes shit away from us.
The last time I wrote here I'd just lost my friend Stuart. And I hadn't even been able yet to write that a few months before that, about 18 months ago from today, one of my most best friends...my spiritual mentor, really...had lost her sweet nephew, Travis, to an ugly suicide at only 14 years old. We lost Travis.
 |
| Travis |
I thought that those losses, while painful and aching, were maybe a good and healing thing. And you know how I feel about saying that the loss of a human being is a good thing. It's not. Ever. But they ARE lost. We can't change that. So I mean that the way that I handled those things...the opportunities I had to handle them were good and healing. I had this really amazing opportunity to be the guiding hand of love for my friends. I was able to be the very person for them that so many had been for me when I was in the darkest place I'd ever been in the days after Leslie's murder.
Probably within ten minutes of hearing about Travis's suicide, I'd fully transitioned into savior mode. I was on the phone buying plane tickets for my friend, Marianne, and her kids to get to Denver to be with Travis's mom. I contacted a clean-up company to come in and take care of the clean up of the house so that his mama would never have to go into that home again and see that. I was talking people I loved off of emotional ledges. I was getting things done that I knew they couldn't do...things that HAD to be done.
When Stuart died, I was at the house right away...as soon as I could. I helped with funeral plans and sat with friends and family. I mixed drinks. I shared my experiences. I knew they had been heard, and I knew that they helped.
Both times I remember thinking "This is what I have to offer now. This new me with a Leslie shaped hole in my heart has a new mission and a new purpose." I thought it felt good. It DID feel good.
I began volunteering with a grief counseling center after experiencing the loss of Travis with Marianne and feeling so empowered by my ability to help her and her family. It was an amazing place. (Solace House Grief Center in the greater Kansas City area, if you are a local...please donate your time and/or your resources, if you are able.) For a few beautiful months, I thought things were okay. I thought my purpose was found, and I was on a path. I had an amazing job in a school where I was permitted to love my students and show them grace. I had a remarkable boyfriend who understood my path with grief...or at least understood that I needed to walk it.
And then... Right?
Over time, days began feeling longer. Falling asleep and getting out my house took longer and longer. I couldn't face the grief center anymore. Sadness and confusion and the old questions of "Why?" started to linger in my brain regularly. Every part of my logical self knew that there is not now and never will be an answer as to WHY this crazy awful terrible SHIT happens to people. I had been in counseling for almost three years. Bi-weekly Mimi would remind me that why was irrelevant and what is the only thing that mattered. What next...what next...what next? Feel then move, feel then move. But logic stopped being the biggest part of me for the first time in a long time. It was scary. And that fear helped nothing.
I started to think about Leslie more. Even the seriously wonderful joy (and in the midst of all of this, I did feel this particular joy) of falling madly in love with and becoming engaged to my boyfriend, Zac, started to ache because I couldn't share it with her. I'd lie in bed at night next to this beautiful man and cry because I was imagining her sitting at a table drinking a cosmopolitan with him and me while we talked and Zac sat smiling in silence. In my imaginings he'd say very little except every now and then he'd say the PERFECT thing, and she'd look at me with the look I knew was approval. And it would make me cry. And then I'd cry some more because there was a time not long before that when these kinds of imaginings made me smile...not weep. I didn't know it then, but I was falling backwards on the grief scale.
Last fall, a serious medical issue I'd been fighting since I was 14 finally decided that it would kill me if I didn't take out all my lady parts. I was about to turn 40. Part of me knew that I would never bear a child. Part of me didn't really want to bear a child. ALL of me, though, hated the idea of not being able to decide that for myself. I tried to convince myself and everyone else that I had made the decision to have the surgery and that it wasn't fear of dying that prompted it. I still try to convince people of this. (If you're reading this and you're one of those people...surprise!) I talked about it all the time to a select few...not because I wanted the sympathy or to have them focus on me...but because the more I talked about it as positive thing, the less I had to face my fear. So in December 2013, I had a bi-lateral salpingo oophorectomy and hysterectomy. That means they took it all...ovaries, fallopian tubes, and uterus. A week before the surgery, Zac and I got engaged. Again, thank God that I was truly able to enjoy that love. And I will always be grateful to him that we made that decision when he knew that we would not have biological children of our own together.
After the surgery, physically, I felt better....as far as my illness went. Hot flashes, memory loss, emotions changing on dime....that happened and still happens. I'm hormone replacement free. Menopause SUCKS without hormone replacement therapy. And contrary to what you read on the internet, it doesn't last just a few weeks after radical surgery. I'm well past six months. And I started to have dreams. About little tiny people with my dark hair and Zac's full lips. I dreamed we'd name her Leslie...or him Leslie. Never in my life had I ever had those dreams. I would read feminist articles in my favorite feminist magazines and want to punch every single person writing in them because, all of a sudden, I was noticing this horrible (in my eyes) trend in feminism of motherhood equaling femininity. Grief? What was I grieving? Babies whom I'd never had or even dreamed of before the surgery? My uterus and ovaries? Why? They were trying to ruin me. Choices? I was grieving could have beens. And don't we all grieve those? Even when what we lose isn't human beings whom we love...the thought that maybe in the future, life without loss would have been much different.
In February this year, my 12 year old sheepdog, Truman, began the last stages of what had been a slow decline in his health. Truman is the dog in my profile photo, kissing on Leslie. He's been with me since he was just 3 months old. Truman and I were bonded in the strongest possible way that dog and human can be bonded. He came into my life when I needed to learn about love. And he taught it to me.
12 is pretty old for a sheepdog. I knew it was coming. But it didn't hurt any less to choose to end my boy's life. On February 24th, I took him to our sweet vet and held him. And I didn't bring him home. Losing a pet is hard when you're anyone. As you know, I'm big on one loss not being "worse" for someone because of circumstance or closeness or even species. Losing a pet is hard in a special way when you're single and lived alone with your pet for most of his life. It was difficult for some (some were truly understanding) people at work to understand the magnitude of this loss. There are no bereavement days for the loss of your child when your child is a dog. I took one anyway. My boss was less than understanding.
This is the tribute video I made for Truman. It's long...probably unnecessarily so. Feel free to look only to see what he looked like and then stop. Or not at all. Or watch the whole thing and bawl. :)
In April, my boss let me go. I lost my job.
I believe, to date, this may be the most profound loss of my life. And yes, that includes losing my best friend to a murderer. By profound, I do not mean that it was "more important." If given the choice of getting my job back or Leslie back, I think it's rather obvious that there would be no hesitation. I would choose Leslie. I do not compare the value of human life to the value of my job and call it equal. What I mean is that it has affected my daily life in a negative way more than any other loss that I have experienced. Losing my job left me truly heart broken. I don't believe I understood the meaning of broken until that day.
It's important (to me) to note that I still have no idea what I did wrong or why I lost this job. I was told why. None of the things that I was told were true. For the record, I wasn't accused of anything gross or criminal. I was told that I made mistakes that I could actually prove were not my mistakes. They happened, yes, but it hadn't been me who had made them. My bosses were completely uninterested in hearing this. When I said I had actual proof on paper that I hadn't been the person to make the mistakes, I was asked to stop being so dramatic. I wasn't actually fired. Being fired is bad news for a teacher. I was just not renewed. My position was dissolved. This was (and is, I guess) supposedly good because I would be able to find another teaching job without that ugly mark.
Because I lost this job as a result of things I didn't do and was not respected or believed, or even given the opportunity to defend myself, my logic went immediately to the only other possible reason: they didn't like me. They didn't like me so much that they wanted me to go away. And I loved that job. I should capitalize that to show my emphasis. I LOVED THAT JOB. I had actually worked there before (under completely different leadership) I went to graduate school and had been scratching and clawing my way to get back there ever since. I had been working there when Leslie died. That place was my family...my home. I truly believed it made me part of who I am. I worked for a private Catholic organization. It could have been (probably was) politics. Maybe someone's mother didn't like me. Maybe I wasn't Catholic enough. Maybe I wasn't God knows what. Whatever it was that I was supposed to be, I wasn't. And all that I ever identified with in a truly 100% positive light had been my career. And I "wasn't." I have never in my life found breath so difficult to take.
I was "not renewed" on April 3rd. On a Thursday. At lunch time. Because I was "not renewed" and not fired, I still had to finish out the school year. I had to finish out that school day...that school week. 36 school days. I didn't go on Friday. I took a sick day. But going back there every day knowing that I was not wanted...in a place that I had loved so completely...working with girls whom I loved with truth, even when they were teenagers and couldn't see it....God...going back there knowing, believing, that I was hated... It hurt in ways that I cannot adequately describe in words. And I can usually find words. It felt like I was sitting in that room being told by my boss that I was not wanted every single day. It was the same breath stealing pain.
And I couldn't tell anyone. First of all, I was TOLD not to tell anyone. I was told that THEY were going to tell everyone. Of course, they kept saying they would tell everyone and then never did. They'd give me exact dates, and I would gear up for the pain, and they wouldn't do it. And I didn't WANT to tell anyone. Like I said, teachers lose jobs for really shitty things, usually. I had no idea what people were going to think. And the self hatred had settled in. The last thing I needed was paranoia that everyone else hated me, too.
This grief was different than any grief I had ever experienced because with it came guilt. I knew I hadn't done anything wrong. Well, I knew I hadn't done the particular things they quoted wrong. But every single day...still today, even...I wondered if maybe I DID suck and I deserved it. That's part of the grief wheel that I can't stop spinning on this one.
Summer did finally come. I finally got to stop walking into the same cycle of loss at work every day. I also had to say goodbye to this place that I loved forever.
I don't have another job yet. But I do have a husband. And Zac's wonderful. He's everything that I need, but he also has these wonderful pockets of need within himself that I get to fill, too. I got married on a beautiful day in the street by my parents house with a gorgeous summer party in the yard afterward. The day was everything I wanted. Any kind of wedding would have been that because I married Zac, but the loveliness of this one was particularly nice. We were married in June, because, duh. :) June is wedding month! Afterward we went to a remote cabin up in the mountains in Colorado and watched falling stars.
 |
| Our wedding day |
When I came home, I had still lost my job. I wasn't a teacher. I had to face the beginning of a school year...the sharpening of pencils, the back to school sales, the school busses reappearing...for the first time since I was five years old when I wasn't a part of it. I was a person for whom a year was August to August, not January to January, for 35 years. And now I was not.
And I still "wasn't." So I couldn't face finding another teaching job. I was terrified that I would be "wasn't" there, too. I applied for job after job for which I either completely wasn't qualified was completely over qualified. Sometimes I got rejection notices. They burn a bit, but they helped spur me on to apply for more. Mostly I was just ignored. What is UP with that, by the way? In what world is it okay for people to just pretend like they forgot you exist, ESPECIALLY when you had an interview? But, I guess it's okay in some world, because lots of places do it. But, it's my blog, so I feel justified in saying lots of places also SUCK for doing it.
In July, I heard from Leslie's brother, Dwight, one of my close friends now, that his son, Nicky, Leslie's sweet nephew, had fallen from a cliff while hiking in Rocky Mountain National Park and died. Yes, you read that right. It seems so crazy tragic that even writing it sounds like part of a poorly written novel. But it happened. I thought immediately of this line in a Barr Brothers song..."if one of us had to leave this place, would the other come along?" I was terrified that we would lose Dwight, too. Amazingly, he's been strong beyond anything I could have imagined. He's given strength to me by simply continuing to breathe and walk. I found myself in the strangest place...with Leslie's family again...grieving. It was oddly familiar and safe.
In between all of these things...Boston was bombed by a teenager who lay frightened in a boat. After he'd murdered people he didn't even know. A Jewish community center less than two miles from my home was the site of a terrible shooting that killed a boy who was in the same debate club as Leslie at the high school we attended. Misguided misogyny (isn't it all misguided?) caused a college kid to shoot his fellow students. A policeman on the other side of my state shot a teenaged boy because he was big, apparently. And black. But no one admits that. And war. War. War.
Why am I telling you this? Well, first, I'm telling you this because I work that way. Telling heals me. Some people think it's over sharing. Some people think it's attention seeking. I say fuck some people. We do what heals us. If we don't, we end up the one someone else loses. Second, I'm telling you this because it gets better. Then it gets worse. And then it gets better again. I know that it does. What I know right now is that I've been in a cycle of loss for 18 months. I got on the grief wheel, and I started to do my work, and a new loss would find me long before I'd gotten far enough around the wheel to be ready for it. And I didn't even realize that was what was happening to me until recently.
But I know that now. And I know that the work will be hard because, well, it's always hard, but also because I've done it before. And I know that, someday, I will have to do it again. And we move forward. And we do what heals us, even when other people don't approve of the way we do it. And in front of us are great joys mixed in with more losses. Because that is our life. That is ALL of life.
I'm going to stop now. I made up for lost time, didn't I? Geeeeez...this is quite a post. Thank you for reading it, if you did. There is more to come, but not this long, I promise. I have some good things for me and for you up my sleeve and I plan to share them.
Don't ever stop trying to heal. You will not ever heal the scar, the hole, that is in the shape of your loss...but you will become a really incredible person who bears a scar. You will if you keep trying. I will if you will.
Wednesday, September 25, 2013
National Day of Remembrance for Murder Victims
Please, murder, go away.
Leslie Elizabeth Noble
September 8, 1973 - April 29, 2007
Leslie Elizabeth Noble
September 8, 1973 - April 29, 2007
EPITAPH by Merrit Malloy
When I die
Give what's left of me away
To children
And old men that wait to die.
And if you need to cry,
Cry for your brother
Walking the street beside you.
And when you need me,
Put your arms
Around anyone
And give them
What you need to give to me.
I want to leave you something,
Something better
Than words
Or sounds.
Look for me
In the people I've known
Or loved,
And if you cannot give me away,
At least let me live on in your eyes
And not on your mind.
You can love me most
By letting
Hands touch hands,
By letting
Bodies touch bodies,
And by letting go
Of children
That need to be free.
Love doesn't die,
People do.
So, when all that's left of me
Is love,
Give me away.
Give what's left of me away
To children
And old men that wait to die.
And if you need to cry,
Cry for your brother
Walking the street beside you.
And when you need me,
Put your arms
Around anyone
And give them
What you need to give to me.
I want to leave you something,
Something better
Than words
Or sounds.
Look for me
In the people I've known
Or loved,
And if you cannot give me away,
At least let me live on in your eyes
And not on your mind.
You can love me most
By letting
Hands touch hands,
By letting
Bodies touch bodies,
And by letting go
Of children
That need to be free.
Love doesn't die,
People do.
So, when all that's left of me
Is love,
Give me away.
Monday, September 16, 2013
He lead me to the threshold of my own mind...
My friend Stuart died this weekend. A disturbed person with a gun didn't murder him. His own large, loving, human heart did. It just turned on him. It turned on us. And it killed him swiftly and surely, and, like any killing, left the rest of us with millions of questions and wondering what in the hell we were going to do.
I loved Stuart. He was first a teacher, then a mentor, and then a friend. He wasn't my "BFF", though...not in that true definition. And I wasn't his. That spot goes to Carlos...his partner of over 35 years...his more than a BFF.
So when I write about Stuart in this blog about how you're supposed to survive the loss of your BFF, I write for a few reasons. I write because of that invisible reader whom today I imagine to be Carlos. And I write because Stuart made such an impact on my life when I lost my best friend.
I've not had a partner, a lover, a spouse for 35 years like Carlos did. I cannot even come close to imagining how it must feel to lose not only your best friend, but half of your own body. What I do know, though, is that when I lost Leslie, I struggled so very much because I had known her so long that I not only lost my friend, I lost part of my identity. I had been friends with Leslie for 25 years....for so long that I do not remember deciding that I liked her. I don't remember when I realized she liked me. It's almost as if our friendship wasn't even like that...as if it wasn't decided "Let's be friends."
And what is odd is that it became part of who I was. I was the girl who had the lifelong friends. I knew other people. I had other acquaintances. But I never even really made a lot of other really good friends throughout my life. And the few that I did make knew all about her and Brooke and Dama. We were those Anne of Green Gables girls. We had our Dianas. Life would snake through all kinds of experiences, but we would always have each other as touch stones, and that's just how it would be. And then she was gone.
I actually felt a lot of guilt sometimes because I missed that identity occasionally almost as much as I missed her. I had no idea who I was supposed to be. I've struggled with it every day since. Sometimes when people think I am still struggling with my grief over losing my friend, I think I might actually be struggling more with figuring out how to be the new person with a different shaped heart.
And I can't help but ache for Carlos because I know that it must be the same for him. He is grieving his beloved, and he is grieving the man he was when he was half of that pair. And that is so incredibly hard.
I also can't help but marvel at the sad, chilling irony that I lost Stuart so suddenly. The irony of it is something most people don't know. I haven't told many people about this, because it was really personal, and because...well...because if I told it people would know that I didn't really write something that had my name on it.
After Leslie died, I wrote an email to people in her address book, letting them know what had happened to our dear mutual friend. I split the people she wrote and called often into two groups: people I knew, at least on some level, and people I didn't know at all. The group that I knew included some people I knew well, and some people that I barely knew, but knew well enough that they would know who I was and why it was me who was telling them this terrible news. Stuart was in that group. And I put the other group off for a day or so because I just couldn't do it. I couldn't figure out how to introduce myself AND tell them, "By the way, your friend was murdered." It was too hard.
So probably an hour after he had gotten the news I heard from Stuart. Because he was not a man of platitudes, he didn't say "if there is anything I can do..." He said, "Give me a task....something you really don't want to do." So I told him about the letter I couldn't write. And he wrote it. And I signed it. It was amazing. It was gentle, but to the point. It didn't coddle and wasn't too familiar, but it wasn't harsh. It was simply perfect. It was the perfect way to say that the unexpected had happened to a person you loved.
And six and a half years later, the unexpected happened to him. And I loved him. And oh....oh how I wish he was here to break it to me that gently.
I will miss you, teacher, mentor, friend...
I loved Stuart. He was first a teacher, then a mentor, and then a friend. He wasn't my "BFF", though...not in that true definition. And I wasn't his. That spot goes to Carlos...his partner of over 35 years...his more than a BFF.
 |
| Carlos is on the left and Stuart is on the right. |
I've not had a partner, a lover, a spouse for 35 years like Carlos did. I cannot even come close to imagining how it must feel to lose not only your best friend, but half of your own body. What I do know, though, is that when I lost Leslie, I struggled so very much because I had known her so long that I not only lost my friend, I lost part of my identity. I had been friends with Leslie for 25 years....for so long that I do not remember deciding that I liked her. I don't remember when I realized she liked me. It's almost as if our friendship wasn't even like that...as if it wasn't decided "Let's be friends."
And what is odd is that it became part of who I was. I was the girl who had the lifelong friends. I knew other people. I had other acquaintances. But I never even really made a lot of other really good friends throughout my life. And the few that I did make knew all about her and Brooke and Dama. We were those Anne of Green Gables girls. We had our Dianas. Life would snake through all kinds of experiences, but we would always have each other as touch stones, and that's just how it would be. And then she was gone.
I actually felt a lot of guilt sometimes because I missed that identity occasionally almost as much as I missed her. I had no idea who I was supposed to be. I've struggled with it every day since. Sometimes when people think I am still struggling with my grief over losing my friend, I think I might actually be struggling more with figuring out how to be the new person with a different shaped heart.
And I can't help but ache for Carlos because I know that it must be the same for him. He is grieving his beloved, and he is grieving the man he was when he was half of that pair. And that is so incredibly hard.
I also can't help but marvel at the sad, chilling irony that I lost Stuart so suddenly. The irony of it is something most people don't know. I haven't told many people about this, because it was really personal, and because...well...because if I told it people would know that I didn't really write something that had my name on it.
After Leslie died, I wrote an email to people in her address book, letting them know what had happened to our dear mutual friend. I split the people she wrote and called often into two groups: people I knew, at least on some level, and people I didn't know at all. The group that I knew included some people I knew well, and some people that I barely knew, but knew well enough that they would know who I was and why it was me who was telling them this terrible news. Stuart was in that group. And I put the other group off for a day or so because I just couldn't do it. I couldn't figure out how to introduce myself AND tell them, "By the way, your friend was murdered." It was too hard.
So probably an hour after he had gotten the news I heard from Stuart. Because he was not a man of platitudes, he didn't say "if there is anything I can do..." He said, "Give me a task....something you really don't want to do." So I told him about the letter I couldn't write. And he wrote it. And I signed it. It was amazing. It was gentle, but to the point. It didn't coddle and wasn't too familiar, but it wasn't harsh. It was simply perfect. It was the perfect way to say that the unexpected had happened to a person you loved.
And six and a half years later, the unexpected happened to him. And I loved him. And oh....oh how I wish he was here to break it to me that gently.
I will miss you, teacher, mentor, friend...
Wednesday, September 11, 2013
Because I knew you...
As a lot of life tends to do, the ache comes in waves. It still does, and I'm six and a half years in. I had this grand plan that other people would read this...specifically people who had lost their best friends (who might also be sisters or sons or wives or nephews, etc) to crazy, wild public violence. I wanted every word to make a difference...to be a source of comfort to that "someone else"...a sense they he or she is not alone. Which, of course, sucks. It would be great if he or she was alone. Not great for he or she, of course, but great because that would mean the rest of us weren't out here, weren't grieving because of this totally unfathomable murder club we're in. Anyway....I'm not even sure if anyone who reads this isn't my close personal friend. Or my therapist. Or my mom. But I pretend that she's out there...that one woman who is standing where I have been. And she's reading. So that's why I sometimes write like I'm writing to her. But I digress...
It does come in waves, the ache. And I won't lie and say that tears aren't part of it still. But sometimes the ache is beauty. It actually gets there...to that place where the missing isn't always sad. There are these really strange times where the missing is funny, and the ache is joyful. Sometimes the missing is a reason to call another person that I love. And a whole lot of the times the ache is thankfulness. There's a lot going on in my world right now that makes me think of Leslie, wish for Leslie, want Leslie's brand of listening and well placed humor. But these days my overwhelming feeling when she enters my mind is gratefulness. Thank God...I mean, seriously. Thank GOD, I had the time with her that I did, right?
Days after she died, Brooke and I put together a list of songs to play during the entrance and exit of the crowd at her memorial and to burn to disc to give out to close friends and family. The songs were an odd mix of songs that she loved, songs that we had loved when we were 13 (hello, Aerosmith and GNR at the pool in 1987) that we didn't really love anymore, but held so much love inside of them, songs that made Brooke think of Leslie, and songs that made me think of Leslie. Some of those she might never have even heard, but they told our story of how we loved her. I remember I picked Regina Spektor's "Fidelity". Brooke wisely suggested that Leslie would have hated that song. And I do believe that she is right. It's the rather affected way that Ms. Spektor sings he-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-art. And let's be honest. Leslie loved Air Supply. And Donovan. In 2007. She wasn't particularly forward thinking in her musical tastes. Or particularly tasteful at all. But I didn't pick it because she would have liked the way she sang it. I picked because of one phrase in the song:
"Suppose I never ever saw you.
Suppose we never ever called."
Because, you know, that would have sucked. I mean, I can't even imagine...
I saw Leslie at camp two years before she moved to my town and started at my elementary school. I thought she was regally tall and had the most amazingly cool hair I'd ever seen, ever. And then she moved to my town, to my school, to my class, to my life. And oh my, did we ever call. We had a little cluster of lovely friends, all of us close in our own ways, but Leslie and I were the phone friends. Hours and hours and hours. Up until three minutes before her death, the telephone was a part of our friendship.
What IF I never saw her? What IF we had never called? There was literally no measuring stick for the anguish I felt when I picked that song for her service, but it was worth it. It was better than not having seen her, not having called.
Lately I've been listening to a lot of music from Wicked. I'm planning to totally annoy my boyfriend by dragging him to see it next month. There was a time when I just skipped over the For Good song. But now I listen to it over and over and over. Sometimes it does choke me up. And it does make me ache. But it's that ache of thankfulness. It is the answer to Regina Spektor's question, "What if...?"
I don't know if you, my invisible readers, have heard this song. And I'm not really the type to post song lyrics or youtube videos, but I think this is the time that I really have to. It's really the only way you can get it. And if you, invisible reader, are aching for yours, please remember as I do about Leslie...
Because I knew you, I have been changed for good...
It does come in waves, the ache. And I won't lie and say that tears aren't part of it still. But sometimes the ache is beauty. It actually gets there...to that place where the missing isn't always sad. There are these really strange times where the missing is funny, and the ache is joyful. Sometimes the missing is a reason to call another person that I love. And a whole lot of the times the ache is thankfulness. There's a lot going on in my world right now that makes me think of Leslie, wish for Leslie, want Leslie's brand of listening and well placed humor. But these days my overwhelming feeling when she enters my mind is gratefulness. Thank God...I mean, seriously. Thank GOD, I had the time with her that I did, right?
Days after she died, Brooke and I put together a list of songs to play during the entrance and exit of the crowd at her memorial and to burn to disc to give out to close friends and family. The songs were an odd mix of songs that she loved, songs that we had loved when we were 13 (hello, Aerosmith and GNR at the pool in 1987) that we didn't really love anymore, but held so much love inside of them, songs that made Brooke think of Leslie, and songs that made me think of Leslie. Some of those she might never have even heard, but they told our story of how we loved her. I remember I picked Regina Spektor's "Fidelity". Brooke wisely suggested that Leslie would have hated that song. And I do believe that she is right. It's the rather affected way that Ms. Spektor sings he-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-art. And let's be honest. Leslie loved Air Supply. And Donovan. In 2007. She wasn't particularly forward thinking in her musical tastes. Or particularly tasteful at all. But I didn't pick it because she would have liked the way she sang it. I picked because of one phrase in the song:
"Suppose I never ever saw you.
Suppose we never ever called."
Because, you know, that would have sucked. I mean, I can't even imagine...
I saw Leslie at camp two years before she moved to my town and started at my elementary school. I thought she was regally tall and had the most amazingly cool hair I'd ever seen, ever. And then she moved to my town, to my school, to my class, to my life. And oh my, did we ever call. We had a little cluster of lovely friends, all of us close in our own ways, but Leslie and I were the phone friends. Hours and hours and hours. Up until three minutes before her death, the telephone was a part of our friendship.
What IF I never saw her? What IF we had never called? There was literally no measuring stick for the anguish I felt when I picked that song for her service, but it was worth it. It was better than not having seen her, not having called.
Lately I've been listening to a lot of music from Wicked. I'm planning to totally annoy my boyfriend by dragging him to see it next month. There was a time when I just skipped over the For Good song. But now I listen to it over and over and over. Sometimes it does choke me up. And it does make me ache. But it's that ache of thankfulness. It is the answer to Regina Spektor's question, "What if...?"
I don't know if you, my invisible readers, have heard this song. And I'm not really the type to post song lyrics or youtube videos, but I think this is the time that I really have to. It's really the only way you can get it. And if you, invisible reader, are aching for yours, please remember as I do about Leslie...
Because I knew you, I have been changed for good...
Tuesday, July 30, 2013
I Am Brave.
This is an older piece of writing. I wrote it about four years ago. Leslie died in the spring of 2007 in a mall parking lot in the south part of the city. In the fall of 2009 I bought a house a few blocks from the area in which she was killed. This is about the day that I first encountered "the mall". I don't know that everyone needs to go to "the place". In fact, I still haven't been to the actual spot, the parking lot, where Leslie was killed. But I do think that I was cheating myself by living in fear of "the place". I used to go to great lengths to drive around it. It's okay to have a healthy respect for the bad memories places can bring you, but it's UNHEALTHY to create new routes for your life so that you don't even need to acknowledge their existence. So, anyway, this is my story.
On Valentine's Day weekend I went to Ward Parkway Mall. I didn't go to the spot where Leslie died. But I went to the mall. I had avoided it for a long time. I even considered going a time or two but decided that I didn't need to. I always told myself that it was unnecessary to make myself go if I didn't need to.
But now I live just about four blocks away. It was late on Friday and I had to buy a board book for a baby shower. My friend, Amanda, just brought home her baby boy, Isaac, who she had been in the process of adopting from Haiti when the earthquake struck. She was able to bring him home thanks to the American government granting orphans in the middle of adoption proceedings humanitarian parole to the United States. We got a larger gift that hadn't come yet and my mom wanted me to pick up something small to wrap and we decided on a board book. I could have driven to the plaza on a weekend night, found a place to park, etc. But it seemed silly to do that when a board book was literally a few blocks away from me. It made me realize that it was only fear that was keeping me away. And the longer I let that fear grow, the more it would become a part of me and a part of my memories about my dear, dear, bosom friend.
I took my friend Amy with me. I cried a little in the parking lot...only a few tears. It was hard to think I was in the last place she had been alive. Inside was weird, but I was okay. I had little bits of fear when I was near the entrances of stores.
When we found to board books, the first one I picked up was called "You Are Brave". On the cover was a smiling, black boy. I thought of Isaac and how brave he had been...living through the only home he had ever known falling down around him; getting on an airplane and arriving in an entirely different world full of strangers. I thought of how brave Leslie was to have lived her life so courageously, spontaneously and with such trust in her own decisions. I thought of how brave I was to be there, facing my fear and conquering it. We are brave.
I bought the book and gave it to Isaac. He chewed on it a lot, which, I think, in baby world, means he gets it.
On Valentine's Day weekend I went to Ward Parkway Mall. I didn't go to the spot where Leslie died. But I went to the mall. I had avoided it for a long time. I even considered going a time or two but decided that I didn't need to. I always told myself that it was unnecessary to make myself go if I didn't need to.
But now I live just about four blocks away. It was late on Friday and I had to buy a board book for a baby shower. My friend, Amanda, just brought home her baby boy, Isaac, who she had been in the process of adopting from Haiti when the earthquake struck. She was able to bring him home thanks to the American government granting orphans in the middle of adoption proceedings humanitarian parole to the United States. We got a larger gift that hadn't come yet and my mom wanted me to pick up something small to wrap and we decided on a board book. I could have driven to the plaza on a weekend night, found a place to park, etc. But it seemed silly to do that when a board book was literally a few blocks away from me. It made me realize that it was only fear that was keeping me away. And the longer I let that fear grow, the more it would become a part of me and a part of my memories about my dear, dear, bosom friend.
I took my friend Amy with me. I cried a little in the parking lot...only a few tears. It was hard to think I was in the last place she had been alive. Inside was weird, but I was okay. I had little bits of fear when I was near the entrances of stores.
When we found to board books, the first one I picked up was called "You Are Brave". On the cover was a smiling, black boy. I thought of Isaac and how brave he had been...living through the only home he had ever known falling down around him; getting on an airplane and arriving in an entirely different world full of strangers. I thought of how brave Leslie was to have lived her life so courageously, spontaneously and with such trust in her own decisions. I thought of how brave I was to be there, facing my fear and conquering it. We are brave.
I bought the book and gave it to Isaac. He chewed on it a lot, which, I think, in baby world, means he gets it.
Wednesday, April 3, 2013
My own private pharmacy...
One thing that I think is important is to get help. Your friends are awesome. Your family is great. Your dog listens like a champ. But your friends often are going through this, too. Your family is so glad to have YOU and not have had the tragedy happen to their baby that they don't know how to feel. Your dog is a better listener than a talker...and while listening is important, you need someone to talk back...to tell you what you can DO.
Right after Leslie was killed, I saw a counselor who specialized in grief. She mostly did a lot of listening. And passing me Kleenex. I am pretty uncomfortable crying in front of anyone who is not a parent of mine so it felt good to be able to cry without feeling weird. I'm a big believer in the idea that a counselor is not your friend. I guess they SORT of are, but no, not really. The counselor that I have now once asked me when we were discussing vulnerability if I felt vulnerable telling her things. I told her no...that I didn't...because I was paying her. It seems rather cold, but it's true.
So, in the immediate...when everyone else around you is likely falling down about as heavily and dramatically as you are...a grief counselor can be a great help, if for no other reason than a very safe place to scream and cry. Or, in the reverse, laugh...talk about something other than your dead friend and not feel guilty. Because that happens. You think about something else...like school grades or a great sale or the lyrics to a song that is not sad...and you feel crazy guilty because you stopped thinking about her/him for a minute. AND THAT'S OKAY. And the counselor will a) listen to that and b) tell you that it's okay....and make you believe it.
The other thing the counselor can do is help you get medicine, if you need it. I'm not talking about serious long term meds....but you MUST sleep. And you MUST eat. And you MUST function. Something to help you sleep or stay calm... I don't believe in using these things long term AT ALL. And this is a time when you need to be careful about that...depression, even situational depression, can make it really easy to rely on substances. But with the right Dr. supervision, they CAN help you get through the first few weeks.
And that's really what the first few weeks are about...surviving the next twenty minutes. When you get through those, you take on the next twenty. And so on. And eventually it's a few weeks later, and you're still alive. Success.
And that's really what the first few weeks are about...surviving the next twenty minutes. When you get through those, you take on the next twenty. And so on. And eventually it's a few weeks later, and you're still alive. Success.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)