Tag Archives: grief

Grief Coronafied, Redux

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Grief Coronafied, Redux

This column went to print in its original form in July of 2020. Since that time I have been privileged to hear many heart wrenching stories of loss from COVID-19 and from other calamities, stories that my patients and friends have entrusted to me and that I will carry with me always. I love to hear about the triumphs my patients celebrate, but I also feel so very fortunate when they trust me to share their grief. As we ready ourselves to celebrate a joyous holiday season, I wanted to remind us one more time that for some, this time is hard, challenging and covered with a glittering veneer of deep sadness.  

 

You are all familiar with the five stages of grief, made famous by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross. They are denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. We have heard about these and thought about them in many contexts over the years, most commonly in the face of the death of a loved one or some similar loss that broadsided us, left us reeling, and engaged our brains in trying to find any way possible to reverse the course of the terrible events we were experiencing. We’ve all been there. Think back to a time that you suffered a major loss. Think about how you felt, deep down inside, how your thoughts organized themselves, and how you really did ponder the possibility of magical thinking.

 

A few things about these five stages before I get to my observations today. Read more detail about this subject at https://grief.com/the-five-stages-of-grief/. First, they are meant to be guidelines, or guideposts to the process of grief, not a rigid system of hurdles that one must jump over in a very specific way in a specific timeframe. People grieve very differently from their fellows. I have worked with patients who lost spouses and were truly happy and content after one month, and with parents who lost a child and never really finished the traditional grieving process at all before their own deaths. Next, not everyone goes through them the same way, in the same order, for the same amount of time.  We process things differently. That being said, many things have popped up over these past twenty two months that have made me rethink these five stages in the context of the coronavirus pandemic.

 

First, denial. Must I get political here? No, of course I won’t, as that is not the reason for this column. Suffice it to say that none of us saw this coming, at least in real time. Yes, people like Bill Gates and others have made speeches and written books in the last decade that foreshadowed this event, but when the actual virus that causes COVID-19 burst on the scene in December of 2019, we were simply not prepared. We heard about it, thought about it briefly, thought about how far China is from where we live, and gave it little more attention. Government leaders, policy makers, medical professionals and ultimately all of us thought to ourselves, No, this could never happen here. We will be fine. Nothing can harm the greatest country in the world with the best healthcare system in the world. The greatest difference between the denial that defined us early on in this pandemic and the denial that happens when a loved one is suddenly lost is that we did not know enough about what we were about to lose. We could not see the horses of the apocalypse galloping our way. We did not know enough to be able to deny in the way that helps a grieving person, or nation, survive. We denied in a way that made us blind and lost us precious time, time that could have mitigated the fallout from the disaster. Coronavirus was so stealthy that early on, we did not even know what to fear.

 

Anger. It’s here. How on earth did it get through our borders and start to move across the United States? Who was responsible for this growing fiasco? Who can be blamed for this? Anger is usually an anchoring emotion, one that gives pain and hurt and loss some structure that makes it helpful. Not so for this scenario, when the thing that invaded us and started to make us sick is so tiny that we cannot even see it. How do you get angry at something you cannot see, touch, confront, look in the eye? So what do we do? We find a surrogate. We get angry at the politicians, the healthcare policy makers, the manufacturers of goods that are in short supply, the people who do not look like us. Our anger is righteous and mighty and backed by allegiance to religion and party and ethnic group and geographical section of the country. The problem with that is that the coronavirus does not respect any of those things. It is happy to infect and spread in those who are angry just as easily as those who are still in denial, maybe more so.

 

Bargaining. If only I could get my loved one back, I promise that I would wear a mask twenty-four hours a day and respect physical distancing and wash my hands twice an hour and … When we know we are stuck, that things have happened that we have no control over, we will often go back before the event and try to reconstruct it in our minds. What could we have done better, sooner, faster? What did we miss? If just given the chance, we would “get it” this time and make the right decisions, perform the correct actions that would prevent the grief and heartache that we now deal with. We want to make it right, make it disappear, make it hurt less, and at least in that moment we are willing to consider almost anything that would accomplish that for us. Why is it so hard to bargain in the time of COVID-19? Because we hope we are in the latter stages of a pandemic that has no well-defined parameters. We still do not know the end game or what this is going to look like when it’s over. Even if we figured out what we could have done differently or better, it’s much too late. Sometimes, when we realize this, it can lead us right back to anger, or…

 

Depression. When we realize that the loss is real, that the new normal is not anything we would have voluntarily chosen for ourselves, we go numb. We feel empty. We are sad, at everything and nothing at all. We are truly grieving now, realizing that this situation is here to stay, perhaps for a very long time. It has been twenty two months and counting. In this pandemic, we have suddenly been thrust into a situation where we are distrustful of others, where the things that normally give us solace might now be dangerous and where we get conflicting information that makes it almost impossible to know what to do to keep ourselves safe. Some of us become quite depressed and even suicidal , but it is very important to know that what the vast majority of us are feeling, the confusion and fear and sadness and lethargy, are normal responses to a very abnormal set of circumstances. Circumstances that have not really existed in similar fashion for over one hundred years. This will end, as all pandemics end, but our lives may be affected in profound ways that persist for a very long time. Once the sadness starts to lift, the realization that we must find new ways to cope, to love, to learn and to socialize will drive us to make positive changes in our lives that will see us back to some sense of normalcy.

 

Lastly, we will enter some sort of acceptance. This does not mean that we like what has happened to us. It does not mean that we embrace it wholeheartedly with a whimper. Not at all. We can go kicking and screaming into the rest of 2021 and on to 2022, but into that time we must go. We may lose some of the things or people we loved. We may not be able to do things the way we did in 2019. We may have to change the way we experience our relationships. Once we allow time for the grief over the losses that we all surely feel right now, then we can begin to heal and grow again and experience joy.

 

My daughter stated it very well in a post to social media that she gave me permission to share with you.

 

“How do I use this time, or at least sit in it without feeling sorry for myself, waiting on a normalcy that may never return?  I exercise some control over the controllable, I will try to change what I can, I use creativity to stay connected and move forward when it may feel easier to be isolated and stagnant. I will love my friends and family fiercely and extend grace freely, to others and to myself. And while I may not mean it every time I say it, I’ll keep saying it. Everything really will be fine.”

 

 

D Day + 1+ 51

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My father died on D Day +1 + 51 years.

It was only fifty three days until he would have celebrated his sixty third birthday.

As many of you know, I have been thinking and writing about his death on and off for years, here and elsewhere. The thought that I might one day outlive my father has never been far from the front of my mind.

Well, tomorrow is the day. Today, September 2nd, is fifty three days from my sixty third birthday.

If I wake up tomorrow, as I certainly plan to do, I will have seen one more sunrise in my life than my father. I will have one more day to live, to love, to work, to play and to think about what is and what might have been, than he had.

What if today had been the last day of my life? I worked at home today seeing patients, as I have been doing for the last half year. I chatted with people by cell phone and on video calls, listening to them and trying to be helpful in the midst of the worst public heath crisis in a hundred years. I electronically prescribed medications that I sincerely hope will help alleviate suffering. I asked after one of my new employees to see how she was doing. At lunchtime I listened to a book about politics, as one does during a presidential election year. After work I took an intense forty five minute bike ride in my neighborhood and along the river with the heat index 106 degrees. I was hot, winded, and soaked at the end of it. It felt good. I felt alive. I missed my wife today, as I always do when she is away on work flights. She sent me a beautiful picture of Germany today, where the temperature and the pandemic are cooler than here in the US. I took delivery of a wonderful set of pastels that she wanted to order for her birthday, which is this Friday. (No, it is not a surprise. One of the pleasures of getting older and having most everything you need is that you can special order your gifts with no shame at all!) I smiled when I saw the box, anticipating the pure joy that these little sticks of color will give her when she holds them in her hand and applies the pigment to the special papers she will use in her art room upstairs.

Did I do enough today? Did I care enough today? Did I get outside my own head, lay aside my own anxieties and worries and needs enough to give of myself to others in a way that would have made my father proud today? Did I learn something new? Did I grow emotionally, spiritually? Did I question my own motives today, vowing to have purer ones if I am given one more tomorrow? Did I care for my physical health? Did I take care of myself in the same way that I am always asking my patients to take care of themselves?  Did I have a good day today, a day that could have been, that could be,  my last?

My wife is convinced and has ordained that I will live until I am  ninety six years old. The odds, not to mention my family genetics, do not support that wish I’m afraid, but I do love to hear her say it. I would love to live ten, twenty, even thirty more years if God grants me that special privilege. There is a lot I want to do. There is a lot I want to experience. There is a lot I want to learn.

Tomorrow, I will have lived one day longer than my father. An accomplishment? No, not at all. A gift. A true gift. A pleasure. A reminder that we are not promised one more day, but that we are allowed over and over again to take possession of that most precious of commodities and choose to use it in any way we wish. We are given the gift of time.

I will wake up tomorrow morning and rejoice in every small muscle twinge, every sleepy yawn, every hunger pang, every emotional surge, every cognitive challenge and every warm sunbeam that graces my aging face. I will rejoice in another day and the simple fact that it has been gifted to me.

Besides, what is my other option? If I die tonight and make it to heaven by morning, I would be greeted by my father, a man who preceded me in death by decades but who would be exactly my age. Somehow, I don’t think even God would find that amusing.

 

“Death is nothing at all,
I have only slipped into the next room
I am I and you are you
Whatever we were to each other, that we are still.
Call me by my old familiar name,
Speak to me in the easy way which you always used
Put no difference in your tone,
Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow
Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes we enjoyed together.
Play, smile, think of me, pray for me.
Let my name be ever the household world that it always was,
Let it be spoken without effect, without the trace of shadow on it.
Life means all that it ever meant.
It it the same as it ever was, there is unbroken continuity.
Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight?
I am waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere very near,
Just around the corner.
All is well. ”

Henry Scott Holland

Rhythms

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My mother buried her husband this past week, the second man she had to say a tearful goodbye to after her had endured a protracted illness. The first was my father, who passed away suddenly, almost violently, from a brain hemorrhage twenty five years ago. It got me thinking about a lot of things, as these events and times do. I began to think about them in the context of the rhythms that they settle into.

We are born into this world, we hope, the objects of joyful celebration, welcomed to the world with open arms and warm fuzzy blankets and the kootchie-cooing of adoring parents and grandparents. If we are lucky, we are loved. Undeservedly, unequivocally, unabashedly, unconditionally loved. We are cared for and nurtured. We grow and learn and succeed. One day, we head out into the world, adults who know nothing ready to control everything, only to finally realize that our true education has just begun. If we are smart and savvy, we learn even more about how things work, how to live and love in a harsh world that owes us nothing, nothing at all. We create, we procreate, we work, we amass, we collect, we build, we inhabit, we settle in for that delicious part of life which is the “we made it” part. We expect that “we made it” leads to “we earned it” leads to “we deserve it” which gradually morphs into “it will always be this way” and “no one can ever take this away from us”.  The train is heading down the track at a dizzying speed, wheels singing on rails and billows of black smoke trailing behind to darken the other fellow’s sunny skies, not ours. Not ours.

Then, a once in a century, a once in a lifetime event happens for the second, third and fourth time. The hurricane leaves nothing but concrete slab and green slime-infested pool at the edge of a sunny shore that once heard the laughter of children and now hears the wails of retirees who find that their physical address, what is left of it,  has moved over three streets. The lingering siren that warned of the monster heralds a dawn in which the rubble is piled three stories high, the muddied teddy bear and the family album strewn across a neighborhood that no longer has landmarks of any kind after the wrath of the mighty winds visited. A casket is lowered into the ground, a tiny one, and is covered with earth, covering hopes and dreams and sleepovers and play dates and senior proms and trophies that will never be displayed, all because of a stray bullet that was stopped by the innocence of a child.

We are born. We grow. We dream. We work. We love. We die.

The virus creeps in on Sandburg’s little cat feet. Yes, I can’t get that descriptor out of my mind in the past few months because it seems like everything that hits us, hurts us, kills us comes in that way nowadays, gliding on silver airplane wings to knock down buildings, hissed in a a quiet string of expletives designed to hold us down, or breathed quietly towards us, inhaled death. Quiet. Stealthy. Deadly. The rhythm of death.

I’m home. I work every day. I talk to everyone and yet touch no one, shake no hands, pat no one on the back, proffer no gifts except my words. The rhythms of this daily pandemic grind are cold and mocking. Upstairs to work. Listen to music that used to soothe but now just bores. Hear the rumble of the construction workers’ trucks and trailers heading into the area to work. FedEx truck by for the first of one, two or three routes that day, always before ten. UPS truck (What can Brown do for you?) close on his heels before noon. Construction guys to lunch, sans trailers. USPS truck chugging out and back, albeit later than usual these days. Rhythms. The daily grind of good coffee and hard work and tedium and our inexplicable complacency with mediocrity of leadership and one thousand deaths per day.

And yet, we do it.

And we do it again.

And we do it again,

until,

one day,

we understand

why.

The masks come off,

and we smile.

When It’s My Turn to Die

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To every thing, turn, turn, turn,

There is a season, turn, turn, turn,

And a time for every purpose under heaven.          The Byrds

When it’s my turn to die, come see me.

For you see, there was a good friend of mine, a teacher, a mentor, who taught me much about people and mental health. He was a hearty type, a man who walked up and down the hill to work for years. He walked and worked and worked and walked and did this summer and winter and year in and year out. He diagnosed and read and learned and treated and taught and did this for many years. We laughed and waxed poetic and drank beer and discussed the meaning of life, as young people are want to do with their mentors, and I learned much at his feet, that man. He was around. I was around. We aged. I became a teacher and healer and mentor in my own right, and he still walked the hill up and down and up and down, until the time he didn’t. He became a case study himself, one with an illness, a terrible, awful, progressive debilitating illness that took away his walking and his standing and sitting and leaning and finally his talking too. Stripped it all away. I heard about him, though he was but a few miles away from me. I wanted to go see him, I really did. Those times that we talked about theory and motivation and symptomatology and drank beer and cracked jokes and laughed came to the surface of my brain like a great whale coming up for a glorious gulp of briny air, way out to sea. I did not go see him. I could not. I was afraid. Of what? His mortality. My mortality. Death in its second most personal form, when it takes someone you know or love. Knowing that when they go and you stay, you become them. You move up the ladder toward your own demise, closer to death than birth, rolling the dice every day. No excuses. There are none that hold water. I am ashamed. But, truth. I was afraid. I will feel guilty for letting my mentor down for the rest of my life.

So, when it’s my turn to die, come see me.

 

When it’s my turn to die, tell stories.

I love stories. You know that if you know me at all. I love to read them, I love to hear them, I love to write them and I love to tell them. Stories are life. If anything is worth anything, there is a story about it that deserves to be heard. Come into the room where I am, even if it is hard for you, come into the room on Sandburg’s little cat feet if you must, find a chair, sit knee to knee with the person there with you and tell stories. I will hear you, and I will be happier as I face death. You may not know that I hear you, I may not be able to physically show you that I hear you, but trust me, I will hear you. Tell stories of naughty things done, things left undone (yes, I am likely to still be an Episcopalian at the time of my demise) triumphs, tragedies, conquests and even failures that taught you a lesson (see paragraph one, above). Let my home-going be the homecoming for your focused thoughts about your own life and times, the things that make your story yours. It would make me so happy to know that the last things I heard, even if I was too far away from this physical world that I was not entirely aware of it, were the stories that were told by my friends and family in the room where they came to see me at the last.

When it’s my turn to die, tell stories.

 

When it’s my turn to die, be pragmatic.

Look, this is it, okay? This is what’s going to take me out of this world and allow me to discover the next. I may have seen it coming, I may not have. Either way, it’s time. I’m good with that and you should be too! I have had a fabulous life. I have had wonderful relationships, I have great children and grandchildren to leave in charge of things here, I have worked at jobs and vocations that I loved, I have traveled the world, I have climbed mountains and I have cheated death. (Just not this time.) Look at me over there, across the room. I am breathing hard, but after all, if I have been lucky, I  have taken more than seven hundred million breaths in my lifetime. What are sixteen more, a hundred more, five hundred more? My poor tired heart has beaten almost three billion times. It has loved fiercely, but it is ready to rest. Mourn for me, yes, please. Shed a few tears. Tell those stories. Reminisce. Celebrate my life and how it intersected with yours. But then, please, please be kind, and let me go. It’s time.

When it’s my turn to die, be pragmatic.

 

A time to be born, a time to die
A time to plant, a time to reap
A time to kill, a time to heal
A time to laugh, a time to weep
To everything (turn, turn, turn)
There is a season (turn, turn, turn)
And a time to every purpose, under heaven.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Random Covidisms for Saturday, May 2, 2020: What is Gone?

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Thoughts as we continue this journey through the pandemic. 

What is gone?

We were riding our bicycles along the North Augusta, SC, Greeneway the other day when I noticed a somewhat disconcerting sight. There is a stop with restrooms and parking and so forth along the path. There is also a sand volleyball court that usually is being used by a half dozen or more people almost every time we ride by.  The net for the volleyball court was gone. Two poles stuck up out of the sand. No net. No people. Empty spot. 

We will most likely be bringing a few people back into the mental health center to be seen face to face by a skeleton staff starting in the next week or so. As part of the continued emphasis on social distancing to prevent the spread of the virus, the chairs in breakrooms and most likely on patios, will be removed to prevent congregating of staff. No chairs. No place to sit. No need for breakrooms. 

On that same bike ride the other day, we saw that one of our favorite little restaurants in North Augusta, one that usually has a lot of people eating meals outside on the sidewalk under umbrellas and sails, was empty. Tables and chairs stacked and locked. No outside dining. No people. Felt a little like riding through a movie set of a horror movie just before the bad creature comes out of the alley and starts to make weird alien noises. 

Should I grow a ponytail? 

I love my car. My Rosie, bought in the spring of 2014 before my seven thousand mile trip around the United States (which I think I might just have to re-create when this whole catastrophe is over). She has 175,000 miles on her now. Good miles. Surviving being hit by a deer in the middle of the night miles. Take me to the coast so I can ride my bike miles. Let’s go hiking miles. Listening to audiobooks and podcast miles. DAILY when I was commuting to work. My commute to work is now ONE MINUTE. On foot. No time for listening to podcasts or books in my car. I miss you, Rosie girl. Soon. 

Chit chat. Checking in. Meaningless five-minute conversations. Man, I miss those. How are you? Read any good books lately? How’s the softball team doing? SEC football in four months! How’s your Mama and them? 

Church. I have gone astray many times in my religious journey, that I will readily admit to. I have experienced my faith, questioned my faith, logically skewered my faith, renounced my faith, lost my faith, and then had it come back to me with such force and clarity that it made me weep. I miss my church. I miss my people. I miss my friends, my acquaintances in the faith. I miss group study and the challenge it brings. I miss liturgy. I miss ritual. I miss music. I miss group worship. 

I miss family. Face to face family time. FaceTime is okay, but 1s and 0s are not family. I can’t remember the last time I thought about just hopping on a plane to Denver to see my family there just because I could. 

I miss flying. Really, with all the trials and tribulations of trying to get on planes and sometimes missing them and getting stuck somewhere, I miss planes and traveling in the air. Really. Could you pay me any amount of money to get on a plane going anywhere right now? Not likely. No, not likely. 

What is gone for you?

What the Funeral (Re)taught Me

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In the liturgical tradition of the Episcopal church, a funeral is an Easter service. It finds all its meaning in the resurrection. It is characterized by joy. This joy does not make the human grief we feel unChristian or wrong.

None of us lives to himself, and no man dies to himself.

“For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance.” Ecclesiastes 3: 1-4

“Help us, we pray, in the midst of things we cannot understand, to believe and trust in the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, and the resurrection to life everlasting.”

“Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.”

Rest In Peace, Reynolds Gracy Jarvis, M.D.

Death of a Mentor

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My friend, teacher and mentor Reynolds Jarvis MD died on May 21, 2019, after a long battle with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gherig’s Disease.

Reynolds was a man who came into my life in that period of time between 1983 and 1987 when I was learning how to be a doctor, and more specifically, a psychiatrist. Yes, I had earned my MD degree in 1983, and I was licensed as a physician, but I had not clue one what I was doing. We were all struggling back then, all the folks in my small residency class at the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta, Georgia, to find our sea legs on the ocean of pathology that confronted us daily. Reynolds was one of the men and women who was entrusted to teach us how to be knowledgeable, compassionate, competent doctors.

He was one of those rare physicians who was proficient and comfortable with one foot in the world of mental illness and the other in the world of internal medicine. He was at ease when diagnosing cogestive heart failure, pancreatic disease, hypertension, as well as depression, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia. If a patient had more than one illness, and one of each type, then bring it on. He would help us learn how to tease apart the pieces of history that we needed to make accurate and relevent diagnoses.

He liked to tell stories and especially liked to put things in the context of what real people needed and wanted, and how they went about seeking the goods and services that they needed to make their lives better. These concepts had been formulated and taught by another of our mutual mentors, Dr. E. J McCranie, several years before. We all loved to stand around a keg of beer in those heady days, waxing poetic and scientific about the ins and outs of human need and psychiatric pathology.

Reynolds would rotate as attending physician on both internal medicine services and psychiatric services. Rounding with him, talking over patient presentations with him, was a treat. He had the respect of both departments, and that was not lost on his charges.

Another physician friend of mine made me aware of his illness one day at church. I had not known that Reynolds had been ill, as I had not seen him in many years. He told me about his diagnosis, which room he was in at the hospital, and said that he had been by to visit. I might want to stop by to visit too, he offered. I thought about this, knowing that it would be the right thing to do, and promised myself that I would consider it.

I never went to visit my old friend and mentor.

I feel sad about his death, but now I feel even more guilty that I did not go to tell him thank you before he died. Why did I not make the effort to go to the hospital to say hello?

There are many reasons, some of which are merely excuses. I can tell myself that. It doesn’t help, but I tell myself that anyway. I remember Reynolds being large and in charge, in that soft, confident, smooth talking way that only he could. I remember him being smart, so much smarter than me, and thinking that one day it would be great if I could be half as proficient at my craft as he was at his. I remember him being one of my teachers, only seven years ahead of me in his graduation from medical school, but seemingly light years ahead of me in experience and confidence. I was so angry inside when I heard that ALS was going to cut his life short, in that cruel way that any progressive neurological disease does, robbing one of all dignity at the end, and not respecting race, color, creed, class, or MD after a name as it ruins another life.

I did not want to see him that way, could not see him that way. I did not want to confront his death, for in doing so, in saying goodbye to my teacher, I would now have to realize that I am closer to confronting my own. Each loss we bear brings us closer to our own loss of this life, and I was not in a place to do that. I feel ashamed, but it is the truth as I feel it right now. Diseases like ALS take away all our control, and I could not bear to see my old friend, once so easy going and confident, in that state. Forgive me, Reynolds.

His funeral is on Saturday at our church. I will be able to attend, just before I take the short drive to Aiken to work a long emergency room telepsychiatry shift until midnight that night. I will go to pay my respects, as I should.

Do we really lose people, their ideas, their skills, their emotional imprint on this world when they die? Do we really? Or do we carry part of them with us, always, imbedded in us just as surely and firmly as any of our own DNA?

I choose to believe that when they are gone physically that we keep some of them with us until we are gone, and by that time we have passed some of that wisdom and wit and energy and intelligence and competence along to someone else that we care about very much. As the wonderful animated movie Coco taught us, as long as someone has a picture of us, thinks about us, and holds us dear, we never really die. It’s only when there is not a soul who remembers us that we truly pass away.

Dr. Jarvis, I will go to your funeral on Saturday. I will smile when I think about the things you taught me that I use to this day. I will leave your funeral, go to my office and see people in the emergency rooms of South Carolina who are in need. And I will be very, very glad that our paths crossed as you taught me what it means to be a physician.

Rest in peace and rise in glory, friend.

Amen.

(Image of Dr. Jarvis via Platt’s Funeral Home obituary in the Augusta Chronicle)

Blackjack

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It’s been twenty-one years. 

Twenty-one years since I looked at the x-rays, white as a blizzard.

…beep, beep, beep, beep…

Whiteout. 

Washed in the blood of the Lamb. 

Looking at blood in all the wrong places. 

Twenty-one years and the image of my mother, sitting in the corner of the room. 

Resigned, not resolute.

…beep, beep, beep…

Limbo. 

Deal another card. 

…beep, beep…

The Decision.

Stop it all, all but the necessary (and what was necessary at that point anyway?).

Deal another card. 

It’s okay, Dad, you can go now. It’s okay.

Death is never okay. 

Deal another card.

…beep…

Is he here?

Is He here?

Is He in heaven?

Is he in heaven?

Do you want one more card?

Hit me. 

Nothing is permanent.

Time is precious.

Love means everything.

Blessed be the tie that binds, our hearts in Christian love.

When we asunder part, it gives us inward pain

But we shall still be joined in heart, and hope to meet again. 

Hit me.

…………..beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep…………………..

The house always wins.

Wailing

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Image

I was dressed, had my briefcase in hand and was ready to walk out the door of my apartment. I heard a rising and swelling and eerie sound coming from outside the door. One of those directionless, piercing, annoying, frightening sounds that makes you wonder if someone is hurt, in pain, being attacked or just kidding someone by uttering disturbing sounds for sport. At seven thirty in the morning, it just sounds odd and oddly  unnerving. 

I opened the door, stepped out and immediately startled a youngish Hispanic woman who was walking by. 

“Are you all right? I’m sorry. I…” I began, trying to lock my door and apologize to her at the same time.

“Yes, yes,” she stammered, her eyes softening almost at once when she saw that I was harmless. 

“Do you know who that is?” I asked. The wailing continued, louder now that I was outside in the common area. 

She looked back over her shoulder, toward the stairwell leading down to the next floor.

“She lost her dog, her puppy, last night. She is…she is very sad.”

“Oh, no! I am so sorry. Is someone with her?” I said, fumbling for anything that didn’t sound either trite or intrusive. I did not know this woman. 

“Yes, yes,” she nodded, a small, sad smile on her lips now. 

“Good, then, that’s good. I hope things are going to be okay for her,” I said, moving towards the opposite stairwell leading down one flight to my car. 

She walked a few steps and turned towards her own apartment door. 

The wailing continued, rising up like tendrils of smoky sound, lingering on the air, then floating away. I get gooseflesh thinking about it as I write this. Sad. Moaning. Injured. Plaintive. Wrenching. 

Grieving.

Happy Birthday, Dad

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Happy birthday, Dad.

You would have been eighty one today.

An old man, but I doubt if the number alone would have phased you or slowed you down much.

You would still have driven us all crazy by jingling the spare change in your pocket.

You would still have cared about the little details in everyone’s life. The kids, the grandkids, the jobs, their schedules (though you could never seem to keep up with mine-that would be no different today, I’m afraid). You always had a memory for the details. I wish you’d passed that one along to me.

You would have continued to do the jobs that nobody else wanted to do, just because you knew they needed to be done.

You would have laughed, always laughed, and smiled your sort of weird, crooked smile that now sits hazy in my memory, hovering there as if deciding to dissolve.

You might be proud of me today.

I work as hard as you taught me to. Sometimes too hard, but you know I got that straight from you. A work ethic is not easily shed.

I never saw you make too many mistakes in your sixty two years. I’ve made plenty, Dad. Some of them life changers.

I hope you would forgive me for those, as I’m trying to forgive myself.

When I get stiff and sore, I think of you.

When something makes me itch, I think of you.

Genes are funny postcards from beyond the grave, powerful in their ability to pass along both good and bad.

I miss you every day.

I think about you every day.

It amazes me, but I’m still learning from you. Did you know that would happen? Did you ever imagine that you would continue to inform, cajole, encourage, scold, and affirm, long after my ability to see the details of your face has waned?

I try my very best to live the way you taught me to.

I don’t try to be you.

No.

But Dad, I try very hard to be like you.

Every day.