I am crying for someone I've never met, that I have never known truly, someone known by everyone, and still feel crushed and lost and hurt and angry like I knew them. It doesn't mean I've lost touch with reality or that I do not care in general for the suffering of the unnamed or that I love in a way that is unrealistic and fantastic. Sometimes we are just forced to confront our feelings of fear and loss in an immediate and direct way. Sometimes watching a supernova burn out reminds us that we are just hurtling through space on a rock warmed by the sun. Sometimes the comet that we tied our hearts to is disintegrating into the blackness and it stops our breath.
My house is eerily quiet, missing someone who was never there. The girls are asleep, snuggled up together across the hall from me. The night light plugged in for the seven year old, is slowly changing colors and throwing candy shadows against the wall. She'll be in my bed soon. I hear myself breathing. Not a good strong breath. I can't fill my lungs and exhale through my nose because only these shallow, choppy breaths keep me from bursting into tears again. I can feel my heart beating deeply in my chest. I cannot stop that. I listen to it and begin to count. The counting takes my mind away from the loss. It gives me something to do so that my idle mind does not visit what's missing. I've cried for every one of them, have been struck to the core.
News of the passing of someone that inspired me or showed me myself before I'd even considered myself sucked the air from my lungs and stilled everything. It seemed to never stop. My heart would go deep into my chest and my chest to my knees. Before I could stop them, there would be tears. I'd feel the planet's atmospheric pressure change. I'd know it to be true that they were gone and I'd sit. Sit with the silence and the truth of the inevitable. I'd go to the tape or the film or the music or the words or the pictures and will their presence on this earth just a little longer. I'd recall a time, a place, a moment, a gesture. I'd hear the first note and feel my teenaged, awkward self rise from the couch in awe and disbelief.
I'd remember the first time. I'd remember myself from that moment, from that time. I'd feel the layers of myself, the ones at the bottom, the ones that built me, and I'd remember the voice or the music or the sound or the image. I'd sit in the darkness. I'd trace my racing thoughts through my brain. I'd feel loss. I'd mourn. I'd grieve. I'd miss them, desperately miss them, their presence, their shared place on this earth and I'd reach out to others who shared the same sense of loss and longing. We'd ask why. We'd wonder if anything could have been done. Could anything have saved them? Can anything save us?
I'm in my bed with just one light on. There is a saved side but I know that only my littlest will share the bed with me tonight. Eventually. The rest of the room is dark and still and I am alone. I cannot bear to watch TV or videos. Cannot bear to listen to the news. With each retelling of a life in past tense, I shrink smaller in my own in the present. We are living apart essentially no matter that I have saved a place for him here at his insistence. It hurts. This loss. This missing what I never had, what I never knew because he remained aloof and untouchable all this time. All my promises to live fuller, to follow my own path, to walk through darkness, to trailblaze are whispers in the face of this overwhelming malaise. I am in shock, scared, and startlingly aware of my own presence. I feel myself watching me and wondering what I intend to do with my life. I listen to my shallow breathing and wonder if I intend to pour the fullness of me into my children because I don't dare live the life I promised myself I'd try to seek, but insist they try to reach. I wonder if I even have it in me to dream anymore. I rub my eyes. Stardust. In my eyes.
This last time the girls catch me, see my face in the rear view mirror as I adjust it to back out. "Are you crying, Mommy?" And I am. I'd let myself believe that the fates would spare these people. Might spare us this grief. That they would not all be taken. I joked with others about the Rapture and end days and then in the silence asked aloud if there was something I was missing. It's like standing in the middle of the storm, at its eye where it seems calm, yet all around there is madness. And I am both the calm and the madness. There are so many tears that I tell the girls that the stardust swirling in the air has gotten into my eyes. I am aching to my core because everything I thought I knew is no more. With each passing, a part of my foundation crumbles. As my girls witness me crack and glue myself together. They attend my Spotify listening parties and watch YouTube videos. They hold hands with me while I read to them thinking of my youthful heroes fading. It is the three of us. They have no choice but to allow me my space to heal.
As a girl, I'd fixed myself to the stars even though I knew that if I could see them, they'd probably already burned out. I saw them in the sky twinkling, sparkling, showing me infinite possibility and waited for them, longed for them in that weightless forever. I was transported. So many who have passed this year were those stars for me. They gave me voice, spoke my pain and heartache, longing and desire, wit and humor. They were everywhere, some so much that I assumed I'd have them longer than they'd been promised to the world. After first denying that they were gone, my heart settled on the realization, on the truth, and the tears could not stop. A short, shallow breath can hold in the despair only so long and then you are whimpering on your knees.
And I am here again. Another loss. They came so fast this year that I could hardly catch my breath before the heartache came again. And yet, I almost welcomed the distraction. I am already grieving. Each day a new assault on my heart. Each day a crack to be reglued. I keep holding up the stars for my girls, offering them magic to believe in. I have tried to show them the very best of these people, the very best they've given. They are already supernovas, hardly seen as human in our eyes. Beyond. Magic. Heroic but also human. We all need our heroes. Theirs is their father. And when I met him, he was sprinkled in stardust. By the time I was looking directly at him, he was already gone. I knew it. But I couldn't believe it. The giant universe that shared with us all these wonderful people now seems oppressive and scary and cold. But I keep holding up the stars for my children though I mourn the loss of the magic and the stardust.
I cannot name them all, but they each left this world and exploded like supernovas into another without warning. The sense of being left behind by their meteor trail of magic, unable to catch the tail of that comet, triggered me in so many ways. Before I could get my bearings, it would happen again. And when he finally comes home, I'll have no choice but to look into that trail of stardust and confront the sadness.
(c) Copyright 2016. Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.
Showing posts with label death. Show all posts
Showing posts with label death. Show all posts
Thursday, December 29, 2016
Sunday, October 2, 2016
Choose Life
TRIGGER WARNING: Discussion of suicide, death, and loss.
Two weekends ago, I sat between two very dear friends, behind the parents of a friend who could be better described as an acquaintance, a well-loved acquaintance but a woman to whom I'd never gotten very close, at a memorial service. I was sad, I was angry, and I was very hurt and didn't know how to communicate these emotions. I was sending X-ray beams to the back of her mother's head, pleading with her to see her, understand her, care about her. And was then angry with myself for feeling that way. For blaming her. For wishing she'd cared more, tried harder, had given her daughter a break, just let her be. That wasn't fair. I know that.
I'd run into this woman just a month before at Trader Joe's. I was walking out as she was coming in and just starting her shopping and the exchange was brief, head nods and smiles, a wink. I was in a rush and she seemed lost in thought or her list. I'm really not sure. I didn't think much of that exchange until a few weeks later when I learned that she'd taken her life. She was dead. I kept seeing her face looking down at that list. I replayed every moment we'd been together, her asking me about something or other, talking about the wine at a party. She was dead. And then she was standing over me doing my make up as she'd just started selling Mary Kay cosmetics and needed someone to practice her technique and her sales pitch. I'd said, "I didn't think you wore make up." To which she replied, "I'm trying something new. My mother always said I'd do better to wear some make up." And I resented her mother for putting the idea into her head that she was not enough and reassured her she was. At least that's what I think I did. Maybe she thought I should just shut up because she was trying something new.
She'd been a lawyer and was incredibly intelligent, more cerebral and intellectual than I (or so it seemed). I'd met her through other friends and saw her most often in the company of the others, except for the afternoon that she did my make up and we talked about trying new things and make up and raising children, daughters in particular, (She has a daughter and a son.) and how beautiful my own mother is and how incredible my mother's skin is and that maybe she'd try Mary Kay. This was nervous chatter. Having her there doing my make up, so up close, trying to convince me to buy the lipstick, the shadow, and the face creams when I rarely wore make up and if I did I sought products that would look good on my brown skin, which to my mind Mark Kay was not such a product, made me uncomfortable. I told her as much in a series of emails after our meeting. I did not want to let her down, didn't want her to waste her product on someone who was not going to buy anything. I wanted her to win. I felt her need for approval, for acceptance. And I was upset with her mother for saying she'd do better to wear make up because she clearly did not feel comfortable in it.
And she now was dead. I hurt her hurt and retraced the steps I'd imagined she'd taken before that last, sudden, violent moment. And as sublime as the moment seems in poetry, in story, in song, the truth of it, the starkness, the finality, and the violence broke me. I thought I should have spoken to her at Trader Joe's. Should have looked into her eyes and said something to her, whatever it might be, that might make her choose life one more day. I thought of the acting exercise, "the private moment' where the actor lives a moment where he'd not expect anyone to see him, lets down his guard, experiences the moment unapologetically, unself-consciously, and I hurt all over again imagining those last moments.
Her family and friends were in tears, completely shattered and stunned. There were photographs of her at various stages of her life and I racked my brain trying to recall if we'd ever taken photos at the dinners and parties we'd attended together. I closed my eyes searching for her ghost in photos of us that were never taken. I felt her loss in the world, in my world, but didn't have the proof. Couldn't find a photo in my mind's files. Looking across the aisle at her children, I thought of my own and those years ago in Barbados when the daily routine seemed impossible. I remember the despair of postpartum depression and the loneliness of my marriage and the daunting prospect of attempting to live each day. And I felt that cold breath, that sigh between here and somewhere else and the pull in my chest and the ache in my core as I struggled to choose life. I don't feel at all close to that edge now but that feeling has never left me.
In a bedroom community outside of New York City, the sound of the passing trains is a common occurrence and every time I hear it now, it gives me pause. I think of the photo of her as a young girl in a brimmed hat, looking so like a character from a novel, a kind-hearted innocent, a girl from another time and place. Her eyes in that photo were so gentle and soft and sweet. She, full of promise. There is yellow light around her, framing her in a memory of a perfect moment in a perfect day. I didn't know her then. I also didn't know the young girl in the short hair that flipped at the sides, snuggling a bunny to her chin. But I recognized the woman that she became in her gesture. She was warm. She was kind. She was sweet and loving and good and she seemed, in that moment of love, so truthful, so vulnerable, and so present.
And now she is dead. I say dead because gone doesn't do the loss the justice it commands. Gone could mean that when ready she could return and she won't. I sat behind her mother who did not, could not speak at the service and searched her father's face as he spoke of her, his voice cracking and faltering as he tried to hold her in this world with a sweet memory, for some answer that would explain why this happened. I looked at her ex-husband and her children and all of her friends and colleagues. I did not look in the faces of my dear friends who sat next to me but I did squeeze their hands.
It is so lonely being a human being sometimes. Even when you are sitting next to someone and holding their hands, when you are in a crowd, when you are being feted and loved and surrounded, when you are on a beautiful Caribbean island living the fantasy of so many, there can be illness, depression, pain, and despair that those around you cannot know unless you share, tell them, trust them. It is truly a risk to take. I get it more than I care to admit. But it's a gift this life. I believe it and I continue to choose it. I hate considering making a decision that ends with this choice. I hate that there is no one to blame no matter that I was clearly searching for someone. That no one knew how deeply despaired she was, how she'd tired of it all, how what haunted her began to share this earthly plane with her and that her dreams were no longer a safe place to escape. I hate it so much that I replay every breathing moment I know of her life and imagine the moment she took her last. I want to be there for her, be her witness, acknowledge her just as she was and in my magical thinking, will her back to this plane. But she is more than gone and she won't be back.
If you have suicidal thoughts, please seek help. You can call 1-800-273-8255 twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.
(c) Copyright 2016. Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.
Wednesday, July 13, 2016
Miscarriage of Justice
WARNING: Some graphic imagery of the experience of a miscarriage.
Miscarriage: failure to attain the just, right, or desired result/end; he expulsion of a fetus before it is viable, especially between the third and seventh months of pregnancy
Miscarriage of justice:
primarily is the conviction and punishment of a person for a crime they did not commit. "Miscarriage of justice" is sometimes synonymous with wrongful conviction, referring to a conviction reached in an unfair or disputed trial.
Before I was pregnant with my second child, I'd suffered two miscarriages. Just weeks into each pregnancy (the first at five weeks, the second at ten) seemingly no different than the one that had delivered its promise of a baby, my body, ripe and pumping with hormones and an increased blood supply, began to tear the walls down. My heart skipped a beat and then a small cramp. I felt nervous and my palms began to sweat. I believe I was holding my breath. I didn't want to look, to check. A small cramp was not entirely uncommon or unexpected. My body was trying to tell me something I did not want to know. I knew it and still didn't want to listen.
The cramping began to increase and I was hot. My skin, plump and swollen, got cold and clammy. My breasts and nipples already longing to nurture that baby were so sensitive to the touch that it seemed just my clothes were too much. I felt the longing, the begging, and the pleading. "Please don't let this be." And then the resolve. There was blood. Blood everywhere and I was alone and even when people came to my call, I was alone. The first time in France in my in-laws' upstairs bathroom on New Year's Eve. The second time in the apartment I shared with my soon-to-be husband and our first child just weeks shy of the end of the first trimester. I was at a loss for words. Everything everyone said to comfort me sounded muffled. I didn't want them to talk to me. I wanted them to listen. To listen to the sound of the moment and it was deafeningly quiet. It was so real that try as I might to escape in my mind, I was pulled back into the present with each tiny contraction. A friend of mine, one of my very best, who is also a healer had once said to me, 'we cannot expand and grow all the time. Sometimes we have to contract.' That thought kept coming to mind. I can't say why, but it somehow gave me comfort and the space to accept what was to be.
We wanted another child, a partner and friend for our first, and after meeting with my doctor and receiving the appropriate shots (I have Rh negative (Rhesus negative) blood which means that my blood is most likely not compatible with the blood of the baby and certain precautions have to be taken), we decided to try again. My husband was hopeful and to some degree disconnected from the emotional and spiritual effort it was going to take to get back out there. Encouraged by the all clear from my doctor, he was eager to start the baby-making! I was more apprehensive. The losses had been traumatic, terrifying, and exhaustively lonely. I did indeed want to have another baby but was so scared to lose another. The sense memories, smells, tingles, ringing in my ears, the muscle memory of loss pulled tightly at my core. My heart and gut wrenched, my palms became sweaty, I was nervous and easily agitated and very short tempered.
I didn't watch either of the videos. We came home from the day-late Independence Day fireworks to our cable, phone, and internet service not working. It turned out to be a blessing. As I did a quick review of the latest on social media on my phone I saw the first hashtag: #ripaltonsterling. It wasn't difficult to put the pieces together to see what had happened. I knew better than to even try to watch the video on my phone. Already I was shaking. My heart and gut wrenched and my palms were sweaty. I looked to posts from my 'woke' friends. I was in a panic. Piecing together small details--selling CDs, concealed carry state, gun in his pocket, point blank range, black, black, black, black, black. I knew guys who sold CDs on the street. Hell, I'd bought some back in the day when I didn't know better and could scarcely afford a good meal let alone my favorite music.
Like with the first cramp suffered in the upstairs bathroom, I stood alone. I didn't even want to say the words out loud. I looked down. Blood. Real, thick, dark. Pulled into the present. This is happening. From the bathroom, "Honey, something is wrong." And now from the bedroom, barely whispered, "They killed another black man on the street." The depth of our disconnect even more expanded, there was no answer. "A man. Selling CDs. Pinned down and shot at point blank range." My husband looked up. "No. Can't be. How they can do that?" Nervous, easily agitated, short tempered. I had to move, walk around. I knew not to try to watch the video, the video! I knew that I was suddenly very alone.
Retreating to my bed, to sleep, seemed the best option and I took some melatonin to disappear and went in. When I woke up to the news of the murder of Philando Castile, a young, black man who'd been shot and killed in the driver seat of his car as he'd reached for his permit to show the officer who'd demanded it, I blanched. That his girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, and his child had also been in the car and that his girlfriend had live streamed his death, dropped me to the floor. Again, I did not watch the video but saw a still. The blood. The thick, dark blood on a white t-shirt on a man sitting in the driver's seat of his car. The scene was haunting, surreal.
I looked down and took stock of my surroundings. That hyper-awareness that trauma brings. I see the floor, the walls, my feet. There is so much blood. I smell the food cooking downstairs. I see the whites of my eyes gleaming with tears and fear. I see blood. A miscarriage. A failure to achieve a desired end. I'm still standing. I sit and try to breathe deeper breaths than the shallow, panicked wisps that are leaking out of me like cold winter smoke rings. All the moments I've ever looked at my feet, my hands, my face, the floor, the wall come rushing to me. I am pulled back to the present.
They have killed another black man in the street. There was no trial, no accusation (none formal at least). This was not justice. It is not just. There has been a rush to find fault in these two men as has been done countless times before. I have taken stock of my surroundings. I stare down at my hands and at my feet. I see the walls, the floor. This has all happened before and before me and before them and before all of us. That in a public court of opinion these men cannot be found innocent of a crime they did not commit because by being black they are guilty. There is a lot of talk about it. Too much for me right now because I need the sound of the moment in its deafening quiet. I need there to be listening.
When we'd passed fifteen weeks during my pregnancy with the little one I felt safe enough to tell people that we were pregnant, but the panic never stopped. I checked between my legs daily. I responded to gas, fullness, fatigue with worry and panic. I prayed and chanted and mantra-d from point to point. I was afraid and I was hopeful. We can do this, I thought. We have before. She wants to stay with us. She wants to be our baby. The gods are shining on us. They want her to be ours too. But until she was in my arms, peering up at me with those shiny, black eyes, I was prepared for the worst. Prepared to lose her, prepared to suffer and hurt and feel anguish in silence. Silence because looking at me in my hurt was too much for most to bear.
It is hard to watch someone in excruciating pain. It is hard to watch them writhe and twist and ache so deeply internally that their body contorts, the way they appear on the outside is hideous to behold, their faces change, their destinies are missed, their paths misdirected. We fear pain like the dark hand of misfortune. We don't want it to touch us too so we turn from it, intellectualize it, talk and talk and talk about it, analyze it, describe it, try to work around it but it can only be confronted deep inside. It is bloody and dark and thick. It is slow and gruesome and sudden. It throbs and burns and pulls. And then gives release.
The tiny space within me that I keep my deepest fears and secrets burst at the seams and I cried for days, endlessly. I'd heard that the little four year in the car, in the back seat, where I now strapped my two children, tried to comfort her mother as her father lay dying in the driver's seat. I'd heard that Diamond Reynolds was taken into custody and I wondered where her tiny girl was taken. I wept at the thought of the rushing, the fast moving, the approach with with Alton Sterling was met in those last moments. Wondered if he said to himself, 'this is just like that guy...' before someone put a gun to his chest. I could not stop crying as I thought about all the blood and its metallic smell, its dankness, its thick, tacky swell as it flowed from the body. I would wipe my eyes and more tears would come thinking of the moments in stillness when even though there was sound and screaming and fury, for a split second the dead silence of that present moment froze the world. *gasp* And then it was done.
I remember the heaviness of the blood, the weight on my shoulders, the pulling in my heart, believing I could never recover from a loss like this. One that had been a secret, one that was private, one that was mine to mull and cultivate. And I came to see, I have to tell you. I have to tell you that these are not just stories on white paper. They are not clean or neat or easily filed. They are real life. The just, right, desired end was that I would bear another child and bring her into this world and love her and have every right to share with her and show her and celebrate with her the beauty of this human experience. I hope I can. The just, right, desired end would be that two men, black men, who had every right, so it is said, to share and celebrate the beauty of our shared human experience would not be dead because they'd been unfairly tried and convicted because they were black.
It's incredible this life. And heartbreaking. Black lives matter. Too.
(c) Copyright 2016. Repatriated Mama in the Jungle: Back to the Suburban Grind.
Miscarriage: failure to attain the just, right, or desired result/end; he expulsion of a fetus before it is viable, especially between the third and seventh months of pregnancy
Miscarriage of justice:
primarily is the conviction and punishment of a person for a crime they did not commit. "Miscarriage of justice" is sometimes synonymous with wrongful conviction, referring to a conviction reached in an unfair or disputed trial.
Before I was pregnant with my second child, I'd suffered two miscarriages. Just weeks into each pregnancy (the first at five weeks, the second at ten) seemingly no different than the one that had delivered its promise of a baby, my body, ripe and pumping with hormones and an increased blood supply, began to tear the walls down. My heart skipped a beat and then a small cramp. I felt nervous and my palms began to sweat. I believe I was holding my breath. I didn't want to look, to check. A small cramp was not entirely uncommon or unexpected. My body was trying to tell me something I did not want to know. I knew it and still didn't want to listen.
The cramping began to increase and I was hot. My skin, plump and swollen, got cold and clammy. My breasts and nipples already longing to nurture that baby were so sensitive to the touch that it seemed just my clothes were too much. I felt the longing, the begging, and the pleading. "Please don't let this be." And then the resolve. There was blood. Blood everywhere and I was alone and even when people came to my call, I was alone. The first time in France in my in-laws' upstairs bathroom on New Year's Eve. The second time in the apartment I shared with my soon-to-be husband and our first child just weeks shy of the end of the first trimester. I was at a loss for words. Everything everyone said to comfort me sounded muffled. I didn't want them to talk to me. I wanted them to listen. To listen to the sound of the moment and it was deafeningly quiet. It was so real that try as I might to escape in my mind, I was pulled back into the present with each tiny contraction. A friend of mine, one of my very best, who is also a healer had once said to me, 'we cannot expand and grow all the time. Sometimes we have to contract.' That thought kept coming to mind. I can't say why, but it somehow gave me comfort and the space to accept what was to be.
We wanted another child, a partner and friend for our first, and after meeting with my doctor and receiving the appropriate shots (I have Rh negative (Rhesus negative) blood which means that my blood is most likely not compatible with the blood of the baby and certain precautions have to be taken), we decided to try again. My husband was hopeful and to some degree disconnected from the emotional and spiritual effort it was going to take to get back out there. Encouraged by the all clear from my doctor, he was eager to start the baby-making! I was more apprehensive. The losses had been traumatic, terrifying, and exhaustively lonely. I did indeed want to have another baby but was so scared to lose another. The sense memories, smells, tingles, ringing in my ears, the muscle memory of loss pulled tightly at my core. My heart and gut wrenched, my palms became sweaty, I was nervous and easily agitated and very short tempered.
I didn't watch either of the videos. We came home from the day-late Independence Day fireworks to our cable, phone, and internet service not working. It turned out to be a blessing. As I did a quick review of the latest on social media on my phone I saw the first hashtag: #ripaltonsterling. It wasn't difficult to put the pieces together to see what had happened. I knew better than to even try to watch the video on my phone. Already I was shaking. My heart and gut wrenched and my palms were sweaty. I looked to posts from my 'woke' friends. I was in a panic. Piecing together small details--selling CDs, concealed carry state, gun in his pocket, point blank range, black, black, black, black, black. I knew guys who sold CDs on the street. Hell, I'd bought some back in the day when I didn't know better and could scarcely afford a good meal let alone my favorite music.
Like with the first cramp suffered in the upstairs bathroom, I stood alone. I didn't even want to say the words out loud. I looked down. Blood. Real, thick, dark. Pulled into the present. This is happening. From the bathroom, "Honey, something is wrong." And now from the bedroom, barely whispered, "They killed another black man on the street." The depth of our disconnect even more expanded, there was no answer. "A man. Selling CDs. Pinned down and shot at point blank range." My husband looked up. "No. Can't be. How they can do that?" Nervous, easily agitated, short tempered. I had to move, walk around. I knew not to try to watch the video, the video! I knew that I was suddenly very alone.
Retreating to my bed, to sleep, seemed the best option and I took some melatonin to disappear and went in. When I woke up to the news of the murder of Philando Castile, a young, black man who'd been shot and killed in the driver seat of his car as he'd reached for his permit to show the officer who'd demanded it, I blanched. That his girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, and his child had also been in the car and that his girlfriend had live streamed his death, dropped me to the floor. Again, I did not watch the video but saw a still. The blood. The thick, dark blood on a white t-shirt on a man sitting in the driver's seat of his car. The scene was haunting, surreal.
I looked down and took stock of my surroundings. That hyper-awareness that trauma brings. I see the floor, the walls, my feet. There is so much blood. I smell the food cooking downstairs. I see the whites of my eyes gleaming with tears and fear. I see blood. A miscarriage. A failure to achieve a desired end. I'm still standing. I sit and try to breathe deeper breaths than the shallow, panicked wisps that are leaking out of me like cold winter smoke rings. All the moments I've ever looked at my feet, my hands, my face, the floor, the wall come rushing to me. I am pulled back to the present.
They have killed another black man in the street. There was no trial, no accusation (none formal at least). This was not justice. It is not just. There has been a rush to find fault in these two men as has been done countless times before. I have taken stock of my surroundings. I stare down at my hands and at my feet. I see the walls, the floor. This has all happened before and before me and before them and before all of us. That in a public court of opinion these men cannot be found innocent of a crime they did not commit because by being black they are guilty. There is a lot of talk about it. Too much for me right now because I need the sound of the moment in its deafening quiet. I need there to be listening.
When we'd passed fifteen weeks during my pregnancy with the little one I felt safe enough to tell people that we were pregnant, but the panic never stopped. I checked between my legs daily. I responded to gas, fullness, fatigue with worry and panic. I prayed and chanted and mantra-d from point to point. I was afraid and I was hopeful. We can do this, I thought. We have before. She wants to stay with us. She wants to be our baby. The gods are shining on us. They want her to be ours too. But until she was in my arms, peering up at me with those shiny, black eyes, I was prepared for the worst. Prepared to lose her, prepared to suffer and hurt and feel anguish in silence. Silence because looking at me in my hurt was too much for most to bear.
It is hard to watch someone in excruciating pain. It is hard to watch them writhe and twist and ache so deeply internally that their body contorts, the way they appear on the outside is hideous to behold, their faces change, their destinies are missed, their paths misdirected. We fear pain like the dark hand of misfortune. We don't want it to touch us too so we turn from it, intellectualize it, talk and talk and talk about it, analyze it, describe it, try to work around it but it can only be confronted deep inside. It is bloody and dark and thick. It is slow and gruesome and sudden. It throbs and burns and pulls. And then gives release.
The tiny space within me that I keep my deepest fears and secrets burst at the seams and I cried for days, endlessly. I'd heard that the little four year in the car, in the back seat, where I now strapped my two children, tried to comfort her mother as her father lay dying in the driver's seat. I'd heard that Diamond Reynolds was taken into custody and I wondered where her tiny girl was taken. I wept at the thought of the rushing, the fast moving, the approach with with Alton Sterling was met in those last moments. Wondered if he said to himself, 'this is just like that guy...' before someone put a gun to his chest. I could not stop crying as I thought about all the blood and its metallic smell, its dankness, its thick, tacky swell as it flowed from the body. I would wipe my eyes and more tears would come thinking of the moments in stillness when even though there was sound and screaming and fury, for a split second the dead silence of that present moment froze the world. *gasp* And then it was done.
I remember the heaviness of the blood, the weight on my shoulders, the pulling in my heart, believing I could never recover from a loss like this. One that had been a secret, one that was private, one that was mine to mull and cultivate. And I came to see, I have to tell you. I have to tell you that these are not just stories on white paper. They are not clean or neat or easily filed. They are real life. The just, right, desired end was that I would bear another child and bring her into this world and love her and have every right to share with her and show her and celebrate with her the beauty of this human experience. I hope I can. The just, right, desired end would be that two men, black men, who had every right, so it is said, to share and celebrate the beauty of our shared human experience would not be dead because they'd been unfairly tried and convicted because they were black.
It's incredible this life. And heartbreaking. Black lives matter. Too.
(c) Copyright 2016. Repatriated Mama in the Jungle: Back to the Suburban Grind.
Thursday, February 26, 2015
From the tiny to the infinite
The day to day is lived in tiny increments. I try to start each day putting myself on a positive path, reminding myself of all that for which I should be grateful. I thank my guides and my angels that helped me sleep through the night and I pray for the continued safety of my family--for our health, peace in our hearts, love. I try to forgive myself the mistakes I will surely make throughout the day and hope that I am leaving lasting memories, good thoughts, proof of my good intentions in the hearts of my girls. That I am arming them with a sense of this dimension and the others and interconnectedness all while serving up pasta, reviewing homework, demanding clean up of the play room, and directing the nighttime program in that killer 5:30 to 8:00 block.
I am incredibly conscious of my actions, my deeds, the things I say, aware that I play a starring role in their early childhood memories and that these moments will be mined for information, for truth, that they will be distorted and contorted to tell the story of how they were loved or how they were not, maybe because those thoughts from my own childhood flood into my mind still. Most especially when I am having a particularly good or bad moment with them, I think, 'God, I hope they know how much I love them or 'Please don't let them think I didn't. ' I am present, conscious, real, and flawed all the time except for when I am not. And so it goes.
Since visiting with my husband's father this summer, we've been talking about the small ways in which he was letting go, in which he was straddling here and now and forever. Our visit provided the girls, who'd only seen him in photos or in the case of our oldest had met him just once when she was a toddler, a chance to spend real time with him. Though he had people who came every day to check and administer his medications and others who provided him with appropriate meals for all of his health issues, with us he had company. There were slow broken conversations in English and French. The girls sang songs and made drawings for him. Jean or Papi as he is called, was feeble and disconnected, a little lonely and frustrated. He'd become annoyed at times, disoriented at others, happy and full of wonder at others. We lived with him in 3-D, wandered his home looking at journals and incredible memorabilia from his travels. The girls looked at him and his home with awe.
One evening, after I'd put the girls to sleep, I started to walk down the stairs when I overheard my husband and his older brother having a pretty deep conversation with their father. A conversation full of longing and need, revelations of secrets and stories from long ago. They were pleading with him for information about their father's family, his boyhood, his hopes and dreams. They were asking for connection, drawing for memories. clues. I stayed at his desk at the top of the stairs and let the boys and their father share a moment. I feared my interruption would give everyone an unwanted distraction, an escape from that incredible connection. I hoped they'd file that memory to pull up when they needed to recall him.
These tiny moments add up to make a life. They leave an imprint, serve as mile markers. I leave little ticks and grooves in my girls' stories so that when I am gone they might say, "Wasn't that such a beautiful moment with Mom" or "I am so grateful that we had that time together or that conversation or saw that sunset/sunrise/incredible earthly moment together." I try to shore them up with self-love, self-respect, identity. I've begun to slowly trace the roots of both families that intertwined to create this branch of the larger family trees. I tell them secrets, our secrets, whisper to them about the people full of hope, love, and promise that came before them.
Before my mother's mom passed, we all spent a last summer on Hilton Head Island and I watched her sit at the edge of the ocean on the sand watching the sun set. I knew it wouldn't be long. She too. I went with my mother a couple of weeks later to move my grandparents' things from their home to the nursing home they were meant to move to. She never made it there. I knew she wouldn't. A week before my father's mother passed, I'd called her rather unexpectedly to tell her I loved her. It was Mother's Day. I chose that evening to tell her about my then boyfriend, now husband, who was, up until then a secret, whispered only in strict confidence, spoken only to help myself believe our love true. She was so tired but so present. I'd never have thought she was soon to leave us. I think of her so often, speak out loud about the mundane, ask her questions. I miss being able to ask the questions. To get the answers.
When someone dies, they are elevated to the heavenly realm, the eternal, esoteric, almost immediately. Remembering how they were in life becomes an exercise, a quiet search for moments real and true. In our mind's eye the memories are pulled and twisted in the murky quicksand of the earthly realm. They are still with us, of the earth, on this plane, only we can't find them. We are so full of longing, living in those dreamscapes, hoping to be with them, see them, hear them speaking to us as they really did, with weight and seriousness, but also humor and humanity and humanness just one more time.
After a 1/2 day of school, a lunch at the pub with friends, ice cream at the parlor for dessert, ballet, homework, bath time, and dinner, the girls and I tucked ourselves in to bed for the night. The day patched together with sweet moments and a whole lot of chatter. My husband's tiny steps took him to his parents' home where he sat in silence, their presence all around him, longing for one more word. The funeral over. Attendees to the service gone home. Flowers laid. I hope that he and his brothers were able to pull up those saved moments, let them shiver through their bodies, feel the life shared with their dad coursing through them before they said goodbye to him and released him to the infinite.
(c) Copyright 2015. Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.
I am incredibly conscious of my actions, my deeds, the things I say, aware that I play a starring role in their early childhood memories and that these moments will be mined for information, for truth, that they will be distorted and contorted to tell the story of how they were loved or how they were not, maybe because those thoughts from my own childhood flood into my mind still. Most especially when I am having a particularly good or bad moment with them, I think, 'God, I hope they know how much I love them or 'Please don't let them think I didn't. ' I am present, conscious, real, and flawed all the time except for when I am not. And so it goes.
Since visiting with my husband's father this summer, we've been talking about the small ways in which he was letting go, in which he was straddling here and now and forever. Our visit provided the girls, who'd only seen him in photos or in the case of our oldest had met him just once when she was a toddler, a chance to spend real time with him. Though he had people who came every day to check and administer his medications and others who provided him with appropriate meals for all of his health issues, with us he had company. There were slow broken conversations in English and French. The girls sang songs and made drawings for him. Jean or Papi as he is called, was feeble and disconnected, a little lonely and frustrated. He'd become annoyed at times, disoriented at others, happy and full of wonder at others. We lived with him in 3-D, wandered his home looking at journals and incredible memorabilia from his travels. The girls looked at him and his home with awe.
One evening, after I'd put the girls to sleep, I started to walk down the stairs when I overheard my husband and his older brother having a pretty deep conversation with their father. A conversation full of longing and need, revelations of secrets and stories from long ago. They were pleading with him for information about their father's family, his boyhood, his hopes and dreams. They were asking for connection, drawing for memories. clues. I stayed at his desk at the top of the stairs and let the boys and their father share a moment. I feared my interruption would give everyone an unwanted distraction, an escape from that incredible connection. I hoped they'd file that memory to pull up when they needed to recall him.
These tiny moments add up to make a life. They leave an imprint, serve as mile markers. I leave little ticks and grooves in my girls' stories so that when I am gone they might say, "Wasn't that such a beautiful moment with Mom" or "I am so grateful that we had that time together or that conversation or saw that sunset/sunrise/incredible earthly moment together." I try to shore them up with self-love, self-respect, identity. I've begun to slowly trace the roots of both families that intertwined to create this branch of the larger family trees. I tell them secrets, our secrets, whisper to them about the people full of hope, love, and promise that came before them.
Before my mother's mom passed, we all spent a last summer on Hilton Head Island and I watched her sit at the edge of the ocean on the sand watching the sun set. I knew it wouldn't be long. She too. I went with my mother a couple of weeks later to move my grandparents' things from their home to the nursing home they were meant to move to. She never made it there. I knew she wouldn't. A week before my father's mother passed, I'd called her rather unexpectedly to tell her I loved her. It was Mother's Day. I chose that evening to tell her about my then boyfriend, now husband, who was, up until then a secret, whispered only in strict confidence, spoken only to help myself believe our love true. She was so tired but so present. I'd never have thought she was soon to leave us. I think of her so often, speak out loud about the mundane, ask her questions. I miss being able to ask the questions. To get the answers.
When someone dies, they are elevated to the heavenly realm, the eternal, esoteric, almost immediately. Remembering how they were in life becomes an exercise, a quiet search for moments real and true. In our mind's eye the memories are pulled and twisted in the murky quicksand of the earthly realm. They are still with us, of the earth, on this plane, only we can't find them. We are so full of longing, living in those dreamscapes, hoping to be with them, see them, hear them speaking to us as they really did, with weight and seriousness, but also humor and humanity and humanness just one more time.
After a 1/2 day of school, a lunch at the pub with friends, ice cream at the parlor for dessert, ballet, homework, bath time, and dinner, the girls and I tucked ourselves in to bed for the night. The day patched together with sweet moments and a whole lot of chatter. My husband's tiny steps took him to his parents' home where he sat in silence, their presence all around him, longing for one more word. The funeral over. Attendees to the service gone home. Flowers laid. I hope that he and his brothers were able to pull up those saved moments, let them shiver through their bodies, feel the life shared with their dad coursing through them before they said goodbye to him and released him to the infinite.
(c) Copyright 2015. Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.
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