The Little Girl at 1207

You took a trip home to 1207, to where you lived before.  To where you lived before the ups and downs of life unearthed you.  You see the home where you laughed and played and cried and lived as a little girl.  Where you were always surrounded by many yet more often than not felt all alone.  You see the window you peered through.  You remember the giant closet you hid away in for hours at a time, safely enclosed within the four walls and the dark.  You see the tree that was struck in the storm.  You see the field where streams would form if it rained hard enough.  And remember watching stick boats float away, out of sight.  You remember the giant stump in the back and the stone wall and the kittens.  So many kittens, and the walks and the Sno-cones, and the horses and the long bus rides on bumpy roads.  The pool is still there, where you learned how to swim, and the fence where the raspberries grew and the place where the garden was.  You drive past the corner where you sold cantaloupe with your brother.  And there is the sledding hill.  And you wonder which neighbors are still around, after all these years…?  You feel the November air and marvel at how the sunshine feels the same way it felt back then and the air feels like the same air.  

 And for so long, the memories of this place in your mind had you convinced that you were just a scared and lost and lonely little girl struggling to be noticed and find her way.  But then you go back now, knowing what you know, having started the uncovering of the covered up part of your heart.  And you realize that that little girl at 1207 was You all along.

Rise Up

This is for the ones who struggle,

but they still rise up.

This is for the ones who don’t have pretty new school clothes to wear,

but they wear the biggest smiles.

This is for the ones who come with nothing to eat,

but they show up eager to learn.

This is for the ones who never got put to bed,

but still they come and try their best.

This is for the little babies who get put on a bus without a hug or a kind word to send them off,

And still they come, and so happy to see us.

This is for the ones who may never learn the way they are “supposed to”,

and still they work and work and work, because they want to make us proud.

This is for all of those who struggle,

but somehow they find the strength and courage to rise up anyway.

This is from the teachers who cannot even begin to understand

or know where and what you are coming from,

But even so we know you and we watch you and we stand in awe of you

and we thank you for rising up. 

Each and every day you make us proud. 

You make us who we are.  

All you little ones who get off of that bus and you rise up anyway.

Follow-through

So you make all off the difficult decisions, but unfortunately now you have to see them through.  It is time for the open house where people want to express their condolences.  And of course you have to be there because it is you and your children they are coming to see.  You know your children want to be there but you also know they are not necessarily equipped to deal with what will be coming through those doors at any moment.  Because who would be?  So you strategically place them on a couch behind you, flanked by their cousins who act as very good distractors throughout the two-hour window.  They have their pretty mourning clothes on now, and so do you.  Ready to receive condolences.

And then the doors open and they start coming and it seems that they will never stop.  The line stretches down the hallway and around the corner, and you never do see the end of it.  Your children are sitting behind you and your dear friends stand behind you, like body guards, waiting for the onslaught of condolences.  You don’t have your shit together, not even in the slightest.  You are a blubbering mess and you are grateful for those friends and acquaintance who blubber with you.  And you are grateful for their kind words, for them telling you how sorry they are, and for the heartfelt hugs, because you have learned that it is much better to cry with somebody than to cry alone.  But every time you look up after one hug, you again see the line that extends into nowhere. 

Mixed up in the line of people you know and love are the people, the many, many people who were his patients.  And you don’t know any of them from Adam.  And they want to hug you and shake your hand and tell you what a good person he was.  And you smile and nod your head, but all you can think about is how much you hate him.  And for every person that tells you what a great person he was, you think to yourself, “Really?  Is this what great people do?”  You think you might suffocate on their words.  They are heavy and hurtful and cut you to the core.  You are so extremely grateful to your friends who smuggled in a water bottle full of vodka.  You take a swig and you think to yourself that if you have to nod and smile while one more stranger tells you what a great man your dead husband was you really might toss your cookies all over them.  And the line never ends.  They just keep coming.

As if this isn’t enough, on top of all the people you don’t even know, and the line that stretches out the door, there is the photo-video set to music that your mother-in-law put together that plays loudly on the TV at the other end of the room.  It plays pictures of you and him and your children and all of those moments in life that in a normal situation you would want to memorialize.  And it plays over and over again, so many times that it makes you dizzy.  And you try not to watch it because it is making you dizzy, but you happen to be facing it and cannot turn away.

Your friends keep trying to get you to sit down.  And even though they don’t come right out and say it, you are pretty sure that you must look like shit.  They bring a chair over and tell you to sit.  But you do not want to sit.  You want to get through this line, so this moment of your life can be over.  And then there is the woman who approaches, in tears.  You do not know her, but she is in tears and she gives you a hug.  She tells you, amidst her blubbering, that your husband saved her life.  That he caught her oral cancer before it was too late, and that because of him she went to the doctor and got the appropriate treatment and she is alive.  And she is very broken up about your husband’s death.  You feel sorry for her, that her hero is dead. 

Finally the two hours are up.  And your friend notices that you must go.  Now.  So she links her arm in yours and she pulls you through the crowds, without a word, past all of the people and into the parking lot.  Her husband pulls up the car.  But you don’t get in.  Not yet.  You finally break down and the blubbering turns into full-fledged sorrow.  And she holds you and lets you tell her how much you hate him.  She just holds you.  Without a word.  And after some time has passed you look up and notice a staff member from the mortuary watching you out of a side window.  You regard this with passing interest and wonder to yourself if someone in her line of work ever gets used to seeing people so very, very sad.

Decisions

There may come a time in your life when you are faced with some really tough decisions.  Decisions that you never really thought you would have to think about.  You are suddenly faced with decisions like what to do with your husband’s remains.  And you have to make phone calls to find out if you are even authorized to make this decision because you have been separated for a year and were nearly divorced.  And you are really, really sad and traumatized and angry right now and don’t quite have your wits about you, but nonetheless you have to make this decision.

Making this unthinkable decision becomes even more difficult when you have your in-laws trying to take this decision away from you and they are making phone calls to authorities behind your back because they want to take his body and do religious things to it and bury him the way their religion says you should.  And you understand that they are grieving and in shock too, but you know he hated their religion and that he would not want this.  And even though you hate him at this point, and the last thing you want to be doing right now is thinking about what he would want, still, you must.  And you have your children to think about as well, and of course you want what is best for them in this very, very horrible situation.  So you stand up to your in-laws and you do what needs to be done and make arrangements to have him cremated and his ashes buried in the cemetery next to where you buried your babies.

And this is not the only difficult decision you must make.  You must also decide what kind of service to have but you don’t think there is even an inkling of a chance that you could possibly survive sitting through a service listening to people talk about him.  And you know that Family would want to turn a service into a religious event, but he hated their religion, remember?  So you decide there will be no service but instead an open house at the funeral home where you and his family will receive people who want to express their condolences.

And then you must decide what his obituary will say.  And this is very, very hard indeed.  Because right now you cannot think of one single god-damned good thing to say about the man who made the choice to leave your three children fatherless.  So you keep it short and simple and luckily you can take up space by including his middle name and the date of his death.  And that will just have to do because you don’t have much more to say.

And you must also decide what you want him dressed in when your children will see him for the last time.  And it is terribly heartbreaking to even fathom the thought of taking them to do this.  But they want to see him again, one last time.  So you pick out his favorite flannel shirt and some jeans, because even though it is not what the mortician recommends, you know it would not seem right to your children for him to be wearing a suit.  And you let your children wear whatever the hell they want because you want them to be as comfortable as they can be when they say goodbye to their father.  And when you see that they have come downstairs ready to go in their T-shirts and sweat pants, you go put on your sweatpants, too.  Because you know that his family and your family will be dressed in their Sunday’s Finest, and you don’t want them to feel out of place in their sT-shirts and sweatpants, because all you really want is for them to be as comfortable as they can when they say goodbye to their father.

Be Still

I hurt my knee three weeks ago.  I was playing soccer and the goalie dove into my leg while it was fully extended.  The physical therapist says it will need at least six weeks to heal.  So once again I have been forced to reinvent myself.  To say I have been freaking out a little bit would be putting it mildly.  When your sanity up to this point relied wholly upon moving your body, and when you know you cannot live without your sanity because you have three young beings for whom you are Everything, you start to freak out a little.  Okay, maybe a lot.  

Up until this point, over the last several years, moving your body has been what has saved you time and time again from losing it completely:  your peace and strength and flexibility came from what you did on your yoga mat.  Your angst and competitiveness and anxiety you worked out with your sisters on the soccer field, and your solitude and clear-mindedness you found when you ran. 

So, what was supposed to be the summer of yoga and hiking and camping and running on the beautiful trails that surround your home, and the summer of yard work and learning how to plant a garden, in an instant turned into the summer of not even being able to walk around the block.  But after three weeks of pain and misery and crying and loneliness and self-pity, you finally start to see the light in your situation.  Because finally you are not just coerced, but forced to be still.  You are forced to be still and sit with the reality of your current situation.  You finally must stop running and doing as you have been since your life turned into Crazy Town, and simply be still.  And you see that it is much easier to keep on running so you don’t have to look the truth of it in the eye.  It is much easier to be busy.  But now you see that you must be still, and accept, and ponder and learn from the stillness.  And rest and accept and be still.  And you understand that finally taking the time to do these things will heal your heart in ways that running and moving could not.

And you sleep.  Finally sleep has come to you when it has eluded you for so long.  Real sleep.  Un-medicated sleep.  The kind of sleep you wake up from and marvel that you are finally able to sleep like that again.  And even your dreams seem to know you are sleeping real sleep again.  For they have become less frantic, less haunted, less anxious.  Steady, peaceful dreams of processing and figuring things out.

So instead of sitting around being angry at the goalie who dove into you, you find yourself seeing the light and embracing this time for what it is.  And even though not a day goes by where you don’t wish you could unroll your yoga mat or put on your running shoes, or take your kids out for a hike, or go out and pull the weeds that are taking over your garden, you fully appreciate the fact that after you clean up the breakfast dishes, you must go upstairs for your morning nap.

Ugly

Although this may not be pleasant writing, I feel that it is necessary writing.  Necessary for me to write, certainly, and maybe even crucial for you to read?  We tend too often to bottle up the ugly things for fear of looking weak, or fear of feeling ashamed, or fear of offending, or even for fear of simply feeling.  When so often what goes unsaid, or unwritten, or even unpainted, may just be the salve we need…

I do not pretend to be passively unaltered and untainted by my past.  I will be the first to admit that I am scarred.  And broken.  And I have to be okay with that.  Because it is what is.  So once again I bare a little part of my heart and soul to you, my reader, in this piece which I have titled, “Ugly”.

                                 Ugly 

If I could paint a picture of you it would be ugly.  

So very ugly.  

But I can only paint pretty things, and with not very much detail.  

I am not a highly trained artist who can paint small ugly details that come together as one giant mass of ugly, to which anyone could plainly see was you.  

I can only use hues that dance together and catch the light and please the eye.  

I can only paint things like trees and flowers and old proud barns, that notwithstanding the difficulties they encounter along the way turn into things of great beauty and light.  

My hand and eye are not gifted enough to paint the gnarly, twisted branches of a thorny tree that died an early death because it could never reach the light.  

Nor can I use colors that clash and hurt the eyes of the innocent, unsuspecting viewer, colors that were never meant to share a canvas.  

So, I think I will not even try to paint a picture of you.  

Because who wants to paint a picture that can only turn out ugly?

Just to Walk

Grief is heavy

and not in a figurative way;

It is literally heavy, heavy,

heavy.

So heavy, that in the first days and weeks

after your tragedy

it is even hard to walk.

Your body feels so heavy

you have to will your feet to walk.

You have to think hard to

even get them to move,

and when they do it is all they can do

to merely shuffle.

You can still remember that day,

that cold winter afternoon

When your friend took you out

for a walk

In the early days of your grief,

After your children lost their father…

When you couldn’t even notice

the crisp February air

Or the feel of sunshine on your face

Or see the bare tree branches

Because all you could think about was

how hard it was to walk.

When did the idea of lifting one foot

 and putting it in front of the other

over and over again

 become so foreign? 

Mesmerized by how something

you had been able to do

for almost your entire life

had become so very difficult..

So, very slowly, you put

one foot in front of the other

and you walk.

You carry that heavy, heavy weight

 that is your body

While you wonder how your body,

which only weeks before

 had been running and jumping

and laughing and playing…

How had it become

so very heavy?

Tragedy will do this to you.

Grief is heavy.

So very heavy.