Category Archives: Grief

A Little More Light

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light and darkness

I’m struggling, y’all.

Not every moment of every day, but enough moments of most days that I feel like I am dragging a bag of wet cement in each shoe.

I’ve written 20,000 words…in my head. I’ve rolled out from under the covers every morning and gotten straight to beating myself up for not being up already. For not exercising. For not writing. For not being happy all the fucking time.

For not speaking up about what is worst in the world right now. For not having gifts wrapped under the tree yet. For not making a casserole ahead of time and just skipping the pot luck. For not even trying to do teacher gifts and greeting cards and a new wreath for the front door and gingerbread people and a birthday party plan for Carlos and a haircut and cleaning out my voicemail box at work. For not. Not not not.

I can never do enough to keep the darkness at bay.

I have this little white ceramic Christmas tree that Daddy passed along to me years ago when our Aunt Mary Fuller died. She and Uncle Curtis lived in Avondale Estates for most of their lives, so they were city folk. They couldn’t walk out into the pasture and cut a cedar tree from the fence line. They had this little ceramic tree that lit up from the inside. I remember visiting them once in Atlanta. I fell in love with this tree and the tiny gold foil star that Aunt Mary Fuller had taped to the top.

Now it’s mine.

Like any inheritance, it’s past is so precious to me that I feel like I have to protect it from the present in order to save it for the future. Namely, I don’t want my kids to smash it. When Vivi was a baby, I put this tree on top of the bookcase in her nursery. Once she started toddling about, the tree stayed in its cardboard box for a couple of years, until I could trust her to not bring it crashing down. It lit up the dark nights in the nursery for Carlos’ first few Christmases, then back in the attic.

This year, I brought it down with all the other boxes of decorations. Each kid has a tree of their own now. There’s one in the living room and another in the den. Now that I could put Mary Fuller’s tree out, did we have room for it anymore?

I decided to keep it for myself, to enjoy it in the midst of my dark nights. This weekend, I set it out on a little table right by my bed, in the same spot that the bassinet stood. Vivi and Carlos placed the tiny plastic “bulbs” in the holes on the tips of the branches (and I didn’t even rearrange them to even out the balance of green and red–they were going for a lava flow effect and I think it’s pretty cool). We flipped the switch and sat in the Saturday morning glow of the 1970s. I told them how important this tree is to me and asked them to be very careful around it. I’m trying trust. We’ll see.

At night, I leave the little tree glowing after I set the alarm, write my gratitude in the journal, and turn out the light. Some nights, I cry. Some nights, I don’t.

It’s less dark. And that’s the reminder I need–a gentle push from the past. A reminder that we can only appreciate the stars when it’s dark. We have to trust our fragile hearts to a world that’s likely to break them.

 

Make Us Thankful

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A Thanksgiving memory: Little Gay, Me, Joe, Beth, Jake...and that's Grant in the front. Mr. Enthusiasm!

Thanksgiving many years ago: Little Gay, Me, Joe, Beth, Jake…and that’s Grant in the front. Mr. Enthusiasm!

My dad had a theory that you could measure how Baptist a person was by counting the number of times they said “Just” while asking the blessing before a big meal. Like this would score pretty high on the Baptist-o-meter:

(with every head bowed and every eye closed)

Lord, we just ask that you just look down on us Lord and just bless this food that is just such a blessing. Just help us remember, Lord, just how very blessed we are to just have what we need. We just praise you Lord….(continue for 12 minutes)

Now, now…to all my Baptist leaning friends, please don’t get your noses out of joint. In our family, we make fun of all peoples, of all faiths, in equal measure. We even did it a little when Grandmama Eunice was alive. But not when she was in earshot.

Speaking of Grandmama Eunice, I think she was the source of the standard blessing that Daddy used: “Lord make us thankful for these and all our many blessings. Bless this food to our bodies and us to your service, Amen.” No matter how much extemporizing the blesser did, they always brought the blessing to a close with these lines.

Over the years, asking the blessing got to be more and more special to Daddy. We all gather up in the kitchen or around the dining room table. Sometimes we hold hands and sometimes we just try to keep the kids in line. (See that just sneaking in there? Raised Baptist!) Daddy would say a few words about how lucky we were to be comfortable in life and the duty we owed to those who weren’t as lucky. His blessings always celebrated our family and the deep love we shared for each other. If it had been an especially tough year for one of us, he would say thanks that it was over and we were all still together. There was the blessing that remembered Richard when he was in the hospital. The blessing that welcomed Brett back home after she got her life straight. Last year, he said a blessing of thanks that he had made it through a bad health scare.

About fifty percent of the time, he’d get choked up. And that led to one of the most enduring stories in our family lore and it’s the thing I’m thinking about as we head towards this first Thanksgiving without Daddy saying the blessing before dinner.

Mr. Enthusiasm strikes again! Grant and Jackson at Callaway Gardens.

Mr. Enthusiasm strikes again! Grant and Jackson at Callaway Gardens.

For a few good years, when the nephews were small, we set aside one autumn weekend to take the whole fam-damn-ily to Callaway Gardens. Piled in together in one big villa, we’d cook and tell stories and laugh and jump in the leaves and let the kids stay up late.

The villa had a long dining table, big enough to hold all of us. Before we sat down to feast on tenderloin from the grill, Daddy asked the blessing. Halfway through, he started to get emotional and took a second to compose himself. All of the adults stayed quiet, but tiny little Grant, who was about three, piped up in a very loud whisper, “Papa’s cryin’ like a BABY!” 

Daddy loved that story. We had a reason to tell it again quite often, pretty much every time we got together.

I don’t know who will ask the blessing this year. Probably Joe, or Brett, maybe even Grant, who is tall and gracious and clever (still). I know we’ll all cry like babies. That’s just the way it’s going to be.

But in the midst of sorrow, may we be thankful for these and all our many blessings. Grief is the price of love.

This picture has nothing to do with the story, but it's my favorite picture of Grant.

This picture has nothing to do with the story, but it’s my favorite picture of Grant.

 

 

Doors and Windows and Corners

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You know that old saying, “When one door closes, a window opens?” I feel like that tonight, here at the end of the Dia de los Muertos when the door to the other world is shut and our beloved spirits draw their visit to a close. Well, the door may have closed, but a window opened for me tonight.

Right around dinner time, just as the noodle water was starting to boil, my phone rang. I didn’t recognize the number or the strange area code. I could have ignored it but I was kind of in the mood to snap at a telemarketer.

“Is this Ashley?”

“Yes, this is she.” In my most imperious tone, reserved for strangers who call at 7 p.m.

“Well, it’s your old Uncle Kenneth here. How are you doing, honey?” My dad’s middle brother. Joe and Eunice Garrett’s boys: Charles, Kenneth, and Sammy. I haven’t seen Uncle Kenneth in at least 10 years and I don’t think I’ve ever talked to him on the phone. He and Aunt Margaret have lived in southern Florida my whole life, so visits were once a year usually, mostly back when Grandmama Eunice was alive. Every summer, Charles and Kenneth drove their long American sedans up the interstate to Gay. And as soon as they pulled up in Grandmama’s front yard, they’d jump out of their cars and start talking about what kind of time they’d made on the drive.

Kenneth was calling to say we had been on his mind. We talked about his health, and the weather in Miami, and the ages of my children. He corrected me for thinking he was thirteen years older than Daddy–that was Charles, who died back in the 1980s. He told me his birthday, and Daddy’s birthday, then did the math.

And my window opened.

“What was your daddy’s birthday?” I asked. I never met my Grandaddy Joe. He was killed in a car accident a few days before Little Gay was born, almost four years before I came along.

“January 30. He used to tell everyone that he and FDR–Franklin Delano Roosevelt, he was the president then–Daddy told everybody that all the smartest people were born on January 30.”

I get my story-telling from these people. My dad’s death has left a blank yawning abyss between me and all the stories that he never got to tell me about his side of the family. That tiny fact–that my grandfather’s birthday was January 30–completed a story that I’ve been carrying around for almost forty years.

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One cold winter morning when I was about nine or ten, I was already dressed for school and waiting on the living room couch. Once Gay and Joe were ready, Daddy would drive us up the dirt road to the bus stop and we would wait in the warmth of the truck cab instead of out by the highway. Daddy was sitting in his orange chair, putting his boots on. He had paused to stare out the window over my head, into the hard white winter light.

“Today was my Daddy’s birthday. He would have been…” I can’t remember the age Daddy said because at that point in the sentence, he choked up and started to cry. It was the first time I ever remember seeing my dad cry. And now I know it was on January 30.

Uncle Kenneth told me stories about Daddy’s first haircut when he lost his princely curls. He told me about when he and Charles were filling out a Social Security form for J.P., the hired man who stayed with our family for 50 years. J.P. didn’t know what his initials stood for, so Uncle Charles declared him “James Pierpont Strozier.” And J.P. chose his own birthday–the second Sunday in August, because that was when his church had Homecoming. He told me about when their father died and my father wanted to drop out of vet school but his brothers wouldn’t let him. When we were talking about who was a blond and who was a brunette, Uncle Kenneth mentioned his own son, who has passed. We got quiet.

Then he took an old man’s deep breath and said, “Well, Mama always said ‘God won’t let you see around corners.’ And Daddy said, ‘Play the hand you’re dealt.'”

I’m so glad I answered the phone tonight. I saved that strange Florida number under “Uncle Kenneth” in my phone. The door may be closed for the next year, and we can’t see around corners, but he opened a window for me.

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Mi Dia de los Muertos

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Back in ninth grade Spanish class with Senora Lee, I was assigned “The Day of the Dead” for my bulletin board project. We didn’t have Google or even Wikipedia back then, so I went to the World Book (you kids can Google that if you don’t understand) and looked up Day of the Dead. After that ahem exhaustive research, I stapled yellow poster paper to the bulletin board, trimmed it with orange rick-rack, and pinned a Dollar Store dancing skeleton to the center. I carefully traced the title of my project across the top of the display and taped pieces of candy in the empty spaces.

My report, in Spanish, roughly translated to, “The Day of the Dead is a lot like our Halloween. The people of Mexico visit the graves of their ancestors and give candy to the children.” Thanks, World Book. So much for experiencing other cultures. I learned more about Dia de los Muertos from the Google doodle today. From Halloween to November 2 is the narrow sliver of the year when the door is opened, when our departed can return for a visit.

Altar for Dia de los Muertos, by Jose Luis Silva.

Altar for Dia de los Muertos, by Jose Luis Silva.

Yesterday, my friend Luis shared a photo of the altar (ofrenda) that he and Brantley created for their home. My heart cracked open to see Spencer there, right beside Lola, Brantley’s beloved dog that he found on the streets of Taiwan. Spencer did so love a pup.

The top level of the altar holds pictures of the souls that you are inviting back into your home. The lower levels offer an array of treats to welcome them–a shot of tequila, a sweet loaf of pan de muerto, a toy for a child. On the lowest level, cool water and maybe soap so they can feel fresh after the journey. All around, candles and bright flowers, sugar skulls.

My own spirit craves a ritual like this. Driving home today in the rain, I cried through three turns of a long red light. It’s easy to cry in the rain because no one’s looking. I thought of who would be on my altar. Daddy, of course, then I realized I don’t have a framed picture of him because I always had him. I would put Richard on there, that picture I took of him at sunset on Santorini, with the big moon hanging in the sky behind him. Grandmama Eunice all dressed up for church. Pop sitting in his recliner with his soft fingers steepled together as he listened to the Braves game on the radio. I’d have Spencer in there too. And Flynt. I’d love to think of Flynt again after so many years. G could bring his people, too–the grandfather who gave Carlos his name.

Altar for Dia de los Muertos, Jose Luis Silva

Altar for Dia de los Muertos, Jose Luis Silva

I’d have a bourbon and branch water for my dad. Sweet tea for the grandparents. A couple of really hot chilis for Pop. A small plate of fruitcake cookies–Daddy and Richard were the only ones who liked them so he made a batch every Christmas. The last of the yellow and orange marigolds from the flower boxes on the deck. The candles that I hid away when Vivi was born. They’re thick with dust but they would remember how to burn.

As evocative as Luis’ altar is, I felt like a fraud at the idea of making my own. The ofrenda isn’t part of my culture. Would I be play-acting? Still, my heart hurt for some ritual, some way to invite the spirits back into my home, even for a few rainy days.

Paige, a college sister, is a Unitarian minister. This weekend, she shared a photo of the candle-covered altar at her church and explained it with these words: “In our annual remembrance service, we honor our precious, imperfect loved ones. And we let our children see our tears.”

Remembrance Service at Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Columbia, Maryland

Remembrance Service at Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Columbia, Maryland

Yes. That was what I was looking for–a place to honor the precious imperfect, a ritual to bring the tears into the light (instead of hiding them away in my car at a red light).

But what?

The answer came to me in the quiet of my own living room. I walked through there on the way to change clothes after work and my eye lit on the grandfather clock that Daddy made us for Christmas a few years back. How many kids have a grandfather clock made by their grandfather? He made four that fall, all alike, for the four of us and our families. On Christmas Eve, they were lined up near the tree, each with a wide red bow.

It’s the clock we check from the dining room table to say how many minutes before bedtime. It’s the clock that softly chimes the hours while we sleep. It’s been silent for a few months now because the battery ran out on the mechanism and I’ve been too busy to get to the store and buy the right size.

Tonight, I let the kids eat leftover pot roast while I made a special trip to the store. I got the battery, then I sat in the rain in my car and cried a little.

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“What you get, Mama?” Carlos asked as I tried to cut the battery out of its packaging. “It’s a battery for the big clock.”

He followed me into the living room and watched silently while I turned the key and opened the narrow door. The pendulum hung still and quiet. Carlos stretched out his hand and waved it along the brass weights and their chains to make them sing. I opened my mouth to correct him…but didn’t. It’s as much his clock as it is mine.

I replaced the battery. I checked the pendulum motor and set it back in motion. I slid the clock back against the wall and the brass sang all in a clatter. Then the pieces settled into the steady work of being a clock. Tick tock. With one gentle finger, I spun the delicate minute hand around until the clock read 7:40.

That’s when I saw it–a precious imperfection. Inside the cabinet of the clock, where the oak face meets the side of the case, a misfired screw poked through. It’s practically invisible, only revealed when the door is open. The instant I saw it, I heard my dad’s exasperated voice bark, “AhhhDAMMIT!” the way he did when he was really angry but already resigned to the fact that whatever was screwed up probably couldn’t be fixed. When the horse was out of the barn, so to speak.

The perfect curves of the clock didn’t move me, the shining brass and the smooth sway of the pendulum, but that tiny screw just 1/16″ out of place brought my dad right into the house again.

Maybe this is the beginning of my own ritual. Every year when daylight saving time ends–right around the Dia de los Muertos–I’ll open up the clock to spin the hour away and I’ll see that precious imperfection and I’ll remember and be glad.

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Letting Go and Holding On

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The massage therapist held my wrist between her fingers and tapped the muscles in my arm. “Let go…don’t try to hold your arm up…loosen up.” It may come as a surprise, gentle readers, but I sometimes have trouble relaxing and simply being present in my own body. I KNOW. Crazy.

Today was my first massage since before Carlos was born, so there was a good bit of work to do. I spend a lot more time hunched over a laptop these days, and I still have all the old twinges and squonks from a desk job. The therapist started on my right arm, my mouse clicking hand, the one with that ache right down the middle.

After three or four times of her asking me to let go with my arm, I said, “Can you tell me what TO do instead of what not to do? I’m really good at following instructions and living up to the expectations of other people, especially people I barely know.” We laughed. And she switched to guided imagery. I figured out how to let go. For a little while.

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I protected that loosey-goosey feeling in my neck all the way home. If I caught myself hunching up my pecs, I stretched them out and sat up straight. Let my spine hold me up.

Until that crashing sound from the kids’ bathroom.

“What happened?”

“Um…Carlos was…” Every explanation begins with “Carlos was…” They were goofing around in the bathroom and knocked “Daddy’s black cup” onto the tile floor. As I picked up the broken pieces and swept up the shards, I tried not to cry. That wasn’t Daddy’s black cup–it was Richard’s coffee mug. I could have put it away into the back of the top shelf of the cabinet, could have held on to it a little tighter. I didn’t hold on and now I’ve got to let it go.

Speaking of cabinets–when I reached for a plate for Vivi’s dinner, the entire cabinet door fell off into my hand. As it hung there by one screw, I could feel my neck tensing back up. I was forgetting how to let go, to not hold the world up with my shoulders. Granted, there was a door falling at my face, but the metaphor wasn’t lost on me. I hollered for G. He came in and helped me set it down.

Letting go, letting go, holding on and letting go. This afternoon’s drumbeat.

G sorted through the stack of mail and handed me two envelopes. A birthday card from my Wesleyan sisters and a note from Big Gay. I slid open the envelope to find another envelope inside, one with my own handwriting on the front. I recognized it immediately as a letter that I had written to Daddy 20 years ago.

He held on to it all these years. Big Gay said he kept it in a special place and read it now and then. She wants me to have it.

I’m not ready to read it yet. I’ll hold on to it for a while. Maybe read it one day when my chest is more open, when I’ve let some things go.

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A Birthday Present to Myself

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This morning, when Beth asked “What are doing for your birthday?” I told her the truth: “Lowering my expectations.” Just last year I was so delighted when Carlos said, “Happy Birfday, Mama.” I had a day filled with special kindnesses and sweet surprises.

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It’s been two weeks since my dad died. This year, I don’t want my birthday to be right now. I don’t want to think about the call I won’t be getting. Maybe in a few months, I can declare a do-over. Right now, I still need to write thank you notes for kind condolences.  There’s not much that can make me happier right now.

Except maybe cake. I mean, when I’m sad AND there’s cake, it’s not as bad as being sad without any cake. And the same goes for friends too. Sad with friends is usually better than sad and lonesome.

One lesson I’ve learned from sadness is that you have to take care of yourself. Not just survival mode–you also have to take time to delight yourself. So today, I booked myself a massage. I ordered a big box of books and music that no one else would know to buy for me, stuff like Edwin McCain, Radney Foster, The Leftovers novel, and Mary Karr’s book about memoir.

I said yes when Bryn offered to bring over dinner tomorrow night. I said yes when Nicole asked me to lunch. I told G that I couldn’t think of anything I wanted right now but maybe an adventure. I emailed the Cool Kids and set up a brunch date for this weekend. I ate one of Katie’s chocolate chip cookies with a glass of wine and a crossword puzzle on the deck. I played bongos with Carlos. I watched a few minutes of “Best In Show” and I laughed about that damn Busy Bee.

And after all that, I was still sad.

But if I turn to look over my shoulder, back over today, I can’t help but see a few bright spots. And that makes it so much easier to turn my face back to the road I find myself on.

My birthday present to myself? I keep going.

 

No This Without That

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“What you doin’, Mama?” Carlos asked as we sat by the tadpole pond.

“Smacking mosquitos!” Then in my mind I hissed, “Take THAT, assholes!” as I smashed two in one stroke.

“McSkeetos bite you.”

Aye, laddie, they do. I am “sweet-blooded” as Quicker used to say–a mosquito will bite me before anyone else.

The weather has been absolutely perfect the last couple of days, but I don’t spend much time outside enjoying it. As our tadpoles have grown in the brown water of the old sandbox, so have the mosquito larvae. Can’t kill one without killing the other, so our crop of baby frogs has come hand in hand with a bumper crop of blood-sucking mcskeetos (kudos to Carlos for his pronunciation) this fall. I can’t wait for the first freeze to knock them out, but it might hurt Lieutenant Dan’s Frog Brigade also.

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I love watching the tadpoles grow and nibble and hop, so for now I have to put up with the cloud of mosquitos. There is no this without that.

So instead of sitting on the deck under the red leaves of the sourwood tree to have my wine, I sit inside. In this raggedy, cluttered den where Vivi is reading a Hardy Boys mystery and singing “Mama Mia” with the wrong lyrics: “Mama Mia, here we go again…my, my, just a little longer.” What the hell? Clearly, I have failed as a parent if my kid doesn’t know the words to basic ABBA songs.

There is nowhere to go in this house for a moment’s peace on a night when the kids are in moods. It’s all slamming doors, sucking fingers, and even refusing to eat tater tots. What four-year-old doesn’t eat tots? Mine, apparently. Mama mia.

After his tater tot tantrum, Carlos called me back to his room where he sat in the middle of his big boy bed that Papa made before Vivi was born. “I not mad anymore. Can I come out now? Hug?” Of course you can, my love. Tantrums and tenderness–there is no this without that. I could have a clean, peaceful house without all these kids running around…but I wouldn’t have these kids running around.

Now, when I look at that bed, I feel the new sinking hole in my chest where my dad’s death has taken up residence. I remember how excited he was to make the crib. I told him I liked quarter-sawn oak and Mission style and he was off to the workshop with wood-working magazines trailing like a cloud of dust behind him. It took months to finish the curved headboard and the narrow slats. He made extra rails so it could convert to a bed. Then he got so mad when Big Gay made him paint that beautiful oak white to match the other furniture in the nursery. And the day they hauled it over here–Daddy dropped it while loading it in the truck, scraped up the paint and was still cussing mightily hours later when they got to our house. He brought along the can of paint so we could touch up the black scrapes before the baby got here. Even after all that, we got the bed in the front door only to discover that it was too wide to make it into Vivi’s nursery…so he had to take the whole thing apart after all then reassemble it. We managed to laugh about it that day. And I’ll manage to smile about it one day when I remember. He wouldn’t have had the joy of seeing his baby grandaughter in that crib without the frustration of making it for her. There is no this without that.

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At the memorial, a friend asked me how I talked to Vivi about death since I don’t believe in any kind of afterlife (other than a general conservation of energy where we get to return to being sunlight or a nice October breeze–we are all part of one organism). I told her, “We have told her her whole life that all living things die. Our bodies are machines that wear out. Dying is part of living.”

In other words, there is no this without that.