My friend Ana and I went for a walk sometime mid spring as the pandemic was taking hold, me walking in the street and Ana on the sidewalk so that we could keep six feet between us. We were not yet sure how the pandemic would affect us financially or health wise or, even more concerning, how it would affect our children, all in their twenties and still launching their adult lives.
Hospitals in Italy and in New York were filling with patients and running out of ventilators. Our empty neighborhood streets seemed eerie, like the quiet before a storm of the likes we had never seen and we did not understand.
We talked about how hard it was to write anything of substance while the whole world felt topsy turvy. We talked about not knowing what was even important enough to write about. I had just started Tending to Endings, and I couldn’t decide whether a blog about death and dying during a pandemic was serendipitous or the worst timing ever.
And then I yelled over the curb, Nouns! We don’t have to write anything important but we need to journal and include nouns!
Ana nodded, and cocked her head, waiting. She is a good friend, and she knows if she gives me time I’ll eventually make more sense.
I told her how when I go through times of great upheaval—say, the complicated pregnancy where I didn’t know for months whether my sons would make it—I cannot write anything of substance. During those long days that turned into months, I couldn’t even read anything but formulaic detective novels.
But I jotted down things in my journal each day. A few thoughts. A couple feelings. And yes, people, places and things: the green pitcher of water on the end table, the hyacinth growing through hard cracks in the flowerbed, the medication pump I wore clipped to my pajamas that was the shape and size of a pack of Camel non-filters.
Someday that would become my favorite story, but I hadn’t lived it yet.
Gabe and Dylan in 1999
Flannery O’Connor famously said, “I write because I don’t know what I think until I read what I say.” I love this quote and during calmer times when I have reserves, I find it true.
But during times of illness or huge loss or upheaval, I’m not sure the first order of writing for me is about making sense of anything at all. All that matters is whether my babies are going to make it to the point where they have skin that will withstand touch and lungs that will breathe air.
Instead, I think that during chaotic and confusing times, times of loss, writing tethers me like some umbilical cord between inner and outer worlds. It is how I don’t lose sight of what is right at my feet when anything more than this step is too much. I write thoughts, feelings, and concrete nouns, while every sentence on the page really says the same thing. I’m here. I’m here. I’m still here.
My favorite places to teach writing have always been with those in the midst of things or on a precipice of big change: juvenile detention centers, the school for pregnant and parenting teens, at camp on a wilderness adventure, the cancer unit of a Boise hospital. There is something about creativity that is begun amidst upheaval—before we know where things might go or how they might end—that feels particularly vivid. Maybe it is only that writing in the middle of things means I have to pay attention. And paying attention makes for better art and better life.
I was excited back in 2001 to teach the drop-in workshop at what was then called Mountain States Tumor Institute in Boise. The class was part of a new integrative health program open to cancer patients and caregivers and hospital staff. And I was nervous, too. I didn’t have much experience in a medical setting and I wondered how it would go with so many different perspectives in the room during such a vulnerable time.
One of the books I read in preparation for the workshop at the hospital was John Fox’s Poetic Medicine. It is full of poems and anecdotes and teaching ideas. But one of my favorite lines of the book is from the preface which was written by another author, Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D.:
Our poetry allows us to remember that our integrity is not in our body, that despite our physical limitations, our suffering and our fears, there is something in us that is not touched, something shining. Our poetry is its voice.
And what I remember most about that conference room as we lifted our heads to listen to what each had written was how poems would begin with chemo or medical charts and make their way to planting green beans in the garden after work or the puppy that the grandkids brought by for a visit or the messy sweetness of a shared slice of watermelon. It didn’t matter who was a patient or a chaplain or a caregiver or a teacher. We could see each other, and we were all here.
Resources on Writing
In February I’m offering a three-part workshop focused on saving family stories for future generations: Writing Family Memoirs: Getting Started. Please take a look at my workshop and events page if you or or someone you know might be interested.
I will also be teaching two half-day writing workshops through the McCall Arts and Humanities Council, Room for Grief: Writing through Loss will be held online on January 23 andBeyond the Obituary: Writing End-of-Life Stories will be held online on March 6. These events are free but with a suggested donation to the McCall Arts and Humanities Council for those who can offer support. I would love to see you there!
If you want to explore writing on your own, two classics that I’ve found particularly helpful for getting into the practice of writing are Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life and Natalie Goldberg’sWriting Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within.
Other Resources
The McCall workshops listed above are offered as part of a winter series: Looking Ahead: Conversations on Aging and Dying offered by Community Hub McCall. They are open to the public and explore many topics I’ve written about in Tending to Endings including a Death Cafe event, advance care planning, and caregiving. I’m excited to attend some of these events myself. Sessions are online and either free or for a suggested donation.
If you would like to receive Tending to Endings the first Friday of every month, please leave your name and email below. Tending to Endings aims to build community and conversation around end-of-life matters. It is always free, and I do not share your info. Thank you for your interest!
Dad and I talk about my mom often, but it feels particularly poignant here in Maui in December, two years after mom’s last Christmas. Here I can stand where her hospital bed was. I can lounge in the chair where she watched for whales and wondered each day at how she ever got to be so lucky. Here, I walk the same floors she and I paced together on the nights when she was agitated and too afraid to sleep.
And here, in the living room, I remember sweet moments like when my parents sang a duet, each holding the other’s gaze, my mom so weak her words came out as a whisper. I assumed it was a love song or maybe a solemn hymn, until my dad explained later, “No, that was the Whiffenpoof song! We sang it in college at the bars!”
It has been a year and a half since my mom died. Memories from that time bring up such a mix of emotions. I found myself saying to my dad recently, “Everything went so well, considering how horrible it all was.”
Which was something my dad but maybe no one else would understand. Horrible makes sense. Alzheimer’s and cancer are horrible. But when I think back to how many people showed up just when we needed help, and how many things magically came together in ways I couldn’t have planned, and how much love and gratitude we were able to express. Well, it is an intense mix. A season full of ache and grace.
I want to share excerpts from our recent conversation here which include Dad’s perspective on familiar themes: grief of losing a spouse, the value of community, and some of the more confusing aspects of caring for a loved one with Alzheimer’s. I want to also take a moment to acknowledge and thank my dad and my sisters. This journey is theirs too, and they have been so very gracious in allowing me to write openly (all year!) about our family during such a tender time.
The question I get most often from my friends these days is, How is your dad?
And you don’t know what to say, do you? (laughter)
I tell them you are doing well. But I always feel like I should explain more because of course this has been a profound loss. I think you’re doing well because you talk about missing mom and you are playing tennis and you aren’t isolating.
I think in many cases people find it hard to continue to do things they used to do as a couple. I talk with both my tennis friends and also our joint friends, and for that matter, mom’s friends. I even went to the ladies Saturday breakfast. I knew they would want to talk about mom, and of course they asked how I was doing. I’m not uncomfortable in that kind of setting.
That was the breakfast that used to be a book group that you went to with mom?
Yes, when the Alzheimer’s was getting bad, the only way she would go was if I went along. So, her friends made an exception for me. I was the only guy there.
I’m so glad because now it seems like it helped keep your social fabric somewhat intact too. Also with the Brennan’s. You had Sunday breakfast with them before mom was sick and when mom was sick and still now. I think there’s a temptation to back away from social situations when someone is sick, probably for lots of reasons, and especially with an illness that affects cognitive abilities.
Well, even when mom couldn’t go out anymore, that Caring Bridge site made such a difference. People could feel involved without feeling like they were intruding. People felt more included.
And you didn’t have to catch everyone up on what happened when she died. I think it meant everyone felt closer to you and after mom was gone, that probably helped.
A strong community has definitely helped. You know when Dennis’s wife died a month or so later, I told him we were going to start having a widower’s BBQ once a month with tennis guys. Whoever wanted to come. Sometimes we had six guys and sometimes twenty. It was good for him, but it was good for me too.
It’s been harder to find ways to get together since the pandemic. But I can still play tennis, still have lunch outside. Zoom with my daughters.
What else has changed during this time of grief? And what has helped?
I am not as teary as I was. I certainly was emotional during mom’s transition. I’m not one of these never-cry guys. But the activity of caring for her, that part was really helpful. You don’t want to need to do it. But in those circumstances, participation felt like—at least I can do something. It’s not worth very much, but I have a purpose here.
You often say, “Jane wouldn’t want me to mope.” Did she say that?
Yes, that came from your mother. She actually used that word. And it was towards the end. It wasn’t like she used that word often. It was when she knew she was going to die—later on, she didn’t know—but there was this time she was aware. She said, “You know everyone dies, Ron. I don’t want you to mope.” It wasn’t like she repeated it. But that one morning she said it and I hung onto it because…
…it was one of the clear things she said when she was aware.
Yes. Very clear. Ok, I thought, I’m not going to mope. I hear you.
What does the grief feel like these days?
I still always feel like I should be checking with someone. Your mom and I, well, we weren’t dependent, but we were interdependent. We operated by consensus. Whenever I have decisions, I still turn around to ask her things. I feel I should be asking someone.
Last year when I was redoing the condo, I would wonder what she would think about the new rug under the table, about whether we should move the couch. I would still ask her. And then I’d laugh, because I always knew exactly what she would say. She’d say, “Well, it’s ok. It’s nice.”
Things were never important to your mom and so she didn’t have strong opinions about them.When we redid the Pine Street house years ago and had this professional decorator help us, Barbara would come over with sixteen different ideas for the bathroom. Mom would say, “Ok, that one.”
And Barbara would say, “Well, you could…”
And mom would say, “No, that’s good.” She was done. Barbara couldn’t believe she didn’t want to think it through more.
When was the hardest time?
At the end of her life during the last weeks here in Maui. It has got to be. Every day it was the question of whether it was going to be the last time I was going to have any form of communication with her. And her pain and there being only so much we could do about it. That was the toughest, but the rest was not easy either. It was hard to lose her. It was hard when we learned the cancer came back.
I have a question for you. Did you think she decided to come to Maui, or do you think we did?
Both, or a combination. At the end she agreed that it was a good idea. Before that, she was unsure. Because sometimes she thought I just wanted a free trip.
(laughter)
Really, she was so good at reading people. She knew we were trying to get her to do things like go into the ridiculous hyperbaric oxygen chamber. And because of the Alzheimer’s she didn’t understand the reasons. So, I don’t think it was that she didn’t want to go to Maui, I think it was that she couldn’t figure out why we wanted her to go to Maui.
Because she always liked to go to Maui.
Yes, so it seemed weird. Also, she was in tremendous pain. It was before hospice.
I actually think I know the moment mom made the decision. It was the night after we found out the cancer was back and there were no good treatment options left. Sandy and Amy and I brought over pizza. She knew we were all sad.
I was very sad.
And mom turned to you and said, “We are going to go to Maui and it’s going to be just fine, Ron.” I don’t know if she said that exactly, but I felt like that was the moment.
Yes, that was my sense, she ultimately agreed with us. It was good we got here when we did.
Mom and I in Maui, 2003
There were so many things like that, that seemed to just barely work out, just in the nick of time. Like the memory book. And different people getting here to see her.You had some really sweet moments together, rainbow sightings and your dance marathon.
(Laughter)
You know your mom never liked dancing quite that much before. She usually was a one dance kind of person. We danced for hours that day.
Do you still feel close to her?
Oh, yeah. Yeah.
I do too.
I don’t see any reason why I wont always feel close with her. After you count the time we dated, we were together more than 60 years. I’ll always be close with her.
Ron and Jane, 1962, 2019 and 2018
Also Related
My dad mentioned a couple things that I have written about in previous Tending to Ending essays that I want to link to here.
In Bridges, I wrote more about our experience with CaringBridge, a nonprofit social media service designed to help people communicate with family and friends during medical journeys.
If you want to read about our memory book project, Love in the Room covers that project and other ways to bring people close at end-of-life even, when they are far away.
If you’re curious about what a hyperbaric oxygen chamber is, you can read more in Not Knowing, which is about the beginning days of my taking on a caregiving role.
Thank you for reading Tending to Endings. If you would like to make sure you don’t miss a post, please subscribe! I began Tending to Endings to help build community and conversation around end-of-life matters.
Before starting Tending to Endings, I blogged primarily about what I was reading, and at the end of the year I’d share a list of favorites. I want to continue that tradition here. Though not all of these fit neatly into the category of end-of-life literature, many do, and others explore relevant themes like grief, mending family relationships, and spirituality.
A number of these titles were highlighted in Tendings this year, and so I’ve included links to the corresponding posts in case you missed them. I also tagged them by Tending to Ending theme and included links to excerpts or other interesting information.
Anything I read (or reread) this year is fair game, no matter when it was published. Also I’m offering these, not from the point of view of a critic, but rather, a lover of literature. Each is a book that if we were going for a walk together, I would want to tell you about to share the experience.
The first ten are books I’ve found myself recommending over and over. Afterwards, I list all of the other books read and enjoyed this year. They are all favorites that I am excited to share. Feel free to leave questions, and please do include your own favorites in the comments!
Three of these are in this year’s list. Oliver and Wiman were favorites in prior years.
Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, by Alice Bechdel (2006)
I have not gotten into graphic novels much. I don’t know how to read them exactly, picture first, words first, all the words on a page and then all the pictures? But this book—which is actually a graphic memoir rather than a graphic novel—wooed me completely. It is funny, sad, poignant, witty, silly, deep. There are also a lot of literature major jokes throughout, which was an added joy for me. I fell in love with it and sent it to three friends before I finished. Bechdel’s father is a funeral director and nicknames their house fun home, short for funeral home. New York Times writer Sean Wilsey offers an excellent overview in “The Things They Buried.” (Talking about Death, Grief, Relationship Work)
Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants , Robin Wall Kimmerer (2015)
Kimmerer weaves her knowledge as a scientist with her cultural wisdom and memoir to create a book that gives me guidance for my daily living, and also hope for our communities and our planet. I listened to this one first on Audible and then bought the print version because I knew it was a book I wanted to return to. I keep running into others who are reading and loving this book, which adds to my hopefulness. I included a bit about this book in the June 26 post, Listening to Land. (Ancestors, Community, Story)
The Fire Next Time,James Baldwin (1963)
I read a lot of books about race this year, and admired, learned from, and appreciated many of them. But these two essays by Baldwin continue to be some of the most beautiful and instructive I’ve read. Fire Next Time is an example of writing that manages to be angry and compassionate at the very same time. Baldwin’s skill as a writer and his honesty as a human gives him a unique power to contextualize discussion of race in America while at the same time transcending the usual obstacles of those discussions. I included quotes from this book in the September 18 post, Slow Food (Talking about Death, Relationship Work, Community).
When the Light Was Subdued Our Songs Came Through: A Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry, Edited by Joy Harjo (2020)
One of the things I’ve learned this year is how limited my education has been. This is true even though I have a couple of college degrees and have been a teacher my entire adult life. There are so many voices, perspectives, and histories I’ve missed. As an example, I taught high school English at a time the same 2-3 Native voices were in every anthology. Often only excerpts of poems were included, as though there wasn’t much to choose from. This book puts that practice to shame. It is a gorgeous book full of Native Nations voices (160 plus poets from 100 indigenous nations) from the 1600s to the present including brief biographical and geographical information for each poet. I am so excited about this book, which I find far more enjoyable than the average Norton anthology. Joy Harjo, Poet Laureate for the US, writes a beautiful and compelling Introduction to the book. (Ancestors, Grief, Story, Community)
Dwellings: A Spiritual History of the Living World, Linda Hogan (2007)
I read three books by Linda Hogan this year and love all of them. This slim book of essays was my favorite probably because I am an essayist at heart and anyone who can do it this well gets my full attention. Like Hogan’s poetry and fiction, these essays are grounded in the natural world and weave together wisdom, story, musical language, and exquisite imagery. The theme of this collection spoke to me during a year when many of us are spending a great deal of time in our dwellings. Here is the title essay, Dwellings, as it appeared in the Indiana Review. I also included a bit about this book in the September 18 post, Slow Food. (Talking about Death, Grief, Story)
The Five Invitations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully, Frank Ostaseski (2017)
Dying (and living) involves a great deal we cannot control. Ostaseski’s book offers a window into how and why to proceed with an open heart anyway. He was one of the founders of Zen Hospice Center in the 1980s. He combines wisdom with experience with eloquence in such a way that this is one of my favorite books on the topic. I wrote about this book in the March 20 post, Welcome. (Talking about Death, Caregiving, Community)
Eternal Echoes: Celtic Reflections on Our Yearning to Belong , John O’Donohue (2000)
I read this book of reflections a little at a time during my morning meditations, and I always looked forward to it. I wasn’t sure whether to include it at first because I my favorite of O’Donohue’s is still Anam Cara. But then I realized I’ve written down more quotes from this book than any other this year. It helped me through. Here is one:
Prayer is not about the private project of making yourself holy and turning yourself into a shiny temple that blinds everyone else. Prayer has a deeper priority, which is in the old language, the sanctification of the world of which you are a privileged inhabitant. By being here, you are already a custodian of sacred places and spaces. If you could but see what your prayer could do you would always want to be in the presence that awakens.
I included more quotes from this book in the September 18 post, Slow Food. (Spirituality)
A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster, Rebecca Solnit (2009)
I think every year, Rebecca Solnit has made my list at least once. I love her philosophical perspective, her lyrical writing, and her activism. I had purchased her memoir this year thinking I’d read it, but then, with the pandemic and the social justice protests and the fallout from our political divide, this older book moved to my nightstand instead.
In A Paradise Built in Hell, Solnit studies five major disasters and the communities that arose in the aftermath. It gives interesting context to historical figures I’ve only known in broad strokes, like William James and Dorothy Day. Solnit argues that while the press and leaders often tell a story of chaos and unrest, life on the ground after these events tells a much more complex story. In the wake of disasters, she argues, “We remain ourselves for the most part, but freed to act on, most often, not the worst but the best within. The ruts and routines of ordinary life hide more beauty than brutality.”
Like all of Solnit’s work, this philosophy isn’t presented only to help us feel better. In giving many examples of how people have responded to disaster in the past, she makes a case that in crisis, there is opportunity to change our culture for the better if we seize it and come together to act towards the common good. (Caregiving, Community, Storytelling.)
The Murmur of Bees, Sofìa Segovia, translated by Simon Bruni (2015)
I read many excellent novels this year, and this is the only fiction on my top ten list, which is not usual for me. I think I leaned towards nonfiction for the top list this year because it has been a time of truth telling on so many levels. But the long list of novels below reminds me how much fiction adds to life as well. I don’t think anything objective made this one rise above the first few titles in the fiction list below, but rather, timing. All are compelling stories beautifully told. But, I read this book in March during the first weeks of quarantine, and Murmur of Bees is a family saga told with a quality of magical realism set in against the backdrop of the 1917 flu epidemic. I didn’t know this last fact until I was at a quarter of the way into the novel, but the synchronicity and historical perspective on that plight made the experience of reading feel intimate and a bit magical in itself.
Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent, Isabelle Wilkerson (2020)
Wilkerson’s Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration has been a favorite nonfiction book since it was published in 2010. It expanded my view of American history with extensively researched beautiful storytelling. This book, too, is about the history of racial hierarchy in America and is told with thoroughness and precision.
The tone and the tenor of this book is different from Warmth. Wilkerson is direct and unflinching in her account, and I couldn’t help but think of how painful it must have been to research and archive these stories for us day after day. My sense was always that Wilkerson was doing so, to save us all from ourselves. I am so grateful for her commitment to this generous and important work. It is a book that has motivated me to not look away and to look for how I can take action with love.
A friend sent this quote from the epilogue of Caste, and it has become a sort of guidepost and reminder for me, that this is longterm work, and this is my work:
Caste is a disease, and none of us is immune. It is as if alcoholism is encoded into the country’s DNA, and can never be declared fully cured. It is like cancer that goes into remission only to return when the immune system of the body politic is weakened…Radical empathy, on the other hand, means putting in the work to educate oneself and to listen with a humble heart to understand another’s experience from their perspective, not as we would imagine we would feel…Each time a person reaches across caste and makes a connection, it helps to break the back of caste. Multiplied by millions in a given day, it becomes the flap of a butterfly wing that shifts the air and builds to a hurricane across the ocean.
This summer, the New York Times Magazine published a feature, America’s Enduring Caste System, by Isabel Wilkerson. (Relationship Work, Grief, Ancestors, Talking about Death).
Many favorites from prior years, and some still in the queue!
Other Books I Loved
I probably don’t need to explain why this year’s list is longer than usual. The first few under each heading were contenders for the top list, and then they fall in random order.
Fiction
The Water Dancer, Ta-Nehisi Coates (2019)
The Vanishing Half, Brit Bennett (2020)
The People of the Whale, Linda Hogan (2008)
The Widower‘s Tale, Julia Glass (2011)
Lost Children Archive, Valeria Luiselli. (2019)
The Dutch House, Ann Patchett (2019)
How Much of These Hills is Gold, C. Pam Zhang (2020)
The Book of Longing, Sue Monk Kidd (2020)
Three Junes, Julia Glass (2003)
A Spool of Blue Thread, Ann Tyler (2015)
Girl, Woman, Other, Bernadine Evaristo (2019)
Pale Horse, Pale Rider, Kathrine Ann Porter (1939)
Crooked Hallalujah, Kelli Ford (2020)
Father of the Rain, Lily King (2011)
Anne of Green Gables, Lucy Maud Montgomery (1908) — This was my anti-anxiety medicine during our eternal election week.
The Relentless Moon, Mary Robinette Kowel (2020)–the third in the Lady Astronaut Series.
The Moon Bamboo, Thich Nhat Hanh (1989)
The Robber Bride, Margaret Atwood (2011)
American Gods, Tenth Anniversary Edition Full Cast, Audible Production, Neil Gaiman (2011)
The Time of Butterflies, Julia Alverez (2007)
What We Keep, Elizabeth Berg (2015)
Poetry
Dark, Sweet, Linda Hogan (2014)
An American Sunrise, Joy Harjo (2019)
The Tradition, Jericho Brown (2019)
Owls and Other Fantasies, Mary Oliver (2006)
Memory of Elephants, Sherman Alexie (2020) — letterpress chapbook through Limberlost Press , Idaho
Citizen: An American Lyric, Claudia Rankine (2014)
Memoir and Biography
Two illustrated biographies for children: Enormous Smallness: A Story of E.E. Cummings, Matthew Burgess (2015) and Drawing on Walls: A Story of Keith Haring, Matthew Burgess (2020).
A Little Bit of Wisdom: Conversations with a Nez Perce Elder, Horace Axtell and Margo Aragon (1997)
The Night of the Gun: A Reporter Investigates the Darkest Story of His Life, David Carr (2009)
The Yellow House, Sarah M. Broom (2020)
Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art, Madeline L’Engle (1980)
Other Nonfiction
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, Michelle Alexander (2010)
When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times, Pema Chodron (1997)
Jesus and the Disinherited, Howard Thurman (1949)
How to Be an Antiracist, Ibram X. Kendi (2019)
Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America, Ibram X. Kendi (2016)
White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk about Racism, Robin DiAngelo (2018)
Dying Well: Peace and Possibilities at the End of Life, Ira Byock (1997)
Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion, Jia Tolentino (2019)
I would love to read your own favorite reads of 2020 in the comments! (If you don’t see a comment box below, click here and scroll to the bottom of the post).
I will be posting twice more this year to get to a nice round 50 posts. Then, starting in January, Tending to Endings will run once a month on the first Friday. If you don’t want to miss an installment, please subscribe and I will send a copy to your email address. Tending to Endings is cost free and ad-free, and I do not share your info. Thank you!
I am in Maui after a quick decision to fly here a little over a week ago when travel to the island became possible with a negative COVID test. It’s still a strange holiday with other family members in various other small pods. But it’s a beautiful place to be thankful, and I am most thankful for seeing my dad again.
I find a book on the shelf that I gave to my mom a few Christmases ago and decide it will be a nice thank you gift to bring to Tom and Steve who are hosting us for Thanksgiving. Bright Wings, a collection that includes sketches of birds adjacent to poems. I am excited to bring it to them. They loved my mom. Steve shared at her Maui celebration of life and he and Tom continued to reach out to my dad all last spring when the island of Maui was on lockdown, and my dad was alone. I think, yes, this is just right! The perfect gift!
I flip through the book and read some of the poems, and then, the impulse to give this book catches on something. Not this book, I think. I really like this one. What if I want to read it when I’m here in Maui? What if I want to hold it and imagine my mom holding it and the way she would talk to birds who came to dine on the lanai during breakfast. The way she would brush crumbs their way, so they knew they were welcome and loved!
And I think, maybe they don’t even like poems. Or birds. Though this second seems especially unlikely.
I might mention here, that I have a copy of this book in my own bookcase in Boise. Also, my dad still has shelves heavy with books at his home in Illinois. Mom created a resource room so she could loan books about the environment or social justice or parenting or just good writing to anyone who was interested. She tried not to be pushy about her opinions, but she never hesitated to share a good book!
I have an abundance of things from my mom. I am wearing her white and blue jacket with palm trees on it, and I have the dozens of photo books she made the kids over the years. The whole ocean is currently in front of me, which, being her favorite color, never fails to remind me of her. I have her wide feet and pointy chin and love of children. Anyone who reads this blog would agree, I’m not at risk of forgetting my mom. A year and a half after her death, she is still a daily presence in my life, a touchstone.
So I wonder at this slight anxiety, this hesitancy about handing over this one book?
Ron and Jane Stavoe at Mala in Lahaina, January 20, 2019
When my friend Pat died in 2015, her daughter Sandy and I continued our tradition of having lunch together on Pat’s birthday, which also happened to be my birthday. When Pat was alive, it always delighted her, the symmetry of each of us having the joy of buying lunch for the other.
It was during lunch, about a year and a half after Pat died that Sandy brought with her a folded blue sweater and handed across the table. “This sweater of my mom’s made me think of you, and I thought you might like to have it.”
I pulled it to me and buried my cheek in the pale blue weave. I thanked her. I know exactly where that sweater is in my house in Boise now, folded on the top shelf of my closet. I don’t wear it often, but when I do, I feel especially close to Pat.
Now I remember Sandy handing me that sweater and think I notice that same catch, that instant of hesitation, as if a small ache was woven into the joy at gifting me the sweater. Or maybe I am inventing that and adding it to the memory now that I know what it is like to lose a mother.
Giving is also releasing. It is an act of generosity, and it is also an act of trust.
I know I will bring the book with me to dinner. And I know Tom and Steve will cherish it. This will be true even if they aren’t a fan of poems or birds. Even more, I know that I will be ok. And that my mom will continue to return to me just as waves continue to roll ashore.
Have a beautiful Thanksgiving weekend,
Laura
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I read articles on grief about the importance of naming losses and I think how hard it is to do that for 2020. Not all of course. Some are utterly clear. Just yesterday I talked with a friends who lost their father at age 57 to COVID. He lived in Guadalajara and they are in Maui. They could not travel to see him when he was in the hospital, nor could they or their children (his grandchildren) make the trip to attend the services.
I have lost two friends to heart attacks and a childhood neighbor to Alzheimer’s since the pandemic began. We did not gather. I have to keep reminding myself that these people are gone. Which is heart wrenching and wrong. There is the loss of the person, and then the loss of the ways we have had to walk through that loss. We don’t get to fall apart together and it his hard to know how to comfort each other.
Liesl and Bailey’s wedding, May 2018. Dylan singing at Mom’s celebration of life, April 2019.
And celebrations are lost too. We missed a long awaited reunion with my extended family and the annual trip to San Diego with John’s. His niece’s wedding was postponed, and graduations were skipped. The retreat I attend each October was canceled for the first time in 21 years.
First we postponed everything until we could do it right. And then as COVID lingered or surged, we found work arounds—zoom funerals and birthday parades. But we haven’t grown into our new ways yet, nor have we been able to return to the old, and so much is lost in the cracks between. Grief has always been awkward in our culture, and now it feels almost impossible, COVID one more reason to avoid facing what is already hard.
And then there are the everyday losses that seem small, but strung together change the way I live and I suspect change my body chemistry as well. Hugs. The ability to know what we do for the holidays. Pulling friends’ kids onto my lap to read stories. Walking side by side close enough to bump shoulders. The freedom of deciding to do anything without having to weigh COVID risks. Seeing strangers smile.
I miss going to live theater with the grand girls and our annual November birthday lunch with dear friends.
I’m low on laughter this year. I think back to lunches in restaurants with friends, and it is not the food I long for— it is being with smart, funny people who I can count on to make me laugh. I am not nearly funny enough on my own, and the comedy channel is not the same. It is communal laughter I miss most. All of us in the same room with tears streaming down our cheeks.
It’s so easy to shift here to the I’m actually very lucky. Shelter in place came at time in my life where we have the finances to withstand it. No one in my immediate family has gotten sick yet. In my extended family, all have recovered well. I like having time alone to write. I live in a place where I can walk outside on trails daily. John and I have a loving marriage and we are good friends. I get to see friends from far away now because we all learned zoom. There is a vaccine on the horizon!
All of this is true, and it is also a trap, this slight-of-hand, this socially acceptable attempt to outmaneuver grief. To call sadness by another name—to call it whining, or not being grateful—as if grief and gratitude are not intertwined.
Grief held at bay does not wait patiently behind the gate. It comes out sideways when I speak sharply to the pharmacist and then feel terrible because isn’t her job hard enough? It emerges as me scrolling on my phone instead of going for a walk. Grief settles in my chest and I swear if I wait long enough, in my bones. It aches at night. Slips through in nightmares and then insomnia or stomach aches. I don’t avoid grief. I avoid acknowledging it and letting it have its well earned place.
Last Thanksgiving our kids tiled our kitchen and then napped under the piano after Indian take-out dinner.
As the nights grow longer, I think of my friends who used to gather for winter solstice each December. We would drink hot mulled cider and eat beignets and toss sticks of wood into the fire with words written on them. Things we wanted to release.
I enjoyed the evening, but held some skepticism for letting go ceremonies. Surrendering old hurts or old loves has always seemed an act of grace that happens when I’m not trying, rather than something I do. It never happens for me when I drive to the top of a mountain to outstretch my hands to the sky or toss crumpled paper into the flames.
But I would join in and laugh with friends, watch their golden skin flicker in the light, see their smiles from across the ring. Some years winter came early and we would lean against each other to keep warm and stand so close to the fire my jeans would feel hot against my shins. I would dutifully write my word or phrase and when it came my turn, toss it into the fire like a prayer.
And now I see I may have had it wrong. It is in the naming that I acknowledge the empty spaces that have shaped me, those things that matter most, those things I love. To deny loss is to deny love.
And so in 2020 it is good to begin early, a full month before the longest night. I write the losses on wood or on paper. Paint them on stone. Type them here.
For I suspect it is not the tossing that transmutes great loss into something else. Rather, it is in the loving hold and the walk up to the fire: I see you—loss—I see you. You were here and now you are not. Much love.
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