Connection

I read a news story last week about a couple, ages 90 and 94, who had been married for 72 years. After a serious car accident they were taken to intensive care, put into beds close together, and died within an hour of one another.

"It was really strange, they were holding hands, and Dad stopped breathing, but I couldn't figure out what was going on because the heart monitor was still going," the couple's son, Dennis Yeager, told KCCI.com. "But we were like, 'he isn't breathing. How does he still have a heartbeat?' The nurse checked and said that's because they were holding hands and it's going through them. Her heart was beating through him and picking it up."

My brother sent the news story to my mom. I was afraid it would upset her, because if she'd had her choice, she and Dad would've left the planet together. Instead, she is still here, aching, loving him from afar in possibly the most extreme sense of that phrase.

But still, that heartbeat traveling from one to another seems a perfect metaphor for the way my parents love each other. Yes, present tense. I'm convinced that death doesn't stop that, in either direction.

Today would have been their 70th anniversary.

Season's Greetings

Classes start on Monday, which means that I'm in my traditional period of beating myself up for not getting enough done this summer.

It's now become like an official holiday for me, showing up as faithfully as plump, breakable jack-o-lanterns lining the shelves of Walgreen's in July. They smile their chintzy, poorly-painted, resin smiles while sitting on the Made in China stickers on their $19.99 bottoms. They're hideous and every year, there they are. Some things you can just count on.

Same thing with Candy's Back-to-School Bludgeoning. While Walmart is cramming its aisles with stacks of the cheapest wire-bound notebooks ever made, the kind with paper you can literally see through, but no one cares because they're 5 for a dollar, the school year is taking shape at our house.

I sit at the computer working on a syllabus for class, when I hear my very judgmental brain approaching the little two-step staircase down to my office. It has important things to say to me, verbal javelins to shish-kabob me with, and needs to get down those steps. I'm not going to help it.

"You want to bitch a little?" I ask it. "Handle the stairs yourself."

It does this Slinky-meets-jellyfish movement, very disgusting with the squishy sounds, and I continue working.

There's no putting this off. I look down at it, pink and wrinkly, sitting on the carpet like a headless turtle.

"Alright, Walnut Meat. Let's hear it. No, let me do this for you. You're going to slather on the guilt because of all I didn't get done this summer. I didn't finish my book. I didn't de-clutter every room. I didn't lose enough weight. I barely left the house. I didn't make it to the dentist. I didn't read the books I stacked up on my bedside table. I didn't use my time wisely. I watched 'The Bachelorette' and 'Hoarders' and a stupid Lifetime movie with Heather Locklear. I'm a failure. I should be taken out and shot." I stop for breath. "Does that about cover it?"

I hear tiny little bumping sounds coming from the steps. As far as I know there's no one else in the house. Just Brainard and me. And then I see it. Carefully making its way down the two steps is my heart, on a tiny pair of crutches.

Brain looks at me with its non-eyes and then we both watch the heart work its way toward us.

I swivel my chair around so I can face them both. The brain has somehow dragged a wee little white Adirondack chair over for the heart to sit in, because even the heart's armpits get sore while pressing down on crutches too long.

Heart speaks.

"Walnut Meat here has decided to let me talk this year. This wasn't easy. You know it's hard for the brain to yield its 5 minutes to me." Brainard, without any face or shoulders, somehow manages a sheepish expression.

I wonder, at this moment, what other people are doing.

"You had your long list of things to do," Heart says. "Brain and I both saw it."

"It's right here...wanna see it again?" I ask. I pull the legal pad from the stack next to my computer and hold it in the air like an eviction notice.

"No. I know it by...heart," the pumper chuckles. "Sorry."

"You've been hanging around Brainard too much," I say.

"Which one of those things on your ever-present list do you think was most important?" Heart asks.

"Well, as you already know, the ones with the red stars next to them are important."

"The real answer. Think harder." The Brain shoots a glance at the heart leaning back in its chair.

"Sorry. Not trying to step on your toes, Walnut."

"The real answer? You know the real answer. The Heart knows all, right?" I say.

A sigh from the Heart.

"Why do you think I'm using these crutches?" it asks.

I lean back in my own chair and cover my eyes. "If I have to say this, I'm going to be sick. But here goes: because you're a broken heart?"

"True," it says. "Why are you so snarly?"

"I don't know. I don't know. I do know. I'm tired of you being broken. Tired of feeling broken."

"This will be hard for you. Very against-the-grain. But listen: that list isn't important. It especially wasn't important this summer."

I know where this is going.

"Please," the heart says, as only the heart can plead, "tell me what you did with your summer?"

"You know."

"Say it."

My throat gets thick and I feel my heart aching from its Adirondack chair.

"I was grieving my dad."

"Why?"

"WHAT?!" What an ignorant heart.

"Just tell me."

The ropes in my throat give way and the tears fall again. How many times have I cried this summer? "Because I love him and he's gone and I can't tell him how much I miss him." I take a breath. "And I still can't believe he's gone!" I feel like an idiot.

"Yes. You held on until last semester was over and then you got a chance to swim into the waves of grief. The water had been rising, around your ankles, up to your knees, but you waded through the hallways at work, pushing through to May."

I can't look at the heart, but I listen.

"This was your work this summer. You had one real thing on your list, and that was to let me grieve."

Brain nods.

"As useless as you felt, and as exhausted and discouraged, you were doing what you needed to do. Don't ignore it."

"It feels like all I did was lay around and cry," I say.

"That's part of the job of grief," Heart says. "So is the writing you did in your journal. Brain here tells me you wrote 19,000 words. So, you did do some writing."

"Not the right kind of writing," I say.

"It was exactly the right kind. You let it come from me. That's the only way to do it."

I consider this idea. And I think about the late nights I've sat up reading Dad's old letters to me. I have hundreds of them, from college, from when I was 38 and living (miserably) in France and he sent me photos and wrote "I hope this doesn't make you more homesick." Letters from every year since I left home at 18. I think about three nights ago when I missed him so much that I sat on the couch at 2 a.m., holding on tight to his old blue flannel shirt.

"And," Heart says, "all that struggling with Walnut Meat here, the forgetfulness, the fogginess, the sitting alongside the road in your car after you turned onto the wrong street the other day? That's the work, too. Even Brain has struggled through this."

Brain nods again.

"So why are you the only one using crutches," I ask.

Heart leans forward in its tiny chair. "Because I'm where the love resides."

I can't speak. I wonder what I can do to help it heal.

"Just keep going forward," it says. "I'll heal. You'll never stop missing him. You'll miss him fiercely. Some days you'll swear you can feel it all the way down to your bones. That's the love talking. That's how strong it is."

I sit quietly, soaking it all in.

I hear squishy sounds again. I look over to see that Brain is giving Heart a slow but determined piggy-back ride up the steps. Heart waves a crutch at me.

Archipelago

I joined a grief support group.

It's a 13-week class and I didn't find it until the 5th week. And it would've been EASY to find during Week One, but my brain missed it. This is one of the most debilitating parts of grief: Your brain gives out. Your ability to find things that you had in your hand ten minutes ago, shuts down. As does your quick recall of the name of a friend who walks up to you and engages you in conversation that ends up not being a very good conversation because you are distracted and digging in the dirt clods of your memory trying to find his name. Obviously some of this is just being middle-aged, but it's increased tenfold since my dad left the planet, this clueless fog of mine.

That said, I've only been to the group two times, but it's helpful. The first night I went I was stunned at just how much pain and suffering was gathered together in that circle. A dozen people and all kinds of loss. A father grieving his 25-year-old son who died suddenly from no medical reason that could be found. A husband who was shot to death. A mother gone after a long illness. A father. My father.

The room crackled with the intensity of it all. It was as though lightning had just passed through. People spoke with voices that carried confusion and bafflement like heavy fruit gathered into an apron. They looked around the room with glassy eyes, all cried out or starting up again. The eyes said it all: Where do I go from here?

I sat there thinking "This is just one grief group in one church in one town." The idea of how much pain there is everywhere else made me dizzy. It was like being a kid and having that moment when the size of the world suddenly occurs to you.

I've started to understand that grief is way more complicated than I imagined. First it was the disbelief that caught me off guard. But now my dad has been gone almost 4 months and some of that initial shock is wearing off. Not all of it. I'm split between "Oh my God. He is truly gone." and "I haven't seen Dad in such a long time. When is this part over? He surely must be coming back." I watch my thoughts stumble over themselves like two drunks, arm in arm, trying to make it down the street.

A good friend wrote this to me yesterday:

I suspect this is a triple grief for you--the loss of your father as he was recently, the loss of the man he was before he became ill, and a sharing of the loss your mother feels.

I was sitting in the group last night thinking about those three pieces, then realized that there are way more than three.

I imagine it like this: Grief is a scattering of islands, big and small, over a vast stretch of ocean. Each island is a particular chunk of it. I travel through the water in a little rowboat trying to find them all. I see the one called "The Man He Was Before He Became Ill." It's huge. Dad's old before-dementia personality is all over it. I can hear the echo of his full-blown laughter. I can see him walking along the beach in that white T-shirt with the red cartoon pigs on the front, the one I gave him that was too small but he wore it anyway. I wave at him but he can't see me. I want to stay and watch him smile and walk near the water with that little bounce in his step, but the current is pulling me elsewhere.

Another island comes into view. "Your Father As He Was Recently." He is on the beach here, too. Sitting in a wheelchair at a small square table. A tray of food sits in front of him. His head droops forward. I want to go wake him up by putting my hand on his cheek. I want to feed him his supper and then little spoonfuls of chocolate ice cream. But all I can do is look at him as my arms pull at the oars and take me to the next place.

This island is bleak and terrifying. Slate-colored clouds hang over it. The waves are slamming against the beach. This is the island of "His Very Last Day." In the near-darkness I see a group of people. They have their backs to me. It's us. Our family, gathered around his bed. I can't look at any of this. I turn away and row as hard as I can. I will have to come back to this island later. I'll have to come back to them all later. To these three and to the others I can see on the illuminated map of my heart, and to the ones I don't yet know about. I know about the island of "There's No Way to Fix Your Mom's Broken Heart" and the "Conversations You Should've Had With Your Father" one. And the primitive, rocky piece of land that does nothing but radiate "I miss you. I miss you. I miss you."

Traveling among this archipelago is part of my life now. Something was blown apart when I lost my dad and the pieces scattered like shrapnel. The islands will change sizes and names and some will merge together and, possibly, some may dissolve into the ocean. We'll see. For the time being, I have to look for them all.

I Don't Know What I Expected of Grief

But it wasn't this.

Where do I start writing?

I've lost people before, but no one nearly as close as my dad.

I'll just say that the overwhelming feeling, the one most constant in the three months since he died, is disbelief.

In the past when I would hear about the "denial" stage of grief (and I want to be clear that I don't believe at all in the "stages" of grief) I naively thought that denial was somehow by choice. As though the person would be telling themselves "I know my dad has died, but I choose not to deal with it yet, so I'm going to ignore it until I can bear it." As though it was that cut and dried and premeditated.

Never did it occur to me that the most difficult part of losing Dad would be my inability to believe that he's gone.

So I guess what I expected of grief was the dark and ongoing gut-punch of missing him. Aching for the chance to see his face when I drive to my hometown. The chance to feed him his dinner, wipe his mouth, clean his teeth, give him a neck trim, put lotion on his face. The endless small things, communicative but not in the usual way, that our relationship had become.

The oddity of the whole picture is that I do have the gut-punch, even though I'm still waking up in the middle of the night and realizing, freshly, that he's gone. I forget it by morning and have to learn it again. I'm tired of learning it and I'm tired of it being true.

It reminds me of a news story I saw decades ago about a former concert pianist stricken with a brain disorder that left him with aphasia. Each day he "met" his wife. Each day his wife offered him a cup of coffee and each day he accepted it, saying "Oh, I'd like to try it. I've never had coffee before." And each day he proclaimed it delicious.

Though major parts of his memory had been thieved away by the illness, this man was left with his ability to play the piano. So there he sat, magnificently playing Chopin, lost to the world around him.

Bye, Dad.

My wonderful dad passed away Sunday evening.
Thank you for the prayers.
I will post as I can.

He was a great man and a good daddy.

Where I've Been

I haven't posted for about 3 weeks. At first, life was just busy with work and normal things.

Then a week ago my dad developed pneumonia from aspiration of a food particle. On Sunday I thought we might lose him.

He is hanging in there but is in critical condition and things are very bleak.

We're praying for God's will, whatever it is, and we're praying especially for mercy. Dad can't communicate whether or not
he's scared, but he looks scared.

My mom is still trying to heal from her back and rib injury, and has just gotten a sore throat and cough. She's worn out.
You know the saying: When it rains...

Will post when I can.

Shame on Me for Slacking on the Beer Diary! Bottles 6, 7, 8, and 9.

It's not that Scott is downing the brew faster than I can type. I've just been busy with school, and trying to feel my way around the tangle of moray eels that are my new students.

Let's recap:

January 19th

Beer: Phin and Matt's Southern Tier Extraordinary Ale

Beer Accompaniment: Gourmet pesto pizza from a local bar/restaurant/billiards place

I picked up the pizza and when Scott got home from work, I chose his beer. This is fun for me. I don't get out much.

Phin & Matt's was a huge hit with Scott. He loved it. And shockingly, I didn't run puking into the sink after I had my traditional sip. It was milder than many others I've sipped and gagged on, and I even took a second sip. (Yes, I can see the slippery slope I'm unicycling down.) It starts with two sips and ends in rehab.


January 21st

Beer: Ellie's Brown Ale

Beer Accompaniment: I can't remember

I do remember that Scott liked it and it was mild and satisfying. Sounds like an old commercial for Winston cigarettes.


January 30

Beer: Optimator Spaten, made in Munich

Beer Accompaniment: Delicious pasta, prepared by Scott. Rosemary noodles with salmon, asparagus, garlic, and red peppers. Exquisite.

My sip of the beer: Oh HELL no. This is bitter and doesn't even try to be friendly.

Scott: Yes, it's very German in that way.

He loved it, especially with the pasta.

And finally...

February 2

Beer: Xingu Black Beer (Doesn't that name just look foreboding?)

Accompaniment: Scott's misery. A snotty cold, hacking cough, made worse by a long day at work and walking the final block from the city bus in hideous end-of-the-world blizzard conditions.

My sip: Screw it. I don't want any.

His reaction: As soon as I drink this, please shoot me.


I don't think he could taste the beer, but hey, Xingu, thanks for playing.