Grief
Life with a teen ager is really a thrill ride – I’m not a wimp, but I am not an adrenaline junkie either. There is so much to love, that I can endure a little extra drama.
This morning was the usual morning chaos and sniping that attends three kids, two frazzled working parents and one dumb dog. Showers, packing lunches, finding shoes, remembering what needs to be signed and sent back to school, getting some breakfast down, walking the dog…sometimes we get a little frayed. My oldest took off without saying anything because we were both irritable, self-absorbed, and she needed to shove off before I was ready.
I arrived at the bus stop with the other two in tow about five minutes later. As I pulled up, I could see my daughter crying. Normally I would have been instantly irritated by this(if you know me, you know I am the anti-coddler), but my mom radar was buzzing. I went to her quickly and discovered that news was breaking that one of her friends had been killed in a car accident hours earlier.
Grief. In a teenager it is raw and grasping.
My mind was full – with questions, the need to comfort the girls before me, the agonizing empathy I was feeling for the family of that child, the urge to make a point about safety and teens in cars and…well, words would have to wait.
Our evenings are perhaps even more jagged than our mornings. Everyone is tired and hungry and wanting to talk all at once. Someone is usually stomping off in a huff before dinner hits the table. Maybe tonight we can remember how precious every sliver of time we have together really is.
Sometimes Your Ghosts Haunt Other People
Once upon a time, I was a preschool teacher. Four year olds are in prime time when it comes to tattling, and I would often have to field complaints on the playground about someone chasing someone else. Little Janey would come up to me and say,”Little Johnny is chasing me!” My answer was always the same:
“Then stop running.”
No matter how many times I said it, this was always a novel concept. What they really wanted me to do was to tell the chaser to stop. What they really needed to hear was that they had the power themselves to make it stop.
“They can’t chase you, if you’re not running,” I would say.
Occasionally, the chaser would continue to be aggressive and intervention was required, but more often than not, the chaser would be flummoxed by the impassive chasee and would soon wander off to find something way more interesting to do.
Fear is running from something that is not really chasing you. You can make it stop. You may need someone bigger, stronger and wiser standing next to you when you stop and turn around, but there will be a shift in the balance of power. Remember all those Scooby Doo episodes? Shaggy and Scooby running, screaming, running some more, away from scary ghosts and zombies and swamp creatures? Then at the end of every episode someone would stop running and say, “Hey, wait a minute here,” and unmask the the monster that really wasn’t a monster at all, just some bitter, disgruntled character decrying those meddling kids.
I guess I’ve been living with my ghosts so long now, that I just don’t pay much attention to them anymore. I’d like to claim it’s all about my strength of character and courage, but it may just be fatigue that has stopped me running away from them. They are still there, but they don’t intimidate me anymore.
But they are pesky fuckers, those ghosts, and will sometimes seek the satisfaction they can’t get from me from those who love me. I really hate that.
Out to Sea
I stand on the shore of memory, the ocean of things past laps at my feet. The water is warm today, so I wade in.
The memories come from all sides: ’92,’78,’84. Randomly, quickly, pleasantly crashing at my feet and dissolving into a million tiny bubbles of thought that glide ashore, suspended for a moment, before retreating back into the sea.
Harmless, it seems.
But the ocean pulls and pulls until you find that you are hip deep in that place where the waves break, threatening to either knock your feet out from under you or swallow you whole.
You can’t stay in this place too long. It’s too violent to be sustained. One choice is to retreat to the dunes – hiding, watching, waiting.
But I’m a strong swimmer, strong enough to go deeper.
I jump over the waves of memory until I can’t jump high enough anymore, and all I can do when that whopper of a wave comes bearing down on me is go under.
I hold my breath.
I feel the roll of thunder undulating across my head and back and legs until I come up on the other side.
I breathe again.
I have survived the breakpoint.
I float freely on the gentle rise and roll of the salty water, an ancient ocean of tears.
I feel the churning, warm and cold currents curling around my legs like liquid smoke, and I know what it means to be alive, to know I can survive in the ocean of memory.
I can’t feel the ocean floor, but it’s OK, I don’t need to feel the bottom anymore. I am buoyed by faith, hope, love.
So, what have YOU been up to the last 25 years?
I saw a man from my past across a crowded room last night.
No, this isn’t the beginning of a romance story. It just got me thinking, what do you say to someone you haven’t seen in 15 years? This person was someone with whom I had worked lifetimes ago. We eventually went off in different directions and have both done a lot of livin’ in those intervening years, I’m sure.
We never had the sort of relationship that assumed any keeping up would be expected once we moved out of each other spheres of activity, but I liked him. I am genuinely interested in what he is doing now. I could not, however, get past the effort I imagined it would take to long-story-short our way to to a meaningful conversation, and I couldn’t really bear the thought of just another surperficial, “Hi, how are you?” “Great! And you?” “So, what have you been up to?”
I just couldn’t. So I pretended not to know or notice him. He may have recognized me, or not. He may have been thinking the same thing as me – I won’t know now.
I think there was a Seinfeld episode about this phenomenon. Is there a statute of limitations on the social obligation to acknowledge an aquaintance? (I put this in the same category as those girls in college who reclaimed their virginity after going sexless for 6 months – uh, whatever!) We all know that person to whom we say “Hi” on the street, maybe have a quick chat, then it becomes just a smile and a nod, then at some point you just stop even doing that. You give up the effort all together. Sometimes it’s a deliberate social divorce, but usually, its just resignation. Why do we allow these lovely peripheral relationships to perish with neglect, I wonder?
Of course there is a new angle on this phenomena with the growth of the middle aged demographic hitting Facebook. All those people from high school who find and friend you – they haven’t seen, spoken to, or probably even given much thought to you in 25 years, and now they are privy to every random thought you feel compelled to post for public consumption.
At first, I was so excited with finding old friends that I did the “my life in a 100 words or less” routine with every friend added. Now, of course, the dew has dried on that rose. I still welcome new and old friends into my life, but now they must content themselves with stepping into the rhythm of my days as I, too, move in and out of the rhythm of theirs. That’s the nice thing about this social networking business. As for my old friend I saw across the crowded room, I can’t count on crossing his path again. If I ever do, maybe I’ll be braver, kinder, more deliberate, and less burdened by expectation or false obligation. Maybe I can just be present.
