Nothing looks the same anymore. Maybe it’s still grief over my mother, and over several friends who have died in the last few years – one of them over twenty years ago who I have recently reconnected with.
It’s funny to phrase it that way, but it feels true. I had been stopping by the grave of one of my dear friends – filling her in on our crazy world now – and doing my best to let her know she’s loved and not forgotten.
I’m supposed to be writing an article for work, and I’ll get to it. It’s been such an orderly thing in my disorderly life.
I feel like a weirdo still grieving my mother’s passing. It was her time, after all. She got to live a long life, but it still came as a shock.
This has more to do with me now, I know that. I know it always had to do with me, really. I’m still here and she’s gone – on.
I’ve still not felt her around me. Maybe she’s left for parts unknown – or is just gone, if atheism is right.
Over the past year, it has taken a lifelong soul-sister friend to help me sort out what’s mine and what isn’t.
I had so much grief and rage.
I’m kind of surprised I’m still talking to any of my family members, but I think that’s guilt. I think it’s hope too, but at some point, it’s wiser to move on.
We were each others’ survival growing up as we were tossed about treacherous seas while those who were supposed to be in charge jumped ship. That forges a bond, even if it’s not ultimately healthy.
I love and loved my sisters dearly, but that affection was only really returned by one sister, who still told me her god is better than mine – and even though we got along the best – I know we can only share some of our heart now.
My friend told me I taught them how to treat me, and my acting differently will not cause them to respond well. In fact, I can expect them to act worse, or just continue as they’ve often been toward me.
Sometimes you get surprised for the better, and sometimes you find your true family outside of those you were born with.
Maybe it is my mother’s nudge from beyond this world that’s pushing me toward compatible love and friendship. At least it makes me feel better to think so.
You know how you ‘know’ how you probably should feel, or be, or do, but you feel otherwise?
Yeah, that’s where I am.
It’s not defiance. I don’t feel ‘choice’, it’s just how it is in this moment.
I understand feelings will shift, my attitude will likely change and I won’t have need of where I am – but when I’m here, I’m here.
And I’m angry that I have to manage the multitude in my head telling me why I shouldn’t be where I am emotionally, and then the litany of all I’ve ever screwed up, and opportunities I’ve missed – how, of course my life is not where I want it to be – look who I am.
What a shithead, right?!
I mean, if I could fire that jerk, and demand restitution for all it’s cost me – I’d bottle that and sell it – because I know I am not alone.
Not being alone in this miasma doesn’t have a ‘camaraderie’ feeling to it though. It’s not bested through others’ compassion, but only through self-compassion, and that is not currently in my skill set.
The best pharmacological offerings have not helped – and therapy does take the edge off – but this is a solo path, even though I desperately want company.
“The best way out is through,” as I have heard (and my inner rampaging self says to go screw yourself with your hollow platitudes).
And, yes, I know I’m arguing with myself, but it’s also all the therapists and self-help books that have not been the miracle cure I had hoped for.
Other wisdom reminds me that this is an ‘inside job’, and all I can think is that it would have been better to hire an expert.
“But you are an expert! You are the only expert on you!,” offers my cheery ‘friend’, who now has a black eye…
So, what am I going to do?
I’m going to go out and till the soil in the garden, because if I don’t do it, it won’t get done.
Also, speaking directly to my inner three-nager: I love you. I accept you. You matter to me, and it’s important to me that you get what you need.
Death, and death, and death, and death – mostly preventable had we had non-psychopathic, demented leadership.
Way too many were cool with that. Way too many.
Were they deluded, or are they psychopaths too?
What is the anger? White people fearing that black and brown people will treat them like they’ve been treated?
I used to love my country – thought it was good, and just, and moral.
I didn’t know how naïve I was.
Did I forget Hiroshima and Nagasaki? WTF is wrong with me?
I believed a lie, but I still don’t want to kill black and brown people. I still don’t think white supremacy is the way, the light, the truth. Jesus was brown – deal with it.
I’m still good with socialist aspects of our capitalistic, ‘democratic’ republic. I believe roads, schools, police, fire, ambulance, non-profit hospitals, and all the other things we pay for through taxes, are worth it.
I’m a citizen. Don’t put me in your stupid box so you can dehumanize and demean me. I care about you getting what you need too, even if you suck.
We’ve been ever inching toward the ‘kill or be killed, survive or die’ wilderness.
The funny thing is you all need each other – you all find belonging in your hatred and disgust of those who get your nickel of support each week so that those without can barely survive another week.
Your absurdist argument of not wanting anyone to take your hard-earned money has been a joke since taxes were instituted. Turn your guns on those above you – the ones who are actually responsible for your misery.
Those below you are not sucking you dry, or even having a good life at your expense.
It is the rich folk, stupid. They are the ones who escape paying taxes, who are never audited, who, if not gleefully, purposely keep you impoverished. They are taking way more than your nickle a week.
They take 99% of the pie, and leave us scrabbling over the 1%.
But you can’t do anything about them, can you? So you beat up those with less to make yourself feel better.
Well, organize. Get those below you to join in your cause of being left behind because there is actually something we can do.
Stop giving those fucks your money. Stop buying their stuff.
Join co-ops for what you need – get local. Stop feeding the corporate beast, and one day, soon enough, they will falter.
Or keep doing what you’re doing, and die as angry as you are now. At least those fuckers will regret getting your nickle.
She’s been calling me for days. I thought I was making it up, but she is persistent.
Go see Mom.
“She’s not there,” I think. “You’re just chasing a memory. You’ll go and the stinky, moldy trailer will be empty, and cold, and you will leave empty and cold.”
“Go anyway.”
“Why, Mom?”
“Because I’m lonely.”
Wait, she’s lonely? I thought she could come see me anytime. I thought that when you’re in spirit, you’re free? Maybe there are things that need to be righted though. Maybe there is unfinished business.
Maybe those final days there were not days she would have wished for. It was not how she wanted to leave it. And my presence will bring love and companionship, even if for a minute.
It will suffice.
And I will keep going back, Mom, even if I’m making it up. I’ll keep going back to say hi until there are no more reasons to go, or no more tears to shed – I guess? I honestly feel like this isn’t just me.
That was your heaven on earth, you said. So I will visit your temple.
I will enter in prayer, and I will leave in prayer.
I wish you peace. I wish you abundant love. I wish you goodness, and light, and laughter all of your existence.
Joni Mitchell has been singing to me too, Mom:
“It’s coming on Christmas They’re cutting down trees They’re putting up reindeer And singing songs of joy and peace Oh I wish I had a river I could skate away on.”
The sun shines brightly over the brown, leafless trees outside the kitchen window. A breeze ruffles the tan stalks of grass and hay poking up in patches of the neighbors back property like several days of stubble growth on earth’s face. The blue sky rimmed with white and grey clouds gathered near the horizon makes me think of the soft summer days recently erased – an artist ever changing its mind.
The chug of the tractor’s engine is heard well before the machine trundles into view. The stack of wood will warm us as the evening chill descends.
Ever turning.
Ever turning.
Each day a chance for a different thought, a different choice – until the chugging of my own heart ceases – and all the fuel has left my body.
Until then, my machine needs the same care any aging machine does – I can no longer skimp on maintenance.
Seeing myself with the same respectful reverence I have for that eighty year old tractor is a hard sell for me, but I keep trying.
Earlier this year I was determined to skip the holidays and go hang out with my friend in Arizona until my inner storm blew over.
I couldn’t afford it, but I think I should have anyway. I should have gone the American way and put it on a credit card I’ll pay off for the next decade, but it would have been worth it.
Instead, I psyched myself up to make all these dishes tonight that I’ve never made before, and tomorrow we’ll cook a turkey, and be with my partner and his parents. I charged in doing the holiday thing, full steam ahead, and made biscuits and a cranberry orange relish, and stuffing, and cleaned up after myself, and then I broke down.
I glanced at the TV while I worked and saw an advertisement with some blue water in the background – maybe it was for beer, or maybe some tropical get away place – and I suddenly saw how fake everything is. Just stupid and pointless and it’s all made up. Life is just a big lie.
I should have gone to Arizona.
I told my partner we’re done – and not because of us, but because it’s all pointless, and I hate being here, and then I remembered last year.
My mom had been staying with one of my sisters, recuperating from a shoulder surgery in September, and we all met at my other sister’s house in Vermont for Thanksgiving.
I just wanted to be near my mom. So much so that I pulled up a stool to sit in front of her, and she sort of balked at me doing that.
It was a bit odd, but she had just been away for about two months, and I was glad to see her – but the subtext was an urgency to get whatever time I could with her.
Look, I know my mom was older, and didn’t take the best care of herself, but she fucking said she was going to live to 103 to beat her father’s lifespan by a year. All my life that is what she said. All my life.
So I can be forgiven for being crushed that she died at 89, alright?
I am grateful she lived that long, and things were far from perfect for most of my growing up, but we worked through so much baggage when I became a mom. She really stepped up for me. Selfish, self-centered, lost, clueless, traumatized me who needed a mom more than my son needed a grandmother, and she did both.
She showed up, and she stayed for months. She taught me how to be a mother in some ways – in the better ways. She loved being grandma.
I really miss her, and I intensely dislike the holiday season, and I don’t think I care to be in the world either.
I should have saved her somehow, but really, I should have gone to Arizona.
The hollowing out of public education – no longer teaching civics and good citizenship – and those in power feeding our fears, telling us to fear anyone who does not look, act, or believe as we do.
So much is happening around us it is overwhelming – on purpose.
As one person we cannot possibly hold onto all the terror.
Hitler rose to power and was followed so fervently because he, like Trump, knew how to manipulate and feed into fear. How is 150,000, and counting, dead Americans acceptable? How is taking children and babies from their mothers and families for seeking a better life in America not reviled?
Trump successfully got people to believe “those” people are the rapists, murderers, gang members, looters, lazy grifters – when he is credibly accused, with current court proceedings against him by at least 2 women, backed up by at least 32 other women, of rape and molestation, and several of those he harmed were children. He has robbed people of their wealth, and his wealthy ‘gang’ is wreaking havoc across our nation. I’d rather see a territorial street gang in one city, than a cross-country crime spree USING OUR MONEY!
But that does not bother anyone? That does not disqualify him?
Learned helplessness is a thing. But I am not helpless. There are answers, and they are not easy, and they require dedication and sacrifice – sometimes our lives – but not one movement has changed anything without great disruption to the status quo. My right to vote was granted through spilled blood. Our right to direct representation was a desperate fight.
We are there. Oppressed people, and thankfully their allies, have come to the point where their oppression is so onerous that they would rather die fighting mob and dictatorial rule than be stomped on anymore.
And the resistance to their uprising among other, mostly ignorant, citizens is painful to witness.
We are so good at xenophobic responses when it is the people who look like America’s idea of the “right” color and class status doing the greatest harm.
Yeah, I could calm down and go for a walk or something, and I do step away and recharge, but this is not ending.
Maybe this is what my life has been all about. I have seen the writing on the wall since I was young. I did not witness an assassinated President, and his brother, or Martin Luther King, or Malcolm X, or any other freedom fighters in our nation, but notice how the ones who are killed are fighting oppression.
Other modern presidents have had assassination attempts, such as Reagan, but it was a crazed person, not a coordinated effort to kill his message or movement.
This world is ruled by evil, but good gets to moderate it as best we can. I am sure I contribute to the evil in ways I might not even realize, but I am championing good to win.
Our summer has been hot and humid – and I’ve already heard “Hot enough for ya?” greetings where a nod and a commiserating look suffices in answer.
We have been edging into drought since late May again for the third year in a row. There was no rain for over a month, but then a string of storms descended, like a fire hose on a match, and the town crews got busy removing felled branches and trees in the aftermath, while the electric company restores power, and residents clean up their yards and assess damage to their gardens or land.
We were lucky. Our garden sits to the side of the house, looking like it has no idea what the bother was.
Our neighbor’s weren’t so lucky.
A large tree crashed down, gouging into a long swath of the neighbor’s prized asparagus patch, the tree branches swiping through most of the row of blackberry bushes he planted last fall – sending not-quite-ripe berries scattered through their yard. Their asparagus which had grown tall and spindly with seeds, is no more. The roots are deep though, and next spring will likely see a new crop – and if the neighbors are brave, they’ll plant blackberry bushes again.
We pick ourselves back up and move on, if we haven’t been flattened. Maybe pieces were scattered over our soul’s yard – crumpled, raw, and overwhelming to look at, but we start somewhere. Maybe picking up bigger pieces and try to salvage whatever we can.
The job is too big for a day, and time fills in with other necessary tasks, and days turn to weeks turn to months – but we see it out there. It’s not going anywhere until we do something about it.
After inspecting our oblivious growing garden, I pull on my work gloves and start picking up branches and twigs in the neighbor’s yard and put them on the burn pile for next spring.
My neighbor is pushing bigger limbs with his tractor back into the tangle of vines and poplar trees that line the back of his property. I wave and smile and after he’s through we look at the damage together.
“Could have been worse,” he says with a grimace.
“Could have been better too,” I think, but just give a sympathetic smile and return to picking up some of the debris before heading back into the coolness of my house.
“Mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom!” I just kept saying it over and over for several days, as if I could conjure you. I was lost. My guttural howls could not take away the emptiness.
I knew I would not be prepared. How could I be?
I thought our relationship was solid and clean, but regret has inched in anyway. Why couldn’t I save you? Did I do enough? Was I a good daughter, Mom? Did you feel loved and cared about?
You were.
I am limited, and I wish with all my heart I could have made your life better. I never got beyond thinking about how to do that, and everything we talked about doing felt like moving a mountain.
I imagine you’re free and flying around in the spirit world – or have you reincarnated (which was your fervent desire)?
Doe taking direction from Jerri – “Come on, Mom, it’ll be hilarious!”Doe having a great time: “Take the damn picture,” she said.
It breaks my heart to think you might have stepped into another life – abandoning me again. I was too much for you – your children were too much – so you left, even if not physically. I was a child and needed you Mom. All your children needed you. I still feel like I need you.
I can understand how difficult your life was, and I know you loved us, but love is also a verb.
I forgave you as life went on, and I thought we got whole. I guess the onion metaphor is apt, but how many damn layers are there?
You did make living amends when I had my son, your only grandson. You were such a great grandmother. You helped heal so many of my childhood wounds, but your passing opened them again.
Grandma Doe with AustenDoe with her daughters and grandson 2017
I wanted you to be here my whole life, as unrealistic as that is. I would have kept you suffering in your painful body for my selfish desire to have you near me, like I owned you or something. Like you somehow belonged to me – and I think that’s a trauma bit from when I was so very little, and so much terribleness was happening in our family, and in the world – just like it is again.
You’re lucky Mom. You got out. You’re not suffering anymore.
Do you miss being here though? Or is it better “there”? Where is“there”? Are you conscious? Is consciousness outside of the body, and we just believe it’s in the brain, or are you completely gone?
Please forgive me for my lack, Mom. Please forgive what I couldn’t manage. I don’t know if it was my job to make life the best it could be for you, but it feels like I failed you.
I liked our conversations and our mostly shared values and morals. I am grateful for the time I got with you. I am so glad I was close enough physically and emotionally to help you and spend time with you regularly.
Doe and Jerri in 2010Laurel Lake swim day
I had wanted to do a “Tuesdays with Morrie” thing with you, but never got it together. I was going to call it “Wednesdays with Mom.” I have never been accused of being original.
Today is Wednesday, so, I guess I’ve begun. If you’re answering me, I’m too dull to hear it. I keep waiting for a sign that you’re still around, but I would doubt whatever you would send me anyway – and you probably know that – so why waste your energy?
Energy is something I absolutely know you still have because of the first law of thermodynamics: energy is neither created nor destroyed. It can only change form or increase. Physicist I am not. I don’t even understand much of it beyond the simplest of terms. Not that I don’t try. I blame my love of standing in front of Dad’s Lincoln Continental and breathing in the leaded gas fumes coming out of the car’s grill for my intelligence deficits. Sweet Jesus, why didn’t anyone stop me? I was 5? Did you even know about that, Mom? I doubt it.
Now, of course, we know that the leaded gas was spewing toxic lead into the air and landing everywhere, especially into my tender lungs and organs and bones as I stood there breathing deeply.
You wanted to make it to 103 years to best your Dad’s 102 years on earth, but you missed 90 by two months instead. Still, not a bad stretch.
I believed you though. My whole life you repeated that like a mantra. You were going to live to 103. It was just a fact we all accepted. You seemed to know, but obviously it was just hope.
Doe March 22, 1930 – January 2, 2020
And maybe you would have made that milestone if you didn’t drink so much, or if you had let us clean up your mildewing/ moldy stuff trailer while you lived – or if I was able to follow through on getting you a new-to-you trailer, or a tiny house that could have given you those 13 more years?
I know that what I was able to do was worthwhile. I have some sweet memories to savor. My job now is to keep the bitterness from spoiling them.
I love you Mom.
Doe circa 1936High School graduation 1947Doe 1950 something
Making A Way 