More and more and more thoughts....
Tuesday, December 17, 2002 --  12:12pm
Posted by Bar


There's been so much on my mind this last month that I haven't been able to
write.  I feel as though everything is too personal; too tender; too angry;
too sad - whatever.  My emotions have been so intense that my writing has
been left to my journal and only sporadically.

But, I got an e-mail from Steve Stiert this morning which reminded me of the
relationship that we all have here on the internet, and that I want very
much to tend to it.  So, here I am.  I'm not sure where to start, but I know
I want to.  I know that I feel better when I write things here, and right
now, I would like very much to feel better.

I guess the holidays coming around is the general backdrop of my emotional
life.  I have always felt the nostalgia that accompanies Christmas and
Thanksgiving, but it's different this year.  Last year was the best
Christmas of my life; this year may well be the most difficult.

Peter and I differ in how we want to approach the season.  I feel compelled
to bulldoze through the rituals doing them as usual:  cutting a tree,
decorating it, buying presents etc etc.  Peter would prefer to skip all of
that and create a different kind of holiday this year.  I am deferring to
him because I think my bulldozing through grief is beginning to cost me.

Last week was the most difficult that I can remember.  I had six impossible
days in a row and basically functioned only enough to complete the most
pressing tasks.  I cried deeply.  I hurt.  I screamed.  I finally realized
the anger that I have been denying.  I hardly ate.  I found no comfort
anywhere.  It was awful and it didn't let up day after day.  Finally on
Friday, with a change of environment, my energy shifted.

We were invited to a synagogue south of here that celebrates on Friday
nights and then again on Saturday mornings.  I was asked to sing there and
to be present for their ritual of acknowledging the dead and to take part in
the weekly rituals of their community.  It was a remarkable journey into
foreign territory and we were better for it by the end of the 24 hour trip.
We felt loved and held and we were inspired to see the world with new eyes.
It was a gift that we needed and I am very grateful to have been a part of
their congregation and to have been so welcomed.

Peter and I are both suffering not only because the reality of Forrest's
absence is so real right now, but because another little boy here in
Woodstock has recently been diagnosed with a difficult form of leukemia.
His parents and family are friends of ours and we are following their story
very closely.  So much has come up because of their situation.

First, we have time now to live through our own journey in a way that we
could not have managed when Forrest was alive.  The initial shock of cancer
was so unbearable that we could not possibly process it when we were so
deeply immersed in it.  Now, as our friends experience that same terror and
shock, we can, from a distance, experience our own.  It is very, very
painful.  I guess you could say that I am finally taking the time to feel
sorrow for my own pain.  So many of you have observed my strength, and in so
many of your eyes I have seen such sadness for me.  In both cases I have not
understood what you were seeing.  I have always just done what I wanted to
do and what any mother would do:  love her child and do all that she can to
comfort and protect him.  There simply has not been time or focus for me to
tend to my self in the same way that I cared for Forrest.  None of us really
know how to take care of ourselves so well.  I am no exception.  Only now, I
am beginning to feel my own sorrow and my loss and the enormity of it all.
Until now, I have comforted myself with lofty (and true) ideas of faith and
understanding about what the bigger picture is.  I believe that there is
much more to all of life than we can experience from our human vantage
point.  I have survived on that belief.  Last week, all of that fell apart.
None of that held water for me at all, and I simply hurt like crazy.

I spent a fair amount of time thinking about our first night in the hospital
when we knew that Forrest was sick, but we didn't know it was cancer.  I was
exhausted and Forrest was too.  Peter had gone home to sleep while Forrest
and I settled in on a stretcher in the local emergency room waiting for a
bed to open up on the pediatric floor.  We were finally admitted at 2am
after a 6 hour wait in the Emergency Room.  When we finally got upstairs, I
was fried and ready just to rest quietly.  HA!  We got in the room and the
nurse on duty insisted that we weigh Forrest - which had already been done
twice in the ER.  He had FINALLY fallen asleep and needed desperately to be
asleep and I didn't want to disturb him at all, but she made me wake him up
for this useless procedure.  The hospital is run by the Catholic Church and
I found myself offended by the Crucifix hanging over the bed.  It was not a
comforting image at that moment - quite the reverse.  One of the first
questions the nurse asked me was whether I wanted to see a priest.  Needless
to say, her question was poorly timed.  I am not catholic and as far as I
was concerned at that moment, we were dealing with lack of sleep and
pneumonia - not something a priest needed to concern himself with.  She also
made me sign papers releasing the hospital from liability because I insisted
on sleeping in the bed with Forrest rather than putting him in the crib/cage
they offered on the other side of the room.

Now, I tell you all of this because my anger surfaced very powerfully this
week and I have to pose this question:  What was wrong with that picture??
I can tell you from my point of view:  Our nurse was unfeeling.  She was not
acting in a Christian way in any sense of the word.  She was not even acting
in what I would like to think of us a humanistic way.  For me, if there are
papers to be signed like the ones she made me sign, they should be signed by
parents who refuse to hold their children through the night when the terror
of hospital life is before them.  I also think it is very hurtful to
humanity for any one religion to force itself on any other person or group
of persons - especially when that person or persons is in distress.  My
anger raged because, to be honest, I was convinced that this tension that
arises out of religious audacity is the root of most of what ails us as a
species.  I asked out loud - and very loud indeed - is there any hope?  Can
we possibly live the principles that our religions teach us?  Are we forever
doomed to be un-feeling, un-loving, disconnected both from ourselves and
from God?  Isn't having a religion ultimately supposed to be about being
God-like?  Is there any hope?  Is there any hope?  I there any hope?  Why
did you take away my son - someone who embodied pure love - and leave behind
this miserable nurse who has no understanding of compassion at all?  All of
these thoughts and emotions were new to me.  It all just exploded out of me
and, pow, I was a basket case.

I am back on my feet again.  I can still get pretty angry about the nurse,
but I can also feel real compassion for her.  She was just doing her job,
and following the rules of the hospital.  That's what really makes me sad,
though:  the rules of the hospital.  They are based on fear, liability and
all of the things that alienate us from one another and from God.  They are
not based on Love.

I have been questioning around and around in my head how I can possibly help
the situation, and I conclude that my best action is to sing.  My most
effective and truist choice is to create music because it is the gift that I
have been given to give.

Steve asked me last night how to comfort another friend whose wife died a
couple of months ago.  My answer is always the same:  give Love.  Show
compassion.  Listen.  Acknowledge the person's pain - try not to make light
of it or encourage them to move on or let it go.  We all need to feel
everything that we feel.  We need to feel it and we need our friend's and
family to support us in our feelings.  (And I want to emphasize that the
'we' that I am referring to is not just those of us who are grieving; I'm
talking about all of us.)

I guess what I'm saying is that kindness is a great thing.

Finally, when we were visiting the Jewish Congregation on Friday night, we
were invited back to the rabbi's house to share in a glass of wine
afterwards.  It felt like an extension of the service that we had just taken
part in at the synagogue.  The rabbi told us that on Friday nights, she and
her husband and their children always express their love for one another
just to make sure that not a week goes by that that their love is not
verbalized.  They gathered in a warm embrace and spoke to each other as we
looked on.  Then the rabbi added that her husband always sings to her alone
on Friday nights; she sings to him on Saturdays.  They held one another, and
he quietly sang a Hebrew love song to her that was so powerful and so full
of attention and love, that I wished that all of us would do just that with
our loved ones once a week as well.  Can you imagine what the world would
feel like if we all took that two minutes a week and softened our armor
enough to be grateful that another person has chosen to be in our lives?

Wow!  Now that's a world that would feel right to me.  Their love and their
open expression of it softened all my despair about the state of the world.

I wish you all a very Merry Christmas.

Peace be with you,
Bar

I hope that it does not seem like I have singled-out the Catholic church
when I criticize our local hospital.  That is not the case.  I believe that
we are all responsible for who and what we are and that religious
organizations are a reflection of that reality.  I guess you could say that
I wish that our religious organizations reflected a more loving,
less-invasive image.