Diving in

So I started reading Bono: in conversation with Michka Assayas tonight. Bono is a character that I've always been a little ambivalent about. You know, he's kind of sexy in that intelligent rocker sort of way but also a little off-putting in his in-your-face approach to saving the world (or at least Africa).

Don't get me wrong, I didn't lay awake at night contemplating my personal relationship with Bono's place in the world. But he has always been intriguing. Plus, hello, I am a child of the 80s and who didn't love The Joshua Tree, right? So after a friend shared this link, which excerpts the book in the context of Bono's thoughts on God, Jesus, faith, and grace, my curiosity was piqued even more.

Which brings us to tonight. And much to my surprise, here is how we've started:

"...To be serious for a second, I thought I had gotten away from my father's death. I thought I had escaped lightly into busyness and family. I've always considered myself good at wailing - "keening" we call it in Ireland. But, as it turns out, I'm better at other people's tragedies. There's no obvious drama in the slow extinguishing of a well-lived life to a common scourge like cancer, but it had a dramatic effect on me and seems to have set off some kind of chain reaction."

Lordy. And I'm not even into Chapter 1.

So I think Bono and I have a lot more to discuss than just thoughts on God and Jesus and faith and grace. I also think he's going to be a lot more eloquent about it than I could ever be.

There's no obvious drama in the slow extinguishing of a well-lived life to a common scourge like cancer, but it had a dramatic effect on me and seems to have set off some kind of chain reaction.

Amen, Bono. Amen.

Tonight I started writing

I've thought about writing a lot, and here's the funny thing: Thinking about writing doesn't make you a writer.

Profound, right?

Like most other things I do and enjoy, I don't consider myself an especially gifted writer. I don't dream up stories of suspense or fantasy and I can't imagine why anyone would want to read my thoughts or opinions or recollections. I share those here mostly for the benefit of my daughter, because I don't want to leave her with all the unanswered questions that my mother left me.

I spend a lot of time thinking about Mom. In May she will be gone for five years. It seems unimaginable. Even though those days feel like they have only just passed, the truth is that life has been impossibly full for my bother, sister and me. Mine alone has experienced Sara's birth, Dad's illness and death, a new job, hard lessons in marriage, and a soul-crushing home renovation that I swear I might turn into a Wagnerian opera one day. (I think I'll start wearing the Brünnhilde horns around the house for a little inspiration.)

Time was supposed to be the thing that helped me make peace with Mom's death. But here I sit, four and a half years later, reliving the night that we said goodbye to her while tucking my daughter into bed. It's just as real now as it was that evening -- and let me tell you, I wasn't all that wild about it the first time around. Death, my friends, is for the birds.

So I'm going back to an old technique that someone suggested to me several years ago, one I've tried before with a fair degree of success: I'm writing it out. I'm going to take it out of my heart and put it to the page, where it can stay forever safe but not rise up to choke me when I least expect it. Death and dying may have a grip on me, but to be honest in many ways Mom's final days were more than most people could hope for. She was surrounded by so many people that she loved and died holding the hands of her children. We were all so lucky, really.

But lucky is not how I feel when I am in the throes of remembering it all. "Feeling lucky" is actually probably way too much to ask for. Maybe I can aim for "grateful," or "at peace" or even "OK." I will happily take any one of them.

Through this process I hope not only to get the sharpness of grief out of my system but also to gather together my memories of her so I never forget that Mom was more than just her death. I don't want to forget who she really was because I want Sara to know her namesake. She has big shoes to fill, my little girl -- and I don't just mean Mom's size 10s. Our mother, though she never would have recognized it, has a story to tell and I think it's a good one. And so, I'm going to try and tell it.

Tonight I stopped thinking and started writing. For me and for Sara, and for the story Mom had to tell. I hope I can do it justice. And who knows? Maybe this will make a writer out of me yet.

Christmas flowers, lilacs, and marigolds

Rob took Sara out to Shades State Park today, just because it was Thursday and he could. They love their T-days together and the adventures that ensue.

As they were driving home they passed a cemetery. Sara said "That's where we take flowers to Grandma," remembering our occasional trips to Mom and Dad's condos over the years, clearing away the old blooms and leaving something new.

Rob corrected her, saying that yes, we take flowers to Grandma -- but not there. Some other little girls had taken flowers to their grandmothers at this cemetery. Sara thought about it for a second, then announced that she wanted to take Christmas flowers to Grandma this year.

And then, "I miss Grandma."

He called me at work, right after this conversation, to tell me what she had said. And of course I cried. (Of course I did.) Not so much because I miss Mom -- though I do, every day -- but because Sara never got a chance to know her. But even so, she loves her. She misses her. And I believe she misses Mom every bit as much as I do, as much as her tender little free-and-a-half year old heart will allow. I can't wait to pick out those Christmas flowers with her and remember Mom together, telling her how Christmas was Mom's favorite time of year, and how flowers were one of her most favorite things. Somehow in the remembering, there is a little less missing.

Sara went on to talk about all the things she wants in her garden next year, sounding very much like her namesake. "I am going to plant all the flowers I love like lilacs and marigolds, and Mama will plant veg-uh-tuh-bles, and Papa will plant fruits."

Mom would just love this girl. Love her. They would be peas and carrots, those two. I'm just so sorry they had to miss it.

Romans 8:26

In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness.

We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself

intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express.

Tonight,

rather than dwell on all the things I want (but don't need),

or recount all the things that I have (but don't deserve),

I am setting aside my mind's idle chatter

and praying for a family that has shouldered more grief than I can imagine.

I don't have adequate words for them. Thankfully, I don't have to.

Grief, you're a tricky bastard

A colleague called yesterday to tell me she had just learned that her sister has a brain tumor. It is aggressive, and does not respond well to treatment. The prognosis is poor.

She is 38, and has two children -- 7 and 11.

Her grief is not mine, but her circumstance brings my own right back to the surface. I understand the helplessness she feels, the anxiety of knowing too much but not enough. Cancer is a sonofabitch; brain cancer, the worst. The treatment robs patients of themselves without offering much in return. It seemed to me to be a relentless undoing of a life, a slow unraveling that all of us -- even Mom -- had to witness every day. It was awful for everyone.

Watching my mother die from that hideous disease changed me; I don't know how it couldn't. To this day I have a single, horrible memory of Mom that defines the entire illness for me, one I'm afraid I'll never be able to shake. It was a moment that captured every feeling of guilt and desperation and confusion that I experienced over all those months; but worse still it was the moment I saw my mother losing herself, so far away and yet stranded here in a body that was destroying her.

I still feel the same nauseating helplessness now as I did that day. I still feel the shame of just wanting to leave, because it was easier than facing her. I still feel like the little girl who's been separated from her mother and is crying for her, desperately looking for her -- only I know I'll never find her again.

About two years ago I ran into an old professor. She was speaking at a conference I was attending, discussing the role that emotion plays in how therapists work with their patients and families. Ever since Mom's illness I had been experiencing this first hand. Whether it was discussing feeding tubes with the parents of toddlers or end-of-life considerations with the elderly, my professional judgement was colored by my journey with Mom. I just couldn't handle another difficult conversation that would inevitably lead me to tears.

Hope and I talked for a long time after her presentation. We talked a bit about the "old days" but mostly about our families. It was clear to her that my loss was still fresh despite the time that had passed. She told me I had to work through the grief.

And I explained to her that I wasn't all that inclined to do so, thank you very much.

But I know she's right, even if I don't really know what it means to "work through the grief." Time seems to help some and so does Sara, who talks about her grandparents as though they are simply living in a magical place even further away than Pennsylvania -- which to her is very, very far away. I have purposely laced some of my old family rituals into our lives today, and this seems to be both comforting and comfortable, and feels like an acknowledgement of who Mom and Dad were and what they left with me. As life goes on the good memories outweigh the bad and I can remember the past without feeling robbed of it.

Until I get that phone call, and I hear in someone else's voice the fear and helplessness that is still so close at hand. And then grief gets the best of me again.

I guess I still have work to do.