Always Saying Goodbye
(This one is very long and gets kind of sad. Sorry.)
Another long awaited day for my daughter arrived this week. Her Florida trip.
This is an end of the year trip that is offered to 8th graders graduating from the middle school to go on a five day tour of the Orlando area including Disney World. It has a quasi-science element to it to give it that educational feel----the learning opportunities of Epcot center, NASA, Busch Gardens and Sea World. Not being a complete cynic, I do feel that there will be some learning going on but I don’t know that any one on the trip could write a paper on what they learned after they return. I really think the learning will come in the form of a step closer to adulthood as these kids prove to themselves that they can operate for several day so far away from home in a responsible way. My little girl's world will get a little bigger over the next 5 day.
The painful side of this departure was that it happened at 2:45 last Wednesday morning. We had our first read through of this play I’m working on with my wife that Tuesday night (which I will detail a little later, I promise). I came home and got everyone tucked in and put my self to bed around 10. I set the alarm for 2 a.m. but ended up waking up every hour with the same thought shooting through my half conscious brain, “Oh my gosh, what time is it!” It was always long before I was supposed to get up, of course. But there was something programmed into the back of my mind that wasn’t going to let all the cash Grandma and Grandpa and Mom and Dad put up for this thing get flushed down the toilet on account of an alarm malfunction.
I got her to the school in plenty of time. She was buzzing. Her mother had wisely devised a plan to get her the sleep she needed to start this trip. Kitten was given a sleeping pill and put to bed a 7 pm. She told me she lay there for an hour while the pill battled the adrenaline coursing through her body. The pill finally won and she woke fairly refresh and excited at 2 am. The rest of the group at the bus loading point had gotten considerably less sleep but were equally excited. I looked around at this group of young people taking their next step toward becoming grown-ups and thought that they probably didn’t even realize it. I recognized people that we had known since Kitten was in 1st grade, their little kid features I remembered were now all stretched out into big people. Some of them looked positively adult already, but some still had that child like flair about them. The diversity was broader than you would expect. You could definately see who would be constantly carded in college.
I came home and my wife and I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling trying to get back to sleep, but all we could think about was that our daughter was stepping into another place in her life. And doing it without us.
I finally drifted off, which was good because I had to get up early then next morning and get ready to say a different kind of good-bye. I would be attending the funeral of my life-long neighbor from childhood. A sad departure of a treasured individual, but also a shift in a much larger picture for me.
He was the quintessential neighbor. A little older than my folks, he and his wife had been there to welcome us when we moved to the neighborhood in the eary 1970s. I was 3, and my folks were proud young parents. As I grew up, he and his wife were this pair that personified the shared-side-yard friends of the family. Even their names, Joe and Donna, were melded in my mind as a single unit; as inseperable as peanutbutter and jelly and Donny and Marie. Jovial, they were constantly full of smiles and caring. We shared Christmas parties, garage sales, and spring breakfast picnics on the patio with them.
My earliest memories are of him sitting in the gravel back alley that split our block down the center, in the fading light of summer, sharing a spool table with the older man across the alley named Luther. They would sit there after a hard day of working and share a beer. Luther would take out his trumpet and fill the neighborhood with some gentle smooth jazz strains as the twilight faded to darkness.
Joe would never turn a kid away that wanted to stand at his open garage doors and ask him perpetual questions about what he was doing. The little kids my mom watches now would called him Quack-Quack. I'm not sure how that got started but whenever he got caught on the walk from his garage to his house, the kids playing in my mom's backyard would see him and call out "Hey Quack-Quack"! He would respond with a quacking that sounded like the noise the Penguin would make on the 70s Batman T.V. series. That was always a hit with the knee high crowd.
With his passing, and institution disappears from my life. I heard it said once that when an older person dies, a library burns to the ground. For me, it was like a momument and landmark had suddenly vanished. It was as significant to the landscape of my psyche as the absense of the Trade Centers from the NYC skyline. Joe, the friend and neighbor icon exists now only in my heart and memory.
As I've gotten older it seems like my life is filled with too many good-byes. I've helped my children deal with emotional devestation of a good frined moving away for the first time. I remembered that feeling well. How unfair that life could rip something away from you that you depended on so much. As life progressed, I saw people move out of my life more and more. I have never been hesitant to invest myself in people, but with more and more departures it grows increasingly difficult.
With the years of graduations, changes of jobs, the changes of shifts, people pursuing careers, and now people passing, it begins to feel that nothing is constant like you needed it to be when you were 7 or 8 or 9 or 10---and still kind of do. I've been fairly fortunate that I've had most of my relatives live very full lives. There has been very little tradgy. But now what that translates to a large group of people who I love very much, whom I'll have to say farewell to probably in a fairly short span of time. A span of time that is a gauntlet though which I don't want to pass.
I don't do grief well. I discovered this when my father in law passed away. As we walked to the funeral home my mood was a stark contrast to the sunny blue sky that crowned that day. But it was a state of sadness that I expected, and felt I could manage. The choke in the throat, the wetness in the eyes, the heaviness inside. I felt it all, but I could control my display to be brave for those around me.
When we went to the viewing it was uncomfortable, but we quietly paid our respects. My wife excused herself, and I saw her sister who I wanted to hug in a gesture of comfort. I put my arms around her neck and we held each other tight.
Then from somewhere I heard something. I've encountered before where a person, usually on T.V., says a phrase something like, "I heard screaming and then realized it was me". I often dismissed this as being exageration for effect. But this day it was true. I heard a mornful howl, and when it grew loud enough to be uncomfortable, I was shocked to realize that I was doing it. I was howling with grief.
I swear, I didn't even feel it. Not in my chest or my throat. It came from a hollow unknown place deep down that was both outside me and inside me. It took me over so completely that I could only succomb to it, a part of me standing back and watching in confusion. Then it crashed over me so I could finally feel it. Tears poured down my face, chest heaving.
My sister in law clutched me tighter as I came unglued in her arms. My wife came running back in shock, bewilderd because I'd given no sign that her young father's death (he was only in his 40s) was effecting me so profoundly. How could she have known? I didn't know it myself. Her family pulled me aisde to sit down. I sat there on this too clean couch and babbled like an idiot to my wife's uncle and step-brother. I just sat there, analzying what was going on like I was back in a class at college. It was completely inappropriate but I couldn't stop. It helped to calm the tremors.
The same thing happened again at my Grandmother's funeral. I told my family that I wouldn't go into the viewing. But finally I did, because I knew how much it meant to my Mom. When the grief took over again, my father and brother kindly pulled me aside and spoke words of comfort in an attempt to calm me. I know that they did it out of love and concern, but this thing didn't come from a place rational words could touch. It didn't come from a place that words could touch at all. It felt as primal and ancient as morners of the first Passover, and as epic as the voices of each person clutching a loved on on the beaches of the Indian Ocean tsunami.
It was a storm that had to be weathered. Take cover and stay away from windows and outside walls.
It only seems to happen when I view the body. I was thankful that Joe had requested a closed casket. I helped my mother display photos of his life in the basement. That's the way I wanted to remember him. The way I wanted to miss him. I felt the lump. I wiped my ears. Leter, I held my mother as some tears pushed through her brave face for a someone who would leave an unfillable hole right outside the windows of their home.
I could feel this kind of grief. I could brace against it. It hurt when I swallowed but I could feel it. I knew this sadness and it was o.k.
The scary ting to me is that these are all people who I cared deeply for, but who were not intimately involved in my everyday life. I saw them occasionally, and enjoyed these rarer visits. The people I have yet to lose are more intimately intwined with my life than my own molars.
I woke in the middle of the night last Saturday and couldn't get back to sleep. I went to the couch and shed a few quiet tears for this loss. I shed a couple more at the overwhelming thought of the grief I have yet to bear. I pray to God for strength when the time comes. I prayed for it now for those currently experiencing loss.
I felt a the pain and irony expressed in quote I read on A Mindful Life very accutely that night:
Another long awaited day for my daughter arrived this week. Her Florida trip.
This is an end of the year trip that is offered to 8th graders graduating from the middle school to go on a five day tour of the Orlando area including Disney World. It has a quasi-science element to it to give it that educational feel----the learning opportunities of Epcot center, NASA, Busch Gardens and Sea World. Not being a complete cynic, I do feel that there will be some learning going on but I don’t know that any one on the trip could write a paper on what they learned after they return. I really think the learning will come in the form of a step closer to adulthood as these kids prove to themselves that they can operate for several day so far away from home in a responsible way. My little girl's world will get a little bigger over the next 5 day.
The painful side of this departure was that it happened at 2:45 last Wednesday morning. We had our first read through of this play I’m working on with my wife that Tuesday night (which I will detail a little later, I promise). I came home and got everyone tucked in and put my self to bed around 10. I set the alarm for 2 a.m. but ended up waking up every hour with the same thought shooting through my half conscious brain, “Oh my gosh, what time is it!” It was always long before I was supposed to get up, of course. But there was something programmed into the back of my mind that wasn’t going to let all the cash Grandma and Grandpa and Mom and Dad put up for this thing get flushed down the toilet on account of an alarm malfunction.
I got her to the school in plenty of time. She was buzzing. Her mother had wisely devised a plan to get her the sleep she needed to start this trip. Kitten was given a sleeping pill and put to bed a 7 pm. She told me she lay there for an hour while the pill battled the adrenaline coursing through her body. The pill finally won and she woke fairly refresh and excited at 2 am. The rest of the group at the bus loading point had gotten considerably less sleep but were equally excited. I looked around at this group of young people taking their next step toward becoming grown-ups and thought that they probably didn’t even realize it. I recognized people that we had known since Kitten was in 1st grade, their little kid features I remembered were now all stretched out into big people. Some of them looked positively adult already, but some still had that child like flair about them. The diversity was broader than you would expect. You could definately see who would be constantly carded in college.
I came home and my wife and I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling trying to get back to sleep, but all we could think about was that our daughter was stepping into another place in her life. And doing it without us.
I finally drifted off, which was good because I had to get up early then next morning and get ready to say a different kind of good-bye. I would be attending the funeral of my life-long neighbor from childhood. A sad departure of a treasured individual, but also a shift in a much larger picture for me.
He was the quintessential neighbor. A little older than my folks, he and his wife had been there to welcome us when we moved to the neighborhood in the eary 1970s. I was 3, and my folks were proud young parents. As I grew up, he and his wife were this pair that personified the shared-side-yard friends of the family. Even their names, Joe and Donna, were melded in my mind as a single unit; as inseperable as peanutbutter and jelly and Donny and Marie. Jovial, they were constantly full of smiles and caring. We shared Christmas parties, garage sales, and spring breakfast picnics on the patio with them.
My earliest memories are of him sitting in the gravel back alley that split our block down the center, in the fading light of summer, sharing a spool table with the older man across the alley named Luther. They would sit there after a hard day of working and share a beer. Luther would take out his trumpet and fill the neighborhood with some gentle smooth jazz strains as the twilight faded to darkness.
Joe would never turn a kid away that wanted to stand at his open garage doors and ask him perpetual questions about what he was doing. The little kids my mom watches now would called him Quack-Quack. I'm not sure how that got started but whenever he got caught on the walk from his garage to his house, the kids playing in my mom's backyard would see him and call out "Hey Quack-Quack"! He would respond with a quacking that sounded like the noise the Penguin would make on the 70s Batman T.V. series. That was always a hit with the knee high crowd.
With his passing, and institution disappears from my life. I heard it said once that when an older person dies, a library burns to the ground. For me, it was like a momument and landmark had suddenly vanished. It was as significant to the landscape of my psyche as the absense of the Trade Centers from the NYC skyline. Joe, the friend and neighbor icon exists now only in my heart and memory.
As I've gotten older it seems like my life is filled with too many good-byes. I've helped my children deal with emotional devestation of a good frined moving away for the first time. I remembered that feeling well. How unfair that life could rip something away from you that you depended on so much. As life progressed, I saw people move out of my life more and more. I have never been hesitant to invest myself in people, but with more and more departures it grows increasingly difficult.
With the years of graduations, changes of jobs, the changes of shifts, people pursuing careers, and now people passing, it begins to feel that nothing is constant like you needed it to be when you were 7 or 8 or 9 or 10---and still kind of do. I've been fairly fortunate that I've had most of my relatives live very full lives. There has been very little tradgy. But now what that translates to a large group of people who I love very much, whom I'll have to say farewell to probably in a fairly short span of time. A span of time that is a gauntlet though which I don't want to pass.
I don't do grief well. I discovered this when my father in law passed away. As we walked to the funeral home my mood was a stark contrast to the sunny blue sky that crowned that day. But it was a state of sadness that I expected, and felt I could manage. The choke in the throat, the wetness in the eyes, the heaviness inside. I felt it all, but I could control my display to be brave for those around me.
When we went to the viewing it was uncomfortable, but we quietly paid our respects. My wife excused herself, and I saw her sister who I wanted to hug in a gesture of comfort. I put my arms around her neck and we held each other tight.
Then from somewhere I heard something. I've encountered before where a person, usually on T.V., says a phrase something like, "I heard screaming and then realized it was me". I often dismissed this as being exageration for effect. But this day it was true. I heard a mornful howl, and when it grew loud enough to be uncomfortable, I was shocked to realize that I was doing it. I was howling with grief.
I swear, I didn't even feel it. Not in my chest or my throat. It came from a hollow unknown place deep down that was both outside me and inside me. It took me over so completely that I could only succomb to it, a part of me standing back and watching in confusion. Then it crashed over me so I could finally feel it. Tears poured down my face, chest heaving.
My sister in law clutched me tighter as I came unglued in her arms. My wife came running back in shock, bewilderd because I'd given no sign that her young father's death (he was only in his 40s) was effecting me so profoundly. How could she have known? I didn't know it myself. Her family pulled me aisde to sit down. I sat there on this too clean couch and babbled like an idiot to my wife's uncle and step-brother. I just sat there, analzying what was going on like I was back in a class at college. It was completely inappropriate but I couldn't stop. It helped to calm the tremors.
The same thing happened again at my Grandmother's funeral. I told my family that I wouldn't go into the viewing. But finally I did, because I knew how much it meant to my Mom. When the grief took over again, my father and brother kindly pulled me aside and spoke words of comfort in an attempt to calm me. I know that they did it out of love and concern, but this thing didn't come from a place rational words could touch. It didn't come from a place that words could touch at all. It felt as primal and ancient as morners of the first Passover, and as epic as the voices of each person clutching a loved on on the beaches of the Indian Ocean tsunami.
It was a storm that had to be weathered. Take cover and stay away from windows and outside walls.
It only seems to happen when I view the body. I was thankful that Joe had requested a closed casket. I helped my mother display photos of his life in the basement. That's the way I wanted to remember him. The way I wanted to miss him. I felt the lump. I wiped my ears. Leter, I held my mother as some tears pushed through her brave face for a someone who would leave an unfillable hole right outside the windows of their home.
I could feel this kind of grief. I could brace against it. It hurt when I swallowed but I could feel it. I knew this sadness and it was o.k.
The scary ting to me is that these are all people who I cared deeply for, but who were not intimately involved in my everyday life. I saw them occasionally, and enjoyed these rarer visits. The people I have yet to lose are more intimately intwined with my life than my own molars.
I woke in the middle of the night last Saturday and couldn't get back to sleep. I went to the couch and shed a few quiet tears for this loss. I shed a couple more at the overwhelming thought of the grief I have yet to bear. I pray to God for strength when the time comes. I prayed for it now for those currently experiencing loss.
I felt a the pain and irony expressed in quote I read on A Mindful Life very accutely that night:
To live in this world, you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your life depends on it; and when the time comes, to let it go.
--Mary Oliver
posted by Will at 2:07 PM
3 Comments:
WHEW,BABY. I WISH YOU WERE HERE TO HOLD ME THROUGH MY TEARS NOW AFTER READING YOUR BLOG.
YOU'RE ABILITY TO EXPRESS YOURSELF ABSOLUTELY AMAZES ME.
I LOVE YOU AND APPRECIATE YOUR TENDERNESS SO VERY MUCH.
MOM
Lovely post, Will. I don't view bodies, and I've been to a lot of funerals. I choose to remember the person when they were full of life. Your stories about Joe (and Donna) reminded me of the dear family friends who lived across the street from us my entire childhood. It still seems strange to me that they're both gone, even though they passed years ago, because they were such a huge part of my childhood. Grief is such a powerful emotion--often overtaking us when we least expect it. I, too, don't do well with goodbyes...even though I've often been the one to disappear on people. All we can do is what you're doing--ask that we'll be able to find the strength to deal with it when the time comes...
This was a beautiful post, Will. It reminded me of my parents' next-door neighbors, who've both passed in the past couple of years. I had known them since I was 14 when we moved in. They were such warm and lovely people. I've realized recently that nearly *all* of my parents' neighbors have passed away in recent years. My parents are in their 70s, and in good health, thank God, but most of their friends and neighbors around them are gone (and our relatives are all in Spain), and I realize how sad that must be at their age, even while it's a fact of life.
I heard Annie Lamott in a TV interview once say, 'Everything I've ever let go of has claw marks in it.' Letting go is hard. Perhaps it helps to think of it as only a 'temporary' separation of the body, with their spirit still around us.
Thanks again for another heartfelt post.
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