Weighing in with less baggage

Monday, April 9, 2012

On Saturday, my college kid and I filled 126 plastic eggs with goodies and hid them outside in the farmyard. The little peppers and their moms and my parents were expected for Easter dinner that night and the first annual “Granny’s Easter Egg Hunt.”

Easter this year was an extra fine celebration of gratitude for me even though I was missing a certain someone.

It was one of the first years I had stepped forward and offered to host Easter dinner and as cook I had beginner’s luck whitewashed all over me that day.

My glazed ham, orange-glazed carrots, and homemade hot cross buns emerged from recipes unscathed and to the table in fine order, along with my mom’s yummy specialties of scalloped potatoes and deviled eggs.

 I don’t think I could duplicate the perfection of that meal nor the groaning satiable comments that followed.

Afterwards came the “Hunt,” which I planned post feast to avoid “The Hunger Games” sequel playing out as little children poked in all those jellybeans before eating a proper evening meal.

The dogs were outside while we devoured our supper, and to my recollection, with their noses pressed to the screen door pining for a scrap of ham or flung bun from a highchair.

What I didn’t know as I poured over my meal with saliva and a smile, was that “Dot” was indeed pasted to the screen door, while “Cash” was no where to be found.

I expect that during a pee break, Cash had sniffed out the scent of sweets emanating from the 126 grassy-knolled eggs we had placed them in.

More than 20 of the prizes were scattered from their hiding places, snapped open with the precision of a chipmunk’s dexterity, and emptied of their contents into the canine stomach.

Skulking dog syndrome ensued as I shook pointed finger at big black dog and uttered some lower form of improper English to the mutt who clearly had no clue what he’d done in the 15 minutes prior to my madness.

He just sat there burping up sweet fragrances of strawberry and pieces of purple gummy bears.

Life changes in an instant every day. More and more I’m learning to accept that some changes have few better options under my control than my attitude towards the thing.

I still get caught up in the muck and buck like a wild donkey sometimes but I really work on my outlook these days.

I remind myself of the outstretched pointed index finger of “Celie” (played by Whoopi Goldberg) in “The Color Purple.”

“Everything you done to me has already been done to you.” 

It’s my wisdom warning statement that reminds me that my reaction to the actions of others or to life in general is my karma.

The late mystery thriller writer Arthur Somers Roche once penned, “Worry is a thin stream of fear trickling through the mind. If encouraged it cuts a channel into which all other thoughts are drained.”

I concur.

At 7:30 a.m. on Monday April 12^th in my diary I wrote, “I am struggling to compose myself in the face of my afternoon counseling session today. This is causing me the most turmoil I have felt in nearly 12 weeks.”

At 10 p.m. that same night I wrote in my diary, “My counsel session was not as bad as I anticipated. I cried and said it out loud [my undelivered communication to Jon] in front of my counselor and I felt better immediately. Immediately.”

I’ll be the first to admit I was a skeptical about this part of the healing process of recovery through counseling but I’m also the first to admit it’s been a life-changing event for me. I am—by my owning it—free.

Truly I am free.

I’ve worked very, very hard since January to find some peace in the face of the half-stitched scars that ooze unspeakable pain following a suicide.

If my brain and my heart could form calluses from working a program so hard, mine would have them.

Not only am I one of the many “left behind” by the tragedy. I was the one who came home at 4:30 in the afternoon that day and found the dark truth.

Suicide shreds the soul and slashes hope and creates unspeakable black crypts of self-doubt.

The nine minutes that followed that hour as I waited for the ambulance to get to my neck of the woods were the longest of my life. They have been weighted and judged on self-deprecated scales along with the 402 days that preceded it as I searched desperately to directly blame myself for what I did or didn’t do that affected Jon’s choice.

In the end I come up empty and I am filled up with gratitude.

Thanks to loving myself enough and to Riverside Counseling Services all of this horrid treatment of myself is over and I am free to experience this process without guilt and remorse and regret.

I am free.

Coming clean cuts like a knife

Monday, April 2, 2012

It’s Monday morning and I have a hell of a lot to write about and a whole lot of it that I really don’t want to write about, some of it that I do, and some of it that I am compelled to write about. 

So in lies my dilemma.

Last week I was bemoaning the dry spell and burn out that had arisen from perpetually pulling my heart out of my chest and letting it do all the talking as I wrote about life in the weeks since Jon committed suicide.

And I was tired. I really was creatively burned out, used up, parched of emotions, and ready for a break. So I just quit trying to find all the answers at the end of my fingers on a keyboard. 

Little did I know that the Universe once again was conspiring to assist me in the next leg of my journey. I think it always knows what I need. I just have to be open to it, stand back, or just plain ask the right questions of myself.

But of course there are no next steps in life, truly, until a lesson is learned or, as I am about to discover, until I cough up some undelivered emotional communication.

That’s going to happen for me today at 2 p.m. when I take all the positive and negative events that I have discovered (with help from my counselor) in my relationship with Jon and communicate and complete them with out loud apologies, statements of forgiveness, or statements of emotional significance. 

It all sounds big and wordy but what it really boils down to is about me moving towards being complete by coming clean. I would be stupid to think that I do not have undelivered communications to my dear late Jon in all three categories that I need to release to the Universe.

I readily admit however at this very moment I would rather have dental work done through my backside than open that gate just so I can close it. 

Just thinking about saying these things out loud to my counselor makes me run to the bathroom as if I had food poisoning. 

But if I don’t do my “me” work I do not heal and I do not get to pass “GO.”  This I know for sure.

I also know for sure that yoga is the new bomb for this green thumb mat monkey. 

If I’m not already taller from all that stretching, then I am well on my way to becoming the tree I want to be in my next life. 

I am learning the true meaning of “focus” and “breathe” AND although I’m still falling over while attempting it I am learning to hold a pose I’ve only seen in the movie “Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon.”

And although this next statement begs to be expounded on in many more columns—and it will be . . . 

“I am going to Wales in the United Kingdom for nine days in May.”

This is the miracle reward I received from the Universe at no cost to me when I was standing in the shower one night last week thinking “maybe I should start traveling and write 'The View From Here' from somewhere else.”

The next morning I had a random, “pulled the rabbit out of the top hat” email from a world traveler I know who was important to me even before I received the ticket money to “go smell the salt sea air and wash away my past and get healed.”

The quote I have on the wall above my writing desk that says “Today is where your book begins . .  the rest is still unwritten” just fell off in my lap. 

Thank you.

Time for the sages to step in

Monday, March 26, 2012


The writing tide has gone out and it’s not flowing back in a timely fashion in my neck of the woods this week. 
Today my “write” mind is as the rusty burn barrel that is sitting upside down on the south side of the old red barn in my farmyard. There’s nothing in this noggin but an empty space. 
It’s been a very tough week on the wild mouse rollercoaster. I’m going to sit back and eat chocolate and let the sages I hold dear take the floor from here. 
Some quotes are anonymous and others are not. 
It’s all short and sweet and  . . . until next week  . . .




“If you can’t see the bright side of life, polish the dull side.” 


“Few situations can be bettered by going berserk.” - Melody Beattie


“Everyone is gifted – but some people never open their package.” 


“I have learned that when you harbor bitterness, happiness docks elsewhere.” 


“In exchange for the promise of security, many people put a barrier between themselves and the adventures in consciousness that could put a whole new light on their personal lives.” – June Singer


“I’ve learned that the best classroom in the world is at the feet of an elderly person.” 


“Watch your thoughts; they become your words. Watch your words; they become your actions. Watch your actions; they become your habits. Watch your habits; they become your character. Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.”


“When the path is blocked, back up and see more of the way.” 


The fastest way to freedom is to feel your feelings.” – Gita Bellin


“Believing is all a child does for a living.” – Kurtis Lamkin


“To see takes time.” – Georgia O’Keeffe




“To journey without being changed is to be a nomad. To change without journeying is to be a chameleon. To journey and to be transformed by the journey is to be a pilgrim.” 


“Today I shall behave as if this is the day I will be remembered.” – Dr. Seuss


“We tend to make the thing in the way the way.” 


“When I was five years old my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down “happy.” They told me I didn’t understand the assignment. I told them they didn’t understand life.” – John Lennon


“Expectation is the root of all heartache.” – William Shakespeare


“How people treat you is their karma. How you react is yours.” – Wayne Dyer


“The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.” – Albert Einstein

Hope floats on notes and sunshine

Monday, March 19, 2012

It’s been nearly 45 minutes since I sat down to write this column and I am doing everything BUT writing it.

I’m following all the traditions that I usually do each Monday to set me up for the task; hot coffee at the ready, good music, comfortable clothes, and all the notes I’ve written myself in the last seven days.

Maybe that’s it. Maybe it’s all about the notes.

Last spring, Jon bought me a pocket notepad called “Great Ideas,” for those light bulb moments he’d witnessed me having when I was devoid of paper, and instead used a pen to chicken scratch the idea on my forearm.

At first Jon thought it was cute, until that time I was having a brainstorm about my dogs and—with no paper to write it on—borrowed a pen from someone at the next table and wrote “nuttier than squirrel turds” on my arm while we were out to dinner one night.

The next day he came home with the “Great Ideas” notepad and I’ve never been without it since.

But today when I copied the memos to my laptop like I do every week, I noticed there are only three pages left on the notepad and suddenly I felt like all the oxygen had been sucked out of the room.

The gifts that Jon bought for me during our time together all are writing-related and mean the world to me. Three of them are books Jon learned about because he was a very good listener when I talked. They were on a bookshelf that I’d seen in a photograph of the late Andy Rooney.

The fourth gift was the “Great Ideas” notepad and although I think he bought it to save my skin, I’m feeling a bit of “writer’s block” looming when the last page is used up. But then again I shake my head and snicker. I doubt there’ll be a bump in the creative process. 

My 21-year-old daughter arrived home from College on Friday and if nothing else I could spend the next three months talking about the notes I’ll be pinning up everywhere to remind her to pick up her laundry, do the dishes, and shut off the light when she leaves her bedroom.

I jest. Her company will be among the many gifts I am thankful for these days.

Those moments of gratitude extend to both ends of the spectrum and into the night air that I inhale for the scent of skunk that will come a’ calling with the arrival of the expedited warm weather.

I still breath easy; as yet the air is clean and clear.

But every time I let the dogs out for a pee before bedtime or in the minutes before daylight each morning, I cringe at what I am guaranteed to soon be mixing more times than I care to admit—the recipe of dish soap, baking soda, hydrogen peroxide and a generous sprinkling of pet-friendly fabric softener. It is unavoidable in my neck of the woods.

Unavoidable too, is the heart homework that beckons after a 14-day respite. I must compile a graph of all the losses I can recall from my life for discussion at my upcoming counseling session.

This is the fork in the road where I am told many people who are in grief recovery counseling stop going because the impact of facing the reality of life loss, and its unfinished business, is just too painful.

“Until you heal your past you will continue to bleed and bleed and bleed.” I heard that in a movie once. I wrote it down. I never knew when I’d need to use it. I guess that time is now.

If I was being unloving of myself, I wouldn’t go back to counseling.

On the contrary I do love myself very much and I want to know what I’m holding on to that holds me back, and I’m pretty sure I’m about to find some “stuff” that I haven’t completed and that hasn’t gone anywhere but underneath.

To my own credit though, I have to say that when I was on my walk on Saturday morning in the incredible sunshine, and watching the geese map out their field nests I think I took a step forward.

Indeed in the beauty of the moment, I thought how sad it was that Jon wasn’t there to enjoy it with me. In the last nine weeks a thought like that meant I would continue to wear a dark pair of glasses through my entire day.

But in the circumstance of Saturday morning I was able to feel the sadness and then put it down and let go and choose to feel peace and dare I say, happiness.

The realization right then of being able to make that happen in the context of my day was amazing and indeed it made me cry, not from a place of sadness—but from understanding that it was the first time I had purposefully chosen to do that since Jon died.

 

And that, my friends, means hope is peeking through. 

Strike a pose and breathe your own truth

Monday, March 12, 2012

In the past six weeks I’ve written about outing the “elephant” suicide, how joy is medicine, how books take me places, my black cape, a rollercoaster ride, and my desperate need for tweezers and for advocates who will listen and not give advice.

The latter are worth their weight in gold, and I’ve discovered that I weave them into my life with precious care as if threading a needle with a fine piece of silk. The spools of friendships that make the best embroideries are the ones who—when you need them most—are there with no agenda of their own to spill.

Granted we all need friends like that and taking turns at being the one who listens instead of talks is a fine art that is finding its way back into my life too, and allowing me to be the sounding board instead of the sound.

I dare say I think that’s a sign that the deepest end of my ocean of the last eight weeks is finding a bit of shallow water to rest in.

That’s not to say I haven’t had my moments where I completely lose all sensible control. I don’t get angry very often but I had a classic flip-out the other day while I was combing my hair in the bedroom.

Jon’s presence is still in there of course on the dresser where he kept his meticulous little pile of note pads, pens, his watch, loose change, and a pile of folded laundry he hadn’t dealt with.

I caught the collar of my sweatshirt on my hair comb twice and in a normal world it shouldn’t have caused a Medusa response, but the second such snag triggered something inside of me.

I threw the comb across the room and started yelling at an otherworld Jon who couldn’t defend, shaking my finger at his invisible self in the corner of the bedroom and chastising him for all the future opportunities he will miss; the lives of his children and his grandchildren and of me growing old with him.

The emotions were new and raw and admittedly shameful and embarrassing to me in the aftermath. In our living life together Jon and I never argued, never raised our voices to each other, never spoke in ill terms, never once.

I cannot stress the benefit of “recovery from loss” counseling, folks. If I have learned anything since I woke up to how much alike we are than unalike (to half-quote Maya Angelou) I have found a whole new sense of freedom in telling the truth about who I really am inside. Sure, I’ve been doing that here in this column space for a long time. There’s a different kind of release however in sharing your truth with someone who specializes in how your brain and heart works. Counselors are awesome, or should I say on a less “global thinking” scale; my counselor is awesome.

Yoga is awesome too. Inexperienced and knowing nothing about the art, I’ve committed to six weeks of classes. I put myself on the mat for the first and second time last week.

“Ohm.” “Gobsmacked.” Can I say those two words in succession and not be in trouble?

The instructor and all the other yogis are the most non-judgmental group I’ve ever met. However, I was not so accepting of myself that first class.

Poses? Downward-facing dog? Monkey? Warrior? Tree? Cobra? Not to mention Sun Salutations? —All news to me.

I believed I’d held the wrong pose every time, as crooked as a dog’s back leg—not to mention that I forgot to breathe. By the time class was over, I was as blue as the July sky. My painted toenails were the only nice shade of pink on my green thumb yogi carcass.

My heart and I wanted to run crying out of the room and hide in the corner. My instructor changed all that negative thinking.

I’m not a quitter. This I know for sure. Oh how well I know this for sure.

I went to my second yoga class with a different mindset and I surrendered to the process of letting go of the outside world and my hang-ups about what I don’t know.

When class was over I realized that for more than 60 minutes I hadn’t had a care or a worry in the world and my breathing was steady and my skin was pink and my body was alive.

And I’m hooked on yoga as sure as my friend Cheryl is on hooking wool rugs.

“Let the beauty we love be what we do.”

Laugh With Me And Then Listen

Monday, March 5, 2012

The way you get sideswiped is by going back.

When you get sideswiped and stay there too long you forget to do some very important things, like have fun or pluck facial hair.

Seven weeks and counting.

My apologies to anyone out there in the world who was standing face to face with me and noticed the long, crooked, grey eyebrow hair growing from the space between my eyes and the tufts of black ones shooting out from the sides of my temples like cactus thorns.

The long hairy strand growing out of my chin and clearly visible to the naked eye of someone standing at the other end of the grocery store, could have been entered in the Guinness Book of World Records for length.

All those monstrosities are gone now.

And I used to believe that “Millie” the cat was using the feline prerogative best described by Pam Brown of working out “mathematically the exact place to sit that will cause the most inconvenience,” but instead I think she was trying to tell me something.

Each morning at 6 a.m., and increasingly so in the last three weeks, Millie has been rubbing her whiskers against the side of my mouth in what I thought was a wake-up call.

Turns out she was grooming my moustache, which also had begun to sprout out like an alfalfa garden.

It too has been plucked.

Joan Didion was right. “Life changes fast. Life changes in the instant.”

I drove into the yard and life as I knew it ended. But it is not the end of my life; it is just the beginning of a different one, as I am slowly learning . . .

But I must breathe some fun too or I will quite simply fade away into the nothing.

Of course the Universe hears me think that and “poof” sets me up.

I had parked the car in the garage and the dogs were in there with me in their usual excited state to greet the Alpha. I closed the big door while still inside and was about to exit out to side door when I figured out I was not the one the dogs were barking at.

In that microsecond as the long-tailed rodent sprung from the shelving unit on to the top of my car did I comprehend that I was blocking the escape route of a cornered squirrel that the dogs had flushed out of my storage space and no doubt the nest it created in my sleeping bag.

His beady and wild eyes met mine and in a move straight out of the “Matrix” movie my upper body leaned back as the squirrel flew by me and out the open door—followed in leaps and bounds by the canine capers.

I just had to laugh. Some things never change.

Some things need to change however, including the contents of my fridge, which currently rivals that of Mother Hubbard. If I didn’t know better I’d swear I was living on pumpkin seeds and raisins of late, as I have no appetite, but sadly the size of my butt has not been reduced by this hen-pecking diet. Time to go shopping.

And when I return home with all my groceries, I can be sure that two dogs will expect the bags will contain a beef bone or two, and they will pay attention while I talk to them about it.

There are six little words I learned online from Dr. Bill Webster, a grief counselor, that have become very important in my world these days.

I am human. I hurt. I hurt a lot. So when you see me or someone else you know who is suffering a loss and we want to talk about it—let us—let me. It’s really all that I need and you are off the hook from having to do anything more than give me the gift of six words.

“Mouth closed, ears open, presence available.” 

I RIDE THE WILD MOUSE

Monday, February 27, 2012

First of all, let me begin with the most important lesson I’ve learned in the last week, courtesy of my first session in grief recovery at Riverside Counseling Services.

My brain isn’t broken. My heart is broken. This means I cannot fix my heart with my head. This means my grief cannot be fixed with time alone, or by keeping busy, or by being strong, or by replacing it with chocolate.

With a lot of help, I am going to learn to face and feel and claim my losses. 

Oh brother.

I’m out to fix my emotional self and quite frankly stepping into those waters scares the shape wear right off of me.

It’s like walking down a familiar country road in the pitch black of night with my arms outstretched into the nothing with a tiny flashlight.

I know with help I will find my way, yet something tells me this heart healing is going to be as raw and painful at times as the sides of my mouth are after I eat an entire bag of salt and vinegar chips.

And what’s the name of this ride I’ve been on? I would like to get off, please.

Who knew there was such a thing—an emotional roller coaster with waves of dreadful rides 24-7 right here in my neck of the woods in the middle of winter.

I looked to “Wikipedia” for a definition of a roller coaster and specifically to find the right words to describe the degree of rise and fall that one of these machines takes, so that I could better explain the whirligig of feelings I am experiencing these days.

The definition of the “Wild Mouse” rollercoaster landed right in my lap and it fit so well I put in on overtop of my black cape.

“A Wild Mouse roller coaster is a type characterized by small cars that seat four people or fewer (and in my case just one).

It rides on top of the track, taking tight; flat turns at modest speeds yet producing high lateral G-forces. (Uh huh)

The track work is characterized by many turns and bunny hops, the latter producing abrupt negative vertical G forces. (Uh huh, there goes my appetite again.)

When approaching a turn from a straight section the intended impression is that one will simply continue straight, and thus plunge off of the device. (I can relate)

Almost all “Wild Mice” feature switchback sections, consisting of several of these unbanked turns, separated by straight sections. Usually the turns on the switchback section are 180 degrees, but some coasters feature 90 degree turns as well as more rarely steep runs with loops.”

I wanted to paste this description to my forehead and point at it when someone kindly asks, “How are you doing?”

And the Academy Award for “how well you am processing this” goes to . . . . Me? Not a chance, my friend.

I think “processing” is what happens in an abattoir.

While I have my moments of peace and quiet, which usually occur at 2 a.m. while I am asleep, I do not feel strong or courageous at the best of times nor that I am “processing” anything well.

I feel lost and abandoned and shafted and helpless and desperately sad to name five of the many, many uncomfortable emotions I have begun to recognize on my roller coaster ride.

And the best medicine I can think of is at my doorstep. Its name is counseling.

The Cape I Wear Is Not A Fashion Statement

Monday, February 20, 2012



I had homework to do this week that included reading three chapters of a book on grief and how to move beyond loss. I’m not supposed to go further in the book until I’m instructed to do so, nor am I supposed to use it to teach anyone else—and I won’t. But already I can see how extraordinarily beneficial this choice to get counseling on grief recovery is going to be for me. 


A well-meaning friend called me a “hurdler” the other day. I wasn’t sure what she meant by that. Was I the type who met life’s challenges with fortitude or was I the poor sap who despite my best efforts is constantly faced with obstacles that challenge my soul. Hmmm. Maybe I’m both. 
Today I am the latter.


I’m wearing a long, flowing black cape these days. It’s at least two city blocks long and it’s there all the time, double-knotted around my neck and complete with arm sleeves that prevent it from being mislaid. 


My cape is there with me in the shower, it covers my pajamas at night, and lies around my feet at the kitchen table each morning during breakfast. 
Even when I’m driving in my car or walking down the creek bed my cape follows behind me billowing in the wind and as soon as I slow down it snaps to a stop and falls in around me. 


I know this black cape to be one of the many faces of grief and as much as I’d like to rip it off, soak it in gasoline and burn it; I know I have much to learn from this unexpected bounty hunter. I will wear it, touch it, feel it, and stay with it until it falls off on its own. 

Self care is something I thought I knew about. I don’t use white sugar or salt, nor for the most part do I eat processed or fast foods. I don’t drink alcohol and I exercise (or at least I did up until 30 days ago) four to six times a week. 
I read a lot, get enough sleep and wear sunscreen. 


But there is so much more to self care that I have yet to learn—like slowing down in life and giving myself more attention than the me who is the caregiver of others thinks I should. 


Self-care also is asking for help, seeing a counselor, calling a friend or my mom and dad when I’m lonely or sad. 


Self-care is about stopping everything I’m doing for everyone else and sitting down and taking off my mask and having a good cry. 


Self-care is clearly about giving up control and allowing life to teach me what I need to learn. This unfolding Universe is showing me that over and over again. 


In hindsight, I think the Universe gave me a kick in the pants in that direction about 10 days before Jon died and although I didn’t know it at the time, I’m convinced the event, which I wrote in my diary about a few days ago, was meant to be a lesson for all of my todays.

“I keep thinking about that day in early January when I was outside giving the dogs their food. I was coming back in the house with my slippers on and I fell. I fell like someone had pushed me down all at once, on all fours, all at the same time smashing my knees and the palms of my hands into the cement pad at the top of the stairs outside.  I remember looking back to see what the hell did I trip on because I just don’t fumble. I never fumble. The pain took my breath away.
It’s February 19th and I still, after six weeks, have a mark on my left knee from the fall. It was mindboggling to me, the smashing of my body against that cement pad.
I never really made any more of until after Jon died and I started trying to reason all these things out. 
I wonder if that was some kind of Universal force that took me down as a reminder to me that I don’t have control all the time about what happens in my life. Maybe I was meant to realize it now; along with everything else I need to learn. I just don’t know.”


I wonder why it is that those of us dealing with loss put ourselves on the back burner when we need help and recovery from grief? Our immediate need to begin to recover from loss shouldn’t be any different or delayed than getting a car windshield repaired after a rock splits it.


You need that car to get you where you need to go the same as you need your mind and your body and your spirit to get you where you need to go.

If I am a hurdler, so be it. 
But I’m going to learn the right way to let go of this black cape so that I can leap into life again with happiness. 

Books Take Me Places I Need To Go

Monday, February 13, 2012



The time slot for this column seems to appear out of nowhere like the next guy’s electric bumper car in a race around the track at the fair. All of my time is spent trying to figure out what just happened, and then I look at the calendar and it says “Writing Day.” 


Crumb. 


These days my shoulder pads are heavy. On my left shoulder sits the fat little gremlin I call “What If”—and he’s an ugly old chap who pokes at and opens up my half-stitched scar of grief all the time. 


My right shoulder, too, is heavy. But it’s bodyguard-heavy with the indelible writing advice of Stephen King, “Come to the craft any way but lightly.” I take him very seriously, even now. Lucky for me he also has the best pitching ear, because I am deaf in my left one. 


I took on two big hurdles this past week by walking through the doors of the local library and the newspaper office to face friends and colleagues in their workplaces I have not yet seen since Jon’s suicide. 
(And I thought leaving the Christmas chocolate in the cupboard was difficult.) 


Those first steps to face people and revisit the thinking of those first hours felt like I was pulling my feet out of glue to reach land. 
But it is done and it was two steps forward. 


I went to the library for another reason and that was to find Joan Didion’s book, “The Year of Magical Thinking.” Of course it was there waiting for me. Why wouldn’t it be? 


I stared at the words on the book cover and realized Didion’s husband John’s name was highlighted in blue. And if I took out the “H”  . . . 


I was standing in the aisle where all the new books were posted on shelves and it felt good to be among the words of all those authors. I decided right then and there that I wouldn’t leave the library until I had my arms full of books of great variety including funny. 


Nora Ephron’s yellow-colored book “I Feel Bad About My Neck And Other Thoughts On Being A Woman” jumped off the shelf into my waiting grasp. 
“The Chicken Chronicles” by Alice Walker was next, then a picture book on decorating, and a book called “Kaleidoscope,” on ideas and projects to spark my creativity. Yes, sparks of creativity is what I needed.


Just then, under what I can only describe as an intervention by sources unseen (if such things exist in libraries) I turned around and came face to face with a black book written by Kay Redfield Jamison called “Night Falls Fast – understanding suicide.” 
Now that I think about it, I’m sure I swore out loud when I saw it—I hope in a whispered voice. 


I was compelled to pile it with the others I was carrying, but I didn’t really want it and yet I did. Understanding might decay “What If,” or at least shut him up for more than five minutes. 


I was so proud of myself for my reading intentions—all of it—and I brought them home and set them in a little pile on the coffee table, in front of the big leather couch. I piled the books by size and walked away. 


For two or three days I stalked the table, pacing the cage and staring at the little mountain of knowledge and fluff with unease and apprehension but never touched it.

I didn’t know where to begin. Should I pick up a book that would make me laugh at my neck jiggle and then feel guilty again if I found joy in such times as these? What about decorating? Would I suddenly decide to rearrange the furniture and paint the walls? 
And “The Chicken Chronicles?”  It was about fowl friends named “Gertrude Stein” and “Agnes of God.” Anyone who knows Alice Walker knows it’s bound to be a profound story and I knew I couldn’t “bawk” at that.

The black book stuck out. Of course it did. I didn’t want to read it, but I did want to read it. 
I was drawn to it like my thirsty dog to her water bowl on a hot summer day. 


It was the first book in the pile that I picked up off the table. I opened it at random to page 297. Iris Bolton’s words from her book “My Son…My Son” said it all. 

“I don’t know why, I’ll never know why. I don’t have to know why. I don’t like it. What I have to do is make a choice about my living.”


And so I begin. 

Joy Is Medicine For The Brokenhearted

Monday, February 6, 2012

It would seem that “The Year of Magical Thinking” by Joan Didion now sits at the top of my read list, up 60 rows from where it sat below “The Complete Bartender” by Robyn M. Feller.

Up until January 19^th I was entrenched in “The Sisters Brothers” by Patrick DeWitt, a novel that won its author the 2011 Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction. It’s an engaging story of two henchmen in the Old West pursuing their next target. Today if you offered me $50/hr to finish off the last 109 pages of DeWitt’s book, I’d never see a dime of it. I’m too busy disliking everything about everything.

I may read the book of magical thinking tomorrow but at this moment I am surely wallowing in the dark Leonard Cohen hits and shoveling in as many bags of potato chips as I can muster.

And in fact I became quite sick of myself today, wandering about this quiet house some 18 days post tragedy with nothing better to do than stare out the window wishing for things I could no longer have.

I re-read Andy Rooney’s “My Lucky Life” speech from October 2 of last year and rolled my eyes at how I’d spouted at the mouth in my column back then about my own life fortunes.

I also made the big mistake of watching the romantic movie “Love Actually,” which until January 19^th was one of my favorites. I might as well have stabbed myself in the eye with a kitchen knife than watch it by myself. What was I thinking? Magical, that’s what.

Yes, quite sick of myself today.

So mid-afternoon at the pinnacle of the Day 18 pity party I got in my car, sped out of the driveway and headed to town in a crying jag passing an ambulance sitting stationary in the airport parking lot across the way. No doubt there would be a patient inside in much direr straights than I. The sobering thought made me take pause from my wallowing.

I will admit that for the last 18 days I’ve not wanted to see any of my grandchildren. I couldn’t bear their optimistic and spirited attitudes to living a life when I was immersed in an unbelieving grievousness I never knew existed.

But today I’d tipped my cup.  I had to shake myself off and find at least a little bit of balance.

Kahlil Gibran was right on the mark with his poem “On Joy and Sorrow.” They are inseparable. While one sits on the edge of the bed, the other one is in bed with you.

I drove straight to the house where some little peppers lived, because I suddenly needed their joy like a breath of fresh air in May. It was all I could do to get there in one piece.

I was sitting on the couch when my three-year-old beauty came running out of the kitchen with a red piece of construction paper on which she had drawn a picture for me.

She explained away the big sunshiny sun and a round blob with stick arms and legs and big eyes (me, she said) and a stop sign, all drawn in black marker. Another nebulous figure, nearly invisible in red marker had been drawn hovering over me.  It was “Papa Jon.”

Gibran wrote, “The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.”

The delight in that moment filled me up. Children should be seen and they should be heard when we grownups are sad. This I know for sure.