Distillation

In a recent reflection on Robin Williams and his role in Mrs. Doubtfire, The Atlantic’s James Parker wrote, “Death, if we are loved at all in this world, is a centrifuge: at the moment of cessation, it throws our essence outward, and further outward, scattering us abroad with supernatural force and largesse. And in the hearts that receive these essential shards or sparks we are, for a short time, revealed –who we really were, what we really meant. For a short time….” 

I love this idea of our essence being cast wide at death, if mostly for an intense period of remembrance, mourning, celebration. But as I watch beloved family and friends ageing, I have come to think that in the time before death, an opposite process seems to occur. My wise mother has for years observed that, as we age, “our moreso’s become moreso.” I believe that as our bodies begin to fail us, our essential selves draw inward, become distilled, and we become quintessentially who we are, in a stripped-down, more easily discernible way to those who know what to look for.

I am just returned from a family road trip to Christmas in my ancestral South Dakota home, having visited less than a week before to help manage what I have come to call “my parents’ near-complete medical meltdown.”

My former footballer father’s medical issue required a total left hip replacement, rounding out his surgical score to Knees: 2, Hips: 2, Back: 3. He is recovering, eager to put the most recent unendurable pre-surgical pain behind him.  

But my mother, whose calm, understated, guiding intelligence has been a constant for all who know her, is not faring as well.  At times, she is almost herself, as I have always known and loved her; we spent a glorious morning lying on my parents’ bed remembering childhood friends and family foibles for a lazy extra hour before entering the day, and her recollections were as sharp and nuanced as ever. But some tasks and decisions are clearly overwhelming to her now, including the crucial, neverending routine of testing her blood sugar, calculating her insulin needs, drawing and injecting the correct amount of two insulin types, and recording all this information. Watching the “speech” therapist test her memory, seeing her flounder at reproducing a sequence of five unrelated words, hearing the assessment of “moderate cognitive diminishment,” broke my heart.

At the same time, I am seeing her distilled to her pure, wonderful essence, and feel blessed anew to have been mothered so well by such a remarkably kind and truly selfless, in the best possible sense, woman: patient love beams from her eyes with even greater intensity; her drive to serve and comfort others, even in her frail and weakened state, has not failed her; her utter lack of judgment of others, and the generosity of heart that I l long ago understood would not be one of the ways in which I most resembled her, are fully intact, newly realized. 

Each of us can only hope to be distilled to such a pure and positive essence in our final days, and to cast it abroad upon our leavetaking of this beloved, complicated existence.

The Stigma of Depression

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Robin Williams stunned the world when he committed suicide on August 11, 2014. I was deeply saddened but not stunned. I've always thought he had the saddest eyes. I believe there were many reasons why his death touched so many people: Millions of us can relate to depression. Unlike many celebrities, he didn't die from a drug overdose. He had recently been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease and was on medication that had a side effect of suicide.

When you think about how physical his comedy was and how lightning fast his mind worked, he must have felt his career and way of life were over. We cannot know what goes on in another person's mind, nor is it any of our business. The laughter he gave to all of us and his kind spirit to all he met will be sorely missed. After his death there was a lot of information and misinformation on every form of media you can name. I'm disheartened that so many people believe that fame and fortune will guarantee happiness. This prompted be to write the following post on Facebook.

I don't usually post much of a personal nature on FB, but I feel strongly about the topic of depression, so part of my writing today is going to include my thoughts on depression, an illness with the stigma of shame attached to it. When I was diagnosed with breast cancer 11 years ago, I felt a lot of things, shame was never one of them. I didn't hide it. I had support. I got well. Depression is a whole different game. We often try to hide our depression or deny that we suffer from it. The tricky part of depression is that sometimes you don't even know why you're depressed. This starts a lot of self-talk. "What's wrong with you? You don't have anything to be depressed about. Get up off the couch you ungrateful piece of shit." When I had breast cancer, not one person said to me, "Stop having cancer." But I have heard people say, "Stop being so depressed." Not helpful.I was never so depressed that I felt suicidal, but I have wondered how I could keep going. Many people think it's weak to ask for help. Asking for help is just the opposite of weakness. It's one of the strongest things you'll ever do for yourself. I think that sometimes, people are so worn down from fighting depression, that they feel they have run out of options. My two cents.

Laughter and smiles hide a lot. Take care of yourselves. Put your own oxygen mask on first. 

Rebekah for the Poplar Grove Muse. 

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Learning How to Fly

(This is an excerpt from a much longer piece, Fly Away, Fly Away, that I wrote about my brother-in-law’s death in February.)

……Vanessa and Debbie in one vehicle, April and Crystal in another, Carl’s family left Hospice House after 8 p.m. and, despite wind, rain, and threat of tornado, hoped to be at Carl and Debbie’s house in Washington by 9:30. They drove as far as Breeden Road, a few miles south of Bloomington on Highway 45, and were stopped by downed utility poles and lines and tree limbs. So they returned to a friend’s house in Bloomington and spent the night there, then drove home Friday morning in the storm swept freshness of a new day. We wondered if Carl hadn’t been quite ready to let them go back home the night before. If he knew how empty the house would feel without him. If he was playing in those big winds that he’d always loved. You try to make meaning out of every little thing when loss and grief press your hearts to the ground. 

March 3, 2014

Yes, I guess Thursday, February 20^th, 2014, was, as Carl would say, a phenomenal day to die. And now here I am, with that momentous day behind me:  Carl’s fine obituary carefully cut from the paper and tucked away in Bill’s Bible; hours of visitation and hugging family members and old friends adding new images and color to our ongoing family tapestry; the many songs from Carl’s Celebration of Life still playing loops in my mind; the comfort food his home church provided still tasting like kindness in my mouth.

Bill and I have found ourselves in each other’s arms more often than usual this past week, eyes blurred with tears, hearts aching with love and loss. And just like Virginia and Pappy, George, Bob, Clarence, and even little David Lee, Carl will always be in our family circle—he meant too much to too many people to ever be forgotten. I picture him filled with amazement; his ethereal body athletic, strong; his wings big enough, powerful enough, to find his new place in the cosmos. Perhaps he’ll land with the Canada geese on the pond near his and Debbie’s house this summer.  Perhaps he’ll tumble and bounce in the trills of Whitney and Luke’s laughter through the days and years to come. Maybe he’ll be the brightest star in the Big Dipper, or the reddest red in the sunrise at Coco Beach where he loved to run and fly kites with his family.   As he said, Cancer isn’t a death sentence, it’s a life sentence, and I truly believe Carl Breeden’s life is eternal.

Learning How to Fly—Carl and the Breeden Road Incident

Was Carl playing, dancing in the heavens,

Watching the storm from above, from within?

Did he dip and climb and dip again on the high winds,

Smile to see his family name on the street sign,

Lose control for an instant and

Wreak havoc with utility lines and trees?

He was new at this flying business after all,

It might take him a few hours to get the hang of it—

Directing the power of those unwieldy wings

Was nothing like driving a semi truck.

But if he could drive a semi for lord knows how many years

Without an accident,

Surely he could master this new means of mobilization

Before he barged in where angels had no business treading.

Or perhaps he understood in some godlike way

That Deb wasn’t quite ready to return home without him.

Perhaps he could get her attention at Breeden Road,

Suggest a night of respite—

Away from hospice, away from home.

He hadn’t realized the full potential of his other worldly concern;

Hadn’t meant to twist those poles, snap that wire, break that limb.

He couldn’t get as close to Deb as he wanted to

And yet he could feel her love so strong

That it almost blew his feathers off;

Felt her competence, her woman power

As innate and relentless as the eye of the tornado he was riding.

Joy and enlightenment flooded his being like the raw force

Of that winter storm beneath his broad shouldered wings—

His family was going to be okay.

He let go his need to protect

And got on with the business of learning how to fly.

                                                                                                            Glenda Breeden 

Glenda for the Poplar Grove Muse                    

The Apple of His Eye

I had planned on writing about Iona for this blog post, but my dad kept tapping on my shoulder and appearing in my dreams. He passed away January 15, 2012. Initially, I was in relief mode because he had suffered horribly for two years and was no longer the big, strong dad I had known all of my life, but grief changes its face constantly and loves to catch you off guard.  It also sometimes puzzles you. I’ve known for a few months that I was really starting to miss him, but that didn’t feel like the whole story. I couldn’t quite name exactly how I was missing him.

I have been reading Anne Lamott’s Traveling Mercies and when I got to the chapter titled “Dad”, this amazing writer took her metaphorical hammer and hit me between the eyes. On this material plane I am no longer the apple of any one’s eye.  I am no longer daddy’s little girl. (He used to love it when I played a song by that name on the piano.) For as long as I can remember, I’ve walked around knowing that there was one person who thought I was beyond wonderful, who was proud of the woman I’d become, who loved me unconditionally. That’s the hole in my life.  The ache that I suspect will never go away.  It’s not a sharp pain, more like the headache that threatens when the barometric pressure is changing.

I can’t write about my relationship with my dad without bringing in my mother, because she did her best to destroy my relationship with him. I look just like him. My DNA is imprinted with his patience, his impish sense of humor, his love of family and his sense of right and wrong.  He was also my protector and tried his best to deflect my mother’s constant disapproval of me. That wasn’t always easy and I’m sure he paid a high price for it. If he did, he never said a word to me about it. He never said one bad thing about her as I was growing up. There are things I know I did that hurt him because my mother had such an influential grip on me. When I grew up and got away from her, he and I talked about those things. He understood and let go of it, most likely because he was the one of the few people on earth who understood the slyness of her toxicity.

He influenced how I parent my son. I learned from him the importance of honoring your child as the person they truly are, to always be there without intrusiveness and to love without strings.

Everywhere I turn there are reminders that Father’s Day is coming up. He loved getting cards from me, especially on a dad’s special day. Last year on Father’s Day he was in the hospital suffering from sepsis and unable to shave himself. I went out and got him an electric shaver. You’d have thought I bought him a new car. He was still telling me how much he liked it at Christmas time. It was something that made his life a little easier. This year I don’t think I can let the day pass without buying him a card. I will simply write Dad on the envelope, as I always did, and just drop it in the mailbox. I truly believe he will receive it. Love you, Dad.

Rebekah for the Poplar Grove Muse

Endings, Happy and Sad

In my faith community, we have lost a number of beloved, indispensable member-friends in recent months. I believe I have been to eight funerals in the last six months (and have begun to understand my parents’ “resolution,” after living almost their entire lives in a mid-sized Midwestern town, to attend fewer funerals). Many of us are reeling from the passing of these extraordinary “ Greatest Generation” folks and our collective loss of their wisdom and patience and long perspectives.

Being present at so many memorials to lives well-lived has raised issues I had never adequately considered, and allowed me to think about how memorial services can be conducted, as well as how lives can be lived and remembered. I have learned that if you die shortly before your 98^th birthday, the church may not be as full as your life was, because you have outlived so many in your circles. I have learned that the sanctuary can be packed to overflowing, but the words spoken may fail to capture a life that was so much more than could be expressed, so that the gaping hole left in so many lives stands as the most powerful testimony to a life lived to the very limits of human energy. Hearing old-timey hymns I usually have little patience for, and knowing that they were chosen by my deceased friend, or their family, gives me a new appreciation for the comfort that a hymn I had dismissed may hold for others. I have thought long and hard about the demonstrated human qualities that compel friends and family to show up for a memorial service and remember their loved one.

An overwhelming realization, one I hope to carry with me more consistently in my life, is that some of the quietest, humblest people can be, deep down, the most fascinating and wise.  As a somewhat reserved person myself, I don’t tend to draw people out as much as I could, and certainly as much as I later wish I had. I so regret not asking Lou more about his transformative service as a marine in World War II, or talking with Harry about what it was like to run against Jesse Owens, among many other topics. I had no idea that Helen had a career besides that of mother long before most women did, and I wish I had learned more about what demands and indignities her bravery subjected her to. I also wish I had made the effort to learn more about the difficult time our congregation went through in becoming the first integrated church in Bloomington. We have one older member who returned to us only a few years ago, having been removed by his angry parents over this issue decades ago. I think I’ll ask him to tell me all about it next time I see him.

I’ve also had ample time to think about what we are actually grieving in our loss. Happily, people sometimes die having lived their time among us so fully, and having made such complete peace with the end of life, that it is inspiring, and in our sadness we realize that the loss is almost completely our own, that there is virtually nothing more we would wish for the deceased; our magical thinking is only for ourselves, to have had more time, or to have treasured the time we had more intentionally.

The first death that touched me deeply was that of my maternal grandmother, when I was 19. I had grown up around the block from her, and she had been a constant, patient, deeply supportive, and inspiring presence throughout my life. While my mother had been with her in her final hours of physical suffering and was grateful to see her out of her pain, my sister and I were inconsolable, and wept unceasingly throughout a triumphant celebration of her life in the home congregation in which she had married, seen her daughter and son married, and provided years of deeply musical keyboard and vocal service. We simply wanted MORE, for ourselves, more time and experience with the woman who had meant so much to us from our very beginnings.

I have much to learn about so many things surrounding the end of life, as well as the living of it. However, I am hoping for a pause in the intensity of my recent learning experiences. Enough loss, for now.

Mary for the Poplar Grove Muse

Memorial Day

I recently attended a visitation at a funeral home. Entering the building, I was struck by how little experience I have had with observances of death, and the degree to which I am ignorant of long-held communal rituals that used to be familiar to all. I felt at a loss, vaguely incompetent, somewhat ashamed at my uncertainty.

My parents, on the other hand, have lived for all but a ten-year hiatus in their ancestral home, a relatively small Midwestern city; they know everyone, and recently vowed to try to attend fewer funerals (a tall order, when so many who die have lived a full, small-town life, with more than a casual connection to my folks). They are all too acquainted with what is called for in bringing closure to a life.

I never imagined that I would move so far from my early community, or become so insulated from the natural cycle of death in life. In my mind, the Memorial Days of my childhood linger like a slowly-unfolding dream, stretching out before me in endless summer hours of dewy shade and sunny expanses of lawn. My maternal grandmother lived around the block from us, my grandfather having died when my mother was a young bride. The visits to the cemetery on Memorial Day and his birthday were part of family life, offering their own idiosyncratic highlights.

Preparations for the trip to Hills of Rest were orderly and understood: the gathering of a bright bouquet of cut flowers from the yard (peonies and lilacs being the favored blooms), a jug of water, and a few small gardening tools to clear the gravesite of any unwelcome growth. At a certain level, I think my siblings and I really felt this was a visit to our grandfather, spoken of as such a kind and generous man; it was as close as we were going to get to knowing him. The cemetery was beautiful, carefully tended by quiet men with shovels. The gravestones were mostly flat, brass rectangles flush with the ground, with ingenious urns that could be pulled out of the marker and upturned to serve as vases, chained to the site by brass links. Pulling out the urn, pouring in the water, setting the blooms, all were privileged tasks to be shared in.

The adults would stay for a bit and talk, while we kids would explore the surrounding area, looking in particular for the grave markers of children we had discovered over the years. The icons of Little Bo Peep and her sheep, and a boy with a sailboat, were the objects of our searching, the chilling thought of a lost child inspiring a welter of emotions in each of us.

The more distant rural cemetery, where the previous generation of Norwegian immigrants lies, was a more occasional destination. My overwhelming memory of that windswept site is the narrow alley of trees these settlers planted, first thing, to break the incessant prairie winds from disturbing the peace of the departed.

My husband and I know we are heading into years of increasing loss. His father died two years ago. Unbidden, greater acquaintance with the close of life is on its way.

What do you remember of Memorial Days past? Do you mark the day now, distant as you may be from family and familiar ground?

Mary for the Poplar Grove Muse