Two Years Ago
After our Hazen reunion in Fort Benton, Montana, we head down to Yellowstone, then on to Island Park, Idaho, for a Johnston reunion of Jim’s siblings and families. We spend Sunday in Shelley, Idaho, where Jim’s mom summers and several aunts, uncles, and cousins live. We’re in Charlotte’s living room when we speak with David on Jim’s cell phone. He reports the latest chimerism testing of his blood shows that 80% of the blood cells are Sam’s and only 20% David’s. We’re relieved and thrilled.
Late July 2016
We have multiple days of 90 plus weather, and a brief hailstorm on Saturday. The storm cools things off for the night. Each night I open all the windows and close them in the morning against the heat of the day.
I’m still thinking about the upcoming twelfth of August. I’m not sure what to name it: ‘David’s Anniversary’ sounds so wrong. That word conjures up happiness: a remembered wedding, first romantic date, first day of sobriety, day we bought the house. He’ll never have those happy events to commemorate. And saying ‘David’s Death Anniversary’ is such a downer. In this American culture of positive thinking, the mention of death feels morbid. I don’t want to be the conversation killer.
Sunday evening we have our Weekly Gathering: twenty people around the two supper tables, including a beloved missionary whose parents have come from Arizona to tour New England before taking him home. It was a shock to me when, several months ago, he immediately knew what acute myeloid leukemia was. He developed it when he was 15 years old and had a successful stem cell transplant from his younger brother. Now he’s completed a successful two-year mission in New England. His parents come to supper and afterwards I talk with his mom. We share the experience of a loved son going through cancer. The helplessness of learning that just one mutant cell can multiply uncontrollably and cause such havoc. The sorrow of watching a son go through both the illness and the treatments. Their journey isn't over: the transplant has caused graft versus host disease. It's never easy. It’s comforting to talk.
It’s been a good week.
Tuesday, July 26, 2016
Tuesday, July 19, 2016
Memories of Montana
Two Years Ago
On Day 27 of David’s stem cell transplant, Jim and I fly west to attend a Hazen reunion in Fort Benton, Montana. It’s the 80th birthday of both my Uncle Herb and his wife, Judy, as well as their 60th wedding anniversary. My 91-year-old dad, my brother Timothy, sister Maggie, and her husband John stay in the charming Grand Union Hotel, while Jim and I rent a two bedroom apartment and host Peter, Xiomara, 15-month-old Andrew, and Sam. I’m thrilled to share the experience, meeting Montana relatives and visiting the places where my dad and uncle grew up, so different from Metro Boston.
We drive out to the abandoned ranch house where my dad was raised, and trudge up a prickly-stubble pickup-truck trail through the wheat field that surrounds the old homestead.
The ranch's abandoned outhouse
We crawl through a window and gingerly walk the old, creaky floors. I find three composition books: travel journals of Grampa’s. Inside there is no text, just lists of highway numbers he drove on in each state. For many years he roamed the country during the farmer's quiet season of winter.
July 2016
I finish Rare Bird, a memoir by Anna Whiston-Donaldson, describing her experience of losing her 12-year-old son in a freak drowning accident, and also read Letter to My Husband, a grief book written by Jill Truman in the year following her husband's death.
On Day 27 of David’s stem cell transplant, Jim and I fly west to attend a Hazen reunion in Fort Benton, Montana. It’s the 80th birthday of both my Uncle Herb and his wife, Judy, as well as their 60th wedding anniversary. My 91-year-old dad, my brother Timothy, sister Maggie, and her husband John stay in the charming Grand Union Hotel, while Jim and I rent a two bedroom apartment and host Peter, Xiomara, 15-month-old Andrew, and Sam. I’m thrilled to share the experience, meeting Montana relatives and visiting the places where my dad and uncle grew up, so different from Metro Boston.
We drive out to the abandoned ranch house where my dad was raised, and trudge up a prickly-stubble pickup-truck trail through the wheat field that surrounds the old homestead.
We crawl through a window and gingerly walk the old, creaky floors. I find three composition books: travel journals of Grampa’s. Inside there is no text, just lists of highway numbers he drove on in each state. For many years he roamed the country during the farmer's quiet season of winter.
July 2016
I finish Rare Bird, a memoir by Anna Whiston-Donaldson, describing her experience of losing her 12-year-old son in a freak drowning accident, and also read Letter to My Husband, a grief book written by Jill Truman in the year following her husband's death.
While repairing a cracked plastic cake carrier, I get superglue all over my fingertips, making accurate typing on my laptop impossible for the evening. Next day I teach a Sunday School class and make our famous mac & cheese for our Weekly Gathering.
Wednesday, July 13, 2016
Eleven Months In
Two Years Ago
Tuesday, 9 July 2014
Day 22 of the stem cell transplant
David’s white blood cell count is down to 1.9 (reference range is 4.5 to 11), but the nurse practitioner isn’t concerned; fluctuations are to be expected. She does another bone marrow biopsy: David’s fifth. It goes better than the fourth, which David described to R’el as “the worst pain in America”.
And so we wait. Seventy-eight days of quarantine to go.
Tuesday, 12 July 2016
11 months since David's death
I take the T into Kendall Square and have a basil limeade with a new friend. I plan to take the T back, but decide to walk to the Harvard Square T station instead. Before I get there I decide to walk farther, to Porter. Before I get there, Alewife Station becomes my new goal. At the firehouse on Garden St, I bear left. Wrong! Instead of Alewife I end up near the Fresh Pond rotary. Cutting through the mall parking lot I take a steep dusty slope to cross over some railroad tracks. The extra sweat drips right into my eyes. They sting intensely for several minutes and it is an effort to keep them open. I pass by the station, having now walked four and a half miles, and resolve to continue to Arlington Center. Once there I eschew one bus stop after another and continue on to Lexington. I stay on the bike path for a mile past our house in order to complete a half marathon: 13.1 miles.
A half marathon on the eleventh monthiversary of David’s death. A tribute to his life.
Sunday, 3 July 2016
My friend, Deb, sits next to me in Relief Society and says she finds her body needs 9 hours of sleep to heal. (She had hip surgery 7 ½ months ago.) She expresses mild frustration at that, but says it is what it is.
So, am I taking my body’s cue on healing as I sleep without an alarm or am I being lazy and self-indulgent? For today I’m going to go with the healing theory.
I return home from my three week vacation on Wednesday, June 30. Next day I’m ambitious, but by the end of the day frantic to tears with what I haven’t accomplished. Friday, my therapist guides me to realize that I have put my grief on hold for the three weeks and now yet another day with my overly-ambitious reentry plan.
I want to mourn. I’m scared to mourn. I’m in a more relaxed, calm place than eleven months ago; I fear going back into that very sad, helpless, painful place. The tears spring up while reading my current grief book: Rare Bird, by Anna Whiston-Donaldson. I feel relief in the tears.
My experience with Rare Bird is similar to my experience with An Unquiet Mind by Kay Redfield Jamison (a bipolar memoir: I collect them). Neither woman’s biography is anything like mine, but there is a fundamental resonance.
At eleven months into this, reading Anna’s description of the early days after the loss of her son helps me process mine.
Thursday, 7 July 2016
I’ve decided to take July and August off. What does that mean? I’m not even sure; I’ll discover that day-by-day. What I’m looking for is the expansiveness in my life that I’ve felt in the last four days. The luxury of reading and writing, of being comfortable spending time, hours of it, nurturing my creativity. I want to take a break and really experience the grief in this last month before David’s first death anniversary. I want to give myself permission to grieve, to feel, to move more slowly and live more deliberately.
Friday, 8 July 2016
What does healthy grief feel like? In Rare Bird, Anna Whitston-Donaldson suggests leaning towards grief rather than away from it.
Saturday, 9 July 2016
As I cook for our weekly Sunday supper (we usually have about twenty people here), I listen, for about the twentieth time, to the second act of the new Broadway musical Hamilton. When the Hamiltons’ son, Phillip, dies and the company sings “Going Through the Unimaginable”, I cry every time. Grief at losing our son. Grief at losing a young adult son, cutting off what could have been a long and bright future.
I listen to the CD twice more. The third time, I move from the kitchen and sit in the family room, letting my body shake with sobs.
Is it wrong for me to play that song over and over? In a month we’ll experience the difficult first anniversary of his death. I want those feelings out in the open, to face them, embrace them. It’s an internal battle for me. I’m the one who is still expecting me to be ‘over it’ and ‘stop wallowing’ by the first year mark. Lean toward it, Mary.
Tuesday, 9 July 2014
Day 22 of the stem cell transplant
David’s white blood cell count is down to 1.9 (reference range is 4.5 to 11), but the nurse practitioner isn’t concerned; fluctuations are to be expected. She does another bone marrow biopsy: David’s fifth. It goes better than the fourth, which David described to R’el as “the worst pain in America”.
And so we wait. Seventy-eight days of quarantine to go.
Tuesday, 12 July 2016
11 months since David's death
I take the T into Kendall Square and have a basil limeade with a new friend. I plan to take the T back, but decide to walk to the Harvard Square T station instead. Before I get there I decide to walk farther, to Porter. Before I get there, Alewife Station becomes my new goal. At the firehouse on Garden St, I bear left. Wrong! Instead of Alewife I end up near the Fresh Pond rotary. Cutting through the mall parking lot I take a steep dusty slope to cross over some railroad tracks. The extra sweat drips right into my eyes. They sting intensely for several minutes and it is an effort to keep them open. I pass by the station, having now walked four and a half miles, and resolve to continue to Arlington Center. Once there I eschew one bus stop after another and continue on to Lexington. I stay on the bike path for a mile past our house in order to complete a half marathon: 13.1 miles.
A half marathon on the eleventh monthiversary of David’s death. A tribute to his life.
Sunday, 3 July 2016
My friend, Deb, sits next to me in Relief Society and says she finds her body needs 9 hours of sleep to heal. (She had hip surgery 7 ½ months ago.) She expresses mild frustration at that, but says it is what it is.
So, am I taking my body’s cue on healing as I sleep without an alarm or am I being lazy and self-indulgent? For today I’m going to go with the healing theory.
I return home from my three week vacation on Wednesday, June 30. Next day I’m ambitious, but by the end of the day frantic to tears with what I haven’t accomplished. Friday, my therapist guides me to realize that I have put my grief on hold for the three weeks and now yet another day with my overly-ambitious reentry plan.
I want to mourn. I’m scared to mourn. I’m in a more relaxed, calm place than eleven months ago; I fear going back into that very sad, helpless, painful place. The tears spring up while reading my current grief book: Rare Bird, by Anna Whiston-Donaldson. I feel relief in the tears.
My experience with Rare Bird is similar to my experience with An Unquiet Mind by Kay Redfield Jamison (a bipolar memoir: I collect them). Neither woman’s biography is anything like mine, but there is a fundamental resonance.
At eleven months into this, reading Anna’s description of the early days after the loss of her son helps me process mine.
Thursday, 7 July 2016
I’ve decided to take July and August off. What does that mean? I’m not even sure; I’ll discover that day-by-day. What I’m looking for is the expansiveness in my life that I’ve felt in the last four days. The luxury of reading and writing, of being comfortable spending time, hours of it, nurturing my creativity. I want to take a break and really experience the grief in this last month before David’s first death anniversary. I want to give myself permission to grieve, to feel, to move more slowly and live more deliberately.
Friday, 8 July 2016
What does healthy grief feel like? In Rare Bird, Anna Whitston-Donaldson suggests leaning towards grief rather than away from it.
Saturday, 9 July 2016
As I cook for our weekly Sunday supper (we usually have about twenty people here), I listen, for about the twentieth time, to the second act of the new Broadway musical Hamilton. When the Hamiltons’ son, Phillip, dies and the company sings “Going Through the Unimaginable”, I cry every time. Grief at losing our son. Grief at losing a young adult son, cutting off what could have been a long and bright future.
I listen to the CD twice more. The third time, I move from the kitchen and sit in the family room, letting my body shake with sobs.
Is it wrong for me to play that song over and over? In a month we’ll experience the difficult first anniversary of his death. I want those feelings out in the open, to face them, embrace them. It’s an internal battle for me. I’m the one who is still expecting me to be ‘over it’ and ‘stop wallowing’ by the first year mark. Lean toward it, Mary.
Tuesday, July 5, 2016
Dish Towels
Two Years Ago
On Day 15 of David’s stem cell transplant we see Dr. Chen. It is all good news: David’s white blood cell counts are 9.9, well within the reference range of 4.5 to 11. His red cell counts remain a bit low, but are holding steady. Next Tuesday David will see Jess Driscoll, the nurse practitioner, a sign that he is doing well and doesn’t require Dr. Chen’s constant attention
David moves slowly and gets tired easily, but he is able to move around the house, make himself a sandwich, go for short walks, and be home alone.
July 5, 2016
Folding clothes on my first laundry day since returning from the Northwest six days ago. The last day of my vacation I did laundry at Michelle’s and David’s house, thus avoiding the discouraging ritual of spending the first day back home doing laundry. Unpacking and resuming household duties is emotionally draining enough.
I reach to fold the ‘new’ dish towels and realize they are two years old. I bought a large package of them, and a package of dish cloths, in May, 2014, to minimize the use of paper towels in my super-clean kitchen by using a fresh cloth towel every day.
Handling the dish towels doesn’t make me cry. Reading On Loss and Living Onward does. I didn’t take it with me on my three week western jaunt. It’s on my Kindle, so that’s no excuse. I consciously didn’t read any grief books; I wanted to take a breather. Now I’m back.
On Day 15 of David’s stem cell transplant we see Dr. Chen. It is all good news: David’s white blood cell counts are 9.9, well within the reference range of 4.5 to 11. His red cell counts remain a bit low, but are holding steady. Next Tuesday David will see Jess Driscoll, the nurse practitioner, a sign that he is doing well and doesn’t require Dr. Chen’s constant attention
David moves slowly and gets tired easily, but he is able to move around the house, make himself a sandwich, go for short walks, and be home alone.
July 5, 2016
Folding clothes on my first laundry day since returning from the Northwest six days ago. The last day of my vacation I did laundry at Michelle’s and David’s house, thus avoiding the discouraging ritual of spending the first day back home doing laundry. Unpacking and resuming household duties is emotionally draining enough.
I reach to fold the ‘new’ dish towels and realize they are two years old. I bought a large package of them, and a package of dish cloths, in May, 2014, to minimize the use of paper towels in my super-clean kitchen by using a fresh cloth towel every day.
Handling the dish towels doesn’t make me cry. Reading On Loss and Living Onward does. I didn’t take it with me on my three week western jaunt. It’s on my Kindle, so that’s no excuse. I consciously didn’t read any grief books; I wanted to take a breather. Now I’m back.
Grief is a geat leveler. There is no highroad out.Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Hour of Gold, Hour of Lead
Courage is a first step, but simply to bear the blow bravely is not enough. Stoicism is courageous, but it is only a halfway house on the long road. It is a shield, permissible for a short time only. In the end, one has to discard shields and remain open and vulnerable. Otherwise, scar tissue will seal off the wound and no growth will follow. To grow, to be reborn, one must remain vulnerable—open to love but also hideously open to the possibility of more suffering.
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