Thursday, March 8, 2012

wisdom


I feel like this.

Her death was the sound of a tree falling in the forest. It made no sound, because no one heard it.

When I realized my daughter fell and I didn't hear her, I screamed.  I became uprooted, immediately tumbling to the ground. I was expended, losing its green the moment it lay still in the mossy bed of the forest floor. It made a very loud sound that everyone in my world heard.

It is a zen koan. The wisdom of her death and the living after. I am not wise. Don't get me wrong. But I am wiser than I was. She died. And I cannot change that. Should I deny growth to spite suffering, to accentuate the injustice of her death?

I admit, for the first year, I specifically resisted growth. There was nothing like growth. If you said something about growth, I spat at you. I bit your head, held on with my rotten teeth, growled. It was the absence of growth. It was a deforestation. I pulled up all my groundlings, the trees beginning to take root in the same place where she fell. I slashed and burnt acreage of me and acreage of friends. I embraced the ugly part of it all. Ugly felt bad, but it is what I knew.

I keep thinking of a friend who had dentures put in her mouth. Her teeth were slowly worn away and blackened by a combination of bad choices and bad genes. She finally got them all pulled, fixed, as they say. When the dentist put her new teeth in, she looked in the mirror and cried. She said that the teeth didn't look like her. They had no gaps, they were white and straight and perfect. Her teeth were yellow and crooked.

That wasn't her, she said. And the dentist asked her if she wanted him to put dentures in that look like rotten teeth. "That is not my job. My job is to put teeth in that look beautiful. You are not your bad teeth."

We grow attached to our scars.
I was attached to them. Attached to my knots, and carved initials in the trunk of me. Maybe I am still attached to them.

I keep writing about grief even when I come here to talk about a tree falling in a forest. I keep writing about what I learned after Lucia died even though I did not want to learn a damned thing. I hated advice. I rejected anything that sounded like I learned something, flipped off prayers and platitudes and comfort.

What I learned was specifically because I didn't want to grow. I wanted to be stuck with my rotten teeth, my felled tree, useful to no one. Perhaps I learned more about the extent in which I could be annihilated and still look normal, function, resemble human. My defects, my strengths, my humility, my arrogance took root in me, grew another withering, beastly creature, less tree and more fungus. I don't begrudge me. I did the best I could, but it was not enough. I took the path of selfish.

Here is what I learned: I learned what I value in my friends. I learned what I appreciate in my acquaintances. I learned how to accept from strangers.

I began to understand the necessity for boundaries. Who shares what and who gets to know about Lucia. I needed boundaries. I learned that I don't have to tell everybody everything I know, as my friend's grandmother says. I figured out whose judgment matters. I found out painfully which friends abandon me in my hardest hours, and which just didn't know what to do. There is a difference, and I appreciate that now. I learned that I am a spiritual person from the top of me to my bottom. It is how I want my life to be. Not religious, but in service to something bigger.

I suppose in some ways I feel wiser, more grateful, more mindful, more present in the moment. Because she died, her death reminded me that everything and everyone dies. I hadn't quite been living that truth. Because I could not change that she died, not through magical thinking, or dying myself. Not from giving up, or giving in. (I did both at different times.) You learn something from that. I have no control and in having no control, there is a freedom. But I chose this path of trying to figure out what I could learn from the worst moments of my life. Who I was then. Why I let my child's death erase all of what I believed so I could embrace intolerant, unkind, judgmental, and angry. I learned anger is my default emotion. I should be ashamed of it, but I am not. It is just who I am. I learned that. And then I work every day to change that reaction to everything.

I feel like Lucy's death made me better, because I have had to change every bit of me. I had to change, because being the me I was and grieving was fucking torture.  So I changed stuff about me, like who I trust and when I trust and what I trust and how much I trust. I change what I give and what I take and what I give personally and what I take personally. I changed what I complain about and what I don't.

Believe me, I resented that I had to change and grow and learn something. But she died, and I couldn't change that. But I could change me. I could change my reaction to grief. I suppose, you can say that Lucy's death has given me a kind of humility and wisdom I was sorely lacking without the years of losing every. little. thing. And yet, I would give all that up if she could live.

And that seems like no wisdom at all.

17 comments:

  1. Wow. That's all I can think of to say right now.

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  2. Beautiful Angie, just captivating stuff here. And that ending just about sums it up perfectly.

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  3. I especially love your posts that I feel like I could have written, if I had an ounce of writing talent. Anger is my default emotion too. It is also my Meadow's. That's the part I have to learn to live with. I can't change that about her, but I wish she never had to experience what she has to make her so angry.

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  4. That last paragraph - me, too. I keep reading this post and thinking about what your Bea said about trees, and how the ideas there and the ones here might mix together.

    And that last paragraph. Oh, gods. Me, too.

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  5. "I suppose, you can say that Lucy's death has given me a kind of humility and wisdom I was sorely lacking without the years of losing every. little. thing. And yet, I would give all that up if she could live."

    I love this line. It made me cry. Great post.

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  6. The question--should you deny growth to accentuate the injustice of her death--I think about this a lot but was never able to articulate it so beautifully.

    My eyes filled with tears as I read this because I know that I have grown and I know that I am better for having loved and lost Eliza. But, like you, I would so gladly be a worse person and just have my daughter here.

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  7. Oh, holy shit. Yes, yes, yes. That is it exactly.

    Today, every day, I am so grateful for your words, and for your company in the silence.

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  8. I keep writing about what I learned after Lucia died even though I did not want to learn a damned thing. I hated advice. I rejected anything that sounded like I learned something, flipped off prayers and platitudes and comfort.

    *****

    Selfish, you say further down. I wonder.

    All that advice giving, that wretched, cheap, bloodless (even when well-meant) up-side touting

    It didn't come from anyone who had paid for it.

    Because anyone who had paid for it, would have known enough - then, at least - to keep their mouth shut. To grieve. And let you grieve.

    Which, when it doesn't go down that way, creates a lot of anger.

    I don't have to tell you.

    Maybe they are the ones who should be ashamed, instead of us.

    I'll take your wisdom - and thank you,

    Cathy in Missouri

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  9. And I feel very much like this too. Except you said it so much better than I ever could.
    xo

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  10. Someone told me today, well yesterday since it is 3am, that they are inspired by my strength. I'm not strong. I just keep living. I'm still loosing friends and finding boundaries and trying not to make mistakes with all this anger and grief... But that is so much effort while thinking about my daughter who I miss and caring for my little boy. Growing and changing may be inevitable but right now it's not by choice, it is more of a metamorphosis. A change that takes place because it does not because I am trying to make it so. I don't feel wise or helpful, I feel broken and bitter. I still smile and laugh and people think I am doing better... But once again it is 3 am and as the world sleeps I am contemplating the tree that fell in my forest, I am dreaming of my daughter. Rating a piece of toast at our kitchen island with my bare feet on the cold tile missing and crying teet and choking down this piece of bread so I stop retching into the toilet. I am so thankful for you. I try and learn from you but as you know it is a solitary path traveled by too many.

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  11. "All that advice giving, that wretched, cheap, bloodless (even when well-meant) up-side touting

    It didn't come from anyone who had paid for it."

    Right on, Cathy!

    I'm sure I'm learning stuff, too. But I'm still in the "flipping off" stage.

    I don't *want* to grow and learn from this. I want my baby.

    You wrote that those desires seem to deny wisdom. But I think it illustrates a deep wisdom, and our wisdom is LOVE.

    Beautiful post.

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  12. Brilliant post. I loved every word of it, truly, and feel you are putting into words so much of what I am feeling. 15 months out, I am still trying to figure out who I am post-loss, and I feel very unsure. I am sifting through each piece of me, examining everything, trying to determine what is the result of my son's passing and what would have happened anyway regardless. It is all such a confusing mess, truly, but I really appreciated reading this. I, too, want to trade the "wisdom" to have my son back. And I'm always so self-conscious to tell people I am better for being his mother, because I'm not sure how that translates to non-loss people. ~Lindsay

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  13. This is so accurate. I believe that I could have learned plenty about my bad habits and worst tendencies while trying to summon up the patience to parent both of my daughters.

    But I can't turn my nose up at the lessons I've learned because of R either.

    I feel more real because of R. Like I really know where my hard limits are. C survived and made me softer and cracked my sarcastic heart open a little. But R made everything seem so much sharper and more clear.

    I'm babbling now.

    I'll just say that this was a great post and leave it at that.

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  14. That whole last paragraph is just perfect. You always seem to be able to take the words right out of my mouth. I am so thankful for you writings. Truly, thankful!

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  15. in beginning of grieving for Calvin, i also didn't want to "grow" or "move forward" or any of that stuff. i just wanted to sit in my despair and miss my baby and shut everyone else out who tried to say otherwise. i needed to do that, at the time, though. i needed to protect my grief and protect the significance of his short, little life.

    there's so much time left for learning and growing... no need to rush any of it at all.

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