mourning

Posts Tagged ‘mourning’

The methodology of consolation

Tuesday, November 10th, 2009

I stood next to his body with my hand on the back of a woman I'd only met once before. I didn't even know her first name. I just knew her as his mother.

There's no way to do that right. It's impossible to properly console a mother who is crying over the loss of her son, her only child, her best friend. Crying's not the right word. This was a complete and utter loss of all emotional faculties. Up and down my hand went on her back. A constant rhythm. That's all I could think of. Up and down. Up and down.

Trying to give her privacy, I stared intently at the cabinet against the wall, filled with medical supplies. In the glass, I caught the reflection of his face, waxy and still. I heard her talk to him, telling him who she notified and how his son will be fine and how she'll be strong because she knows he would want her to be. And I heard her deny it over and over again, repeating the word no with a low staccato beat. Her face buried in the blue sheet that covered him, she moaned, a low guttural sound that echoed in my head. Up and down. Up and down.

I noticed that one of the cabinet doors was slightly ajar and contemplated walking over to close it. The more I stared, the more it bothered me. Why didn't somebody close that fucking door? The rest of them are closed and how hard is it to close. one. door? And the sheets? Why were the sheets wrinkled? Hadn't anyone thought that the sheets should be nice and neat? Without thinking, I reached out to straighten the sheet in front of me. My hand touched his covered body. It was very solid and felt cool to the touch. And it felt wrong. So wrong.

Suddenly, I was ready to leave. If it wasn't for my hand on the back of this woman I didn't know, moving up and down, while she said goodbye to her son, a friend, I would have been gone. Instead, I breathed and looked him in the face and listened to her words. I felt her love and her grief and her pain and her misery as if it were my very own.

And I stood silently and like a statue, if not for the arm moving up and down, up and down, until she was done saying goodbye to her only son.

Tags: condolences, consolation, death, morbid, mourning
Posted in Serious stuff | 59 Comments »

For Bug

Wednesday, October 21st, 2009

For little more than a year, I've been friends with Tanis, a blogger who's famous in Canada, which is kind of like being rich in Romania. I mean, I guess some of you may have heard of her outside of the Great White North, but mainly because I've written about her several times before. This time, though, it's a bit more serious. It's about today, and what today will be like for my friend.

Tanis, I'm sorry. I didn't know who you were four years ago when your son Bug died. I wasn't there to see you glassy-eyed, barely functioning, enduring a flow of well-wishers and supporters, and then struggling to survive when that flow dried up. I wasn't there to sit with you quietly, offering nothing more than the solace of another person's company.

I have never experienced loss on a level even close to yours. I can only try to use what I do know, from knowing you and being your friend, to offer my love and support. I know that Bug was loved deeply by his mother and his father and his brother and his sister. I know that he will live forever within your heart. And I know that even though the pain will never go away, your fond memories of his time on this earth will grow stronger until the hurt is more bearable. And that doesn't mean that your love was or is or will ever be any less.

Today is going to be a hard day. Today you will be mourning one son while celebrating the birthday of your newly adopted son. How do you do both? How do you separate a celebration of a lost life and a celebration of a new one?

If I can be presumptuous, let me answer that. You don't. Every time you embrace Jumby, every step you take while carrying him, every minute you spend with him at the doctor's, helping him to grow stronger, you are celebrating life. You are living life to the fullest, taking that love that Bug had for you and you had for him, and investing it in the world. In Jumby. In Fric and Frac. And that's the best way to remember your son that I can think of.

I wasn't there to sit with you then, but I'm here now. And I encourage everyone who is reading this to sit quietly for a moment for Tanis. And then take your love and invest it. Love always pays dividends.

Tags: bug, love, mourning, redneck mommy, redneckmommy, shale, tanis
Posted in Serious stuff | 62 Comments »

Ode to my grandfather

Wednesday, April 29th, 2009

Those of you who follow me on Twitter or Facebook likely saw the news that I posted about my grandfather dying early Tuesday morning. He had been suffering for a long time now, and his physician had been predicting that he "wouldn't last the week" for almost two years – almost since the day my grandmother died. Those of you who sent me condolence emails or messages through Twitter or Facebook, thank you very much.

I moved away from Boston when I was three, and can count on one hand the number of times I saw my dad's parents after that. They came down and visited twice and we went up to visit them three times. I wasn't particularly close to either of them, although my grandfather and I communicated during college quite a bit. Even though he only had a sixth-grade education, he would write me letters and send money every few months. I would always reply with my own letters, and we communicated like that during my entire college career. It was a very sweet gesture, albeit an occasionally indecipherable one, and I took every chance I had to tell him how much it meant to me that he would send those letters.

Until the last several years, my grandfather was in amazing health. Before a hospital visit in 2001, the last time he was in the hospital was in the Korean War when a jeep he was driving exploded. He walked away without a scratch but they insisted on taking him the hospital anyways. He was probably the toughest person I've ever met, and it was always difficult to see him in a weakened condition. The last time I saw him, he was staying in a hospital room with my grandmother and was raring to get home. He also handed me the last letter he'd ever write me and asked me not to open it until after he had died. I searched through my file cabinet on Tuesday and finally found it, a normal-looking 8X10 envelope with "Adam Heath Avitable" scrawled, barely legible, on the front. I smiled at the fact that he uses my full name just like I do, and began to read:

Dear Adam,

If you are reading this, then I have finally passed on, hopefully to a better place. Or so it would seem. However, it is likelier that I will crawl from the ground a hungry brain-eating monster, shambling from victim to victim in my never-ending quest for a meal. You were my first grandson, so I am entrusting you with this letter in order to avoid a zombie plague like the famous Undead Attack of '66.

Here are directions to my pre-purchased grave site. I need you to fly to Boston and come to the grave, where I have hidden a shovel. Take the shovel and dig up my coffin. When you open the coffin, be very careful to keep your hands and fingers away from my mouth, as zombies can be quicker than they look. I need you to separate my head from my neck, put my head in a box or bag, and then bury it in a separate location.

Two years ago, when your grandmother died, I had to go through this same process and she almost got me. In fact, she managed to turn two groundskeepers into the undead before I could stop her rampage. Zombies are serious business, and you cannot take this responsibility lightly!

I cannot ask your father to do this, as I know it would be too difficult, so the burden rests on your shoulders alone. Tell no one of this letter, as we do not want to cause a panic in the streets about future zombie attacks.

May God have mercy on our souls.

Love,
Jerry Avitable*

So, I'm off to Boston. Wish me luck?

***
In other Avita-news, tonight we're having a Britt-free installment of "Clearly, You're Retarded!" Stepping into Britt's highly capable fashionable shoes is the intelligent, although not quite as smart as me, Faiqa!

The show starts tonight, Wednesday, at 9 PM EST, and our topic is about destroying children's dreams. More specifically, should parents encourage and support a belief in fictional characters like Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, or the Tooth Fairy? Is lying to your children okay in this situation?

If you're going to listen, I strongly suggest that you download the TalkShoe Pro software – it's free and much more stable than the web interface. Listen live online here: Clearly, You're Retarded