Monthly Archives: December 2011

Begin Again – New Year’s Resolutions

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The title of this entry is a mystery to me. It’s late. I’m tired. A new year turns over tomorrow and the impulse to look back over my shoulder for a glance at the past is impossible to overcome. These days I look for times of my life when I was happiest and try to find whatever it is that might help me today. Kundalini Yoga stands out as one of those life enriching habits, and I’m making the resolution to bring out my “Seven Rays for Seven Days” workbook and begin again. (ah….now the title makes a little more sense).

Alma Eaton moved in next door when Lena was almost two, and I was pregnant with Mimi. Alma means “soul” in Spanish. A gorgeous mix of Cuban and French heritage, Alma lived with her soul on the outside of her skin: passionate, compassionate and so very very beautiful. 17 years ago, Alma took me to my first Kundalini Yoga class held on Saturday mornings in the home of Gurmukh Kaur Khalsa. Gurmukh teaches out of a studio now in Hollywood, Golden Bridge Yoga. But back then, we gathered in her living room where she led us in an hour of yoga followed by fresh brewed chai and cookies. Alma worked hard during class, the sweaty sheen and flush of red on her skin elevating her beauty to near otherworldly quality. What made her even more beautiful was her desire to apply the lessons in Kundalini yoga to her spirit as well, to grow her heart, to nurture her soul. She travelled to India with Gurmukh and met one of the spiritual leaders there. I used to know this story well – Alma was blessed and given a new name, which had a special meaning. Having lived most of her life being appraised by her outer appearance, this recognition of her inner self thrilled her. And I’ve forgotten the details. And I’ll probably never learn them again.

After eight years of living next door, she moved and we lost touch, running into each other once. We exchanged our new numbers, then never used them. Two different worlds. She had seen Lena grow up. Seen Mimi born. She took baths in my house because she only had a shower. We shared birthdays – I can still look around the room or in my jewelry box and remember the special things Alma gave me. Funny how we let people like that slip out of our lives. They are gone from us, perhaps for good, but we don’t mourn grievously because the loss is not immediate or complete. An opportunity for reunion remains, and this appeases us.

Tonight when I went online to find Alma, I found her obituary. She died in 2008. Somehow I feel I must have known this before. I know I have looked for Alma in the past…If I knew, I forgot. And I forgot because….maybe I was too sad to continue to know.

Gosh, it’s late. And I had meant to keep this short and simply provide a link to the following Garrison Keillor essay about the accident that took Alma’s life. He happened to have seen the aftermath.  I have heard him read this essay, but didn’t know the Alma he was speaking of was the woman who once lived next door and shared so much of my life with me.

As for the title of this entry, with the new year breathing down my neck and the sandman pounding at the door I will steam forward without nuance or finesse: many many people will be walking with us into this new year. Some of them we used to know, love and enjoy. When their phone number flips by in our contacts but we don’t call, there’s a part of us that figures they’ll still be around next year and we’ll call them then. Call now. Renew the friendship. Begin again.

In Loving Memory
Alma Maude Eaton

Alma’s memorial page

Golden Bridge Yoga

Garrison Keillor’s essay on Alma’s death 

Holiday Shopping – what to get the person who only wants one thing

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The first Christmas without Lena came just two months after she died. Mimi and I were still blessed with the shock that sheltered us from emotional extremes, but also left us somnolent, too lazy to keep our traditions and fly back to the midwest to be with my family. My desire to create a relatively happy holiday for Mimi motivated me to shake off enough of the tacky-eyed, heavy-limbed grief fatigue to get a tree, decorate the house, make lots of lists and actually shop for the items on those lists. Otherwise, we stumbled along with anyone who reached out and ended up finding refuge outside our seasonal habits.

A few traditions were lost that year, some forever. The fear of what this new holiday would be like turned out to be greater than the sadness of leaving old traditions behind. Mimi and I started over on our own that year, finding comfort in creating new traditions and putting aside memories that were too painful to enjoy so soon after Lena’s death.

My favorite gift that year came from myself – apologies to all those who shopped for me and did their best to please. I was pleased, and grateful to receive. But while shopping at the Taschen bookstore, I stumbled across something called Keel’s Simple Diary. Soft but substantial, with gold lined pages and a slender red satin bookmark, the outside of the book appealed to my senses. At first, the inside of the book – each page half filled with prompts to serve as a starting point, discouraged me – I didn’t want a journal that had already been written in. Still, the little diaries came in an assortment of attractive colors and were so reasonably priced that I purchased ten or so to give to Lena’s friends. And I kept a brown one for myself.

All my life I’ve had a notebook or diary or journal around to scribble in. Then, during one of life’s most acute circumstances I found myself unable to write. Empty pages overwhelmed me. But once I opened the little brown diary, I began writing in it immediately, and continued writing nearly every day. The prompts were like a friend, a teacher…a shrink….nudging me to explore an idea that could help me see my situation in a different way. Sometimes the prompts were a silly distraction, a joke, an exercise in absurdity that cleared my head. Some days, the prompts were shockingly relevant, as though Lena or some other angel had written the page and stuck it inside the book when I wasn’t looking.

That still happens. Tonight, before writing this entry, I went looking for my old Keel’s Simple Diary, the one I’d completed more than a year ago. Half my new house remains unpacked, and I had to dig through several boxes before I found the diary.

The prompt on the very first page which I had dated December 23rd, 2009, was a multiple choice question, asking what made me feel at home.

In December of 2009, I had chosen the first answer: “Opening an organized, odorless refrigerator filled with everything you like.”

Earlier today, December 2011, I went refrigerator shopping.

My new fridge will be delivered the day after tomorrow. I’m going to fill it with everything I like. This year’s favorite gift to myself – which has now become a tradition.

Purchase Keel’s Simple Diary at Taschen online

Of course, every choice of gift depends entirely on the recipient. Here are some ideas based on what brought Mimi and I particular comfort that first holiday season.

DVD of whatever will provide complete and utter escape from reality. For me it was the most recent Star Trek Movie, for Mimi, Ghosts of Girlfriends Past. We also received The Hangover (part one), but we didn’t really enjoy it. Too realistic?

Books: Sum: forty tales from the afterlives by David Eagleman; When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice For Difficult Times by Pema Chodron; My Bread by Jim Lahey  and a 5 qt. Dutch Oven to cook the bread in. (amazingly comforting and satisfying.)

an invitation….to your house, where doing nothing but sitting comfortably in silence is acceptable.

a self invitation….to the grieving person’s house, to sit in silence, or watch tv, or order pizza, or….

warm fuzzy socks

a phone call.

Happy Holidays

 

 

Tattoo Relief

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Shirking a relentless list of urgent “to-dos” (including writing a long overdue blog entry), I spent three hours last Thursday getting a tattoo. Over the past two years, ink and needles have been flying as Lena’s friends and relatives sacrifice a patch of bare skin for a permanent, personal memorial. A sugar skull in full Dia de los Muertos regalia; a butterfly hovering on a chest, just above the heart; a reproduction of the same tattoo Lena had between her breasts: a ying/yang type symbol Lena said was African in origin and meant “No Fear Except for God”. Mimi had LaLaLa tattooed on the underside of her left arm, where it would rest against her heart. She doesn’t know why she added the extra “La”. But it seems right.

My tattoo intertwines a string of LaLas and Mimis into a double helix, down the length of my left arm.

Why does it seem so right to get a tattoo? This is not only a phenomena among those of us mourning Lena. Among a group of grieving mothers I recently joined, there are many who have tattoos or are planning to get them. An article about a couple who lost their adult son to AIDS mentions that the mother and her sons friends got tattoos honoring her son. In the photo accompanying the story, the mother appears so conservative it is hard to imagine her entering a tattoo parlor and getting “inked”. She probably had never considered getting a tattoo – until her son died.

Part of the reason may be a desire to shout to the world we have suffered a devastating loss – to make visible the scars of our battle with grief. I am proud of my new tattoo. But the first time I thought about going sleeveless to show it off, I realized that when the tattoo is revealed, so is my history. From now on, I will be telling the story of my life more often and perhaps when I don’t really want to. And I will always be reminding myself of the story too. No days of forgetting or pretending. No, sharing the pain is too big a burden to be the main reason tattoos are so popular an expression of grief.

Feeling the pain is what motivated me. The desire to break my own skin. Not just to break my skin, but rip it apart. A new friend who lost her step-son to suicide five years ago asked me recently, “don’t you sometimes want to unzip yourself and let out the pain?” Other people have expressed similar sentiments: the desire to tear open their bodies looking for relief on the outside. References to violent, self-mutilating expressions of grief appear in the Bible, in records of the Greeks – since the beginnings of humanity we go mad from the inability to reclaim what was just moments before death our most precious possession – the living presence of someone we love.

Seeking to claw our way out of the madness brings a second remedy: the prospect of a physical pain so great, the emotional pain will be diminished. As the needles went into my arm, I envisioned myself taunting grief with my strength and tolerance. Knowing I would have something to show for my experience emboldened me. I would not come out of this pain empty handed – or empty armed. Not a shout out to the world about losing my daughter, but a shout in to myself about what I am able to survive.

After the lettering of the tattoo had been finished, the artist added shading in areas, which meant running a bigger cluster of needles over my freshly inked flesh. For the first time in the session I felt the edge of my threshold. I had discussed another tattoo idea with the artist, a larger one, a half sleeve of a painting of Lena’s. As I paid her I said I wasn’t sure I could take the pain of such a large color fill.

“All pain is bearable,” she replied. “You can take it – look, you’ve given birth to children.”

Yes. Childbirth is painful – but when the pain is over, you have something – someone – to show for it. The memory of the labor pains fades into the joy of having a child.

The death of a child is painful – the pain is never over and there’s nothing to show for it.

So I lay bare my flesh and hope I can take the pain.