Viola Speaks

Viola hits the big time!

Or at least the NY Times.

It's a bit surreal...

...my story's 'out there'...my sex life's 'out there'...I got published!...damn, guess I need to take this writing thing seriously...

And I will.  Promise. 

Somewhere Evan's smiling on me.  I know he's very, very proud.

 

PS:  Cub and I (yeah, his name's really Manuel) did resolve our blowout last month, a couple days after my last post...in a platonic, we'll-always-be-friends-transforming-romantic-love-into-friendship-love kinda way of course, nothing more.  (Although a few friends do keep checking with me to make sure he's actually still in California.) 

PPS:  Isn't the illustration awesome?  The guy really nailed the essence of it.

 

 

Holding On

“That echo chorus lied to me with its
Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on"

--Neko Case

Download 03 Hold On, Hold On

I’ve had a rough go lately.  Ironic, since there’s so much good in my life.

I finally got my own place and it’s lovely—Jersey City, 2 bedrooms, 2 blocks from the Hudson and Manhattan views. 

Work’s busy.  I’m finally ready for a fuller agenda, and have a nice mix of part-time roles:  Teaching (brings out my nurturing side, which doesn’t get much expression nowadays), strategic planning for the Zen guys, consulting and a new nonprofit advertising gig.

And best of all, looks like I’ll be published soon, in the NY Times no less (one reason I haven’t posted here—spent the summer writing this longer piece).  I’m still processing—“official” recognition of my writing, a broader audience for my voice and story.  Beyond now seeing myself as a “real” writer, where will this take me, what doors will open?

And my friends are still amazing.  The grief conventional wisdom holds that bereaved parents are lucky if they have one good friend who sticks by them.  I have…well, just about too damn many to count.

So what’s the problem?  I’ll be blunt—I’ve had serious ‘will to live’ issues the past month or so. 

It’s up and down, but overall I’m just tired, my soul’s tired.  The kind of tired sleep doesn’t help. 

It takes a lot to stay positive—manage grief, the pain, the memories, be with other’s children without self-pity, love my apartment and my life, without undue focus on the events that brought me here. 

I’m different, in some ways radically, and the growing pains on my 43-year-old psyche are almost too much.  My relationship to money is different—it’s hard to take the Fidelity rep seriously when my real issue is finding reason to live another 20+ years (no answers for that in their scripting). 

And “career”—that’s for people whose worlds weren’t destroyed.  Instead I focus on paying the bills (not quite there yet), and more importantly, creating meaning out of the debacle of my life.

I live with much heaviness, darkness, probably always will—no ‘getting over it’ or ‘moving on’, just learning to live with it.  It takes joy and happiness to balance, and that’s missing for me right now and perhaps why I’m struggling.

After a ridiculous number of breaking-ups and getting-back-togethers, Cub and I finally parted (really, really) this summer.  We ended well, particularly given that we had feelings for each other but were ending it anyway.  (I finally wanted something longer-term, he didn’t.)  The NY Times essay is about us, how he helped me heal.  I wrote it to both process and put “us” in the past, while creating a memorial of sorts.  He loved it.  Probably still does, but its being published brought up issues this week, with the final result of our hurting each other in ways we’d never have thought possible while actually dating.

This lovely essay, all about my finding hope after loss, through the joy, connection and love he brought to my life…and now, a battlefield between us, strewn with the dead bodies and carnage of anger, betrayal, rejection, disappointment, hurt feelings and sorrow. 

I hope we have the energy and will to go out and clean up the wreck.

I’m holding on.

"I Overslept Before I Woke"

I’m still doing hospital volunteer work.  And still working and training with the Zen guys.

The training itself involves some spiritual and self-growth work not for the self-knowledge resistant.  Last month we did a deep-dive into contemplating and preparing for death—completed advance directives, assigned health care proxies, planned memorial services and communicated such to loved ones.

Maybe I was an outlier, but I thought it was kinda fun. 

(I passed on the recommended funeral home visit, however, figuring that box got checked off three years ago.  Our funeral director’s lack of equanimity in dealing with the parents and family of a dead-six-year-old still astounds me—you’d think they’d be used to that shit, it being their job and all.)

At least in my own head, I’ve made peace with death.  I’ve found a way (mostly) to live with Evan’s.  I’m okay (mostly) with dying when it’s ‘my time’ (in a “if-the-plane-goes-down-oh-well” kind of way).  And I’ve stared down several “gee-I-hope-the-plane-really-DOES-go-down” episodes, thanks to copious amounts of therapy, spiritual exploration and Prozac.

The death ‘deep-dive’ culminated last weekend with even more exercises, including writing our obituary, a “just-in-case” death poem and death meditation.

(So what’s the point? Isn’t this macabre?  Not at all.  It was liberating and freeing.  When you’re fearless and self-accepting enough to look your own eventual death in the eye, then you’re free to face, and fully live, your life.  Seriously.)

A couple personal insights to share:

For one, I’ve got more time and potential for happiness than I tend to think, important given my daily battle to keep loss from overwhelming me and, given our youth-obsessed culture, the gnawing fear that my chance at happiness has passed.   Writing from the perspective of 95 gave me a sense of expansiveness and potential I don’t always feel.  I won’t always be where I am now—single with no active prospects, sharing a house, figuring out my path.  And much is in my power to create.

I’m also not ready to die yet, which honestly came as a surprise given my struggle to stay positive and find meaning and purpose.  I still have my moments (today, in fact), but I rediscovered that core that just KNOWS I’m not done yet.

The Zen death poem (called Yuige, which means ‘left behind’) is a tradition Soto Zen priests follow, where they write a poem as they’re actively dying.

“Just in case” they end up dying without warning, each New Year’s Day they write one to ‘leave behind’ for that year.  This being Zen, it’s not a free-form exercise.

First line: Express life and what you’ve done

Second line:  How many years in this life

Third line:  Feeling you have approaching death

Fourth line:  Your understanding of death and its meaning

So...just in case:

I overslept before I woke

43 years, not in vain

Time to go, no more to do?

Job well done…time for home

Coming Out Of His Closet, Part 1

My ex-husband is gay.  (Or maybe bi.) 

Still not sure if he’s sure, but at any rate he’s somewhere on the Kinsey scale other than where I’d assumed for eighteen years.

No ‘new’ news here—I found out three years ago as our marriage was unraveling.  (For the record this fact accelerated the unraveling but didn’t start it…that’s a whole other story.)

My reaction to this game-changer may have been atypical, at least based on what one reads and sees on Oprah regarding mixed-orientation marriages.  (Do we know a damn thing in our early 20s?  I clearly didn’t.) 

No wailing, anger or shame for me.  Rather…relief.  I wasn’t crazy—there was a reason we weren’t emotionally connected, it wasn’t all in my head.

It explained a helluva lot, beyond our emotional connection problem.  (Not to get all stereotypical, but he was enormously helpful around the house and has exquisite decorating taste.)

After this reveal however, my ex must have been unnerved by the ease with which I began psychologically moving into supportive, soon-to-be-ex-spouse mode.  A couple days later he asked “But we’re going to stay married, right?” 

My surprised look and honest response—“of course not”—clearly wasn’t what he wanted to hear.  The ‘confession’ was soon retracted (“never mind!”) and he insisted the marriage had to work.

When told I didn’t believe him, his petulant “well, you have to!” didn’t improve matters.

He did his damnedest to slam his closet door back shut and lock me in with him, but the gig was up.

Things were about as ugly and awful in the following months as you’d think, made worse by our utter inability to deal with conflict.  He desperately tried to hang on to everything our marriage represented to him (“respectability,” “normalcy”), while I miserably tried to reconcile the woman who knew she had to leave to save her soul with the guilt-ridden mother who knew the impact divorce would have on her son.

Yes, this was what was going down when he died. 

The fact we spent my son’s last five months on earth dealing with this bullshit—his first day of first grade, his last Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s, his parent's 40^th birthdays—just absolutely breaks my heart.

And then he died.

After the last of our family left two weeks later, our five-bedroom colonial was utterly silent.  An empty bedroom.  Empty playroom.  Clothes, pictures, Christmas gifts unused, birthday gifts bought and wrapped but never given. 

And two estranged, devastated people unable to provide the other any comfort, emotional zombies moving through the endless days and weeks that followed. 

I finally moved out five months later.  The Kinsey scale was beside the point—I was in survival mode.  Our one remaining bond was a heartaching, bittersweet memory. 

We both had gaping wounds to heal and tremendous shit to work out. 

On our own.

The Dogwood Stub

Some believe ghosts are just souls with unfinished business. 

Rather than moving on with bat-out-of-hell speed to whatever’s next, they... just hang out awhile. 

Perhaps hoping to find peace.  Answers.  Maybe they’re just not ready to move on. 

Totally get it.  Living on the outskirts of my old life, opting out of its relentless forward flow and pace…moving on is a continually moving target of a goal and a concept fraught with conflicted emotion. 

Our old house isn’t far and I drive by occasionally.  And still marvel at how my dream home transformed so quickly and completely into a house of horrors.

Not much has changed, at least on the outside.  (Although they do hang those annoying seasonal ‘flags’ I rather detest. They also aren’t trimming the rhododendrons…I want to sneak into their yard with a pair of clippers—but resist.) 

Last week I went to see if the dogwood was blooming.  Our son loved to climb that tree.  Small and low enough so he could get pretty high, yet not so high to give us a heart attack. 

Tree trimmers came once and in removing one of its dead branches we asked that they leave a little stub as a foothold. 

The trimmer, an older gentleman, wise in the ways of both trees and young boys, understood.  “Yes, this is a very important thing’—as he looked at our son and set to work leaving about a foot of dead branch, just enough to plant a small Merrell on.

I like seeing that stub.  It emotionally connects me to him and no one else knows its purpose—they’d just think it a mistake. It wasn’t.

The dogwood was just beginning to bloom.  But more disappointing…the stub was gone. 

They can’t trim the damn bushes but they went to the effort to cut off his—my—stub?!

(I do wonder if they ever made the connection between the last names of the couple they bought their house from and the memorial bench to a six-year-old just down the block.  I rather hope not.  And like to think none of our neighbors made the connection for them.)

Given everything else swirling within me (more later), it seemed a sign.  It’s no longer my tree, let alone his.  Let them have the dogwood.

I’m free to go. 

Sophie Meets An Unmarried Woman

Lately I’ve been thinking of grief as a chronic condition, something I’ll always have to deal with, including remissions, relapses and ongoing management strategies. 

Right now it’s learning how to grieve in the midst of living.

My pattern till now has been to be either ‘okay’ or very ‘not okay’ with little in-between.  And ‘not okay’ is so bad that when I’m ‘okay’ I’ve done what I can to keep ‘not okay’ at bay…lest I slide all the way back to Despair and then right back into bed. 

Which really won’t fly once I’m working again and have places to be, people to see.

I got through Christmas and New Year’s emotionally unscathed—but have begun to fear a ‘relapse’ sometime soon. 

But my 42nd birthday was this week.  And I had plans, was being taken out on the town, surprised even.  After my last two birthdays (my 40th a particular horror show, although at least my son was still alive), I was NOT going to jeopardize this fun with an untimely grief spell.

But I feel it coming.  The second anniversary of his death is a few weeks away.  And I’ve felt a few twinges lately. 

Bear in the Big Blue House (one of the sweetest kid’s shows ever) came up during a recent convo about kid’s TV…and it took me right back to my early years as a mother and the shock of realizing how absolutely, unconditionally, painfully even, one can really love another. 

This love, our intense bond, rocked me to my core.  Diaper commercials never made formerly unsentimental me cry, but other stuff did.  A.I. came out a couple months after he was born and the previews left me a battered, emotional lump (it’s about a mother who rejects her android son because he isn’t ‘human’).  I still haven’t seen it and never will.

I was the first of my friends to have a baby and while I was prepared for the work and lack of sleep, I wasn’t prepared for how pregnancy, birth and nursing would impact my view of myself as a woman, how thoroughly life-changing adding ‘mother’ to my identity would be.

The memory of Bear singing the Goodnight Song with Luna, my young son asleep on my lap, brought all this emotion right into the present day, during a normal, everyday conversation.  It stopped me mid-sentence.

The woman that is “me” has been undergoing even more profound identity changes the past two years.   It’s bizarre enough discovering the single, sexy woman with a bit of a wild side, long buried beneath the suburban, pony-tailed, long-married mom…it’s even more strange unleashing this long repressed self at the same time I’m figuring out how to be a ‘bereaved’ mother with no surviving children.

Life as one part An Unmarried Woman, one part Sophie’s Choice.  

 It’s a touch intense.  And has apparently made me fairly intense, or so I’m told.  (I’m apparently so not the typical dating relationship it takes my FWB days to process and recover.)

Not sure about this story’s ending, but I do know it’s gonna be way better than Sophie's.

Third Time's The Charm…

Two years ago, about a month before our son died, my now ex-husband and I spent New Year’s in the Hudson River Valley in a ‘let’s make the marriage work!’ weekend get away…as if two days at a B&B, wine tasting and sex were going to fix our issues. 

It was a miserable disaster, nicely foreshadowing 2007 in general.

Last year I rang in 2008 in a Native American sweat lodge out in Ojai, complete with shaman and a bunch of L.A. new age types.  It was an intense (claustrophobes beware) but amazing experience, a definite highlight on my spiritual journey.

And also foreshadowed the year to come.  In retrospect, 2008 was all about seeking…spiritual insight, peace, healing, meaning, a way forward, my ‘new’ self.  I didn’t leave too many rocks unturned in the process.

In contrast, this New Year’s was low-key and drama-free.  A girlfriend and I (neither of us had dates) spent a mellow evening with friends of hers and watched the ball drop with her son.  And went into hysterics over the Robbie Knievel jumping the Mirage volcano stunt, including re-enactments of all the various ways he could die in the attempt (so lame—god I don’t miss TV).

Friends, conversation, good food and wine, lots of laughs—after the past two years that’s a damn good and welcome foreshadowing of 2009. 

Didn’t do resolutions though.  Never was a resolution girl (whenever I wanted to do something I’d start, no point in waiting till January), and besides the past two years have been one big self-improvement project anyway.

All I really need to do is stay true to myself.  And stay open…to whatever life brings my way.   

Wishing everyone a peaceful and enlightened 2009.

Year's end is neither an end nor a beginning but a going on, with all the wisdom that experience can instill in us.  Hal Borland

For last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice.
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
T.S. Eliot, "Little Gidding"

The New Old Me

Been remiss in not posting for over two weeks…this one was surprisingly tough to write.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I’ve been feeling normal lately. 

Which made me realize I haven’t felt ‘normal’ since like mid-2006.  (My son died early 2007, but my marriage began falling apart the summer before.)

This normal thing takes some getting used to.  It’s like being home after returning from a long, awful trip to hell I never booked but there I was anyway, participating in some Kafkaesque version of The Amazing Race, exploring new, exotic places like Death, Despair, Grief, Heartbreak and Depression…and it was always a non-elimination round and the Roadblocks and Detours were without end. 

No cash prize either (unemployment so doesn’t count).

(Yes, the words and metaphors have been running wildly through my mind like undisciplined three-year-olds, and like a parent in way over their head I’ve been unable to regain control.)

Maybe it’s more than just ‘normal’…it’s my old self but way better.

With the despair gone and the grief easing up, the person I’ve become is emerging…all the work, soul-searching, cleaning out what was no longer helpful or authentic in my life is finally showing results.

I like this new old me.

The shift began last month—the days began to get easier, life seemed less bleak and the idea that things just might turn out okay began to gain both credibility and momentum. 

Seeing children…particularly young ones, particularly boys…no longer brings a reflexive jab of pain—I can also see their parents without bitterness, happy for them and what they have.  I’m also engaging with my housemate’s daughter who’s the age my son would be—I had been self-defensively distant for months.

Others have noticed—a friend told me I ‘got my groove back’, a yoga classmate noticed something’s ‘lifted’ and a recent date I first met in September almost didn’t recognize me—apparently I ‘carry’ myself differently. 

I’ve maybe, finally, let it all go.  Everything’s been gone a while.  But as Faulkner said “The past is not dead.  In fact, it’s not even past,” and accordingly the ghosts of my losses continued to haunt me, a constant push-pull, not only between me trying to tame, deny, will them to disappear, only to see them pop up time and again, but also between and betwixt them…I grieve my son, then my job, tomorrow a friendship, the day after the belief that life is fair and ‘nothing bad ever happens to me,’ etc.—one continuous random shuffle.

With this baggage (mostly) offloaded…well, there’s room for the new.  My adjunct instructor gig starts soon and I’m excited to teach.  Also met a guy (28, so I can now add ‘cougar’ to my bio) and we’ve got a nice little affair going on…he’s not ‘the one’ but we’re having fun in the meantime.  After the past couple years, the connection and affection is as good a drug as one can find.

Life’s moving forward.  It’s really only the darkest night that gives an appreciation for the dawn.

It's a new dawn...

…it’s a new day, it’s a new life for me…and I’m feeling good (apologies to Nina Simone—that song rocks.)

Winter will always be a bit tough for me now. 

I grew up in Southern California and frequently get puzzled looks at why I moved ‘back east’.   But people frequently gravitate to where they feel at home—I prefer the cultural and intellectual vibe in New York, as well as the change of seasons. 

What’s so great about every day being warm and sunny?  It’s boring.  You really don’t appreciate spring until you’ve had a few weeks of freezing weather, navigated New York sidewalks in the snow and dug your car out once or twice.

Winter is necessary for me and symbolic of so much—our day-to-day lives, time on this earth, ongoing personal growth.  It helps one remember joy is all the sweeter after a bit of bitterness.  (You can see where this is going…)

Winter’s not getting any easier for me, being when all the “milestones” hit.  Starting in fall—Halloween…no trick or treating. Thanksgiving and Christmas…without him.  New Year’s…one more he won’t see.  January…the month he died.  March…his birthday.

I just passed that last milestone. 

Last spring is a blur.  The end of winter didn’t have its usual impact.  The grief, the day-to-day struggle to appear ‘normal,’ the fast-lane disintegration of my marriage—neither home nor work were a haven.  The world re-awakening to life was depressingly irrelevant to me.  I was hanging onto the life raft for all I was worth, trying by sheer force of will not to go down.

As they say, what a difference a year makes.  As crappy as the year after my son’s death was (grief/despair, marriage dissolution, leaving my job, feeling let down by certain people, etc.), it had the effect of clearing out that which didn’t ring true. 

It was the ultimate psychological yard sale (or loft conversion), if you will.  Moving out the crap, tearing down the walls, clearing out space to breath in, to live in, to re-imagine my life.

And now a spring I can truly enjoy.  Bulbs poking up.  Forsythia blooming…only two months ‘till lilacs (my favorite).  And sunlight…wonderful sunlight. 

I feel more alive than I have in a long time. 

From ‘halfway house’ to a home of one’s own

I’ve never lived on my own.

Unless you count college dorm rooms (I don’t).

I moved in with my ex after college—we married a year later.  And when I found myself needing to move out last summer, I gravitated towards a “share” situation.

Moving out was traumatic.  I knew I needed to (he wasn’t budging and things had gotten bad), but the logistics were overwhelming—city vs. ‘burbs, furnished vs. unfurnished, personality concerns, commuting/car considerations and how much $ (I still needed to cover half our considerable mortgage). 

The day came when I knew I had to act—I met my housemate that night at a meditation group (I had a dire need—the universe provided).  It’s worked out remarkably well.  Even after my house sold and I could have my own place, I decided to stay. I had stuff still to deal with, process, work through—and housing wasn’t at the top of the list.

(For me, it’s worked best to get the internal house in order before focusing on the external.)

Of course this was an easy decision because my situation was working well.  My housemate and I have much in common and as well as an easy, natural balance between “space” and “social” time.  It’s also nice to have company.

While I do feel a bit odd about renting in someone’s house at my age, I think of it as a port in a storm.  An economical “halfway house” of sorts, giving me the ability to take time off and continue healing and nurturing myself into “what’s next.”

So I considered it a good sign this week when the thought bubble came that it would be nice to have my own space. With my own stuff (it’s currently in a 10x15 storage unit).

Halfway houses are good—a sheltered step between the old and the new.  And while they normally evoke drug addiction, mental illness or prison release programs (alas), as a concept it’s appropriate for anyone making a big transition.

Just as the bulbs in the front yard are inching their way out of the frozen ground (as we navigate not-quite-winter-or-spring March in the northeast), my looking forward like this is a sign to myself I’m moving along in the right direction. 

I can begin to see the day when I can commit—to a mortgage or lease, to a neighborhood, to a new life.  My new life—with a room and a home of my own. 

(Apologies and thanks to V.W.)