the pelican

once more with feeling

just difficult stuff

ok truth is i can't concentrate. or won't. maybe that's really more like it.

just won't.

too much to process. too much to feel. it's all too much.

see a close friend of the family died on monday. very very suddenly of a heart attack. completely unexpected. out of the blue. 47-48 years old. grew up with him as almost a big brother. as a baby right through high school. just poof gone wham.

a sudden blip.

and it's bringing up all sorts of things. as death does. the great teacher. how could it not?

here death comes. ready or not.

and what's in order what have i done am i prepared have i really done the work have i even considered it that closely do i could i what if when and how and why?

and oh just never mind the grief thing.

yeah and it's real, but yet removed. there is shock and grief maybe. and time and distance removed, and just removed. detached. my big brother then but a semi-stranger now. linked into an intimate complex childhood past but little to actual adult contact. last time i saw him was at my sister's wedding i think, about 13 years ago.

though i'd hear of his exploits through my mother.

see, my dad was a newspaperman. and his dad, my godfather, was dad's closest friend and partner. they owned a triumverate of small town independent newspapers. and the dads, the partners, sort of combined our two families together. we were one big happy conglomeration. all major holidays were spent both families together. most weekends. lots of extra ciricular activities. picnics. dinners. events. the moms became best and closest friends. all things done as one extended family. when the dads sold the newspapers, our family moved back to colorado where i was born, my mother was born, her father was born, etc. and so they came with us. just kind of had to. we were one unit, after all. and the dads bought a newspaper together here too. and so it continued. it was expected. it was the way it was. we were all family.

and then, the year i graduated from high school, my dad's partner, my god-father passed away very suddenly. completely unexpectedly of a heart attack. here one day and gone the next. he was 47.

and then, three years later, my father died. after a motorcycle accident, some in and out hospitalization due to blood clots and then ultimately a heart attack. at 51.

after that, the moms tried to keep the newspaper going for a couple years but they just weren't into it. they sold it not long after. meanwhile the kids have all gone fairly separate ways. none of us have really stayed in contact with each other. the moms have stayed good friends and have a regular standing lunch appointment every saturday. in this way, we remain connected without actual contact. and so we hear about them and we assume they hear about us but the kids don't really communicate with each other any more.

and so now it's 28 years after my 47 year-old god-father was yanked suddenly out of this realm and now it's some kind of mirror repeat performance as his son, one year older at 48, is gone.

just like that.

and so.

what to make of all this.

and i guess maybe in that it's-all-about-me ego trip i'm sort of suffering from childhood reflux. there is some grief for everything, some sense of loss of the present and the past but it is all connected. everything linked back in time. how things were. childhood. the dads the partners the newspapers the families the functions the holidays. the whole thing is sort of regurgitating up in my body and mind in sweet and sour chunks of imprinted and crystalized and reinvented and idealized memories. old old super 8 home movies and snapshots. if this were a film, i'd be having a lot of flashbacks and dream sequences. shifting in and out of time. swingsets to riding bikes to christmas to functions to weddings and funerals and babies and high school and home and the newspapers and all of it. the whole mess makes me feel kind of dizzy. the time travel is making me motion sick. gripped in bouts of emotional nausea.

oh it isn't all good or bad memory. it is the pull, the grip that creates the nausea. the connection. the grasping. the grief. it tugs and yanks and jerks the tears and flops the stomach and shakes the head and churns the brain.

and there is some great sentimental softness to it. and a gaping loss of innocence. and an awareness of what was how we saw the future then and what the present is to us now.

and when i can put aside my own stuff long enough, ultimately in my heart i suppose my main concern is for my sweet old fairy god-mother. to lose a husband so young and so suddenly and now to lose her son the same way. i have nothing in my life to compare the depth of grief she must feel. i've lost my father, a god-father, dogs and cats, a very close friend, a grandfather, a great uncle, an aunt, and now a semi-estranged big brother. but a spouse and a son. well that's something else entirely on the grief scale. that's just off the charts. and oh but my heart breaks for her. and her other kids too, his brother and sister. i can feel their hurt and confusion and shock and guilt and worry and regrets and concern and pain and loss and loss and loss and love and tears and and and. some kind of psychic reconnection going on. and an awareness of the depth of our disconnect too. and so i hope they will all be ok. i wish them all well. and i suppose i will see them soon.

oh grief. it is a gaping hole in the chest.

a loud presence of silent absence.

there will be a cremation and a memorial service where he lived out of state and then a return home to colorado to bury his ashes and a family gathering of sorts perhaps although the details are being arranged. for there is always the ceremonial mourning schedule of events and then there is the personal process. cremation and burial, paper or plastic, public and private. they must deal with the arrangements. and what to do with his stuff and was there a will and who's going to take care of his cats.

this is all being done at a distance.

back in the state where our families lived when we were small. before the move back to colorado. he had moved back to idaho. he had been divorced. lonely perhaps. a difficult time. maybe he tried to move back into the past. back into our childhood.

so it's a reminder. maybe a bit of wake-up call. yeah. need to live life. enjoy self. do good work. take care of things. be of use. love.

so temporal this life. so brief. so quick. so sudden. so precious.

we are like fruit flies, living for just a few days.

the edge between the worlds is so close. so very very close. all of this reality that we hold so dear and consider so real so important so all consuming. this suffering we believe to be our identity. this grasping this clinging this game this show this demonstration this body these feelings these thoughts these opinions and preferences this perception this moment this now. now is gone the word is typed and all around us everything is popping into and out of existence.

transformations. incarnations. journeys.

and what have i done and what am i doing and where have i been and where am i going?

and so i have to breathe.

and i breathe in life and breathe out death and in between in between the breaths in between the moments in between this constant coming and going and rising and falling birth and death in between in the midst in the center and all around in between and through it all at the heart of it in the now there remains this stillness this pause this now this tranquility in the movement this peace in the chaos in between in the midst at the heart.

there is always this love.

posted by: limine at 07:23 | link | comments (8) |

Comments:

#1  20 July 2007 - 12:37

 

"everything is popping into and out of existence.

there is always this love."

yeah.

xoxoxox

S

Leigh

#2  20 July 2007 - 13:02

 

You process everything beautifully, but I'm sorry you--and your combined families--have to process this too.

Thank you for all the positive feedback, by the way, when you're dealing with so much.

I wish everyone was grounded as you are. I wish I could help those who aren't. I wish, I wish.

xoxox

InMyLife

#3  20 July 2007 - 13:31

 

Sometimes all we can ever do in difficult times is breathe.

Jackal

#4  23 July 2007 - 12:25

 

No mother should be made to endure the pain of her own offspring's passing, it's simply too much to ask.

Just this morning, I finished reading Bill Bryson's touching Thunderbolt Kid memoir, a vivid and evocative recounting of his life as a newspaperman's son. I recognized the timbre of his world, since my own father was a newspaperman as well, very much in the style of your own father: he and his partner managed several small publications in a few small markets. And I gasped a bit when I read of your big brother's passing, thinking of the pain my mother endured when my real big brother, her oldest son, passed away at the unreasonable age of 37 some decades ago. I can't really describe the fleeting facial expression she betrayed that day, because I've never seen it before or since, but it stays with me even now. It was a mixture of injustice, anger and disappointment, and it was fueled by the deepest imaginable pain.

Here's to the better days ahead for all of you, and the courage it takes to get to them.

coopergreen

#5  24 July 2007 - 17:21

 

Let me count the days. When young ones go it is very unsettling. Memories reach into the sweet essence of the one we loved and knew for us to carry on.

cactusandquail

#6  05 August 2007 - 14:04

 

I lost my oldest son at the age of 40, to a sneak heart attack, and then his father died of lung cancer less than a year later. It's been almost 2 years and the pain is still there. Thank you for so eloquently expressing some of my turmoil.

Anonymous

#7  11 August 2007 - 09:54

 

A beautiful post
I so understand and sympathise
It is so hard to be left behind

Anonymous

#8  06 December 2007 - 08:39

 

Yes, breathing is always a good idea.

And yes, we have the new Joni Mitchell.

taming

Comments: