One Day for Atonement?

Tonight marks the start of Yom Kippur, the day of atonement and most somber day of the Jewish year, a day meant to be spent fasting and repenting for the previous year’s sins.  In the exact opposite of that spirit, I would like to share an irreverent poem I wrote about repentance 15 years ago in a poetry circle with my children:

ATONEMENT FOR ALL

The Catholics go in weekly
to seek forgiveness for each deed.
They confess each sin, bow meekly,
do penance as their priest decreed.

The Baptists seek more salvation:
"Praise the Lord" louder, “Christ is great.”
One born-again exclamation
wipes clean a lifetime’s whole sin slate!

The Buddhists urge a strength of mind,
an inner path to living pure.
Avoiding sin means being kind;
confession just is not a cure.

The Jews have got a special spin
on the matter of redemption:
We set aside one day to win
a mea-culpa exemption.

On Yom Kippur we fast all day,
a swap for falling short all year.
Give God our regrets, then we pray
to get the once-a-year “all-clear.”

If we’re sorry, God sets in stone
our names in the Book of Life.
Then it’s a year til we atone
for the next twelve months of strife.

I need relief from Jewish guilt,
so I like that we make amends.
But even contrite to the hilt …
one day seems not enough to spend.

So I propose a medley:
a forgiveness potpourri:

When you’re wrong, admit to it fast
When others are failing, be kind.
Don’t wait all year for God’s die to cast:
Atone as you go for true peace of mind.

------------------

I hope that didn’t offend anybody, but I am discovering there is no way to be a writer without taking that risk – so what I really hope is that it made some of you laugh.

Regarding my own Yom Kippur, I will not be spending the day atoning. My son is dead, so if I believed in a punishing God, which happily I do not, I would expect I’ve already received the worst punishment I could have been dealt for whatever sins I may have committed. More to the point, I have spent the entire past year praying and reflecting on the suffering I have caused myself and others, so I think I’m covered for the day.

Instead, I am enjoying a blessing beyond measure. Dear friends have loaned me the use of their bright and beautiful home in Cape Neddick, Maine, and I am here for two weeks putting together a book-length collection of my (more serious) poetry for submission.

Renee was with me for a romantic getaway the first couple of days and is coming back to share another whirlwind mini-holiday with me Sunday-Monday, and at the end of my stay here I am thrilled that Jamie will be flying out from Portland for a mother-daughter writing retreat with me here during the holiday formerly known as Columbus Day weekend. But mostly I am here on my own.

When my friends first generously offered me the use of their home while they were traveling, it was because I was grieving and in need of time alone to mourn. But that was many months ago, and something about building myself up for the one-year mark has helped me turn a corner. So instead of mourning (or rather, in addition, as mourning is part of my forever now, like breathing), I am here writing, reading, revising, compiling, doing yoga, dancing, eating, circling poetry book contests in Poets & Writer’s Magazine, and playing with pastels on the lawn overlooking the ocean. I am blessed. God is good. And I am glad to be here.  If I have anything to atone for, it’s for all the days I’ve failed to be this fully alive.

Yom Tov, everybody – which means, “have a good holy day.”

The New Year

Today, even though it is the one-year anniversary of my son’s death, a chihuahua with wheels on its hind legs attacked my little terrier mix, Lola, during our morning walk. (Lola’s shaken but OK; I yanked her up into the air by her harness, and wheels-for-legs may be fast, but she can’t jump.)  The chihuahua let me know first thing that the world is not going to stop to help me mark this sad day. The dog still needs to be walked and comforted. The gas still needs to be pumped, the online bills paid, the deodorant applied.

I am glad for this anniversary marker, though, just as I was glad for the one-year memorial event; both dates gave me a deadline to work toward and let me imagine I might achieve some closure.  Of course there’s no end to my grief, but I am hoping to use this date as a demarcation between the year I spent actively grieving and the years I will spend with grief as my steady, loving companion rather than as a micro-managing, hyper-critical, tyrannical boss who doesn’t believe in coffee breaks.

The memorial event this past weekend was beautiful, or at least that’s what the friends who attended have kindly told me. I spent most of the day feeling a bit out of my own body. It was blazing hot and muggy, and I had set up craft tables outside for people to do scrapbook pages with Kyle’s photos, paint rocks with messages from Kyle on them, and write letters to his someday-teenage daughter, Maggie, about what Kyle might wish for her or want her to know. I didn’t do any of the crafts and mostly stayed inside in the air-conditioned cool of the house playing video clips of Kyle as a baby, as a stand-up comic, as a poet, as a rapper, as a brother and a friend and a son. I felt huge gratitude to every single friend who showed up (or even just sent loving messages) and to the dear ones who flew and drove for many hours to be with us -- but I didn’t feel Kyle’s spirit when we stood around the grave marker and lay down our heart-shaped rocks and tried like hell to feel him in our hearts.

Happily, when we were a smaller group gathered inside that evening, his spirit infused us all as we held hands at Jamie’s suggestion and sang Stand By Me --  and then had a truly joyful dance and karaoke party.  When I had asked Kyle what we should do to mark the day, he told me he wanted us all to laugh a lot and have a fun party.  I was annoyed; I didn’t see how that was possible. But it turned out he was right; laughing and dancing and being joyful is the only true way to feel his spirit as it lives on in us.

As I was typing this, Jamie called; she said Kyle had directed her to reach out – and it turned out the last words I had typed before my phone rang were “messages from Kyle,” so that was kind of cool. I read Jamie my opening paragraph and she said she was having the same thought as she looked at her day’s calendar: she has two home visits to make and a class of 20 pre-schoolers to teach, and will be seeing a parent whose six-month-old baby is having open heart surgery today. So she, too, was struck by how life was pulling her in and demanding her attention, despite this supposed momentous anniversary. We both know keeping up with life is good for us; the alternative serves no one.

In Judaism the one-year mark is significant; children, parents and spouses who have grieved all year are supposed to mark this anniversary with a Yahrzeit candle reflecting the fragility of life, the light of the soul, and a verse from Proverbs: “The soul of the man is the candle of God.”  This year, making the significance of this  anniversary even more clear, the anniversary of Kyle’s death falls on the start of the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah --a day when Reform Jews eat round challah to celebrate the circle of life. Many Jews also mark the occasion with a tradition called tashlich, which means “casting off” in Hebrew; when my children were little we would throw bread into the water to represent everything we wanted to cast off from the previous year. We would each say something we were sorry for and wanted to do differently in the year ahead.

In my current friend-family, we celebrate by making water colors of what we are repenting and wanting to shed -- and then throw our artwork into a baby pool until whatever we’ve painted has been washed away.  I’m not sure I can join my friends for this ritual tonight; I think I need to stay home – but I know what I want to cast off. It’s been a year of self-absorption and sad reflecting, of questioning every choice I made and wishing I’d done so many things differently.

Today I will endeavor to let my regrets go and to celebrate all that was bright and beautiful in my boy, as doing so is what truly allows his memory to be a blessing.

Shanah Tovah, my friends -- here’s wishing us all a good year.

What Is Wrong With Me

Here's how today's writing practice went: I wrote a poem, or rather, a poem started to pour out of me, and I caught it and splashed around in it for several hours. (How lucky am I, how privileged, to have time to do this?) Then I sat down to post the poem here but lost courage, so wrote a long blog-post to precede and explain the poem. Then, through the act of writing the explanation, I rediscovered my courage and realized I should just let the poem speak for itself.  Of course. So here's the poem...  no explanations.  (I think this is progress, I'll take it.)

What Is Wrong With Me: Sickness As Symptom

Our bodies manifest the pain
our souls cannot express.

When my son was an infant
I became engorged
when I couldn't express
my breast milk, turning my
once soft skin into stretched
stone that hurt when touched.

Back then my only cure
was ice and weeping
with agonized longing
to be home nursing.
Bathroom pumping
was a one-day outlet
that made me miss more
the antidote I craved,
which was to breastfeed
longer than six weeks.

My latest maternal pain
also fills me with rocks;
if I had a pump this time
I'd use it. Instead, my body
manufactures new outlets.

The pain moves out
while I'm in motion:
the herniated disc,
the blade-divided heart,
both muted by distraction.
Only when I stand still
do pain's pincers seize
my lower back, clamp
the spot where my neck
meets my shoulder,
rip my meal back out
through my gasping mouth.

The miracle is: my soul will
be able to absorb my son’s death,

just not all at once. My breasts
had one day to dry up, don armor,
and get back to a job they didn't want.
What lies beneath them, my enlarged
heart, is a damaged muscle; she won't
work well against her will, even
pumping double-time she can't fill,
then empty in so great a hurry.

I've let in the needle, but speeding
the plunger would kill me.  Sometimes
the wall holds me while I catch my breath.

I’ve been delicately making my way,
one memory at a time, trying to digest
all the moments that made this outcome,
chewing each misstep mindfully,
remembering to breathe between bites,
so the glass is smooth when it goes down,
so I can forgive each choice I made.
So I can make his memory a blessing.

Sometimes I forget to pace myself,
and everything rushes in at once,
all the knowledge that made Eve
sorry she was naked, sickened
by the bitter worms in every bite.
My body rejects the speeding influx
forcefully enough to scare me.

For every ache and itch I’ve had,
my soul has an explanation:
My stiff neck asks how it can ever
turn easily to face this full-on.
It orders me to better manage
my peripheral vision, which plays
tricks now if I'm not watchful.
I’ve been crawling out of my skin
since I heard the news, too,
wishing to be out of this body
before the full brunt bears down.
No wonder I tear tiny wounds,
scratching at the backs of my hands.

Yet pained or not, here I am;
the six weeks this body fed my son
were the only ones I will ever get;
and the lifetime I have left in this body
will be all the time I'll ever get
to miss him in every cell of my being,
and for that alone I must cherish it.

---------

To satisfy my worried wife,
and to keep the will to live this life,
I smooth on the creams, take
the medicines, see the doctors,
even though I know there is
nothing in me they can fix.

What can a stranger do to treat
the wind-rush of pain I breathe in
upon waking? When my heart expands
until the membranes near rupture,
it's up to me to let air out of the valve
by breathing in. Then out. All day.

I do the yoga (thank God and Adriene for the yoga).
I write – my own prescriptions and this poem. I pray
and wish I knew You could hear me,
but give thanks I don't know You can't.
I cry to release more steam,
I enjoy each taste my tongue chooses,
I let the open sky touch my face,
I take joyful kisses from my dog
and watch my cat discover sunshine.
I cheerlead all the warriors
in my circle and in the world.
I  laugh at comedy and read
universal stories of suffering
so I am less alone. I love as a verb
the dear ones still here on Earth.
Including, most challengingly, myself.

I look at lists my son was ordered
by his sponsor to write of his fears:
"That God is a lie I tell myself,
that I will die without doing anything
I hoped to get done."
I resolve to write a list of hopes instead,
just as soon as I feel ready.

Is my grief excuse expiring?

Probably most people who know me don't think of me as conflict-averse (I'm not) nor shy about sharing my feelings (ditto).  But this blog https://thelifeididntchoose.com/2017/01/10/healthy-boundaries-in-grief/ about being able to set boundaries, especially with the people closest to me, really spoke to me today.

Like most women, I feel I have failed if I have not made everyone I love (or even know) happy.  No amount of therapy or self-help reading has been able to cure me of my sponge-like absorption of everyone else's feelings, especially the negative ones, nor of the ridiculous notion that it is up to me to fix every problem brought to my attention.  So when Kyle died, my only relief was being cleared of nearly all my emotional-support responsibilities. Having failed to make Kyle happy enough to value his own life, I obviously wasn't going to be expected to make anyone else feel happy anytime soon. (I am being sardonic; I recognize it isn't my actual responsibility to make anyone else happy -- but it was a relief to know I didn't even need to try for a while.)

In the first months after Kyle died, I said no more easily and asked for what I needed more directly.  I took a medical leave from my job, where I would once have considered myself too indispensable to arrange two months off.  (As one friend said to me, not meaning to be unkind, "You can probably get away with pretty much anything now.") And now I am on permanent leave, no longer employed, because I was able to say I needed space and time to figure out how to live with this loss.  (And also because I am privileged and married to someone willing to undergo a lot of economic changes.)

As my son's one-year memorial is approaching, I am having trouble being as clear about what I need, even with myself -- or feeling as entitled to protect my time and energy. Is it OK to shut off my phone when my daughter sounded sad the last time I talked to her? Is it OK to tell my mother I don't want to go to all her doctors' appointments with her? Is it OK to tell my wife I want to be alone again this evening when I have already spent all day by myself? Is it OK to always make my friends come here to see me because I have a new social anxiety? Is it OK to read a novel when I am "supposed" to be planning a memorial? Is anything I'm doing OK?

It's a lot harder to tell what is the right thing to be doing when there are no longer any clear goals being set for me -- and when I occasionally hear, "Oh, come on, you're home all day now, so surely you can __________." (Fill in the blank with whatever it is that person wants me to do.) If I try a tentative no and am asked to explain myself, I have no good answers.  Is it OK to have no excuse, to not explain how I am getting through each day, to say -- as my therapist instructed me -- that I thought about what I wanted, and I simply don't want to do what I am being asked to do. It doesn't feel OK. It feels scary and bad. And like my grief excuse might be expiring, which is even scarier.

Unfortunately, my body is doing a lot of the talking for me, as I have been suffering from itchy hives, spontaneous vomiting, a propensity to injure myself by banging into things, stiff necks and severe lower back pain despite daily yoga. A good friend who is practicing somatic-experience therapeutic techniques ("where does it hurt? why does it hurt?") worked with me yesterday and we concluded my physical pains are manifesting to distract me from the more agonizing emotional pain that is always lying in wait when I run out of distractions. Perhaps there is wisdom in letting ourselves access the full depth of our grief.  I am letting in as much at a time as I feel I can take, but it seems like my body wants me to let in more -- rather than, say, spending a day acquiring new furniture on Craigslist.

I had been pressuring myself to feel a sense of closure -- as if my grief is going to be wrapped up in some way because it's been a year. This fellow grieving mother's article helped me recognize that my first year of grieving was mostly spent in shock, denial and avoidance as I continued working, traveling, and helping loved ones through major moves and life transitions.

I feel like I am just now getting into the heart of my grief -- whatever that is. Kyle's father, Larry, whose heart is surely as broken as mine, takes comfort in working multiple jobs and staying busy; he doesn't understand why Jamie and I spend as much time as we do looking at pictures and "making ourselves sadder than we need to be."  I appreciate that avoidance works for him and have often envied his ability to be cheery in the face of grim news. (His last voicemail to me, the day before Kyle died, assured me that I was worrying for nothing, that Kyle sounded great the last time he spoke to him. I never wished more for his endless optimism to be on target.)

Meanwhile, I am still practicing my own methods of avoidance and distraction: Facebooking too much, for example.  Even writing this blog was a form of procrastination that allowed me to avoid the work I keep meaning to be doing with Kyle's poems.  I wanted to assemble them, and a scrapbook, and a video compilation, all before/for the memorial, but I'm starting to think I might not be able to get any -- or certainly not all -- of that done. Reading his writing hurts so much that I must pace myself; knowing there is no more of it hurts, too; maybe I am better off having these projects still waiting for me after the memorial.  I am trying to trust myself, even though many days I wonder what I am doing, why I'm not getting more done.

So instead of asking myself if it's OK that I sit many days in a room surrounded by Kyle's writing and photos, talking to him, trying to figure out how this happened, how I can best honor his life, and what I'm supposed to be learning from this, I will try to just be -- to practice the radical self-acceptance I praised in my wife the day we were married.

I welcome all of you to keep reaching out -- or even to start reaching out if you've been waiting for an appropriate amount of time to pass before being back in touch. But I'll be grateful to know you understand if I'm not ready to say yes to your requests just yet.