Chicken Soup for Grief

All she could imagine cooking was chicken soup. She wasn’t even sure she could eat the soup but at least she could nourish someone else. She had made matzoh ball soup every winter for years, she used noodles to make a more traditional chicken soup, she taught herself to make mole from chicken stock adding the mole paste from the jar of Maria’s. (Why roast chilis and mash up sesame seeds when Maria’s was good enough? she reasoned.) These days she mostly ate pudding and cookies and yogurt, soft sweet foods, erasing years of determination to serve healthy choices: fresh sautéed vegetables and salads, lamb or fish, only olive oil, nothing with sugar. How he craved sugar! She remembered how he would add sugar to a raw beaten egg and pretend it was dessert. He loved her cooking, said he could tell she cooked with love. It was love: she put up with the cigarettes, the excursions to other states without notifying her first, the flat tires because he insisted in driving over the cactus-laded hillsides instead of the main road, the strangers brought home from the bar at 3 am, the frantic calls to her during work. (The questionnaire at the doctor’s office:  Are you able to take vacations without him? and how when she answered yes, the assistant was surprised, raised his eyebrows. As if she had done something wrong. Gave the wrong answer.  That was when she knew, that was the moment. It wasn’t just moods, it wasn’t just something to be cured with hot soup and salads or even acupuncture and therapy. It was terrible. Those lines of neurons laid down in childhood, those genetic misfirings, those attempts at self-medication, it was all part of a pattern no one seemed able to break.)   She had gone to retreat, recuperate, take a breath, because of his insane hours, because of his insistence that he didn’t want to live, because of the gun he had hidden from her, because of the suicide notes he read to her to ask her opinion, (how do you write the right thing when you are going to break someone’s heart into pieces and what right did he had to do that to us? she fumed) because their couple counseling broke down the day he drank too much and she was too angry to stay. That morning when his soul had left his body, there had been a black crow feather on the doorstep. She picked it up. She knew it was a sign but she didn’t—couldn’t—she was on her way to therapy, to the rest of her life, to her life savers of groups and activities. His body was already cold but she wouldn’t find out until that evening. And now she came to visit carrying a whole chicken, carrots, celery, an onion, a box of noodles. She would make soup. Nothing would stop her. Not the fact that the temperature was in the 90’s and soup was comfort for a winter’s day. Notice the way she carried all the ingredients in a bag she could hardly lift, more than enough to make two pots of soup. She brought her grief and her release, her freedom, her love unstitched from the place where she had been woven into a tapestry of despair and fear, of hopelessness. He told her I don’t want to be here and he meant it. But she wanted to. She wanted to soar, to sing, to commune, to praise, to bless, to be blessed, to love, to be connected, to be whole.

Cultivating Resiliency part 2

How can we cultivate resiliency? What is resiliency and is it a muscle we can strengthen? How does being resilient change our lives and the ways we cope with crisis?

Resilience is defined by the ability to bounce back after trauma, to cope with or to heal after a crisis. Resilience is not only coping or bouncing back or healing but change, growth, and transformation. 

The love of my life, Michael, was wild—gregarious, funny, warm-hearted, affectionate, honest—and he lived his life in a creative fury. But when his mood changed to unrelenting depression, he was diagnosed with bi-polar disorder. The next eight years were a roller-coaster of manic highs where he stayed up all night, disappeared out of state, and spent recklessly, and lows that sucked the air out of the room, when he spent all day in bed, unable to change clothes. I lived in constant fear after he told me he wanted to die. During this time I joined two writing groups, one a women’s poetry group and the other Write Action, a writing support group led by poet Joan Logghe. These would cushion my grief when he took his life.
     Michael’s death released me from the weight of care-giving and my own depression. A burst of creative inspiration uplifted me. My poetry group held our first public reading during Day of the Dead to honor those we had lost. I wanted to share a poem about Michael but felt too emotional to read it off the page. I needed the audience to support me, so I memorized it. The connection was gratifying as I shared my grief honestly in public. I opened hearts, and mine was comforted.
         I decided to memorize all of my poems. I self-produced a poetry CD, had a launch party, traveled to promote it, and honed my performance style, creating a career as a performance poet.

But tragedy struck, one I was not anticipating. When my younger son died, also by suicide, my life shattered. I was filled with anger--at myself, at him, at God, and a burden of guilt—that I hadn’t seen it coming, that I hadn’t tried to stop it. My voice was strangled. I was unable to pray or write. The spiritual practices that had guided me through mourning Michael were now silenced. At the memorial services, one in Minneapolis where he lived, and one in Santa Fe where friends gathered, I fell into dark despair.

As Thanksgiving approached, I wanted quiet—I didn’t think I could put on a façade for friends. However, I didn’t want to be alone and I decided to go to Christ in the Desert Monastery. The monastery is thirteen miles up a dirt road by the Chama River. I didn’t have a car, I don’t drive, and I didn’t have money for a retreat, but I contacted the guest master and asked for prayer. He replied that the monks would pray for me.

            Then, a small miracle happened. A friend had gone back to Mexico but slipped over the border and drove me out to the monastery. (Little did I know that here Thanksgiving was celebrated with a turkey feast with wine and the vows of silence lifted for the evening meal!)

            The next day the Abbot read the preface from the book The Thorn Birds: “There is a legend about a bird which sings just once in its life …it impales itself upon the longest, sharpest spine. And, dying, it rises above its own agony to out-carol the lark and the nightingale…For the best is only bought at the cost of great pain. …Or so says the legend.”

                As a poet without words, this seemed hand-picked for me.

                 I walked to the river where we scattered Sam’s ashes. I had chosen this spot because we camped here when I was pregnant with him and when he was a teen.  I hiked back through autumn leaves to the beach. At Earthwalks for Health retreats, we learned from the indigenous people how to listen to the river, the rocks, and the drum. I thought, The river wants to give me a gift, and walked to the water’s edge. Was it a special rock, a feather? Then I heard a voice saying, “You have all the pieces of the puzzle. Take all the pieces of your life and put them together. You must sing again.”

This visit to the monastery was a turning point. I came home to write on my own for the first time, recording my experiences of the week-end.

WHAT I LEARNED ABOUT RESILIENCY: ASK FOR HELP

We live in a culture that demands we be strong and self-sufficient. Asking for help is a seen as a sign of weakness; asking for charity makes us dependent on others. But what I learned is that to ask for help is being resilient. After I learned of Sam’s death, I asked friends to make phone calls so I wouldn’t have to. I remembered from Michael’s transition how draining that had been. My friends threw fund-raisers. I asked for rides to the grief counselor, to pick up groceries, to the writing group. I asked the monks to pray for me. I had support from professional counseling, a grief support group, and a women’s group. People helped move possessions to second hand stores or storage. A friend took me camping. Another friend cooked meals. Alejandro escorted me on the plane from Minneapolis back to Santa Fe, I felt incapable of doing it alone. People gave me places to land, kept me connected.

Question to ask yourself: Where can you go for help? Is it professional: a therapist, counselor, or coach? Physical therapist, yoga class,  hot tub? Is it a support group or workshop or spiritual community? Is it family and friends: a listening ear or just company; an invitation to dinner; transportation: errands, to the doctor, to support group; a walk in nature together; help with de-cluttering or getting rid of things; or prayers, healing energy, and positive affirmation?  

     Sam's altar at the Santa Fe memorial gathering.

The holidays are coming. A time for celebration with family and friends. For some of us, it is also a time of grief, remembering those who are no longer with us, on the physical plane. What I know about grief:

I could be an expert on grief at this point. I have lost many loved ones: a partner, a son, my son’s fiancée, a husband, a sister, a grandmother I was close to, several best friends, people I thought I would live with forever and their children, poetry companions, mentors and elders. I have lost homes and countries where I thought I had found home, said good-bye to children I helped raise and never heard from again, my faith in the Divine and faith in myself. I have been a hospice volunteer. My dad has severe dementia, so I have lost the man he was.

This is what I know: that grief comes in waves, it recedes and flows back but eventually the sharpest pain softens. That anniversaries of any kind—birthdays, day of death, holidays—bring up memories. That we may never feel we got to say all we meant to and that we may never know if our loved ones heard us, despite assurances from mediums that they do.

But I also know that love is not broken or diminished by death. That it lives on, it just becomes long distance or across dimensions. That we are not bound by time or space, if we can just stop holding onto the idea that it has to be tangible in this life. That our loved ones are part of us, no matter what we believe about the afterlife. We are the afterlife.

I know that being grateful for the time our loved one spent with us is a key to enjoying the holidays even though we miss his presence. To have gratitude for ourselves, to be grateful for the depth of our sorrow as a measure of the depth of our love. Thank goodness, we can love and hurt deeply.

In the midst of those terrible days after my son passed, when my soul felt as though it had left my body, I was too angry to pray. I asked others to pray for me. I attended Thanksgiving at Christ in the Desert Monastery so that I could be immersed in silence yet be in company; I could not handle a cheerful meal with friends. As I was leaving, I told the guest master I was grateful to be with the monks because I was unable to pray; I was too angry at God. He answered me, “I would be, too.” and a huge weight fell off me. I realized that my anger was natural. But in the midst of the most excruciating turmoil—why had I failed my son, why had God failed me—I knew there was a gift. In complete darkness and not knowing how I would survive the pain, I believed I would find a gift. I had no idea what it was but I knew it was there. I had seen it when my partner died: the incredible release of creative energy when I no longer was under the cloud of his depression and no longer anxious that he might carry out his threats of suicide, how friends mourned with me, how I knew how to hold sacred silence at the altar we created, to weep with abandon and to laugh as we shared stories. I inherited some of his qualities: the ability to laugh at myself, to dance not caring if I had a partner, to be silly and gregarious and inclusive and spontaneous. I was not alone in my mourning.

These gifts would come to me after Sam’s death as well. Fund raisers to compensate for time off work, prayers and vigils, the moment of complete silence in the circle at one, friends showing up to help scatter his ashes in the Chama, healing touch received at the Women’s Moon Lodge, the wonderful counselor at The Center for Grief, Loss and Transition, the ability to weep during the service at Unity, the poems that came, performances during Día de los Muertos in Mexico, the solace of grandchildren, and more.

But what I want to say here is that Thanksgiving is a time to say thanks, to grandchildren who fill my heart with joy, to friends who invite me to share the meal, to light-bearers who light the path before us, to poets who nourish my soul, to many who hold me in their hearts. But especially I want to acknowledge those of you who have walked this path. Those who have lost someone and mourn in waves that rise and fall, as we hold those precious memories close and admit we miss our loved ones. It is just not the same without them. We will never get over it, but our lives will move on.

For the first couple of years after Sam passed, there was often an empty seat beside me at meditations, prayer circles, poetry readings, concerts, places both crowded with an audience and intimate with a small circle. Yet the seat next to me…empty. The last time I noticed this was at David Whyte’s event at Islandwood which happened to be during Día de los Muertos. The packed room and the empty seat. I did not want that seat taken, although I had decided not to share my loss with the strangers beside me that week-end. I would leave my ghosts, my sadness, at home, I thought. Concentrate on joy and inspiration and hope.

This year, we created an altar to hold the photos and names of those we have lost. We drank a toast and shared what we received from them. Never will I feel we had enough time or that I have said enough words. If you do hear me, know that I love you beyond this lifetime and you are part of me forever.

Coming Home to Joy

Eight years ago if you had told me that I would be able to survive, I would have looked at you in disbelief. If you had predicted that I would find ways to heal, I would have been astonished. After my son's death, I could only put one foot in front of the other, day by day. I had tremendous love from friends and family and support from colleagues and counseling and yet, I was in such a state of shock that I was operating on instincts, not rational, not able to foresee any future at all.

My instincts told me to go back to work, that it was better than the agony of my own turbulent guilt, and I did until the wheel of fortune took me to Mexico and Alejandro. My instincts told me to hold onto Alejandro, who was both a distraction and a refuge. He knew how to live on a pendulum between deep denial and enjoying life's sensual pleasures. I knew he would not pity me, but in fact, one of the last straws between us was the way he demanded I show up to work at the gallery when I had dengue fever and should have been in bed recuperating, with a kind hand bringing me cool drinks and Tylenol.

Seven years ago when I moved to Minneapolis, if you had told me that I would find ways to meld my gift with my passion to be of service, I would not have believed you, even though my hunger for poetry had come back. Coming to Minneapolis was another turn of the wheel of fortune: my son asked for my help with childcare. I used to claim I would never live in such a cold place. Here I still am, 7 years later.

That first winter, I attended a poetry reading at The Loft for the publication release of Songs Along the Way. I remember it because the temperature was 20 below and I asked my daughter-in-law to give me a ride. I assumed there would be a small turn out. I was still disoriented, in an altered state, and raw with grief that felt like my skin of my heart had peeled away. I was surprised to watch the auditorium fill up but despite standing room only, the seat next to me remained vacant. Was it Sam's spirit come to comfort me? I left that reading to go home and write my first poem since leaving Mexico.

Five years ago if you had predicted that I would create a life I love, I would have seen a small glimmer through the fog. I would have considered the Twin Cities writer's community as a place to begin. I created brochures and sent out proposals, showed up for open mics and asked questions, attended every reading I could get to. Won a McKnight grant, published a book of poetry.

Three years ago if you had told me that I would feel joy, astounding joy that permeates my entire being, the joy of doing what I am meant to do, of  using my gift and my desire and my vision, that I would heal, I would have been astonished. I would not have been able to imagine it. But joy has been gifted me, I feel blessed.

Sam's death is not something I got over or ever forget. If I choose to hold the moment of getting the phone call in my mind, or seeing his body at the funeral home, or the afternoon at the Chama where we scattered his ashes, the visceral reaction is as potent as ever. Sharp unbearable pain shoots through my heart. In the poem I wrote a description of my grandson, "When he smiles, it is enough to crack the scotch-taped fissures of my heart back into shards. It is your smile, carbon copy family trait." These memories are enough to crack all the fissures back into shards. The fissures that I have spent the last seven years filling in with gold lacquer, painstakingly matching each surface to the other to resemble the whole.

Poetry performances for Dia de los Muertos where I shared my anguish, poetry performance at Patrick's Cabaret where I told the story also healed me as I realized that death comes for all, death is part of the cycle of life. Death is natural. Sam's death was a choice he made and I can choose the way I mourn, publically and privately.

What I learned as a writing instructor/facilitator is that when I write, there are two paths. One will take me deeper and deeper into the story: what happened to me and what I feel about it. There is no end to that branch of the story. I can tell it over and over, because the emotional pull is powerful. Or I can choose another branch: what it means, what patterns I see, where it leads me, what has been the lesson, and how I can change and transform because of it. And as the writer responsible for the circle, I deliberately choose that branch. That is what I write about and share. When I led workshops under the funding of the grant, writing with battered women and homeless youth and heart patients and care-givers, I was writing weekly or twice weekly and choosing that path over and over again. What does it mean to me, what did I learn, where do I find inner courage and strength, what do I still have, what are my blessings? And I began to heal, not only enough to keep going, not only enough to be engaged with laughter and friendship and love and curiosity and pleasure, but real joy. An inner knowing that I am where I am meant to be, that I am living my dreams, that I am connected to others in deep ways and that I love my life. I am blessed. I am grateful.

If you had told me even last year, that I would be overwhelmed with ecstatic bliss, that I would dance again under the Mexican moon, that I would be filled with Presence of Spirit and that I would be overcome with love, I would have been incredulous. This joy is beyond any previous experience I have ever had. Beyond when I fell in love, when I gave birth, when I sat in a Spanish cafe and listened to flamenco, when I celebrated with friends, when I held my first book in my hands, when I spoke my truth on stage and was held in the arms of my audience. This joy is a state of being. I have come home to myself after long years of wandering. Like Dorothy clicking together her ruby slippers and saying No place like home. It is the center towards which I have been traveling all my life. While I am here, I know I can always return. Whenever grief or disappointment or frustration or longing knock me off-kilter, I know it is here, waiting for me, invincible, mine.

The Yellow Dress

I inherited the yellow dress from my mom, probably because after the fourth pregnancy, she could no longer fit into it, or maybe she just thought it would look cute on me. It was made of a soft, sheer cotton with white rick-rack on the sleeveless arm holes and hem and the waist was cinched with a cloth belt. I was about twelve when it was hung in my closet for wearing to church.

When I heard the news that my uncle had died, my instant reaction was to rebel against attending his funeral. I announced that I would not go. I didn’t want to be in a room full of weeping relatives. I don’t believe in funerals, I protested. You either love someone while they are alive or you don’t. I didn’t feel close to my dad’s large family and I couldn’t imagine my uncle any other way than handsome, funny and charming. He had the same black wavy hair and blue eyes as my dad but he wasn’t married nor did he he have children of his own. He made all of us feel special. In fact, out of all the aunts, uncles and cousins on my dad’s side, he was the only relative I liked. The Brown family was made up of hard-working, beer drinking, gossiping German blue collar workers and Grandpa was a drunk. He always smelled like beer and being next to him made me feel sick. I was an intellectual bohemian artist with my nose in a book and my head in the clouds. Uncle Tom had made me feel comfortable in an acutely uncomfortable situation. I thought to have a funeral was the wrong way to honor his passing but I didn’t have the concept of “celebration of life” at that time. It was my first encounter with death and my response was to refuse. The refusal was a facade to hide my shock and sorrow.

I argued and tried to resist but my parents insisted that I show my respect and accompany them. There was no way that they were going to let me stay home while they all went to the funeral. It was unthinkable.  I knew the casket was to be closed due to way the body had been damaged in the car accident. This fact was another reason I thought a memorial was stupid. You couldn’t even view his body, anyway, he was no longer there. If I had to go, though, I would wear the yellow dress.

My parents were trying to get my three siblings dressed and ready and didn’t have time or energy to fight with me any longer. I can’t remember their reaction but I wore that dress to the funeral. I don’t remember anything about the service or the gathering afterwards, although I’m sure there was one, with plenty of beer. The only thing I remember is that I knew Uncle Tom could see me in that light-reflecting yellow dress. I knew it would make him smile. I knew I would never wear black to a memorial if I could help it. I would go as myself, my dynamic, feisty, alive self.  

The Lord Have Mercy Show

A Mother's Grief.
A Mother's Love.
The healing power of words. 

After performing poems for 10 years in places as spread apart as Berkeley and Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, and in venues as varied as Banfill-Locke Center for the Arts in Fridley, Chicago's Green Mill Jazz Club, Borders Bookstores and BarB hiphop club  in Santa Fe,  I felt that it was time to take an artistic risk. I perform my poems by asking myself how the poem wants to be performed. I memorize it while considering the character I am portraying: is she feisty and bold, subdued with grief, bowed or uplifted by fate, moving and transformed, sensual and yearning, questioning, questing, affirming, contemplative, remembering? I accentuate the rhythm of the lines and language with movement, ritual, shawls, long skirts, aprons, and jewelry to bring attention to my hands as they gesture. There are the times when my ideas didn't work: the time the shawl wrapped around me and the mic, incapacitating my movements; the time I totally went blank even though I had performed the same poem to the previous English class; the awkwardness of my steps and my balance after hip surgery that was very different for me after being accustomed to heels, a passion for dance that led to late nights at the disco in my youth, and even rooftop bars in Puerto Vallarta in 2006.

But the nervous sensation of my stomach doing flips with worry that I will get it right, that I will connect with my audience, are no longer noticeable. Of course I still feel nervous, especially in a new venue and I still wonder if I will grab their attention but I know where the poems will take me. To the magic and the joy of communication. I will survive any mistakes, I do know how to create intimacy. I do land in my own skin.

I want to try something I have never done before and I want to finally transmute my deepest grief, my long journey to the underworld of despair and back. The Lord Have Mercy Show arose from a simple litany I find on my lips often: "Lord, have mercy!" This simple phrase had been a mantra as I moved four times in the past 6 years, from Santa Fe to Puerto Vallarta, from PV to Fridley, from Fridley to North Minneapolis to live with a dear friend, then when her job ended and she moved to Madeline Island, to Saint Louis Park with a housemate whom I didn't know. From the healing after my partner's death through the shattering of my son's, then the deaths of my Mexican husband and my sister, grown children of friends, my son's fiancee, dear friends and poetry peers. "Lord, have mercy" is simply a natural cry of anguish and a cry for help, while at the same time, a cry of fatalism mixed with irony. Life and death are part of the cycles of life and we can't avoid them. I want to allude to the contradictions, the mosaic, the understanding coupled with emotional incomprehensibility. I believe that Death comes to all of us and the anguish of losing someone is a measure of our love and their meaning in our life, that life is eternal and love never ends, yet healing is sometimes only "scotch-taped" over the "fissures of the heart" and the heart is permanently scarred. We never emerge unscathed. We can't stop the desire to keep our loved ones alive and near. We have to let them go and we have to face our own mortality.

There is also the irony or the black humor: What, again? Another time you are calling out to the Lord?
And what is His answer this time?

The Lord Have Mercy Show is a multi-media monologue, with poetry, story telling, dance, music, visuals, video, shadow play and audience interaction which I hope to develop as time goes on with grant funding. (I am thinking of several grants and will also post a kickstarter or USAprojects campaign later this year.) But why wait, why not begin with an excerpt? This is a work in progress and I will present an excerpt as a way to judge audience interest and get moving. 

I am not trained as an actress but I have acted as I performed poetry. I am not a playwright but I have interconnecting poems and a story to tell. Soloist Rachealann Haasken and dancer Linda Lundquist will accompany me at Patricks' Cabaret next month to present a 15 minute excerpt of poetry with music and dance. If you live in the Twin Cities, I hope you will come and ask questions after the show. Let me know what you think and if you believe in the power of words to heal and transform our stories of painful memories into stories of courage, hope, resiliency and love.