Category: Slice ‘o Life

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Go To the Joy

For Judith

A few months after our daughter died I spoke with a family friend who gave me some of the most profound advice of my life.  “Go to the joy,” she said, “Go to the joy.”  Four itty bitty little words that hold profound wisdom.

Joy2

This friend, too, had experienced great loss.  I know it is prejudicial, but I always feel a kinship with those, like me, who know deep, life altering loss. There is a wisdom gained, if not always acted upon, that comes with living through and with loss.  There is a shorthand that exists within us that is not, I imagine, unlike combat veterans.  We have seen things and experienced things that others have not and could not possibly understand.  We are, in some ways, another form of the walking wounded.

Years ago, when I was working as a clinical social worker in a retirement community, I ran a bereavement support group for widows and widowers. One man who had lost his wife of over five decades talked a lot about the necessity of wearing a mask when he was around others. Trust me when I say that when you live in a genteel retirement community, you are almost always around others.  Living in community can be exhausting, as the space to just be alone, really alone, is minimal.

Anyway.

This client would talk about putting on his mask every morning.  It would be inconceivable for him to not wear his mask, just as it would be to not wear pants.  His particular mask involved a slight closed mouth smile, brief, but limited, eye contact, and exchanging a few kind pleasantries about the day before moving the hell on and out of there.  He found most exchanges with other people burdensome.  They required great effort and they definitely required his mask.

Listening to this client talk about his mask always made me profoundly sad.  Because he was a minister in his life’s work, he felt a responsibility to show a strong public face — to live the life his flock aspired to.  For him, in his grief, that meant wearing the mask and not showing his vulnerability or his weakness or the true extent of his sadness.

I always felt for him, that he never felt comfortable enough to express how very sad he was to miss the love of his life, every minute of every day, his life’s partner in work and family.  I believe that the mask he wore took a toll on him, too, just as his grief did.

In my own grief, I’ve done almost the exact opposite as my former client.  I write about it, talk about it, share about it.  It’s been five years now, and here I still am, on the eve of my daughter’s 9th birthday, still going on about it.  I’ve been told, albeit by anonymous Internet strangers, to “get over it” and “find a new angle,” but here I still sit, writing about grief on my keyboard.  My sadness and its presence in my day-to-day life is no different than having blue eyes or being 5’5″ — it is something that just is.

The things that guide me most  in my grief are my friend’s words, “Go to the joy,” and my memories of Donna and her own relationship with joy. Kids get joy, you know?  They are joy magnets.  Think about a three or four or five year old and how so many of the things they do, they do with gusto.  A bug!  A sprinkler!  A Happy Meal!  Everything really is awesome! Except, you know, bed time.

I work to find the joy in every day life.  Some days it is easy.  Some days it is hard.  Feeling joy, true, amazing joy, does not negate my grief, but it does give me a reprieve.  Going to the joy — making a conscious choice to seek it out — has restored some balance in my life.  And, full disclosure, I understand how it could be much easier to find the joy when you are raising kiddos in your 40s rather than living in a retirement community in your 80s.  I get it, and I am grateful for it.

Perhaps, like my former client, I, too, have a mask.  My mask just happens to be my boys.  My giggling, growing, amazing, crazy, challenging, joyful boys.  They help me find the joy every day.  Well, almost every day.

And for that I am so very grateful.

Joy1

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Chocolate Cake With Numb Frosting, Please

Sunday, July 20 marks my daughter’s would be 9th birthday.  Those days are hard on me — those phantom birthdays of Donna’s.  Given my druthers, I would curl up in a wee little ball in a dark room and not show myself until the morning of July 21.  I always breathe easier the day after a milestone of Donna’s.  The emotional burden of some specific date passes and I know, I feel, that I have 364 days until it makes its way back again.

Donna Candles

I try to imagine what it might be like to parent a tween girl, my tween girl.  I can’t.  It’s just blank.  I can’t imagine what Donna would be like at 9.  I mean I can try, but my efforts are pretty useless.  For one, am I imagining a nine year old Donna who never had cancer?  One who sasses her Mom and wants to shop at Justice?  A girl who plays Minecraft and still dances at recitals?

Oddly, it is somehow easier to imagine a 9 year old Donna who has survived her cancer diagnosis, but is living with the badges of honor her treatment left behind.  She is sweet and has short tufts of hair that never quite grew back after chemo and radiation.  She still reads a lot and wears black, too. We travel to the hospital, for regular visits with her oncologist, but the visits are much less frequent.  We make a day of them, those hospital days in my imagination, having lunch at Water Tower or Eataly.

By 9, had Donna survived, some of the ramifications of brain radiation would have asserted themselves.  Maybe her memory was impacted, or her comprehension.  You see, you can’t irradiate a three year old brain and not cause lasting damage.  No doubt she would be on synthetic growth hormones and acutely aware that other girls in her grade were developing in a way she never would.

That thought breaks my heart — knowing that because she died, Donna was spared the cruelty of unknowing folks.

Donna’s birthdays trip me up, too, because I never know what to do with them.  It doesn’t feel right to celebrate them.  It doesn’t feel right to ignore them.  Like I said, my preference would be to hole up in a cave with only a fully charged iPad and a mainline of Coca Cola, but that really doesn’t work for my husband or sons.  Indulging my wish to lick my maternal wounds isn’t, well, very maternal.

This year, in an ironic twist of fate only the Universe could provide (cruel, baiting Universe that she is) we have been invited to a 5th birthday party for a little girl we barely know.  She is one of Mary Tyler Son’s future kindergarten classmates that he met at orientation last month.  She is adorable and sweet and took an instant liking to our boy.

Were her birthday being celebrated on July 19 or July 21, this would be a non-issue and of course I would go.  But this dear girl’s birthday is being celebrated on July 20.  A 5th birthday party on July 20 with cake and pizza and presents and a room full of people singing happy birthday.

I don’t think I can do it.

I don’t think I can stand in a room full of strangers and sing happy birthday on July 20 to any girl that is not my girl.  I am weak that way.  Or bitter.  Or both.  Or just sad.  So terribly, terribly sad.  And to a certain degree, damaged.  Broken.  Changed.

It is what it is.  I will send Mary Tyler Son with his Dad and we will figure something else out for the rest of the day.  Sigh.  The rest of the day.  The rest of all of the days.  Yes, we will figure something else out for the rest of all of the days.

I miss you, dear Donna.  Every day.  And every day I work to remember all the amazing things you taught me.  

We’ll meet you there, girl.  We’ll meet you there.

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Magritte and My Husband

When I was 26, I flew across the ocean to visit the young man I had started dating just six weeks before he moved to Europe to work in a small theater as a barkeep and fill-in performer.  He was dreamy and living in a garret apartment in Amsterdam, so OF COURSE I FLEW ACROSS THE OCEAN TO VISIT HIM.  My spontaneous acceptance of his spontaneous offer to come visit was, to this day, one of the best decisions I have ever made.

So for ten days in August of 1996 I lived the life of a young woman in love hanging out in Europe with my handsome young man.  Those are some of my sweetest memories.  We rented a car and drove across the Netherlands and into Belgium.  I knew he was a keeper when I failed miserably at learning how to drive stick in the pouring rain and he had to push the car I had stalled out in a busy intersection and he still thought I was adorable and forgave me instantly.

One of the things we did on that trip was visit the Rene Magritte wing at the Modern Art Museum in Brussels.  I have always loved Magritte.  His art is clever and smart and precise and winsome.  He had such a clear aesthetic and I find his particular take on surrealism so much more accessible than Dali or some of his other contemporaries.  You know when you read a book or see a film or painting that just speaks to you? Magritte speaks to me.

Shhhh. No photography in the galleries, but I'm badass that way. I've always adored Magritte's trim, precise signature.
Shhhh. No photography in the galleries, but I’m badass that way. I’ve always adored Magritte’s trim, precise signature.

Yesterday, almost 18 years later, my now husband and I went to see the Magritte exhibit at the Art Institute of Chicago.  We are no longer young. We are, though, still in love.

As we walked through the galleries, sometimes together, sometimes apart, and looked at Magritte’s art — still as clever and potent to me as ever — I was reminded of our Brussel museum visit so many years earlier.  It is really something to spend your years together with the same person.  It is a gift of life that not everyone gets.

We talked about our son who we both thought would enjoy the paintings. He will start French lessons in school this fall and would get a kick out of Magritte’s simple declarations, Ceci n’est pas une pipe.

Speaking of badass, Magritte's comment on this iconic painting, "Well of course it's not a pipe, it's a painting."
Magritte’s comment on this iconic painting, “Well of course it’s not a pipe, it’s a painting.”

Eighteen years ago, walking through a different museum in Brussels, there is no way I could have imagined the life we are now living together.  In that time we’ve cared for and lost a child to cancer, are somehow surviving our grief, created three homes together in our beloved Chicago, are raising two boys together.  I’ve left my career in social work behind, and now write words that people actually read.

In so many ways, life is like those galleries you walk through in museums.  Some of the rooms are bright and full of light and interesting, rich, joyful art that you could linger in for ages.  Other galleries are dark and poorly lit and depressing as hell.  You want to leave and leave now, but it’s not always so easy to move from one room to another.  Some galleries are just meh, humdrum, boring.

I feel so lucky to have been walking through museum galleries with my husband for eighteen years now.  We’ve seen much together, appreciated some of it, feared some of it, trudged through some of it, but always together.  Best of all, I still feel excited to see the galleries yet to come, the hidden treasures we have yet to find.

Ceci n’est pas une billet doux.