Thinking Ahead

I thank all my readers who have been patient with me as I need to be away from much of my "real" life. I am helping my siblings plan a memorial service for my sister.
It is a lot of work, and everyone has been incredibly helpful. And I'm beat.

Happy Birthday to My Dad

My father David is eighty years old today. He was born in a rather nice little house in Mississippi--once he told me that he was born in a barn, but that was just one of his leg-pullings. My youngest called him up today and said, "Grandpa, you're eighty!
How do you feel?" My dad replied, "I felt a lot better yesterday, when I was still seventy-nine!" May you live to be a hundred, Dad. He choked up on the phone today about my sister, but he also sounded okay, too. He's got just a few lines in my book, but I think they capture his sense of humor, even in one particularly awful situation.

I went to grief counseling at the local hospice caring project and spent fifty minutes crying in front of a very nice grief counselor. Guess I am moving out of the "numbness" stage over my sister's death. I strongly recommend grief counseling if that is something anyone out there in Readerland needs. You can say pretty darn much anything about the person who has died and the situation, from positive things to stuff you need to vent about, and a good counselor will have HEARD IT ALL and more.

My sister was a tremendous help to me in all phases of The Strega's Story and I was so glad that, in Boston, I was able to read the opening chapter to her (she'd read a lot of it, but had not heard a lot in finished form). Eerily, and extremely sadly for me, I hold a lot of the family stories now--we talked and talked and talked of them in the course of this book--the same way my mother and grandmother discussed them endlessly--
and now I will not forget them...and in fact have to write a few more down that didn't make it into the book...

Thank you, cherished readers, for being patient with me in one of the most awful times of loss I have ever experienced. Eventually, good things will come from this, even if just a tempering of my spirit.

Thinking Ahead

Boy, a word of wisdom to everyone: don't die unexpectedly. My sister's death (on July 20th) has caused a huge amount of shock and pain to everyone, including my elderly father, who turns eighty tomorrow. I am sure he never thought one of his children would precede him in death. I know she did not mean to cause us this pain and of course I am not blaming her--I am just dealing with lots of shock and am walking around like a zombie.

What comforts me is that my sister did NOT die alone in her apartment, as I first thought. She had been able to get to the hospital late the night before, and died cared for and hopefully unaware at the end of what was happening to her. I was so afraid when I heard an initial report that she had died in her apartment alone--something she too had feared.

Some of my cherished relatives read this blog and I want to apologize for being so slow in getting back to people. There has been a lot to take care of. I see a grief counselor starting tomorrow. Since August 2007, this is the fourth death I have been through--three of the deaths were sudden, and all were people close to me. I would strongly recommend grief counseling for any loss of this kind, but especially sudden loss. It is like being hit with a fifty-pound hammer.

Cherished readers, make sure that if you have a will, it is up to date and that, if you have occasion to go to the hospital sometimes--ie if you have a chronic condition--that you make sure to put family members on your emergency contact list. I was not called to be with my sister in her last moments, not even to say goodbye on the phone, because the hospital did not have me on the list of people to call. I would have loved the opportunity to say goodbye to both my sister and my mother, and I know they would have loved for this to happen, too.

My garden is blooming, the weather is gorgeous, and life is going on all around me--yet my sister is gone. I am comforted by the fact that I know she is in a better place. She will never grow old now, and I will--a strange feeling, to be sure.

My Sister

I may (or may not) be away from the blog for a few days. My dear elder sister Maryanne, who battled many health problems for years, has died today. I loved my sister very much; she bravely fought all the physical challenges her illness brought her (like me, she had lupus) and her death was sudden and very unexpected, even by her. My son spoke to her just a few days ago and she seemed very happy, though she was feeling a bit unwell. Her passing was swift (within minutes of experiencing her symptoms, she was in a coma and passed just a short time later) and merciful--she never wanted to linger or suffer.

I loved and admired my sister and I know that she--like all the people who have passed on in my life--Harvey, Maudie, my mother, my friend Joanie--is in a place of light and beyond all suffering. My sister was a brilliant and creative woman who influenced me greatly in my own creativity. To paraphrase Ted Kennedy's eulogy for JFK Jr.,"(she) had every gift but length of years." She was 53 years old.

Trying to comfort my elder daughter today, I said that one of the reasons I believe heaven is a place of bliss is because our loved ones can see us and have awareness of us--and the difference between heaven and earth is that we can't see them and are deprived of their physical presence. What comforts me is that I believe she is in a place of goodness and light, and with all my beloved relatives who have gone before us, and that her love does not end, even though her physical body is gone.

I guess it was hardest today to hear my father cry. I have known him for forty-nine years and have never once heard him do that (he's a tough old guy on the outside). It is terrible to have to know that a parent has lost a child. It should never be that way.

Thank you in advance, dear readers, for all your kind thoughts and prayers for my family.

Nelson Mandela is 90 Today

Last night, Mr. Strega and I were driving and listening to the BBC. They were interviewing someone who had been in prison with Nelson Mandela, and described the horrific conditions in which they lived. I realized how incredibly lucky I am and decided--as always when I hear these stories and am reminded of what people have accomplished under circumstances that seem utterly hopeless--to make good use of my time here on earth.

Mandela is 90 years old today; click on the link to read more. May he have many happy years in the world.

Just When You Thought It Was Safe to Add Softener...

Living in a woodsy environment often brings me closer to nature than I sometimes want to get. Last night, in my very backyard, the local bobcat let forth the most amazing, spine-chilling, wild screeches all night. I even encountered him (or her) on the road last year, bounding from one side to the other. I regularly see (or hear) bats, owls, raccoons, deer, possums, squirrels, and the merry band of feral hogs who like to use our backyard as a path to the creek.

But I have NEVER had an encounter like the Maine woman in the news story. An 8-foot reticulated python came through her washing machine pipes and nestled itself in the load of wash. Click on the link to find out more.

Well, this is another excuse for me to avoid that particular task! I've heard a couple of other snake stories: one was about a snake who curled up inside the nice warm interior of a woman's Thanksgiving turkey, after she had removed the stuffing. The other concerned a snake who came up through the sewer system in New York and nestled itself on a toilet seat. The unfortunate apartment dweller, answering nature's call late at night, sat down upon the (rather disgruntled) reptile. It didn't harm him, but the man ended up running out of his building and into the New York streets, saying he thought he had seated himself on a wet washcloth, until he flipped on the bathroom light.

Enough primal fears for the day. I gotta go dance.

Ok, Twist My Arm

Ladies and gentleman, here is what I have decided. Due to your emails in which you, my cherished readers, have asked me to NOT stop talking about the book, I have decided to keep posting about it, at least general things. It's not like I'm writing something shameful, after all. My book has consumed my life for seven years. When I made the very last edits on my mother's birthday, I realized I had been a hermit since the age of forty-two, just because this project possessed my heart and mind. In order to write the book, I've had to cancel all kinds of fun things, I didn't travel, I burnt-out a hard drive on my previous laptop, I've had to say "no" when I would 'way rather have not done so, just to get this book done.

I finished my book on my mother's birthday because I wanted this to be a gift for her, the woman who, despite her imperfections, gave birth to me and did many good things for me, and who lived as equally a life of bravery as she lived a tragic one. I also want to let my readers know that I got more than just a manuscript out of this. Here's a list, by no means all-inclusive, of what happened to me due to this book (we'll leave out carpal tunnel syndrome and stronger glasses, just for now):

1) I got, from far-flung places, a treasure trove of photographs and memorabilia of my family. Since my book begins with the fact that, once upon a time, "every artifact of my childhood vanished without a trace," this was on the level of the semi-miraculous. And I didn't get these things right away--I had to go through years of imagining the lives of the people in my book, without having any reference point.

2) I made contact with beloved relatives whom I thought had been lost to me forever.

3) I traveled to Boston twice, both under the auspices of things to do with my mother, but I connected again with a city that is truly an enormous part of my life.

4) I got an MFA, for goodness' sake, and a bunch of wonderful friends/colleagues/instructors/students, all of whom I feel privileged to know.

5) I had the honor of exploring the lives of my relatives, and get into their heads as characters--to touch the tragedy of my grandfather and his loneliness, the wild beauty and vulnerability of my mother, and the incredible survivorship of my grandmother and great-grandmother. Despite the fact that I can only see through a glass darkly as to who they really were, I felt I got to know all of them better.

6) I have the satisfaction of saying, "I wrote a book," instead of "Gee, I think I want to write a book someday."

I've been talking to my creative writing students all summer about basically not hiding their light and about bravery as writers and artists, and I realized today that, well, why not me, too? Physician, take your own medicine, I always say.

So there! :)

Happy Birthday, Mom....

You'd think my grieving for my mother would have been well on its way to some resolution by now, but I think I am just starting to really feel it. Or perhaps I just feel it more on holidays associated with her: today would have been her 76th birthday. I know I posted a version of this photo before, but here she is again, as I think she would like people to have remembered her.

My mother had many flaws, as we all do, but she had many wonderful, kind things about her. I felt her presence strongly today, on this lovely end to a very eventful weekend for me. No matter what the tragic circumstances of her life, I do know one thing: my mom loved me very much, and vice-versa, and that there are still things I have yet to discover about my mother, even though she is gone. What helps me most is that I know a parent's love does not end, even after death. I don't exactly know in what mysterious way it endures--but it does, and that gives me comfort.

Caves

Mr. Strega and I had a lovely, quiet Fourth--I am doing a lot of stuff on various projects, with looming deadlines for some, and also have student work to correct, so I wasn't going to be doing much anyway. Mr. Strega rousted me out of my office at home to go over to his friend Ika's house; Ika (obviously not his real name) grilled tri-tips, and we also had an Italian sausage-roasted peppers-potato dish and broccoli, then settled down with our plates to watch fireworks from New York. Afterwards, Ika--a geek supreme-- treated us to an episode of the "Planet Earth" series, in high definition.

I chose the episode on caves and I have to say--only HD television can make a huge mountain of bat guano, with cockroaches crawling all over it, look stunning!

Seriously, though, a portion of the program was devoted to the Lechugilla caverns in New Mexico, which are located in the Carlsbad Caverns national park. This was an absolutely amazing viewing experience (Ika has one of those gi-normous TV screens). Lechugilla has room after room of amazing crystal formations, like walking into the mother of all geodes, and only a few people are allowed to go there every year (it's serious cavers only), as the system is incredibly delicate. For general information, click on the link to see more about this cave. It made me wonder how many of these kind of wonders are still out there, waiting to be discovered.

At any rate, I had a happy Fourth, and am looking forward to more of a quiet weekend. As far as I know, no fires broke out from illegal fireworks around here, so that was good--I nearly packed a "go-bag" again.

George Washington's Boyhood Home

One of the many things I loved about my mother Kathleen is that she would (in the years before everything got consolidated into one President's Day), serve up a cherry pie for Washington's birthday.

Well, they didn't find the hatchet that cut down the cherry tree at Washington's boyhood home, but they are finding a great many artifacts there. I've always been fascinated with archeology--artifacts have a story to tell, and sometimes an amazing one. The video that goes with this on the news site is really interesting.

Back to enjoying a quiet dinner with Mr. Strega, after a great teaching day in which I got to discourse on one of my favorite poets, William Blake.

If I don't get back to blogging in a day or two, have a happy Fourth of July--and for those of you who live in fire-prone areas, turn on your fireworks screensavers and forget about the sparklers this year. We've had enough of fires for one year.

Water Conservation!

Gosh, I didn't know my little neck of the woods is in a state of water conservation!