Category Archives: loss

Christmas and loss

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My apologies for my long absence. This has been a time of transition and upheaval. I left my job of 17 years in early October with a plan to focus on my own writing, do some freelance work, and teach. I was—am—eager to move into this next phase and also a bit apprehensive and sorry to leave my colleagues.

I thought the job transition would be the primary story of this fall and winter. But, sadly, overshadowing the work transition has been the ill health and death of Barbara, my older and only sister.

A couple of days after my final day at work, I got a call that she was gravely ill. Her health started failing last winter and in April she went into a care home in England, where she’s lived for many years. I visited her in June and then flew to England again in October, after I got the emergency call. She rallied a bit while I was there but then went rapidly downhill through November. She died in early December

I’ve been writing during these months of blog silence and have just posted three backdated entries–I invite you to check them out:

Sometimes I need a list (October 26)

Rain then sun (November 8)

“Hope is the thing…” (November 14)

For now, here are some reflections on Christmas this year.

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Sadness and joy can co-exist. That’s a lesson I’m learning and re-learning this Christmas season.

IMG_0216I put the Christmas tree up a week ago. I bought the tree in late November because the garden center quickly runs out of the small, table top trees I like. It languished in the dark, cold garage for weeks. I dragged my heels about putting it up because I was wary of the emotional impact, weighing the possible—probable—sadness against the pleasure I get from bringing the green and light into the house.

And perhaps if I’d waited until Christmas eve to decorate the tree, had the twelve lessons and carols service from King’s College, Cambridge, playing in the background, remembered sitting with Barbara in her English home watching the service in real time, the sadness would have deepened.

But this year I simply felt my usual mix of nostalgia and pleasure as I draped the white lights and hung the familiar ornaments, a few that have been handed down from our dad’s childhood tree, a few that friends have given me, some I’ve bought over the years. Under the tree I placed the wooden village that was under dad’s tree. I did not put Kris Kringle on the top. This is another ornament from dad’s childhood but Kris is old and fragile and now retired to the china cabinet. Instead I perched a cardinal, honoring our mom and her love of these birds.

As often happens when we’re living through an experience, gifts float our way. On a friend’s recommendation I listened to a recent On Being podcast. Krista Tippett’s guest was Pauline Boss, who teaches and writes about ambiguous loss, that loss you feel when a loved one is alive but lost to you for some reason, the loss I felt for my sister over the last few months of her life.

She talked about the “myth of closure.” “‘Closure’ is a terrible word in human relationships,” she said. “Once you’ve become attached to somebody, love them, care about them—when they’re lost you still care about them. It’s a different dimension, but you can’t just turn it off.” Grief continues and in some way gets integrated into our lives.

She also disputed the idea of the five stages of grief. She said that Kubler-Ross intended those stages to describe the experience of people living with terminal illness, not the experience of those left behind after a death. Instead, grief is episodic, kaleidoscopic, appearing and receding.

My grief for my sister often feels muted, subterranean and then fissures open and sadness bubbles up—I had a day like that on a recent Saturday. I took part in my usual Saturday morning routines—coffee with a friend, farmers’ market with another friend—but then in the afternoon I retreated to the couch and opened to a deep sense of loss. I sat with the feeling until it passed, as these feelings do, but was left with a lingering lethargy of spirit. 

But even when I’m not consciously feeling sad, I know my mind and body are absorbing the loss on some level. I read an essay by the Irish writer Derek O’Connor about his grief at his wife’s death. He describes a conversation with a friend who is a scientist: “She details the neuroscience of grief, how mourning is the process by which the brain repairs itself.” The neuroscience of grief—I want to know more.

I talked with my cousin Kathy shortly after Barbara died. She lives on the west coast and we see each other rarely but she’s family, she’s continuity. Her voice sounds like her mother’s voice and I remember that her mother sounded like my mother—echoes rippling out, bridging time and loss. Her parents and her only sibling are also dead. “We’re adult orphans,” she said. I take that in.

I spent Christmas eve at a dinner party with old and new friends and gathered with other friends for a meal on Christmas day. Both days were filled with laughter and connection, the warmth of good company. On Christmas day we toasted those who were missing from the circle, including my sister, and in doing so made a space for them around the table.

Someone once told me that decorations on a tree at winter solstice represent souls of the dead. A quick Google search yields one website that makes that point and then others that say the decorations represent wishes for the year to come. I choose to think of the tree as both—a nod to memories of those who have died and a nod, as well, to life and light in the darkest season.

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Here are two previous posts about Christmas:

Homesick for Christmas

Kris Kringle

 

 

 

Rain then sun

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Tuesday’s chill, dark rain sank me, drowned me. I drifted through the gloom, semi -reclined on the couch, bright yellow throw over my legs, streaming video on the laptop. Anyone peering in the front window would have thought I was ill and maybe in some soul space I was—not exactly ill but tired, damp, moldy.

I got up from the couch to make lunch, run a quick errand, make supper, do some minimal tidying up. I did not read a good book, make soup or bread, sweep up the leaves I’d tracked in from the front walk, do any of the items on my to-do list, exercise, meditate, write. I tell myself I need these down days but I’m not sure that’s true.

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I think of my sister every day. She’s hard to reach by phone these days. She’s sleeping a lot and not always making sense when she’s awake. She’s slipping away from me, from us. Last week I wrote her a letter and emailed it to M to deliver. I’ll do the same this week.

I think of her everyday but especially on a couch day like Tuesday when her image hovers like a warning, my last view of her as I left her in late October, lying in bed unable to tend to herself, bathe, feed, turn over in bed. She’s so frail and weak. She sleeps, wakes, sleeps again. I whisper to myself to move, to use my strong enough body, my agile enough brain while I can.

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Light returned. Two crisp, clear, sunny days. My to-do list still languishes with items unchecked but I got off the couch and out into the world. Walks around the neighborhood, dinner with a friend.

Yesterday, mid-afternoon, I went into the garden to empty some pots, put away chairs, cut back the rose bushes. As I walked around the house and into the back yard, crunching through leaves, I startled a Barred Owl—it soared across the backyard to a new perch in a pine tree near my compost pile, just above the garden cart I needed for my clean up tasks. I walked toward the cart as quietly as I could, not wanting to startle the owl again. It sat there as I retrieved the cart and went about my clean up tasks then flew off again, toward the field behind my house. 

I dumped the accumulated dirt and plant debris onto the compost pile and walked back toward the house slowly, stopping to look and wonder at the light glinting through yellow leaves on a Norway maple.

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Holding on–letting go

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IMG_0226Early in the morning. I’m sitting on the couch. Raven, the cat, is prowling around, hoping for space in my lap. She’s an old girl—she was 10 when I adopted her from the shelter in January 2011. So far she’s been healthy but recent bloodwork indicates her kidneys are starting to deteriorate. She’s lost some weight, seems to be drinking more water. Other than that, she’s her usual self.

But I know what might be coming—I’ve been here before with other cats, most recently my cat Sam who died in 2009. When the vet called to tell me the results of Raven’s blood tests, I told her about my experience with Sam—the nine month passage from mildly elevated blood values to a very sick cat and euthanasia. She reassured me that not all cats go that route; some live comfortable lives with chronic disease. Perhaps.

This is the bargain we make when we adopt these animals—that we will love them, care for them—and usher them through their last days, leaving us with holes in our lives.

Raven has been sitting on the dining table, gazing out at the backyard, which is slowly getting light on this next-to-last day of daylight savings time. She now makes the leap from the table to the arm of the couch and bulldozes her way onto my lap—I’m typing now at a slant with the laptop off to one side. Ergonomics be damned when a cat wants to rent space in your lap.

Bringing animals into our lives, opening our hearts to them, forces us to confront the duality of loving well and letting go. We rehearse this over and over, with each furry death. I know I’ll have difficult decisions ahead—when to treat and to what extent, whether to administer sub Q fluids, when to end it. Cats are stoic creatures; by the time they let us see their pain, they’re usually suffering.

In 2009-2010 I had to make that decision for 3 cats. Albert was first—acute kidney failure and a trip to the emergency vet hospital that resulted in his euthanasia. Then a few months later, I had Sam put to sleep after his chronic kidney disease grew severe. Indigo, the oldest of the three, lived for another year of declining abilities, aching joints, and a wonky heart. Each death taught me something about what to look for, when to treat, when to let go, how to keep the animal’s needs foremost, put their welfare above my own need to hold on.

Raven has abandoned my lap—this is often the routine, she nestles in for a time and then leaves for more important feline business—a daily ritual of attachment and letting go. The sky is light now. and I need to start my day.