I just got off an hour long conversation with someone at Social Security. I need to collect some more information from England before I can apply for any survivor benefit, it seems. So that is still in the air. But it was the first time I pulled Vernon’s death certificate out of its envelope and actually looked at it. So strange to mix that in with the important paperwork like birth and marriage certificates. I’ll live with it all in one place in the house now, the main records of his life.
But on a nicer note, I would like to share a special gift I received in the mail this week. I opened up a large tube covered with stamps and found this
It’s a giant photocopy of a pigeon from an adult coloring book that my childhood dentist’s wife sent me. She also sent along a pack of colored pencils, thinking we could all have a go at coloring in this delightful bird. Long live pigeons! Thank you, Mrs. Lee. I love it.
Speaking of art, the craft fair starts tonight. Here are a few more things you can expect to find there:
Sansoxygen Coffee! Hand-roasted right here in town. I can’t wait to try some of this.
Remember, tonight at the San Clemente Art Supply (Friday) will be 6-9 and tomorrow (Saturday) at 10-5. 1531 N. El Camino Real, San Clemente, CA 92672
As I looked around at the group of sixteen, circled in the shadow of giant rocks, a makeshift family of friends who had reconvened to release the ashes, I could almost see the shape of Vernon in our midst. I’d put most of the ashes in a beautiful clay vase our friend Jeff had made, and it stood alone on the ground, in the middle of the group. Someone began to spontaneously share some memories of our dear departed, and as our eyes began to fill up with emotion, it seemed to me the little urn was standing at such a jaunty angle it could have been listening. A picture of Vernon washed over me…he was laying back on his final hospital bed, basking in the company and music, one eyebrow cocked, purely focused on on every face there, dawning to the same truth we all were becoming aware of: that this was a sacred time.
Here we were, gathered again, almost three months later. We’ve joined up many times since he died, but this was the most sacred, intentional. This half hour of scattering the ashes was set apart to honor Vernon out of a weekend spent climbing, eating, playing, watching sunrises and sunsets, chasing little children, exploring, eating, drinking, sitting by the fire, enjoying music and each other’s company. As we stood in a lopsided circle, I could imagine his presence there again, as if he took on the shape of the space inside our circle. Some of us in the group knew him longer than others. Most knew him before the accident, but then, perhaps not that well. Some met him afterward, and never knew him in his previous mental state. But all of us loved him, stuck by him, were greatly affected by his struggle to live for so long when he should have died on the street that night. All of us came to be more compassionate, humbled people because of the way he was. Our hearts were broken but will surely be stronger for the scar tissue. We cannot separate who we are now from our love for him. So we come together to renew that shape, whether we talk about him or not. We plug in and remember him…and honor what we’ve become.
“Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak knits up the o-er wrought heart and bids it break.”—William Shakespeare, Macbeth
It’s been hard to write in this space this week as everything is so politically charged. I have deep convictions when it comes to this sort of thing, but I’m trying to keep this space “on-message”—whatever that means. So..for lack of anything else relevant to say, here are some writings that have come out of my Grief Group this week. I hope that these will resonate with people going through any type of loss themselves. Wikipedia says: “Grief is a multifaceted response to loss, particularly to the loss of someone or something that has died, to which a bond or affection was formed. Although conventionally focused on the emotional response to loss, it also has physical, cognitive, behavioral, social, and philosophical dimensions.” In other words, “grief is the price we pay for love.”
We were challenged in our group to make a “found poem” from a collection of highlighted words that caught the eye off a Sunday paper. I finally got around to this assignment earlier today, though its been weeks since it was given. Fortunately I got my hands on the “Books” section of the LA Times. I wasn’t convinced there would be much to this activity, but once I got started, it spoke to me.
Which way would you go—
The future or the past?
Midway through history…
Dazzling, dizzying,
Freshly obsessed with thoughts of the future.
You struggled with three dimensions—
A fourth dimension dawned!
Is the future predetermined?
What of the eternal, the spiritual?
Pure thought can only take us so far.
And then there was today’s prompt, based on a poem by John O’Donohue. (He’s visited these pages before.) This is what I wrote:
Sorrow slithers as a blanket of mist which
layers itself through the village.
Almost visible, caught in car-lights and windows—
Shrouding everything else from view—
until you notice what you almost bumped into.
Be careful, if you must go out in it at all.
It may help to watch from inside the window,
To make hot chocolate and wear pajamas,
Turn on the fires of comfort, make a lovely stew.
Being safe inside, but knowing what’s out there
gives you space to feel cozy.
A new kind of privilege.
Outside in the fog, you might lose your way,
unable to see the future—just a few steps ahead.
Accidents can happen, stay vigilant as you go!
It’s dangerous out there in sorrow.
Oh to be ambushed by grief,
Thrown onto the black tide of loss.
But to go out into the village, I must.
I can’t bear to stay here forever
withering away in my own mind.
My bones need movement…
My lungs, fresh air. After all…
I have miles—MILES!— to go before I sleep.
Now because I don’t have anything to illustrate these with, here is a picture from the beach today. A hot November—as if things couldn’t get more surreal.
I think I’m starting to rise out of the fog more often than not. I think the writing group has helped a lot…and we have less than a third of the way left for that. I’m so happy to have found something that suits my nature so well in this time. It’s been so much work, a lot of thinking, a lot of reading, but for over a week now, I feel more in touch with the appropriate emotions. The superimposed image is beginning to line up. I’m not out of the woods entirely yet, but I am beginning to think about the future almost as much as the past. This must be progress?
Today I managed to spend time re-organizing the pile of medical forms that keeps getting shuffled around. Last time I tried to get my way through it, I had help (thanks, Mom!) Today, I did it alone…even chasing down some answers to the confusion by phone. I looked closer at a stack of yellow operation forms from early in Vernon’s journey and realized I hadn’t looked at these since I’d signed them.
A Patient’s Guide to Blood Transfusion
Jaw Surgery
Tracheostomy
Gastrostomy
Jejunostomy tube placement
Bronchoscopy
Left Forearm Irrigation and debridement with possible placement of antibiotic beads
Left forearm internal versus external fixation
External fixator placement to pelvis
irrigation and debridement,
Right femur open reduction and internal fixation
Brain Surgery
Placement of wires to to upper and lower teeth
(Intravascular stents, filter, coils or grafts)
(Wire sutures or surgical stapels)
(Metal rods in bones)
(Bone/joint pin, screw, nail, wire or plate)
Right frontal ventriculostomy and licox monitor placement,
Repair of facial lacerations
Arterial line placement
(Removal of Pelvic external fixature)
Percutaneous cholecystostomy tube placement
(another) Bronchoscopy
Pelvis open reduction and internal fixation, possible screw placement, right sacroiliac joint
All of these are out of order, and they are from one small stack that I’d kept together from 5/23/14 to 6/11/14 and in this group, I see nothing of the renal failure and requisite surgeries to get him ready for dialysis. So I’m obviously missing a few. How fitting—isn’t that just like Memory?
On Facebook today, a post from two years ago showed up. Usually, I like them, because it reminds me again that all this was real. But today’s memory, for the first time, made me cry. I relished in the tears, just because they were appropriate to the loss. It passed, of course. Here it is:
These are hard to watch because he was doing BETTER then. His voice and his cognizance seem so much brighter than they did in the months, years to come. I am only beginning to come to the awareness of his disintegration. I know it in my head, I’ve accepted that. But wow, in this videos, he seems like he has a chance. It’s been two years since these videos were taken, even longer since those yellow papers were signed. It’s been a difficult (but also growing) day of realizing now how much he declined from the beginning…and the fact that I didn’t notice it till now. The fog is lifting.
Among Vernon’s boxes of belongings in the garage, I found a ziplock bag full of glasses.
There was the pair he bought in Venice for our honeymoon. I remembered how he looked in those dark sunglasses, eating an orange popsicle on an orange chair. He looked like a member of Oasis. I remember that time, almost a year after his bike was stolen, he saw it laying outside a shop near our home. Without hesitation, he picked it up and rode off on it, telling me to wait across the street for him. When he came back, he had changed to a disguise of all black, and he was wearing these dark sunglasses. We laughed about that for years. He looked like a cat burglar, a spy.
There were the prescription spectacles Vernon bought in Henley on some quiet afternoon when we only had the baby with us. We both bought glasses that day, and wound up looking quite twinnish. He hardly ever wore his, but when he did, he looked so intelligent. He was already so smart…too smart for his own good, most of the time. It could be infuriating because I could never win a debate.
There were more: the ones he wore at the nursing home, various sunglasses we’d picked up, mostly aviator style. I remembered how Vernon needed to wear sunglasses when we took him outside on that horrid geri-chair, tilted back so he couldn’t throw himself out. I remember begging for a simple wheelchair for him, so he could at least sit up and strengthen his back and core, or learn to move himself around, but I was shut down over rules about seat belts. I remember figuring out that a table could work as a restraint, if I pushed him close enough. I remember sneaking him milk shakes and cups of water. Of course he would choke and cough loudest just as a staff member was walking by, and I’d hide all the evidence as best I could while he sputtered away horribly. Then he’d ask for more.
The sunglasses made him look normal, like someone lounging in the sun on holiday. He could even look cool with with his short haircut and black tee-shirts. Without them, it was clear his eyes were wonky, whether they were tightly clamped in that pained wince or open wide, but looking in opposing directions. I am sure he couldn’t see well, but he made up for that with his imagination. Seeing double or not seeing at all was surely no stranger than not remembering your identity and how you got where you were.
Now he doesn’t need any glasses at all. I imagine his eyes are perfect and can hold lots of light without squinting as he looks into eternity. Perhaps he looks and sees us too from time to time. Meanwhile on earth, I hold this bag of now useless frames and think about he inheritance of memory and hope for the future.
A special cover of Vernon's fav song 'Waterloo Sunset' by friend and singer/song-writer Ian McGlynn. All proceeds support Vernon's recovery! Donate what you can and download a beautiful song in return.
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