I took Maki to a concert last night, the first proper one I’ve taken him to. We bought tickets 6 months before just to make sure it would happen. We are both very sentimental about this band Echo and the Bunnymen, a big post-punk band from the 80s. I loved them in High School myself, but Vernon was really into them when he was a lad in England, where they were much more known.
This is a picture of a back of album cover that came out in 1981. Vernon would have been Maki’s age now. For a school art project, he made a watercolor painting from this picture. His parents put it in a frame, and its been hanging on the wall of the lounge ever since. Maki remembers it too. It’s one of the few artworks we’ve seen from that time in his life.
Vanessa sent over this picture of a 14-15 year old Vernon when she heard we were going to the show. Think he looks a bit like Maki?
I do want to take a moment to praise the therapeutic and uplifting power of music. I’m not just talking about listening to music at home or in the car. I think the vibrations of live music must do something special to us. I know I always feel better for a few days after seeing a show, and Vernon is the one who made me realize how healing music is. He would always respond better to musicians playing for him than when he listened from a cd player. He would relax in ways that medicine couldn’t help with. It made me start realizing that listening to real instruments and voices is GOOD for people, not just nice for them. Maki and I can both feel the difference today!
I met a lady today. She was maybe ten years older than me. Her husband is suddenly on hospice after recognizing his lung cancer too late to do much more about it. I was just leaving coffee with buddy Chris Adams and a friend. He flagged me back as I was driving away, letting me know she had just run into him on her morning walk and could I talk to her? “Does she even want to?” I asked. I guess she did because I went back and talked with her for about an hour. I didn’t know how I could speak into her life because its only been a month since Vernon graduated from his own hospice. (And since we graduated from hospice ourselves.)
I didn’t know what I could give her, coming from this raw and irregular state I’ve been in. But there were two things I remember stressing for her. One was that she should come up with a sign for him, something to remind her that he would be watching her. I told her about the pigeons, the butterflies, the hawks. I told her that her husband’s body was a chrysalis and his spirit was in transition…that is why he seems to come and go from the state he is in. I told her that they don’t actually leave us when they go, but that they stay with us…she can honor the symbols she is seeing flying around her now. I don’t even know if everything I told her was true…but its been my experience thus far. I also sent a friend who plays music over her way. She has played music for another friend of mine whose mother was on hospice recently…and she has played for Vernon.
I realized I had this Death Team around me. Somehow, out of our experience, we had come up with (while not exactly, an expertise) a specialization of our own. A club. We don’t have the only corner on this, but we can speak with some authority. Everyone in my Vernon-tribe can. It’s the experience of dying and death and the after that we can draw on together. It sounds morbid, but I assure you, it is not. It’s just continuing the exploration of LIFE.
Apparently there are these things called Death Cafe’s. I knew it was an English thing immediately as the first detail on the website offers a place to eat cake and drink tea and talk about death. The point is: we aren’t used to talking about it. I’m still not sure if it is always in good taste. But its a space for people to talk about these things. I’m still not sure how we are supposed to do it.
Our chaplain, before I even had confirmation that Vernon was going to go (though I had an inkling), suggested to me that the purpose of our journey at that point was to show people how to go into death. I don’t know if that was true, but I ran with that purpose. I started blogging our experience and also putting up-to-dates on FaceBook. It probably wasn’t the English Way that Vernon’s family would have expected, but it was my way, at least what I had learned to do over this time.
Anyway, here we are. He has died, and we are figuring out how to talk about it. Who ever expected he would have pulled together a unit to try to express our feelings about this stuff while we are still in the land of the living? But here we are, alive, talking about it.
“I thought I could describe a state; make a map of sorrow. Sorrow, however, turns out to be not a state but a process.”
“For in grief nothing “stays put.” One keeps on emerging from a phase, but it always recurs. Round and round. Everything repeats. Am I going in circles, or dare I hope I am on a spiral?
But if a spiral, am I going up or down it?
How often — will it be for always? — how often will the vast emptiness astonish me like a complete novelty and make me say, “I never realized my loss till this moment”? The same leg is cut off time after time.”
― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed
Everyone says Grief comes in waves. You can be very good for a few days straight, then suddenly you find yourself knocked on your head, flailing underwater, gasping for air. And then that goes too, in its own time. It’s shocking how quickly the feelings can change too. I was doing great all weekend, I was with friends, there were almost blissful moments of random memory rushing to the surface. I let it all happen, I tried to enjoy. And then, without warning, comes the crash. And I just want to sleep and cry. I get up again for the kids though, when its’ time to fetch them. And they help me see my vague purpose again, they give me a job to do, someone to worry over (trying not to, but sometimes I do.)
Someone mentioned beside the grief, that there could be a bit of PTSD going on, in the sense that after operating on such a traumatic level, outside of our default capabilities, we now are having a hard time transitioning to the land of the living. We have to become different people than we were during that time, and we are just at the beginning of that process. But we are also finally allowed to grieve what we couldn’t as long as Vernon was with us. As much as we tried to be realistic, we still held hope within our hearts that somehow he would somehow get better. Maki has said that he doesn’t ‘feel like himself’ sometimes. I think I know what he means. He said he could relate to this quote:
“There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me. I find it hard to take in what anyone says. Or perhaps, hard to want to take it in. It is so uninteresting. Yet I want the others to be about me. I dread the moments when the house is empty. If only they would talk to one another and not to me.”
― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed
But then, it passes…at least for me. I believe for the kids too…especially Justine, who is easiest for me to read. It’s hard to watch the kids have to deal with this, but then…I always think: “I know so many people who lost their parents when they were young. They still became confident, well-adjusted adults, for the most part. I know people who have lost their spouses: some remarried, some did not. They still found their way in the world and found their way joyfully, despite the pain of loss they may often still feel. Sometimes I get very angry, but I don’t feel entitled to have him alive with us. (Maybe because we already let him go somewhat over the past couple of years?) I’m understanding this death thing is really a part of life, no one escapes it. It happens to be our family’s turn to deal with it. It sucks though.
Today, after writing this piece, I will get back to the pile of envelopes and bills to sort out. It’s been sitting there for weeks, I just keep shuffling it into different piles. Today, I moved it all the living-room from the office, in order to clear out a work space for Maki. If it weren’t for him, that pile would keep growing. But the fact is: I’ve moved it! Progress! We’re getting somewhere. I’m doing really well this morning, feeling focused, energized. I better get done what I can before the next wave of surprise emotion hits and I won’t be able to anything except look after the kids.
Vernon. You told me how you wanted to raise these kids. I didn’t always agree with you. But now I’m now I’m on my own trying to do it both our ways. I was doing fine until you keep showing up in my mind. Now I keep doing it your way, despite what I intended. No fair.
I got a surprise letter through FaceBook this morning which really touched me. I remember this person, as I spoke with her many times. She was one of the ambulance staff that took Vernon to dialysis five times a week over the course of two years.
Hi, I’m not sure if you remember me. I’m Jenifer, one of the EMT’s that used to take Vernon to dialysis. I just found out about Vernon’s passing & wanted to reach out to you & tell you that I’m terribly sorry for your loss & your children’s loss. I never got the chance to tell you but you inspire me in so many ways. The way you stayed at Vernon’s side & the love that you have for him is amazing. There were times were I would go to the bathroom & cry after dropping him off because it broke my heart to see how much you love him & how hard seeing him in that state was for you. You are the definition of an amazing wife & a beautiful soul. God bless you & your family, & may he give you the strength to overcome this.
I was moved by her letter, of course, as these medical assistants filled up all the important ensemble roles of our Play. But then we only tend to stay in touch with the main characters, the people we actually know well, and all the others can fade to the background when the bows are made. But these background people are the ones that make the world turn, especially in Vernon’s case, as he could do nothing by himself. Of course I knew they cared in the moment, but its a treat to actually hear that these people remember him fondly. They were such an important part of our lives, the unsung ones.
I sent the letter to my friend Sandy, just to give help give it some wings. She wrote back:
Thank you for sending this to me. It makes me actually weep. I know I have lots of tears stuffed and stuck down. And this releases some. Allison, we all have been watching ( and participating) in an extraordinary love story. And love stories usually have tears. Beautiful words from Jenifer.And so true.
And Allison.You sometimes ask, “Where is God?Is He even there? ” He was there. Inside you. As you were being His hands and feet and love to Vernon. No, He didn’t say ‘Yes’ to miraculously healing Vernon. But He demonstrated His love and power through you. And the children. And the Logies, Ketcham’s, Hendrix’s, Adams’, your parents, Joe. Others watched and saw the face of God. They saw love in action. His power and love to do what was given to Vernon.
Vernon left the imprints of his fonts behind. And he left he imprint of love.
PS Jenifer’s name was changed. But the rest of the story is real.
Death is one of the main things in life that connects us all. It is a major part of life—we know that but we don’t like to expect or accept it in our culture. It’s inevitable—we all have that in common. Sometimes I imagine we are all in a long metaphysical queue (like at the grocery store, just waiting our turn…which will come eventually, but not no time soon. Suddenly a new clerk opens the next register and someone in the middle or even back of the line, suddenly is called to be first. And off they go when you least expected it. Its especially distressing to everyone in the waiting queue when we watch someone young get called up ahead of us. Or if it’s someone we love a lot.
There a small painting on my living room wall. I did it sometime after Vernon and I returned from our Venice honeymoon in 2016. I have been looking at it lately, wondering if its time to take it down, whether I should reorganize the artwork. At any rate, I think it matches the poem I am about to share (from a book someone gave me at Vernon’s memorial service—thanks Yuki!) I hope others who have lost their loved ones can gather comfort and hope from the words.
On The Death Of The Beloved
— John O’Donohue
Though we need to weep your loss,
You dwell in that safe place in our hearts,
Where no storm or night or pain can reach you.
Your love was like the dawn
Brightening over our lives
Awakening beneath the dark
A further adventure of colour.
The sound of your voice
Found for us
A new music
That brightened everything.
Whatever you enfolded in your gaze
Quickened in the joy of its being;
You placed smiles like flowers
On the altar of the heart.
Your mind always sparkled
With wonder at things.
Though your days here were brief,
Your spirit was live, awake, complete.
We look towards each other no longer
From the old distance of our names;
Now you dwell inside the rhythm of breath,
As close to us as we are to ourselves.
Though we cannot see you with outward eyes,
We know our soul’s gaze is upon your face,
Smiling back at us from within everything
To which we bring our best refinement.
Let us not look for you only in memory,
Where we would grow lonely without you.
You would want us to find you in presence,
Beside us when beauty brightens,
When kindness glows
And music echoes eternal tones.
When orchids brighten the earth,
Darkest winter has turned to spring;
May this dark grief flower with hope
In every heart that loves you.
May you continue to inspire us:
To enter each day with a generous heart.
To serve the call of courage and love
Until we see your beautiful face again
In that land where there is no more separation,
Where all tears will be wiped from our mind,
And where we will never lose you again.
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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