A Little Help From My Friends

Here's what a new friend of mine wrote in response to my brief "Acceptance entry"

"Acceptance in this situation indeed in MOST situations, is kind of like when you are wandering through the house, say, intent on going to the bedroom to get a pair of socks, and in passing a table you happen to look down and SEE that item or gizmo you KNEW was lost or misplaced somewhere inside the place... but you'd long since given up looking for."

As he is a new friend I did not lash out with my usual No-BS-Rose (an actual nickname of mine) retort. I do try to ease into the no hold barred truth with new friends, give 'em a chance to build up their calluses to my callousness! (yes,yes very clever)

Anyway, his metaphor made me cry. Not, I'm sure the way or reason that he may have intended.
See that metaphor described my ENTIRE relationship with my Dad. Forget the gizmo, I don't even have any socks anymore!
I keep getting condolence cards and phone calls from people who knew my dad at different points in his life. They tell me about what their common thread was, while I listen, dutifully, and then hang up and yell at my kids or husband or dog; because...
because I have spent my LIFE trying to weave that thread. Just an easy one, movies, books, f-ing food ANYTHING.

But what we had in common was sometimes being too much with this world.

I found a way (thru amazing friends,a career in a business that caters to humanity and all it's messy emotions, a nonjudgmental spirit path and considerable amount of therapy)to deal with that.

My poor dear dead father did not grow up in a world, social or career-wise, that allowed for that kind of nurturing exploration.

Maybe that's his legacy to me. Maybe, just maybe (and I mean maybe)I am, what he would have wanted to be.

Maybe I am his secret heart.


Goddess
I only wish that were true.

Acceptance

yeah.
Not so much.

Depression

Yuck.



That's really all there is to say about that.

Like layers of paint on a canvas, color over color over color thick mess of crap.

(Hmm sounds a bit like anger is still around)



I keep wanting to be done with it all and then immediatly turn around and cling to the grief like some perverse life raft.

If I'm still grieving he's still present in me somehow.

I write that and Goddess knows, I know I'm not the only one who's felt this way.

But I don't want to cry and be taken care of, and I don't want to yell "why"

cause, -duh, -mortal



And then I want to be a little girl who can simply be hushed back to sleep cause it's all a bad dream.



Wow, does this suck.

Anger

on the radio "Don't Give Up" Peter Gabriel Kate Bush. I gotta put my head down for a minute.

Ok Anger:
Here's how it's manifesting for me
1. Electronics- cell phones, ipods, anything with a f-ing battery because they keep dying at the most inopportune/ironic/ass kicking times. It is a wonder that they are not littering the roads as I grit my teeth and scream at them.
add that to,
2. I have been behind a. a dump truck or b. SUV driven by an old person; all going 20 miles an hour- ON EVERY ROAD I've been on, regardless of posted limit.
Probably a good thing tho, as I've developed a wee bit of a lead foot in my grief and anger.

Let's get down to it shall we:
The concept of anger has been drilled out of me as an actress- you don't play anger you recognize the the source of it (usually hurt) and play your character's response to it.

My Best New Old Friend, a really good actor, totally called me on that. He said "No, don't do that. Anger has it's place." Wow is he right (and yes my phone died in the middle of our conversation)
He talked about his parents deaths and how it simply makes no sense.
I've been thinking about that.
Sure there's the regret which I've previously expressed, things left unsaid. etc.
But it's more it's like the world is off.
Off kilter, tilted. Like gravity has been replaced, or displaced. There is no way to prepare for someone who is supposed to be immortal to go.
My ipod, even in shuffle keeps playing Hendrix "Castles in the Sand"
Even at 41 I guess a part of me thought, however delusional, that even when my dad died, I'd at least be able to call him now and then.
Not being able to makes me mad.
I guess that's anger.

Bargaining

First of all She's getting me.
The Radio Witch that is: started this and she put "Ripple" by The Grateful Dead on the radio.

ok Bargaining.
We'll get to Anger when I can give it words, right now it's just roiling about in me.

What is "bargaining" exactly? I imagine some delusional haggling. Or shopping.
Denial- got it. Anger- you betcha. Bargaining? Wah? Filene's Basement? Flea Markets?
Or is it more about fantasy? Maybe if _________ happens it will ease my loss.

maybe I'll be given a box full of secret messages to me. All my reviews- clippings of my achievements. Letters never sent telling me how he was proud of me. Amazed by me. A box of photos of him and I, that I've never seen. Maybe journals with long entries of how he wished he could have said this and that. Paintings I'd done, childhood poems; every card and note I'd left on his desk. Poems about my wedding, my children, love and regret and redemption.

Perhaps that is Bargaining.
Makes sense that it's followed by Depression, cause there is no box.

What they don't tell you is that the "stages" are really the arc and shape of the waves. Not some f-ed up checklist/checkpoint but just words to identify the crazy that you feel. That I feel. Depressed, angry, anxious, mad, anticipatory, light-headed, impatient.

It's all I can do to keep from drowning.

Denial

“The most important things are the hardest things to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them--words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they're brought out. But it's more than that, isn't it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you've said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That's the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear.”

- Stephen King

My dad and I used to send the above quote back and forth to mend our bridge that we would burn and rebuild through the course of our lives.

My Dad died Saturday.

Ok, perhaps I’m still in the Elizabeth Kubler Roth stage 1 –Denial. Because I write that and feel an inappropriate giggle bubbling around my heart.
Because it simply cannot be true.
My Dad was a formidable giant in my eyes. I think I have always seen him from the perspective of a 7 year old (the age my son is now, the age I was when my dad left, the age I was when my mother’s father died)
One of the last dreams I had about my dad; he was enormous, like a Macy’s Thanksgiving day balloon. Huge, bombastic somewhat foreboding..
He was going to die within the next 5 years or so, his lungs were slowly failing, but instead had a heart attach while vacationing earlier this month, in Las Vegas. I flew out to see him in the ICU, on a ventilator and told him I loved him. He held my hand.

There were important things to say that I didn’t get a chance to.
I suppose there’s a stage for that.

I am curious about what Roth meant about bargaining. I’m going to take it as shopping.

Retail Therapy as my dear friend calls it.

The radio witch has been kind, she has yet to hit me with “Old Man” by Neil Young. But on the day he died, actually in the moment he died she put “Wish You Were Here” on the radio while driving with my family on vacation. (yup I was on vacation, actually on the return home when he died) And then my step mom called while we were checking our bags. On the plane I drank beer and listened to the XM radio and once again heard “Wish You Were Here”.

My dad and I spent many years estranged; on and off; me in my 20s, him in the bottle.

Now in our 40s and 70s we finally were able to talk about love and life and regret.

We had just found the way to each other’s secret heart.

And then his stopped.