Condolences

It's a very rough day for me when three condolence cards have to be written and mailed. I'm not a believer in platitudes and pre-printed sympathy cards. I like to do a little eulogy of my particular memories of the deceased to the grieving loved ones. I'm in complete isolation apart from the two in my bubble. Not that I could attend funerals or wakes anyway as such gatherings are disallowed in the Time of the Plague.

The first was to a dear friend of  over forty years duration whose mother had died just shy of her hundredth birthday. A difficult one to write as she and her mother were not deeply connected. My friend is very honourable and was incredibly dutiful to her mother in her last residence in a home for retired military. I liked her mum, British to the backbone, sharp-tongued and judgy, careless with money. And quite selfish. As someone else's mum can be to our great amusement, but not our own. Heaven forbid. She never took the time to get to know her numerous grandchildren and great-grandchilden. So I wrote about the great old Irish expression when the last parent dies :"Now the roof is off your life," which has great depth if you ponder on  it.

The second was to a friend of some fifteen years whose daughter died when an ambulance was delayed. She had a problem with her leg (blood clot? - it would be intrusive to ask). She was in her early forties and leaves three children, the youngest is ten. This couple lost their eldest a few years back, he was a non-verbal autistic and died from a seizure. I can't imagine their grief. She was his favourite child, full of vim and vigor and they would run together and raise funds for autism. I've written about the death of one's child a few times. It is unspeakable.

The third was particularly hard as I wrote about this multi-talented man here.  I can't re-read it without bursting into tears. We spent more time with him this past summer and cooked for him and his partner in our rental up in the Great Northern Peninsula. He knew his gig was up for a while and opted for death with dignity. Effing cancer. Effing cancer. So I wrote to his partner citing his wonderful attributes and that magical night we spent when he played for us. 

And it was the last time.

Loss

Mike of Genial Misanthrope commented on my last post on his (and all of ours) wish not to outlive our children.

But I write of this again. I've written of my own personal circle of good friends and relatives who've not been so lucky. I link to them all here. And I say "all" because there are quite a few. An aunt's child, a school friend of my daughter's - herself a mother of a teenager. And on. At my high school reunion a few years back, one of my schoolmates appeared with a shaven head from cancer treatments. Six months prior her only daughter, birthing a third child, had died in the birthing process from a stroke. Not uncommon.

And many more death posts. Too many. Or maybe not enough. I've outlived my mother by 14 years now. Death looms more clearly at the age one's parent dies. And yes, they've done studies. It bubbles underneath the surface. Stolen time, I feel. So death is more present to us.

I was with someone on Tuesday who lost an adult son. I talked of missing daughter who's left a gaping wound in my own small family. A pain that never leaves. A pain often completely ignored and unacknowledged by some family members. And in some cases added to by deliberate shunning and non-inclusion which makes it all the more unimaginable. I'm not alone in that either.

I am staggered and amazed by how most of us get through the often unbearable pain of living with such enormous losses trailing behind us. Focussing on what we have, I expect.

My friend felt a missing child was worse than a dead child. I have no idea. How do you weigh one pain against another unless you've experienced both?

I don't label any behaviour "brave". In fact I despise the word. As if failure to be brave makes a person less than, inferior. We need less of this bravery thing and more of feeling and grieving and roaring out at the injustice. And shaking our fists in exhaustion.

I'd rather you and I had the permission to scream our losses to the skies in each others' presence.

The loss of those living, the loss of those dead. And all those losses in between.

The Last of the O'Sullivan Sisters. Part 1 of 2.

Catherine(Kit)O'Sullivan in her heyday.

Today my mother would have been 100 years old if she had lived. A rare thing, you'd think. But you'd be wrong. Her grandmother, my great-grandmother whom I remember well, lived well into her nineties and had a misstep on her stairs and fell to her death when I was, what, 8 or 9. So 100 would not be far-fetched. It certainly wasn't in the case of my recently deceased aunt who lived to be just shy of her 95th birthday.

I was fortunate enough to have 8 blood aunts. My father had 5 sisters, my mother 3. They wended their way in and out of our household when we were growing up and my father's two surviving sisters, when he had passed, would meet for lunch once a week in a fancy hotel in Cork when well into their nineties.

However, my mother died in her fifties leaving her 3 sisters and her mother bereft along with her own husband (my father) and 6 children, 3 of whom were teenagers.

I have written of some of my aunts before, here's a link.

My maternal aunts along with my mother were four stunning girls and in that old expression would make the heads of the blind turn and weep at their beauty. I have no trouble believing that, having been at several Nollaig Na mBans when I was growing up and listening to their raucous stories. The sisters remained extraordinarily close to the end of their days.

My mother's last surviving sister died last week. I visited her every year I returned home to Ireland. Up to a few years ago she played golf and bridge but then her baby, a son of 49, died a horrible death from lung cancer and she 'turned'. She looked inward then, much like my grandmother did when my mother died, and was never the same. Inner memories pertaining to the deceased loved one were deleted, never to return, while girlhood reminiscences were embraced as if they were yesterday.

We take our ease and comfort where we can and losing a child is unimaginable, no matter what the age.

Part 1 of 2. See Part 2 here.

Counting Moments

A moment from yesterday, you can see the masts of the fishing fleet outlined against the setting sun.

You're catching me as I wax philosophical lately. I've lost friends over the years. Far too many to count now. "Lost" seems that I was careless, somehow. As if I temporarily misplaced them. How come we use that metaphor? "Oh, you lost your dad, I'm so sorry." As if he could be found, you know? Lost to what exactly? Life, the world, his loved ones, the cancer that got him?

All this to say that a friend of mine died 10 years ago. A nasty form of cancer. She smoked. And the cancer ran everywhere in the end. She was a strikingly good-looking woman and dressed to the nines. Hair always perfect. Nails polished, cashmere twin-sets (now there's an old fashioned word but she was built for twin-sets) and pencil thin skirts and expensive tall shoes. A high school principal who had to run outside and up the road and behind a coffee shop to attend to her habit. Out of sight of her students and shedding her dignity in the process.

Her widower visited me out here in Newfoundland about 5 years ago. He was still in deep grief over her loss. We talked into the long nights about his beloved. She meant everything to him. He smoked. Four years ago he lost a leg, two years ago, the other one. Send them to the tobacco companies, he said at the time. Now he has receded into dementia.

Their younger daughter died last week, leaving three children. Smoking. Cancer. And when family pressure forced her to medical attention it was far too advanced. She suffered greatly in the last 6 months of her life. She was so like her mother in every way it would break your heart.

I look at her pictures today on Facebook, her last Christmas with her family, her chemo-head covered in a santa hat and her dad in the wheelchair beside her and her kids, the youngest only 12 and sadness overwhelms me. For all of us. For this precious, fragile world we inhabit so carelessly. Afraid to breathe the clean air and eat the good food, inhaling, ingesting, imbibing all the poison and toxins that will surely kill us in the end and far too soon.

And I'm glad her mother didn't live to bear this. And they have yet to tell her father.

The Unspeakable Part 3

I wonder how us humans bear the pain of life sometimes.

I've written about this before.

The death of one's child.

And it happens again. In my community. To a lovely man who chats with me every morning as he takes his daily constitutional. Always dressed beautifully in soft khakis and a walking stick (to ward off unwarranted attention from the odd stray dog, he tells me).
Dan lost his wife a couple of year ago to cancer, a lingering death which broke his heart. This couple gave a lot to the community. She so much that I will write about it sometime.

Yesterday he gets the unbearable news that his youngest child, 44 years old, died from chronic alcoholism. All attempts to help him failed. I can't even describe the pain Dan is going through.

I saw the effects of the death of a child up close and personal with my grandmother who lost a whole chunk of herself that never came back after her daughter, my mother, died far too young.

And more recently, a beloved aunt lost her youngest of 49 to the ravages of cigarette cancer. Yes, I always insist on calling it that. And she lost most of herself and had to be put into care. A woman who was a golfer and bridge player only a month before.

And then, at my high school reunion a month or so ago, one of my classmates, herself in the after-affects of radiation and chemotherapy and barely able to walk, shared that four months before her 38 year old daughter, 3 months after giving birth to her last child, had died suddenly of an aneurism.

Heroes? I don't have to look very far.

They should all get a medal just for suiting up and showing up.

The Unspeakable Part 2

Dear Bill:

As we stood in front of your daughter’s casket tonight you shared your personal story with me. Gently. Without self-pity, shame or blame.

Your mother died when you were five. There were five children and you were the eldest. Your father couldn’t cope so he put you into a home, you didn’t say what kind, the baby was adopted and the remaining three children were put into foster care. And your father vanished from your life.

You were able to reconnect with your siblings in later life, apart from the adopted brother whom you’ve never found. Four years ago, one of your brothers died suddenly of an aneurysm too. And it crosses your mind now, that that was probably the cause of your mother’s death as well. So you and your surviving son and daughter are having tests to determine if you are at risk. It would be dreadful to lose another child and perhaps it could be preventable.

You were overwhelmed with the turnout for your daughter, the funeral home was packed, the flowers banked around the casket, bulletin boards of her photos everywhere. You were so proud of her - she was responsible, honest, an excellent mother to her teenage daughter and a devoted wife to her husband who was of different race and religion. You were grateful that your younger daughter took charge of the funeral and all the arrangements as it was completely beyond your capacity to do so.

You named and aged your six grandchildren who were playing quietly in another room. As children do even when unbearable grief is all around them. Your face had that soft look around the edges that we get when all the tears have been wrung out of us and we feel as if our very skin could melt away leaving the raw bones.

You've had more pain than most, Bill. All I could think of was: how bloody unfair, how absolutely bloody awful is the rotten hand you’d been dealt in this game of life.

But you never said this.

You affirmed your faith was strong and you knew that your daughter, your firstborn, was in a better place.

I need you to know, Bill, that I admire your dignity and courage in the face of such overwhelming loss. I'm a little better as a person tonight, a little more grateful, a little more in the moment.

And for that, I thank you, Bill.

The Unspeakable

Tonight I’m going to a funeral home. With my daughter.

A school friend of hers died suddenly from a brain aneurysm. Leaving a fifteen-year-old daughter and a beloved husband. And her parents. I worked with this young woman’s mother back in the day and knew her daughter. Tonight I’m going there for the mother.

Last year while I was in Newfoundland, another friend lost her son, very suddenly. He had beaten cancer but died rapidly, and ironically, from pneumonia as his immune system was compromised from chemotherapy.

I grieved with her via mail and email and saw her last Saturday. Visible pain encased her whole body and it is eight months later. All one can do is hold her fragile body really tightly. There are absolutely no words.

I had dinner with my daughter last night and as regular readers will know, she is not well. Looking at her, I found it unimaginable to think of losing her.

Outliving one’s own child is by far the greatest tragedy of all.