Transcending our place in the world

What the sea loses

Always turns up again;

It's only a question of shores.

Erica Jong

I'm reading Erica Jong's How to Save Your Own Life (1977) and came to the coveted grocery list of existential freedom, the zeitgeist of her character Isadora Wing.  So how does someone save his or her own life? 

Renounce useless guilt and shame. Much easier said than done for those who had both served at the dinner table between the green beans and mashed potatoes. Yet, it's such an important part task in becoming. This dangerous dyad can be functional at times throughout our lives; yet, far too often we hold onto guilt and shame long past their functional phase, and they become our constituents. Active disavowal may help many shed these negative emotions, but I'm inclined toward facing them and challenging their right to move into my own heart. So, I write many eviction notices. 

Don't make a cult of suffering.  I write a great deal in my blog about how suffering is necessary for transcendence. And it is.  Yet, cults leave no room for discussion or debate or dissent. No other privileges, no critical thinking, no alternative views to the current state of being or belief. To transcend loss, a person must challenge, at some point, their view of the world, their view of their emotional state, their sense of self, and sometimes, their methods of coping with the human experience. It's not suffering that is the problem... it's the cult.

Live in the now, or at least the soon. This moment in time- this very second in which your eyes gaze upon this screen- is forever lost, irretrievable. Don't waste it either looking too far forward into the future or in the gazing past for too long. There are, indeed, things to await in the future, and things to reflect on from the past, and we can learn and grow from both. But our most important moment is the gift of the now. Don't allow the shadows of the past eclipse your present.

Always do that which you most fear.  Courage is an attribute that is developed painfully over time; it's professor? Disappointment and pain and practice.  With traumatic bereavement, facing the grief is the greatest of all acts of courage. Take it in small doses if you must. One day, you will be strong enough to carry its weight, and others can help.

Trust all joy.  The most beautiful thing about my own grief has been the abundant and unbridled joy I have discovered for the most simple things in life, the things that truly matter. Seek, find, and trust joy in your life. Grief does not require eternal, unmitigated suffering as an outpouring of devotion. Grief makes room for joy. In fact, it commands it in order to truly heal in such a way that grief becomes a welcomed friend.

Prepare to be 87 years old. Need I say more? What will you say about your life at 87? What regrets will you harbor? Who do you want by your side as you take your final breath? If you could describe your ideal life - the life you choose to live, even amidst the suffering - does your current life meet that description? What have you done with your 87 years, and how have you left your imprint on the world?  So much is answered in the exploring of these questions. Don't wait to answer them. Contemplate them now. It will be a painful contemplation, but it will help you to grow and live with such passion and fury that not a single moment in time will be missed.

And I'm really hoping that when I'm 87 or so, my time on earth completed, the sea will bring me to all that I've lost on a distant shore. Then, the saving of my life will have been worth the long and curious journey.

Death Education Comes to Arizona State University! Finally!

After three long years of work and effort, the graduate program for the Certificate in Trauma and Bereavement is ready to accept its first cohort.

Why is this important? Because traumatic loss and grief can have devastating effects on both the individual and the community – physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually. From a strictly economic standpoint, the price tag for unresolved grief amounts to billions of dollars each year in lost productivity, lower job performance, and destructive coping (Ayers, et al., 2004), and the "hidden annual cost of grief in the workplace" related to grief after a loved one's death is estimated at $37.4 billion. In the case of premature or sudden and traumatic death, grief-stricken families are often overwhelmed by the enormity of the death of a loved one, and with little or no support from those around them all too easily may fall into a downward spiral of destructive coping behaviors (Kissane, 2000). 

In sum, we hope to help educate our community to improve standards of care to the bereaved, increase understanding and support to the bereaved, and provide hope for the future.

If you know someone who may be interested, please pass along this link:

http://ssw.asu.edu/portal/academic/certificates/trauma-and-bereavement

Newsweek issue: A Vast and Sudden Sadness

The Clark family

Photo by Miyo Strong

Today, Newsweek magazine featured the MISS Foundation in an article about memento mori photographing with the group Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep.  They interviewed me about my work with traumatic child death as well as one of my research studies on perinatal ritualization. It's a beautifully powerful and sensitive piece. It is the February 9, 2009 issue in case you'd like to pick up a copy.

In addition to the article citing my research, I was able to appear on the syndicated Newsweek radio show with reporter Claudia Kalb on February 1, 2009 (toward the end of the show). While much work remains, we've come a very long was from our distant and evasive past.

I'd personally like to thank Newsweek reporter, Claudia Kalb, for her interest in this important story and the apparent compassion and dignity she offered the families, and the magazine itself for this often-overlooked human interest story.

Monsters Inc.

I can remember being a young girl fraught with anxiety over monsters that lurked in my closet. Once the lights went out, my wildly vivid imagination transformed plaid dresses into horrid gremlins with gnashing teeth, and shadows incarnated on the walls as the room closed in around me.

All I needed to do in order to escape the wraith assailants was to close my eyes. But I could not. I felt compelled to look into the darkness as I awaited my dreaded fate.  Would the monster devour me, limb by limb? Would he carry me off to the netherworld?  What would become of me? 

The staring into the darkness did not end in childhood. Rather, this tendency has persisted throughout my life.  But with age, mostly, comes wisdom. I have mostly learned to face my Monsters; to confront those places that scare me. Mostly.  I still stare into the darkness, sometimes paralyzed with fear and anxiety.  

But I've learned that by confronting the Monster-of-the-Month, he's not so scary after all. In fact, when I turn on the light and invite him to sit on my bed and have a chat, he looks and feels very different than he did in the dark. He's softer, gentler, and he doesn't devour me. In fact, sometimes, he teaches me. Oh, it might be a painful process: turning on the light- taking those intrepid steps toward the switch- may be, at times, terrifying.  It seems, though, better in the end to become familiar with him rather than to remain unenlightened.  

The places that scare me the most are also the places of often unexplored territory, unmet potential.  I try to remember that a Warrior opens herself (or himself) to experiences of the unfamiliar. A true Warrior is willing to take the risks necessary to grow. It is in those places, where the Monsters have taken residence, where we can ultimately discover unbreakable truths. Sister Teresa of Avila calls these the "treasures that lie within". 

So, in the end, the Monsters that the Warriors befriend may hold the key to our contentment. How's that for antic (Pixar) irony?

Just....Peace

My youngest, Joshua, hiking Tonto National Forest with me in September, 2008

Peace is not something you can force on anything or anyone... much less upon one's own mind. It is like trying to quiet the ocean by pressing upon the waves. Sanity lies in somehow opening to the chaos, allowing anxiety, moving deeply into the tumult, diving into the waves, where underneath, within, peace simply is.

— Gerald May

I'm reading May's book "Wisdom of the Wilderness" (after already reading his version of Dark Night of the Soul, an iteration of St. John of the Cross), and I'm loving this book.  

I sought after the wilderness, Mother Nature, after Chey's death. I yearned to be close to the earth. I went on long hikes in the red rocks of Sedona; I walked along Christopher Creek in Payson; I sat atop big rocks, where many feet caressed the ground in search of truth and contemplation. Even to this day, a deep sense of spirituality calls to me from the wild, and I often find respite there.  I remember studying the Bible as a child and reading about how Jesus frequently retreated solitarily into the wilderness.  I understood why he did so. I have always felt closer to God- to the Universe- to Creation- to all that is and all that ever was when I was in communion with Mother Nature. May's writing feels much like Edward Abbey or Wendell Berry, two of my favorites.

But May does something special with nature: May uses the wilderness as a means to understand our inner selves as well. He says that the inner wilderness "is the untamed truth of who you really are."

Beautiful. Profound.  He talks about using the wilderness as a catalyst, both the literal and the mythical, to confront fears; an exhortation toward growth. He reminds us to stay awake and present in each moment, even through the suffering that life brings.  

Ultimately, he says, time within the wilderness brings us to a place within ourselves of gratitude and more importantly a place of peace. 

May died of terminal cancer in 2005, after completing this beautiful book.

 

Metamorphosis

Between grief and nothing, I will take grief.

—Faulkner, The Wild Palms

I remember in profoundly painful detail the reactions of others during the few months after Chey's death.

.............

"Are you still feeling so sad?"

"Why don't you try having another baby?"

"You need to trust in God's will."

"She wouldn't want you to be so sad."

"All things happen for a reason."

"At least it wasn't one of your older children."

"You should be over it by now."

..............

"Oh, really?" I thought to myself with outraged skepticism. "How could I possibly be over it? Over what precisely? The death of a child? And who set the time limits on my grief? And who says what losses are harder than others? In what book does it outline the commensurate nature of grief's reactions? And, oh, have you spoken to God lately about His will? How can I ever be over it?"

Those words, as if spoken into a deep, dark cave, reverberated through my mind, filling me with self-doubt, despair, and questioning.  Then, I had an epiphanic moment, and I wrote these words in my journal:

"Sometimes just being is the only way that I can be at all."

Sometimes, in other words, being in grief or being in despair, or being sad, or being desperate, or being encased in a womb of pain was the only way I could continue to exist. If that moment of being were somehow removed or rejected or repressed or relinquished, then I would most certainly have ceased to exist. 

I would have become my own emptiness. Nothing. Utter nothingness.

This prospect was the only thing more frightening to me than my grief.

So, instead, just being became my savior.  And now, almost 15 years later, I'm just becoming.

Weeping for Victoria

I manage about 200 to 250 emails a day, many of which are from grieving families around the world. The resonance of their stories coalesces during many times of my life, their valencies a buoy during my own times of existential crisis. 

So I weep. I weep often doing the work that I do. This morning was no exception:

Dear Dr. Cacciatore,

My name is Natalie Anderson. I am writing to express my deepest gratitude for the work that you do on behalf of stillborn children, and their families. In 1996, my first child was stillborn. My life was forever changed.

Yesterday, I wrote about and linked to your foundation on my blog. I had many people commenting that I should pass along, to you, what I wrote. I have pasted it below. I am certain my writing is not politically correct enough for many people. I wish I could apologize, but really I am not sorry for the things I wrote.

Thank you again most sincerely for your tireless efforts... You(r work has) touched more lives than you can imagine.

Respectfully,
Natalie Anderson
Ellicott City, Maryland

Victoria is her daughter, her handsake; and she is Victoria's mother. No political agenda, no imposed labels, no assumptions, and no force on earth- not even Death- can change that.

Thank you, Natalie, for sharing Victoria's precious hands with us all.  

And this morning, I wept for Victoria.

Altering Fate

I often think that we are like the carp swimming 

contentedly in that pond. 

We live out our lives in our own pond, confident that our 

Universe consists of only the familiar and the visible. 

We smugly refuse to admit that parallel universes or dimensions 

can exist next to ours, 

just beyond our grasp. 

If our scientists invent concepts like forces, 

it is only because they cannot visualize 

the invisible vibrations that fill the empty space around us. 

Some scientists sneer at the mention of higher dimensions 

because they cannot be conveniently measured in the laboratory.

- Michio Kaku

Newton's idea of temporal absolutism, and our limited perceptual capacity, commit human beings to the notion of both unidirectional time and its strict linearity. Yet, quantum mechanics reveals a much more complex and relativistic view of time and space.  Klaus Riegel's work emphasizes the concept of time as dialectical, interrelated and says that events in our lives:

...lead to the formation of conflicts and resolutions... 

temporal markings, produced by the synchronization 

of these sequences and represent transitions in the 

sequences of qualitative changes...

thus, elucidating the relative nature of the events, the sequential measure used, and meaning and awareness within a person's sense of time and space. In other words, our development into full human beings is not necessarily measured or appraisable vis-à-vis the traditional ordinal or interval temporal increments.

Quantum physics, and more specifically string theory, are gradually refining and delineating our understanding of time continuity and discontinuity. And these new understandings, being explored by brilliant, iconoclastic quantum physicists like Michio Kaku, give rise to so many potentials beyond our current comprehension; including a restructuring of  our place in the Universe, time and events in which we play a role, and even the outer edges of transcendental possibilities such as time travel, parallel universes, and multiple dimensions.  

The most phenomenally mysterious, consequential forces in our Universe, I believe, are precisely those that cannot be measured within a flask or under a microscope or with a psychometric tool. There is simply no way to measure time, space, fractal dimensions and meaning, or even love within the four walls of science.

The Architecture of Hope

I believe in rain, in odd miracles, 

and in the intelligence that allows terns and swallows 

to find their way across the earth.

-Paul Hawken

The essence of hope is something to which I've held for most of life. Hopefulness, as an emotional state of being and as a paradigm through which I view the world, is one of my core values. I hope, I believe, and I have faith most times, even when the forces of doubt and despair feel Herculean. At least, I try to hope- and for good cause.

There are empirical data mounting that explore hope as a core personality trait; as one of the most significant foundational underpinnings upon which a person's character is built. Peterson et al (2008) found that individuals who scored high on a tool measuring core hopefulness were more resilient. Resiliency is a pivotal attribute in helping humans to endure suffering.  That is, hope and resiliency interact; the effects of this interaction are profoundly important to psychological endurance and tolerance.

These are potently essential psychological resources to possess.

Hopefulness may be a more visceral character trait. And while it may bolster resiliency, I suspect, and some research supports this suspicion, that resiliency truly burgeons from endogenous and exogenous factors. In other words, the family system, the community, and the larger sociopolitical environment in which a person exists in the world can foster and facilitate or quash and extirpate resiliency.

Interestingly, research in animals (rats specifically) suggests that those faced with traumatic experiences, under the right circumstances, are more resilient- as a biological function- than those not exposed to such stimuli.  In comparing three groups, including a control, the group of rats exposed to trauma fared better than those not exposed to trauma. They were more hardy, and had a higher level of resiliency and functioning. The caveat: Those rats repeatedly exposed to the traumatic stimulus did not fare better. Seemingly the chronically unresolved rats- those who were "hopeless" for any relief- suffered the most out of all the groups.

I know rats are not humans, and there are significant ethical and comparability issues in such research. But even anecdotally, there appears to be strong support for the hypothesis that exposure to adversity- under the right circumstances- can help foster resiliency in such a way that we, as humans, can transcend; it's an opporunity to become believers in the rain; and in odd miracles; and in the notion that all things find their way home, to the heart.

From the Stocking to Yann

From the stockings in Arizona....

To Yann in Cambodia 

Our family engages in many altruistic traditions throughout the year, including during the holidays.  We always buy a gift for a girl who is the same age as Chey should be that particular year. We volunteer and serve food to the hungry. My favorite, mostly because of the assigned anonymity, is the Kindness Project (tm), where I will often feel the most gratitude for having known my daughter in my own quiet way.

I began thinking about the holiday tradition of stockings. My children made their own stockings back in 1996, shortly after Joshua's birth. It was a special year for our family as we made room for our new baby.  

So I decided that this year I wanted to do something meaningful with our stockings. After all, a person could spend $50 or more on gadgets and gizmos that wander into the netherworld of lost children's toys  within moments after their emergence. I thought: Why not do something in my children's names that would be an enduring gift for someone else.

Enter Kiva.  Kiva is a fantastic organization of mostly volunteers who provide micro-loans to small business owners in many poverty-stricken nations.  It is a paradigm based on empowerment and enrichment not disempowerment and enslavement. 

So with my children's stocking fund, we were able to help Yann Voeun, 22, a young mother in Cambodia with two children to purchase cows for their breeding business; and Romel Paulo, a father of three, in the Phillipines who needed $325.00 so he could plant his next crop of rice and corn; and Edith Agho, mother of five, who requested a loan of $1200.00 to help her start her second-hand clothing business in Africa.

The children's "stockings" helped eight people they will never meet or know achieve their dreams and become more independent and self-reliant.

So, this holiday when they reach into their stockings, they won't find chocolate covered gold coins, or wind up toy cars, or dice games. Not even coal.  This year, they'll open an envelope and meet someone whose lives they were able to touch across the oceans, beyond language, and traversing culture. I think it may well be the best gift of all this year, and a new tradition I hope they will continue with their own children.

The Extinction of Tolerance

If you see a spark, you will find it in the ashes.

-Elie Wiesel

A friend of mine called me today to ask my advice. She's enduring the ending of a long relationship, feeling destitute, lonely, and broken.  She asked, "Should I go on some meds to make me feel better?"

"Feel better?" I said. "Why should you feel better? Something really important is happening here in your life. It's a major change and what you're likely to feel is grief."

She blurted, "I don't want to feel grief. I don't want to be sad!"

Well, of course we don't want to feel sad. But...really...isn't there an appropriate time for sadness?  Have we, as a culture- as a people, lost our tolerance for feeling? Is there some cosmic treaty guaranteeing that neither you nor I nor our neighbor nor best friend will get through life absent suffering? 

Still, so many people seem to want a drive-thru cure, 30-second gorilla glue, for a broken heart- for normal feelings like sadness or grief or despair.  Many have not had much practice in sorrow, loss, hunger, desire, or want. Affluence attenuates tolerance. Low emotional tolerance increases the risk of depression and other negative psychological outcomes.

And, what do we miss by our evasions, as Jaspers asks? What happens when we obviate emotional risk?  There is a sublime, and I would argue necessary, beauty and aptitude waiting to be discovered in the dark emotions.  Suffering offers opportunities for change, transformation, and transcendence. 

Is it painful? Of course. But since there is no way to eradicate all suffering from the world, perhaps, the most genuinely humane thing we can do for ourselves and for each other is to feel our suffering and that of others. And in so doing, search for the spark, the light, within the ashes.

It just might be the spark that saves another.  

In the end, the best I can offer my friend is to feel with her- to confront the suffering by her side, and to fearlessly accompany her on her journey into the dark emotions.  In the words of de Montaigne, "the man who fears suffering is already suffering what he fears."

Tis the Satirical Season?

My 12- year- old launched a full-blown-food-protest this morning (after too long between grocery trips), threatening a revolt if we ate veggie burgers one more night. So I got into my baby blue Prius and drove to the grocery store, hurried and harried to return back to a final draft of a paper on deadline.

As I walked toward the entrance of Safeway, I passed a woman standing at her car with her hand on the hood. She was leaning over as if she was in pain. I glanced at first, and continued past her, taking a minute for circumspect to strike me. Then the pause. 

I turned around and thoughfully approached her. "Are you okay?" I asked? She replied, "I'm just having one of those days. I can't seem to get to my truck."  She was parked in the disabled spot.  

"May I help you?" I asked.  "Sure," she said smiling at me with apparent gratitude, and maybe some surprise.

She moved with painful deliberation as I gently took her arm and helped her into the truck.  A few seconds later, a young employee of Safeway approached to see if he could help.  He put her groceries into the back of the truck as I continued to help her into the vehicle.

She drove away grateful for the assistance.

I headed back toward the door of Safeway, about 40 feet from where this woman was struggling and walked past the holiday season staple: Salvation Army bell ringers. There were four of them posted at this single spot, one furiously text messaging, another talking on her cell phone; about five others posted another 20 feet away. 

Again I hurriedly walked past them, and then I suddenly stopped. I walked back outside and looked at them. They were watching the woman as she drove away. They had seen her struggle to get to her vehicle as she had to walk past them to get to her truck. And I was both stunned and entertained at the irony: They were there collecting money so that they could help others in need.  

Yet, right there, within their very view, was a person in need, someone they could have helped in this moment- not in some intangible way, but in a very authentic-in-the-moment-way. I felt like I was in a bad piece of satire: Saturday Night Live's caustic condemnation of human behavior comes to small town Arizona. 

Where have we gone wrong that we don't pay attention to one another any longer?  Why do some humans ignore their moral duty to help?  What compels some to take the initiative to help even while others do not, or even while others will inflict direct harm? *(Milgram's experiments, while unethical, taught us a great deal about human behavior and helping/harming...)

It's easy to drop a dollar in the hungry metal bucket. It's easy to send a check in the mail to some obscure group that helps people who you will never know or meet or see. And they are, indeed, worthy and necessary causes to which others should give. But, there are so many more important things than fiscal responsibility to one another. There is a responsibility of compassion; kindness; mindfulness of suffering; advocacy for social justice; and our pause in recognition for their worthiness of our time. Those are the things that money cannot buy. Those are the things you will not find in any red bucket.  And apparently, those are the things that are the most difficult to offer to another, if for no other reason than we mindlessly are unable to see the need as it arises. Those are also the most imposing tests of our own humanity.

The Four Quartets: An excerpt

I said to my soul

Be still

And wait without hope

For it would be hope for the wrong thing;

Wait without love

For it would be love of the wrong thing;

There is yet faith,

but the faith

and love

and hope

are all in waiting

Thus, wait without thought

For you are not ready for thought

And in the darkness there shall be light,

And in the stillness, dancing…

Pointing to the agony of birth and death.

T.S. Eliot

Death Education on the Horizon

One of my former interns and death studies students, Krista

I've been teaching a class on traumatic death and loss at Arizona State University for several years. When I first proposed the new course, the only death-related course on campus was one that had a gerontological focus. I actually took that course to experience it. The deaths of children weren't discussed. Even in a death course, this epidemiological microcosm remained the last taboo.

There were concerns that my course would not be well attended; that it would repel rather than attract students.  Yet, during the first offering of this class, we met and exceeded the cap of 30 students. Then, another ten enrolled. The first course of its kind would bring 47 students to the new death studies course.

Years later and registration remains the same. This Spring, I will meet between 45-50 students wanting - yearning - to learn.  We could have easily enrolled 60 or more students based on the demand, but the classroom will not accommodate that number.  In fact, I have a waiting list in my office now.

I have never experienced such enthusiasm for a topic as I  have for this course.  It's an academic course, indeed. We explore Worden and Rando and Kastenbaum and Kubler-Ross. We discuss evidence based practice relative to psychosocial care.  The course includes cultural competency, ritualization in the historical context, and both epidemiological trends and etiology.  Yet, the most meaningful part of the course includes some self-awareness exercises.  Very few students come to this course without having experience some profound loss. They come to share, to discover, to confront, and to heal. They often develop an increased understanding of their own experiences of loss that leads them to something profound. And these profundities invariably help these students become better counselors, social workers, nurses, doctors, or just human beings.  Death studies is more than a course about death. It's a course about life.

And many express to me, at the end of the semester, their gratitude, noting that the simple act of confronting death has, indeed, helped them to really live again.

And so it is. And so it is.

Peace and Forgiveness

Forgiveness is one of the most important first steps
to ending conflicts

within ourselves,

and within in our families,

and within our communities,

and between nations.

-- Robert Alan

1994 was a bad year around the world. While I was suffocating with my own grief following Chey's death in July of that year, unspeakable atrocities erupted in Rwanda, where the Tutsis were being butchered en masse by the Hutus.

Dread and despair amassed in a small African country where genocidal unrest would leave nearly one million Tutsis dead. Amongst those dead included all five children of a remarkable woman of Tutsi descent named Iphegenia Mukantabana.

During the uprising, a Hutu militia that included Mukantabana's neighbor, John Bizimana, armed themselves with clubs, hoes, and machetes and murdered all five of her children, her husband, and many others in her village. It was an inconceivably violent slaughter that would last for 100 days at the behest of the Rwandan government.

Years later, Mukantabana took a remarkable step toward forgiveness for her neighbor, Bizimana, the man who took the life of her entire family. And, after serving only seven years in jail for the murders, Bizimana went before the city council and asked Mukantabana for her forgiveness. She granted that forgiveness. And she transcended it.

In an effort to promote peace, Mukantabana, a master basket weaver, agreed to participate in Path to Peace, a cooperative effort that joins Hutus and Tutsis together to benefit Rwandan children and families. Mukantabana now weaves baskets in her village with Bizimana's wife. Together, they have helped to employ more than 2500 weavers, raising much-needed money and support for education, HIV/AIDS, and for healthcare. More than that, they have created a milieu in which reconciliation and forgiveness can flourish.

I am startled by human endowment. It feels nearly supernatural to me, this forgiveness for such a heinous crime against her family. I do not honestly know if I would have this within me. Mukantabana credits her faith; And while I do not understand, I dare not question. Rather, I only stand in awe.

And I am reminded that peace- true peace- will only be possible within and between people. Peace will not come from institutions. It would be an grave and improvident error to anthropomorphize: Governments do not have the capacity for compassion, or kindness, or love. Governments cannot offer peace, nor harmony, nor tolerance. Nor forgiveness. In fact, a brief review of history will demonstrate that governments have most often brought systemic angst and despair to its people through manipulation and coercion. Divisiveness. Slaughter. Impoverishment. Exploitation. Oppression. Fear. It is not this machine that will change the world. The machine cannot feel. Rather, it will be conscious, courageous, and intentional human beings who change this world in which we live for the better.

Only people - with the possibility for those insuperably human traits of compassion, kindness, and love- can create peace, and harmony, and tolerance. These are the consummate qualities of humanity, what it really means to be a person.

Only people can forgive.

Neolithic Love and Death

An artist's rendering of the likely burial position 4,600 years ago

Come out of the circle of time

And into the circle of love.

Rumi

Scientists have discovered a burial site in Germany that tenderly held the remains of a Neolithic family who died, apparently together, in a brutal attack about 4,600 years ago. DNA evidence gathered at the site suggests that the four were related: mother, father, and two children. They were carefully buried facing one another. " "Their unity in death suggests unity in life," the researchers asserted.

While the idea of core nuclear families during this period of human history may seem an unusual archeological discovery, family scientists, myself included, are not at all surprised by this finding. There is something timeless and pure about a parent's love for his or her offspring. Something that is able to withstand any force that rises up against it- even, or perhaps especially, Death.  

Juxtaposing Joy with Thoughts of War (*Warning*)

Bella detesta matribus
Wars, the horror of mothers 

Horace

There is no government so worthy

as your son who fishes with you

in silence beside the forest pool.

There is no national glory so comely

as your daughter whose hands have learned a music

and go their own way

on the keys.

There is no national glory so comely

as my daughter who dances and sings

and is the brightness of my house.

There is no government so worthy

as my son who laughs,

as he comes up the river path in the evening,

for joy.

-Wendell Berry

I took my son to the fall carnival in Anthem, Arizona, a magical event to celebrate the transition to cooler weather from the long and relentless desert heat. I let Josh and his friends run and play in the park as I sat under a tree reading a book about Freud and Jung. Children to my left were standing in line for hair-raising rides decorated with flashing lights and wild music. Masked children to my right were dancing to the Monster Mash as proud parents watched and grand parents gloated. Sticky-faced children ate their pink cotton candy and red-patent apples. It was a smorgasbord of panoramic festivities. Laughter filled the air and shadows leapt on concrete. Several fighter jets from a nearby military facility graced guests with a gratuitous fly-over.

"How bizarrely ironic," I thought to myself. Military jets flying above the heads of hundreds of people, families, here in Arizona. There was no fear, no terror, no bloodshed or bombs dropping from the sky. No. Not here. But in Iraq (or Afghanistan or any other country plagued by war), nearly 8000 miles away, there are no family festivals, no enchanting rides, and no tooting community park choo-choos with giggling children on board, led by a strange bearded Santa-type iconoclast.

My son approached me, drenched from water toy combat with other boys at the playground. And I realized that somewhere in Iraq an 11-year-old boy, just like my own, was also drenched. Drenched in his own blood. A wound that is not pretend, that will not heal, and that will cost his family the ultimate price. I looked around and really saw... our children were playing. Our children were eating. Our children were joyful, laughing, unscathed, and fully-limbed. Our children were privileged with abundance.

And as our children enjoyed their comfortably cool fall day, somewhere in Iraq children, countless numbers of them, were dying. Starvation. Bombs. Disease. Lack of clean drinking water or electricity. Scarcity. Luxuries of our lifestyle are the antithesis of the suffering, terror, and death in battle spaces of America's choosing such as Iraq, Somalia, and Afghanistan.

War is ugly. We know this. But how many are willing to truly contemplate the cost? Truly? Wendell Berry, in The Failure of War asks:

"How many deaths of other people's children by bombing or starvation are we willing to accept in order that we may be free, affluent, and (supposedly) at peace? To that question, I answer pretty quickly: none. And I know that I am not the only one who would give that answer: please, no children. Don't kill any children for my benefit."

"We seek to preserve peace by fighting a war, or to advance freedom by subsidizing dictatorships, or to 'win the hearts and minds of people' by poisoning their crops and burning their villages, confining them to concentration camps; we seek to uphold the 'truth' of our cause with lies, or to answer conscientious dissent with threats and slurs and intimidations."

Berry goes on to answer his own question: Is there any reason for which he could surrender his own child's life to war. "No," is his clear response.

I cannot imagine a more necessary time in history for a radical change. It begs the question in my own heart: Is the life of an Iraqi child any less worthy than the life of my own?

I must also answer a resounding no.

And I packed for home, placed Sigmund and Carl in my bag, and walked to the car, past children doing the Monster Mash, juxtaposing joy with thoughts of war.

These are the Days of my Dead

Circa 1970

Daddy and his little girl

Josephine and John, fifty years of marriage

When bad news- really bad news- arrives, it often arrives within a framework of relatively predictable patterns of insensibility, a type of  emotional novacaining.  Disbelief and anesthesization- it just cannot be. Depersonalization- out-of-body experiences. Temporal distancing and alterations- a wrenching of of time and space. From these acute responses is born a cascade of emotions, a rollercoaster of ups and downs, inside outs, and all arounds. And of course, when looking backward while on the Hadesian ride the view is different. I realize that every loss I've ever had is deeply entrenched in my identity, and that disentangling one from another is nearly impossible. So this time of year conjures up sensate memories of all my losses, including the death of my parents.

On October 31 of 2001, as my four young children were amassing sweet delicacies from generous neighbors and committing acts of friendly tomfooleries, my phone rang.  My mother collapsed in her living room, and paramedics were transporting her to John C. Lincoln hospital. Together, Ari the ogre, Cameron the werewolf, Stevie Jo the kitten, and Josh the reluctant, purple Barney from public television, and I rushed into the emergency room, catching a glimpse of frantic blue shirts screaming at one another and yelling my mother's name as if angry with her, "Josephine! Josephine!".  Shock and terror descended on the waiting room as the moon lit the parking lot where candy-filled bags waited patiently in the car to be devoured by the costumed children.

For four days, my mother lay lifeless, tubes down her throat and in her arms, and iron lung machines forcing oxygen into her broken body. Her eyes were open, but her brain, in the ultimate act of defiance and apostasy, rejected any attempt at communication, affection, or pleading.  The people she'd loved her whole life- the children she bore- the grandchildren she watched come into the world- the man she loved for more than fifty years- were strangers in her world of insentience.  No amount of hoping, prodding, begging, praying, or commanding would change her condition.  On November 4, 2001, we said goodbye.  And in an apropos, but evanescent, moment, I witnessed as she took her final, laborious breath, just as she was with me as I took my first.  

Four years to the day later, on November 4, 2005, at 5:00 a.m., my niece, Amy, called. I knew something was wrong by the tone of her voice. "Papa is dead," she said. "What? What? No, no, no, no, no!" I screamed in futile protest. Not today. My father died suddenly during the night. My former husband took the phone and I fell to the ground sobbing. I tried to dress myself but couldn't think clearly enough to put my own arms through the top of my shirt. David tried to help, to calm, me. Again, I faced another goodbye for which I was wholly unprepared. The man who walked the floors with me when I had a fever. The man who would give me his last bite of chocolate cream pie. The man who would let me sneak into the bed next to him, pretending he didn't notice, when ghouls and goblins came from my closet to accost me. The man, with his doctrines and dogma, against whom I would rail during my rebellious teen-years and beyond. I sat next to his bedside, weeping over his cold, dead body. In that moment, I was transformed into a frightened little girl. Not all the pleading or negotiating or acts of contrition in the big Universe could incite Death's capitulation. My father was gone.

Not even four decades had passed since my own birth, and I found myself an orphan. My children, grandorphans, would live the remainder of their lives without really knowing my parents.  The mounting losses are, at times, too overwhelming to realize.

This time of year is melancholy for me.  I ruminate, despite repeated attempts at deflection, on the culmination of my losses: my parents, Elisabeth, and mostly my precious daughter. There are layers and layers of grief for my dead which, like both buried pain and buried treasure, are still undiscovered. I miss them. All of them. There is so much more mourning to be done. While bearable, tears still fall like rain, blurring the words on the screen. At times I intentionally immerse myself in meaningful, distracting preoccupations. But not today. These are the days when I will remember them.

Yet, I am mostly at peace even amidst the mourning that bites. I don't have the same acute reactions to these losses, of course. Like looking backward on the ride, the grief has changed form. It's become more pliable, quieter, more cooperative. Still, I miss them and I wish it wasn't so for me, for us. And that is okay.

These are the days of my dead. These are the days of my dead. 

El Dia de los Muertos: Day of the Dead is almost here

Other cultures are awash with death rites that have endured the test of time. One such tradition in Latin culture relates to rituals around death. For example, Hispanic culture often includes a novena after death, a nine-day period following the funeral when mourners recite the rosary in the name of the dead child. Families are often left undisturbed during this period.

Another during this time of year, El Dia de los Muertos (or some version of it), or the Day of the Dead, is celebrated throughout much of Latino America from Mexico to Guatemala to Brazil to Spain. This enduring holiday is recognized every November 2, and during this time of remembrance, all eyes turn toward the dead. It includes eccentric altars, offerings of food and drink and even fine fabrics. The rituals last four days. Families stay awake the entire night of October 31. If a child has died, family members await the return of the child’s spirit, known as Angelitos. A tiny candle is lit for each child and morning mass is recited.

Colorful paper banners, called papel picado (Spanish for "perforated paper") can be found hanging about the streets during this time. Usually made of tissue paper but sometimes of more durable plastic, the cut banners are hung together like a string of flags. For the Dia de los Muertos, the designs feature skeletons, skulls, crosses, and tombstones. Some artists create intricate designs that take many hours to make. Because of their fragility and the time spent creating them, cut-paper banners are themselves symbols of the transitory quality of life (AZ Central).

"The tradition of papel picado can be traced to pre-Columbian times when papermaking thrived throughout Mesoamerica. The bark of the amate tree, a type of fig tree, was used to make a rich colored brown or beige paper. Cut-paper figures used in ceremonies were created to represent any number of human and animal spirits. Today, a group of indigenous people, the Otomi from the village of San Pabilto, continue to make cut-paper figures from their handmade amate paper" (http://www.crizmac.com/free_resources/papelpicado.cfm).

Each day brings a new ritual until, on the final day, November 3, All Souls Day, three masses are recited and priests visit the cemeteries, blessing the graves and sprinkling holy water. At sunset, the graves are decorated with colorful accoutrements, candles, and flowers. Food may be offered at altars.  It is a death immersive, rather than death aversive, tradition:

The word death is not pronounced in New York, in Paris, in London, because it burns the lips. The Mexican, in contrast, is familiar with death, jokes about it, caresses it, sleeps with it; it is one of his favorite toys and his most steadfast loves (Mexican writer, Octavio Paz).

Death is an accepted part of life for many heritage-consistent Hispanic families, integrated into daily routines, where children are included in rituals and mourners express their emotions openly (Corr, et al, 2006). Death is a ubiquitous theme where “it is in the literature, on murals, in cutout paper figures and on the streets” (Irish, et al, 1993, p. 76). In Latino culture, the dead are not separated from the living; rather, they continue their presence in the family as grievers often do not relinquish bonds.

Death Porn

According to blog ratings, my blog should not be read by anyone under the age of 17. Yes, I received an NC-17 rating. In the social taxonomies, my blog is nearly pornographic because of the following:

"This rating was determined based on the presence of the following words:

death (152x)dead (69x)pain (54x)suicide (7x)hurt (6x)kill (4x)dangerous (3x)breast (2x)steal (1x)"

I know, I know, it's not really applicable here. It doesn't really apply to my blog about thanatos (and eros) but as a feminist thinker, I cannot help but to find this amusing. And wow, I've said death/dead more than 220 times. That must surely be a record.

But hey, to really understand life and living, I believe, we must first understand death and dying. Right?

On the first day of Scorpio...

Yes, I happen to be an astrological Scorpio. But here is a different kind of Scorpio...

My new little friend. And yes, these are common in the Ol' West...

(click on the photo to enlarge...this guy was big!)

Meditations...

While you live, while you can, become good.

Aurelius

Marcus Aurelius, though not a self-proclaimed Stoa, was identified with Zeno's philosophies of Stoicism. I've often grappled with hellenistic ideas of austerity that spring from detachment.

But there are things I do appreciate about Stoa thought: The virtues upheld are ones to which most humans should indeed strive- courage, justice, self-control, wisdom- while rejecting the less desirable inclinations of the material world such as irrationality, greed, corruption, and lust. Life lived in the latter is vacuous at its best and tyrannical at its worst. Aurelius issues his caution against living mindlessly, superfluously. Time is short, he warns.

So he calls for humans to become good.

What I hear Aurelius saying is: Meditate on the connection between all things within the Universe. Be mindful of all things around you. Walk, do not run. Seek truth. Do your duty. Treat others, including animals, with generosity and decency. Develop virtue. And in realizing the finitude of the material world, confront Death. Either teach or tolerate. Abandon vengeance: "Leave the wrong done by another where it started." Do not squander yourself. This dictum against squandering illuminates our mortality. These aspects of Stoicism resonate within me.

Aurelius begs a willing encounter with the ephemerality of existence. He says, "So one should pass through this tiny fragment of time in tune with nature, and leave it gladly, as an olive might fall when ripe, blessing the earth which bore it and grateful to the tree which gave it growth."

Yet, here is where my mind, like quicksand, pulls me under the earth. An olive falls when ripe. In its time. It's incredibly painful- and beyond the realm of reasoning for me at times- to accept that so many young lives need be lost with such bitter untimeliness. The olive, in this case, did not fall gracefully to the welcoming detritus on the forest ground. The olive was plucked, forcefully, too early, like the bitter apple that held on by its stem in protestation.

Stoicism loses me here. I can much more readily accept the construct of an austere life. But there is something about a child's death against which I shall always recoil. I would not, and could not, as directed by Aurelius and his Stoa ilk, accept this as something that was meant to be. I would not accept the maxim that the gods intended these deaths, so young, or that they intentionally incited the accoutremental angst and agony. I can never follow the dictates of detachment: To go in peace or to abandon mourning for the dead. I reject that this is somehow in the Universal blueprint of the gods, as he asserts.

Still, there is so much I do appreciate about Aurelius. I can embrace his call to become good. And I will continue to work toward that end. But my idea of becoming good does not include my emotional acquiesence to Death or the relinquishment of grief rightly earned.

And I also believe that, somewhere, embedded in really feeling the pain of attachment are the potentialities for change and awakening. I feel strongly that Stoicism would have led me to another path wherein I did not become the person, woman, and mother who I am today.  While I would give it all back to have her here instead, in absence of that option I am so thankful I allowed myself to experience attachment and its resounding agony. Rejecting my circumstances- refusing to accept it all as part of a larger plan- has created within me the will to survive in a different way. And in so doing, I have come to accept it in my own way and in my own time. This is the beauty of really feeling loss. I'd have missed it all otherwise...and now, the love is bigger than the pain.

October is Infant and Child Death Awareness Month

Seeking to forget makes exile all the longer. 

The secret to redemption lies in remembrance. 

Richard von Weizsäcker

Sadly, about 25,000 babies will die during or prior to birth this year in the U.S. alone. Another 10,000 or so will die during the first few months of life. Thousands more will die during their first year of life in accidents, drownings, and from illnesses. Thousands more toddlers, young children, teens, and young adults will die.

These deaths leave countless families with aching hearts, their lives irreversibly changed, transformed forever. The month of October is a month to pause and remember the precious lives gone too soon, not only in the U.S., but also around the globe where every minute 20 children die from preventable causes such as hunger, pestilence, poverty, and war.  

The effects of a child's death are intergenerational and long-lasting- in particular, the psychosocial tumult can devastate individuals and families. Like a pebble tossed into a still lake, a child's death ripples outward in waves of despair that are often unrecognizably related to the tiny stone. Across cultures and throughout time, the death of a child is recognized as one of life's worst tragedies.

In my many years working with bereaved parents and siblings, I have witnessed these effects. Women in their 70s and 80s hear of my work and seek me. They want to tell me their stories of loss and sorrow. No, they need to tell their stories, for they are still whispering, shamed by the secrecy so common decades ago. They seek redemption. I ask, "What is his name?" and they often look surprised at my asking, follow it with tears, gratitude, a hug. "Thank you. I haven't spoken his name in 37 years." 

One 80 year old woman wrote to me, "My daughter died in 1947...I want to join your group and get her birth certificate and finally remember her so that I can die in peace..." Siblings often recount to me stories of their brother or sister who died 40 or 50 years ago, still anguishing that "my mother was never the same woman after that..."

These deaths change us permanently. It is critically important to understand these experiences, to embrace and support those facing such traumatic losses, and help them find their voices. We need to, as a culture, pause and remember so that families can live their lives out of the closets of shame to which they were once condemned. Meaninglessness leads to purposeless and purposeless to hopelessness. If we can grant the compassion, empathy, and support so desperately needed, the outcomes for the bereaved can provide the underpinnings for a changed world. 

It is my great hope this October that every bereaved family who has experienced the death of a baby or child at any age and from any cause has the loving and compassionate support they so duly deserve. Lend your heart, lend your hand to them, so that one day- when they are ready- they can extend their hand to another. 

In memory of all our children who died too soon...