note: i began to draft this post back in october 2012 and am just getting around to finishing it (maybe) now.
it's just about 6 months ago now that i packed up my prius for the last time (on the west coast, anyway) and jumped onto i-80. durham was about 2,900 miles away, and i planned stops in western utah; aurora, colorado (more on that in a moment); western missouri; and lexington, kentucky, before pulling up to my destination.
the first two days were pretty dreary. the weather was good and the scenery was beautiful, but i'd met - or, more accurately, gotten better acquainted with - someone in san francisco about two months before i left. (i've always been known for my impeccable timing.) we'd packed a lot of "getting to know you better" time into those two months, and i'd even considered staying in san francisco. she'd asked me to, and i was very unhappy to have to say no. but i had a plan, for the first time in many years, and i was terrified of anything or anyone steering me off course.
still, that made for a long couple of days. i wanted to make it to aurora, where i'd be taking a break and staying with friends, in two days, so it was about nine hours in the car each day. i invested in a sirius radio dock and tried to drown my sorrows by singing 80's music at the top of my lungs, with varying degrees of success (singing, and drowning my sorrows).
i arrived in aurora on thursday, july 19th, in the late afternoon. it was 100 degrees, and i was happy to jump in my friends' pool, drink a cold beer, and socialize with the other people they had over. (people in their neighborhood have come to look for a bright pink beach towel slung over their fence, which constitutes an open invitation to come and swim.) it was a lovely day and evening.
the next morning, we were having breakfast when the phone rang. it was my friend's broker, calling from virginia to "see if you're ok." she chuckled at first, confused, and then the color drained from her face as he continued. she rushed off the phone and over to the tv, and that was the first we heard about the mass shooting that had taken place just a few miles down the road. it was about 9 hours after it happened.
the strangeness of it all was hard to take in, from the clownish appearance of the suspect to the sheer coincidence that i was in the immediate area when it happened.
(now, january 2013 ...)
it didn't stop there. in august, six people were gunned down at a sikh temple in wisconsin. in december, a mere eleven days before christmas, 26 people at an elementary school (20 of them children) were killed with a rifle by 20-year-old adam lanza, who also killed his mother, a gun enthusiast. and just today, a gunman in arizona opened fire at an office building in phoenix, wounding six people, one of whom died from his injuries. as i write this, amazingly, that suspect remains at large.
this blog isn't a diatribe against gun violence - but still, i stand in strong support of gun control. i don't need an outright ban, and i have to be realistic that that's not going to happen anyway. what i ask is for our elected officials to acknowledge that 2012 was a record year for gun violence (here's an excellent article from Mother Jones posted just today). the most notable point for me is that the majority of mass shooters have a history of mental illness that has been identified in the past. frankly, it makes me wonder if i'd be able to pass a background check to get a gun. if you've read other entries in this blog, you know that i have a history of clinical depression that goes back 20+ years, and although i've been treated continually for most of that time, it's been that long since i've been hospitalized for it.
then again, not a single mass shooter in history has been female. as for more guns in schools? not a single mass shooter has ever been stopped by an armed civilian. just sayin'.
i digress.
when i logged on tonight, i'd forgotten that i'd even begun this entry, as it had been a good long time. i've now been in my new home - durham, north carolina - for six months, and living in a little house for nearly four. i love it, my dog loves it. turns out we're both country(ish) mice, not city mice, which i'd suspected for a long time. we live near a large park where we walk several times a day. there are certain things to get used to, like not rolling out of bed and walking to the grocery store or the corner store or stumbling to a cafe half-awake to get a cup of coffee. i've adjusted. it's not always been easy. being in a long-distance relationship is challenging, gchat and the phone notwithstanding.
i can't do durham justice in a few sentences, so i'll save that for another entry. since i arrived here to go to school 25 years ago this month, though, downtown has undergone a revitalization that is surprising and delightful. there are cafes, restaurants that rival some in san francisco (in quality if not in number), galleries, and the wonderful durham performing arts center (DPAC), which attracts the likes of David Sedaris (a native north carolinian), Lily Tomlin, Whoopi Goldberg, and broadway shows like jersey boys. the stunning Duke gardens are still an awesome place to take a stroll, east campus a great place to jog.
even more importantly from my standpoint, however, is the number and quality of state graduate programs here. my focus has shifted somewhat from when i first started this blog: instead of pursuing a masters in family therapy, i decided to go for a masters in social work. as of now, my applications are complete and i'm waiting for decisions, which will take another 3-6 weeks at least. in the meantime, i've been occupying myself with volunteer work. two days a week, i tutor young adults to prepared them to take the GED exam; my legal training has finally come to some real use for a county teen court program, which provides an alternative justice model for first-time offenders; and finally, next week i begin training to be a hospital responder for the durham crisis response center, which deals with rape and domestic violence. i'm so happy, and feel so fortunate, to have the opportunity to do this sort of work in the near term. and i feel more fulfilled than i have in years. finally, i might just be on the right track. what a feeling that is.
1.30.2013
7.21.2012
and the adventure begins
writing tonight from blue springs, missouri, just east of kansas city. i haven't really delved into this part of my plan, but i'm relocating from the bay area to durham, north carolina (the northernmost point of the Research Triangle Park; the other points of the triangle are chapel hill to the southwest and raleigh to the southeast). to make a long story short, after my hiatus at my mother's house in pennsylvania, i came to the realization that i simply couldn't afford to go back to graduate school in san francisco. therefore, i'm headed back east to a more laid back and much less expensive place. it happens to be where i went to get my undergraduate degree a million years ago. i sold my condo in san francisco, packed my much-pared-down belongings into a relocation "cube," and am on my way. it's scary, but it's also starting to seem like a real adventure. it's been way too long since i've had one of those, and i'm heartened to know that it's never too late. next task: house-hunting. more on that early next week.
7.04.2012
a cold january
happy independence day. it's not deliberate, but this post happens to have something to do with independence. and liberty.
when i got to my mother's house, it was unclear how long i was going to stay. in my head, it was three to four weeks, and then i had to "snap out of it" (yeah, we still try to convince ourselves we can do that, even if history shows painfully obviously otherwise) and get back to my life. i kept looking at plane tickets, but i didn't pull the trigger. the schedule wasn't exactly right, or i couldn't get a nonstop (important because of the dog), or whatever. of course, the truth was that i was simply stalling.
and then on january 14th, 2012, my wonderful grandmother (my mom's mother) passed away. i wrote about her here last august, pointing out that i had only one surviving grandparent but that she was "still going strong at 94." in november, a maintenance man at her senior living facility went to her apartment, where she'd lived alone for more than 30 years, and noticed she wasn't looking well. someone was called, and she ended up in the hospital for a few days to be treated for severe dehydration. my mother, who lives three hours away, and one of her brothers, who was local, were told that she couldn't, or shouldn't, live on her own anymore. sick as she was, she was as stubborn as ever. she'd been refusing for years to come and live at my mother's house, and she wasn't changing her mind. the hospital wanted her gone (naturally, since she was on MediCare), so my mother and uncle had to quickly find a place for her to go. within a few days, they found a facility about 15 minutes away. it was adequate, if not wonderful. so there she was delivered, directly from the hospital, kicking and screaming (figuratively, but still) the entire way.
lord, she was a handful those first days, apparently. she refused to eat. she called the nurses and orderlies nasty names. she spit her dentures out at them so many times that they eventually took them away. let's say she probably wasn't a fan favorite. but she was still my grandma, speaking her mind and fighting for her way, just as she'd done her entire life. and i secretly loved her for her bad behavior, because it showed she was still in there, that she wasn't giving up.
but her decline was shocking. within three weeks she could no longer stand and barely said a word. she stopped eating and drinking - whether out of a lack of interest or in some sort of protest, i don't know, because she stopped speaking coherently at about the same time. and this would go in waves. they'd call my mom (the primary contact) to tell her that grandma had fallen out of bed or had stopped eating or had stopped drinking or had started again or had stopped again and did we want to give her IV fluids, etc.
it was just around this time that i arrived at my mother's house. of course, i'd been hearing the news about my grandmother and wanted to see her right away. so a few days after christmas, we made the three-hour drive together. i was apprehensive the whole way.
my mother tried her best to prepare me, but i was horrified when i walked through the doors. i'm sure it wasn't anywhere near the worst of these places, but it was bad. there was a lot of moaning. there were no lunch carts in sight even though we'd arrived at about 11:30, which was lunchtime. and there were a lot of orderlies who appeared to be standing around, not doing much of anything. (i don't know how these places run, and i know the people who work there are grossly underpaid for what they do, so i didn't want to judge, but i simply couldn't help it.)
in my mental state, it was very difficult to control my emotions, and i started crying almost immediately after walking into the facility. my mother led me to my grandmother's room, but before she let me in, she turned to me and said something like, "I know this is incredibly difficult, but you have to think of her. Please don't let her see you like this." she hugged me tightly, which made me cry harder. then she pulled me away, looked at me, nodded, and turned on her heel and walked into that room with a big smile on her face. "Hi, Ma! How you doing today?" she's the fucking bravest person i know.
it took a few minutes for me to collect myself, but i finally took a deep breath and walked into the room after her. a whole new sense of shock and dismay, and even fear, welled over me when i looked at the woman in the bed. she was a shell of my grandmother. her skin was tissue-paper-thin; it almost looked as though the veins were sitting on top of her hands. her lips were horribly dry and cracked. her hair (oh, she was such a proud person that she still washed and set her own hair every few days while she lived alone) looked dirty and was brushed back from her face in a way i'd never seen before. her mouth was sunken because they'd taken her dentures away. and she looked tiny. she never broke five feet at her tallest, but she looked like a child in that big hospital bed.
i held back tears with immense difficulty and greeted her with the biggest smile i could muster. she looked up at me and seemed to attempt a smile and some words, but without her dentures they were unintelligible. i just smiled and nodded and stroked her hand and told her how i'd missed her, how i loved her.
we stayed for about an hour, during which i had to approach an orderly twice to ask where her lunch was and once because it was clear from her distress (my mother had come to recognize it) that she needed to be changed. i was polite, even sweet, during these interactions (the dutiful, concerned granddaughter), when actually i wanted to wring someone's throat. the visit took its toll quickly and my grandmother started drifting in and out of sleep, at which time my mother suggested we leave, that any meaningful interaction we were going to have was over. i clasped her hand and kissed her forehead and told her how much i loved her and thought, "this is not my grandmother; this is her shell of a body. her soul, while still present, is searching for and will find a better place." and this time i did cry. and left. and that's the last time i saw her.
when we got the call a couple weeks later, my mother and i had just barely begun a game of scrabble. (this was one of the first times since i'd been at her house that my mother had tried to engage me to do something active with my brain and i'd actually agreed. she used to beat me handily when i was a kid, but i'd had plenty of practice against worthy opponents and had learned a lot of strategy in the intervening 25 years and was prepared to kick her ass.) i knew what had happened as soon as she picked up the phone. she was off in less than a minute and turned to me with tears in her eyes. we hugged each other, and as is typical of my mom (of all moms?), the instant she realized how much i was hurting, she put her own feelings aside and began murmuring comforting words in my ear. my ear. it was her mother, with whom she'd had a complicated but very close relationship, and she was putting her energy toward trying to make me feel better.
there's a lot more to the story, of course, but what's important as it relates to this line of thinking and act of writing is that when my grandmother died, i let myself off the hook. i gave myself over to the fact that i couldn't go home just because i thought i should - in other words, just because i was a fucking grownup, for god's sake, and should act like one, whatever that meant. i camouflaged some of that thinking in the convenient part of it: i have to stay and be here for my mother for a while. but that wasn't the half of it. it would have been disrespectful to my grandmother not to fight for my life, to do everything i could to get better. and realistically, i was not confident that i could do that in san francisco, where i was basically entirely on my own. i let go of the shame and guilt i felt about "dropping out of life" and decided that i had to do what i had to do to get myself back in. and if that meant staying at my mother's for a few more weeks or a few more months or longer, that's what i had to do. and whereas i'd been poring over travel websites almost every day for the previous few, i didn't visit one for at least a month. i liberated myself from a damaging vein of critical, punishing thinking and behavior. it was an important turning point.
when i got to my mother's house, it was unclear how long i was going to stay. in my head, it was three to four weeks, and then i had to "snap out of it" (yeah, we still try to convince ourselves we can do that, even if history shows painfully obviously otherwise) and get back to my life. i kept looking at plane tickets, but i didn't pull the trigger. the schedule wasn't exactly right, or i couldn't get a nonstop (important because of the dog), or whatever. of course, the truth was that i was simply stalling.
and then on january 14th, 2012, my wonderful grandmother (my mom's mother) passed away. i wrote about her here last august, pointing out that i had only one surviving grandparent but that she was "still going strong at 94." in november, a maintenance man at her senior living facility went to her apartment, where she'd lived alone for more than 30 years, and noticed she wasn't looking well. someone was called, and she ended up in the hospital for a few days to be treated for severe dehydration. my mother, who lives three hours away, and one of her brothers, who was local, were told that she couldn't, or shouldn't, live on her own anymore. sick as she was, she was as stubborn as ever. she'd been refusing for years to come and live at my mother's house, and she wasn't changing her mind. the hospital wanted her gone (naturally, since she was on MediCare), so my mother and uncle had to quickly find a place for her to go. within a few days, they found a facility about 15 minutes away. it was adequate, if not wonderful. so there she was delivered, directly from the hospital, kicking and screaming (figuratively, but still) the entire way.
lord, she was a handful those first days, apparently. she refused to eat. she called the nurses and orderlies nasty names. she spit her dentures out at them so many times that they eventually took them away. let's say she probably wasn't a fan favorite. but she was still my grandma, speaking her mind and fighting for her way, just as she'd done her entire life. and i secretly loved her for her bad behavior, because it showed she was still in there, that she wasn't giving up.
but her decline was shocking. within three weeks she could no longer stand and barely said a word. she stopped eating and drinking - whether out of a lack of interest or in some sort of protest, i don't know, because she stopped speaking coherently at about the same time. and this would go in waves. they'd call my mom (the primary contact) to tell her that grandma had fallen out of bed or had stopped eating or had stopped drinking or had started again or had stopped again and did we want to give her IV fluids, etc.
it was just around this time that i arrived at my mother's house. of course, i'd been hearing the news about my grandmother and wanted to see her right away. so a few days after christmas, we made the three-hour drive together. i was apprehensive the whole way.
my mother tried her best to prepare me, but i was horrified when i walked through the doors. i'm sure it wasn't anywhere near the worst of these places, but it was bad. there was a lot of moaning. there were no lunch carts in sight even though we'd arrived at about 11:30, which was lunchtime. and there were a lot of orderlies who appeared to be standing around, not doing much of anything. (i don't know how these places run, and i know the people who work there are grossly underpaid for what they do, so i didn't want to judge, but i simply couldn't help it.)
in my mental state, it was very difficult to control my emotions, and i started crying almost immediately after walking into the facility. my mother led me to my grandmother's room, but before she let me in, she turned to me and said something like, "I know this is incredibly difficult, but you have to think of her. Please don't let her see you like this." she hugged me tightly, which made me cry harder. then she pulled me away, looked at me, nodded, and turned on her heel and walked into that room with a big smile on her face. "Hi, Ma! How you doing today?" she's the fucking bravest person i know.
it took a few minutes for me to collect myself, but i finally took a deep breath and walked into the room after her. a whole new sense of shock and dismay, and even fear, welled over me when i looked at the woman in the bed. she was a shell of my grandmother. her skin was tissue-paper-thin; it almost looked as though the veins were sitting on top of her hands. her lips were horribly dry and cracked. her hair (oh, she was such a proud person that she still washed and set her own hair every few days while she lived alone) looked dirty and was brushed back from her face in a way i'd never seen before. her mouth was sunken because they'd taken her dentures away. and she looked tiny. she never broke five feet at her tallest, but she looked like a child in that big hospital bed.
i held back tears with immense difficulty and greeted her with the biggest smile i could muster. she looked up at me and seemed to attempt a smile and some words, but without her dentures they were unintelligible. i just smiled and nodded and stroked her hand and told her how i'd missed her, how i loved her.
we stayed for about an hour, during which i had to approach an orderly twice to ask where her lunch was and once because it was clear from her distress (my mother had come to recognize it) that she needed to be changed. i was polite, even sweet, during these interactions (the dutiful, concerned granddaughter), when actually i wanted to wring someone's throat. the visit took its toll quickly and my grandmother started drifting in and out of sleep, at which time my mother suggested we leave, that any meaningful interaction we were going to have was over. i clasped her hand and kissed her forehead and told her how much i loved her and thought, "this is not my grandmother; this is her shell of a body. her soul, while still present, is searching for and will find a better place." and this time i did cry. and left. and that's the last time i saw her.
when we got the call a couple weeks later, my mother and i had just barely begun a game of scrabble. (this was one of the first times since i'd been at her house that my mother had tried to engage me to do something active with my brain and i'd actually agreed. she used to beat me handily when i was a kid, but i'd had plenty of practice against worthy opponents and had learned a lot of strategy in the intervening 25 years and was prepared to kick her ass.) i knew what had happened as soon as she picked up the phone. she was off in less than a minute and turned to me with tears in her eyes. we hugged each other, and as is typical of my mom (of all moms?), the instant she realized how much i was hurting, she put her own feelings aside and began murmuring comforting words in my ear. my ear. it was her mother, with whom she'd had a complicated but very close relationship, and she was putting her energy toward trying to make me feel better.
there's a lot more to the story, of course, but what's important as it relates to this line of thinking and act of writing is that when my grandmother died, i let myself off the hook. i gave myself over to the fact that i couldn't go home just because i thought i should - in other words, just because i was a fucking grownup, for god's sake, and should act like one, whatever that meant. i camouflaged some of that thinking in the convenient part of it: i have to stay and be here for my mother for a while. but that wasn't the half of it. it would have been disrespectful to my grandmother not to fight for my life, to do everything i could to get better. and realistically, i was not confident that i could do that in san francisco, where i was basically entirely on my own. i let go of the shame and guilt i felt about "dropping out of life" and decided that i had to do what i had to do to get myself back in. and if that meant staying at my mother's for a few more weeks or a few more months or longer, that's what i had to do. and whereas i'd been poring over travel websites almost every day for the previous few, i didn't visit one for at least a month. i liberated myself from a damaging vein of critical, punishing thinking and behavior. it was an important turning point.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)