Hijacked Grief...

I haven't posted a new entry since November--election time. It's not that I haven't been writing; I have. I started seeing so much of what I've written here, and elsewhere, show up in a weekly newspaper column. At first, it was a little eery to see writing that so mimicked my own in thought. It wasn't word-for-word plagiarism, but I was seeing entire articles written on exact topics on which I'd written, with a cadence so like my own, from the same perspective as mine. Originally, I thought perhaps the writer and I were just very like-minded; she had also buried a son. As time went on, though, I could see her style of writing changed dramatically when centered on topics I hadn't so far touched. Her voice changed. Her insights changed. The personality of her pen changed. I considered pulling my blog, or maybe hiding it so that only I can read it, but I felt I needed proof of what was mine. Instead, I kept writing and have made the posts only available to myself. I was stunned to see my entry, The Grief Contest, mirrored so clearly in the paper this week. And I was hurt, too. To the columnist: I am profoundly sorry for your loss. Please, please be honest enough about your grief to write it from your own perspective. I guarantee your healing will benefit far more from your thoughts and words than from mine. Your candor may be the lifeline another parent needs. Someday I hope to publish my entire journey here, for myself, for my son, and for other grieving mothers, but until I've stumbled a little further down the road, putting "one foot in front of the other", I simply cannot bear to see my journey hijacked by another.

Common ground

Yesterday was a day of reflection for me. It was voting day in America. It would have been Logan’s first time casting a ballot. He loved politics. As a young teen, he was, even more so than my husband and me, a staunch conservative, both on fiscal and social issues. In 9th grade, about the time we became computer-owning, internet-accessible people, Logan’s world view began to change. Access to a vast array of information and to people whose circumstances varied wildly from his own fascinated Logan. He became liberal in his thinking, yet remained very conservative with his finances and his second amendment rights. He and I would often discuss politics and the influence of religion on it. Our discussions often became heated. He was a talented debater--firm in his opinions and well informed on both sides of every issue. He had the ability to make me feel ignorant, grasping for words and resorting to catch phrases when my mind couldn’t keep up with his quick wit. It exasperated me and invigorated him, but I delighted in the fact that he thought I was worth arguing with. By the end of his life, I think Logan viewed himself as a socialist  more so than a democrat, evolving (or devolving, depending on your politics) from Rush Limbaugh to Noam Chomsky.  I hope he knew how hard I tried to be respectful of his opinions. I hope he understood my point that life’s journey might have brought him down a path that led right back to his conservative roots.

Throughout the course of this election process, I have wondered how many times I would have wanted to strangle my Logan. As I filled in my ballot, I knew that his votes would have cancelled mine out, right down the page. We would have loved each other anyway.  We would have worked together on many things. We would have broken bread and built bridges. I would have worked to show him that each man’s opinion is valid and should be respected, that being louder or more eloquent in speech doesn't make one more right. He would have pushed me into acting otherwise. I hope he would still have found comfort and safety in the conservative values of the people in the home where he was raised. I hope I would have peeked at the opposing side of an issue and imagined I walked in another man’s shoes for an short time. I imagine both of us would have grown a little and both of us would have groaned a lot. In the end, I think we would have agreed to disagree.

This morning, I was dismayed by the ugliness that continues in the name of politics on social media. It really amounts to bullying and gloating, to smugness and contentiousness. The party of tolerance seems hypocritical in it’s inability to respect the other side’s positions. The party of self reliance casts blame on government instead of self. Through it all, I think I’ve come to dislike people I once considered to be friends, not for their stance on issues, but for their mode of delivery of their message and the belittling of our differences. We are a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. We shouldn’t wonder, then, when we consider how we treat one another, that our politicians are more interested in toeing the party line than calling truces and working together for the common good.  We are different, but surely we seek what each of us views as the common good. The common good requires common ground. Common ground requires respect. Respect requires tolerance. Tolerance begins when you get over yourself. I learned that from Logan. I wish beyond wishing that he had been there to cancel out my vote yesterday.

Unbroken chains

I dropped out of college after the spring of my freshman year and moved back in with my parents. Well, technically, I hadn’t dropped out so much as I knew I wasn’t planning on going back in the fall. My parents weren’t aware of my plans, or lack of them. A high school friend, who moved to the farm across the field from us, was working at a turkey processing plant about 30 miles away. She talked me into applying for a job on the line and driving back and forth with her every day. “It rocks!” she said. “The people are awesome!” Turns out, she was half right.

They tell me there had been big improvements made in meat processing facilities across the country by that summer of 1984, which makes me wonder how bad things must have been at one time. My first morning there, I was issued a belt and scabbard, two knives, two sharpening steels, and a metal mesh glove to keep from cutting off my fingers. We were required to wear hairnets every day. I wonder if it was to keep our hair out of the meat or the meat out of our hair. The plant itself smelled of a combination of wet feathers and turkey shit. It was chronically damp and eerily gray. The sanitary conditions were, well, horrible. I remember when the line had to be shut down because maggots were dripping onto the conveyor belt which transported de-fatted turkey breasts. For excitement, someone had thrown a chunk of meat up on the machinery high above our heads, and a few days later, the maggots had moved in. And, they fit right in, too. Some of the less sanitary workers smelled vaguely of rotting flesh because they didn’t bother to scrub their mesh gloves at the end of each day, but they didn't bother to wash their white uniforms very often either, so it's probably not fair to blame the odor on the mesh gloves alone.

The days themselves were usually long and always unpredictable. Work began at 5:00 am; that meant leaving home by 4:15 am to get there on time. The line ran until no more truckloads of birds arrived. Rare were the nights I was home by 9:00 pm. I remember once when the last truck arrived at 11:00 pm and, when all the birds had finally been butchered, we were held over to rework a pallet of breasts that hadn’t passed inspection. It ended up to be a 22-hour day. We left the plant at 3:00 am, and were told to be back to work at  11:00 am, just eight hours later! A couple of indignant workers contacted OSHA, who informed them that, since turkey was a perishable food product, it was legal to work up to 22 hours as long as workers were given eight hours off before being required to return to the line.

When forced to perform under such conditions, most people form close bonds with one another, finding ways to encourage each other. Besides a healthy respect for anyone earning a living doing line work, and an urgent call to return to college, the turkey plant blessed me with a handful of salt-of-the-earth friends. One such friend was Gloria. She was 25 years older than me, but she had a real sense for what it was to be a young woman living in a fast world. She watched over us and encouraged us to be true to ourselves. She told off-color jokes that seemed to make the minutes pass more quickly.

I ended up going back to college that fall, and returned to the turkey plant the following summer. Most of my old friends were still there, but the conditions had changed for the better. 1985 was the last summer I worked at ‘the plant’. I slowly lost contact with the good friends I had made there.  Twenty-six years later, two days after Logan died, I got a phone call from Gloria. She had read Logan’s obituary in her local paper, then asked her daughter to search out my number on the internet. Gloria called to offer me her condolences. She asked a million questions about the years since we'd worked together. She encouraged me to cling to the truths of my faith. She asked if there was anything she could do for us, so I asked her to pray for the other driver in the accident. I had no idea how he was physically, but I knew he had to be an emotional wreck. I asked if she’d also put him on the prayer chain at her church.

Over the next few weeks, Gloria called me almost daily to tell me she had added the other driver to another prayer chain at another church. She would comb the yellow pages for telephone numbers. She called every number in her phone’s contact list, reached every relative she could think of, and in 3-weeks time, had listed him on over 90 prayer chains across the country! Ninety prayers is a lot of prayers, but ninety chains of prayers is mighty.

I have never seen or spoken to the driver of the other vehicle, except through our lawyers. He filed a personal injury suit against me, well beyond what I was insured for, since the vehicle Logan was driving was in my name. The man was not wearing his seat belt and was thrown from his vehicle, sustaining a head injury which required him to be air lifted to a larger medical facility. Four days later, by the grace of God, he was discharged from the hospital. I know his life will never be the same as it was before 12-noon, September 3rd, 2011, but I'm thankful he has the opportunity to make each moment of what remains of his life worthy. I pray he walks those moments with Christ.

I wish I had understood at the time that standing for endless hours in that cold, damp, dirty processing plant would turn out to be one of the biggest blessings in my life. God is good.

The poetry of grief

There is quiet poetry in grief, which reads clearest in hindsight. I wish I had had the foresight to journal my thoughts from the beginning of this journey, because there have been so many beautiful little moments that have helped to carry my pain and grant me a better understanding of faith and how best to abide in it. I believe with all my heart that these moments are the fingerprint of God on my life, His assurance that He knew best when to call Logy home. He blesses me with the comfort of knowing I do not grieve alone. Surely sin, of which the result for all of us is death, causes my Lord more pain than it does me. I may never know the why of Logan's early exit, but I believe it had to happen when it did in order that Logy not outlive his faith in Christ. My longest lasting prayer for my children has been that they die in faith, whenever that day might be. I have wanted them to know eternity in Heaven far more than I needed them to know a long life on earth. I trust that God answered my plea. I hold no anger or bitterness toward Him, nor is the weeping and gnashing of teeth, which I endure daily, a sign that I question His work. This profound sorrow is simply necessary to the grief walk, which  is as ugly as it is beautiful, which reveals as much as it affirms what was.

There was an elderly brother and his sister who belonged to our church. We knew them by name and were familiar with their faces, but I doubt they would have known us had they met us on the street. They certainly would not have known Logan. Neither of the siblings ever married. They sold the family farm sometime in the 1980s and retired into town. As age became the focus of their lives, they gradually became more reclusive, welcoming a select few people into their lives; even our new pastor wasn’t one of those few. Dolly, the sister, was legally blind. Don, her brother, ignored the signs of cancer until a friend finally talked him into going to the doctor. He was given a very short death sentence.

One afternoon at the end of October, about two months after Logan died, a friend of Don and Dolly’s stopped by the farm. During our visit, he told us about Don’s cancer and impending death, then he handed us an envelope and said, “This is from Don and Dolly. They heard about Logan and wanted to do something. Money, to Don, doesn’t matter much anymore and he and Dolly just thought they could help you out a little. Use this as you see fit.” Inside that plain white, no-nonsense envelope was a check for five thousand dollars. Five thousand dollars from siblings who had lived a frugal, unassuming, very private existence, who never had children of their own, given in memory of a young man who lived his life very much the same way, to parents who were virtually strangers to them.

We were at a loss as to how to handle this kind gift. It is a humbling thing hold fruits of an old man's hard work in one's hands, knowing he is preparing to exit this life, and feeling like the message it carried must live on and do good.

We made arrangements to visit Don and Dolly at their home, where Don was confined to a hospital bed in the living room. Dolly nervously sat in the chair not far from him. My husband and I  cried as we thanked this humble pair for their generosity. Both of them, as you might guess, brushed it off as nothing. As they warmed up to us, they chatted about their lives. Both of them served their country--Don a WWII combat veteran and Dolly a Naval WAVE. Their time in the service was the only time they had been separated over the course of their lives. We stayed about an hour, and it became obvious that Don was exhausted., so we said our goodbyes. Two days later, Don passed away. The funeral was a simple graveside burial. There were maybe 12 people in attendance, including 3 employees of the funeral home, the minister, a volunteer from hospice, a church elder, two of Don’s friends, my husband, our youngest son, me, and Dolly. The men in attendance, including my then-16-year-old son, acted as pall bearers. With a few simple words and a prayer, Don was lowered into his grave that cold, windy November day.

After the service, the minister stopped us, “Do you mind if I ask how you know Don and Dolly? They are the most intensely private people I know. I’m just really astonished to see you here.” I was torn at how to answer. I cannot imagine that a man as private as Don was would want the world to know about what he did for us. Much like Logan, I think Don would have preferred to simply do the good deed and carry on his unassuming ways.

I replied, “We knew Don through Logan.” And, although I think the minister would have liked to ask more, he just nodded his head. We didn’t know Don, except through his heart and through the journey he now walks with Logy.  This is grief's haunting beauty, quiet poetry. This is the fingerprint of God.

My equal...

 “He is my most beloved friend and my bitterest rival, my confidant and my betrayer, my sustainer and my dependent, and scariest of all, my equal.” -Gregg Levoy

I think my youngest son hit the nail on the head when he said he lost his ‘best friend and worst enemy’ when Logan died. I have witnessed our boys try to kill each other. When they were younger, I could pull them apart and send them different directions. Once they grew bigger than me, I used the almighty power of groundation to stop their battles. In the end, they grew smarter than me; they knew enough to fight their battles out of my sight. Often, the only way I knew they had fought was by the injuries they sported when they sat down for supper. Through the years, as I would deal with the aftermath, cleaning up their blood and bandaging their injuries, fixing busted furniture, twisted glasses, and broken glass, the boys would sit together and laugh as if the war had never happened and they had always been trusted allies.

I wonder about the emotional battle that must rage on in the hearts of my sons since Logan left. They had wished each other dead, or at the very least, maimed over the years. They had shared toys, beds and secrets. They fought as hard for each other as they had fought against one another. What is it like to lose such a brother? One instant he was there and the next he was gone. No chance for goodbyes. No final battle royale. No lasting truce. Brotherhood, I believe, knows what words could never say anyway. Though they spent many an hour plotting to do the other in, I have no doubt that if Jesus said, "Who shall go?" Logan quietly got to his feet, nodded his head, and said, "Take me."

Grief is an insidious, deceiving bastard.

I was insistent that Logan’s death would not define our lives. We would not, could not, fall apart as a family because Logan was gone. We would find a way to celebrate what we used to be, in order to find worth in what remained. We did quite well for a while. We got complacent, though, thinking we had trudged through the worst of the agony, soldiering through the murky, muddy waters of loss until finally finding a dry bank on which to rest. Grief, it turns out, is an insidious, deceiving bastard. It is happy to watch you sink comfortably to your knees and close your eyes, taking respite. That’s when it begins to worm its way into your relationships. When you think , we’re ok, grief whispers, “The fuck you are!” and it blows its foul breath in your face. You open your eyes to see that the tide has risen and the dry land you stood on is once again covered in filthy water. The muck beneath your feet tries to suck you down. It holds your legs immobile. You get to your feet, and as far as your eyes can see, grief has set to rot what you had worked so hard to preserve.

By his own admission, my husband is a workaholic. His day begins before 5:00 am and ends about 10:00 pm. Occasionally, if it’s raining, and we’re caught up on every single act that will keep the sky from immediately falling on our heads, he will take off Sunday afternoon from noon to 4:30. The busiest time of year is spring. And summer. And fall. And winter. There is about a one-week window, usually the last one of August, when all crops of hay are up, the beef and youngstock are out to pasture, we have dried down in the barn to about 40 cows, and we have not yet started to ‘freshen’, so there are no calves to feed twice a day. During the first week of September, the milk cows start to calve and the fall field work and preparations for winter begin. That one-week time frame in August is the best time to get married, go on vacation, do a home renovation, or bury a son. Logan died September 3rd. It was early in the month; the new season wasn’t in full swing, but it had begun, and the work loomed large in the distance.  It was a very inconvenient time to die.

As I said before, thank goodness for generous people. Because of their help, we were able to get through calving season. They showed up to help us chop our corn. They helped us dig a new water line from the wood stove, which is housed in the detached garage, to the house. They helped us haul sand for a new hay shed we were building. They helped us cut wood, haul manure, and bag earlage. Their company showed us there is so much more to life than work. My husband and I would remark that we had to change how we lived. We could not exist solely for the work, and we had to reach out a helping hand to others as they had done for us. We would never look at the farm as anything other than a means of support again. The months rolled along and we concentrated so hard on slogging through our pain, that when we were finally able to fill our lungs with air again, and see without that shroud of darkness limiting our vision, we simply rested there. Before we knew it, it was spring again. The land called to my husband and he threw himself headlong into his work. 18-hour days were the norm. I would try to say, “We weren’t going to do this, remember? It’s Sunday, let’s…” And he would explode.

“If you want to spend time with me, get your ass out there and do something to help!”

 I can be made to feel I’m a lot of things, like fat, grumpy, opinionated, or ugly, and I can shrug that off.  But, being made to feel lazy is like a punch in the gut. You cannot be lazy in this marriage and have any worth. And I need worth. The stench of grief meets me each morning as I crawl from my bed to face the new day. My husband has already walked out the door to start morning chores. “You’re lazy,” grief casually nudges me, defying me to prove it wrong.  Here we are again, with no time to reach out to those in need. We are not putting marriage and family first. There have been four Sundays off in 13 months. That equals about 16 hours of time we might have devoted to family.  My husband’s eyes look upward, constantly checking that the sky is not in danger of falling. Greif encourages the fear of not having enough to outshine the understanding of what really matters. And, grief, that dirty, uncouth bastard, has shown my husband the card that trumps me every time: laziness, not measuring up to the standard he sets. Grief has the power to steal my voice and suffocate my dreams. For his part, I know my husband doesn‘t see things that way. I know he deals with life, the good and bad, by burying himself in his work. He measures success in dollars; he measures love by what he provides in terms of financial security; he measures the worth of a man’s life by his willingness to toil. It probably boils down to how we were raised, combined with the differences in males and females in general, but no matter how hard I search for success in our lives, I cannot see it in this farm. I see it in my boys and their ability to balance work and play, making a living and making a life.

My marriage isn’t the only relationship to suffer here. Our youngest son has always been moody, particularly in the morning. I attributed much of his behavior to the fact that he and Logan were often at each other’s throats. Logan usually came out the winner; he was still stronger physically, and had the advantage of being able to best my youngest verbally as well. I would often tell Logan, “When you steal someone’s voice, you’ve lost  more than you’ve won.“ However, he could usually turn my words on me and silence me, too, so I don’t think I had much effect on  him.

Over the years, I dealt with my youngest son’s moodiness by refusing to be drawn in by it. I encouraged him to remain true to himself, regardless of how Logan viewed his beliefs and interests.  As I said, mornings are especially hard for him. Daylight is not his friend. Through the years, I would go out to the barn and feed silage, then come into the house at about 6:45am to make breakfast and wake up the kids. Starting last September, I only had one kid left at home to awaken in the morning, and this year is the last year I would get to do it. I love making a hot breakfast and drinking a cup of coffee before school, but it became less enjoyable when the ‘morning boys’ left and it was just ’the baby’ and me.  I felt like an unpaid lion tamer. When he would finally get out of bed, he was sullen at best, and belligerent at worst. I was torn between cracking the whip and stroking his messy mane. One morning, about a month ago, I was a little late in getting the French toast started. I stood in the kitchen, dipping the bread into the eggs and setting them on the hot griddle. I would run to the top of the stairs and yell down, “Wake up! Breakfast is ready!” No answer. I yelled at least 5 times and finally made the trip down to turn on his light with the thought that it would slowly creep into his dreams that the new day was at hand. Finally, at 7:25, I hollered as loud as I could, “WAAAAAAAKE UUUUUUUUUUP!” I had just gotten the milk and juice out of the fridge and set them on the counter when my furious ‘baby’ stomped up the stairs. His brows were drawn down and his lips were pulled in a thin line across his teeth. Not an uncommon sight, for sure, but the tick in his cheek gave hint that this was more serious than the usual morning roar. I said, “Kiddo, you gotta start going to bed earlier.”

“I didn’t fucking hear you,” you sneered.

“What did you say?” I was incredulous.

“I didn’t FUCKING hear you, alright?! You fucking bitch at me every morning!” he bellowed.

I think my skin lost much of its leathery quality after we buried Logan. The surface of it feels like it’s lightly bruised all over. The tiny hairs covering it are stiff and sensitive, like they are coated in a mist of super-hold hair spray. The wound in my heart hasn’t crusted over yet, so it still bleeds tears when it’s bumped too hard. I set the French toast in front of him. I would have grabbed the juice and set it there, too, but I couldn’t see through the tears in my eyes. My poor wounded heart couldn‘t  pump on its own and the blood backed up in my veins. Grief overloaded my system and reminded me that I still have more boys to lose. Of the hundred ways I could have, and in the past would have, diffused the situation, I chose instead to slog through more shit.  “That is the last breakfast I hurry in to make for you,” I said. “You are on your own in the mornings from here on out.” And he has been. I no longer rush in to get him up and out the door on time. One morning it was nearly 9:00 when I got in the house. I didn’t know it, but he was still asleep. He as awakened by the ringing phone, which caused him to scrurry into action. “You gonna write me a note?” he asked accusingly.

“What would I write?” I asked.

“I don’t care what you write. Tell them I had to help Dad.”

“No. I will write a  note that says you overslept, though. You’ll have to ask your  dad for note that lies.” The Bitch of Grief that had taken up residence in my body wanted my husband to know that the lazy member of our union had been taking care of things he didn’t even know required taking care of through the years. And she dared my baby to ask his father to lie for him.

“Why the fuck didn’t you just get me up?”

“You know why I won’t go there anymore. You are 17 years old. You are either responsible for yourself in the morning or you are civil to the person who is responsible for you.” I still don’t know if his dad wrote the note or if he went to school without one. He hasn’t spoken to me in a civil tone since the last-French-toast day. I’ve tried everything to build a bridge, except offer an apology, which I just don‘t know how to frame. Maybe my heart has finally crusted over.

My oldest son has made a life for himself about 90 miles away from us. 90 miles seems far enough for him not to feel the gravitational pull of the farm and all its work. He appears to have abandoned his love of hunting and fishing, and concentrates on his girlfriend and his dog. My husband is taken aback by the fact that he could be content living in an apartment in an urban area, no longer rushing home to bow or rifle hunt, or shoot at targets just for fun. He can’t imagine what kind of man would spend the weekend catching up on laundry and housework, and whiling away the hours with a woman. I think he turned out to be the kind of man who refuses to devote his life to work, who cannot separate the intimacy of grief from the intimacy of immediate family, who needs distance from where he came in order to be who he wants to be. Our oldest has been working to convince our youngest, who has dreams of taking over the farm, to move to the city for a while, after graduation next spring, and work a normal job before marrying the land. I am silently cheering his efforts. I believe it’s his way of loving the baby brother he has so little in common with these days. He still calls a couple of times a week. He stops in every couple of months for a short visit. He isn’t comfortable in the home in which he grew up, but I’m not sure any of are these days.

The grief contest...

Grief is a strange contest sometimes. I've been told it's harder to lose a child than a teenager; that grandparents grieve harder than parents; that it's worse to watch a loved one fade away, ravaged by cancer; it's more painful to lose a spouse, a daughter, an infant, a war hero. People like to tell me about friends and relatives who've suffered worse or the same or more. I, however, believe grief is relative to what we've lost in the past. I have suffered grief before in my life; I miscarried a baby at 13 weeks and buried my father when he was 67 years old. The grief I live this day is Logan. I knew him from 2 weeks after his conception. He grew inside me. His heart grew under mine, from mine; it beat within the same body mine does. That body bears scars from him. I have silver stretch marks, some a quarter-inch wide, where my abdomen grew beyond its limits to hold him within me. When it was time, I pushed him, all eight-plus pounds of him, from inside me and out into the waiting world. I counted his toes and fingers. I diapered him. I cried when breast feeding didn't work for us and I was forced to put him on formula. I rubbed him down with udder balm, head to toe, every night, to soothe his chronic eczema. I held his hand and encouraged him to walk. I helped him form his first words and taught him to wipe his own butt. I taught him to tie his shoes, zip his pants, button his shirts, and use scissors. We practiced ABCs, learned to write his name, memorized his address and phone number. We read books, drew pictures, and shared dreams. He bought me beautiful gifts, like huge earrings shaped like stop signs, and a necklace Cleopatra would have envied. I encouraged him to walk away from the bullies who picked on him at noon and stole his lunch. I bribed him into taking a summer school class in 8th grade to help him organize his thought patterns. I encouraged him to keep smiling while he waited for the best time to put braces on his buck teeth. I knew what he loved to eat, enjoyed reading, hated to wear, and dreamed about seeing. I bought his underwear, his socks, his jeans, his toothpaste. I taught him to parallel park.  I helped him choose all of the things he'd need to furnish a college dorm room. And then one day, I was told he was dead. I never saw his face again, just the closed casket that I assume held his broken body. There was no slow progression to death, no sweet goodbye, no sorries, no I love you, and no final kiss to his brow. He was gone. And, while I can appreciate the blessings in the way that he left, I can't seem to appreciate anyone else pointing them out to me. They are mine alone to count and hold in my aching chest. God whispers them into my ear and I know that He reads my heart and knows all of the things that my lips cannot lift to Him in prayer. He knows I have been angry, felt guilty, and wished beyond wishing that it had been me instead. This is the loss and the grief that I know. Nolo contendere.