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Category: Death and Dying
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It’s a nice place to visit but…
Posted at 1:32 pm , on October 16, 2019
Maybe you’re familiar with the saying, “It’s a nice place to visit but I wouldn’t want to live there.” It all depends on who you are. I say that about San Diego because I hated living in San Diego County but some people love it.
Like Persephone I love the underworld. I love the Moon and all of her silvery glory. I like to vacation in the light of the Sun if there’s a cool breeze and plenty of clouds to diffuse the heat and light but I am absolutely not a light worker or in love with the blazing hot brightness of the Sun. That’s me. It’s a part of who I am.
That said, I love chiaroscuro. It was my email address for a while and I really felt for the rat of that name in The Tale of Despereaux. I saw myself in him.
I’ve always seen myself in villains because, as I’ve recently come to understand about myself, I am very frequently rejected by humans around me because I don’t meet their expectations. I don’t conform to cultures I don’t understand or relate to, so I am treated as a problem by those with control issues and those who lack the courage or strength or motivation to engage in self reflection. My values don’t match with theirs so I don’t behave the way they expect people to behave and the result is disdain or at the very least dismissal.
But what it’s come to is that I have a sense of self based in that rejection. I am used to it even though it has never been comfortable. I am primed to walk away and give up hope of being valued. That’s what happens to lots of people we reject because they aren’t what or who we expect them to be. We do it without thinking about it but it marks people for a long, long time. The fault is not with those rejected. It lies with any of us who reject others who don’t conform.
It gives me a unique perspective. I can see outside of groups, systems, relationships, etcetera because I AM outside of them. My way of being is not reinforced and is not welcomed. It doesn’t matter why.
It doesn’t matter why.
Say it after me.
What matters is the impact it has had on me and that matters way outside of me and my experience because I am not the only one who has experienced that impact.
Two years ago I was asked to observe in a teacher’s classroom because two students were having severe escalation episodes quite regularly. They would both be taken from the room to “calm down” in the social worker’s office. They would come to some peace and go back to the room and escalate again. Why? Because the teacher would greet them with a laundry list of what they did wrong and what was wrong with them and why they were such a problem. I heard one of them say, “You want me to die.”
(Do not complain that I told this story before if I have told this story before. Read it again or don’t. It’s an opportunity for you to see new things in the same thing and if you don’t want that then you are free to stop reading at any time.)
I heard that and realized that’s how I feel in my office. I feel like my bosses and some of my coworkers want me to die. I feel like they hate me. They would protest at both of those things and last year I gave some of them the chance to protest.
Realizing that gave me a lot of insight into my own choices and how they are influenced by that kind of behavior. For years I have sought to reject the conformists, to sneer and display my sincere shock at what they do so that they get an idea of what it feels like.
The problem with that is that they have years of having power behind them. They have years of acceptance and reward behind them. I am standing on thin ice.
It’s hard for me to have compassion for someone like that, someone who naturally makes others feel inferior because it’s always worked well for them. The thing is, though, there is no other way. When someone’s foot is on your neck it is unlikely that you are going to force them to see what’s wrong with what they are doing.
If you can’t avoid them, enlist the help of someone more powerful until you can avoid them. If you can’t do that, then use passive non-resistance. Go limp.
Don’t fight. They get stronger when you fight.
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Legacy or Lack Thereof
Posted at 2:45 pm , on September 17, 2019
This is a photo of one of my crow friends.
The wonderful thing about nature is that it doesn’t lie. These crows are around when there’s food and they appreciate me for giving them unsalted shelled peanuts from time to time. They are reliable, if sometimes noisy, and they don’t want to convince me that I’m crazy because I call out their abusive behaviors.
I am so grateful for the few kind and caring people I’ve found. Without them I would probably have had to find homes for my fur babies and would be living in my car somewhere worried about having enough $ for gas so I could move it to keep from getting towed.
I had no control over my mom’s illness, her death, the timing, or where I found myself when she died. For the rest of my life I will regret where I was when it happened. It made me regret all of my life choices from the time I left my undergrad until now.
Why did I choose a career where I knew no one would value me?
At the time it was because I wanted to help the people being crushed by the system who I knew were not being valued. I imagined that with the little power I could have as a teacher I could advocate for helping more than hurting. I hoped that I could effect some change that would be meaningful and that I could protect others from the soul crushing assumptions of those who fear the empowerment of others.
Turns out I was wrong.
At least, I was wrong about some of it. When I was in the classroom I could come to the defense of the children in my room. I could stand up to parents and teachers and administrators who actively worked against the empowerment and liberation of the vulnerable, the different, the creative, the ones who didn’t make them look good or feel good and who challenged their misconceptions about pretty much everything.
I love those kids. They are my people.
I approach everything I do with such tremendous love and care. I don’t like to do anything without including everyone. I will defend even those I don’t like because I truly believe that when we value everyone we all win.
Not the case with our existing systems. The existing systems reward shady, exclusionary, selfish, callous, unempathetic, and evasive behaviors. Back room deals and currying favor to promote themselves, lying to cover it up, and gaslighting those who would confront the corruption is standard operating procedure and has been the culture of the places I’ve worked for the 20 years I’ve spent in K-12 education.
It’s not funny but I look back and laugh sadly as I remember how earnest I was at first.
I believed that if I could just get the ear of the masses I could show them how kindness and concern for the welfare of others would help us all. That failed.
I believed that if I could get into a position of some power that I could wield that power to empower others. That failed.
I believed that if I could just say the right thing I could convince people to stop fighting over resources and start sharing. That failed.
When my mom died I found myself in a world where kindness was rare and was spit on whenever it was highlighted.
I found kind people here and there but they were in the same position I was and I was not able to support them because I was barely making it through each day.
My boss saw my vulnerability and decided to ride me harder and shove me to my knees every chance she got. She decided to call it support so that I could not argue or stand up for myself.
When my mom died I found myself surrounded by coworkers who had been responding to my attempts to share with them, to include them, with hostility and exclusion. When I found opportunities for training or participation in things that they valued, I shared the information with them. One of the managers tried to write me up for it. If it hadn’t been for my direct supervisor standing up for me he would have.
They knew where my skill and interests were and when they were invited to trainings or opportunities they invited each other and left me out. It all came to light after my mom died. I was alone and I was devastated and they sneered at me when I made mistakes, they accused me of being unprofessional and unkind when I spoke up against the way they treated me.
At probably the worst moment of my life I found myself having to force myself to walk into a place where I was met with cruelty, where I was forced to hurt myself to satisfy the controlling power hoarding needs of those with more power than I have.
At the time when I needed community and care and support I was scolded, and insulted, and excluded, and met with only rejection. For the rest of my life I will regret that was how it went down. I will always wonder what I did wrong to end up there. All I’ve done my whole life is try to help. All I’ve done is love and struggle to empower those without power or with less power than I have.
And now I just want to stay home with my fur babies. I can’t see any way to find the community I needed and still need.
I find joy and inspiration and kindness in small places with someone here and someone there. I feel like a ship that no one will allow to dock. Like the barge of garbage that wasn’t allowed to stop anywhere.
I am so grateful for the few kind and caring people I’ve found. Without them and without knowing that my fur babies need me, I would long ago have gone to a cold beach and sat there until I fell asleep for the last time. That sounds so restful.
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Planning My Funeral
Posted at 2:17 pm , on September 16, 2019
I am officially planning my funeral in earnest.
Firstly, I can’t in good conscience counsel anyone on something I haven’t done.
Second, we never know when we will die. It’s better to be ready if you want to throw a really good party.
I’ve started a document on my google drive that will have links to all the things anyone needs to know about wrapping up production on my life. I want to make it as easy for them as I can.
Here are my top to do items:
- Choose someone to MC
- Choose elements that need to be included
- Choose optional elements
- Share my playlist “Song for My Funeral”
- Choose several venues in case my first choice isn’t available
- Secure funding once I know what I want
There will be more. This is just the beginning…
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Stages of Grief
Posted at 12:21 pm , on August 16, 2018
I just realized that this blog has changed from just a resource that I wanted to put together for some people who are about to go through something similar to a way for me to process through stories, like I used to do with my mom. It took us a long, long time to figure out how to be genuinely supportive of each other in a way that worked for the other person. My mom and I are very different people and she had a very difficult time with differences between herself and people she cared about. She just didn’t want to have differences of opinion or style. When someone disagreed with her she reacted like they were telling her that everything she was was wrong. It was very hard for her, and it was also hard for me until I realized that she had infused me with a similar problem but that problem was hers not mine.
So, along that line of thought, I’ve been thinking about my stages of grief. The most current thought is that there isn’t a linear progression (duh) but that the process is always in flux. Control freaks hate that. That makes me love it. I pretty much love anything they hate because I am so sick of their shit.
My sister was talking to a colleague about this kind of grief, the deepest, cataclysmic kind of grief.Her colleague told her that when her mom died, she went to work one day and forgot to wear pants. From then on, she said, she knew she was doing ok if she was wearing pants when she left the house. Now we gauge our days as pants and no pants days. There’s no way for anyone to understand it until they’ve lived it. It’s like so many things.
My first few days were after mom’s death were comprised of pretending to be a whole person while I made arrangements with the funeral home, crying so hard that I would choke on it, completely leaving my body while watching television with my fur babies, and panicking because something went wrong and I simply did not have the cognitive capacity to make quick changes or bounce back from bumps in the road.
When I got back from signing papers and all that at the funeral home, my dog was in such horrible pain that the couldn’t lift his head. I rushed him to the emergency vet and they told me that he had degenerative inter-vertebral disc disease. That was one of those moments that my heart and brain unhooked. I just couldn’t process the eventual paralysis of my little piglet right after I fell into the tiger trap that was my mom’s too early death. The problem with falling onto spikes is that every move you make hurts more.
I’ve actually met people who didn’t experience loss until they were in their 30s. When I heard them say that I had one of those head exploding moments. My uncle was murdered when I was four and my sister wasn’t yet born. My mom told the story that it was all that people were talking about until Roseann Quinn was murdered but as it turns out, she was murdered on New Year’s Eve and he was murdered on January 6th. Huh.
I have a large extended family and had lots of great aunts and uncles and mom’s cousins and my own aunts and uncles. I’ve been to a lot of funerals.
I’ve done lots of cat rescue so I’ve also had to make the decision to let someone furry go on to the other side more times than I’d like.
I held my childhood pet in the back of a station wagon as she aspirated on her own blood after being hit by a truck. I cried as her tongue turned blue and her eyes rolled back in agony. She was broken beyond repair and died before we got to the emergency vet.
You could say I know my way around grief.
Today was a pants day. Yesterday was a no patience day, but I was wearing pants.
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Resources
Posted at 12:04 am , on August 16, 2018
You didn’t have to read the last post. That was me being myself, which it turns out is hard to do. I get a lot of static for that but meh…
So I have been collecting a mass of amazing resources on death and dying because I am considering making a career transition into the field. Either funereal work or grief and trauma counseling. We shall see.
The first recommendation I have is where I began my learning. Maybe I mentioned it before but it doesn’t hurt to mention it again. It’s the Order of the Good Death.
I could, and will, link you to the many sites that they have linked on their site but I really don’t need to do that. They have legal information about what you can and what you must do with regard to disposition of remains and funerals and so many other things.
It was through that site and affiliated groups that I learned about alkaline hydrolysis. It’s like cremation but with a much lower environmental impact. It’s amazing. It turns out there is a place near me that will do it for pets but no facilities exist in California yet.
My sister and I went to Better Place Forests and bought a tree on which we will be spreading my mom’s ashes. She would have loved this place because when you buy the tree and spread the ashes it means that the area can no be developed and stays a forest for as long as the laws are the way they are. A non-profit will be managing the legal guardianship (or whatever, that sounded good) of the forest.
I was thinking of having my body placed in the ground at Fernwood Cemetery because they place you in the ground naturally. It was the closest legal thing to a Sky Burial I could legally have in California. It turns out maybe I could have one in Texas. Maybe I’ll do that.
I love the idea of returning my body to the ground. Maybe I’ll still do that. If I do that, I plan to wear one of these burial shrouds, provided there’s someone to do that for me when I die.
I’ve got more and I’ll continue adding to this post. If you’re interested in any of this, keep checking.
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What happens after…
Posted at 11:45 pm , on August 15, 2018
subtitle: What the fuck did they just say to me?
For a very ling time I knew my life would crumble when my mom died. She was the focus of my life for so long. Even as a little child I worried about her. My poor mom never had the chance to integrate her true self with her lived self and that was through no fault of her own but shortened her life.
She lived for other people. When I was young she was always worried about what every single person would think of us if we did this or said that and how that would impact us. She would never have said this but she truly believed that if you stay still and quiet the monsters will stop hurting you and go away. Her advice to me about kids who were cruel to me at school was to not react at all (freeze) and then they would get bored and move on to another person because they would get nothing from me.
It turns out that doesn’t work. It never worked for her, not when she was molested by someone she should have been able to trust, not when she was treated like she was not worth as much as other people, not when she lived in fear of my father for most of my life.
As she grew older, she started to say things she wished she could internalize and wished she could do. She gave wonderful advice but found herself unable to make it real in her own life. The more I learned about psychology, trauma, grief, and resilience the more I taught her about how to help herself find some safe space within her mind. It didn’t really work. She was just too afraid.
The saddest thing, for me alone, about it was that she so very desperately wanted to see me happy. She wanted to see me working a job I loved, living a life in a supportive community, and with someone who loved me especially dearly. She never got to see that. She died still worried about me, knowing I was alone in the world but for her and that I might not be ok. That breaks my heart.
So, that being said, what happens after someone you love dies is that you have to make some choices about their remains, the ceremony, the location, the after party, etc…
I recommend that you not do what I did.
I organized a ceremony and after party for everyone but myself. Not surprisingly, the majority of the attendees didn’t give a single shit about me and how I was coping. I appreciate the people who came up to me and asked how I was doing with genuine concern. They were few and far between.
I also appreciated the people (blood relatives) who sat with me and laughed and talked about a lot of nothing. Though it was crushing that, unlike the funerals we’ve had for male members of the family, there was not the drinking and crying and laughing and telling stories about my mom. Maybe it was precisely because her life was so sad or maybe my family really doesn’t care about its women. At this point, I know I can do nothing about it so it really doesn’t matter.
Some of the attendees had an invitation only party without us.
It took me months to process that.
While my family was sitting in a hotel lobby (because I forgot to reserve a suite while working an unforgiving job, struggling with my own health issues, and managing my poor little dog’s disc disease… that’s what happens when you’re alone in the world, balls drop) some other folks were comfortably in a house. Did I mention we weren’t invited? We weren’t.
So that’s what happens after. A lot of business happens, with a lot of phone calls and mistakes. I imagine it would have been better if I hadn’t been doing it mostly alone but who knows.
And then the services happen. I hope that no one tells you to behave yourself when someone you love dies. That shouldn’t happen to anyone.
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Where Do We Go From Here?
Posted at 9:18 pm , on June 6, 2018
Writing this now is extremely difficult for me but on the chance that it will help someone I want to navigate the pain. I don’t want to hurt myself, even though that’s been my way of coping with stress and shame and loss. I want to clarify my thoughts so that what I know might help you. I plan to write out the whole story for anyone who wants to read the whole thing but if you’re in a hurry or don’t like my writing style, here is a list.
Admittedly, it will be different for everyone but there are some consistent themes.
Here’s my bullet point list:
- Get a second opinion. Maybe get a third opinion. If something doesn’t feel right DO NOT BE AFRAID to challenge the doctors. They may have developed a very aggressive way of being to get through medical school but that doesn’t mean your intuition is wrong!
- It is NEVER too soon to start planning your funeral. If the person with a cancer diagnosis or other serious disease is not ready to talk about it, there are death doulas and therapists who specialize in working with fear to allow a person to look honestly at planning for the worst. We all die. It’s never too early!
- Look at all of the options for final disposition of remains. Home funerals are legal in some places. There are more environmentally friendly methods if you are interested in lowering your impact. There are so many advances and options. The Order of the Good Death is an excellent starting place.
- That said, make sure anyone who might be in a position of having to make medical or funeral decisions has access to any and all necessary paperwork. DO NOT leave them hanging. It is a terrible position to be in to have a doctor ask you if they should resuscitate your loved one when you don’t know what they wanted when they wrote their directive.
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Blues for Persephone 