Grief

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From I'm Not a Mourning Person (2023)

  (It’s a useful technique. You’re welcome.) Dead mouse, dead mouse, dead mouse! . . . Distraction created, crisis averted. At least temporarily. While my mind games may seem odd, we humans are wired weird for good reason. In psychology, there’s a theory known as mortality salience. It suggests that when our evolutionary drive to survive collides with our inevitable realization that we will all eventually die, we freak the fuck out. Terror ensues. And because terror is, well, terrifying, we develop clever ways to distract ourselves from it. There are millions of ways to divert attention from this terror—buy a midlife-crisis sports car, get your helicopter mom pilot’s license, hoover all the Ho Hos in a threestate radius, the list goes on and on. But my tried-and-true diversion remains two syllables long: Dead mouse! TICK. TICK. BOOM! In October of 2018, Dad’s cancer returned, and technically, it wasn’t a recurrence; it was a new diagnosis of pancreatic cancer—as if lightning had struck twice in the same frickin’ place. Within days, he was back at the hospital for another surgery, followed a few months later by more chemo. By that summer, the cancer would spread to his liver, and he would be told that his disease had become terminal. “I really thought I’d be one of the 10 percent who makes it,” he shared, as he began to wrap his mind around what that actually meant, since curing was no longer an option. Suddenly, Dad found himself walking the precarious line between living fully and actively dying, between making the most of the time he had left and simultaneously winding it all down. As this new phase set in, Dad’s behavior might not have looked different to our extended circle of family and friends, but I noticed the changes. He paused longer in conversations, smiling in wonder and awe as if he were standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon, taking in the majesty of it all while he still could. Mom and I helped him create a bucket list, and I took it upon myself to be our event planner. (The recovering perfectionist in me was thrilled at the opportunity to relapse.) Dad wanted to go to Lake Placid in the Adirondacks one more time, to sit at the water’s edge and do jigsaw puzzles by the fire. To visit his brother in Cape Cod and reminisce about the old days “and have a few good chuckles.” And to celebrate his 72nd birthday on Martha’s Vineyard and my 48th “somewhere nice.” We set out to make as many memories as possible and as quickly as possible, trip by trip. That summer was “brutiful,” as Glennon Doyle would say, both beautiful and brutal. First stop: his birthday celebration in Martha’s Vineyard. This idyllic little island off the coast of Massachusetts is known for its quaint harbor towns, sandy beaches, postcard-worthy lighthouses, and lush farmland.

• From Speak, Memory (1966)

  Her particular fondness for brown dachshunds puzzled my critical aunts. In the family albums illustrating her young years, there was hardly a group that did not include one such animal—usually with some part of its flexible body blurred and always with the strange, paranoiac eyes dachshunds have in snapshots. A couple of obese old-timers, Box I and Loulou, still lolled in the sunshine on the porch when I was a child. Sometime in 1904 my father bought at a dog show in Munich a pup which grew into the bad-tempered but wonderfully handsome Trainy (as I named him because of his being as long and as brown as a sleeping car). One of the musical themes of my childhood is Trainy’s hysterical tongue, on the trail of the hare he never got, in the depths of our Vyra park, whence he would return at dusk (after my anxious mother had stood whistling for a long time in the oak avenue) with the old corpse of a mole in his jaws and burs in his ears. Around 1915, his hind legs became paralyzed, and until he was chloroformed, he would dismally drag himself over long, glossy stretches of parquet floor like a cul de jatte. Then somebody gave us another pup, Box II, whose grandparents had been Dr. Anton Chekhov’s Quina and Brom. This final dachshund followed us into exile, and as late as 1930, in a suburb of Prague (where my widowed mother spent her last years, on a small pension provided by the Czech government), he could be still seen going for reluctant walks with his mistress, waddling far behind in a huff, tremendously old and furious with his long Czech muzzle of wire—an émigré dog in a patched and ill-fitting coat. During our last two Cambridge years, my brother and I used to spend vacations in Berlin, where our parents with the two girls and ten-year-old Kirill occupied one of those large, gloomy, eminently bourgeois apartments that I have let to so many émigré families in my novels and short stories. On the night of March 28, 1922, around ten o’clock, in the living room where as usual my mother was reclining on the red-plush corner couch, I happened to be reading to her Blok’s verse on Italy—had just got to the end of the little poem about Florence, which Blok compares to the delicate, smoky bloom of an iris, and she was saying over her knitting, “Yes, yes, Florence does look like a dïmnïy iris, how true! I remember—” when the telephone rang.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  Lisa’s father was not happy being married to Lisa’s mother. He complained that she was demanding, edgy, and uncaring. He wanted love and tenderness and, indeed, he quickly found a woman similar to his wife in age and education. By all accounts, this second marriage to Machiko, an accomplished Japanese American who was a senior executive at the Bank of America, was happy, lasting, and good for both partners. As a young adult, Lisa said, “I never want him to feel guilty about leaving my mom. He’s been a good father and a good husband to my stepmother.” But this happy second marriage does not mean everything was hunky-dory right from the start. In this family, like the others we’ve met, parent and child relationships changed after divorce. Lisa’s dad had always spent large amounts of time with her, reading her stories in the evenings, going places on weekends, making her breakfast in the morning. But as in other families, when the new stepparent objected to the amount of time he lavished on his child, he took her side. Lisa’s mother was in no position to help her. She was herself in desperate need of love and comforting. And she had almost nothing left to give her little daughter. She was frantically engaged in keeping her own feelings under control, in strengthening her position at the government agency where she was employed, and in rebuilding her social life. The message to Lisa from both parents at this time was to keep her distance and do the best she could. She was given no chance to cry by parents who truly loved her. All the adults in this saga tried their level best to protect the child by not quarreling openly. But the passions evoked by the divorce, especially jealousy between the two women, did not lessen. As everyone cooperated for the sake of Lisa, close contact between Lisa’s mother, father, and stepmother provided endless opportunity for misunderstanding, hurt, and envy. Lisa’s mother knew when and where the stepmother and father went on vacation together, when they gave a party for the former mutual friends of the couple, what gifts the stepmother received from her former husband. Lisa’s mother continued to feel that her husband’s happy remarriage was built upon her own unhappiness. This triangle remained central to Lisa’s life as she grew up. Although little was said because Lisa’s mother was a proud woman and did not dwell on her troubles, she continued to be hurt by what she considered her husband’s betrayal. Lisa was acutely aware of her mother’s loneliness and longing.

• From I'm Not a Mourning Person (2023)

  When you answer this question honestly, you will be changed in the best possible way, just like I have been. Acceptance is what will help you get there. CHAPTER 9 A WKWARD T IMES , A WKWARD P EOPLE In times of stress, the best thing we can do for each other is to listen with our ears and our hearts and to be assured that our questions are just as important as our answers. — MR. ROGERS Awkward times create awkward people—including you. Whether you’re dealing with a full-blown crisis or you’re trying to pick up the pieces after a significant loss, there are bound to be awkward and disorienting moments with those in your circle. They will say unbelievably weird and cringey things, and you will respond in weird and cringey ways too. You’ll feel discomfort when you have to ask for help because your normal bandwidth for managing life is compromised. And you’ll endure the rawness that comes from being out in the world while your heart is bleeding. When we’re in the midst of intense change, our interpersonal exchanges are subject to change, too. The rupture gives familiar dynamics the heave-ho—cue the awkwardness. But it also provides opportunities to get comfortable with discomfort. To learn new ways to express ourselves and our needs. Yay! (Just what you wanted.) This chapter, filled with tips and real-world scenarios, is meant to help both people who are grieving as well as those who love and care for them. My hope is that we all emerge feeling a little more prepared, a little less awkward, and a lot more forgiving—of ourselves and each other. I KNOW YOU MEAN WELL, BUT . . . Don’t be surprised if people do or say weird, totally confounding shit when your world falls apart. These well-meaning folks are often referred to as “grief illiterate.” This doesn’t mean they’re jerks (although it may feel like it in the moment); it just means that they’re inexperienced in handling the big emotions that accompany life’s scary moments. As we’ve well established, none of us were taught how to survive storms of this magnitude. You likely didn’t know how to, either, before this sad, bad, mad, exhausting thing happened, and then it was trial by cancer, divorce, death, or some other flavor of crisis. Let’s be real, it’s frickin’ hard to know what to do or say when someone you love is in pain. It’s also hard to know and ask for what you need when you’re the one who’s struggling. And because this rocky terrain is rarely traversed, it’s easy to slip and unintentionally do or say insensitive things. In my first book, Crazy Sexy Cancer Tips , I called the unconscious (and often insanely inappropriate) things people would say “cancer faux pas.” Stuff like, How long do you have to live? or My cousin got that and died . Super comforting (and absurd), right? Well, grief faux pas are just as common, if not more so.

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  As women of good faith we can only become familiar with the language of difference within a determined commitment to its use within our lives, without romanticism and without guilt. Because we share a common language which is not of our own making and which does not reflect our deeper knowledge as women, our words frequently sound the same. But it is an error to believe that we mean the same experience, the same commitment, the same future, unless we agree to examine the history and particular passions that lie beneath each other’s words. When I say I am Black, I mean I am of African descent. When I say I am a woman of Color, I mean I recognize common cause with American Indian, Chicana, Latina, and Asian-American sisters of North America. I also mean I share common cause with women of Eritrea who spend most of each day searching for enough water for their children, as well as with Black South African women who bury 50 percent of their children before they reach the age of five. And I also share cause with my Black sisters of Australia, the Aboriginal women of this land who were raped of their history and their children and their culture by a genocidal conquest in whose recognition we are gathered here today. I have reached down deep inside of me to find what it was we could share, and it has been very difficult, because I find my tongue weighted down by the blood of my Aboriginal sisters that has been shed upon this earth. For the true language of difference is yet to be spoken in this place. Here that language must be spoken by my Aboriginal sisters, the daughters of those indigenous peoples of Australia with whom each one of you shares a destiny, but whose voices and language most of you here have never heard. One hundred and fifty years ago, when the state of Victoria was declared a reality for european settlers, there were still 15,000 Black Aboriginal people living on this land that is now called Victoria. Where we sit now today, Wurundjeri women once dreamed and laughed and sang. They nurtured this earth, gum tree and wattle, and they were nurtured by it. I do not see their daughters sitting here among you today. Where are these women? Their mothers’ blood cries out to me. Their daughters come to my dreams nightly in the Windsor Hotel across the street from your Parliament. And their voices are haunting and brave and sad. Do you hear them? Listen very carefully, with your hearts open. They are speaking. Out of their mouths come what you have said you most want to hear. Their history is my history. While white immigrant settlers in Australia were feeding Wurundjeri women and children bread made from arsenic and flour, white immigrant settlers in North America were selling seven-year-old African girls for $35 a head.

• From Speak, Memory (1966)

  We again met in the nineteen-thirties, and were on quite amiable terms in 1938–1940, in Paris. He often dropped in for a chat, rue Boileau where I lodged in two shabby rooms with you and our child, but it so happened (he had been away for a while) that he learned of our departure to America only after we had left. My bleakest recollections are associated with Paris, and the relief of leaving it was overwhelming, but I am sorry he had to stutter his astonishment to an indifferent concierge. I know little of his life during the war. At one time he was employed as translator at an office in Berlin. A frank and fearless man, he criticized the regime in front of colleagues, who denounced him. He was arrested, accused of being a “British spy” and sent to a Hamburg concentration camp where he died of inanition, on January 10, 1945. It is one of those lives that hopelessly claim a belated something—compassion, understanding, no matter what—which the mere recognition of such a want can neither replace nor redeem. 3The beginning of my first term in Cambridge was inauspicious. Late in the afternoon of a dull and damp October day, with the sense of indulging in some weird theatricals, I put on my newly acquired, dark-bluish academic gown and black square cap for my first formal visit to E. Harrison, my college tutor. I went up a flight of stairs and knocked on a massive door that stood slightly ajar. “Come in,” said a distant voice with hollow abruptness. I crossed a waiting room of sorts and entered my tutor’s study. The brown dusk had forestalled me. There was no light in the study save for the glow of a large fireplace near which a dim figure sat in a dimmer chair. I advanced saying: “My name is—” and stepped into the tea things that stood on the rug beside Mr. Harrison’s low wicker armchair. With a grunt, he bent sideways from his seat to right the pot, and then scooped up and dumped back into it the wet black mess of tea leaves it had disgorged. Thus the college period of my life began on a note of embarrassment, a note that was to recur rather persistently during my three years of residence.

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  Sometimes she drinks a lot. Her first husband broke her heart, but she quickly married again. “The missionaries lied to us so much about our bodies,” she said, indignantly, “telling us they were dirty and we had to cover them up, and look now who is running about in bikinis on the Riviera, or naked and topless! I had a friend . . .” and she starts another story, like one most of these women tell, of a special woman friend who loved her past explaining. Sweet-faced Emily tells of the militant young comrades in Soweto, their defiance of the old ways, carrying their determination for change into the streets. She demonstrates for us a spirited and high-stepping rendition of their rousing machine-gun dance. She does not like to listen to the other women singing hymns. Emily, who loved her best friend so much she still cannot listen to the records they once enjoyed together, and it is five years already since her friend died. Linda of the hypnotic eyes who was questioned once by the South African police every single day for an entire month. About Zamani Soweto Sisters and subversive activities, such as a tiny ANC flag stitched on the little dead boy’s pocket in the corner of a funeral procession quilt. “The quilts tell stories from our own lives. We did not know it was forbidden to sew the truth, but we will caution the women never to stitch such a thing again. No, thank you, I do not wish to take a cup of tea with you.” I can hear her grave dignity speaking. She finishes the tale with a satisfied laugh. Linda has a nineteen-year-old daughter. The women joke and offer us their daughters to introduce to our sons and nephews in america. No one offers us their sons for our daughters. Mariah lives next door to a famous woman writer in Soweto and offers to carry a letter to her from Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press. Posted mail from abroad so often does not reach its destination in Soweto. Round, quick, and with a brilliant smile, Mariah sits near the top of the executive board of Zamani. There is a presence about her of a successful African market woman, sharp, pleasant, outgoing, and awake to every opportunity. Sofia keeps the books. She is quietly watchful and speaks with that soft humor that is shared by many of the women. She lives and sews alone now that her children are grown and gone away. She likes the way Gloria does her hair, and they discuss different hair preparations. Her eyes are encouraging and attentive as she sits and sews with tiny, rhythmical stitches. Vibrant young Etta of the beautiful body dances excitement in our frequent spontaneous dancing. She is also learning to run the film cameras. Etta is always laughing and full of frolic, and some of the older women watch her and shake their heads with that particular Black women’s look.

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  as the face of my black mother was bleached white by gold or Orishala and how does that measure me? I do not believe our wants have made all our lies holy. Under the sun on the shores of Elmina a black man sold the woman who carried my grandmother in her belly he was paid with bright yellow coins that shone in the evening sun and in the faces of her sons and daughters. When I see that brother behind my eyes his irises are bloodless and without colour his tongue clicks like yellow coins tossed up on this shore where we share the same corner of an alien and corrupted heaven and whenever I try to eat the words of easy blackness as salvation I taste the colour of my grandmother’s first betrayal. I do not believe our wants have made all our lies holy. But I do not whistle this man’s name at the shrine of Shopona I cannot bring down the rosy juices of death upon him nor forget Orishala is called the god of whiteness who works in the dark wombs of night forming the shapes we all wear so that even cripples and dwarfs and albinos are sacred worshippers when the boiled corn is offered. Humility lies in the face of history and I have forgiven myself for him for the white meat we all consumed in secret before we were born we shared the same meal. When you impale me upon your lances of narrow blackness before you hear my heart speak mourn your own borrowed blood your own borrowed visions singing through a foreign tongue. Do not mistake my flesh for the enemy do not write my name in the dust before the shrine of the god of smallpox for we are all children of Eshu god of chance and the unpredictable and we each wear many changes inside of our skin. Armed with scars healed in many different colours I look into my own faces as Eshu’s daughter crying if we do not stop killing the other in ourselves the self that we hate in others soon we shall all lie in the same direction and Eshidale’s priests will be very busy they who alone can bury all those who seek their own death by jumping up from the ground and landing upon their heads. from The Black Unicorn (1978) For Linda Gertrude Belmar Lorde and Frederick Byron Lorde The Face Has Many Seasons A Woman Speaks Moon marked and touched by sun my magic is unwritten but when the sea turns back it will leave my shape behind. I seek no favor untouched by blood unrelenting as the curse of love permanent as my errors or my pride I do not mix love with pity nor hate with scorn and if you would know me look into the entrails of Uranus where the restless oceans pound. I do not dwell within my birth nor my divinities

• From Giovanni's Room (1956)

  GIOVANNI'S ROOM 181 were red andwet,but he wore a strange smile, it was composed of cruelty and shame and de- light. He held out his arms andI leaned down, brushing his hair fromhis eyes. Tou smellof wine/ said Giovanni, then. 1 haven't been drinking wine.Is that what frightened you? Is thatwhy you are crying?' TS[o.' •What is the matter?' •Why have you gone away from me?' I didnot knowwhat tosay. Giovanniturned to the wall again.Ihad hoped, Ihad supposed that I would feel nothing:butI felt a tightening in a far corner of my heart, as thougha finger had touchedme there. 1 have neverreachedyou,' saidGiovanni. *You have neverreallybeen here. I donot think you have everUedtome,butI know that you have nevertold methetruth — why?Sometimes you werehereall daylong and youread or you opened thewindow oryou cooked something — and Iwatched you— and you neversaidany- thing —andyou looked at me with sucheyes, as thoughyoudid not seeme. Allday,while I worked,to make thisroom for you.' I saidnothing. I looked beyondGiovanni's headatthesquare windowswhich heldbackthe feeblemoonlight. •Whatare you doingall the time? And why do you say nothing? You areevil, youknow, andsometimes when you smiled at me, Ihated you. I wanted to strike you.I wantedtomake you bleed. You smiled at metheway you smiled 182 JamesBaldwin at everyone, you toldme whatyou told every- one —and you tell nothingbut lies. Whatare youalways hiding?And do youthink I did not knowwhenyou madeloveto me, you were makingloveto noone?No one! Oreveryone — but not me,certainly. I amnothing to you, nothing,andyou bringme feverbutno delight.** I moved, looking fora cigarette. They were in myhand. I litone.Ina moment, I thought, I willsay something. I willsay something and then Iwillwalkoutof thisroomforever. Touknow I cannot be alone.I have told you. Whatisthe matter?Can we neverhave a life together?' He began to cryagain. I watched the hot tears roll from the comersof his eyes ontothe dirtypillow. Ifyoucannotlove me,Iwill die. Before you cameI wanted to die, I havetold youmany times.Itiscruelto havemademewant to live onlyto makemy death morebloody.' I wanted to say so many things. Yet,when I openedmymouth, I madeno sound.Andyet — I donotknow whatI felt forGiovanni. Ifelt nothingfor Giovanni.I felt terrorandpity and a rising lust. He tookmycigarette frommylipsand puffed on it, sitting up in bed, hishair inhis eyes again. 1 have neverknownanyone like youbefore. I was neverlikethisbefore you came. Listen. In Italy Ihad a woman and shewasvery good to me. She lovedme,she loved me, and she

• From Giovanni's Room (1956)

  28 James Baldwin in alowvoice, with a pained, a marvellous intensity, TDon'tworry, David. You're going to be allright. You're going tobeall right.' Istillcould not sayanything. I simply watchedhis face, Toukids were mighty lucky,' he said, trying to smile. Tou're the onegotsmashed up the most.' 1wasdrunk,' Isaid atlast.Iwanted totell him everything — butspeaking wassuchagony. 'Don't you know,'he asked,withanairof extreme bafflement —forthis was somethinghe could allow himself to be baflBedabout — 'better than togodriving around likethat when you're drunk? You knowbetterthan that,' hesaid, severely, and pursedhis Ups.'Whyyou could allhave beenkiUed.' And hisvoice shook. I'msorry,' I said, suddenly. Tm sorry.' I did notknow how tosaywhat it was Iwas sorryfor. 'Don't be sorry,' hesaid.'Just be carefulnext time.'Hehad been patting his handkerchief betweenhis palms; now he opened his hand- kerchiefandreached out and wiped my fore- head.Tou're allI've got,' he said then, with a shy, pained grin.'Be careful.' 'Daddy,' I said. And began to cry. Andif speaking had been agony, this was worse and yetI could notstop. And my father's face changed. It became terribly old andat the same time absolutely, helplessly young. I remember being absolutely astonished, at thestiU, cold center of the storm which was occurring in me, to realize that my GIOVANNI'S ROOM 29 father had been suffering, was sufFeriJig still. Don't cry/ he said, 'don't cry/ He stroked my forehead with that absurd handkerchief as though it possessed some heahng charm. There's nothing to cry about. Everything's going to be all right.' He was almost weeping him- self. 'There's nothing wrong, is there? I haven't done anything wrong, have I?' And all the time he was stroking my face with that handker- chief, smothering me. 'We were drunk,'I said.We were drunk.' For this seemed, somehow,to explain everything. TourAunt Ellen saysit's my fault,' he said. 'She says I never raisedyou right.'He putaway, thank heaven,that handkerchief, and weakly straightened hisshoulders. *You got nothing against me,have you? Tellmeif you have?' My tears began to dry, on my faceand in my breast. *No,'I said,*no.Nothing. Honest.' 1 didthe bestIcould,'hesaid.1 really did the bestIcould.' I looked at him.And atlast hegrinned and said, Tou'regoing to beon your back for awhile but whenyou come home,while you're lying around the house,we'lltalk, huh? and try to figure out whatthe hell we're going to do with you when you getonyour feet.OK?' 'OK,' I said. For I understood, at the bottom of myheart, that wehad never talked, that now wenever would. I understood that he must never know this. When I came home he talked with me about my future but I had made up my mind. Iwas not going to go to college, I was not going

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  I heard several similar stories from children of divorce who turned down career opportunities if it meant moving the children away from their familiar surroundings. For example, Jonathan was a rising star in cancer research who turned down an offer from Harvard University because his school-age children were well settled in their California suburb and he didn’t want to disrupt their lives. “You have to know your priorities,” he told me. In thinking about these stories, I realized that the family home is a symbol for both children of divorce and children raised in intact families—but for different reasons. For one it’s a symbol of continuity. For the other it’s a symbol of what has been lost. For those raised in intact families, the childhood home is a symbol of family history. It’s the storehouse of good, bad, funny, and bitter memories—a place children can leave when they feel ready and know it will be there when they come back. Considering how much Americans move around, it’s interesting that the family home has retained its traditional meaning for these young people and that a couple like Gary and Sara were willing to make sacrifices to preserve it. I found it interesting that adults raised in intact families recognized the importance of stability for them and their children. For children of divorce, especially those in their teens or older, the family home also carries great meaning and they mourn its loss for years after the breakup. The home is the repository of the family they lost and the sense of continuity with their childhood that ended with the divorce. Some poignantly go back to the neighborhood where they grew up, gazing at the house from the outside, and sit there for hours with tears in their eyes. One young woman whose parents divorced when she was a senior in high school made regular pilgrimages during her college vacations just to see the family home and renew her memories. Will You Still Need Me … When I’m Sixty-four?THE FAMILY AS symbol of continuity plays yet another role in the lives of adults whose parents have stayed together. When I asked Gary how he got along with his parents these days, he spoke about how much closer they had become in recent years. He said, “I guess I’ve come to appreciate that my dad and I have stayed close. We talk several times a week. It’s not so much father-son as man to man. It’s a precious relationship to both of us and it gets more so as the years go by.”

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  He could not fathom his mother’s experience in this violent marriage. But the appeal of his role as stand-in for his departed father had roots that extended beyond his fear of abandonment and his genuine longing for his father. At age seven a little boy is in the process of identifying with his father and is still engaged in separating from the protective mother of his preschool years. Larry’s longing for his father as a little boy was not only built on his relationship with his father during the marriage but was also rooted in his own developmental need for his father at this time in his life. When the divorce happened, he was still an at-home little boy who had not yet entered the rougher world of play with other little boys. Had his father stayed, Larry would have been able to move gradually into this bigger, more dangerous realm. But the abrupt loss of his father pushed him forward before he was ready. Larry was not comfortable on the playground, but he could not go back to a more childish relationship with his mother. Although there’s never a good time to lose one’s father, it’s especially perilous for six-and seven-year-old boys who still have their footing in the home and are just beginning to feel comfortable in school and on the playground. It wasn’t until adolescence and adulthood, however, as I was to learn, that the destructive elements of Larry’s identification with his father clearly emerged. It is also hard for many people to understand that young children cry for wonderful loving fathers and they cry equally hard for fathers who hardly know of their existence or fathers who beat them. Larry’s sister cried all the way home after her visits with her father because he hurt her feelings so much. And then she sobbed bitterly after he left her because she was afraid that she would not see him again. At age fifteen Anja recalled, “I used to cry so hard when he drove away. I wanted my brother to run after his car and bring him back. It wasn’t till I got older that I realized how mean my dad was. I was very upset as a little girl when he always called me stupid. But that did not change my feelings. I wanted my dad at home.” The longing of children does not reflect whether the father is a beneficial influence or a destructive one. It does reflect the child’s fear of losing the parent at that developmental stage. Carol, the Prisoner W HAT IF a child is brought up in a marriage in which the parents are cruel or violent but choose not to divorce? Does an intact family—even a chaotic one—confer any de facto protections to children? Can we assume that high-conflict families are inevitably unhappy?

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  The gentleman, more dead than alive, asked the de- moiselle how the lady's illness had begun, and she told him all she had heard. He then knew that the duke had revealed his secret. His grief was so intense that, embracing the body of his mistress, he wept over it long- in silence, and at last exclaimed, " Traitor, villain, wretch that I am ! Why has not the penalty fcr my treachery fallen on me, and not on her who was innocent ? Why did not Heaven's lightning blast me the day my tongue revealed our secret and virtuous love .-• Why did not the earth open to swallow up a wretch who violated his faith ? May my tongue be punished as was that of the wicked rich man in hell ! O heart, that too much feared death and exile, may eagles tear thee perpetually as they did that of Ixion ! * Alas, my dear friend ! in thinking to hold you fast, I have lost you. I thought to possess you long alive, with virtue and pleasure, and I embrace you dead, and you have been dissatisfied to your last gasp with me, my heart, and my tongue. O most faithful of women ! I denounce myself as the most inconstant, faithless, and perfidious of men. I would I could com- plain of the duke, whose word I trusted, hoping by that means to prolong our agreeable life ; but ought I not to * The poor gentleman had but a confused knowledge of Greek fable, or grief had muddled his recollection of it Srventkday.] QUEEN OF NAVARRE. 539

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  in many different colors I look in my own faces as Eshu’s daughter crying if we do not stop killing the other in ourselves the self that we hate in others soon we shall all lie in the same direction and Eshidale’s priests will be very busy they who alone can bury all those who seek their own death by jumping up from the ground and landing upon their heads. from Chosen Poems: Old and New (1982) TO FRANCES LOUISE CLAYTON our footsteps hold this place together our decisions make the possible whole. The Evening News First rule of the road: attend quiet victims first. I am kneading my bread Winnie Mandela while children who sing in the streets of Soweto are jailed for inciting to riot the moon in Soweto is mad is bleeding my sister into the earth is mixing her seed with the vultures’ greeks reap her like olives out of the trees she is skimmed like salt from the skin of a hungry desert while the Ganvie fisherwomen with milk-large breasts hide a fish with the face of a small girl in the prow of their boats. Winnie Mandela I am feeling your face with pain of my crippled fingers our children are escaping their births in the streets of Soweto and Brooklyn (what does it mean our wars being fought by our children?) Winnie Mandela our names are like olives, salt, sand the opal, amber, obsidian that hide their shape well. We have never touched shaven foreheads together yet how many of our sisters’ and daughters’ bones whiten in secret whose names we have not yet spoken whose names we have never spoken I have never heard their names spoken. Second rule of the road: any wound will stop bleeding if you press down hard enough. Afterimages I However the image enters its force remains within my eyes rockstrewn caves where dragonfish evolve wild for life, relentless and acquisitive learning to survive where there is no food my eyes are always hungry and remembering however the image enters its force remains. A white woman stands bereft and empty a black boy hacked into a murderous lesson recalled in me forever like a lurch of earth on the edge of sleep etched into my visions food for dragonfish that learn to live upon whatever they must eat fused images beneath my pain. II The Pearl River floods through the streets of Jackson A Mississippi summer televised. Trapped houses kneel like sinners in the rain a white woman climbs from her roof to a passing boat her fingers tarry for a moment on the chimney now awash tearless and no longer young, she holds a tattered baby’s blanket in her arms. In a flickering afterimage of the nightmare rain a microphone thrust up against her flat bewildered words “we jest come from the bank yestiddy borrowing money to pay the income tax now everything’s gone. I never knew it could be so hard.”

• From Giovanni's Room (1956)

  26 James Baldwin other. Wewere notlike father and son, my father sometimes proudly said, we were like buddies. I think myfather sometimes actually believed this. I neverdid. Idid not want to be his buddy; I wanted tobehis son. What passed between us as masculine candor exhausted and appalled me. Fathers oughtto avoid utter nakedness before their sons. I did not want to know —not, anyway, fromhis mouth — thathis flesh was as unregenerate asmy own. The knowledge did notmake mefeelmore like his son — or buddy — it only made mefeellike an interloper, and afrightened oneat that. He thought we werealike, I did notwant to think so. I did not want to think that mylife would be like his, or thatmymindwouldever grow so pale, so without hardplaces andsharp, sheer drops. Hewantedno distance between US;he wanted me to look on himasa manlike myself. But Iwantedthe merciful distance of father and son, whichwould have permitted me to love him. Onenight, drunk, with several other people onthe wayback from an out-of-town party, the car Iwasdriving smashedup. Itwas entirely my fault.I was almost too drunk towalk and hadno businessdriving; but theothers did not know this, since I amone of thosepeople who can look andsound sober while practically in a state of collapse.On a straight, levelpiece of highway something weird happenedto allmy reactions, andthecar sprang suddenly outof GIOVANNI'S ROOM 27 my control. Anda telephone pole, foam-white, came crying at me out of the pitch darkness; I heard screams and thena heavy, roaring, tear- ing sound. Then everything turned absolutely scarlet and thenas bright as day and I went into a darknessI had never known before. I must have begun to wakeup as we were being moved to the hospital.I dimly remember movement and voices, but they seemed very far away, they seemedto have nothing todo with me. Then, later, I wokeup inaspot which seemed to be the very heartof winter,a high, white ceiling andwhite walls, anda hard, glacial window, bent,asit seemed, over me. I must have triedto rise,for I rememberan awful roaringin my head, and then a weight on mychestand a huge face over me.Andas this weight,this face,beganto push meunder again,Iscreamed formy mother. Thenit was darkagain. When I came tomyselfat last,myfather wasstanding overmybed. I knew he was there before Isaw him, before myeyesfocusedand I carefully turned my head.When he saw that Iwas awake, he carefully steppedcloser to the bed, motioning tome to bestill. And helooked veryold. I wanted to cry. For amomentwejust stared at each other. *Howdo you feel?' he whispered, finally. Itwas when I tried tospeak that 1realized I wasin pain and immediately I wasfrightened. He must have seen this in my eyes, forhe said

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  and sleep with their ghosts. These stones in my heart are you of my own flesh whittling me with your sharp false eyes searching for prisms falling out of your head laughing me out of your skin because you do not value your own self nor me. This is a simple poem I will have no mother no sister no daughter when I am through and only the bones are left see how the bones are showing the shape of us at war clawing our own flesh out to feed the backside of our masklike faces that we have given the names of men. Donald DeFreeze I never knew you so well as in the eyes of my own mirror did you hope for blessing or pardon lying in bed after bed or was your eye sharp and merciless enough to endure beyond the deaths of wanting? With your voice in my ears with my voice in your ears try to deny me I will hunt you down through the night veins of my own addiction through all my unsatisfied childhoods as this poem unfolds like the leaves of a poppy I have no sister no mother no children left only a tideless ocean of moonlit women in all shades of loving learning a dance of open and closing learning a dance of electrical tenderness no father no mother would teach them. Come Sambo dance with me pay the piper dangling dancing his knee high darling over your wanting under your bloody white faces come Bimbo come Ding Dong watch the city falling down down down lie down bitch slow down nigger so you want a cozy womb to hide you to pucker up and suck you back safely well I tell you what I’m gonna do next time you head for the hatchet really need some nook to hole up in look me up I’m the ticket taker on a queen of rollercoasters I can get you off cheap. This is a simple poem sharing my head with the dream of a big black woman with jewels in her eyes she dances her head in a golden helmet arrogant plumed her name is Colossa her thighs are like stanchions or flayed hickory trees embraced in armour she dances in slow earth shaking motions that suddenly alter and lighten as she whirls laughing tooled metal over her hips comes to an end and at the shiny edge an astonishment of soft black curly hair. Between Ourselves Once when I walked into a room my eyes would seek out the one or two black faces for contact or reassurance or a sign I was not alone now walking into rooms full of black faces that would destroy me for any difference where shall my eyes look? Once it was easy to know who were my people. If we were stripped of all pretense to our strength and our flesh was cut away the sun would bleach all our bones as white

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  She rocked slowly with each word. “It was the wishing and hoping that things would change and especially that my mother would become another person—a mother who loved her children and cared for them and protected them.” She put her face in her hands. “I longed so desperately for the parents that I never had.” We sat in silence for another minute until Carol recovered enough to say, “I’ve been in and out of therapy since I was thirty years old. And I’ve thought about this and know now that they couldn’t change. All my life I wanted a mom or a dad or someone I could rely on even a little. I’ve tried to stop hoping for what I’ll never have and I’ve tried to get some comfort from being a better mother someday—if I ever have children.” “You’ve had so much pain, Carol. Do you have any happy memories?” “A few when I was little. I remember that my mom used to read me Winnie the Pooh. And I remember that one Christmas we had matching black velvet dresses. I was so proud that I could look like her—we even had matching headbands and shoes with bows. I have a picture of us then—Dad’s holding me on his shoulders and he has his arm around Mom and we’re all standing in front of an enormous Christmas tree.” Carol stopped abruptly, fighting tears. “I used to have that picture in my dresser drawer when I was older. When it was bad with Mom and Dad, I’d take it out after they’d left and stare at it. I couldn’t believe it was the same parents and the same daughter. They looked so kind in the picture.” • • • C AROL’S NOSTALGIC MOOD snapped. “My parents never should have had children. I never understood why they did. They were terrible parents. They never helped us with anything. We served at their pleasure. They told us what they expected and told us what to do and what not to do. We were there to be used. If we didn’t comply, we were out. You know, it’s funny about the mix of the good and the bad. I remember being really cared for was when I was sick. Mom would fuss over me and bring me sherbet and soda. But at five o’clock, she’d be out in the living room getting the drinks ready for Daddy.” I asked Carol if she could describe her parents’ marriage in a few words. She shot back, “Codependent, dysfunctional, and passionate.” This is a topic she had thought about for years. “I know this sounds crazy, but my parents really do love each other and are committed to their relationship. They’re both in their late sixties now and they still do things together every day. They don’t ignore each other. They sleep in the same bed.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  Whether the damned can make use of the knowledge they had in this world? [*Cf. FP, Q[89]]Objection 1: It would seem that the damned are unable to make use of the knowledge they had in this world. For there is very great pleasure in the consideration of knowledge. But we must not admit that they have any pleasure. Therefore they cannot make use of the knowledge they had heretofore, by applying their consideration thereto. Objection 2: Further, the damned suffer greater pains than any pains of this world. Now in this world, when one is in very great pain, it is impossible to consider any intelligible conclusions, through being distracted by the pains that one suffers. Much less therefore can one do so in hell. Objection 3: Further, the damned are subject to time. But “length of time is the cause of forgetfulness” (Phys. lib. iv, 13). Therefore the damned will forget what they knew here. On the contrary, It is said to the rich man who was damned (Lk. 16:25): “Remember that thou didst receive good things in thy lifetime,” etc. Therefore they will consider about the things they knew here. Further, the intelligible species remain in the separated soul, as stated above (Q[70], A[2], ad 3; [5171]FP, Q[89], AA[5],6). Therefore, if they could not use them, these would remain in them to no purpose. I answer that, Even as in the saints on account of the perfection of their glory, there will be nothing but what is a matter of joy so there will be nothing in the damned but what is a matter and cause of sorrow; nor will anything that can pertain to sorrow be lacking, so that their unhappiness is consummate. Now the consideration of certain things known brings us joy, in some respect, either on the part of the things known, because we love them, or on the part of the knowledge, because it is fitting and perfect. There may also be a reason for sorrow both on the part of the things known, because they are of a grievous nature, and on the part of the knowledge, if we consider its imperfection; for instance a person may consider his defective knowledge about a certain thing, which he would desire to know perfectly. Accordingly, in the damned there will be actual consideration of the things they knew heretofore as matters of sorrow, but not as a cause of pleasure. For they will consider both the evil they have done, and for which they were damned, and the delightful goods they have lost, and on both counts they will suffer torments. Likewise they will be tormented with the thought that the knowledge they had of speculative matters was imperfect, and that they missed its highest degree of perfection which they might have acquired. Reply to Objection 1: Although the consideration of knowledge is delightful in itself, it may accidentally be the cause of sorrow, as explained above.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  BEDE. (ubi sup.) In that again which is added, And for their sakes who sat with him, he wishes to make all partakers in his guilt, that a bloody feast might be set before luxurious and impure guests. Wherefore it goes on, But sending an executioner, he commanded his head to be brought in a charger. THEOPHYLACT. ‘Spiculator’ is the name for the public servant commissioned to put men to death. BEDE. Now Herod was not ashamed to bring before his guests the head of a murdered man; but we do not read of such an act of madness in Pharaoh. From both examples, however, it is proved to be more useful, often to call to mind the coming day of our death, by fear and by living chastely, than to celebrate the day of our birth with luxury. For man is born in the world to toil, but the elect pass by death out of the world to repose. It goes on, And he beheaded him in prison, &c. GREGORY. (Mor. 3, 7) I cannot, without the greatest wonder, reflect that he, who was filled even in his mother’s womb with the spirit of prophecy, and who was the greatest that had arisen amongst those born of women, is sent into prison by wicked men, is beheaded for the dancing of a girl, and though a man of so great austerity, meets death through such a foul instrument. Are we to suppose that there was something evil in his life, to be wiped away by so ignominious a death? When, however, could he commit a sin even in his eating, whose food was only locusts and wild honey? How could he offend in his conversation, who never quitted the wilderness? How is it that Almighty God so despises in this life those whom He has so sublimely chosen before all ages, if it be not for the reason, which is plain to the piety of the faithful, that He thus sinks them into the lowest place, because He sees how He is rewarding them in the highest, and outwardly He throws them down amongst things despised, because inwardly He draws them up even to incomprehensible things. Let each then infer from this what they shall suffer, whom He rejects, if He so grieves those whom he loves.

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  marking yellow exam-books tucked into a manilla folder orderly as the last thought before death I throw the switch. Through screams of crumpled steel I search the wreckage for a ticket of hatred my lover’s voice calling a knife at her throat. In this steaming aisle of the dead I am weeping to learn the names of those streets my feet have worn thin with running and why they will never serve me nor ever lead me home. “Don’t touch it!” she cries I straighten myself in confusion a drunken woman is running away down the Westside street my lover’s voice moves me to a shadowy clearing. Corralled in fantasy the woman with white eyes has vanished to become her own nightmare a french butcher blade hangs in my house love’s token I remember this knife it carved its message into my sleeping she only read its warning written upon my face. [1981] from Our Dead Behind Us (1986) to Gloria I. Joseph tikoro nnko agyina* * Ashanti proverb: “One head cannot go into counsel”To the Poet Who Happens to Be Black and the Black Poet Who Happens to Be a Woman I I was born in the gut of Blackness from between my mother’s particular thighs her waters broke upon blue-flowered lineoleum and turned to slush in the Harlem cold 10 PM on a full moon’s night my head crested round as a clock “You were so dark,” my mother said “I thought you were a boy.” II The first time I touched my sister​alive I was sure​the earth took note but we were not new false skin peeled off like gloves of fire yoked flame​I was stripped to the tips of my fingers her song written into my palms my nostrils my belly welcome home in a language​I was pleased to relearn. III No cold spirit ever strolled through my bones on the corner of Amsterdam Avenue no dog mistook me for a bench nor a tree​nor a bone no lover envisioned my plump brown arms as wings​nor misnamed me condor but I can recall without counting eyes cancelling me out like an unpleasant appointment postage due stamped in yellow​red​purple any color except Black​and choice and woman alive. IV I cannot recall the words of my first poem but I remember a promise I made my pen never to leave it lying in somebody else’s blood. Outlines I What hue lies in the slit of anger ample and pure as night what color the channel blood comes through? A Black woman and a white woman charter our courses close in a sea of calculated distance warned away by reefs of hidden anger histories rallied against us the friendly face of cheap alliance. Jonquils through the Mississippi snow you entered my vision with the force of hurled rock defended by distance and a warning smile fossil tears​pitched over the heart’s wall for protection no other women grown beyond safety come back to tell us whispering past the turned shoulders