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 Wild (2012)

  “Can I ride my horse?” my mother asked the real doctor. She sat with her hands folded tightly together and her ankles hooked one to the other. Shackled to herself. In reply, he took a pencil, stood it upright on the edge of the sink, and tapped it hard on the surface. “This is your spine after radiation,” he said. “One jolt and your bones could crumble like a dry cracker.” We went to the women’s restroom. Each of us locked in separate stalls, weeping. We didn’t exchange a word. Not because we felt so alone in our grief, but because we were so together in it, as if we were one body instead of two. I could feel my mother’s weight leaning against the door, her hands slapping slowly against it, causing the entire frame of the bathroom stalls to shake. Later we came out to wash our hands and faces, watching each other in the bright mirror. We were sent to the pharmacy to wait. I sat between my mother and Eddie in my green pantsuit, the green bow miraculously still in my hair. There was a big bald boy in an old man’s lap. There was a woman who had an arm that swung wildly from the elbow. She held it stiffly with the other hand, trying to calm it. She waited. We waited. There was a beautiful dark-haired woman who sat in a wheelchair. She wore a purple hat and a handful of diamond rings. We could not take our eyes off her. She spoke in Spanish to the people gathered around her, her family and perhaps her husband. “Do you think she has cancer?” my mother whispered loudly to me. Eddie sat on my other side, but I could not look at him. If I looked at him we would both crumble like dry crackers. I thought about my older sister, Karen, and my younger brother, Leif. About my husband, Paul, and about my mother’s parents and sister, who lived a thousand miles away. What they would say when they knew. How they would cry. My prayer was different now: A year, a year, a year. Those two words beat like a heart in my chest. That’s how long my mother would live. “What are you thinking about?” I asked her. There was a song coming over the waiting room speakers. A song without words, but my mother knew the words anyway and instead of answering my question she sang them softly to me. “Paper roses, paper roses, oh how real those roses seemed to be,” she sang. She put her hand on mine and said, “I used to listen to that song when I was young. It’s funny to think of that. To think about listening to the same song now. I would’ve never known.” My mother’s name was called then: her prescriptions were ready. “Go get them for me,” she said. “Tell them who you are. Tell them you’re my daughter.”

• From Bold Move

  This experience was really painful for me, and it took me months to be able to sit early in the mornings and work through this reflection and feel the pain. At first it was just raw pain and tears, like the fire that my patient Miriam referenced. Some mornings I would allow myself to cry, and some mornings I would just be angry. But slowly the intensity came down and I could really start to look behind that pain and ask myself: What value of mine would I have to not care about for this pain not to exist? I kept asking myself, Why is this still hurting so much? And I finally arrived at my answer: trust . Trust is one of my core values, and one that is really challenging for me. As an adult I understand that I was never able to trust my father. He was simply too unreliable. Of course, my wonderful mom was always there, so that has long been my model for trust. But I had also seen early in life how she couldn’t trust my father either, so trust has always felt like a precious stone that I only share with those who are closest to me. This is not uncommon for individuals who have had traumatic experiences, especially early on in life.18 So the experience with Robert hurt so much because I felt I could no longer trust him, and all the memories that are associated with this time in my life are related to a violation of trust in some form or another. So for me to have been able to say, “To hell with Robert; he’s out of line!” without any pain, I would have needed to not care about trust, and that just isn’t me. I need to trust those around me to feel safe in the world so I can function, and that is why this experience hurt so much. After identifying the value behind my pain, I was able to start healing and find a way to really consider what I would do today if I hit a similar crossroad. For some of you reading, if you were to be in my situation with Robert, trust might not have been what impacted you the most. It could have been another value, like integrity, truth, or fairness. The value that was compromised is unique to me and my views of the world, but the underlying principle is universal to all of us. For example, if you really care about growth but find yourself in a job where you are constantly underperforming or being asked to do things that you feel underutilize or stymy you, you will likely feel stress in your work life. Similarly, if you care about justice but find yourself in situations where there is constant injustice, you can expect to feel strong emotions.

• From Wild (2012)

  The last couple of days of her life, my mother was not so much high as down under. She was on a morphine drip by then, a clear bag of liquid flowing slowly down a tube that was taped to her wrist. When she woke, she’d say, “Oh, oh.” Or she’d let out a sad gulp of air. She’d look at me, and there would be a flash of love. Other times she’d roll back into sleep as if I were not there. Sometimes when my mother woke she did not know where she was. She demanded an enchilada and then some applesauce. She believed that all the animals she’d ever loved were in the room with her—and there had been a lot. She’d say, “That horse darn near stepped on me,” and look around for it accusingly, or her hands would move to stroke an invisible cat that lay at her hip. During this time I wanted my mother to say to me that I had been the best daughter in the world. I did not want to want this, but I did, inexplicably, as if I had a great fever that could be cooled only by those words. I went so far as to ask her directly, “Have I been the best daughter in the world?” She said yes, I had, of course. But this was not enough. I wanted those words to knit together in my mother’s mind and for them to be delivered, fresh, to me. I was ravenous for love. [image file=image_rsrc2VM.jpg] My mother died fast but not all of a sudden. A slow-burning fire when flames disappear to smoke and then smoke to air. She didn’t have time to get skinny. She was altered but still fleshy when she died, the body of a woman among the living. She had her hair too, brown and brittle and frayed from being in bed for weeks. From the room where she died I could see the great Lake Superior out her window. The biggest lake in the world, and the coldest too. To see it, I had to work. I pressed my face sideways, hard, against the glass, and I’d catch a slice of it going on forever into the horizon. “A room with a view!” my mother exclaimed, though she was too weak to rise and see the lake herself. And then more quietly she said: “All of my life I’ve waited for a room with a view.” She wanted to die sitting up, so I took all the pillows I could get my hands on and made a backrest for her. I wanted to take her from the hospital and prop her in a field of yarrow to die. I covered her with a quilt that I had brought from home, one she’d sewn herself out of pieces of our old clothing. “Get that out of here,” she growled savagely, and then kicked her legs like a swimmer to make it go away.

• From The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness (2004)

  That had hit home, and I returned to my script and started again. This time, I made myself remember some of the more positive things about the convent years. I recalled the excitement of those first days in the postulantship, when I had been convinced that I had embarked on the road to holiness; the beauty of the liturgy; the kindness of some of my superiors; and the grief that I had felt when it had become clear that I must leave. I realized that the order had itself been undergoing a painful period of transition. For the first time in years, I allowed myself to feel the attraction of the ideal that had propelled me into the convent and kept me there. June had been far more satisfied with this second attempt. A final draft, with some fine-tuning and additions, took only a few weeks, and the manuscript was ready for the publishers. It had been sold at auction just a year after Sally had sat me down at her father’s desk and forced me to make a start. I had told the headmistress about the book, of course, and promised that I would confine my writing to the school holidays and weekends, so that it did not detract from my schoolwork. She had smiled and wished me luck. I see now that she probably expected the book to creep humbly into the back of the book-stores, gain a couple of kind notices in some obscure religious journals, and die an early death. That did not happen. June had sold the serial rights to a tabloid newspaper, which had also run a big interview with me, complete with photographs, in the Sunday edition. There were more profiles and photographs in some of the women’s magazines, and I had appeared on several radio and television programs. The children were agog, arriving in school each day brandishing copies of the Express and looking at me with new eyes. I was no longer just a boring teacher who nagged them about their punctuation, but had suddenly acquired celebrity status and had a kinky past. Of course, it was only a nine days’ wonder, and by the time I received my quietus from the school, the excitement had long subsided. The head had never remonstrated with me about the fuss, but she did not need to. A grim air of disapproval and reserve had made her position quite clear. This kind of notoriety was not what she expected from her staff. I myself had doubts about the wisdom of this publicity. Writing Through the Narrow Gate had been an act of restoration and self-discovery. It had redeemed the time I had spent in the religious life and set it in proper perspective. As I had unearthed more and more layers of the experience, I had felt that I was reclaiming my past.

• From The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness (2004)

  But this long exposure to the crusading ethos had another effect on me that was just as long-lasting. It broke my heart. The sheer horror of what I was now forced to study day after day, month after month, and—as it turned out—year after year breached the barricades I had erected to block out strong feeling. This material was so distressing that I could not approach it in the slick, cerebral spirit that had characterized my television work hitherto. As with Saint Paul, I began to feel emotionally involved. The story of the Crusades was a hideous chronicle of human suffering, fanaticism, and cruelty. I read of massacres in which the blood had flowed up to the knees of the Crusaders’ horses; of Jews herded into their synagogues and burned alive; and of women and children raped and slaughtered. An Anglican bishop recently rebuked me during a radio discussion for my condemnation of crusading. It had simply been Europe “flexing its muscles” and “getting a little carried away.” I was unable to reply, because I found this one of the most shocking remarks I had ever heard. These crimes were committed deliberately and in cold blood. The Crusaders enjoyed hating their victims. When an eyewitness described the conquest of Jerusalem in July 1099, in which some forty thousand Jews and Muslims were massacred in two days, he crowed in delight that this was a “glorious” day and the most important historical event since the crucifixion of Jesus. Living with this sorry tale of murderous bigotry was very different from living with Saint Paul. There was nothing inspiring about it. Instead, I was forced to confront the darkness of the human heart: we were beings who positively loved to hate our own kind. My heart was beginning to thaw. For the first time in years, I was able to feel the pain of other human beings. Why had this happened now? One reason was certainly my improved health. Now that the drugs were effectively stabilizing my faulty brain rhythms, I no longer saw everything from a great distance or through a hazy screen. I felt as though I had been plugged in, like an electrical appliance, and suddenly come to life. To paraphrase my friend Saint Paul, instead of experiencing reality as through a glass darkly, I could now see it face-to-face. This meant that nothing now interposed itself between the material I was studying and my emotional and intellectual reflexes. It was also true that, working as I was in Israel, I was out of my usual environment, and could no longer operate on automatic pilot. Removed from the reflexive skepticism of Channel 4, I could not simply dismiss the Crusaders as “bonkers.”

• From Worried about Everything Because I Pray about Nothing (2022)

  Then we hope that the fragmented thoughts or demons or whatever is rattling around inside their heads get cleared out by morning. Side note: It’s even harder to shut down a kid at night than to shut down your word processor and forty-seven documents. I’m straying from the topic. Complaining about parenting is therapeutic, though, so thank you for listening. You can send me your bill. Prayer is a bit like resetting your soul. And just as with computers and small children, how exactly it helps can seem like a bit of a mystery. God’s ways are higher than our ways, after all. I know that when I pray, it settles and focuses my mind. It clears out some of those fragmented things—thoughts, projects, hurt, sin, emotions, challenges, plans—that rattle around in my soul. It definitely helps expel a few inner demons. Spending a few minutes in prayer refreshes us on the inside. It gives us a clean start and a new beginning. Prayer helps us process the things we have on our hearts and in our brains. In a sense, prayer is like going through those unsaved documents, deciding whether to save them or delete them or finish them, then closing them down and clearing up some headspace. There is a lot of pain, confusion, and trauma in life, but the Holy Spirit helps us work through those things. He gives us understanding into what matters and what doesn’t, what can be discarded and what we should hold on to. DEAR GOD, ARE YOU SERIOUS? Being able to process our pain, doubts, and trauma in God’s presence is part of an emotionally healthy spiritual walk. It’s also something that God-followers have done for thousands of years. Just look at the book of Psalms. David was an incredible example of someone who knew how to take things to God in prayer. When you read his psalms, you often see a progression that looks something like this: Pain: complaint, suffering, sorrowProcessing: struggling with the contradictionsPrayer: turning to God for helpProclamation: affirming faith and trust in GodPeace: settled, calm, and expectantIn other words, his prayers—just like ours—were dynamic. He learned and grew as he prayed. You don’t pray from a place of perfection. Your prayers are not carefully crafted, emotionless, self-controlled speeches to God. They come from the heart. If they don’t, they aren’t really prayer. You pray from a place of need, trust, humility, and even desperation. And as you pray through your circumstances, you find something happening on the inside. You change. You learn. You grow. And eventually, you reset. You sort through the fragmented thoughts that were holding you back. You work through the emotions that were taking so much of your focus. You find yourself once again full of faith and courage. This five-point progression isn’t a formula to follow, but rather an illustration of the dynamic nature of prayer. Let’s look at Psalm 22 as an example. 1.

• From The Art of Memoir

  Then there was the pain. A breaking and entering when even the senses are torn apart. The act of rape on an eight-year-old body is a matter of the needle giving because the camel can’t. The child gives, because the body can and the mind of the violator cannot. I thought I had died. Her sense of culpability mirrored my own, and my conviction that she was innocent helped me start to think I might be too. “Mr. Freeman had surely done something very wrong, but I was convinced that I had helped him to do it.” (When the rapist was freed early and found kicked to death behind the slaughterhouse, I felt a sick sense of justice.) Yet when Angelou’s in college and sleeps with a boy, there’s zero description. Kathryn Harrison’s college beau is likewise never described in any intimate way—nor her sexual reactions. Mary McCarthy’s Memories of a Catholic Girlhood comes closest to the subject, but she has more erotic feelings when she buys a book: “I was tremendously excited by this act. It was the first expensive book I had ever bought with my own money.” Compare this to her impressions of the married man she drinks and makes out with in a hotel. I grew a little tired of his kisses, which did not excite me, perhaps because they were always the same. . . . I was only precocious mentally and lived in deadly fear of losing my virtue, not for moral reasons, but from the dread of being thought “easy.” Later, when in How I Grew she loses her virginity, she’s also completely without desire as she makes out with her guy in a parked car: I was wildly excited but not sexually excited. At the time, though, I was unaware of there being a difference between mental arousal and specific arousal of the genital organs. This led to many misunderstandings. . . . In fact, he became very educational, encouraging me to sit up and examine his stiffened organ, which to me looked quite repellent, all flushed and purplish. . . . Of the actual penetration, I remember nothing. It was as if I had been given chloroform.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  He hesitated ; I kicked at his ankle with my foot until he stepped away.‘You are not yourself, Nan -’‘Get out!’‘I am afraid to leave you -’‘Get out!’He flinched. ‘I shall go beyond the door - no further.’ Then he looked at Kitty, and when she nodded he left, closing the door behind him very gently.There was a silence, broken only by the sound of my ragged breathing, and Kitty’s gentle weeping: just so had I seen my sister weep, three days before. Nothing that Kitty ever did was good! she had said. I placed my cheek upon the counterpane where it covered Kitty’s thighs, and closed my eyes.‘You made me think he was your friend,’ I said. ‘And then you made me think he didn’t care for you, because of us.’‘I didn’t know what else to do. He was only my friend; and then, and then-’‘To think of you and him - for all that time -’‘It wasn’t what you think, before last night.’‘I don’t believe you.’‘Oh Nan, it’s true, I swear! Before last night - how could there have been anything? - before last night, there was only talk and - kisses.’Before last night ... Before last night I had been glad, beloved, content, secure: before last night I had known myself so full of love and desire I thought I should die of it! At Kitty’s words I saw that the pain of my love was not a tenth, not a hundredth, not a thousandth part of the pain I should suffer, at her hands, now.I opened my eyes. Kitty herself looked ill and frightened. I said, ‘And the - kisses: when did they start?’ But even as I asked it, I guessed the answer: ‘That night, at Deacon’s ...’She hesitated - then nodded; and I saw it all again, and understood it all: the awkwardness, the silences, the letters. I had pitied Walter - pitied him! When all the time it had been I who was the fool; when all the time they had been meeting, whispering together, caressing ...The thought was a torment to me. Walter was our friend - mine, as well as hers. I knew he loved her, but - he seemed so old, so uncle-ish, still. Could she ever, really, have brought herself to want to lie with him? It was as if I had caught her in bed with my own father!I began, once more, to weep. ‘How could you?’ I said through my tears: I sounded like a stage husband in some penny gaff. ‘How could you?’ Beneath the blankets I felt her squirm.‘I didn’t like to do it!’ she said miserably. ‘At times I could hardly bear it -’‘I thought you loved me! You said that you loved me!’‘I do love you!

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  I looked at her, and at Cyril — at his flushed and sleeping face, with its delicate lashes and its jutting pink lip. I said, with a kind of creeping dread: ‘And then ... ?’She blinked. ‘And then - well, then she died. She was too slight, the confinement was a hard one; and she died. We couldn’t even find a midwife who would see to her, because she was unmarried - in the end we had to bring a woman in from Islington, someone who didn’t know us, and say that she was Ralph’s wife. The woman called her “Mrs Banner” - imagine that! She was good enough, I suppose, but rather strict. She wouldn’t let us in the room with her; we had to sit down here and listen to the cries, Ralph wringing his hands and weeping all the while. I thought, “Let the baby die, oh, let the baby die, so long as she is safe... !”‘But Cyril did not die, as you see, and Lilian herself seemed well enough, only tired, and the midwife said to let her sleep. We did so - and, when I went to her a little later, I found that she’d begun to bleed. By then, of course, the midwife had gone. Ralph ran for a doctor - but she couldn’t be saved. Her dear, good, generous heart bled quite away -’Her voice failed. I moved to her and squatted beside her, and touched my knuckles to her sleeve; and she acknowledged me kindly, with a slight, distracted smile.‘I wish I’d known,’ I said quietly; inwardly, however, it was as if I had myself by the throat, and was banging my own head against the parlour wall. How could I have been so foolish as not to have guessed it all? There had been the business of the birthday - the anniversary, I realised now, of Lilian’s death. There had been Florence’s strange depressions; her tiredness, her crossness, her brother’s gentle forbearance, her friends’ concern.

• From Real Sex for Real Women (2008)

  Try to bring a little humor into your life. Watch a funny movie together, put on a favorite CD and dance, or spend some time chasing a ball around the garden with your children. Do whatever it takes to change the mood from stress and tension to a more fun and relaxing atmosphere. Take turns nurturing each other. When one person is having a bad week at work, for example, the other could make a commitment to cook dinner or put the kids to bed. A healthy relationship is based on give-and-take. Even if you don’t initially feel like having sex when you come home after a hard day, being intimate with your man rather than starting a fight with him may awaken your sexual desire. And an orgasm will defeat stress every time. Mind spaceMeditation can teach you to still your mind and focus on the present, so joining a yoga class can be helpful in managing stress. Breath and body control combine to leave you feeling calmer and more rational. And any activity that distances you from domestic, work, or other stress is helpful in keeping you focused on the important things in life, such as your well-being and your relationships with your loved ones. [image file=image_rsrc3E0.jpg] Sex and Emotional DistressOur emotions affect more than just our mood. They affect our physical and sexual health, along with our relationships. Often we don’t know how to manage negative emotions, which are a natural result of our day-to-day lives. Sadness caused by the loss of a loved one, everyday worry and anxiety, and feelings of anger toward a partner can all have a detrimental effect on sex. However, finding positive ways to deal with your distress can help to keep a sexual and emotional connection alive in your relationship. Sex during times of griefWhether you are dealing with the death of a loved one, the end of a relationship, or another cause of grief, loss is difficult to come to terms with, and causes a range of distressing symptoms, such as insomnia, anxiety, restlessness, changes in appetite, and depression. When you don’t feel like getting out of bed in the morning, it can be difficult to be in the mood for any sort of intimacy and this can affect your relationship. For some couples, sex can help. Making love allows a couple to return, albeit briefly, to a semblance of feeling normal, provided that each partner is allowed to take their time and decide whether sex feels right in the current situation. Sex can be comforting—it can offer a welcome respite from a trying time and temporarily relieve distress, and can make you feel more in control.

• From The Chronology of Water (2011)

  Yes, this title came to me long ago-when I was 26! Wait, was I ever 26? Man that seems like epochs ago. I was in a creative writing workshop with the wonderful Diana Abu-Jaber. My daughter had just died, and I was a mess-raging, grieving, self-destructing. But I did manage to make it into that creative writing classroom. I wrote a crazy short story made from seemingly random fragments. Diana looked at the rush of fragments and said Lidia, they all have something in common. Because I was a knownothing, I said, what? Water, she said. She also said, I think this is a book. I think it’s the story of your life, maybe. But at that time I was busy. Busy raging, grieving, fucking up. Later I pulled the story back out and looked at it. You know what? She was right. And I thought, if this is the story of my life, no wonder it’s in fragments. It’s got a messed up chronology because that’s how I feel about life-it’s not linear. It moves in fits and starts, doubles back, repeats or extends an image. I thought if my life has a chronology, it’s the chronology of water - the way water carved the earth, the way water carries us into the world, the way we are made of water, the way water retreats or comes. I had, in other words, with her help, found my central metaphor. That story was eventually published in The Northwest Review, and as you know, all these years later, has become the spine and bones of this book. In my house there are many rocks. What I love about rocks that you find in rivers or at the ocean’s shore is that they are the sediment of all life on the planet continuously destroyed and remade. When you hold a rock in your hand you are holding everything in existence, even space dust, and it’s traveled oceans to get to you. So fragile and yet solid - made from pieces of things - like we are. Writing restored your personal narrative that was not allowed in your father’s house while you were growing up. “My voice, she was coming. Something about my father’s house. Something about alone and water.” Does writing provide the same essential to Lidia the adult? Are the reasons you wrote then and now different?

• From Worried about Everything Because I Pray about Nothing (2022)

  Joshua probably thought he needed strategies, weapons, and warriors. But God said he needed courage and he needed God’s presence. And those two things were connected. 5. Understanding Earlier I mentioned that Jesus raised Lazarus, the brother of Mary and Martha, from the dead. Before He performed the miracle, though, He talked with Mary and Martha. He listened to them. He heard their pain and saw their grief. And then He wept (John 11:35). Even though He was God, even though He knew the pain would soon end, He felt empathy and compassion. He didn’t dismiss their pain; He sat with it. He sat with them. I’m sure Mary and Martha had never felt so seen and heard as they did that day. When you pray, God sees you and hears you. His presence accompanies you and comforts you. He laments with you. He celebrates with you. He does life with you. 6. Rest Earlier I quoted Jesus’ invitation to the multitudes: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls” (Matthew 11:28–29). When we draw near to God, we find rest for our souls. I think that’s what Mary found, and it’s what Martha needed. Don’t be in a hurry to leave His presence. Sit at His feet for a while, enjoying His favor and His gaze. Let busyness dissolve and time stand still. Nothing matters more than being with Him. Joy, peace, wisdom, courage, understanding, rest—God’s presence gives us all of that and more. But ultimately, it’s less about what we get and more about who we are with. The benefits are secondary to His presence. God himself is His gift to us. And we are our gift to Him. So, once again, what do you give a God who has everything? You. You give Him you.

• From The Chronology of Water (2011)

  I still remember the counselor’s name. Dr. Akudagawa. I remember how I had to stay with friends of my parents when the three of them abandoned me for sessions. How my father never went into the basement. How she rarely came up. How my sister got closer and closer to the final act of leaving for college: exeunt daughter, stage left. How my father’s rage came to live in the house for good. How I would be what was left of her, when she gave me a piece of her hair as a keepsake. How my father’s eyes would turn. This is Not About my Sister THIS BOOK IS NOT ABOUT MY SISTER. BUT IF IT WERE, I’d tell you again that for two years before she could leave our Oedipal household she carried razor blades in her purse. I’d tell you how her colon was irrevocably messed up - how as a child I sat in the bathroom with her and held her hand every time she tried to poo. How she squeezed my little girl hand so tight I thought it might be crushed. Because it hurt that bad to shit. I’d tell you how she was born with a wandering eye, and what the Dr. who later delivered me wrote about what that might mean for infants like her - how to watch for it as a sign of danger in a child. How fathers or uncles or grandfathers might have had a hand in this particular kind of eye disorder - in certain sexual abuse cases - a penis coming too close to the still developing eyes of a child. I’d tell you how, in the end, my sister replaced my mother and father in my mind and heart, how we created a union of survival that means we are both still alive. If this book were about my sister, I’d tell you how she lived past daughter. And I’d show you a picture. A Simca station wagon. Maybe white. Maybe wood paneling. My father loved the Northwest. He loved to explore the mountains and rivers and lakes. He loved to fish and camp and hike. But his wife had a misshapen leg not good for walking and he had two daughters instead of sons, so his disappointment always came with us everywhere we went. We could never hike far enough. Never carry enough weight. Never go as deeply into the wilderness. We couldn’t fish right. We had to pee sitting down and we needed toilet paper. A crippled wife and two daughters. We couldn’t even breathe right. Ever. The Christmas I was four and my sister was 12 we drove and drove. From I-5 to Puyallup. Past Enumclaw. East on highway 7 to Elbe. Onto Highway 706 east through Ashford to Alexander’s. Then there is the entrance to Mt. Rainier National Park. I have driven it many times as an adult. That’s how I remember the path. Or so I tell myself.

• From The Chronology of Water (2011)

  All the events of my life swim in and out between each other. Without chronology. Like in dreams. So if I am thinking of a memory of a relationship, or one about riding a bike, or about my love for literature and art, or when I first touched my lips to alcohol, or how much I adored my sister, or the day my father first touched me - there is no linear sense. Language is a metaphor for experience. It’s as arbitrary as the mass of chaotic images we call memory - but we can put it into lines to narrativize over fear. AFTER THE STILLBIRTH, the words “born dead” lived in me for months and months. To the people around me I just looked … more sad than anyone could bear. People don’t know how to be when grief enters a house. She came with me everywhere, like a daughter. No one was any good at being near us. They’d accidentally say stupid things to me, like “I’m sure you’ll have another soon,” or they would talk to me looking slightly over my head. Anything to avoid the sadness of my skin. One morning my sister heard me sobbing in the shower. She pulled the curtain back, looked at me holding my empty gutted belly, and stepped inside to embrace me. Fully clothed. We stayed like that for about 20 minutes I think. Possibly the most tender thing anyone has ever done for me in my entire life. I WAS BORN cesarean. Because one of my mother’s legs was six inches shorter than the other, her hips were tilted. Gravely. Doctors told her she could not have children. I don’t know whether to admire the ferocity of her will for deciding to have my sister and me, or to wonder what kind of woman would risk killing her own infants - heads crushed by the tilted pelvis - before they could be born. My mother never believed she was “crippled.” My mother brought my sister and me into the world of my father. When the conventional doctors voiced their medical concerns to my mother, she went to another kind of doctor. An obstetrician/gynecologist who practiced alternative approaches to health. Dr. David Cheek was best known for his work using hypnosis on patients using their fingers to tell him the subconscious causes of emotional or physical illness. The process is called “ideomotor.” Particular fingers are designated (by the doctor or the patient) “yes,” “no,” and “don’t want to answer.” When the doctor asks the hypnotized patient questions the relevant finger lifts in response - even when the patient consciously thinks otherwise, or has no conscious awareness of the answer.

• From The Chronology of Water (2011)

  YOU CAN TELL A LOT ABOUT A PERSON FROM SEEING them in the water. Some people freak out and spaz their way around like giant insects, others slide in like seals, turn over, dive down, effortlessly. Some people kind of tread water with big goofy smiles, others look slightly broken-armed and broken-legged or as if they are in some kind of serious pain. I swam, once, with Ken Kesey. In a man-made reservoir up near Fall Creek. Puffy with drink, his bulk rounded and bulged around his former reputation. It was night swimming. Five people, I think. Totally, completely, unapologetically, rocket shot high. The moon kept coming in and out of focus as the clouds moved around. And the water was warm yet, so it must have been late summer, but in my mind it has the crisp clarity of fall for some reason. If it had been fall we would have frozen our tits off. So sometime in late summer less than a decade before he died, we entered the waters. Man-made reservoirs smell like dirt and concrete mixed with algae. I dove down into the black and opened my eyes. Looking into lake water at night is like looking into deep space while drunk. Black, and blurry. I resurfaced and strong-armed into a glide, went down, came up again, then took a look back, and saw his unmistakable head and burled broad shoulders. “Goddamn girl, what are you, some kind of mermaid?” he said. Spitting a stream of water. Yeah. In the black reservoir water we swam around each other looking at the sky, treading water, floating on our backs and letting our feet break the surface. Sometimes Kesey’s belly rose up like an island. We shot the shit, mostly he told stories … That’s a bald faced lie. Just now I made it sound like we casually shot the shit out there, but really my brain was as numb as a wad of cotton and I couldn’t think of anything interesting to say, so I just let him talk and I don’t even remember what he said because my head was expanding and contracting like an idiot’s. And he wasn’t really in the water with me. He was on the shore. But then he must have said something from somewhere that penetrated, because I opened my mouth, and it was nothing nothing nothing words until it wasn’t nothing anymore, and I was listing all the horrible things people had said to me since my baby died. Things like: “You know, it’s probably better that she died before you got to know her.” Or: “ Well what you really want in your 20s is the freedom to party.” Or my personal favorite, from my father’s sister, fascist catholic: “The saddest part is that she’ll go to hell, isn’t it, since she wasn’t baptized.”

• From The Chronology of Water (2011)

  I had a few other encounters with her. We exchanged two letters about sexuality. I talked to her on the phone once when I thought I might be in love with a transsexual person. That’s it. And this. She read my writing and said: “You should keep doing it. Not everyone should. You should.” Kathy died in 1997 of breast cancer. Kesey died in 2001 of liver cancer. Sometimes in my head she is the good mother. He’s the good father. Me swimming in words. IV. Resuscitations A Drowning Scene MY SECOND HUSBAND WAS A CHARISMATIC NARCISSISTIC tender hearted frighteningly attractive artistic drunk. With hella black curls of hair traveling halfway down his back. And black eyes. It seemed. And a tiny zipper scar across his left wrist. My break up with Devin - poet, divine one - it took 11 years. Goddamn it. I took an informal poll of all the incredibly intelligent, intriguing, beautiful women I currently know on the question of why we find ourselves driven like moths to fire toward men who fuck us up. They said things like: “Because in loving his darkness I found my own.” Or “I learned from an early age that if it feels bad, it’s good, and if it feels good, you are bad.” Then there was the ever popular “Between slut and saint I choose slut.” And this one’s a classic of course: “Bad boys are more interesting than good ones. If you can survive it. And I still feel that way.” Also: “Suffering makes a stronger bond than love,” and “I’d rather feel alive and die than feel dead and live.” This one nearly made me cry: “He made me feel like someone somebody would risk something to choose.” But the one I personally identified with the most was, “He celebrated a death drive with me.” The first night I slept with Devin we consumed 25 bottles of Guinness and two jumbo bottles of wine. I barely remember the actual sex but I remember exactly what we drank. We listened to Jim Morrison all night in his bedroom. Strange Days and LA Woman until it felt like it was in our skin. When I woke up the next morning and looked at the desk across from the bed I saw as many bottles as I was old. I laughed and burped and went back to sleep, Devin’s arm pinning me to the bed. I didn’t feel anything about myself. It was everything to be filled with such nothing. I first met Devin at the orientation meeting for new graduate students at the University of Oregon in Eugene. It was my second year, his first.

• From The Chronology of Water (2011)

  Before he was a soldier he was an artist. Sometimes, when we were alone, I would ask my mother questions about my father when they first met. She would nearly always go into the spare bedroom, pull a shoebox down from the closet, sit down next to me, and unfold a piece of drawing paper. On the paper was a redbird. A beautifully drawn - I mean artistically stunning redbird. She would smile, and keep her eyes down, and say in her soft southern drawl almost in the voice of a girl, “Your father won an art prize for this drawing.” In the same box, she would unfold a yellowed scatter of pages filled with beautiful handwriting. “I won a prize for this story.” And then she would carefully fold it all back up, put it back in the box, return it to the closet. When I hold photos of the two of them in my hands my heart aches. My father looking all James Dean with his rolled at the cuff denims and his white muscle tee with cigarettes tucked in the sleeve and his mirror sunglasses. My mother in her 50s dresses with wide skirts and her hair tied back, her lips that were red as a coca-cola can looking black in the black and white photos. They were gorgeous. Hollywood. She was smiling. He looked like someone a woman would fall in love with. There is another photo of him sitting at a picnic table. He has khaki pants on and a white shirt. The way he is sitting? His crossed legs and bad posture and long fingers running through his thick hair? His other hand wrapped around his neck so that his elbow folds softly in? He has the body language of an artist. I know. I married three in a row. Before my father was an artist he was an athlete. I know how to tell this story. I know how to story over things.

• From Justine (Alexandria Quartet vol. 1) (1957)

  Balthazar at this moment is saying: ‘Your father said: “I cannot bear to watch it, and I do not know what to do. It is like watching a small child skipping near a powerful piece of unprotected machinery.”‘ Tears came into Clea’s eyes and slowly vanished again as she sipped her drink. ‘It is over’ she said, turning her back upon the subject and upon Balthazar in one and the same motion. She turned her sullen mouth now to the discussion of meaningless matters with Count Banubula, who bowed and swung as gallantly as Scobie’s green parrot ducking on its perch. She was pleased to see that her beauty had a direct, clearly discernible effect upon him, like a shower of golden arrows. Presently, Justine herself passed again, and in passing caught Clea’s wrist. ‘How is it?’ said Clea, in the manner of one who asks after a sick child. Justine gave the shadow of a grimace and whispered dramatically: ‘Oh, Clea — it is very bad. What a terrible mistake. Nessim is wonderful — I should never have done it. I am followed everywhere.’ They stared at each other sympathetically for a long moment. It was their first encounter for some time. (That afternoon, Pursewarden had written : ‘A few hasty and not entirely unloving words from my sickbed about this evening.’ He was not in bed but sitting at a café on the sea-front, smiling as he wrote.) Messages spoken and unspoken, crossing and interlacing, carrying the currents of our lives, the fears, dissimulations, the griefs. Justine was speaking now about her marriage which still exhibited to the outer world a clearness of shape and context — the plaster cast of a perfection which I myself had envied when first I met them both. ‘The marriage of true minds’ I thought; but where is the ‘magnificent two-headed animal’ to be found? When she first became aware of the terrible jealousy of Nessim, the jealousy of the spiritually impotent man, she had been appalled and terrified. She had fallen by mistake into a trap. (All this, like the fever-chart of a striken patient, Clea watched, purely out of friendship, with no desire to renew the love she felt for this dispersed unself-comprehending Jewess.)

• From The Chronology of Water (2011)

  I looked at him hard. Sometimes - I couldn’t help it - I wondered if the other guy was in there somewhere. Some people will know what I mean. There were moments when he looked more knowing than he should. In those moments I almost … I almost wanted him back. My father was one of the most intelligent men I have ever met. My father was an artist. My father loved art, and nature, and the life of the mind. He gave me those things. He was talking about the story “The Chronology of Water” I’d written. In it, there is a father who abuses his children and then loses his memory. A father whose daughter pulls him out of the sea. A swimmer’s story. “I like it. It’s a very good story.” “Thank you,” I said, knowing not to say more. “Not very flattering of me though.” I smiled and looked down and crossed my arms over my chest. “Fair enough. You know, I won a prize for that story. I got to go to New York.” “Isn’t that something,” he said, and whistled, and looked out at the trees. That’s the only thing we ever said to each other about anything that had happened. A father. A daughter. Recollected. I have an image of him from that time. He appears in a film short Andy made based on the same short story. My father agreed to let us film him for it. In the segment in which he appears, the film is black and white. You cannot tell from looking at him that he has lost his wits or memory. You cannot tell from looking at the square jaw and broad shoulders and intense stare that he abused his wife and daughters. You cannot tell he was an award winning architect, and before that, he had the tender hands of an artist. You cannot tell he is anything but a man who looks intense on film. I’m in the film too. In the segment in which I appear, the film is black and white. I am walking out into the ocean of the Oregon Coast. In November. I walk in waist high, and then I dive into the oncoming waves, and I swim. How I swim. My father died less than two years after my mother. His ashes were in a plastic bag about the size of a loaf of wonder bread. The ashes were white. I went to the funeral home to get them, but that’s not all I got. I had asked for his pacemaker and defibrillator. The two mechanical things attached to his heart that had kept him alive after he drowned. How strange they looked, without a body. Eventually Andy helped me smash them on the garage floor with a mallet.

• From Real Sex for Real Women (2008)

  The first time, againDating and intimacy after the death of your spouse might feel like a betrayal. You need time to recover and grieve for your loved one before starting a new relationship. After years of making love with one person, you might find you are out of practice when it comes to having sex with a new man. Share your feelings with him—he is probably as nervous as you are. Practice safe sex, even if there is no risk of pregnancy. [image file=image_rsrc3DX.jpg] Sex files: Sex after sixtyRemaining sexually active in later life is a great way to stay emotionally and romantically bonded with your partner. It also keeps you feeling young, sexy, and vibrant. This is how one couple revived their sex life, despite health problems and a belief that people over the age of 60 “don’t have sex.” [image file=image_rsrc3DY.jpg] Background Martin, 60 years old, and Victoria, 62 years old, have been married for 11 years. They have a close relationship and have supported each other through illness—Martin has diabetes and back problems, and Victoria had breast cancer, which she has just recently recovered from. The problem Victoria’s sex drive waned considerably after she was diagnosed with breast cancer, and didn’t return when she got better. This, plus the fact that they both had busy lives helping out with grandchildren, meant they hadn’t had sex in almost three years. Despite an otherwise happy relationship, Martin and Victoria were growing irritable and impatient with each other. Martin was keen to resume his sex life with Victoria, although he said he sometimes found it difficult to maintain an erection. Victoria’s response to Martin’s request for sex was, “I’m over 60. Who has sex in their 60s?” Finding solutions After assuring Victoria and Martin that many people have active sex lives well into their 60s, 70s, and beyond, I recommended that they make physical health a priority. This included healthy eating (which is of special importance for Martin because he has diabetes), daily exercise, and regular check-ups with their doctors. I reminded them that the more frequently people have sex, the more they want and enjoy it, and the more their bodies respond sexually. Next, I proposed a five-step plan to help them rebuild their sex life. The first step was to restore intimacy (and counteract impatience and irritability) by bringing back neglected tokens of affection: I asked them to use pet names for each other, buy each other little gifts, and cuddle and kiss. The second step was for Victoria to start giving herself “me” time. I wanted her to stop focusing exclusively on her grandchildren so that she could get out of her “grandma” mindset and rediscover herself as a woman. To help this process I asked her to buy a simple, no-frills clitoral vibrator to re-awaken her sexual responses.