Keeping on keeping on
The closer we get to the day when I'll be heading upstate, the more spontaneous crying jags I go on. Yesterday staring at a spot on the subway floor, this morning in the shower. And the more spontaneous crying jags I go on, the better I feel. The feeling, not only after but during these crying jags, is one of relief. As in, "Thank God I'm crying; I haven't in a while and I was beginning to worry about that." It's sort of a truism that crying is an emotional catharsis, and that healing only happens when you've gone "through the process." But to actually experience the simultaneity of the crying and the relief, with their components of pain and healing happening together as a joint occurrence is something like seeing a famous painting you've seen elsewhere in reproductions in person for the first time, and the painting strikes you, you get the painting, you understand it, the epic human sense it makes is revealed to you.
*
Talking to my mother this morning has drudged up the good question about moderation in grief. I've written about this issue before; there's a post somewhere below this one in which I argue for a direct confrontation with the source of the trauma, and as a result for the return home, where this confrontation can take place. And in a related way the two poles my questioning this morning must slalom through are these: should one carry out that confrontation, or should one "get on with things", "get back to work," et cetera. I'm not disavowing my previous argument, but rather I'm trying to deepen it and contextualize it.
I watched some "Sex and the City" the other night, and uptight success story Miranda Hobbs, who's recently had a baby, is at her law firm fending off accusations that her dedication's flagged or that she's not up to the workload. Having defended herself ably and gotten rightfully indignant, she leaves the "We're worried about you" meeting with the following send-off: "And may I remind you that when my mother died, I was back in the office on Monday." I had a strong reaction against that idea; fictional character or not, Miranda seemed to be so dead wrong that she got me shaking my head.
But then at the same time we hear these strictures and tenets about "keeping busy", how you've got to "keep on keeping on" (which I'll be the first to admit is one of the catchier substitutes for "Life goes on" that I've ever heard).
I hate to say it but it's becoming clear to me how cliche the solution really is, and it only remains for me to say it: the solution involves moderation. You've got to keep on keeping on, yes. You've got to return to work; you've got to fend off accusations that you're not up to the work you know you're up to. But you've got to confront the troubles that have developed in you as well; part of what you've got to keep on keeping on with is the psychic distillation, packaging, and exporting of the stuff in your head and heart. I'm using the 2nd person a lot here but we all know whom we're talking about. My mother said something about being a homebody, which I've always been myself no surprise there, and yet at the same time her need to get out of the house at least once a day. She's been working a rather demanding schedule as Kay Jewelers' A-#1 salesperson and her success has impressed me in the extreme. (She reads this site and this is nothing I don't share with her in person myself.) Neither is there any surprise in the idea that good psychic health requires changes of scenery and social interaction and the other hallmarks of civilized, connected modern life. But being there in that house, especially at dinner time, is, she reports, difficult. As is would and should be. Hearing about that difficulty makes me want to experience it. Another friend of mine lost her brother-in-law to suicide some years ago; she'd been living in New York City and moved home to help her sister out. I heard this story on the downtown D two nights ago. "It's important," my friend said, which didn't really resonate with me until she continued and said, "It's priceless," and something in my face made her continue further to elaborate on what was priceless, namely "The time you spend together in that first year or two afterwards... that time you can all just be in the same place with people who are on the same page as you." It wasn't until I heard my friend say these things and echo, in her own words, the thoughts I'd had about the virtues of heading home, that I became well and finally convinced about those virtues.
So I suppose these examples - my mother, my friend on the D - demonstrate the effective balance it's possible to strike between getting on in a "life goes on" sort of way as well as a "I've got some serious grief to experience" sort of way. It's hard to make headway on the latter, especially in New York, because the city goes on, the city is largely deathless it can sometimes seem, the city functions at a constant energy level and requires your couple of volts if you're to be in it. I suggest however that the body and the mind aren't infinitely charged, and there's a certain necessity to husband your fund of voltage and power for the more important activities - I think here of "Apollo 13" in which the Odyssey command module has only so much remaining battery power and may not be able to return home, which would have been a tragedy indeed, but they did make it home, which was a relief.
*
Talking to my mother this morning has drudged up the good question about moderation in grief. I've written about this issue before; there's a post somewhere below this one in which I argue for a direct confrontation with the source of the trauma, and as a result for the return home, where this confrontation can take place. And in a related way the two poles my questioning this morning must slalom through are these: should one carry out that confrontation, or should one "get on with things", "get back to work," et cetera. I'm not disavowing my previous argument, but rather I'm trying to deepen it and contextualize it.
I watched some "Sex and the City" the other night, and uptight success story Miranda Hobbs, who's recently had a baby, is at her law firm fending off accusations that her dedication's flagged or that she's not up to the workload. Having defended herself ably and gotten rightfully indignant, she leaves the "We're worried about you" meeting with the following send-off: "And may I remind you that when my mother died, I was back in the office on Monday." I had a strong reaction against that idea; fictional character or not, Miranda seemed to be so dead wrong that she got me shaking my head.
But then at the same time we hear these strictures and tenets about "keeping busy", how you've got to "keep on keeping on" (which I'll be the first to admit is one of the catchier substitutes for "Life goes on" that I've ever heard).
I hate to say it but it's becoming clear to me how cliche the solution really is, and it only remains for me to say it: the solution involves moderation. You've got to keep on keeping on, yes. You've got to return to work; you've got to fend off accusations that you're not up to the work you know you're up to. But you've got to confront the troubles that have developed in you as well; part of what you've got to keep on keeping on with is the psychic distillation, packaging, and exporting of the stuff in your head and heart. I'm using the 2nd person a lot here but we all know whom we're talking about. My mother said something about being a homebody, which I've always been myself no surprise there, and yet at the same time her need to get out of the house at least once a day. She's been working a rather demanding schedule as Kay Jewelers' A-#1 salesperson and her success has impressed me in the extreme. (She reads this site and this is nothing I don't share with her in person myself.) Neither is there any surprise in the idea that good psychic health requires changes of scenery and social interaction and the other hallmarks of civilized, connected modern life. But being there in that house, especially at dinner time, is, she reports, difficult. As is would and should be. Hearing about that difficulty makes me want to experience it. Another friend of mine lost her brother-in-law to suicide some years ago; she'd been living in New York City and moved home to help her sister out. I heard this story on the downtown D two nights ago. "It's important," my friend said, which didn't really resonate with me until she continued and said, "It's priceless," and something in my face made her continue further to elaborate on what was priceless, namely "The time you spend together in that first year or two afterwards... that time you can all just be in the same place with people who are on the same page as you." It wasn't until I heard my friend say these things and echo, in her own words, the thoughts I'd had about the virtues of heading home, that I became well and finally convinced about those virtues.
So I suppose these examples - my mother, my friend on the D - demonstrate the effective balance it's possible to strike between getting on in a "life goes on" sort of way as well as a "I've got some serious grief to experience" sort of way. It's hard to make headway on the latter, especially in New York, because the city goes on, the city is largely deathless it can sometimes seem, the city functions at a constant energy level and requires your couple of volts if you're to be in it. I suggest however that the body and the mind aren't infinitely charged, and there's a certain necessity to husband your fund of voltage and power for the more important activities - I think here of "Apollo 13" in which the Odyssey command module has only so much remaining battery power and may not be able to return home, which would have been a tragedy indeed, but they did make it home, which was a relief.
posted by Wil at
7:41 AM
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