A new and entirely possible approach to this whole rigmarole of grieving
Feeling a gnarly, phlegmy rawness in my throat today. I blame Hector, who was sick left and right yesterday in the bookshop, but, I bear him no ill will. Just blame. Plus I can’t tell if I’m over- or undercaffineated. It’s 10 A.M., I slept in until about 9 or so, I wrote a baaaad poem and not bad in the way that means good, and my spirit is diffuse and discontented.
*
Here’s why, and you can take it as the guiding theme of this post: I hate the fact that I am not beside myself with grief more often.
*
Most people would say that this grief isn’t something that can be inspired artificially. That you need to proceed with your life as it had been before the Event, or that you must try and get your life to look and feel as near to how it had been before the Event as you can. It’s not a large or unfamiliar claim to say that this is what people mean when they refer to Being Strong and Moving On. You have to “be strong” in order to get back to work, interact normally with friends, strangers, and postal carriers, to sleep untroubled sleep.
What I’m feeling is that I don’t want to be strong in this case. I feel as though being strong—I basically quoting an earlier post of mine—is betraying Jon. The more competent I act, the madder I become. Because I feel as though I didn’t know him, because I didn’t know him as I feel a brother should know a brother, I feel an obligation and even a need to get to know him now. It is difficult to do that when I’m here in New York, when I haven’t sorted through his items, haven’t really assembled the facts of what I know into a coherent picture. And yes, yes, it may never add up into a coherent picture. But the fact that I haven’t actively worked that out to find out for myself is a rather large thorn in my side.
I HATE the fact that I’ve seemed to’ve “gotten on” with things in the wake of Jon’s suicide. (FN 1)
Even writing “Jon’s suicide” brings the Event and its upstate aftermath to mind in vivid ways that I just don’t experience on a day-in, day-out basis anymore.
When I got an email from my mother last night, which touched on the Event in all of its particularity and its ramifications for us, I felt these sorts of mental phase waves go from me and from the computer screen with the email on it, and amazingly the waves were synched up. I haven’t felt this synchronization since leaving home. Granted, this is natural: only the immediate family members are going to a) understand and b) want to discuss the particularities of what happened, and the natural affinity and familiarity family members have with each other is going to be preternaturally heightened in the wake of a profound horror like the one we’re dealing with here.
*
All of this dovetails with my more general life upheaval. I’ve allowed my “lease” (if you could use such an official word to describe this just-no-good living situation) to lapse, and that means I’ve obligated myself to move out of this place by Feb 1st. My immediate options are basically these:
One: to find another place here in New York City.
Two: to rent a truck and get myself and my belongings up to Camillus.
With some help and some connections from pals of mine, I’m making some exploratory in-roads on One. Two will be easy enough, if that’s what I decide to do. And some of you might be interested to know that Option Two, if I opt for that one, contains within itself several additional Sub-Options, some of which are a) Las Vegas, b) back to the Pacific Northwest, c) stay home and be with the family in Camillus, d) road trip it to parts unknown and set up shop somewhere completely new.
But the rub is this: the question is this: given my frustration, my anger even with the fact that I’m not actively grieving, it seems like a very attractive thing to be home such that I will be able to see Jon’s things, pictures of Jon, talk about Jon with those who knew him best… it makes a certain amount of sense to put myself right up face-to-face with the house where we all lived with Jon, the stuff Jon left, the pictures of Jon Jon didn’t care for, the food Jon stored and won’t eat now, ever. Beef jerky, for example. No one’s going to eat that stuff now. Bags of it in the cupboard beside the refrigerator (unless Mom or Melissa’s moved it).
There’s a form of therapy like this—or rather it’s a hallmark of many kinds of therapy—in which the person in therapy is gradually reintroduced to the site or the substance from which the trauma sprang. I read about this in the Times when about a month ago a young man tussling with his friend went onto the tracks along the 7 line up in Queens, and died. Subway conductors who are at the switch when a passenger falls under the train – in subway lingo it’s called a 12-9 – go on leave and undergo a pretty established system of reintroduction to the work of driving the train: first allowing months to pass with the standard therapy ongoing, then boarding the train only as a passenger and only with an accredited therapist as an buddy or escort, then riding the train in the cockpit (or whatever it’s called), and finally manning the switch themselves. It takes months if not years, and like any profound trauma the processing never really stops. But: I don’t recall if 12-9’ed subway drivers are ever asked to revisit the station where the 12-9 happened; it might be that they transfer to another line, and never drive through those tracks again.
It’s true that I’m advocating a more full-on, dive-back-in approach.
*
It’s beginning to seem like that’s the real question here. Is it possible to actively grieve rather than passively? If it’s possible, is it a good idea?
Effectively, I’m wondering about advocating for myself a brand-new approach to grieving: Not Moving On.
We hear this often: “it’s time to move on.” “Life goes on.”
Of course it does. But that does not mean that it has to go on right now. It will go on eventually, as it must. But what if one consciously decided to keep it from going on, if only for a critical little while?
I submit that this form of conscious, taking-life-by-its-bull-horns and telling it to hang on, is very different than the "wallowing" Joan Didion and the larger culture warns us against.
One could say that keeping it, life, from going on - which might seem like stasis and water-treading - is actually forward motion.
Friends of mine have been canny and right to indicate the danger in going home, especially for a twentysomething with two literary degrees of somewhat spotty workplace value. Might going home make it difficult to leave again? That’s a good question, and I think the answer is no: I’m pretty good about getting a move on when I need to – this past summer being a possible exception. And there are of course some financial and emotional benefits to being home, which should be obvious to anyone who’s in or been through their 20s. But the larger reason would be the match-to-the-palm effect of being near everything Jon had touched and existed within, and having that effect, I don’t know, wake me up.
*
Recently acquired:
The Go! Team, Thunder, Lightning, Strike!
Currently playing:
DJ Shadow, Endtroducing…
Room temperature:
Toasty.
Plans:
A very brief run around the neighborhood. Which’ll probably make me late, but meh.
*
FOOTNOTES:
FN 1: I realize that the very fact of this post and this website in sum is proof that I haven’t “gotten on” with things entirely. This post and this website When I say “gotten on with things”, then, I suppose I mean more the fact that I’m working and being cheerful to friends new and old and generally being a competent well-put-together young person. I hate being such a person. It feels disingenuous, even if it isn't in a technical sense. Somewhat oddly, this issue seems to be a monkey wrench in my 100% Honesty Project, because one could make a case that I’m hiding something from myself IN ADDITION to hiding something from others. Which means that the Communication Project is also imperiled.
FN 2: Can you see how the whole “active approach to grief” thing might leave a rotten taste in my mouth? Does it remind you of anything blogged about here on this site? That’s right, I thought of the same thing: the Video Tribute. Should the one in grief try and force behavior on oneself in the manner of the VT, which was akin to a big cartoon mallet that kept bopping anyone who viewed it for more than 10 seconds on the back of the head, and you could almost hear its inventor yelling “Cry!” at us from somewhere.
*
Here’s why, and you can take it as the guiding theme of this post: I hate the fact that I am not beside myself with grief more often.
*
Most people would say that this grief isn’t something that can be inspired artificially. That you need to proceed with your life as it had been before the Event, or that you must try and get your life to look and feel as near to how it had been before the Event as you can. It’s not a large or unfamiliar claim to say that this is what people mean when they refer to Being Strong and Moving On. You have to “be strong” in order to get back to work, interact normally with friends, strangers, and postal carriers, to sleep untroubled sleep.
What I’m feeling is that I don’t want to be strong in this case. I feel as though being strong—I basically quoting an earlier post of mine—is betraying Jon. The more competent I act, the madder I become. Because I feel as though I didn’t know him, because I didn’t know him as I feel a brother should know a brother, I feel an obligation and even a need to get to know him now. It is difficult to do that when I’m here in New York, when I haven’t sorted through his items, haven’t really assembled the facts of what I know into a coherent picture. And yes, yes, it may never add up into a coherent picture. But the fact that I haven’t actively worked that out to find out for myself is a rather large thorn in my side.
I HATE the fact that I’ve seemed to’ve “gotten on” with things in the wake of Jon’s suicide. (FN 1)
Even writing “Jon’s suicide” brings the Event and its upstate aftermath to mind in vivid ways that I just don’t experience on a day-in, day-out basis anymore.
When I got an email from my mother last night, which touched on the Event in all of its particularity and its ramifications for us, I felt these sorts of mental phase waves go from me and from the computer screen with the email on it, and amazingly the waves were synched up. I haven’t felt this synchronization since leaving home. Granted, this is natural: only the immediate family members are going to a) understand and b) want to discuss the particularities of what happened, and the natural affinity and familiarity family members have with each other is going to be preternaturally heightened in the wake of a profound horror like the one we’re dealing with here.
*
All of this dovetails with my more general life upheaval. I’ve allowed my “lease” (if you could use such an official word to describe this just-no-good living situation) to lapse, and that means I’ve obligated myself to move out of this place by Feb 1st. My immediate options are basically these:
One: to find another place here in New York City.
Two: to rent a truck and get myself and my belongings up to Camillus.
With some help and some connections from pals of mine, I’m making some exploratory in-roads on One. Two will be easy enough, if that’s what I decide to do. And some of you might be interested to know that Option Two, if I opt for that one, contains within itself several additional Sub-Options, some of which are a) Las Vegas, b) back to the Pacific Northwest, c) stay home and be with the family in Camillus, d) road trip it to parts unknown and set up shop somewhere completely new.
But the rub is this: the question is this: given my frustration, my anger even with the fact that I’m not actively grieving, it seems like a very attractive thing to be home such that I will be able to see Jon’s things, pictures of Jon, talk about Jon with those who knew him best… it makes a certain amount of sense to put myself right up face-to-face with the house where we all lived with Jon, the stuff Jon left, the pictures of Jon Jon didn’t care for, the food Jon stored and won’t eat now, ever. Beef jerky, for example. No one’s going to eat that stuff now. Bags of it in the cupboard beside the refrigerator (unless Mom or Melissa’s moved it).
There’s a form of therapy like this—or rather it’s a hallmark of many kinds of therapy—in which the person in therapy is gradually reintroduced to the site or the substance from which the trauma sprang. I read about this in the Times when about a month ago a young man tussling with his friend went onto the tracks along the 7 line up in Queens, and died. Subway conductors who are at the switch when a passenger falls under the train – in subway lingo it’s called a 12-9 – go on leave and undergo a pretty established system of reintroduction to the work of driving the train: first allowing months to pass with the standard therapy ongoing, then boarding the train only as a passenger and only with an accredited therapist as an buddy or escort, then riding the train in the cockpit (or whatever it’s called), and finally manning the switch themselves. It takes months if not years, and like any profound trauma the processing never really stops. But: I don’t recall if 12-9’ed subway drivers are ever asked to revisit the station where the 12-9 happened; it might be that they transfer to another line, and never drive through those tracks again.
It’s true that I’m advocating a more full-on, dive-back-in approach.
*
It’s beginning to seem like that’s the real question here. Is it possible to actively grieve rather than passively? If it’s possible, is it a good idea?
Effectively, I’m wondering about advocating for myself a brand-new approach to grieving: Not Moving On.
We hear this often: “it’s time to move on.” “Life goes on.”
Of course it does. But that does not mean that it has to go on right now. It will go on eventually, as it must. But what if one consciously decided to keep it from going on, if only for a critical little while?
I submit that this form of conscious, taking-life-by-its-bull-horns and telling it to hang on, is very different than the "wallowing" Joan Didion and the larger culture warns us against.
One could say that keeping it, life, from going on - which might seem like stasis and water-treading - is actually forward motion.
Friends of mine have been canny and right to indicate the danger in going home, especially for a twentysomething with two literary degrees of somewhat spotty workplace value. Might going home make it difficult to leave again? That’s a good question, and I think the answer is no: I’m pretty good about getting a move on when I need to – this past summer being a possible exception. And there are of course some financial and emotional benefits to being home, which should be obvious to anyone who’s in or been through their 20s. But the larger reason would be the match-to-the-palm effect of being near everything Jon had touched and existed within, and having that effect, I don’t know, wake me up.
*
Recently acquired:
The Go! Team, Thunder, Lightning, Strike!
Currently playing:
DJ Shadow, Endtroducing…
Room temperature:
Toasty.
Plans:
A very brief run around the neighborhood. Which’ll probably make me late, but meh.
*
FOOTNOTES:
FN 1: I realize that the very fact of this post and this website in sum is proof that I haven’t “gotten on” with things entirely. This post and this website When I say “gotten on with things”, then, I suppose I mean more the fact that I’m working and being cheerful to friends new and old and generally being a competent well-put-together young person. I hate being such a person. It feels disingenuous, even if it isn't in a technical sense. Somewhat oddly, this issue seems to be a monkey wrench in my 100% Honesty Project, because one could make a case that I’m hiding something from myself IN ADDITION to hiding something from others. Which means that the Communication Project is also imperiled.
FN 2: Can you see how the whole “active approach to grief” thing might leave a rotten taste in my mouth? Does it remind you of anything blogged about here on this site? That’s right, I thought of the same thing: the Video Tribute. Should the one in grief try and force behavior on oneself in the manner of the VT, which was akin to a big cartoon mallet that kept bopping anyone who viewed it for more than 10 seconds on the back of the head, and you could almost hear its inventor yelling “Cry!” at us from somewhere.
posted by Wil at
8:10 AM
4 Comments:
Good and concise post. One always thinks of the grief-stricken as unable to "get on with life" so your post gives a different perspective.
By
junebee, at 11:29 AM
OH, that Go! Team record is GOOD.
By
Anthony Robinson, at 6:19 PM
Junebee: Thanks. I never think it comes out concisely, so that means a great deal to me! And it does seem like an argument that might possibly convince even myself - although I could easily design the opposite argument. The Great Equivocator &c.
Tony: I know. Boy, do I know.
By
Wil, at 8:53 PM
For myself, life goes on but not a moment goes by that I do not think of my sons, Will and Jon, and daughter Melissa. They are my purpose in life, and that is why I must go on. But things will never, ever, again be normal. I do not wish that. When all of you become parents in time, you also will understand.
By
Anonymous, at 3:48 PM
Post a Comment
<< Home