death

hepcat

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Years go by and memory, though not erased, dims. Characters who played instrumental roles in our lives, however briefly, also fade into the background. The drift is imperceptible as life grumbles along, shifting under our feet, repopulating with new casts of characters. And suddenly 30 years of life’s adventures, turmoil, joy, curses and cravings pass with almost no connections to these past characters.

When suddenly they reappear – but are no longer among the living – it’s such a gut punch. The tattered memory revives all the conversations you had, the things you shared in common, the influence they had, the tangible help they provided, even when it wasn’t easy for them to do, the confidences they shared and struggled with. The sense of lost closeness floods back in, and the regret at having let the connection fray bubbles up. Nothing really happened to create a rift. Living in different places at different stages of life, wanting and expecting different things, forcing different things to happen… people drift apart for no reason, without actively deciding to, without effort. And all of a sudden, someone who was once a part of daily life, important in a way that words can’t really convey, is gone forever. Not just gone from daily life, which happened so many years ago between us, but gone for good.

It is hard to know what to do with or how to process this information. The discovery of the sudden and unexpected death of someone who was once so close. It’s facile and inadequate to say “they will be missed” but equally impossible to find a fitting alternative tribute.

who’s keeping score?

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As the year ends, I feel compelled to tally up what I’ve done versus what I aimed to do when the year began. Of course life isn’t quite the linear thing that smoothly hands over what we ask for or think we will do, see or accomplish. Even what we want (or think we want) can change so fast, can be led along by circumstance, or a sudden need for dramatic change, that it’s almost silly to do things like set ‘resolutions’. Sillier even than watching 40-year-old, late-night reruns of The Love Boat or Only Fools and Horses, which has been my rough introduction to peri-Brexit Britain. (I certainly didn’t choose the wisest time to put down stakes in that neck of the woods.)

I had no idea when 2018 began that I’d spend half the year in Glasgow, immersed in intensive psychology studies. I also had no idea that I would try to balance that with work/job and the simultaneous completion of a thesis from a previous, almost-finished MA from another university. I had no idea that I would (mostly) have the discipline to follow through on almost all the goals I set for the year, somehow managing not to disrupt them despite the otherwise disruptive nature of the chaos I sprung upon myself by moving from place to place in a more itinerant than normal (for me) fashion.

“That life is not for me. Clearly I did not inherit whatever gene it is that makes it so that when you linger in a place you start to put down roots. I’ve tried, a number of times, but my roots have always been shallow; the littlest breeze could always blow me right over. I don’t know how to germinate, I’m simply not in possession of that vegetable capacity. I can’t extract nutrition from the ground, I am the anti-Antaeus. My energy derives from movement—from the shuddering of buses, the rumble of planes, trains’ and ferries’ rocking.” –Flights, Olga Tokarczuk

Hands-off, ears-off

Sadly, there is no new soundtrack for this month. But you can revisit the musical archives that date all the way back to 2004.

Emotional turmoil

On a less physical, hands-on level, though…

I had no idea, at least not consciously, that I would continue to dig deep into reserves of patience I had no clue I had, trying to patch up holes that are completely bottomless. They cannot be fixed.

I had no idea that I would finally try to come to terms with myself as a too secretive person, completely lacking in transparency when it comes to myself. I pretend to be open, but I’m open to you and your problems; I’m listening to you; I am reflecting you; I am flexible to and for you; I am absorbing your misery and anxiety.

But I am not being me with you, and I never have been.

(This “you” is everything and everyone.)

And this, rather than getting better, is getting worse. Much of what I did this year was to try to go against the grain, to stop doing this insofar as I recognized it. I did not succeed; instead I… recede.

Or could I have known that I would continue to love, to love more deeply than I could imagine possible, that being lovestruck, despite its implication of being immediate and fleeting, can continue and deepen? And despite the distance I put between myself – my self – and another? I could not come to trust it all because I have found the physical world is not to be trusted.

Yet others – all others – continue to tell me all the things contained in the vulnerable underbelly of their lives, their pasts, their hidden desires… their urge to share, to confess, to scrape out all the gelatinous globs of all the things they could never, ever tell anyone else too strong to resist, even if in the immediate aftermath they realized, Ah, now things will never be the same. 

Knowledge: Reading and thinking

“Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.” ― John Locke

In terms of reading, I read a whole lot more than I set out to read – and a whole lot more than I expected. And in many cases it’s been an elusive and esoteric pursuit. As I’ve written through the year, a great majority of this reading in the second half of 2018 was academic/scholarly/empirical, but there were quite a few other things as well – mostly dominated by poetry whenever possible. (And many of my “lists” of what I’ve read don’t reflect a lot of the academic stuff.)

When 2018 started, I’d set a goal – read 26 books, all of which had to be in non-English languages. I started off strong but first found myself lured into a whole lot of English-language books (novels, poetry, contemporary non-fiction), and then into the required readings from academia (a lot of BS/masturbatory theory, i.e. an academic citing a previous academic, citing a previous academic/philosopher/theoretician, not actual theory on masturbation). In the end I only managed… well, 20 as of 12 November 2018. Still better than I thought, thinking back to spring when I found that reading in Russian again was so slow-going that I’d never make the kind of progress I can make in English. Reading Russian has also become bittersweet – so intense the memories of the time when it was the most important thing in the world to me, and so fresh the knowledge that one of the closest friends I had at the time died two years ago. She had not been in my life at all since 1995, but it still hit me to learn that she is really gone. I read Marina Tsvetaeva, for example, which is something she and I talked endlessly about, in a wholly different way.

In any case, this whole exercise required a re-evaluation of what progress is in this context. What am I doing this for if not for the qualitative experience of living, loving and grappling with languages, words, concepts, constructions, time periods, perspectives that are not even close to my own? In the digestion, interpretation (literal and figurative) and comprehension of these particular reading challenges, reading feels like a new endeavour, different from the much-loved near-obsession I experience with own-language books. Novel and difficult, and truly as worthwhile as I had hoped. Still I set such a goal when I had a fraction of today’s deadlines to meet and ‘achievements’ to unlock.

I’d be remiss not to reflect on these things even though I feel empty of the ability to truly reflect. Outside of my own little world, everything has been so ugly and contentious I can’t bring myself to think about it.

 

grieving giants

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Perhaps not so many were familiar with Donald Hall – no more so than most are familiar with poets in general, poets laureate of the United States or not.

But somehow, the passing of poet Donald Hall this week has stirred me… in a very different way from how I am stirred by the horror show of current events or by my daily life and its little ups and downs. No, the poetic life and its slower, more contemplative timbre force me to calm down as well, to look back over the life, the writing, the voice of Donald Hall. To reinfuse my daily life with poetry (which is something I give thought to daily but don’t slow down enough to fully appreciate). It is perhaps my own form of meditation.

“Then I had the night
to myself. No moon, no starts, no trucks, no heifers,
no friends, no stories, and no sound. Only dark fields
and darker road, black on black, and I was alive, older
than my dark-haired father ever got to be, sleepy,
not wanting to sleep, happy, startled by happiness”
-Donald Hall, from “The Night of the Day”

 

The languages we speak

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The late poet Derek Walcott wrote: “To change your language you must change your life”. I’ve thought about this statement many times over the years, and usually find that the inverse is also true – truer even: “To change your life you must change your language”. And we speak many different languages, literal and figurative, to fit our lives.

Literal language

There are the obvious ways in which this is true. For example, in the life of a migrant, you only become integrated to a limited extent without changing your language, but you can make inroads with the literal changing and adopting of another language. The more immersive it is, the more it shapes your life (so these statements work in conjunction with each other: language changes life, life changes language).

I spoke at some length with a friend about whether a language inherently contains a power structure. We were discussing that the US and UK have buckled under the weight of crumbling infrastructure and insufficient provision for managing natural disasters/bad weather. He shared that a friend in Massachusetts boasted about how her new generator switched on automatically five times that winter, leading him to ask (once again), “What is it about Americans that makes them twist the shortcomings of the place they live into things to brag about?” I always go back to the same answer: they don’t know any better. Many everyday things (for me or for him) sound futuristic to people in America (and to some extent, the UK). “Empires”, if we could call America one, crack and crumble from within. My friend wondered if the English language contains a built-in predilection for “shitty societies”. I did not agree with this statement but thought a bit about the built-in attitude of English. He posited that something in the language creates fear and anger in its speakers that is masked by arrogance.

I admit that although I have analyzed the language – and language in general – from many points of view, I had never taken it on from this angle. I have, though, thought about the imperialism and spread of language, which then gives native speakers a sense of entitlement. He posed the question: “How else to explain why both London and NYC are crappy in similar ways?” I figured it is not so much something within the language itself so much as in its ubiquity and power. (Both places driven and developed by the original British imperialist way of thinking, the dominance of English, even among large populations of immigrants who end up united by this one powerful lingua franca, contributes.) Within the language itself, though, is it a magnet for the best or most useful elements of other languages? Has it not only overtaken other languages but plundered them for its own needs? Does the dominance of English come from how and where its imperialism ended up (North America, India, other parts of Asia, Australia), in places where dominance also meant colonization and the “conquering” people staying put and taking power – as opposed to “resource grabs” like those in Africa, where French colonialism was alive and well? Could it be the result of English having such a vast and even superfluous vocabulary.. another way of dominating just by sheer volume of words? (And we can’t even say there is one “English” – its spread and ubiquity have created all kinds of variations.)

I don’t know the answers to these questions, but the questions are fascinating.

The language of self-help and personal identity

Then there are increasingly less obvious languages. For example, the language of self-help: you are told to frame yourself and your issues in a new way. The frame changes perception and eventually the language used to describe that perception. That is, you are what you think. You are the language you use. This came to mind most recently when I was listening to a young colleague who is often cuttingly direct in the language she uses, and I wonder how she would respond to softer, more diplomatic language. I also note that she notices keenly when others are as direct as she is. Would she be as effective in her role if she were softer? No. But if I were as direct and abrupt as she is, it would not suit me or work for me. Each of us, thus, forms our own (kind of) language – by which we are identified and through which we craft our own identities.

The language of failure?

Similarly, in pop-self-help and some broader psychological discussion, “failure” isn’t used when something might just be a setback. Here I think of alcoholics… do we really want to say that because someone had 90 days of sobriety and then fell off the wagon that those 90 days are a loss, a waste or a step back to square one – and their attempts a “failure”? Does the language we apply imply judgment and set the groundwork or pace for the next “slip”? That is, for an alcoholic each day sober is a success, and even if they build toward longer periods of sobriety, is their success (or failure) measured cumulatively? Maybe AA or other people measure this way. But for the person dealing with it, the language needs to be more forgiving or less judgmental.

Language of experience

Maybe certain experiences we live through do not change the literal language – the words you use – but change the whole approach, so your set of sociolinguistic approaches and cues becomes different. Maybe experiences forge within you a different person, with different eyes, who can no longer speak the same language, with the same tone you once used before the experience. This is applicable in many cases, but I think in particular about consolation, grief and the expectation of it.

How little I understood when I recently read Eduardo Sacheri’s The Secret in their Eyes how prescient two takeaway quotes would be:

“…perhaps the man’s fate, a life destroyed by tragedy and grief, provided me with a chance to reflect on my own worst fears. I’ve often caught myself feeling a certain guilty joy at the disasters of others, as if the fact that horrible things happened to other people meant that my own life would be exempt from such tragedies, as if I’d get a kind of safe-conduct based on some obtuse law of probability…” – The Secret in their Eyes, Eduardo Sacheri

“I believed I understood that the reason we’re sometimes moved by another’s grief has to do with our atavistic fear that this grief may get transferred to us, too.” – The Secret in their Eyes, Eduardo Sacheri

These thoughts stuck with me after reading the book, which I was reading as I consoled someone through and after the death of his mother. While being supportive and compassionate to him, I turned to someone else for my own kind of consolation, and discussed at length the particular kind of grief that punctuates the loss of one’s mother. He only realized then, as if becoming prepared for grief, how very devastating his own loss would eventually be when his mother passes away. It seems especially cruel and unusual that he didn’t have to wait long to be confronted by the potential for this grief: his mother suffered a fairly catastrophic setback only a couple of weeks later, which has not resulted in her death – but has opened the floodgates and made him see that his entire approach, logically, was flawed, that he could not control or know what the loss would mean or do to him. Sacheri’s points on how we are moved by another’s grief – because it is so close to what we ourselves may soon experience – was applicable.

And yet, language cannot contain this kind of grief, the fear (or confusion) it creates and the mirror it holds up to us and how we live and feel.

Language is equally inadequate for consolation. But in such cases, it’s less a spoken language and more a listening language: giving the time, patience and love to listen.

He “…went on to assure us there’s no Devil, no Satan, no Hell. There is—(maybe)—Heaven but it isn’t anywhere far away or anything special. And we demanded to know, why isn’t Heaven anything special? (You always hear of Heaven being so special.) And Daddy said, because Heaven is just two things: human love, and human patience. And all love is, is patience. Taking time. Focusing, and taking time. That’s love. This was disappointing to us! This was not anything we wanted to hear. We were too young to have a clue how special human love and human patience were, how rare and fleeting…” –A Book of American Martyrs, Joyce Carol Oates

Photo by Kyle Glenn on Unsplash

 

Who we are, who we have to become and are always yet to become

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“All men contain several men inside them, and most of us bounce from one self to another without ever knowing who we are.” –The Brooklyn Follies, Paul Auster

“He is at least three different men, and she at least three different women.” –One of Us Is Sleeping, Josefine Klougart

The dead and their identities

At different moments in our lives, we are different people. With different people, we behave as different people. We are who we need to be in our circumstances. We may embody these many people all at one time; we may embody these people at very different and distant moments.

I think now of a woman whose life has now ended, but who was at one point a young, abused wife with several children to consider, who was at another point a brave abuse survivor who became a single mother when she found the strength to leave her abuser, who was at another point still young and beautiful, meeting a married man who would father her ‘accidental’ final child but never be with her or know his son, who eventually met a new husband, who eventually gave her another identity: widow; a woman who always, somehow, made ends meet, who was loved and, by some of her children, resented, who still cared about having her hair done even in the last days. At each moment or phase, she was who she needed to be.

And then she passed away, as we all do. The end was not unexpected, as death comes for all of us. And certainly sooner for the elderly and infirm, which she was. But, despite various ailments, death had not been imminent. She had not suffered, had not struggled with dismal health. Reduced mobility, increased anxiety, more dependence on her youngest child, but nothing that made her lose her will to live. No, the time just came that her body, tired from living these many different, and often quite painful, lives, went to sleep and stayed asleep. The way we all hope to go… feeling just a little unlike herself suddenly one evening, getting into bed and not getting out of it again.

She had been living her normal life right up until that last night: ordering her new prescription glasses, having some new knickknack shelves installed, expressing anticipation about watching her soaps and other shows. But in hindsight the last couple of weeks might indicate that she had known deep down that the end was coming soon – people do seem to know sometimes. She was putting different things in place; she was offering her adult children whatever little things she had that could ease their paths; her social club (where she went and socialized actively right to the end) was quite insistent the week before she died that they have a copy of her do-not-resuscitate order on file. The signs perhaps had all been there, and she had internalized her peace with it.

The one who dies isn’t the one who lives with the aftermath, though. Those who live grapple with the aftermath: the prospect of a world without the departed. Over the course of days, weeks, even years, grieving in new and unexpected ways, often coming to terms with the identities the departed inhabited about which they had never known. And now can only glimpse or never know. And no one can know if any – or all – of those identities truly were that person. Did the departed even know him/herself?

The living

“There is no evidence of the soul except in its sudden absence. A nothingness enters, taking the place where something was before.” –Born to Run, Bruce Springsteen

The youngest son, the one who was closest and had cared for her day in and day out, discovered her, still and peaceful, lying exactly as she always had in sleep. He knew, immediately, but still tried to shake her gently awake. Frantic wailing came only later, garbled and panicked statements that made very little sense, all uttered in shock and the kind of inconsolable grief that comes from that shock. Later, after the initial panic of not knowing what to do, once the rest of the family, the authorities, appeared, he calmed down into fearful coherence: “What am I going to do? What am I going to do without her?”

She had always been his anchor – both the kind he never wanted, weighing him down and making him stuck somewhere, but also the kind he always needed for stability and support. What happens with the loss of that anchorage? The eternal struggle of figuring out not only who he was and is – but figuring out what his identity is and will be without her in the world. How do we define ourselves once we are motherless? A strange and painful rebirth into a world empty of the person from whom we were… birthed.

RIP with love, M.

Photo by Jacob Meyer on Unsplash

Seasoned departure

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“…I used to think we escape time by disappearing into beauty. Now I see the opposite. Beauty reveals time.” from “A Lesson from the Earth” -Anne Michaels

The last year has delivered quite a walloping in terms of death.

Most are not exactly sudden, as people in our periphery grow tired, frail, ill or some combination of these traits. None necessarily fatal on its own, together create a kind of fatigue that can trigger the onset of departure. Late last year, my mother’s brother died, which was devastating for her, and left a gaping wound in the heart of our small family. During 2017 many other people succumbed. My mother’s cousin Terry, unexpectedly. Then my father’s good friend, Larry, died, not necessarily expectedly, but his health had declined in recent years. Then my dad’s mother, about a week ago (and only a week before her own birthday). Then yesterday (on the aforementioned grandmother’s birthday), my mom’s best friend for more than 35 years, Sherry, died. I know it sounds like the set-up for a joke: Terry, Larry and Sherry walk into a bar. Well, for all I know, somewhere in this universe, they are. But that’s not the point.

Death had been so much on my mind last year, entering this year, forcing me at times to move my comfort zones and expand on my sense of space and time. That is, time is not unlimited – but at the same time, does not really exist. We float through a world in which all action is interaction. What are we – or were we – without interaction? We do or did not exist. I have let myself love and let myself get hurt and do and undo all the concomitant reactions (e.g. lashing out, crying, recomposing, moving forward, and so on). To feel – and to produce something from the feeling – is somehow all there is, and what proves we are alive, proves we still have something to give – whether to another person or to the world.

Photo by ORNELLA BINNI on Unsplash

Marie: “Pardon me all to hell”

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Last night, my last living grandparent died. It was not unexpected when it finally happened but was somewhat sudden in that the end came about quickly. I don’t have a lot to say about it; we were not close, she lived far away, and I didn’t really know her. I didn’t/don’t really know much of that part of the family.
But this, I suppose, is sad. I feel a certain sadness for her children, as it’s difficult to lose a parent (undoubtedly). It’s hard to come up with words about a woman I didn’t really know. When the other grandparents died, it was devastating, but I was really close to them.
I was not close to this grandmother; she was virtually a stranger. What do you say about someone whom you never really knew, whose life was defined by getting married and having children when she was a child herself and whose later life was pretty much dominated by Jehovah’s Witnesses?
I have small, incomplete memories of Marie, the distant grandmother who died, from the way my late grandfather pronounced her name, a rushed “Mree” (usually sneering or yelling), to the giant pancakes or the homemade loaves of bread she used to make.
I seem to recall that she had a crush on the late James Garner, circa Rockford Files time, which came to mind not so long ago when Mr Firewall told me about an episode (“The Empty Frame”) he had caught in reruns (yes, they are still showing Rockford in some parts of the world). The best parts happen at 42:15, when Rockford exclaims, ‘Pardon me all to hell!’
Immediately thereafter (42:30) when the episodes ‘villains’ discuss their failure to adhere to their initial socialist/hippie principles:
“Hey, David, will you knock off that stale 60s rhetoric? You’re looking at the new Jag, she wants a Kenzo wardrobe, I’m sick and tired of hearing about the pigs up on Gorki Street and the storming of the Winter Palace!”
“I’m not buying a new Jag; I’m buying a paramilitary vehicle…”
“We all sold out the day she got her first 50-dollar haircut and you and I said we liked it!”
I only saw her a handful of times in my life; the most memorable was in the early 80s. I recall that she bought some candy bars one evening, and my brother and I begged for one before bed, and in her very West Virginia way of speaking, she smiled and said, “I reckon we can have one tonight…”.
And that’s about it. May she rest in peace.
Photo by Patrick Fore on Unsplash

grief collective

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Facebook does not often give me reason to feel grateful. Today I feel grateful because I was able to reach out, with the platform’s immediacy, to an old (but not graduated-high-school-in-1977-old) and dear friend to express my condolences after a death in her immediate family, share in her angry grief and add to the vast chorus of voices chiming in with love and respect about my own memories of the loved one my friend lost.

Though vague and hazy childhood memories, the woman my friend and her family lost is branded in my brain as a strong, hard-working, straight-talking, no-nonsense woman. I didn’t know her well, but as a part of my friend’s family, I met her many times 30 or so years ago. For me to have retained clear memories of these personality traits in her, after three decades, she must have fully and indelibly embodied these attributes and, more than that, been able to make lasting impressions on all those she met in life. Seeing all the beautiful pictures my friend posted of this woman, her family and herself, all together, I felt such sadness for them, as you do for people who have disappeared too soon, but also the bittersweet feeling of joy you feel in observing a life well and fully lived.

These things also render one a bit helpless but wanting to help, reaching out in a flailing and fumbling way but reaching out nevertheless.

Grief, perhaps unlike death, and all its forms, is tough and unpredictable. As I have written before, it is those who remain on earth and in life who struggle:

“It’s this aftermath that’s hardest to know what to do with. The people who remain: how should they move on? Should they? I mean, do you ever really move on? Are you the same person after you experience a major loss and the kind of grief it visits upon you? Of course it – death and grieving – is a part of life; do you come out the “other side” dramatically changed because, in fact, your world is changed so significantly (because of these absences/losses)? Or is grief the engine of being exactly the same person you were in a changed world (and you start to “let go” or “stop grieving” only once you start to change in facing the new reality)?”

“’Moving on, as a concept, is for stupid people, because any sensible person knows grief is a long-term project. I refuse to rush. The pain that is thrust upon us let no man slow or speed or fix.’” -from Grief is the Thing with Feathers, Max Porter

My friend and her family have the strength of their faith to help and guide them through and to offer some kind of reason for what they are going through. But more than that, more broadly, the more we can form a loving and supportive collective, no matter how long ago our friendships flourished or how distant we are – literally or figuratively – the more we can at least be witness to the human experience in all its nuance. I won’t say it will make things easier for those left in the wake of loss, but it never hurts to reach out and offer compassion and reassurance.

Photo by Marta Pawlik on Unsplash

Who wants to live forever?

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The States
–George Tsongas
it’s an
amazing
place, where
no one enjoys

life

but they
all want
to live

forever

Yesterday, going through various blogs and news outlets, there were so many articles on aging, the mind and how to live better for longer.

  • Reverse the age with exercise, particularly dancing.
  • Listen to soundwaves to enhance deep sleep, which tends to dissipate as we age, and thus improve memory.
  • And most of all, extend life: “Unless we target aging itself all we can hope is that we switch one disease for another.”

I realize that this whole living forever, staying young thing is kind of a Boomer thing/obsession, mostly. They do not want to go away quietly.

I do not want to live for any artificially long time. I am in the majority, I think, when I say I would like to live as best as possible for as long as I live, so I take measures to do that. We all want to ensure a healthy mind and youthful vigor for as long as possible. But does that mean I should want to be 120 or 150?

If our lifespans were to be lengthened, how would our brains need to adapt to cope with that? Not that they could or would not – it’s just that today, if aging itself brings on disease and decrepitude, and we fight just to keep the most minor signs at bay, how would we evolve (I suppose that is the key – evolving rather than some magic bullet) to accommodate such a long life? What would take on meaning and importance (and what would lose it)?

Photo by Simeon Muller on Unsplash

Life’s flickering blue light

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Perhaps my mother and I have never been particularly visual people. Unable to see or care about what is in our face, or to remember the faces of people we have met repeatedly…which would explain something like what follows…

Years and years ago, we decided to show my then-partner, C, the film The Right Stuff. I don’t remember why now, but I do remember sitting down and watching the first/an early scene, and both my mom and I commenting, “Wow, they sure look young.” We were, of course, referring to Sam Shepard (RIP) and Barbara Hershey. C incredulously demanded, “Well, who the hell are they?” We’d seen the film a bunch of times so we knew who they were, but C had no clue what he was even seeing – silhouettes of indistinguishable people, apparently, so he decided to adjust the color on the TV, only to find we’d been watching something that was so ridiculously dark that we too might have exclaimed, “Who the hell are they?” if we had not seen the film before. I still laugh at this sometimes, and of course, it came up again with the news of Sam Shepard’s recent passing.

In another one of those tiny coincidences, where little things cross your path at just the right moment, I had just read Patti Smith’s memoir, Just Kids, only a few days before Shepard died. I had had no intention of writing about it; it was one of my filler reads – interesting, entertaining, engaging, but nothing so thought-provoking it warranted analysis or further discussion. Yet I learned in reading it that she’d had a relationship with and was a near-lifelong friend of Shepard’s, which struck me as strange at first, but then as I read, it felt more and more fitting (not that I know these people to comment on what was strange or not. Like almost everything – we decide what’s strange based on some surface perception). She’s written about this most recent loss as well.

Then I remembered this truly beautiful video of Patti Smith that I had seen last year, just after my uncle died, in which she discusses dealing with death: “all of these people that we lose, and this is what I mean by experience, they’re all within us. They become part of our DNA. They become part of our blood.”

Photo by Egzon Bytyqi on Unsplash