Grief At A Distance

Reading Rick Bass's lyrical memoir Why I Came West, I thought of a writer from back here in the east, David Budbill, most famous for his poems about the imagined town of Judevine. I've read Budbill since Ben recommended him, though when he first gave me Judevine I was too green to appreciate it. I came back to Budbill through Hayden Carruth and some experience and wisdom before I appreciated enough to hear what he wrote. Happy Life and While We've Still Got Feet are precious books to me now. In my classroom, I went to the computer and searched for a new Budbill book. There is one, but there's a catch: he died in October 2016. 

I get attached to writers. Learning that Budbill had died was a shock. Realizing he had been dead seventeen months without my knowing felt like I had been a bad friend. 

No, I didn't know the man. 

I had a similar feeling when J.D. Salinger died in 2010. It was a terrible time in my life and I stood in another classroom when I learned of his death the day he died. There wasn't any guilt over having missed it, and I understood I was never going to meet or correspond with the man, but I still felt as if a friend had died. 

Driving to get gas today, I passed a car like that of a neighbor whose husband died about the same time Budbill passed. Throughout her husband's cancer I kept tabs on her online and tried to be of some use. My wife had gone through cancer treatment too. She came through bald but on the mend. The neighbor's husband was taken off life support and passed into the other life. Since then, we haven't had much contact. It's as though she lives across the world instead of a block and a half away. 

Yesterday, I spoke with a woman who has been through chemo and radiation and who prays she is free, that cancer won't come back to her. She asked what exact kind of cancer my wife had had. I didn't know. I probably seemed clueless, out of the loop. In many ways, I was. I simply believed nothing bad could happen. I went to appointments, sat with her for chemo, and fainted while the plastic surgeon removed stitches from her mastectomy, but I didn't pay attention to names of things or exact details. If felt like ignoring some of that might make it go away. That's a fool's philosophy, but it worked for us this time. 

David Budbill has died. His last book of poetry is in paperback. I'll need to get a copy. I'll want to tell Ben because he gave Budbill to me and I eventually came to treasure that gift. Is it ridiculous that I'm grieving Budbill? I am, just as I grieved Salinger, and I hope it won't diminish the neighbor who died or his wife to say I felt similarly about that too. 

I'm whistling past the graveyard here. I often have. My wife is healthy, thank heavens. I'm healthy enough to grieve a poet I met only through words on printed pages. Then again, not much brings me closer to someone than their words on a page. About the only thing, holding my wife and not letting go. 

Waking My Girl

Last night she asked, can you make sure I'm sitting up when you get me up tomorrow? I smiled. My youngest sets an alarm for 6:30 but has been in the high school musical this weekend and hell week before that. She has been going flat out for three weeks and is tired. On an easy day, she gets herself up, dresses, comes down, packs lunch, makes  breakfast, and sits on the love seat under a blanket to eat. After the musical, she was pretty sure it wouldn't be so easy. 

I said, I'll make sure. 

I'm up before five to make coffee and then write in my basement nook. I go to the couch around six to read and write an email note for my wife to read over her breakfast. When I hear my girl's 6:30 alarm, I creep upstairs to make sure she's up, then pack lunch and get ready to go. 

This morning, her phone's alarm was flashing silently. I sat on her bed and hugged her leg with my hands. Honey, it's time. I said it softly knowing she didn't want to get up. I didn't want her to get up either. She looked so peaceful, so cherubic. I wanted to stay and pass the day with her.

"I'm going to stay in bed today," she said. I smiled. "I'll go to school some other day." Hmm, I said. "I'm so tired," she said, drawing out "so" like a yawn. Yeah, I know, I said, almost whispering and I could feel the words coming from my smile. I hugged her leg some more and waited. She pulled the covers up high. I said, "a girl last night told me to make sure she was sitting up." She sat up and rubbed her eyes. I said, I'll see you downstairs, my love. 

There's not much better in than seeing my girl each morning. I wake her gently because that's what she prefers. Who doesn't? I remember being jerked awake by my alarm clock's terrible click and buzzer or, when I overslept, my mother's shouting, singing, and clapping. It made me angry. I want the opposite for my girl. 

There's a selfish aspect as well. 

I want her to remember me waking her. Not the specifics of today, but that feeling of me talking quietly, hugging her leg. I want her to feel loved without thinking about it and as sure of that love as she is of the sun in the sky. No question, no doubt about it. This small ritual of checking if she's awake and waking her gently is me trying to insure all that. 

I want it for her, but I want it just as much for me. Having her feel loved helps her love me and I'm greedy for more of that. 

Some say I'm lucky she gets up so well and goes to school. Most of the kids I teach come to school only under threat. My girl, unless she's feverish or it's a Jewish holiday, goes to school, mostly willingly because my wife and I have been waking them this way their whole lives. We have engineered this. We seem to have realized early enough that we have our children only for so long. Childhood really is over too quickly. 

When she goes out on her own, I hope she will wake some mornings remembering my soft knock at her door and the shadow of me sitting on her bed. She might almost feel my hand hug her leg and hear me say, "it's morning, honey. I'll see her downstairs." If she does, there's every chance she will begin her day feeling loved and radiating it out into her world. That's about all this world needs is more of her kind of love. 

And I Love Her

Brad Mehldau Trio is on the turntable (their album Blues And Ballads, not the whole band; they'd break the whole shelf) playing "And I Love Her." And I love it. 

I've poured a short glass of scotch with one ice cube. Whiskey is the only thing I enjoy slowly. Mostly I gulp and bolt things. I want to slow down but just don't. Whiskey is slow and that's what I like best about it.

Stephanie is in the shower and when she comes out can use the sink. For five days it has been plugged beyond anything I know to clear it. Anything but the plumber who took things apart, snaked a muskrat out of the pipe (might have been hair, but I saw eyes), and the water she flows again. 

The snow has melted enough that the roads are dry though riddled with potholes and bumps. We got fourteen inches Friday into Saturday, but it's all cleared and piled along the sides of driveways and roads. A clear driveway makes me happy and reminds me of Dad. 

The dog snores when she sleeps on her blanket three feet away and is intriguing accompaniment for Mehldau's jazz trio. And I love her too, though this wheezing and snoring is odd. She needs whiskey. 

Both daughters are at school tonight. One is rehearsing the musical until past my bedtime. (I've been known to be in bed by 7:30 saying I'm going to read but falling asleep before eight. I really am 87 years old and get the hell off my lawn you damn kids.) The other is at mock trial until a slightly different time than the other. Having two children means driving to and from the high school more times than I can count, though I can't count very high. Back in my day, we used to walk...

Having railed against Amazon for weeks, I of course ordered a printer cartridge from them. They had a ridiculously low price and we were snowed in pretty well when I ordered. It was so convenient! So convenient, I ordered the wrong one and will spend eight bucks to send it back. Meanwhile, Best Buy had the right one, two miles away, and get this: they match Amazon's price if I ask nicely. Had I bought the wrong one at Best Buy, I could have returned it for free. But Amazon is convenient. Place your best on when I might learn my lesson. 

I figured out that I have about 2,000 days on the job before I can retire. Stephanie says that's no way to think about it (as she took away sharps and poisons). Take it one day at a time, she said. She didn't sing the One Day At A Time theme song, which surprised and saddened me, but the message was clear. 

So I took just today, this one day at a time, and you know what? It totally sucked. What does she know? 

Brad Mehldau is playing "My Valentine" now and it might just be a perfect song the way he plays it.

I have this record, a turntable, an amplifier, and a great pair of speakers. I'm sipping good scotch. My lovely wife will come down soon. Our printer works as does most of our plumbing. The dog snores but is every way love itself. 

There's every chance I may learn not to panic every time I feel sad. I may come to believe again in possibilities for my future. I suppose almost anything is possible.

At least when Brad Mehldau is playing and Stephanie is walking down the stairs to be with me. 

Hope Is A Good Thing?

“Remember, Red, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies. I will be hoping that this letter finds you, and finds you well.”

— Stephen King

““Hope” is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -”

— Emily Dickinson

“Everybody’s got a hold on hope, It’s the last thing that’s holding me”

— Guided By Voices

For three months I've hoped for a good thing. I have tried to keep that hope from overcoming me since things depended on other people's decisions. I applied my best efforts, showed the best of who I am, and did well, but Tuesday the funding was erased and my hopes evaporated. I had gotten my hopes up far enough that the fall knocked me pretty much out.

Austin Kleon wrote about Groundhog Day and a quote from Bill Murray's character Phil Connors:

In my favorite line from the movie, he asks his bowling buddy, “What would you do if you were stuck in one place and every day was exactly the same, and nothing that you did mattered?'

And his buddy, who’s a little drunk, looks at him and says, “That about sums it up for me.”

Yesterday, I was that drunk buddy. Such is the effect of disappointment on me. Today, I wonder am I using hope the wrong way. 

I've said that I write without the goals of getting rich or published, but maybe that's not honest. I don't believe I'll get rich by writing, but what is posting to this site but an attempt to be published? 

My therapist says it's natural to want to be heard, seen, and noticed. I asked, isn't it childish to need that? I'm caught between wanting to be known and thinking I should find worthiness from within. Needing approval seems a bad sign. She said, needing to be heard is different from wanting approval. I suppose so. 

This week's disappointment was the result of having built things up such that I was already on my way, out of unhappiness I've felt for years. I soared on that hope then crashed so hard when it disappeared that I still feel broken. 

To hell with the thing with feathers. 

Why am I even writing this? I'm trying to write without hope that it (or I) will be noticed. Austin Kleon seems to say, do the work, learn the craft, and keep going. Do it as if nothing matters. Keep writing and go through the days. But why do something without hope it will lead somewhere? How do I go forward without hope for some result? 

This week I wrote my 4,000th Morning Page. That's eight reams of paper. I've written three pages by hand every morning since July 5, 2014. After this week's disappointment, I wonder, so what? Why am I doing them? What do I hope for and expect from them? I don't have a good answer, but I'll do three pages tomorrow anyway.  

My wife suggests, instead of hoping for some specific or trying to figure out what it's all for, that I concentrate on doing one thing to make today good. What can you do to live well today? 

So I write without hoping it's enough to live well today. 

I feel I'm supposed to be more than I am. I keep hoping and when that hope fails, I lament how little I've accomplished. I'm sure I've written about being content and understanding the good life comes from acceptance, but what role do dreaming and hope play? They seem utterly not of the moment and lead to disastrous falls, but I can't imagine going ahead without them. 

About now, both my wife and therapist would suggest that it's not either hope or the moment but both at once. There are times that makes some sense. Right now, not so much. 

I want to say I'm letting go of hope, but this week of hopelessness has been too awful. I don't know what to hope for or how. Disappointment broke me. I'm not convinced hope is a good thing, that it never stops at all, or that it can hold me. As for one thing to make today good, I've written this. Has it worked? I guess I hope so.