Monday, June 27, 2011

The Mosh


In which I stray from my usual themes of sister loss and mother care into the realm of aging and role reversal

My daughter, who is 15, loves the nu-metal band System of a Down.  She started liking them when she was six and her older brother listened to them.  I liked them too, to everyone’s surprise.  The band broke up, sad to say, so when my daughter found out they were getting back together to do a one-time tour, she had to get tickets.  She’d need a ride to the Shoreline Ampitheatre, so she asked if I wanted to go with her.  We thought some of her other friends would get tickets, but that didn’t happen, so when the day came, off we went, the teenager and her mom to a heavy metal concert on a Sunday night in Mountain View. 

It was a beautiful spring evening.  We got there early and set up our blanket in a choice spot on the grassy hill while other people arrived with their blankets and their blunts, and set up around us.  Watching the droves pour into the amphitheatre, I realized I was quite possibly the oldest person attending the concert, with only a handful of others anywhere near my age category.  I knew I was an anomaly in that setting, but I don’t think I have yet adjusted to how differently younger people see me than I see myself.  I’m still strong and full of aliveness, I still feel young.  I don’t get it that they don’t think I am. 

I’d been warned that everyone would stand up and move forward when the band started to play.  That turned out to be less than full disclosure of what I was in for, but at this point, it was a chill scene.  Except for when the 20-something girl in front of us passed out and collapsed, with her eyes open.  My daughter thought she was dead.  I’ve seen a few dead people so I knew she wasn’t, but it was a little freaky for a moment. 

My daughter ran into some friends when the opening band started playing, and let me know that I didn’t need to be right next to them.  I understood; I complied.  It seemed ok at the time.  Then System came on stage, and the crowd jammed up even more, and it was getting dark, and I realized it could be harder for us to find each other afterwards than I had thought, even with texting.   I started moving as best I could through the crowd in the direction she had gone, and suddenly found myself sucked into the mosh. 

Well, not actually into the mosh.  I was at the edge of the mosh and couldn’t get away, so I kept getting slammed into as the wild bodies came flying off the spinning circle with centrifugal force.  I checked my cell phone and saw a message from my daughter:  “Where are you?”  As I was texting her back, she appeared in front of me with a worried expression on her face.  “Are you ok?”  She didn’t want me out of her sight.  A minute later, one of her friends came back from the mosh, limping. 

All night, kids that weren’t even my daughter’s friends kept asking if I was ok.  It took me the rest of the concert to grasp that to them I was a frail old lady who needed looking after.  I’d heard some bad stories of mosh injuries and even deaths from trampling, but I was more nervous than actually afraid.  I’d been doing Pilates for a few months so I felt strong and balanced and could push back – just like a kid. 

On the way home she told me that her friends had asked why I was there.  “She loves System of a Down,” she told them.  “Cool,” they said.  They must have thought I went along to make sure my daughter was safe, which would have been very un-cool.  Instead, I was the remarkable (or misguided) old woman who ventured into their world for a night, and needed their protection.  An unexpected ending, you might say.

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

I'm Sorry You're Leaving

Last week I sat in the hallway at Berkeley Pines with my mother and a few other residents, waiting for her turn to eat lunch in the dining room.  While we were waiting, she kept reading out loud the empty carton of the vanilla shake food supplement she had in her hand.  Over and over.  

I tried several times to engage her in something else, but she ignored me.  Her attention kept going back to the carton and what was printed on it.  I decided to honor that it was the most interesting thing in her world right then, and stopped trying to talk to her about anything slightly more meaningful, from my perspective. 

After about 20 minutes of this, feeling useless and unconnected to her, I said, “I need to go home now and eat my own lunch.”  She looked at me and said, plain as day*, “I’m sorry you are leaving.”  “Well, I can stay a few more minutes,” I instantly replied, and was rewarded with the biggest and longest-lasting smile I’ve seen on her face since she first arrived in California.  So I stayed, about 10 more minutes, while she continued to read and reread the vanilla shake carton.  

I went home feeling good.  It mattered to her that I was there.

*I find myself using her expressions, like "plain as day," now that she doesn't generate much speech on her own.  I guess it's my way of saying, "I'm sorry you are leaving."

Monday, June 6, 2011

The Lost Sister

When I finished my doctorate – finally – I started reading nothing but crime thrillers.  For a few years, I couldn’t bear to read non-fiction.  Mysteries and thrillers became an addiction.  “It’s my only vice,” I used to say (I’ve added others since then).  I need them because when I wake up during the night, if I have the pleasure of reading my novel, I don’t get upset about not being able to fall right back to sleep.  They also get me through migraines.  So I get nervous when my stash is low, and I have to make a run to the library for more.  More than once I’ve been forced to go buy a paperback at Safeway late at night, when I ran out.

I have my favorite authors, but they can’t write them as fast as I can read them, so I have to peruse the “New Fiction” shelf at the local branch to see what else might do the job.  You won’t be surprised that the title The Lost Sister caught my eye.  The writer, Russel D. McLean, was new to me.  It said right on the front “a novel,” but it felt risky, so I made good and sure it was crime fiction before I took it out. 

I was innocently reading along last night, the detective was going around detecting, and then he stopped at the cemetery to visit the grave of his fiancée.

I closed my eyes, tried to remember her face.  Little by little, she was escaping me.  Getting so I could only remember how she looked when I came across old photographs.
Some days, I thought I was betraying her by starting to heal…
I crouched in front of the headstone, traced the dates that marked Elaine’s life with my index finger.  Closed my eyes.
Tried to conjure up her face.
Wished she was here with me.  To answer my questions.  Offer reassurance.  Remind me what it was to be in love with life again.
Here was the reality: she wasn’t coming back.
I was alone.
In the end, that was the one inescapable truth of my life.

No fair.  This was supposed to be my escape!  But, while I felt an ache in my chest at this suddenly appearing in my safe zone of crime fiction, I have to say it was also satisfying to hear the experience described so simply and so well, in the middle of a book that wasn’t about grief. 

Many of my grieving clients could relate to his words.  They struggle with the conflict between their desire to heal and the sense that to move on and feel good means the person who died wasn’t that important.  Or that they didn’t really love them if they can go on without them.  So we do our best to make room for everything: all the ambivalence, all the longing, all the resentment, guilt, disappointment, anger, numbness, just plain sadness.  Grief is complex and idiosyncratic, and accepting whatever shows up seems to be the best way to move it through. 

And then we let ourselves discover that life still has joy in it, and we can still appreciate those simple pleasures that make life worth living – like good crime fiction.