Every Cloud Has a Silver Lining

My brother Jim, who was a lover of storms, was more at home with the elements than he was with people. As the stories progressed, his essence began to emerge as the mysterious changing qualities of the moon. Dan was compassionate and generous. His bright light was personified by the sun. A silver and gold thread began to shine through the dullness of my grief and weave itself through the stories. The mythical presence of Jim and Dan, expressed through dreams, symbols, and the coincidences that my family and I shared, supported me in my grief and became the signposts out of it. ~ From “The Jim and Dan Stories

“Two words,” I said to my husband as we were walking through the front door of Sal’s Restaurant, ready for a late supper.

“Cue cards,” I blurted out.

It was 9:00, and we had just come from the Radford University grief and loss class that is using my book, “The Jim and Dan Stories,” as part of their curriculum. I was the guest speaker, and Joe was telling me what a good job I had done. For once I didn’t deflect his feedback.

It was the 3rd time I had spoken to a class of Radford University counseling students in the last 2 years, and so I suppose my improved public speaking abilities could be due to the fact that I’m finally getting the hang of it, but it was also the first time I used noted index cards, and I think they helped immensely.

In “The Jim and Dan Stories,” I mentioned my ongoing fear of public speaking, so this group of 16 who had all read the book, smiled knowingly when I shuffled my index cards and began our hour-and-a-half together by saying, “I write better than I talk.”

Having my husband, a former counseling student who enjoys speaking to groups, by my side gave me an added boost of confidence. Although he injected less than he has in the past, he was able to overview the direction of the presentation, gauge the responses of students, and remind me to slow down when necessary. He also logged onto my webpage and blog and displayed them on a screen for everyone to see.

The evening included a show-and-tell of newspaper articles about the book, photographs, a scrapbook, and emails and letters from readers. My index card notes of talking points included headings such as; How the Book Came About, The Shadow Epilogue, The Turning Point in My Grief Process, What has happened since Writing the Book, The Hull Village Reunion, and Grieving My Father's Death. When my mind either went blank or became overloaded with what I wanted to say, I could glance down at my index cards and stick to my own script. Other times, I could refer back to them, after having veered off into a class-led discussion.

In the chance that the students might be hesitant to be vocal, I came equipped with a short series of questions that past readers had asked and a few questions that I like to ask readers, but I didn’t need to use them. The class, mostly women of various ages, was welcoming, intimate, and engaging.

In closing, I read “The Black Feather,” an account of a recent transpersonal experience related to my father’s death in November. By the look of the wet eyes in the room and by the feel of the hugs at the end of the evening, I knew it was a worthwhile shared experience, one that I would find myself thinking about later.

On my way out of the building, a woman who had been in the class but had not spoken a word approached me shyly and asked, “Just how did you conquer your fear of public speaking? I’m not even able to speak up in class.”

“I’m still working on it,” I answered. “The more I do it, the easier it gets. But it’s never easy, even with cue cards,” I told her.

Outside, I emerged, feeling like I had passed a milestone. Looking up, I noticed that the sky was filled with an amazing formation of large clouds. Seeing them, outlined by the gold of the setting sun, I instantly thought of my brother Jim, the weatherman, and my golden-hearted brother Dan. The clouds were like a “thumbs up” from them and a visual validation of something I had just said in the class. Death doesn’t only take away. Because Jim and Dan lived and because I wrote about them, so much love and insight has been given, received, and shared.

~Originally posted on Loose Leaf Notes on July 3, 2006

The Black Feather

On the same day my father was in a car accident that eventually led to his death, my sister, Tricia, had a grand mal seizure. Family members were in the hospital supporting her when my father was wheeled in on a stretcher. His vital signs were fine. He was talking and joking, coherent enough to tell the nurses that his daughter had just been admitted that morning. Although we were shocked by the turn of events and amazed by the synchronistic line-up, the phone calls and emails spanning the seven-hundred miles between my family in Massachusetts and my home in Virginia were encouraging. We thought my father was being kept overnight for routine observation.

When I called Tricia’s house the day after her seizure, I choked up when I asked her husband how she was. I was stunned when he said, “I’m more concerned about your father.” My eighty-one year old father had a broken vertebrae in his neck. He would have to be put in a brace and would likely be bed-ridden for some time.

The screen door slammed behind me as I headed out to the mailbox. Walking our long gravel driveway with woods on either side, I was absorbed in thinking about my father when I was startled by a SWOOSH, and then the loud flapping of wings. A brazen vulture had swooped down close to my head, and then, as quickly as it had appeared, disappeared into the woods.

I don’t remember what mail came that day, but I was midway in my walk back to the house with a stack of it in my hand when I looked down and noticed a large black feather in my path. A white feather had appeared in a similar manner just after my brother Jim died, four years before. Another white feather turned up a month later, before the death of a second brother. A part of me knew the instant I picked up the black feather that my father’s journey out of this world had begun.

He endured six weeks of hospital interventions and complications before he passed away. It was a heavy loss with layers of grief that took time for me to process. Six months after he died, I wrote a poem after waking up in the morning with a sense that he had kissed me on the cheek. I called the poem “My Father’s Kisses.”

From the creased and fading underlining
of the mind’s lived-out stories
I summon them up
to soothe a new hurt

Although my father was sober in the last two decades of his life (except for an outbreak following the deaths of his sons), he struggled with alcoholism all his adult life. He was nineteen when he joined the army as an artillery soldier in WWII. Combat was almost more than he could bear, but it was witnessing first-hand the inhumanity at Buchenwald Concentration Camp that he always claimed broke him. Later, as a father of nine children, providing for a family of eleven took a further toll.

After the last kiss goodbye I mourned
the part of him that was always absent
compelled to purse his lips for a kiss of death
against the slippery edge of a glass or bottle

My father was a playful, loving man who expressed his affection as easily as he did his anger. I both loved and feared him when I was a child. I struggled writing the poem. It was like a lid on a Pandora’s Box of emotion that needed to be lifted slowly.

If actions speak louder than words
then his kisses should drown out my hurts
the sting of his words harshly spoken
under the influence of post traumatic stress

Stupid little shit
and other figures of speech
that leave indelible marks on young children

Can you make it all better, daddy?
I’m afraid when you yell like that

I don’t normally post long personal poems on the online journal that I keep, but I impulsively posted “My Father’s Kisses” on Father’s Day, the first since my father’s death. The discomfort that followed was unexpected and dramatic. I felt as if I was “in trouble” for sharing such a personal poem. I worried that my words would disturb others and wondered how my family would receive it. As my distress intensified, I couldn’t sort out what was rational or irrational about my fear. I not only thought about deleting the poem, but I worked myself up to the point where I considered not writing on my weblog anymore.

In response to my anxiety, my husband, Joe, suggested we go for a walk. By this time I was aware that the poem had unearthed a dark childhood fear. I knew I had done nothing wrong; but I still felt threatened. Walking on the dirt road paralleling the Blue Ridge Parkway, we were immersed in conversation, reviewing the roots of my feelings, when Joe stopped abruptly in the middle of the road.

“Why are you making us stop?” I demanded. “I need to either keep moving or go curl up in the fetal position somewhere.”

He just stood looking at me until I gave in and let out a big sigh.
“That’s why,” he said.

I took his hand and we began walking again until something in the periphery of my vision caught my attention. It was another black feather, about eighteen inches long. I wanted to believe it meant nothing, but I knew it was mine to pick up.

Turning it over in my hand, I reminded Joe about the first black feather that appeared the day after my father’s car accident. “Did you know he was the only one who knew I put a white feather in Jim’s coffin? He was nearby and saw me do it,” I explained. “He asked like a curious little kid what it was for. I told him – purity, journey, freedom – and he smiled like he was learning something new.”

Joe and I walked in silence after that. With my hands clasped together behind my back, holding the feather in one of them, I shifted into a timeless place. With my head down, I watched my feet move, feeling the reverberating cadence of each step. The dirt road became the sandy shoreline of my childhood home; the dusty gray gravel was beach pebbles. I felt small like a little girl again, and the feather quill I was holding onto was like holding my father’s hand.

With that realization, a feeling of peace floated over me. I knew my father was pleased that my poem told the truth of his story. I felt his presence bearing a message: Don’t be afraid. Don’t be afraid to use your voice.

~ Originally posted on Loose Leaf Notes on June 30, 2006.

The Book: Fulfilling Its Higher Purpose

My book, The Jim and Dan Stories, started with a poem I wrote about being with my brother Danny in the hospital when he was taken off life supports – like taking Jesus off the cross he was nailed to… He died 3 hours later.

After the poem, I wrote a tribute about the deaths of both my brothers, Jim and Dan. Jim died in August of 2001 in a machine shop accident, and Dan died a month later from liver failure. The tribute was published in the town newspaper in Hull, Massachusetts where my eight siblings and I grew up.

After the tribute, I got out my notebook, thinking I would write some more poetry to help me process my grief; instead, “The Jim and Dan Stories” poured out of me. The original poem and the tribute got incorporated into the new writing, which I didn’t realize would end up as a book.

Once I knew it was a book, I didn’t know I was going to publish it.

After I knew I was going to publish it, I thought I would do so in a small number for family and close friends.

When the first printing of 300 books was done, I thought I was going to get stuck with lots of extra books.

When the first 300 sold in a few months time, I had another 300 printed up. Again, I thought I was going to get stuck with a lot of extra books.

When I sold that 300 and invested in a 3rd printing of 300, I thought I would surely get stuck with those.

I’m now more than half-way through the 3rd printing and wondering about a possible 4th.

Will the day ever come when someone asks about “The Jim and Dan Stories” and I say, “Oh, I don’t have any copies of that anymore?

Post Notes: The cover design of The Jim and Dan Stories was done by my brother-in-law, Nelson Pidgeon. For more information about the book, how it came about and what has happened since it’s been published, visit my website, Silver and Gold, which Nelson is also the creator of.

~ Originally posted at loose leaf notes on April 18, 2006.

Strong in the Broken Places

The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong in the broken places. ~ Ernest Hemingway

“Strong in the Broken Places” was the theme of the art show that hung on the walls of The Glade Baptist Church where I met with the woman’s book club group that had just read my book, The Jim and Dan Stories. It didn’t occur to me until the next day how fitting it was that I was talking about the deaths of my brothers with a group of women in a room adjacent to an art show with such a theme.

...I didn’t know when I began writing that to tell my brother’s story I also had to tell my own. I knew it was a family story, but I was surprised to discover that Jim and Dan’s deaths revealed an identity crisis in me, one that was underscored by the distance between my childhood home in Massachusetts and my present one in Virginia. Writing became a way to bridge those two places, and a way to piece together what was shattered in me. It was like a broken mirror was being put back together with each memory retrieved, so that I could see myself again. ~ From The Jim and Dan Stories, introduction.

Alex is a multi-media artist who I sometimes play Scrabble with. I gave her a copy of “The Jim and Dan Stories,” insisting that we make a trade after she gifted me with one of her handmade necklace creations. Once she read the book, she recommended it to her book club, which is how I came to be in the church that evening.

We met at Zeppoli’s, a Blacksburg Italian restaurant that makes home-made pasta, before the book club meeting at 7 pm. Alex arrived first. I found her sitting in a dark corner of the restaurant and immediately noticed that she didn’t look right, as if she was holding her breath. It didn’t take long for her to blurt out what was wrong; she had put down her favorite old horse that very day and was grief stricken about it. I tried to console her and wondered out loud if she would have the emotional stamina to attend the book club. What was the alternative, she questioned? She didn’t want to go home and be reminded of what had happened. At least the book club topic would be relevant.

At the church, while touring the art show, Alex shared that just days before in the same room the book club members were beginning to gather, she taught an art class on making mosaics. What kind of church hosts art shows and classes and has a giant mosaic with the word JOY spelled out hanging over the altar? Baptist is part of the church’s identity, but they have recently chose to be affiliated with the United Church of Christ because, "The UCC placed a comma in our lives where the Southern Baptists had placed a period," the pastor, Kelly was quoted on the United Church Press webpage as saying.

Alex made the Joy mosaic with shards from the minister’s own prized pottery that had been broken in an accident. It hung above the altar well before the “broken in the strong places” show. Perhaps it was the inspiration behind the show’s theme.

But I was there to talk about my book, and I did. The women were welcoming, the format informal. I was moved by how willing they were to share their own stories of losing loved ones, and I’m still thinking about some of the questions they asked me.

Sometimes memorable events can mean even more to me after they’ve happened. The next day, I was able to step back and see the theme through the previous evening that was not just the name of the art show. Alex’s mosaic was another fitting piece to the art of the evening, and so was my book. It too was like a mosaic, one of broken pieces and retrieved memories constructed by words to tell a story of love.

Even the book group related to the theme. We were a roomful of different women coming together as a whole to talk about grief and loss in an effort to make meaning out of it.

~ First posted on loose leaf notes on April 5, 2006.

The Weather

AKA: We’re All in It Together

After my brothers, Jim and Dan, died, I went through an identity crisis, which caused me to question why I lived in Virginia when the rest of my family was in Massachusetts. One factor that complicated my distress was that, besides my husband and sons, no one in my close-knit community knew my brothers. While I had 6 other siblings, five of them back in Massachusetts, grieving along with me, here in Floyd I was, for the most part, grieving alone. But I wanted everyone to know my brothers and to know how much their lives mattered. It was a desire that became the impetus that led to my writing a book about them.

We buried my older brother, Jim, who died suddenly at the age of fifty-four, in July 2001. My younger brother, Dan, died a month later at the age of forty-nine. Since their deaths, life has had a sharper focus. There are things I can see that I couldn’t see before. If I can describe what I see from inside this hole, will it help others when they are down in one? What place is this? How will I survive it? How deep does it go? I want to know. I’ve never been here before. Can I make something constructive out of the powerless feeling of loss? Am I digging my way out, word by word? I’m writing Jim and Dan’s story because after living this story no other seems worth telling, because what else can I do down here, because there’s no where else to go. I’m writing Jim and Dan’s story because I’m proud of their story. I want to shout from the rooftop how irreplaceable they are. ~ excerpt from “Down in the Hole” from the introduction to The Jim and Dan Stories.

After the book came out and many people in my community read it, the sense of alienation I felt changed, as people approached me with feedback and comments about my brothers. My brother Jim especially made an impression with readers, probably because he was such a paradox. Jim, was opinionated, pessimistic, capable, constructive, and (regardless of how much he complained) passionately engaged in life. He was also an avid weather enthusiast who published weather photos, worked at The Blue Hill Weather Observatory as a volunteer, and was well known and respected throughout his local weather community.

The Blue Hill Observatory, where Jim volunteered, is planning a dedication ceremony to honor him. They’re raising money to erect a flag with a tribute to Jim inscribed on a plaque set in its base…All this for a guy who didn’t think he accomplished much in life, a guy who, when I asked him, “Jim do you think you’d try for a liver transplant if you need it (for Hep C)?” answered, “No, give it to someone who enjoys life!” A guy who, when asked by Kathy with a video camera, “Who are you?” answered with a laugh, “A loser.” A guy whose key chain read, “Not a happy camper.” ~ From The Jim and Dan Stories

I reached a turning point in my solitary grief and knew that writing the book made a difference when, while at a community gathering just after Hurricane Isabel, a friend approached me and said, “Wouldn’t your brother Jim just love all this weather?”

More recently, another Floydian asked, “Did you get those photos I emailed you?”

“No.” I answered. “My computer was probably in the shop. What were they of?”

“A photo of my baby girl…and some weather photos. I was thinking of your brother Jim when I shot them.” he said.

Missing Jim and Dan and grieving their deaths is something I’m still involved in. I know that because I’m crying as I type this. But the sadness is mixed now with a sense of gratitude that I’ve been able to share a small part of who they were with others who wouldn’t have known them otherwise.

Photo: On the back of the above photo that Jim took, he wrote: Virga at Sunset over Boston. I looked up the word and learned that “virga” is “any form of precipitation that doesn’t reach the ground.”

January 31, 2006

Bibliotherapy

Bibliotherapy means using the reading of books (or the watching of movies) as a way to heal yourself, gain insight, or solve a problem. ~ from The Sibling Connection

Suppose you were struggling with grief after losing a loved one, and so you sought out a grief counselor for guidance. Because it is often less threatening to deal with painful emotions indirectly, your counselor might use a treatment modality called bibliotherapy, suggesting a book for you to read or a movie to watch with themes that relate to your issues. I first learned about bibliotherapy when my book, “The Jim and Dan Stories” was reviewed by Pleasant Gill White, Ph.D. and listed in the bibliotherapy section of her sibling loss website, The Sibling Connection. Some of the ways bibliotherapy can help facilitate healing, listed on the website, include: It can give you a vocabulary, reduce your feeling of isolation as you recognize characters who remind you of yourself, and help you work through your grief experience by giving you an opportunity to compare and contrast your experience with others.

But you don’t need a therapist to practice bibliotherapy. Some who are coping with loss will find themselves instinctively reaching for books and movies about death and grief. After losing my brothers 4 years ago, I did. I browsed through so many books on death that I can’t remember one from the other now. “Tuesdays with Morrie” was one I do remember that was so good I bought an extra copy to have for lending to others.

Over the last few years only a couple of movies with death and grief themes continue to stand out in my mind. One is “Moonlight Mile” with Susan Sarandon and Dustin Hoffman, and the other is “In America” about an Irish immigrant family who lost their young child. I saw both too long ago to comment on in detail, other than to say that they were deeply moving and dealt with the subject intelligently and sensitively and in a way that I could relate to.

I recently saw another movie to add to this list of favorites. It’s an independent Canadian film made in 2003 called “My Life Without Me.” The plot line described on the video box that drew me in was something like: Young woman conceals the fact of her terminal cancer to live her life with a passion she never had before.

In the movie, the main character, played by Sarah Polley, decides to face death on her own terms. She rationalizes that by keeping her pending death a secret she will spare her family months spent crying in hospital corridors and eating bad cafeteria food. She sets about to make her children audio tapes for each birthday, reunites with her incarcerated father, looks for a new wife for her husband and mother for children, and explores doing things she’s never done before. It’s sad but not sappy with balance of tragedy and resolution, and the fact that the lead role was a strong female character wasn’t lost on me. One reviewer summed the movie up like this…it makes you think twice about what’s really important and a movie that can do that is a movie worth seeing. Ultimately, that’s probably the underlying reason that I’m involved in the study of death.

My Life Without Me and the other movies I mentioned will probably make you cry, but you won’t feel manipulated to do so, as with some Hollywood fare; at least I didn’t. But why watch movies that you know will make you cry? How can that be therapy? I think watching movies about death when you’re grieving can act like a homeopathic remedy, aligning with feelings you’re already having and bringing them to the surface for you to plainly see. Another reason not to avoid what you know will make you cry refers back to a line in the The Jim and Dan Stories, the book I wrote after losing my brothers: “The sadness is already there… the crying just lets it out.”

~ Originally posted on looseleafnotes.com January 27, 2006.

Bridging the Grief Gap

“Drop by drop we cry a river of tears and the earth is washed with our love.” ~ Jan Seivers Mahon, reader of the Jim and Dan Stories.

I received an email recently from a subscriber of the Museletter, the monthly community forum that I co-edit. She was thanking me for my written contributions that have appeared in the publication, particularly recent ones on the subjects of death and grief. I think she was referring to my questions, posed to author Joan Didion, ‘Is it any stranger to think that a loved one can return from death than it is to accept that they died in the first place? Isn’t the vanishing as fantastic as the idea that they might return from it?’ when she commented that her take on death was similar to mine…that maybe there isn’t any.

I appreciated her feedback, as I appreciate any conversation about death and grief that others are willing to have with me because too often it can be an awkward subject that people avoid. Death and grief have played heavily in my recent life and to not acknowledge that or not talk about it with others tends to make me feel invisible. But I haven’t pinned down any one fixed take on death, and I don’t think I ever will.

I emailed her back saying that my study of death is ongoing. On a lighter note, I added, “I might be willing to die just so I can penetrate the mystery of it. That’s how curious I am!”

A few days after that, Pearl, a Loose Leaf reader, left me an intriguing comment. Knowing that I’m engaged in an in-depth exploration into the mystery of death, she sent me a link to some writing on the subject, which ultimately led me to “Dan Blogs,” authored by a man who had recently lost his wife and whose insights I found to be fresh and honest. He wrote: Actually, I think it's more accurate to say that you aren't dead until everyone of whose social atom you are a part is dead. This is because we don't live solely inside our bodies, we live outside them, too. We are social beings. We are defined by, we come into existence through our relationships.

I was so affected by my brother’s deaths four years ago, that I felt like I had been abducted by aliens. I found myself looking for others who had also been abducted so I wouldn’t feel so strange and alone. I still feel like that but to a lesser degree, and since then have lost my father, which is why I gravitate to others who are dealing with loss and why I was interested in what Dan had to say on his blog. I particularly liked his post entitled “Time doesn’t heal. The only way out is in.” In it, he writes: What does happen over time is that memory of the loved and lost begins to fade and so the daily experience of pain at the loss reduces. You begin to form new life patterns so the reminders of the difference gradually diminish. This isn't healing the wound, though. It is simply the wounding process winding down. The knife gradually being withdrawn…

He also has a post titled, “What to say and do with someone who has lost a loved one,” which is something I also wrote about in “The Jim and Dan Stories.” I know from experience, as one who has been changed fundamentally by loss, that it’s better to say something, as awkward as it may be, than to say nothing to those who are grieving. Even a knowing gesture can offer a bridge to a person who is feeling alienated by grief.

I don’t think our culture prepares us for dealing with the death of a loved one (particularly when it doesn’t come at the end of life, which is considered more normal). I think it's up to us. We need to reach out to each other.

Posted by Colleen at 8:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (17)
Bridging the Grief Gap

iceshadow.jpg“Drop by drop we cry a river of tears and the earth is washed with our love.” ~ Jan Seivers Mahon, reader of the “Jim and Dan Stories.”

I received an email recently from a subscriber of the Museletter, the monthly community forum that I co-edit. She was thanking me for my written contributions that have appeared in the publication, particularly recent ones on the subjects of death and grief. I think she was referring to my questions, posed to author Joan Didion, ‘Is it any stranger to think that a loved one can return from death than it is to accept that they died in the first place? Isn’t the vanishing as fantastic as the idea that they might return from it?’ when she commented that her take on death was similar to mine…that maybe there isn’t any.

I appreciated her feedback, as I appreciate any conversation about death and grief that others are willing to have with me because too often it can be an awkward subject that people avoid. Death and grief have played heavily in my recent life and to not acknowledge that or not talk about it with others tends to make me feel invisible. But I haven’t pinned down any one fixed take on death, and I don’t think I ever will.

I emailed her back saying that my study of death is ongoing. On a lighter note, I added, “I might be willing to die just so I can penetrate the mystery of it. That’s how curious I am!”

A few days after that, Pearl, a Loose Leaf reader, left me an intriguing comment. Knowing that I’m engaged in an in-depth exploration into the mystery of death, she sent me a link to some writing on the subject, which ultimately led me to “Dan Blogs,” authored by a man who had recently lost his wife and whose insights I found to be fresh and honest. He wrote: Actually, I think it's more accurate to say that you aren't dead until everyone of whose social atom you are a part is dead. This is because we don't live solely inside our bodies, we live outside them, too. We are social beings. We are defined by, we come into existence through our relationships.

I was so affected by my brother’s deaths four years ago, that I felt like I had been abducted by aliens. I found myself looking for others who had also been abducted so I wouldn’t feel so strange and alone. I still feel like that but to a lesser degree, and since then have lost my father, which is why I gravitate to others who are dealing with loss and why I was interested in what Dan had to say on his blog. I particularly liked his post entitled “Time doesn’t heal. The only way out is in.” In it, he writes: What does happen over time is that memory of the loved and lost begins to fade and so the daily experience of pain at the loss reduces. You begin to form new life patterns so the reminders of the difference gradually diminish. This isn't healing the wound, though. It is simply the wounding process winding down. The knife gradually being withdrawn…

He also has a post titled, “What to say and do with someone who has lost a loved one,” which is something I also wrote about in The Jim and Dan Stories. I know from experience, as one who has been changed fundamentally by loss, that it’s better to say something, as awkward as it may be, than to say nothing to those who are grieving. Even a knowing gesture can offer a bridge to a person who is feeling alienated by grief.

I don’t think our culture prepares us for dealing with the death of a loved one (particularly when it doesn’t come at the end of life, which is considered more normal). I think it's up to us. We need to reach out to each other.

~ Originally posted on looseleafnotes.com on January 13, 2006.