Homeless
Me: What should I title it?
Diane: How about Homeless?
Me: Isn’t that too ham-handed? I don’t want people feeling sorry for me.
Diane: Then don’t post it.
Me: But I want my words back on the blog, and I want people to know why there haven’t been any.
Diane: Then post it.
*******************
Dear Helen,
I’m behind. I should have written earlier. Maybe I’d be sleeping now.
I understood your death. I knew it was coming, I didn’t know how I’d react, but your perpetually bright smile helped me cope. Mack’s demise has unhinged me. Most days I know who I am, but some days I feel lost, and many nights I feel myself thrashing about. I wish he’d lived longer than six months after you died, I wish I’d intervened to stop his surgery, I wish my last memories of my father were not of him lying in bed, eyes closed, exercising the only parts he could still move, his hands.
Wednesday night I dreamed I couldn’t find my way home. I was in a strange city and all streets were dead ends. Anxious, I’d wake myself up, but go right back to the same city, and the same struggles. I’ve had these dreams before. Wander, wander, wander, look around, not knowing where I am, or really, even where home is. This time I got mad and said to myself, “I know where to go.†I grabbed my shopping cart and walked through dark, empty streets until I came to a highway without cars. I sensed this was a place I shouldn’t be, where I might be arrested, but I picked my cart up, hoisted it overhead, and continued to walk over the lanes, past high fences and down to a broad building with a loading dock. The concrete platform was too high, I’d made one wrong decision, but I heard a man’s voice that said, “Over here.†Over “there†was easy entry to the building and I walked in that direction with my cart.
I remember your dreams. You loved dreams. Yours were colorful and intricate and populated with people, and you looked to that PBS guy for help interpreting them. What was his name, the guy Mack derided, who liked James Joyce and wrote about symbols and myth and…Joseph Campbell, that’s him.
Thursday night, as if to ward off more wander-in-the-dark dreams, I cooked garlic toast with dinner. I crushed four fresh cloves, soaked them in olive oil and slathered the mixture on sour dough bread, which I then browned under the broiler. It was so strong it bit back. The toast reminded me of Karen’s potato soup which she cooks with five heads of garlic.
I often think of shopping with you at Idylwilde, of how you’d marvel at their exotic produce – like a child your eyes sparkled at new and different – and I still have the garlic cooker you and I bought. Anyway, Karen’s soup made her whole house smell like a crushed garlic clove, but it was about half as intense as my toast. Did she ever make it for you?
The point of my wandering letter is I need help. I need more rest, I need to feel up to this task, I need to feel not so alone. I know you don’t have the answers, you didn’t when you were alive, but you did always listen.
Anyway, as Diane and I were driving into Cambridge yesterday, we rounded the rotary near the BU bridge and Diane whispered, “There you are.†I thought she was talking about the driver in front of us, and I said, “You mean the curly-headed guy?†“Noâ€, she answered, pointing to the green grass near the overpass, “The homeless man sitting next to his shopping cart.â€
We’ve missed your words, though we’d not have them tell us you’re in such pain were it possible for them to speak otherwise. And yet, I sense hope, in that no one who can grapple so eloquently can be truly lost; just wandering.
I’m minded, though, of the closing lines to your story, “Christmas Trees”, the parallels intimating that while the acuteness, and the loss of a waypoint soul may be new, the wandering is not.
Comment by adam — April 1, 2007 @ 6:13 pm
Michael, maybe your issue about posting versus not was to ward off offers like this, but here goes: It does seem like friendships fall into patterns in terms of who listens and who talks. I’m pretty sure I’m mostly the talker so I owe you a chunk of listening and would be glad if you collected. And it’s not an imposition; think how you’ve felt over the years when people talk to you.
Comment by jennifer — April 1, 2007 @ 6:17 pm
Dear Jeffro, Do you recognize yourself in the dream?
Comment by anon — April 1, 2007 @ 6:44 pm
‘Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it. We anticipate (we know) that someone close to us could die, but we do not look beyond the few days or weeks that immediately follow such an imagined death. We misconstrue the nature of even those few day or weeks. We might expect if the death is sudden to feel shock. We do not expect the shock to be obliterative, dislocating to both body and mind. We might expect that we will be prostrate, inconsolable, crazy with loss. We do not expect to be literally crazy, cool customers who believe that their husband is about to return and need his shoes.’ From Joan Didion’s Year of Magical Thinking.
Michael…your grief wave is gripping you. Nasty stuff. Ride the wave and it will ease up. Truly.
Comment by Chris — April 1, 2007 @ 7:42 pm
Jeffro’s the voice, I take it? Yeah, what happened after that part of the dream?
I like the quote, Chris, but it leaves the erroneous impression that once one gets to know one’s grief, one knows it. I’m now suspecting strongly that each grief is unique. And guilt is so often a part of it, possibly along with anger at oneself for the undeserved guilt.
Comment by jennifer — April 1, 2007 @ 8:20 pm
Hmmmm, I didn’t take it to mean that at all. The author winds up disoriented after the death of her husband and daughter (though the book was published before her daughter died, the play addresses both deaths). Accustomed to being competent, capable, optimistic, and indestructible, she doesn’t recognize herself in the shadows of grief.
I’m not going to address the guilt thing…I think it’s a separate discussion.
Michael, I liked your dream. I think you went through danger to get to a safe place with your cart.
Comment by Chris — April 1, 2007 @ 8:50 pm
It’s just that first sentence–simultaneously true and false. In describing grief as *A* place (emphasis mine), I was left with the impression she had found some constancy. I can understand she has experienced the dislocation as non-constancy.
Comment by jennifer — April 1, 2007 @ 10:30 pm
Dear Michael,
I’m so sorry you’ve been feeling so sad. I’m glad at least you got a chance to reconcile with your father before he died. The truth is, it must be a bit orienting (centering) to realize how much you miss your parents. It shows that all this effort we’ve poured into our children, and our parents poured into us makes a difference.
Anyway, thanks for being such good company in spite of your sadness. We’ll try to be like the man in your dream who was helpful!
Comment by jacquie — April 2, 2007 @ 9:55 am
Yea Mike! This is so nice. I love how your subconscious speaks directly to you. Not a lot of wondering what this all means to you.
Comment by Jen — April 2, 2007 @ 9:56 am
Hey Mike! Over here!
Comment by Jen — April 2, 2007 @ 10:04 am
Jen, where is over here? Better yet, when is the next dinner?
Alright, I walked down Central St. and noticed guards posted at nearby bridges next to signs that plead for would be jumpers to first call the Good Samaritans. I do appreciate – greatly – the support, and I’d love to get together with whomever for whatever, but I am OK.
And I loved the subsequent discussion about grief, and I wondered whether guilt really is a separate topic, and I wished I’d though of the word “obliterative.” Isn’t that the engine that drives the grief?
And thanks, Adam, for reminding me of who I am.
Comment by michael — April 2, 2007 @ 8:40 pm
Guilt had nothing to do with the passage I selected..that’s why I said it was a separate issue. I suppose anything could bring guilt on, but it’s really so counter-productive the guilt thing. Really.
Comment by Chris — April 2, 2007 @ 10:24 pm
I find guilt a part of every discussion I have with myself, certainly not excluding ones about grief and death. Let’s see, how does it work in my mother’s death: I feel guilty that I didn’t mind her death more, guilty that I didn’t push her harder to acknowledge it and gulty that I tried at all, guilty that I got to reconcile with her more than my sisters did and guilty that I wasn’t more honest with her. That might be all.
Michael, is this a metaphor or true or both? “I walked down Central St. and noticed guards posted at nearby bridges next to signs that plead for would be jumpers to first call the Good Samaritans” Wait, I can’t remember any bridges. I guess that answers my question.
Comment by jennifer — April 2, 2007 @ 10:26 pm
Oh, yeah; the counter-productivity of guilt. Another thing I feel guilty about. I’m not arguing–I totally agree–just stating my reality.
Comment by jennifer — April 2, 2007 @ 10:28 pm
Garlic toast with dinner? Sounds like part of a nightmare to me. Or if you did it for real (as it appears), was it to drive the demons away? I hope it worked, although it seems to me like a recipe for waking up in the wee hours and scrabbling for the Tums.
Comment by rakkity — April 2, 2007 @ 10:58 pm
There are bridges on Central St., but only in the sense that there are streams flowing underneath the road. If you jumped feet first you’d stick in the mud with your head above water, so the only way to off yourself would be to dive in head first and hope no one saw your legs waving about.
If not for dinner, rakkity, then for breakfast? Adam taught me to eat garlic back in ought 83 when we used to lunch at Armando’s on Huron Ave. He’d shake the garlic jar like he was putting out a fire.
Jennifer, I just know I can use all that guilt to make you do things you otherwise wouldn’t. Wait until I decide what I need done.
Comment by michael — April 3, 2007 @ 7:12 am
OK. I am remiss at setting a date. I pick Saturday, April 21. All are welcome! I’ll send the address in an e-mail.
And, I agree with Jennifer, Chris, Adam, Michael and Rakkity. Although useless, guilt is very human and surfaces just about everywhere it’s not welcome; garlic toast is a guilty pleasure. I’m always offending someone when I eat it. And you can bet it will be on my table for you, Michael.
Comment by Jen — April 3, 2007 @ 9:42 pm
Wow, what a supportive community, Mike!
Danny-come-lately is now loathe (I don’t do guilt) to add a comment on two counts: (1) Lateness, (2) Leanings toward interpretation and advice vs. pure listening.
But here goes anyway: Is there a strong food which in overdose triggers an all-out crying-and-sobbing bout? Then make some of that, and go to bed looking at your dad’s face as a young boy, while hugging a big pillow.
Do that a dozen times — then write Mac a letter.
Comment by smiling Dan — April 7, 2007 @ 9:39 am