Five Years of Inhumanity

"In a little over a month, the U.S. will have been occupying Iraq for 5 years. It's hard to believe. Even when looking at the awful numbers -- more than 1 million Iraqis and nearly 4,000 U.S. servicepeople killed, 2 million Iraqis living as refugees in other countries, with another 2.5 million displaced within Iraq, more than 1 trillion dollars spent -- I find it difficult to grasp what 5 years really means. What is the full sum of the destruction and suffering that has taken place? And what does it mean for the future of our country and our world?" - Leslie Cagan

Yes, I Will Take You

"Hey Mom, do you want to eat in the dining room?"
"No, there are a bunch of old people in there."

Words from my 74-year-old mom, who is now in a rehab facility for about a week or so for rest and physical therapy. She'll be released when she is less of a fall risk.

Who can blame her for not wanting to identify as an "old person." Up until my father died in March, she was going to the gym, writing articles and books, attending a weekly writing group, making dinner every night, tending to my father's varied and many needs, and being active in a variety of ways in the community.

After he died she had two successive falls, and suddenly she has lost her husband, her home, her health, her independence.

I'm whirling from it all. I know my sisters are. My mom? I can barely imagine.

Grief? Loss? What are the right words?

My friend Gabriele Rico sent me the perfect Ellen Bass poem, with the perfect words. I'd read it several times before in Mules of Love, and re-reading it re-reminds me that what my mom and my family are enduring right now is ... well ... the human condition.

Here's the poem:

The Thing Is

to love life, to love it even
when you have no stomach for it
and everything you’ve held dear
crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,
your throat filled with the silt of it.
When grief sits with you, its tropical heat
thickening the air, heavy as water
more fit for gills than lungs.
When grief weights you like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief,
you think, how can a body withstand this?
Then you hold life like a face between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes, I will take you,
I will love you, again.

Notes from One Wedding Chickie

Not Annie and Me On Our Wedding Day

My piece about Annie and me getting married in San Francisco was just published here, on a website called weddingchickie.com. The focus of the site is "Advice and Commentary for the Savvy Bride." Very cool that it includes weddings with two brides.

And guess what? I actually got paid for the piece. $150, not shabby. Especially since it was previously published in a small literary journal.

This is all good news on a day when I can use good news. It's only been a little over a month since my father died, and I can feel my skin crawling from residues of stress and grief. I feel like I've been on a speeding train since his death: all the calls and vistors, planning the service, holding the service, mom falls and breaks her arm and moves in with me, seeing her daily reminds me of our big loss, helping her bathe and dress and all that reminds me of everything she's been through, I continue teaching, face a mountain of papers to grade, Virginia Tech happens so here come stressors of even BEING on a campus, we're studying the devastating sitatuion in Iraq in one of my classes, I didn't get a job I applied for, we almost went out on strike, now I'm involved with students in protesting fee hikes ... Seems appropriate that this is one big run-on, with unparallel structure. Grammar be damned when life is like this.

And thank goddess for humor. Laughing reminds me to breathe. (My dad used to say, "You can either laugh or cry. I 'd rather laugh.")

And biggest of all thank goddess for Annie. Marrying her was the best decision of my life.

Giving Mom a Bath

(from www.simplytom.com)

As I helped her ease down to the stool in the shower, gingerly careful of her broken shoulder, and lathered her hair with minty shampoo and ran a soapy washcloth across her back...

I thought about all the times she bathed me. She'd sit on the toilet lid as I splashed around with with my washcloth and yellow squeaky duckie.

I thought about how when I was growing up she wrote out a dinner menu and stuck it with a magnet to the side of the fridge. Monday, Meatloaf, string beans, ice cream. Tuesday, Baked Chicken, potatoes and salad, cookies. There were always vegetables and dessert. She shopped every Sunday to buy all the ingredients needed for the week because in addition to raising three kids and a husband (!) she worked as a school nurse.

I thought about how she used to hang all the clothes that needed ironing in a closet and then once a week fold out the ironing board, heat up the iron, and make all our clothes presentable.

I thought about how she volunteered as a nurse at a camp summer after summer so my sister and I could attend a ritzy camp for free. For her, it was a summer of dispensing medications and tending to kids with stomach aches. For us, it was a summer of horseback riding, waterskiing, hiking, archery, and campfires.

I thought about how she used to sit on my bed when I was cozy in my pajamas. She'd be holding a cellophane-covered book we'd gotten from our weekly visit to the library. I'd read one page and she'd read the next, and she'd let me turn the pages.

I thought about how she once told me, "Don't ever worry about my feelings or what I think when you're writing. Write whatever you want." She was telling me to feel free to be myself as a writer and a person.

I thought about how, after 48 years of marriage, she lost her husband--my father--last month. And then a week later she fell and broke her shoulder. And I thought about how no matter what I do now to help her make it through, I will never be able to repay her.

Maybe Dad's Finding Ways to Say Hi?

Example #1: The Phone Rings
The day after my father died, my mom and I were sorting out some things in the kitchen, and I came across a piece of paper written by my father's hand. It said "Bob Newman"--a name unfamiliar to me--and a phone number. I held it up and was just about to ask my mom if this was something to keep, when the phone rang, interrupting me.

I picked it up. The person on the other end said, "Hi, is Bob Newman there?"

I looked down at the piece of paper in my hand, eyeing my father's familiar scrawl. "Bob Newman" it said in Dad's loopy blue ink. And now someone on the other end of the phone was asking for that very name, at the very moment I was about to ask my mom who Bob Newman was.

"You're not going to believe this," I said, "but I'm holding a piece of paper in my hand with the name Bob Newman on it. Who is this?"

"This is Jim," said the male voice. "I'm in Bob's poker group."

"My dad, Don Evans, was in a poker group."

"Yes, that's the same group," he said.

"You called his home."

"Don Evans? Your father? Oh, I'm so sorry. I just heard he passed away."

I asked him what number he was calling. He said the number. It turns out that my father's number was accidentally listed as Bob Newman's on the Poker Group phone sheet. I just can't get over the fact that at the very instant I was holding a piece of paper with Bob Newman's phone number written in my father's handwriting that the phone would ring, with someone asking for Bob Newman.

Example #2: Goulash
After the funeral, when Annie and I were back home, our friends Lisa and Marissa asked if they could come by and bring us dinner. A very sweet, compassionate gesture given all we'd been going through. Besides, we love to hang out with them and talk about life. They came through the door carrying a wonderful-smelling pot of something and bags of other items.

"Wow, smells great!" I said. "What's for dinner?"

"Hungarian goulash," Lisa said.

"Did you know my dad was Hungarian?"

Lisa and Marissa looked at me. "We had no idea."

And so...
...there you go. Hi Dad. I miss you.

Post-Father Life

I'm starting a new blog in the midst of total life change. I'm now in my post-father life. My father died on St. Patrick's Day. I was with him and my mom when he died at his home, in his bed, in the middle of the night. I suppose I have a kind of post-traumatic stress or shock right now. It's hard to focus, to think, to be in my skin.

My father was quite ill for a long time. But he was so obstinately in love with being alive that I never thought he'd really let go. Up until his last day he was living big.

I miss him like you wouldn't believe.

Or maybe you would.

I know most people have gone through deep loss.

Welcome to age 44, I hear the universe saying to me.

Here's a piece I wrote about my dad, with some pictures:

http://kateevans.drumtable.com/My_Father__a_Tevye_at_Heart

May Sarton once said she never truly felt free until her parents died. I feel free in the way an unanchored boat or a helium balloon let go feels free: wavering, lost, floating with no direction, no path.