The Big Sleep

I’ve been thinking a lot about death lately. Yours, mine, and the way that we relate to death in general. This is obviously one of those topics that make a lot of people uncomfortable. (Which is to say, it’s one of those topics that tends to make people say and do really stupid things. More on that later.) But that’s never made any sense to me, probably because my experience with death is long and deep. How long? How deep? Here’s a timeline for your reference.

• 1980: my grandmother
• 1985: my favorite uncle
• 1987: my grandfather
• 1988: my aunt
• 1989: my great-grandmother
• 1990: another uncle
• 1992: my cousin
• 1992: a next-door neighbor I grew up with
• 1993: my aunt and her baby
• 1994: my best friend from elementary school
• 2008: another cousin
• 2008: yet another cousin

Freaky? Yeah. I know. That’s a lot of death. A lot. (It may not come as a surprise, but I spent the years between 1992 and 1998 assuming, whenever anyone was late, that they were dead.) For a long time, I experienced this overabundance as something shameful; a curse, if you will. Over time, I’ve come to see that, for however awful these experiences have been, they’ve helped me to accelerate a particular type of learning. Primarily, I’ve learned to live in such a way that, if I die tomorrow, no one that I love would be left wondering how I felt about them. But it’s also given me a sort of rare privilege: the ability to make myself useful when the people around me are faced with death.

We’re all going to die. Right? We know this. But because we’ve had the luxury in the West of removing, sterilizing and/or ignoring the things that cause us discomfort and pain, we walk around pretending we’re not going to die. Or worse: we think about it and make reference to it in hushed, faux-pious tones.

Death is imminent. All the time. Everywhere. It takes so very, very little to make it happen. Which makes it (rather automatically) unmysterious. Common, even. And yet: when it happens to the people you care for, it never is anything less than painful as hell itself. You get used to the process, which is sort of helpful; but that’s it. The pain is new every single time.

Death is messy. It’s embarrassing, awkward, ugly. It’s definitely inconvenient. It never, ever feels right. No part of it ever feels right. And it brings out the worst in people; those directly connected to the deceased, and those around you with whom you might need to share the news.  When my cousin died in 1992, it was completely unexpected. It was accidental. He was 16. I went to school the day I found out (figuring that doing something normal would be the best way for me to cope with it during the shock stage), and I told a friend of mine what had happened. She opened her mouth in surprise, closed it again, and walked away from me. And then she never mentioned it afterward. A couple of years ago, the brother of a dear friend of mine died suddenly, and although I hadn’t known him, I was stunned to receive the news at work. I got up from my desk, and the first person I saw was an office mate I trusted. I told him what I’d just heard, and he grimaced, chuckled a little and said, “Well, that’s fun.” (Amazing, the similarities between a 15-year-old girl and a 46-year-old man, no?)

Here’s what people need when someone dies:

• To be held
• To be heard
• To hear that you are waiting to help them in whatever way they need help
• To be checked up on
• Silence
• Space
• To be fed
• To be reminded to sleep
• To be told that however they are grieving is normal
• Safety
• Respect
• To laugh
• To cry
• To slip back into their regular lives and selves for a bit, even (especially) in the midst of grieving
• To never have to hear (or never again have to hear) dumb-ass platitudes like, “Well, she’s in a better place now,” or “He would have wanted you to be happy.”
• To not be expected to be back to normal after the funeral

That last one in particular gets to me. The first few days, everyone descends upon the bereaved with cards and phone calls and meals and visits. Once the funeral is done, people start frowning upon signs of your insistence not to get back to life as we know it. If we’re honest, we can say that other people’s grief is not terrifically exciting, and that we tend not to see beyond our own level of entertainment. That is to say: our own level of comfort. We are small, small creatures.

But we aren’t so small that we can’t push past our silly little cubicles and pigeonholes and scheduled me, me, me time to provide a service for a fellow human being. Reaching out to others is risky. It’s awkward. It doesn’t always feel good. And hey, guess what? It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter at all what it feels like to you. Because by being a willing participant in the grand, arch, cosmic joke that is life on this planet–that is, by being willing to bare yourself in a way that we never really do anymore in this great Western culture of ours–you begin to see that maybe, just maybe, there’s a bigger picture. And that the bigger picture goes beyond life and death. Because once you get beyond that, you begin to see that the little things are huge, and the big things are tiny. And nothing is ever the same again, really, after that. And you won’t mind.

I promise.

I Don’t Know…Ask Emma!

Ooh, look! My very own advice column! Yes, I’m totally serious. It’s a part-time job for me anyway, so I figured I would go public with it. Need advice? Send me your quandary and I’ll address it here.

Hi Emma,

EC, Nashville, TN

Hi, EC –

What I’m hearing from your letter is that you really love the discipline you’ve been a part of, but do not feel that you are spiritually aligned with the particular group you’ve been practicing with. You have continued to support both the larger and smaller groups financially. Meanwhile, you want to look around and find a group where you can feel at home. Does that about sum it up?

None of this sounds remotely flaky. In fact, I can very much relate to feeling totally out of alignment with a group of people who gather to participate in a discipline you love; it’s happened to me more than once, which is why I’ve visited and/or joined and then left various churches in the last 10 years. What catches my attention, though, is that you used the phrase “more ‘flaky’ behavior.” That makes me wonder who has been labeling you like that? Is it someone else? Is it you?

If you’ve been calling yourself flaky, knock it off. To do this, examine what it is that’s pushing the “flaky” button in you–perhaps the feeling that someone whose opinion you trust would disapprove? Well, what’s the worst that could happen if that were the case? There are two scenarios possible there, the way I see it: either this person would disapprove so strongly that he/she felt they could no longer be in your life–in which case, their problem’s way too big to solve here–or they’ll disapprove and then get over it. (Sometimes just ignoring the issue altogether is the same thing as “getting over it.”)

Obviously, this is something that’s meaningful for you. So why allow someone else’s opinion to back you into a corner? Ultimately, you’re the only person who has to walk around in your shoes.

Emma

Not for the non-addict.

I followed a link today and wound up reading a straight-up, no-bullshit blog post written by someone who is highly intelligent, articulate, and on the very first day of a long, hard journey.  I know addiction and its alluring, tantalizing promises. It is one sexy demon. I come from two long lines of addicts, both practicing and dry. I’ve been to countless funerals necessitated by death via entanglement. And if I were to share the countless ways I keep watch, the many nights I stay up late with a fine-tooth comb and a bottle of No More Tears, spraying and combing until I can rest assured I have not developed any sultry little snares–well, the truth is I don’t want to share that with anybody. But it’s a constant upkeep. It’s just so easy for me. And I cannot afford to be distracted anymore, at this stage.

Anyway, I left a comment for the brave soul telling the truth about the wrestling match she’s just signed on for. And shortly thereafter, I heard from her. She said the comment had been helpful. Which was so, so gratifying for me. So I thought I would post my comment here, just in case it might help anyone else. And I’ll be honest: it helps me, too. To be a hand in the darkness. It keeps me grounded. It reminds me that we’re all in this thing together.

You don’t know me. But I get it. I understand this. And addiction. And, by extension, you. Make no mistake: it is a battle. To the death. To call it anything short of that is to simultaneously candy-coat and undermine one of the most difficult things a human can do. Remember that. When you find yourself knowing beyond a doubt that you absolutely, positively cannot go on without that thing that makes everything bearable–and you will find yourself there, many times, before you’re through–remember: it IS a battle. And battles DO taste an awful lot like shit. So don’t be deterred by the taste, the exhaustion, the fear. Most of all, do not be swayed by the illusion of hopelessness. Because that part is a lie. It is the biggest lie of all. You’re not hopeless. Not now, not ever. Remember that. Okay? Do it.

My Co-Workers: You, You, and YOU.

A few weeks ago, my friend Stacy put words to something I’d been thinking about for some time. Appropriately, she said it via Twitter: “…twitter is like the watercooler for the self-employed.” Of course! I thought. That’s exactly what it is. Since I am self-employed, I see very few other humans during an average workday, and while I generally consider that one of the perks of this gig, it can get lonely from time to time.

But social media gives me that hit of humanity, just enough to make me feel like I’m not the tree in the forest that didn’t really fall since no one heard it. I check in to see what everybody’s up to; we compare notes on the weekend, on how everybody hates Mondays, on what our kids and spouses did–oh, and the projects we’re working on.  Occasionally we lose or gain cohorts.

It’s been nearly a year since I shared an office with @Loops91 and nearly six since I worked with @bbrasier–but because they’re both on Twitter, I can ask a question, make a snide comment or continue to beat an old inside joke into the ground with no more effort than if I were there with them. (For which they are no doubt unendingly grateful, given my love of beating old inside jokes into the ground.)  My friends @randibuckley and @fridaworld are on the other end of the state and world, respectively, from me, but most weekdays we check in with each other fairly regularly. And although I’ve yet to meet @sarahjbray or @WhenIGroUpCoach in person, they may as well be just down the hall from me.

It is a bit ironic, no? We get away from the watercooler and promptly find a new way to replicate those same dynamics. But here’s the thing: they may be the same dynamics, but now we have the luxury of choosing the minds and personalities with whom we’re brainstorming, commiserating and/or verbally jousting. As Sarah and I were saying from our respective offices [actually, she was outside on her property somewhere in Virginia Beach and I was at my kitchen table in suburban Los Angeles] the other day, it’s nothing short of delicious to be able to find whole enclaves of those all-too-rare-in-real-life, like-minded individuals. It changes how we think, how we feel, how we work.

So it isn’t quite business as usual, no. It’s business, but better. Call it Post-Watercoolerism, if you like. I’m just calling it great.

Photo by NidalM.