My New Title

Today my oncologist referred to me as a survivor.  I can’t begin to convey the feeling that came with that label.  It is an incredible way to finish the year.  

How Aunt Dorothy Saved my Life

I was never close to my Aunt Dorothy.  She always treated me well, she seemed nice, she even gave me cool Christmas gifts; but that’s not the same as close.  I was therefore surprised at my mother’s funeral, when she walked up to me, waited until she had my full attention and then told me the wisest thing I have ever heard regarding grief.  I have read books, attended countless workshops, and talked with some noteable experts on grief.  None of them contained the brilliance of her thinking.  Her words are enshrined in my heart.

“William, hold onto her as long as you need to, then let her go.  Don’t listen to anyone who tells you to move on before you’re ready.  Don’t set a time limit on your grief.  Hold onto her as long as you need to, then and only then let her go.”  

She was right.  You can’t put a time limit on grief.  It ebbs and flows throughout your life.  While you may not feel anything at a gravesite, a tune on the radio can trigger tears.  You may not feel anything for a long time, then a holiday or anniversary may unleash a wave of sadness.   

Grief is an unavoidable part of life.  I do believe that avoiding grief can physically hurt the body.  Keeping that kind of pain within you will damage your body over time.  With that one little comment my Aunt Dorothy may have saved my life.  

The Letter

No matter how much you work on some issues, they will still come back to haunt you.   Sometimes current events will trigger you.  Sometimes an anniversary or a holiday will trigger you.  Sometimes divine providence interrupts the tranquility.  The result is that you have to work through issues that you have worked through before.  Such is the reason I haven’t been writing for the past couple of months.  I have had to wrestle with an old issue yet again.  

Fall has always been a delicate time for me.  My mother died on September 25th, my parents anniversary was October 25th, my Mother’s birthday was November 25th and Christmas was always the big holiday in our house.  In succession, these events would emerge each year to require that I feel the loss.  Early in our marriage, my wife pointed out that if I didn’t allow myself to feel the sadness during Autumn, I would get sick by Christmas.  

One of the complications of my mother’s death was that just prior to her getting killed she visited Connecticut.  I was finishing my internship, the only thing that was holding me here.  During her visit she asked me if I would return to the family home after my training.  I could complete writing my Masters Thesis from the farmhouse in Rochester as well as I could in Connecticut.  I knew she was lonely and wanted my companionship, but I wasn’t about to move home at the age of 26.  I declined and I knew it hurt her.  I think she took it personally.  It was only a few weeks later that she was killed.  Along with all the other emotions that accompanied her death, I was overwhelmed with guilt that I had not moved home.  I reasoned that if I had been there, maybe she wouldn’t have died.  Maybe I could have saved her.  

This question has haunted me over the years.  I knew I wasn’t responsible for her death, but did my absence contribute to her demise?  I also became angry with my father who had died 6 years earlier.  Maybe if he hadn’t have smoked those damn Camel straights, he would have been there to protect mom.  Then during my grief I realized that if I had been there I might have died also.  Murderers don’t like to leave witnesses.  I rationalized my decision, while also acknowledging that moving home at my age, would not have been healthy.  But the feeling that I had let her down by not moving home had stayed with me.  For 39 years I have carried this small guilt.  

We have been in the process of cleaning out all kinds of stuff that has accumulated over the years.  It was on Sunday September 20, 2015 that I pulled out another box, from under the stairs to go through and see what could be tossed.  In the box, I found my mother’s purse.  I don’t know if I had ever looked in it.  It still had her car keys and lipstick.  Mostly it was filled with bank deposit slips for accounts long gone.  Then I came across a letter.  It was a letter from me dated September 20, 1976.  I had written the letter exactly 39 years to the day that it was returned to me.  I opened it and read.  

The letter described the work on my thesis.  It described my plans to seek employment.  But it also told her how much I loved her and that she shouldn’t take it personally that I didn’t want to live with her.  I needed my independence and to find my own way.  My not returning home was about me, not about her.  

She would have received this letter only hours before she was killed.  Before she died, she knew that I loved her dearly and that my not moving home was about my trying to grow up.  Reading the letter, finally after 39 years, absolved me of the guilt I had been carrying.  While it totally let me off the hook, it also triggered my grief again.  At times, during the next few weeks, I felt the devastating pain just as strongly as when she first left me.  For several weeks, I had to return to mourning the loss of my mother.  

I no longer avoid these feelings.  Over several weeks, I let the pain roll over me and through me.  It slowly ebbed away and I again feel grounded.  It took some time for me to recognize this experience as a “great gift” as my son called it.  The fact that the letter came back to me exactly 39 years later impressed me that the Gods wanted me to pay attention and work through another piece of my grief.  

Maternal is as Maternal does

In my humble opinion, I am one of the most maternal men you will ever meet.   As maternal as I am, I’m not in the same ballpark as my wife.  She could spend days with our infants without a single complaint.  I could handle extended hours at best.  She has always had this internal ability at mothering.  It was an instinct that was built into her.  She knew what our children needed before I could even recognize the question.  But everyone has their limits and before long we had to have a talk about her getting a break from infant babble.  We finally worked out an arrangement that one night a week, I would stay in with the baby and she could go out.  This worked for us.   Many years later that negotiation came back to me as an intervention.

I was working with a nice young man, Elliot, who was in the rehabilitation program for substance abuse.  He was married with 6 boys, all under the age of 10 years old.  One afternoon we had a family session with the entire family.  I only had to cope with those boys for one hour, but they almost sent me over the edge.  His wife was great and loved her husband and the boys with all her heart, but she had a legitimate complaint.  She needed help with those boys.  He explained that he would do his best to stay home and help her.  But eventually, he would reach his breaking point and leave.  On the streets he would meet up with ‘his boys’ and he would end up using drugs sending him back to the bottom again.  Elliot was frustrated, his wife was frustrated and the boys were out of control.  His wife certainly was not going to like the idea of his attending 12 Step Self-Help groups 5 nights a week.  

It was nearing the end of the hour and I felt that my only accomplishment had been to keep the boys from taking a crayon to my wall.  The office had not been totally destroyed, only partially.  I was disappointed in how the session had turned out, when I remembered how my wife and I had negotiated a similar problem.  I told them of our experience.  I suggested that one night a week, Elliot stay home and watch the kids and the wife go out for the evening.   She brightened up immediately.  I insisted that this would only work if Elliot was encouraged to go to 12 Step groups on the other nights.  It took the rest of the hour for them to work out the details of the negotiation.  But they both went away satisfied that they would get their needs met.  Elliot left the rehab. program the following week and he didn’t return in the years that I worked there.    

               Despite our limitations as fathers, we can make our contributions.  Elliot could handle the overwhelming responsiblity of the boys for one night a week.  One night a week out, was all the wife needed to keep her sanity.  She could then encourage Elliot to attend 12 Step groups to continue his healing.  

Sometimes You Just Get It Right

It was August 30, 1975.  We were going to see the Rolling Stones.  I was accompanied by my college roommate, Jim, and two wonderful women who went with me to SUNY @ Geneseo.  The concert was at Rich Stadium, where the Buffalo Bills play football.   We were all totally excited.  We were in the stadium by the early afternoon.  It was a beautiful, warm, sunny summer day,  a perfect day for an outdoor concert!  I don’t remember who was the first warm up band, but I remember Sheryl Crow being the second act.  She was still not well known.  When we heard her, we knew she was going to be a great star.  

The Stones were incredible that night.  The music was amazing.  Jagger was outstanding as he danced across the stage.  He was Jumping Jack Flash, the Midnight Rambler and an unsympathetic devil all in one.  Keith Richards’ on lead guitar was brilliant.  Hearing him live, you came to appreciate all that he added to the sound.  Billy Preston was playing keyboard for this tour which just added to the fullness.  There was a frenzy that ignited when they performed Midnight Rambler.  This had to have been before the Altamont disaster.  Jagger took off this big, white belt that he was wearing and he repeatedly whipped it on the stage in time with the music.  It had a dark eroticism to it.  It totally electified the audience.  Later, they sang “Wild Horses” acappella.  They all grouped around Jagger and sang back up to his lead.  It was beautiful, powerful and impressive. 

The 1975 concert ended close to midnight.  Fireworks marked the finale.  Then there were 100,000 people exiting the stadium at the same time.  It was the only time in my life where I was in such a tight crowd of people that you literally couldn’t move other than to go with the flow of the mass.  It was scary.  By the time I got home and to my car, it was almost 3 AM.  

In the fall of 1975 I was lucky enough to be driving a copper-colored Ford Mustang hatchback.  It had 360 hp and was gorgeous.  I had spent the day before filling the car with my most important possessions.  At 4 AM, I got in my little Mustang and drove off to Connecticut.  On Monday I started an internship at Elmcrest Psychiatric Hospital in Portland, Connecticut.  I was 25 years old and I would never again live in New York State.  This was farewell to my childhood home.  It was a wonderful way to leave.  In my way of thinking, the Rolling Stones gave me a send off to my new life.  

When Does Grief End?

My wife Catherine, taught me an important lesson about grief.  It was the fall after our daughter was born.  She had a very serious look on her face when we sat down to talk.

“Every year during the fall, you get sick.  Now that we have our daughter that has to change.”  I really didn’t understand what she was talking about.  She could see it in my face.  “William, every year at this time, you get sick.  When you get sick, I get sick, and the baby will get sick and we’ll have a miserable Christmas.  It has to change.”  I was still confused about what she wanted from me.  “Let me put it this way, your mother is here in our marriage and she’s fucking with us.  Get her out.”    

This was a challenge.  At this point, my mother had been dead over ten years. I was sent to the basement (exile) to “work” on this issue.  At first I didn’t think she knew what she was talking about.  But she knew me well and I knew she believed it.   

My mother died in late September.  The anniversary of her death was always a powerful time for me.  My parent’s wedding anniversary was in October, my mother’s birthday was around Thanksgiving and Christmas was our big holiday.  Fall was filled with emotional anniversaries.  In September I would start to avoid my feelings.  Clearly, the cork was put in the bottle with the anniversary of her murder.  As Fall proceeded I would get more and more depresssed.  I bottled up the sadness I had from all those family times that I used to celebrate.    I would get more and more depressed and numb, until I would get sick.  Catherine was right.

Then I had a memory of an experience I had shortly after her death.  My brother and I had decided to rent out our farmhouse in Rochester.  We should have sold it then, but neither of us could consider parting with it.  I was given the job of going up to the house, cleaning it and preparing it for sale.  

I knew that this was going to be tough.  I knew I would have to clean up blood.  When I arrived at the house, I steeled myself to the task at hand.  If I allowed myself to feel the sadness, I would never be able to complete the job.  So I turned off all my feelings and went about my cleaning.  By the time I left there, 8 hours later, I was sick as a dog.  I felt like I was coming down with a flu.  But I needed to get back to Connecticut, so I jumped in my car and started driving.  I was outside of Albany, when I finally had to pull over.  Once again, I felt the hurt.  It was the familiar pain that accompanied losing my mother.  It was excrutiating.  I believe I sobbed for over 15 minutes.  It was deep and cleansing.  It took me a while, before I could regroup and get back on the road.  But by the time I reached Massachusetts, I was totally healthy.  My body had washed away whatever it needed to.  

I knew what I had to do.  In order to get my mother out of our family, I had to spend some time with her.  Each Fall, I had to allow myself to mourn my mother.  I needed to cry and feel the loss.  Some years I would pull out pictures of her and that would open me up.  Some years I would write her a letter and tell her about my life.  To this day, I can still find tears if I think about how much my kids would have loved their grandparents and vice versa.  That thought will always be a trigger for me.  

For several years as fall would approach, my wife would remind me that my mother was sneeking back into our lives.  Would I kindly get her out?  For more than a decade, this was our ritual every year.  In fall, I would start taking time to think about my family, my childhood, my mom and dad.  Eventually, I would open the flood gates and have a good cry.  Once I opened up to the tears, I wouldn’t get sick.  

I don’t know when I noticed that Catherine stopped bringing it up.  Eventually, it was no longer necessary.  While the pain will always be there, as time and my family healed me, my mom’s death lost its power over me.  

Great Mothers

Sometimes great mothers end up in my office.  I call them "Great Mothers."  Great mothers are the ones that can juggle their responsibilities to the children, the husband, the home and a job.  They don’t question their duties, but go about them effectively and with love.  They are comfortable making dinner, while feeding the baby, kissing their husband hello and checking their schedule for the next day.  You wouldn’t think that great mothers would end up talking to a therapist. 

It has to do with the development of the family.  Juggling everything for everybody works when the kids are small.  But we all need to learn to do things for ourselves.   The more you do for maturing children what they can do for themselves, the more you handicap them.   Adolescents need to learn how to take care of themselves.  This is a slow process that continues until the child is launched.  When problems occur during teen years, great mothers revert back to doing the things that worked before, namely fixing things.  Now, these efforts backfire.  What the child really needs is enough support to handle the problem themselves if they can.  The message the child gets is that they can't handle their own life, so parents will control them.  Parenting requires that the adult continually be changing as to how they raise their child.  This is a difficult shift for some mothers to make.  It requires that the parent watch their child fail, hurt, face disappointment and generally struggle through the chaos.  As parents, we hurt when our kids are hurting, so we want to spare them.  Further, adolescents are now much more capable of doing permanent damage to themselves or others.   Now matter what the age of the child, parents will want to protect them.  The basic job of parenting is to teach the child to take care of themselves.  This means that mom needs to change how she does things.  In order to change this pattern, mothers can start by finding one thing a week, that they are doing, that their child could do for themselves and give it up.  When the pattern is broken for the first time, parents tend to apply the process to other issues.  As they learn to adapt, great mothers again become great mothers.