So I’m walking down the street last night. It’s dark, and I’m walking fast because I’m meeting my fair Jessica at a restaurant and want to be there before her, because I don’t mind waiting for her, but I know she doesn’t like waiting for me.

So, I’m walking faster than usual.

It was a beautiful night, actually. Pretty warm. I had my favorite brown leather “not used for a motorcycle anymore because I sold that to Jessie’s father” jacket and a new pair of  “original, hard as freakin cardboard because I’m not buying any of that ‘about to break down pre-washed’ crap” Levi jeans.

So there I am, hair down and flowing, all 6+ foot of me, striding down the hill thinking “I can’t wait to get to the restaurant and read my book until Jessie shows up.”

But that’s not what other people were thinking, I guess.

I’m not my inner geek

As it turns out, despite my inner “scared, scrawny, geeky Indian kid who gets beaten up everyday after school” view of myself, other people have a rather different view. Sometimes, that view is something like “huge, imposing, scary long-haired guy that’s going to steal my wallet and beat me up.”

This pretty much always freaks me out.

So, I’m walking down the right side of the street and about two blocks ahead of me is a woman talking on a cell phone. At least, I figure she’s talking on a cell phone, because Hood River is a quiet enough town that I can hear– at two blocks away– that she’s talking.

She keeps looking around, and I eventually settle on the question of whether or not she’s looking at me. “Why would she look at scrawny, geeky me?” I think, immediately– as I often must do– reminding myself that I’m not “scrawny, geeky me” to, well, anyone but me, really.

So, then I’m all worried. What if she actually is looking at me? At that point, I feel something of a responsibility. I don’t want to frighten this woman, Jessica says that I’m big and scary (calling me “the big, scary monster” often). Should I cross the street and give her room?

Of course, I also don’t want to think that the entire world revolves around me. “It’s not about you, John” is something I remind myself all the time. I mean, how ridiculously arrogant to assume that this woman, blocks ahead of me, cares one way or another about me. Talk about egocentric!

But I’m still worried. I don’t want to slow down because I want to get to the restaurant, I don’t want to speed up and get it over with either. I don’t want scare someone, but I don’t want to needlessly worry about scaring someone either. I have to cross the street eventually, so I could do it now, but this side of State street is much nicer to walk on, so I don’t want to cross until much later.

What to do?¹

The crossing

By then, I’d reached a bit less than a block behind her. She turned around and looked at me again– about the 4th or 5th time– and crossed the street. I was relieved, because now I didn’t have to go through that whole “how do I pass this woman, do I cross, do I not cross?” series of questioning.

I kept walking, eventually passed her on the other side of the street, and would have thought nothing more of it. I went on, about two blocks more, and then decided to cross, well in front of her to continue down to the restaurant. I would have thought nothing more of the event except that when I turned to look in the road before I crossed I noticed her, about a block behind me, crossing back to the right side of the street.

The world in which we live

That’s it then.

Am I the guy your mother warned you about? That guy on a dark street that will do bad things to you? That guy that– even while he’s all worried and concerned that he’s being too ecocentric about people noticing him– you will cross the street to avoid?

It made me really sad. Not because this woman would avoid me. That’s a small thing, really, and who am I to complain about it.

It made me sad that the world is such that any woman would avoid anyone. Just the fact that a woman walking down a street always needs to be conscious of that. That we live in a world where women might routinely cross to the other side of the street so much that it actually becomes, well, routine.

It just saddens me to see that happen, and know that it’s the case, and know that I’m actually one of the reasons that it’s the case. Not because I’d ever do anything, but just because I’m there, and big, and walking fast.

And a man.

It just made me so sad. So I looked things up. Here are some fun facts to cheer you up:²

• 1 out of 4 women is sexually assaulted at some point in her life.
• Every 15 seconds a woman is beaten by her husband or boyfriend. (FBI Uniform Crime Report, 1991)
• 2-4 million women are abused every year. (American Medical Association)
• 95-98% of victims of domestic violence are women. (Bureau of Statistics)
• Approximately 25% of all women in the U.S. will be abused by current or former partners some time during their lives. (American Medical Association)
• 82.8% of sexual assaults occur before the victim reaches the age of 25.
• 78% of sexual assault victims were assaulted by someone they knew.
• Over 50% of victims and 70% of assailants had used drugs or alcohol prior to the assault..
• Fewer than 20% of crimes of sexual violence are reported to the police.
• Approximately 2% of acquaintance rapes are reported to the police.
• Only 2% of reported sexual assaults have been determined to be false reports.
• 1 in 8 college women is the victim of rape during her college years. 1 in 4 is the victim of attempted rape.
• 95% of these rape victims did not report the rape to officials.
• 25% percent of women were raped and/or physically assaulted by a current or former spouse, partner or date during their lifetime.
• 84% of the women knew the men who raped them; 57% were on dates.

The emphasis is mine, but probably not for the reason you think. On the surface, I could be upset that this woman might have been afraid of me when all the evidence points to her being extremely more likely to get assaulted by someone she knows. It would be easy for me to pull out the “what the hell is she worried about me for?” card, but that’s not where I’m going at all.

My point? What the fuck kind of world do we live in that fully 25% of women are sexually assaulted and 85% of them by someone they know?

Yet women still have to be afraid on the street of people they don’t know?

You mean, basically, women are pretty much unsafe at home and unsafe on the street?!

What. The. Fuck. World?

It made me so sad to think about this that I actually started to cry.

For the most part, I love life, and love people.

Sometimes, however, I just feel physically sick.

And sadly, sometimes I feel ashamed and depressed that I’m a man.

1. Yeah, it’s pretty funny that this “woman walking on a dark street” scared me so much.
2. http://www.rwu.edu/studentlife/studentservices/counselingcenter/sexualassault/rapemyths.htm

I’ve never really had a problem with waiting.

I know that many people hate to wait for things– appointments, people, Christmas, whatever. That’s the reason that, as much as I can, I try to be early when I meet with people. I’m afraid that people don’t want to wait for me. At the same time, I sometimes wish people would show up late for meetings with me– even an hour late, I’m okay with that. Waiting, to me, is something of a gift.

The beauty of waiting is that often you have nothing else to do but wait. You usually can’t run some errand or take care of a bit of work or start a new project. You can’t really do anything but wait. That’s probably why many people hate waiting, and why I love it. Waiting is a break, a pause, a space. Waiting is an opening of time where the stretch of experience is expanded, however briefly, into a period of silence, and in that silence there is nothing to do but be.

Waiting is like God saying “Hey, why don’t you take a minute and relax. Chill out and stare off into space. No guilt, there’s nothing else you can do. So hang out and breath.” I love waiting.

Except when I’m waiting for something that might, or might not, be just really, really, horribly bad.

Then waiting pretty much sucks.

The Debrief

So I had this endoscopy to see how poorly cooked the hamburger meat of my esophagus is. The normal procedure is that I stop eating or drinking anything 12-18 hours before I go in, then they dope me up with happy juice, shove a camera in my throat, then slap we awake and give my wife and I a little debriefing on how things looked. The last two times, they brought pictures from my previous endoscopy and showed us the comparison side by side:

Here’s where your Barrett’s changes are, and it looks like this area is reverting back to non-Barrett’s tissue, which is a good thing. We took biopsies here and here, just to make sure, but overall…

In general, I get about 5% of whatever the hell they are talking about, because I’m too busy staring at the particular color maroon of the doctor’s tie and wondering if Jess is going to put some food in me soon because the doctor’s tie looks pretty damn tasty… ooh, look, a leprechaun!

This time, things were different. It was all the same until the end– the debriefing part. At the point where I expected the doctor to come and at least give me a quick rundown, a nurse came instead and said “Alright, you can leave.”

??

Unfortunately, I wasn’t in much of a state to realize anything, because I wanted to eat something and pass out. It wasn’t until the next day when I realized what had happened.

The thing about it is that I really, really like that whole debriefing part. I’m consistently worried about my esophagus going bad, and so having the doctor come out and talk with me and say “it’s getting better” or “it hasn’t changed” gives me a state of comfort that I don’t even know they realize. Hell, even if the doctor came out and said “It looks worse, but we know how worse it looks” it would help. It would at least be better than, well:

…

We’ll Call You

The next day, I started to wonder why I didn’t get the debriefing, and wondering made me concerned, and concern made me worry, and worry made me… well, you get the picture.

So I called the Gastrointestinal clinic at the Portland VA to ask, basically, if there were preliminary results that the doctor could tell me– you know, the way they usually do? I got to “preliminary” before being cut off with “Your results will be available in two weeks and you can discuss them with your primary care physician at that time.”

Uh, okay. So I called the primary care clinic– not to get the results that were two weeks hence, but to try to find an actual human to say “So, we usually walk out with pictures and an initial write up and didn’t get that and I’m trying to find out why.” Again, I didn’t get very far before: “You’ll be scheduled for a follow-up apppointment with the GI clinic when test results are available and should direct all enquiries to the GI clinic.”

“Follow-up appointment?”

“But the GI clinic sent me…”

It never actually dawned on me before that “The run around” was actually, well, round.

“There and Back Again, A Veteran’s Tale”

Again I call the GI clinic– and again it’s just to ask if the doctor can just speak about the initial results with me as has always been the case until now. The message I got this time was a very firm and annoyed “Stop calling us to get your results, we’ll call you when your results come in.”

Ouch.

Where’s Patch?

This was very frustrating to me. The run around above was actually a subset of the calls I made– people telling me to call other people, etc. And every time, I was trying to get a message across that they didn’t hear.

I mean, I do understand that biopsies go to a laboratory and they just don’t know the lab results. But there’s not much point in shoving a camera down my throat to see what’s there without a doctor actually seeing it– and that’s all I wanted to know. Well, Doc, what did you see?

The disturbing thing is that maybe the reason he didn’t say anything is because it was just that bad. I try not to spiral down that road, but it’s hard without any kind of feedback.

And that’s really why I wanted to call. I tried to tell people, “Listen, I’m just really worried about what’s going on, and thought that we’d get to see the doctor after the procedure to discuss what he saw. I just want someone to actually listen to me. Even if they only say ‘John, I know you’re worried that things didn’t go the way they usually do, but by now the doctor might not remember, so we have to wait for the report.’”

This is the problem I see with modern medicine– it’s actually why I left the medical field. People aren’t people. They are conditions, and results, and statements. When I call the VA, I’m not ‘John.’

I’m ‘M5285′.

I’m not a guy that’s worried about what’s going on and just wants to at least ask the nurse if, maybe, this particular doctor just doesn’t do the whole debrief thing– maybe it’s not about me at all. I’m not a guy because nobody has time to even get into that. They have just enough time to look on a screen and see that ‘M5285′ has a note beside it saying ‘results pending.’

Stop calling us, M5285!

Even if they said nothing of substance, but said that they knew that I was worried, it would do one thing. It’s the one thing that many people want when they are in the hospital– it’s the one thing that every single one of us wants more than anything in life, in fact.

It would show me that I had been acknowledged as a human being.

I really wish medicine didn’t have to be that way. Patch Adams had the right idea– treat people as human beings. Tt’s a shame that concept doesn’t catch on.

That’s really all I want. That’s what the other doctors did when they came out and talked to me afterwards. “Hey, I know you’re probably worried about this, so I’ll give you a quick run down… because you and I are both humans, and that matters to me.”

Acknowledgment. Humanity.

This time, I didn’t get that.

This time I’m just M5285, waiting for results.

This time, I really hate waiting.

Because this time, I’m mostly scared that there won’t be a human on the other side.

When I was 25, it was a very good year. There were, beautiful girls wearing… nurses uniforms and… telling me to wake up…

“Wake up. Wake up, John.”

Groggy, I opened my eyes to a white and pink room that smelled of a combination of death and the avoidance of death. A few days later, I left the hospital to 30 days convalescence leave and barely another year as a member of the “US Military” club before I would become a member of the much less exiting “US Veteran” club.

The “disabled” branch.

Mere moments later, with the top of my stomach wrapped around my esophagus, I was out of the military.

Off to college I went, assuming– like some blind, stupid fucking idiot– that I would live a long and completely normal life.

Suck it up!

I can’t even complain. I mean, I can complain, but I’m unable to take myself seriously when I do.

“Oh woes is me, I’m a veteran with a gimpy throat.”

I mean, it’s not like I’ve lost a limb, or have Type II diabetes, or am blind, or suffer from PTSD. Who the fuck am I to complain? I have to take a pill every day, big fucking deal.

Quit your bitchin’, you fucking baby!

The problem: There’s this background noise. It’s a noise that’s always there.

It’s like a high pitched whining that you can only hear really well when it’s quite, but which still affects everything else you hear in a subtle way. It’s the squeaking of a door that means someone mean is coming home to hurt you. It’s the grinding of a gear that means your car is about to break down on a deserted road.

But it’s not a door, and it’s not a car. It’s your throat. And the grinding doesn’t go away.

It’s always there.

And you have to learn to live with that. But it’s hard sometimes, because you know that you have an esophagus that’s just waiting to become cancerous. Oh, sure, it’s really rare. Only about 5 in every 100,000 people get esophageal cancer, and basically all of them are over 50. So you’re crazy to think it would be you.

But the background noise isn’t just the sound of your throat. It’s the sound of air passing through other people’s throats. It’s voices.

It’s mostly the voice of the surgeon who operated on you when you were 25. The one who said that your esophagus looked like that of a 50 year old.

How old are most people who get esopha–? Well, fuck.

And it’s also the voices of others around you who like to remind you that you’re fucked. It’s not their fault, because we all like to prove what we know about things. We all like connect with someone and to feel smart, so when you mention Barrett’s Esophagus to anyone who’s seen an episode of [name a random medical show here] or has read a single website about heartburn, you’ll hear their voice as they prove to you that they know something about it.

“Barrett’s Esophagus turns into cancer.”

There it is again. That reoccurring phrase. I’ve heard this more times than I care to remember over the past 13 years and every time I hear it I come closer to screaming. My actual internal reactions vary, but they are always something similar to:

“Yes, I do know that I may have cancer eating away at my throat right now, thank you for fucking reminding me. I’m so glad you feel it necessary to tell me something that I couldn’t possibly live without already knowing! Especially when that something is ‘you know, you’re probably going to die.’ Now fuck off!”

I don’t say this, of course. Not because it would be mean, but because I empathize with them. I do the same thing, I’m sure. We all do. How many times have I said something stupid to poke a wound in someone else? It’s not their fault, but that doesn’t help.

The fact is, that my entire adult life has been lived with a constant, persistent, and increasingly loud level of background noise that basically amount to the syllabic equivalent of “Prepare to die. Soon.”

Despair

The noise is loud, and affects everything I do in my life, every day, because the simple fact I have to admit is that my chances of being one of those 5 out of 100,000 are– more than likely– 100%.

I have to be honest with myself and admit that I will have esophageal cancer. For me, it’s not a question of if, it’s most likely just a question of when.

It’s really just an exercise in math and risk management. When they look at those numbers, I have to admit to myself that they don’t say:

“…and of those 100,000 people, the majority of them had completely fucked up throats by the time they were 25, and they still didn’t get cancer even by time they were dead at the ripe old age of 80.”

It’s a condition that leads to cancer, and the longer the condition exists, the higher the risk of cancer.

Wow. There’s a fucking paradox for you. Think about that for a minute.

The longer it exists, the more likely I am to die of cancer, but the longer I exist, the more it exists.

So the longer I live, the more likely I am to…

Talk about fucked.

Waiting… to wait.

So this is the background noise of my life. You may feel it’s a bit forced, but from my perspective it’s entirely accurate to compare it to the guy in the foxhole, waiting, in silence.

I’ve heard time and time again, and have actually felt in real life, that it’s that waiting that drives people crazy. If the firefight comes, then you fight– you can deal with that. If the firefight is avoided, all the better. But the waiting! That will get into your spine, crawl up into your skull, and drive you fucking insane.

And that’s how I feel a lot of the time. Waiting. For the firefight in my throat. That’s when sometimes I feel that the guy who leaves the military with one arm is lucky. He’s not waiting. Blindness? It’s done, and you live with it.

I try to live a normal life– I think I do a pretty good job, actually– but that fucking background noise is always there.

That fucking waiting!

I eat well, I take my medicine, I actually have a really good life. And I don’t think about it every second of everyday.¹ But there’s always the background noise.

And the occasional heartburn which isn’t heartburn. I’m not lucky enough to get just heartburn. I get “Oh shit, is that the cancer?” I don’t get indigestion, I get “Has it come?”

That’s why I’m so worried after this last endoscopy, because I’ve been having heartburn consistently for months, and sometimes even outright pain and trouble swallowing. After doctors visits, medicine changes, etc. they took a look, took a bunch of biopsies, and now I wait.

That fucking waiting!

They can’t tell me anything about what they saw, I have to wait for the results. Two weeks. So now I’m waiting on top of waiting. There’s another paradox: I’m waiting to find out if I get to wait.

Because if the results come back bad, then I have to deal with having esophageal cancer before I deal with being 40. I know that’s not extremely likely, but it doesn’t help that the background noise and the waiting have pushed me so far to expect it that it’s all I can think of.

“You know, Barrett’s Esophagus turns to–”

“WILL YOU PLEASE SHUT THE FUCK UP!?”

And I almost want it to be true, because then at least I wouldn’t be waiting.

Because the worst thing about this all is that if the tests come back good– if everything is fine and dandy even though it’s hard to swallow– then I don’t have esophageal cancer.

Yet.

1. basically because if you think about dying every second of every day it’ll drive you crazy and make you kill yourself

… check. Throttle ignition lock? Check. And we’re descending into Despair in 4… 3… 2…

This is one of those things that sucks to write about, not because it’s hard to write but because the very act of writing it– while it helps me to formulate my thoughts and feelings– proves that it’s true.

And I really really wish that none of this was true.

There’s an onion that I’m peeling in life, lately, with layers upon layers of complicated realities. All of those realities involve a level of despair that I have carried with me for my entire adult life.

This is one of those damn “series” posts, because it’s just too much to write about at once.

Your Esophagus May Kill You

The facts are this: When I was 25, I was diagnosed with Barrett’s Esophagus. It’s a condition that’s caused by stomach acid rising into your throat and eating away at your esophagus until it becomes something closely resembling poorly cooked hamburger meat. This is bad because your esophagus is supposed to very closely resemble completely uncooked hamburger meat.

You see, as it turns out, cooking your internal organs is not at all A Good Thing™– and acid will cook the shit out of you.

I’m in my 20s and have been having problems with heartburn for a while. So I talk to people about it and they say “Suck it up.” This is how the military works, by the way: “You’re young, you’re supposed to be tough, so quit you bitchin and get to work!” And these aren’t friends I’m talking to. They are medical professionals. The corpsman on my submarine basically told me to shut up for 2+ years. He “prescribed” tums. Thanks for the help.

So, fast forward a few years and I’m 25, the corpsman on my submarine gets transferred¹ and the new corpsman wants to meet with everyone to get acquainted. We have to do the meetings quick because in 2 days we’re going on a 6-month deployment. So I sit down that day and tell him what’s going on.

He freaked out.

Seriously, too. He pulled me off the boat that day, and scheduled me for an emergency endoscopy the next day. He did this because I “might have Barrett’s Esophagus and that leads to cancer.”

This will become a reoccurring phrase in my life.

Suddenly “suck it up and drive on” has turned into a surgeon telling me that my esophagus looks like that of a 50 year old.

A 50 year old!

He’s never seen Barrett’s Esophagus in such bad shape in someone my age, and we need to take drastic steps. Four days later, the boat is gone, and I’m in surgery. Seriously. Fucking surgery! As in “cut open my stomach and move shit around” surgery.

Fuck. Me.

They wrapped the top of my stomach around my esophagus to try to close it off.

This is something that will never feel quite comfortable. For the rest of my life, there’ll be a persistent “tugging” inside my chest which I can only assume is my stomach saying:

“Hey, why the fuck am I wrapped around this esophagus?!”

It’s either that, or it’s my esophagus saying

“Get the fuck off me, stomach!”

I can’t really figure out which. Maybe it’s both.

There’s also the persistent need to return to have a follow-up endoscopy every 2 years.

Yes, every two years I get to return to our friendly VA hospital– home of our honored veterans who walk around moaning with a complete lack of hope for their future² — and have a camera shoved down my throat to make sure that my esophagus is not so mad at my stomach that it creates a cancer large enough to necessitate the removal of the whole shebang.

Basically, every two years, I am reminded that there’s something seriously wrong with me.

Recently, I’ve had another one. This time it’s because I’ve been feeling really bad heartburn again, and actually sometimes trouble swallowing. Not A Good Thing™ by any stretch of the imagination.

I’m worried. More than that, I’m really scared. Over the past two months or so the background noise of my life has risen from a small persistent whine to a mind-bending screech that’s drowning out my best attempts to live a normal life.

The purpose of writing all of this is to help me deal with the feelings I have from this last endoscopy. But first, I actually need to come to grips with what it’s like to deal with background noise.

And I’ve got a lot of background noise.

1. forcibly discharged, actually, he was a fucking drug addict. Thanks for the help.
2. nice place, that. Glad we appreciate our vets

Long-time readers will know that I’m a fan of Wordle, the web site that let’s you make word clouds of strings of text. I have a lot of them¹ because they present words outside the context of narrative, which is both disjointed and jarring, while at the same time being fascinating and beautiful. I decided to make a couple based on the writings I did during my Grief series to see how they would look.

There’s nothing really to describe, these graphic visualizations are up to the interpretation of the viewer. The words are places randomly and the size of the words is a function of their frequency of use, so there’s much left up to the viewer to decide upon.

The first is a word cloud of the entire series of posts. The second is a word cloud of just the final poem “Sunday.” The final one is the most poignant for me, since the word “space” appears more prominent than even “grief.” It’s interesting that both of these words and it was space away from my mother that I sought more than anything when she was still alive, and space within grief that allowed me to realize what was lost when she died.

1. although you wouldn’t know it, since the recent destruction of my blog server screwed up all of my images links

Grief is not for the lost, but for the left behind.
The lost need nothing.
They are ashes and dust, pictures and memories.
They are mistakes and regrets.

Grief is not for the lost, but for the left behind.
Grief is a space in our living. It is a vessel.
It is a room, empty of all else.
It is a space in the soul, a space we need to breathe.

Grief is not for the lost, it is a space for the left behind.
Grief is a space for us to sit and cry, and to laugh out loud.
It is a space for us to think, a space to remember, a space to learn.
But most of all, it is a space to fill.

Grief is not for the lost, it is a space to fill.
It is a bowl into which we mix the ingredients of a soul.
Regret, mistakes, sadness, pain, anger. Love.
It is a bowl into which we pour ourselves, out of ourselves.

Grief is not for the lost, but for the left behind.
And into this grief, we pour ourselves, out of ourselves
So that we may see ourselves, within ourselves
and so we may have the space, within ourselves, to love.

Saturday.

What is Saturday?

Saturday is a placeholder. Saturday is a schedule. Saturday is an opening in a schedule.

Saturday is a funeral.

You wake up in a room full of people telling you how sorry they are. You don’t know how you got here, nor do you know when you got here. Thirty seconds ago it was Monday and you were answering your office phone.

Now, you are speaking to a person you haven’t seen since you were 12.

“Thank you.”

Sounds issue forth from a person standing next to you, a person who looks just like you, a person standing so close to you that it almost seems like they might be you.

Almost.

“Thank you.”

A blur of people as indiscriminate as bees in a swarm. Faces as recognizable as leaves in a storm. They swirl around the tempest behind your eyes and blur your vision. You can’t even really tell who’s there, all you can tell is that there is a room full of people weeping for your loss.

There is a room full of people weeping for your loss.

There is a room full of people weeping for their loss.

There is a room full of people.

Weeping.

A room full of people.

There are people standing in the aisles, there are people in the hall, there are people sitting on the laps of other people.

There is a room full of people, a large room.

All of them came for your mother.

All of them are weeping for the loss of a person you ran away from, for the loss of a person that you don’t even know. All of them are weeping for the lost of a person you never wanted to know.

And then the stories. Of her making the choice to sacrifice so much to take care of your grandmother, of her taking care of people she barely knew. Of her being so kind, so loving, so thoughtful.

There are stories of her laughing, of her stripping down to her underwear and jumping in a stream “because you only live once.”

There are stories of a beautiful person, a person you never knew existed. A person that everyone loved.

You want to tell a story. You want to stand up and tell a story of your mother.You want to say something, anything, but you can’t. You have no story, because you left.

You sit in the front row seat that you don’t deserve and watch this procession of love that you don’t deserve to see. So many people. So many people, and they surrounded her and can tell her story. You don’t deserve a story. You don’t deserve it because you left.

You can’t tell a story. You don’t have the strength even to get up. After a while, you close your eyes and realize that any crying you’d done before was just a prelude. You didn’t know the pain of your loss. You couldn’t know how much you’ve lost until you knew the story.

Until you had a story.

And then it’s over. People are making plans and packing up. Everyone is leaving. You missed your chance. You have a story now, but missed the chance to tell it. Your one chance is gone. Your mother is gone, and the story you would have told is one of the life that you missed. The story that you can’t tell, because you had not the courage to tell it.

If you had the chance, if you had the courage, this is what you would have said:

“To truly love a person, you have to know the whole person. I stand here as witness to my mother, because I love her. I love her now, because I know the whole her.

“My mother was crazy. My mother did things to me and my sister that made both of us want to run away, or kill ourselves. I actually tried to kill myself once– not because I hated life, or myself, but because I hated my mother.

“I hated that I spent my entire school day worried who I would find when I came home. Who would be waiting? Nice Mother, Silent Mother or Crazed Angry Mother? I never knew, and that was dangerous, because expecting one mother, when the other was home was a very, very dangerous thing to do.

“Hell, to me, is not knowing which someone someone you love will be

“I hated her, because I never knew who she would be. And, in not knowing who she would be, I never had the space to know who I was.

“I hated when she threw away the dishes suddenly because they weren’t clean enough. I hated when she screamed, and screamed and screamed– about things I didn’t even understand. I hated when she sat in her room, immovable, staring into space. I hated trying to comfort her and having her ignore me, breaking the silence only to insult me in ways that made me feel vile, and worthless, and bad, and evil.

“My mother was crazy. Life with her was, to me, a living hell. I spent most of my childhood worried who she would be at any given moment, and the rest trying to think of ways to escape. And so, after more years of planning than anyone of you would care to know, I left.

“I tell you this not to insult her, but to love her. Because to truly love a person, you have to know the whole person. I want everyone here to know the whole her. I want everyone here to love her.

“I didn’t love my mother, because I didn’t know my mother, I only knew part of her. I only knew the part that I could never know.

“You have shown me part of my mother that I never knew, that I was never allowed to know, that I later became incapable of knowing. You’ve shown me a woman who was kind, caring, witty, even fun.

“I never saw that part of my mother. The part of her that hurt me also blinded me, and blinded, I left for life without her. I turned back to look, now and again, and thought I saw her. I thought I saw her, but all I saw was the image, burned into the retinas of my closed childhood memories. All I saw, were my own scars.

“And so, I never loved my mother, because I never knew the whole person. I knew only part of her. I knew only scars. I want to thank you all for showing me this other part. I want to thank you for these stories. I want to thank you for telling me of her kindness, of her joy. I want to thank you for showing me this part of my mother that I was too wounded to see. I want to thank you all for letting me love my mother. My whole mother.

“My mother wasn’t perfect, but she was a good person. The great tragedy I will live with hereafter is that I couldn’t see that. She was a loving person, she was a kind person, she was a fun person, and yes, she was a crazy person. She had problems, but she did the best that she could. She did the best that she knew how.

“Until know, I only saw part of what she did. Until now, I only saw the parts that weren’t good enough… to me. To her son.

“Thank you, everyone, for showing me the rest of her. Thank you for showing me these parts that were so filled with love.”

That is what you would say.

If you had any courage at all.

You step off the plane into a winter of anger and regret. It’s cold in the town of your youth. Much colder than you remember. It’s more grey than you remember. In fact, there’s very little that’s the same as you remember.

The town of your youth is exactly the same.

Your cousin picks you up at the airport and you decide that the innocuous questions that she asks you are just that. You decide that she’s not a spy, sent behind enemy lines to steal tactical information. You decide to believe that she’s just your cousin, and she’s asking questions that anyone would ask. But you know you’re wrong. Even if her questions are innocent, the information will be carried back to the enemy.

No. Stop.

The answers will be taken to your family.

This is not a battle between members of your family. There are no sides. There are no lines. It is not a battle, but the battlefield after a battle that your mother fought with life. There is one death, there are a lot of wounded people who desperately need care, but the battle is over.

This is the view you decide to take as you answer your cousin’s questions in openness and honesty.

These are all decisions, and it comforts you to know that. You are not being forced into anything, you decide to see the world the way that you do, whatever way that is. This thought gives you strength. As if you can shape the world into whatever you want it to be, and all you need is the desire to do so.

Strange, that a death brings such a thought to your mind.

In the car, you decide that you will look to everyone and honor their pain. You will see them as the wounded person they are. No-one’s pain will be beneath your own. No-one’s pain will be less than yours. You lost your mother, but your cousin lost her aunt. Your aunt lost her sister. You had your mother for all your life, but your uncle, so much older than you, had her for all of his life. Loss cannot be measured and weighed. It can only be felt.

So you decide that you will look to them all and say “I honor your pain, your loss is even more tragic than mine. I’m so sorry. I love you.”

At the house, you dive into a tempest of questions and answers, offers and requests. “Can you…?” “Do you…?” “Will you…?”

You swim in the words as if they were a stream, letting them wash over you and only conscious of the general direction they are flowing. You travel with the flow. You eat, sit, watch, listen. The stream rushes on, and the water is strangely refreshing.

Periodically, your family tries to coax you into the battle. “She said …?” “Well he wants to …?” “You don’t, do you?” “You will, won’t you?” Much of what they say could anger you, or hurt you, or amuse you, but you don’t need it to. You’ve decided that there is no coaxing, only love and sadness.

“Yes,” you say, “she did say that, but she is in a great deal of pain, you are in a great deal of pain. There’s so much pain that I don’t even know what I’m thinking.”

Like water over the rocks, “she’s just hurt, she lost her sister.” Like wind in the shadows, “she’s just hurt, she lost her mother.” You can tell that your answer isn’t what they wanted, but you can also see that they want to believe. At least they want to believe that you believe, that the answer is, well, if not right, then at least somewhat true.

And, right now, that’s good enough. Almost. Some of that pain will be held onto for a long time. And some will feel betrayed because they do see sides, and see that you’re not on theirs.

Yet, for the most part, you’re doing alright. Everyone asks how you’re doing, and you reply by asking them how they are doing, and then listening intently, empathetical, to their tale. You listen to the tale of your family.

There’s a lot of crying. There’s a little bit of laughing. There’s quite a thick curtain of tension.

And there is a funeral tomorrow.

You crawl into bed at night wrapped in sunshine, and finally tell her stories. Good stories, funny stories.

Stories about your family.

You take the day off on Thursday.

You tell yourself that it’s because you have to prepare yourself for 7 hours in the middle seat of a plane. You tell yourself this, but mostly it’s just because you’re suffocating and need some space to breath. You feel like you’ve been at full throttle for weeks, though it’s only been a few days, and your eyes burn as if you’ve been awake for the entire time.

You wake to the last bits of evening snow melting on the ground in painfully brisk air. Strangely, the sun is shining this morning. The sky, having shrugged off it’s robe of clouds and dread, sports an azure skin that can almost be mistaken for summer, though it’s barely spring, and barely warm enough to leave your scarf behind.

You sit in the silence of the mourning and stare at the back yard for a few moments. One minute, two, fifteen, thirty. Looking out at the lawn you so carefully prepped for winter, the new patio you and your wife built with your own hands. You see tiny, tentative buds on the maple tree that your father-in-law carried on a plane all the way from his backyard because he thought you might like a maple. The first moments of spring hint at their awakening before your eyes, and they become increasingly difficult to see as tears swim before the images.

Crying, you realize what mourning is for.

Grief is not for the lost, but for the left behind. Your weeping is not for the loss of your mother, but because you fear the loss of yourself. Mourning, it seems, is a selfish act. You say this to yourself as you weep, sitting in the small swath of sunlight that catches your kitchen before it disappears behind your favorite Scots Pine. You tell yourself that you’re selfish, but you don’t really believe it.

Life and death look somehow different in the sunlight. The dark gray of the previous days showed you only the dark, gray side of your mourning. Might the sunlight show you a brighter side? Could that possibly be true?

Grief is not for the lost, but for the left behind. The lost need nothing. They are ashes and dust. Pictures and memories. They are wounds and scars. Your mother needs no grief, she is gone. Part of you wonders if she is happier now. She tried to commit suicide before, you’ve heard stories about it from before you were born and from after you left. Maybe she wasn’t happy here, and has finally found something to make her happy.

This, also, you don’t really believe. The sunshine is bright, and the sky is clear. The day is filled with spring’s promise. Yet you still don’t believe that. The courtroom in your head is quiet, but the verdict has not changed.

She wasn’t happy here. You know that. And the reason she wasn’t is, well, you.

Still, there are facts you can more easily face in this quiet morning, facts that the zombie job and the exhausted nights didn’t leave room for. There’s space here, today, now. You sit again in the silence of the morning and look out, watching the birds explore the ground around your berry plants. You’ll have to net them, now that winter’s over.

Now that winter’s over.

Is that what it means? You wonder. Winter?

Again, you cry. But the tears this morning bring you relief. The sunlight helps you face the judges cold stare. There are a few more clouds in the sky now, but it’s still sunny, it’s still spring.

Errands, you decide to do errands. Packing your clothes and your comfortable pajamas. You’re staying with your cousin, and hope you can wear your pajamas and drink wine late into the night talking with her.  She’s the cousin who got pregnant during your senior year, the one who made you the godfather of her baby. She’s the one that’s always ready to laugh with you. You always smile when you think of her.

Food– for the plane, for the airport. Travel blankets– two of them, one for your wife, and one…

…so that you can give it to your wife to use as a pillow as she leans against the window sleeping.

It’s starting to drizzle a bit outside, clouds begin filling the sky in that slow, somber way they always do on nice spring days. The sunlight beams through them, into the window of the bedroom as you pack. You pull your suit out of the closet and remember that you want black socks. You always forget black socks.

Into the bathroom, toothbrush, razor, little tube of nice lotion. The sun is gone now but it doesn’t matter. The darkness of yesterday was burned off in the morning sunshine. You are in motion now. You are moving, packing, cooking. It feels good to be alive again.

And then the phone rings. An out of state call. You look at the area code and you know that, yes, this call is from another state entirely. This call is from a state of chaos, a state of confusion, a state of anger.

The spin-up is innocuous enough. You’re sister asks you if you are doing alright and you make small talk for a bit, then ask her the same. Soon, however, the general emerges. Strategy is laid out, battle lines are drawn, the position of the enemy is discussed, plans are formulated, and weapons are unsheathed.

You are not preparing for a funeral. You are preparing for a family.

You, my friend, are preparing for a battle.

You steady yourself against the kitchen counter, holding the phone in one hand and your head in the other. Wait, you think. Wait, who are we fighting?

Everyone. You are fighting everyone. You can’t trust any of them. They are the enemies. They are out to rob you, to cheat you. They don’t care about you. They want to hurt you.

The general shouts at you, yelling to “Get into formation!” Screaming that “you’d better muster up!”

But this is family, you plead to yourself. They’re not enemies, they’re in pain. There’s no battle. There are no sides. There’s just a death. There’s a death, and there are a lot of wounded people, but this is no battle. Maybe it’s the aftermath of a battle– her battle. We don’t need time for strategy, we need time for healing. You know you are failing the general, even as you speak, but how are you supposed to know what side you’re on when you don’t see any sides.

This is not what the general wants to hear. The voice, filled with red, black rage, grows louder and louder, warning you, threatening you. The message is universal, all generals have the same message, the same ultimatum:

“We need you on our side. If you are not on our side, then you are against us.”

You can’t think, you can’t speak. You try to be calm and to understand the pain of your so-called “enemies.” You know that you left. You know that you are not entitled. You honor the debt that your sister paid to your mother when she helped her pay the rent. You honor the debt that your aunt paid to your mother when she found her unconscious and brought her to the hospital. You honor all the debts that everyone paid.

Everyone but you.

You are, in fact, the only one who hasn’t paid his debts.

So you say there are no sides. You say that you want to honor the grief of everyone. You owe everyone a debt. You will take no sides because you see no sides. This is not a battle, it is a funeral. You don’t have any enemies.

Ahh, but you do. You are now enemies with the generals. Whether you want to or not, you are flying into battle. The lines are drawn, and you, my friend, are on the wrong side.

The sun comes up, breaking strongly through the clouds before bedding down for the night. You decide to pack. There’s a battle far too big, far too terrible, already going on in your head. You cannot fight on two fronts. You prepare for your flight, and make a promise with yourself that you will pay at least a small part of your debt. You will pay pennies where millions are owed.

You will embrace everyone you see, you will look them in the eye, you will thank them deeply for everything they did. And then you will tell them that you are sorry.

You will plan no battle. You will draw no lines. You will unsheath no weapons. You will not fight.

The blade you feel in your back will be a penance. The spear in your side will teach you. The bullets will be payment for a debt owed. You will be wounded, but you will not wound. The generals will hurl such weaponry at you in words and looks and you will be tempted to fight back, but you will let it come without saying a word.

You will not fight them. You have no right to fight them.

The only thing that you will do when you step off of that plane onto the black, blood-soaked field of family battle, is thank them for letting you go.

And beg them to forgive you for ever leaving.

You are starting to understand why people need time off to grieve, because the exhaustion you feel this morning is more than you could have imagined. It’s a dark heaviness that pulls you down to a space just a bit beneath the floor. A dark place where bones lay.

Another morning of images. The gray sky, eggs on toast, coffee, a blue robe. Snatches of moments driven by a quiet lover as she tends to everything. You stare at a spot on a piece of paper trying to remember what street you lived on when your mother said that joke and you laughed, connecting for one brief moment. Trying to remember a snapshot of time surrounded by years of isolation and anger.

The sunshine sits beside you and she says something about the homemade bread being a bit hard this time and you start to cry again. We did the best we could on that bread, you think, it’s not perfect, but we did the best we could– we did the best we knew how.

You’re sobbing now, but there are no tears this time– black-hearted people don’t deserve the relief that spills out in tears. There’s just the dark sullenness of a heart made of coal.

A hard heart that hated it’s baker.

You dress for another day in zombie land while your springtime blows warm breezes and dandelions at you. She’s saying things like “you tried so hard,” and “don’t beat yourself up,” and “I love you, you’re such a good person.” You want to believe her, you desperately need to believe her, but you can’t. The proof is there. It’s right there sitting on the table of your life like an exhibit in a murder trial.

“Your Honor, Exhibit A: The mother, found two days after she died in an empty apartment. I ask the jury, what kind of evil, twisted, black-hearted demon would allow something as horrible as this to ever happen?!”

The voice of your accuser booms in your head, slowly sounding more and more like your own voice, like your mother’s voice. The evidence is plain, yet this person sits next to you just pretending not to see it. Why? Is she just playing games with you? Why won’t she listen?! Why is she making fun of you?!

Voices. Accusers, condemners, assaulters. So many voices in your head, all pointing at your black heart, pointing at the question, this new question from the prosecution: Did you try? Did you really, actually try?

Or did you just run away… like a coward?

They’re just voices. You know they’re just voices. Everyone has them. Your mom had them. That’s when it occurs to you: She was crazy.

Your mother was crazy. She wasn’t crazy in a sort of “wow, I would never do that” sense. No, she was actually crazy. That’s why you gave up. That’s why people around her gave up, eventually.

It’s why your sister had to hide the spare key after repeatedly coming home to find a ransacked house. It’s why she eventually had to change the locks. Your mother was a disturbed person. She wasn’t as crazy as others, granted. She wasn’t as crazy as others. They didn’t break into your house to “rescue” you from the shrieking woman who’d spray painted the red words “THEY’RE COMING!” on the walls of your living room. They never had to take you away, the way they took others. But are we talking about things in comparison, or are we talking about things when they are… alone?

Witness for the defense: You’re mother was crazy, wasn’t she? And that’s why you left?

But the prosecution always wins the cases in your head. Isn’t this just more proof for the jury? She did the best she could– not perfect, certainly, but the best she knew how. And if she was actually, clinically, “should be on some kind of medication”- crazy, doesn’t that mean that others were responsible for making sure she got help? Doesn’t that mean you should have made sure she got the medication- because she couldn’t do it herself? Doesn’t that mean that you should have been there to take care of her?

“Your Honor, I have no more questions for the defendant.”

The judge speaks: “We will take an 8-hour recess while the defendant puts on his zombie coat, goes to zombie work, and tries like hell not to scream at the top of his lungs and crawl out of his fucking skin. The court is adjourned.”

You head to work, a calming, quiet place, where you ask yourself normal, everyday work-like questions. They are questions like “I wonder if my car can get through the wall of the building before the engine breaks down?” and “Can I actually give myself a paper cut deep enough to hit a major artery?” and “What would really happen if I pissed in the corner of my office?”

After enough of those questions, none of which you answer, you go home. There you do whatever you can to convince yourself that you are still sane. You pour yourself a glass of water and don’t throw it through the window. You cook yourself dinner and don’t place your head on the hot burner. At the end of the night, when you are still alive and not lying in a hospital bed wrapped up like a schizophrenic mummy, you begin to believe that you just might be sane after all.

Remember, you said “might.”

Later that night, the prosecution shows the jury letter after letter, proof after of proof, that conviction is the only option. Words written, words spoken. Friends and family who give their condolences. They describe your mother using words like “kind,” “loving,” and “big-hearted.” They are all glowing with remembrances. “She was such a wonderful person” they say to you. They speak these words to you as if to comfort you.

But they don’t comfort you. Oh no. They poke you. They press you. They condemn you. There is no comfort for the black-hearted. Each word of praise is a bar on the prison gate of your soul. They loved her, everyone loved her. Everyone, that is, but you. She was perfect. She was wonderful.

“I’m so sorry for your loss.”

“I’m so sorry that you are such an evil person and allowed this to happen.”

“Who, I ask you, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, would condemn such a beautiful soul to a life of loneliness and despair? Who but the most vile, base, cruel filth that ever tried to call itself human?!”

You know the answer, don’t you?

“Your Honor, the prosecution rests.”

Lying in darkness, after the jury of your mind pronounce their verdict, you see it. From the inky shadows under the bed creeps the shape of the monster, grasping forward with it’s blood-soaked claw, reaching for your heart.

This time, however, you’re ready. You draw in your breath, you clutch the monsters face, and shriek. You shriek! You shriek and you shriek and you shriek!

“Fuck you, monster! Fuck you! I’m the black-heart! Fuck you! I’m the murderer! Fuck you! I’m the monster!!!”

You scream until you can’t breath, then you fall asleep crying, knowing that your mother won’t come. She never came. You fall asleep crying, knowing that your monster won’t come. You, my friend, are the monster.

You fall asleep crying, and even though you hear the quiet, deep, slow breath next to you, you still feel alone.

You are alone.

You are alone.

You are alone.