19. The Intuitive Nature of Grief

Mario has just returned from a two-week trip to Italy – business, but hey, how bad can ANY business trip to Italy be? – and something has shifted. Instead of flooding into his space with my needs, I have felt compelled to just enjoy his company and do whatever I can to make his landing in the home time-zone soft and comfortable.

Mario dislikes those posts on touching Gregory’s body. Creeps him out, he says. It's too personal to share, he says.

I can see how it would be inappropriate for him. Although outgoing, Mario’s also a very private person and even now shares only glimpses of the day-to-day challenges of dealing with Isabel’s illness.

Grieving isn’t and shouldn’t be one-size-fits-all. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross gives insight into this in her final book, On Grief and Grieving, co-written with David Kessler. She talks about the need to share grief, the sometimes surprising ways it manifests – a man who lost his son wanted to immediately make love to his wife, not out of carnal escape but to reaffirm life – and the necessity of surrendering to it.

Not long before Mario left for Italy, a dear friend of his, now a friend of mine, lost her husband of 53 years to Alzheimer’s. Violet worked with Isabel, and when Isabel was ill, Violet was there to help, most memorably, I’m told, by reading to Isabel when she could no longer read for herself.

Violet’s husband Angelo had been a graphic designer in New York City during the 1950s and ‘60s, a golden age of creativity in that field. New York was the nerve center. By the time Angelo died earlier this year, the memory of his heyday, his later work with shadow boxes, his love of Mexican art, indeed of Violet and all they had lived through together, had been scrubbed from his mind.

During the later throes of the disease, when he and Violet were at home, he once looked at her said, “Do you work here?” Violet answered, “Yes, I do.” He thought about this for a moment, then said, “Do you think you could get me a job here, too?” Funny, yes. But funny-sad.

While Mario was in Italy, Violet insisted on hosting a remembrance gathering of friends and family. She both looked forward to the day and dreaded it. She suspected that it would be emotionally exhausting. Yet intuitively, she knew it was a necessary element of her grieving.
Each of their children spoke movingly of their father and mother. Violet read a piece that she had written about him, her voice faltering toward the end.

There was Violet’s sister, who recalled when Violet and Angelo had their first date in 1952. And Angelo’s teary-eyed golf buddies. One said, “We still haven’t replaced him in our foursome.”

And his caregiver for what turned out to be the final year. The young woman marveled at Violet and Angelo’s relationship, at Violet’s caring and insistence that Angelo be washed, groomed and dressed every day and treated with the dignity befitting the man he had been, even when he did not know who he was, where he was or how to dress himself. It was, the young woman said, an inspiration.

There were toasts. And tears. Stories and laughter. And when it was all done, Violet felt complete with another step in her passage.

Grief is like entering into a long, dark tunnel. Dark because it is unspeakably painful. Dark because you don’t know what’s ahead. Dark because it fits your mood. When I first met Mario, I told him that he was in the tunnel. I think he also told Violet this. Grief does feel like a long, black tunnel. And part of the value of sharing with others who have experienced it is their assurance of light up ahead, even if the person who is grieving cannot yet see it.

But like a tunnel, there are no shortcuts. You may spend time groping along the edges for another, shorter way out. But in the end, the quickest way out is still through.

18. The Face of Death: Part II

Note: This entry contains strong imagery that may make some readers uncomfortable.

This is a continuation of the previous post in which I was talking about spending time with Gregory’s body. This was at the behest of a friend who was a grief counselor. Although I resisted the idea at first, I finally relented, on the strength of my trust in her.

I brought Gregory’s favorite massage oil with me. His body was strapped to a gurney, and he was wrapped tightly in a sheet from the chest down. I had wanted his whole body so that I could anoint it slowly and methodically as I prayed, meditated and said goodbye. In so many traditions – Jewish, Hindu, early Christian – the body is ceremonially cleansed and dressed, often by those closest to the deceased.

I poured a little of the aromatic oil into my cupped hand. The scent of lavender, cypress and patchouli softened Gregory’s plastic odor. I rubbed the cupped hand with my other hand to spread a fine film of oil over my fingers and palms, just as I had done when I had massaged Gregory in life.

At those times, he would lie below me as I balanced lightly on his buttocks and worked the muscles of his back, shoulders and neck. I marveled at how supple his muscles were, even those where most of us hold tension in our backs and shoulders. It was like rubbing a cat, and I surmised then that either he really did easily throw off the stresses that got to the rest of us, or he buried them so deeply within his body that I could not reach them.

Poised again at the top of his head, I started with my thumbs on his forehead and used my thumbs and fingers to trace the outline of his face down to his chin. I caressed the planes of his cheeks, the bones around his eyes, the bridge of his nose, all the time talking softly to him and reciting a prayer we used to say in the church where I had first seen him.

Oh wonderful, beautiful kingdom of light, shed down upon these humble souls thy beam of cosmic consciousness.… I stroked his fine smooth neck, carefully avoiding the autopsy stitches at the back…. Reach down and touch the souls that wait, and stir our minds with thoughts divine…. I smoothed the oil along and under his strong shoulders, the shoulders that had borne so much…. Cast out all evil and all sin, and take unto the world of love our hearts and psychic selves, that thus merged, our selves shall be but self of God….

Gregory had been plunged into the frigid vault so quickly after death that his arms and fingers remained pliable. I drank in those sun-browned arms, the slack muscles, the wrists barely larger than my own…. Oh God, creator of the universe, from Whom all things proceed and to Whom all things return….

Using my thumbs, I first stroked the top, then the palm, of each hand, those gentle, sweet hands whose touch had thrilled, protected and comforted me. I slid my fingers down to the end of his fingertips…. Reveal to us now the face of the true spiritual sun, hid by the disk of golden light….

I lingered over each line, each delicate and hard-earned wrinkle. Then I moved my hands over the sheets, as if I were caressing the rest of his body…. That we may know the Truth and do our whole duty in the One work as we journey to Thy sacred feet….

Because Gregory was tightly covered, I would miss being able to touch his feet and his long, slender toes with their long, slender nails. One time we had gone to an Assyrian art exhibit and peered up at a massive wall relief of soldiers frozen in some forgotten battle thousands of years ago. There were dozens of toes just like Gregory’s.

The truth is, when you love someone, you do love their body. The body is the expression of the inner being, whether it’s the pillowlike comfort of a mother’s breasts or the sun-leathered creases of an old man’s smile. In my private farewell, I realized just how deeply I loved this body – its shape, its smell, the form of it – and how difficult it was to separate the body from what had once been the spirit within. I loved the way the man moved and animated this body. The two, body and spirit, blurred as one.

As I snapped the lid shut on the oil, lingering at Gregory’s side one last time, I was struck by the thought: The man I love is gone. Joy was right. Without his essence inside, the body is truly a shell. And strangely, this comforted me.

17. The Face of Death: Part I

Note: This entry contains strong imagery that may make some readers uncomfortable.

When a counselor friend suggested, in the week following Gregory’s death, that I might want to spend some time alone with his body, my first reaction was one of revulsion and fear. Like most people, my initial thought was to remember Gregory as I had known him in life, as the vital man I had loved.

Joy gently persisted. She suggested that spending time with his body might allow me to find some closure and understand that the man I loved was no longer in the body.

Joy was a wise counselor, whom I respected. Her suggestion reminded me of the time as child when my favorite cat was killed. Though Tiger bore no outward signs of trauma, my overprotective mother refused to let me see him. In retrospect, I always wished I had been able to look at him one more time. Perhaps I knew something intuitively then about what Joy was suggesting now.

Going mostly on faith and not much else, I arranged with the funeral director to spend some time with the body. And once more, I found myself being ushered to a viewing room by the young woman. Closing the door behind me, I asked that I not be disturbed.

Death is not pretty. Whether a person is pumped full of embalming fluid or dolled up with makeup, neither can hide the absence of animation and the flat, lifeless translucence of a corpse. Gregory was neither embalmed nor made up. He was wrapped tightly in sheets and again strapped to a gurney, this time draped with a quilt. His hair was clumsily combed back so as to emphasize his receding hairline. He would not have liked that.

Left alone with the body, I gingerly began to touch the face, Gregory’s face. It was cold, like the inside of the refrigerated facility where he had lain for nearly a week. An opaque waxiness replaced his true coloring. His eyes appeared to be glued shut. There were bits of sticky stuff caught in his eyelashes. With no circulation to support the tissue, his features were slightly flattened and the crook of his nose, sharpened.

Standing at his head, I leaned down so that I might smell his forehead and remember his scent. But I was disappointed: There was only an unfamiliar plastic odor. His scent had vanished in the icy vault. Tentatively I traced the outline of his ear with my finger and followed the crest of his brow and the line of his chin. I was not repulsed.

I tried to push his hair into place. I was struck by the weight of Gregory’s head as I rolled it gently between my hands; it had never seemed so heavy when the life of muscles had supported it. I ran my hand down his neck, his shoulder, his arms to his hands.

I had requested that his whole body be accessible. But instead he was tightly bound from the chest down. I had only his arms and hands and the top of his chest, where little tufts of black hair curled. I drank him in with my hands as well as my eyes.

You can love someone for years and be hazy on the fine details of their features. Now I was intent on incising the memory of every line, every crevasse, the faint mole on his upper lip, the shape of his fingers. I noticed a bruise on the top of his right hand. Is this where he tried to catch himself as he fell? Otherwise he was unscathed, perfect and unscathed, save for the thick black thread where the autopsy incisions were sewn closed. And of course his heart. His heart was broken.

To be continued…

Sat Oct 7, 2006

Blog of the Day Award

"They like it, they really like it!"

16. The Language of the Sandbox

Mario and I were getting on a plane the other day, in our typical Italian-Teutonic fashion. He ambled up into line before our group was called. I waited farther back. He motioned me to come forward. I didn’t want to “cut” in front of the people I was behind.

Mario strode down the walkway ahead of me, while I, somewhat disheveled, juggled a cellphone I’d just hung up, my purse and a bag. A man nearby, having observed our interaction, said to me, “You guys look like you’ve been together a long time.”

The comment made me smile. In a way, it was true. I’ve been in relationship with Mario longer now than I was with Phillip, long enough for us to develop a couple culture, which is a kind of shorthand that develops over time between two people.

I think, without stating it in so many words, the loss of couple culture is one of the things we mourn deeply when we lose a love, whether by death, divorce, or some other separation. And no wonder we mourn losing it. That person, with whom we feel seen and acknowledged and connected, suddenly is not there.

Couple culture is a state of understanding and being understood; you don’t have to explain everything in every conversation from scratch. A lot of times, it’s a basis for play and how you relate to each other in your own private sandbox.

It’s also probably fair to say that “bad” couple cultures are at the root of a lot of divorces. (“He always does THIS.” “She always does THAT.”) But “good” couple cultures help solidify relationships. You create a common language of mind, body and spirit with all the complexity and nuance that implies.

So this gig I’ve been doing lately that had Mario and I boarding a plane together (sort of) requires me to record sound snapshots of things like restaurant service. When Mario and I aren’t interacting with staff, the recorder continues, and our personal conversations invariably wind up on the tape, too. Couple culture. In your face.

I am what Mario (and a lot of other people) call bossy. I come from a family of bossy women. I’m a know-it-all, whether I really “know” something or not. Mario, on the other hand, is a force of nature. I like to call him a big tree because his is a formidable presence. Safe to say, whatever I dish out, he can take. Or put up with. There are no withering violets in this match-up.

This exchange occurred after a server brought us some cracked, fresh coconut. Imagine comedian Dane Cook doing this dialogue. That’s what it sounded like.

I should also point out that Mario runs circles around me intellectually. He is a renaissance man, educated by Jesuits, who has poked his nose into more books on more subjects than I will ever hope to. It’s just that, I’ve read more books on nutrition.

The other thing is: We’re not angry in this exchange. We’re having fun, playing a little relationship ping-pong.

Anyway, here goes:

Mario: Coconut is good for you!
Ann: No, it’s not.
M: Wuh?
A: It’s got saturated fat in it.
M: It’s water soluble.
A: No, it’s not.
M: How can something that grows on a tree be bad for you?
A: Well…. Is there fat in avocado?
M: Um-hum.
A: There’s fat in coconut.
M: It’s water soluble.
A: Fat is not water soluble.
M: Yes, it is. The fat in avocado is water soluble.
A: It’s completely impossible.
M: Are you sure?
A: Yeah. Fats are fat-soluble. Water-soluble things are water-soluble. Fat can’t be water-soluble.
M: Well, why do “they” always say that the fat in avocado is water-soluble?
A: “They” never say that.
M: I’ve heard it said a million times.
A: You have not.
M: Yes, I have.
A: Avocado is not water-soluble.
M: The fat in avocado is water-soluble.
A: No, it’s not.
M: That’s what I’ve been told.
A: I don’t know where you heard that.
M: You better check it out.
A: It’s wrong.
M: You may think it’s wrong. But you may not be right.
A: On this one, I am right.
M: You may think on this one, you’re right. But you may not be. You may not be right.
A: But I am right.
M: You don’t know that.
A: But I do, without a doubt. Without a question of a doubt. If you don’t think so, make a wager.
M: Are you ready to go?

Talk about savoring every morsel. Later that night at an Italian dinner, Mario baits me with the statement that the fat in olive oil is water soluble. He's got a twinkle in his eye. I snap at the bait, we laugh, and our journey of parallel souls continues.