So my
mom emails me and asks me which of her possessions I do
want. I remind her that I don’t want any stuff;
I want her to tell me about the death of my grandmother. It’s never the right
moment. So it’s this great big mystery, what my maternal Grandma Mary was even
like.
My
mother finds any desire for more information about my childhood threatening. (Because what if I tell everyone what a bad
mom she was?) All the best moms I know think they’re bad moms, so it’s actually
a normal fear--especially among good moms--but my mom has turned it into her Big
Fear, instead of using her feeling of fear as a mere sign that she had a fear
that needs to be released.
That’s really all a fear is about. It's just a sense. You don’t really
need to fear the actual thing. You
can just use the feeling of fear, the sense of fear, as a red flag that something needs to be
addressed. Ironically, her fear that I’ll find fault in her converges with my
having written a book about mothers and daughters. Wouldn’t ya know it? My dream project,
my life’s work, goes head to head against my mom’s biggest fear.
Meanwhile, the process of my writing of the mother-daughter book had always had a twinge of dread
attached. Until last week. Because a phase has completed itself, at least among
energetic pioneers—people who cannot keep themselves away from the
self-examined life and self-correcting their course, i.e., me and my friends: apparently
we are moving on into a new frontier. A fearless frontier. A frontier of truly
knowing we create our own reality and that the outcome is inevitably good. A
New Earth. According to, you know, astrologers, and Eckhart Tolle. So I'm told.
MY GRANDMA'S FUNERAL
My
grandma’s funeral—that of my dad’s mom, Aurelia, who died a few months ago--was
not a tearful event. In fact I didn’t actually even see anyone cry. Her two
daughters weren’t that crazy about her. My dad later remarked that he hadn’t
cried because she’d lived a long, fulfilling life. And my grandma’s other son
Virgil didn’t cry because…he no-showed.
Ninety-nine!
Who could cry about that? I had been waiting for my grandma Aurelia to die for
at least 20 years—wait, no, that came out wrong. Not waiting, but…keeping an appropriate
outfit handy. I had donated the most recent appropriate funeral attire when she was
97. But she…she had been waiting to
die for…25 or 30 years. My mom, ever critical of my dad’s side of the family,
used to say, “She just loooves reading the obituaries. She’s jealous every time
one of her friends dies.”
My mom could be subtly brutal.
Grandma Aurelia, aka
Buna, really did love going to the
cemetery. She dutifully lived her
life, but I rarely saw a moment of joy, or even…deep satisfaction. Her kids
weren’t crazy about her, her husband was dead, her voice lacked tone—for as
long as I could remember. By today’s standards she would qualify as
“depressed,” and her childhood was a childhood of adoption and abuse, of
marrying a man 14 years older so she could escape the adoptive family--and
statistically it’s likely the adoptive dad had sexually abused her because...of
course he would have. Statistically.
The details are sketchy and ultimately
don’t matter. I’m surmising. She had the kind of life that people these days go
to therapy over. But anyway: in no way was her death a tragedy. (Did I mention
she was 99?) Yet at the same time, neither would her survivors be calling her funeral a
“celebration of life.”
Fortunately, with each generation, humans get a little
more self-aware, and a little more aware of honoring their children--so I’m
lucky. And my daughter is even luckier than I, and happier.
MY GRANDFATHER'S FUNERAL
When I
was a freshman in college, I wrote an essay about the funeral of Aurelia’s
husband. I was
incensed by the sheer hypocrisy of a funeral—how suddenly, overnight, we can
say only positive things about the
deceased. I no longer take umbrage at the hypocritical way people conduct
themselves, like I did when I was 19. I’m used to it now. Everyone’s out of
integrity sometimes; everyone limits their behavior to what’s socially
acceptable. Don’t we?
Anyway. I
should add that I long felt a sense of dread about writing--and about life
in general. Thanks, Grandma. I’ve learned to live with it and remind myself
that there is actually nothing to dread, but sometimes I wake up in the morning,
in it. Or when I have a lot of ideas,
and write them all down, and then look at them, I dread all the work I just created for myself, due to those
brilliant ideas. Rather than celebrating them, I procrastinate them.
Due to
dread.
I have
wished I could trace it back and eradicate it. It’s neither life enhancing nor
realistic. While it reminds me of how I imagine Grandma Aurelia probably felt, there’s also the other side of my family.
MY FAVORITE GRANDMOTHER
I watched my mom’s mom, Grandma Mary, die when I was 5 or 6. I don’t remember much about her.
I don’t even remember her death. I only remember that I loved her so much that I
felt she was a part of me.
Grandma
Mary was just as passionate about me as I was about her, I am told. Once, well
into my adulthood, my mother mentioned, “You are so much like my mother.” She
didn’t sound joyful when she said it.
“In what
way?” I asked, incredulous. It had never occurred to me that this could be so.
I imagined her as bigoted, due to the description on a 1965 post card in which
she called Palm Springs a “ritzy Jew town.” Also, she was a tiny fat old ethnic
lady, whereas I’m a tiny skinny neo-Hindu yoga chick.
“Because
she was such a women’s libber,”
replied my mom. (A women’s
libber, young people, is a women’s rights activist.)
Well, that was food for
thought. I guess my mom’s version of rebellion against her mother was to be
staunchly opposed to women’s rights, which she is.
“What
kind of woman could be opposed to women’s rights?” friends ask me. The kind of
woman who would insist on male gynecologists because “What kind of woman would
want to look at other women’s vaginas?”
Ok, that’s not exactly what she said.
She had actually said, “What kind of woman would want to do that for a living?” Steeped in this
opposition to women’s rights and deep identification with the patriarchy, my
mother named me after herself because, and I quote, “Barbara was the most
beautiful name I could think of.”
Having never
liked Barbara as a name for myself, and not being crazy about being named after
my mom, I changed it right after I got married, since I was changing my last
name anyway--I'm efficient like that. (I should add that, on my dad’s side of the
family, Aurelia had named her first daughter after herself too, and our next
door neighbor named her second daughter after herself, so apparently that was a
thing—at least in the Calumet Region.)
Standing by when I was five watching Grandma Mary have a stroke
caused me to grow up unconsciously feeling guilty that I had killed her, and in reality, I
actually did almost kill my other grandma,
Aurelia, 50 years later, though my intention had been only to take care of her.
HOMICIDE AT THE NURSING HOME
After living
for a year with my dead ex-husband whom I also took responsibilityfor killing, I
had become more comfortable with death than ever. And after three years of having
visited my yoga client’s sister in a nursing home as a paid professional, I was
more comfortable in nursing homes than ever. I learned to block out the urine smell
and the random crying out of deceased wives’ names and 1969 Cubs scores. I
could recognize the beauty of late-life unintentional slumber. In groups. In
wheelchairs. In front of the tv.
One spring morning I woke up and knew I needed to go visit my 97-year-old Grandma
Aurelia in the nursing home that minute. It was this kind of feeling: now or never. I knew I’d feel bad if she
died and I had never visited her in the nursing home. So I called my dad and
asked where his mom even was.
The
nursing home turned out to be in a cornfield in northwest Indiana. She had been
there for at least a couple years without a visit from me—if I say five, I will
come off as a downright callous granddaughter but two seems…not so egregious…so,
two it is.
But it
was probably closer to five.
Security
was nonexistent. Without signing in, I found her myself, in her room, dozing in front of
the tv, wearing grey sweats. Her hair was oddly long—right--of course--why cut
her hair? She was oblivious to me so I perused her side of the room, and then her
roommate’s side, and then brought a chair and placed it in front of her and sat
there and…woke her up. In our eye contact, I felt like she recognized me as family.
I started by chatting about my cousins, but I found it impossible conduct a
superficial conversation, even though it was the only kind I could remember
ever having had with her.
I had to get real.
“Grandma,”
I said. “My cousins said to tell you they love you. They love you a lot.”
That
was a lie. But it could conceivably
be true. If we were some other family.
Regardless, I felt guided to say it, so it was absolutely the right
thing to say; and I felt her soften, deep within. And I realized: I wasn’t there
as a granddaughter, in the role I’d embodied for my entire life. I was with
her as the healer, the yoga teacher, the pioneer of new energetic territory. As
I met her gaze, I saw her as consciousness,
rather than as a personality, or my 97-year-old paternal grandmother. We had no
history, in that moment of connection.
“Can I
hold your hand?” She couldn’t talk, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t say yes—I
felt a yes. Reiki energy comes through my hands (“Even when I’m playing tennis,
will it go into the grip?” I asked dubiously at the Reiki training 27 years ago,
the response to which was a confident, “Yes.”)
I held
Buna’s hands, I Reiki’ed her knees, I stood behind her and did Reiki on her head and
neck and heart. “Everybody loves you so much,” I told her so many times, “I
really love you a lot. So many people love you,” because this message was what
her very being had craved all her life. I could feel it. I brought each family picture over to
her and let her gaze. I brought over her wedding picture. I told her how
beautiful she looked in it.
Then she slept again.
Words cannot express how
weird it was to even mention the word ‘love’ to my grandma. It was not a thing
we ever said to each other.
“Want
some water, Grandma?”
I asked when she woke up again, holding for her a styrofoam cup with a lid and
a straw—which made sense, to keep old people from spilling. “Don’t they ever
give you any water here?” I joked,
marveling at how thirsty she was, thrilled at my own resourcefulness. She sure was
sucking it down!
We went
back to tv-watching, though I was secretly on my computer, knowing there was no
way my grandma knew what the device on my lap was. I had committed to myself that I’d stay at
least an hour, and I was well into my second, feeling like an A+ granddaughter,
while also getting some computer-y stuff done.
THE MOMENT OF TRUTH
The
attendant who came in to check on us spoke to me: “Does she know who you are?” –implying
that it mattered to me, which it kind of didn’t. “Mama, Mama,” said the
attendant, tapping my grandma’s arm. “Do you know who this is?” She tapped my
chest.
“T-t-t-ted,”
my grandma responded, her breath barely strong enough to provide a voice.
“Ted’s
my dad," I told her. "She’s saying I’m Ted’s daughter.”
The
attendant was satisfied that my grandma knew me, and I mentioned to her how
nice it would be if someone would put a pillow on my grandma’s shoulder from
now on, so when she randomly fell asleep, her head would have somewhere to rest
rather than hanging to one side like a chiropractor’s nightmare. I then mentioned
that cleaning her glasses might help her see the t.v. better.
I was so full of helpful hints that I feared the attendant would feel compelled to ask
me when I last visited my grandma, or worked in a nursing home. She was going to tell all the other attendants on her coffee break about the
bossy absentee granddaughter. Seeking to redeem myself, I casually mentioned
that I’d cleaned her glasses earlier. Maybe these people would be inspired to do that on occasion.
“Oh! And
I gave her some water!” I announced. “She was really, really thirsty!”
The
attendant turned to me in horror. “You gave her WHAT?”
“Water?”
I asked.
“No! It
could have been…the END! The END! She could have aspirated it! It would have been…the END!”
This lady was really getting worked up.
My
grandma had been so damn thirsty. She was thrilled
to be drinking water. And had she actually died in that moment, at 97, sucking down the water, she’d have died elated. Sated.
Hydrated. Tell me how that’s bad!
“There
was a cup sitting next to her. How could I have known that she’s not allowed to
have water?” My voice was rising. (“It was almost the END!” Seinfeld episodes
are made of this.)
The
attendant urgently requested that I empty said water cup immediately to prevent
future potential accidental deaths, while she checked my grandma’s vital signs by looking
at her quizzically.
“I don’t
know who left that cup there,” she pondered. Heads
will roll.
“So…how
should a person know not to give my grandma water?” I asked again.
“Because
it says so right outside the door,”
she answered, as if it was obvious, gesturing toward the door and then standing
in front of…what was certainly not a
sign saying “no water.” It was an applique
of a generic flower, like something one might put in one’s bathtub as an anti-slip
pad. If it were the '70s. That was the no-water warning? Was that the universal sign for Do Not Hydrate?
Does everybody know that but me?
“Just
out of curiosity,” I asked (and I must add that even though she clearly thought
it was my fault that I almost killed my grandma, she was nevertheless very nice to both of us and happy to
entertain all my questions, a true care-giver), “if some people can’t drink water,
how do you hydrate them?”
“They
drink these,” she replied, showing me a carton, like yogurt might come in, and
opening it to reveal a very red gelatin
substance. “Give her one,” she said casually, as she left, relieved that no one
had died on her shift.
“Grandma,
do you want this?” A firm, silent no. Of course not. Why would she? First of
all, she was well hydrated, thanks to my ignorance. Second of all, it was red Jello.
I said
goodbye, knowing that the likelihood was high that it was a forever-goodbye,
which it indeed turned out to be.
THAT'S THE SPIRIT
Some months later, I woke up in the middle of the night so lonely,
as if I had no one. It was, fortunately, more of a dreamlike wave that washed
over me and thankfully didn’t insinuate itself into my very cells. Fleeting. I woke up
the next morning to a voicemail from my dad, and knew immediately it had been her during the night, Grandma Aurelia, giving
me a glimpse of what she was made of: an orphan. Unloved until the end.
I now knew
exactly what it felt like to be her: so lonely, as if she had no one. I’d felt
it.
THE JUNGIAN PERSPECTIVE
My
hilarious story of how I almost killed my grandma is always well received. But the day
I was telling it to a Jungian analyst who also knew the story of my Grandma Mary,
she wasn't the least bit amused.
“Do you
sense a theme here?” she said, and in that moment, my epiphany: I had killed my
Grandma Mary! I had killed my dead ex-husband! And now, this hilarious tale
about how I almost killed Grandma Aurelia was so delightful to me because it accessed the truth of my inherent sense
of guilt (that narcissistic, infantile tale within), in which other people’s lives and
deaths revolve around my actions!
Of
course, everyone dies at the time that’s right for them. It's possible for me to know that in my mind, but still feel responsible in my psyche. Because
Death-Responsibility had lodged itself into my cells, during my early perceptions of the world, when I was 5, in Grandma Mary’s back yard, and it has shaded my perception
of the world with a tinge of dread.
I almost
think…though to actually think this almost feels accusatory…but I almost think that no one even asked me to talk about it—after I
watched my favorite grandma, my feminist grandma, Grandma Mary, die. Because she was the one I had told everything
to, she was the one who would have asked
me about the death, and loved me through it—but she was dead. And I was five. My
mother says my grandma “spoiled” me, which I realized, as an adult, meant: she
loved me unconditionally.
At least someone did.
SLEEPING NAKED WITH MY GRANDMOTHER
My first
spiritual counselor, a church minister clearly
not trained as an actual counselor, decided that Grandma Mary had sexually abused
me. I had told him about taking baths
with her, and sleeping with her.
“I
remember, when she took her nightgown off, there were sparks in the dark,” I
had said, and he said he’d never heard of anyone sleeping with their naked
grandmother. In truth—maybe she’d been putting her nightgown ON. I don’t even know. I never thought about it. I
just remember the sparks; and if she actually did “spoil” me, she might have
done the sparks thing just for fun, so I could have my own little Fourth of July on
hot summer nights.
It was
the ‘60s. She babysat me regularly. My family lived at my grandparents’ house
for six months while renovating our house, and I imagine we had to double up in the beds. Of course I'd be with the person with the unconditional love.
“Yep.
I’m pretty sure she sexually abused you,” the church minister concluded, when I
was about 30, based on the following evidence:
a) that he had never heard of a grandma who slept naked, and b) that I
remembered the sparks that my grandmother’s nightgown created when I was a
toddler.
To this
day I’ve still never asked anyone if they’d ever slept with their naked
grandma. I don’t even want to know. If there really was sexual abuse involved,
thank god for it. If there wasn’t, thank god for it. Either way, I love my body
and delight in my sexuality on every level.
Rubbing soapy naked bodies together
in the shower with my daughter was fun for both of us when she was
little—chest to chest--and I’ve never asked other moms if they rubbed soapy bodies with their
daughter either. Who even cares what’s normal, in this world of sexual darkness
and perversity? Do I want to choose and follow sexual propriety standards that
I didn’t set, that an un-evolved collective unconscious unconsciously agrees
to? (God, no.)
THE NEXT GENERATION
Lily let
me know when she no longer wanted to be seen naked. Apparently this happens with most kids at
around age 6—I read that in a book. She
was 14.
She had turned
away from me, one evening after her shower, and I remember my response: “Are
you kidding me? I’m not allowed to see you naked any more? Right when things are
getting interesting?” and we both
laughed.
I asked
her a follow-up question, “So...do you not want me to see your breasts because
they’re so big? Or so small?”
“Both,”
she said. She’s brilliant.
Breasts. To own them and laugh,
with them, at the projections that have taken them from providing eternal
sustenance for the masses, both literally and metaphorically, to being objects
of sexual desire—though there is nothing wrong with that, if it’s in balance. But
we are living in a world out of balance, sexually. My breasts, though rarely
viewed as objects of sexual desire as far as I could tell, were more than
adequate at providing sustenance for my robustly healthy baby. So I think
they’re pretty great.
In this
planet out of sexual balance, out of sexual reverence, if someone says it was
wrong for my grandmother to sleep naked with me—if indeed she even was
naked—well, of course I would question their judgment. The cultural
underpinnings of what’s right or wrong—that which I assume created society’s
current state of massive sexual unconsciousness—are not the foundation on which
I base my perspectives.
Could I
imagine sleeping naked with my future granddaughter? I am not sure what's socially acceptable in
my country, and why add a layer of shame onto myself if it’s taboo, but the
truth is, I’ve never heard of American cross-generational nakedness. Even
though it’s hard to imagine Lily pregnant, it’s somehow easy to imagine her
leaving her kid with me overnight—in fact I even imagine her believing that I’m
the only acceptable babysitter for her child. I also imagine that I would ask Lily for permission to be naked with her
baby or child, if for some reason I wanted to be, though I don’t sleep naked.
“What if
she pees in the bed?” is how I imagine Lily responding.
With
that possibility adequately addressed, she would then say that it’s fine for me to sleep naked with her baby.
Lily doesn’t have issues with naked bodies either. My mom, I’m sure, would think
it was perverted. So of course my grandmother wouldn’t have asked her, in this perverse hypothetical. My
mother is not a sensuous person, especially in matters of the body, and she is
avidly concerned about what other people think. I imagine I would be cold and
uncomfortable, sleeping naked, unless it was the heat of summer and there was
no air conditioning, which could very well have been the case at my grandma’s
house in East Chicago, Indiana in the 1960s.
And so it
was that grandmother—whom I revered—and who may or may not have
sexually abused me—who died when I was five. I was the only one there, when she
had a stroke. And as I was saying, way up above, I doubt the powers that be ever asked me about my grandmother's stroke in a kind, leisurely, therapeutic way. In fact,
I imagine them in my face, invading my boundaries, screaming frantically, “What happened?!”
Little me, feeling it was all my fault, because I'd been the only one there.
What had happened?! All I know is,
this scene—or lack thereof, because I can’t actually remember it, can’t see it at all, I can only feel it—is clearly when I was most paralyzed
by fear—if I had to choose just one time in my life. Of
course I’d grow up with an underlying feeling that I could have prevented
her death. Of course I’d grow up with
a sense of dread about the unknown. It was lodged in there at a fundamental, and
appropriately narcissistic, kindergarten level.
And my mom’s
worst fear is that I’ll write about her mothering, and find fault.
I’m not
trying to find fault here, just trying to re-trace my steps. But
in truth I can’t fathom my daughter witnessing her grandmother’s stroke as a 5-year-old or 15-year-old or even 25-year-old and her mother being too busy or too caught up
in my own emotions that I wouldn’t notice she needed…something.
Whatever that
something was that I didn’t receive, I suspect the lack thereof has at times kept me from fully
trusting love, trusting my voice, trusting an unguarded moment, trusting
nothing dread-full is going to happen.
Of
course that death-guilt also bled into and colored the death of my daughter’s dad. I moved to New Mexico and took his child along. He died unexpectedly nine
months later. Clearly it was my fault.
I was a person who was responsible for
people's deaths. It was in my cells, from a young age.
But this
false responsibility for other people’s deaths was becoming obsolete. Having
had the Jung-induced epiphany about being “responsible” for other people’s
deaths a few months earlier, I decided it was time to go see an energy worker
or two. I went to the more “medical” of my two practitioners first, and he
prescribed an esoteric flower essence that he did not shelve. Nor did Whole
Foods. It was that esoteric. He recommended I do a search.
“And read
the description in the catalog,” he had said during the appointment. “To make sure this formula makes sense for
you.”
“To let
go of the past, to let go of resentment,” it said. Indeed it made sense. And this:
Rowan flower essence helps to accept and take responsibility for
behaviour and actions that have caused pain or suffering. Negative emotions that
are not resolved can manifest again in other situations and relationships that
have nothing to do with the original trauma. In some instances, this may mean
reaching back into the past to process events, learn from the
experience and make amends.
I ordered
it online.
The next
practitioner I saw, less traditional and more mystical, facilitated a profoundly deep
appointment that took me back to the moment my Grandma Mary died in front of me when
I was five. I love how, in energy work, you don’t have to verbally rehash the pain
of the past. I just felt it and let go--of the guilt, the abandonment. And
while I was at it, I let go of the guilt of killing my daughter’s dad, too,
and the guilt about abandoning him when I left the marriage, and then again years
later when I moved to New Mexico with his child. It was simply time, time for
my narcissistic outlook—in which I cause deaths--to release its hold on my perceptions.
Although the energetic network in my body had altered in response to my “responsibility”
for the deaths of almost two grandmothers and an ex-husband, intellectually I
could see that it was just an old tape loop that set the stage for self-blame
when I was five. It was a relief to come into the blameless present. So
efficient, to accomplish ten years’ therapy in one session of energy work.
That
night, I dreamed I was driving. I was on the Indiana toll road, heading toward Chicago. There was a
bicycle rider to my right, and I noticed she wasn’t the most stable rider. I should try to get beyond her, I thought, in the dream. But as I passed her on her left, I lost sight of her
then felt her, and her entire bike, slide under my car;
hoping she’d miraculously slide through to the other side (after all, it was a
dream), I was mortified (no pun intended) as I waited to feel and hear the grotesque
crunch of bones and bike. No way could she survive.
In the
dream, I stopped my car right there on the tollway and put my face in my hands,
truly in dread.
I couldn’t bear to face what the next moment would bring: the
blood and the ambulances—but mostly the guilt. And just then, in the dream, eyes tightly
covered by my hands, I had an epiphany: If I truly, truly believed it, I could shift my reality. So I summoned every ounce
of optimism I had, along with absolute faith in the immediate future, and the
moment when I truly knew the situation would turn out fine, when I absolutely could feel
“Joy awaits,” I removed my hands from my eyes.
And there
I was: awake, in my bedroom.
I was not viewing the scene of an involuntary
manslaughter. I had never been so happy to be awake, right Here, right Now. Relief and
joy flooded me, along with awe at the power of creating my own reality. Good morning!
Later
that day, I suddenly realized: that dream strip of toll road where I had likely
killed that ill-equipped bike rider was in real life the exact spot where, if there’s no traffic, and if my paternal Grandma
Aurelia’s house is still painted pink, you can see it from the tollway.
Thus, the
dream took on another level. My visceral experience: from now on, I can create my own future without
dread. A dream interpretation: my old self, my inherited human ancestry of
guilt and dread, killed. In a good
way. My new self: optimistically and joyfully creating my future. I could now live in
a New Paradigm, in a world not created by my ancestral karma. No need to be afraid
to look at what’s in store for me. The dreadful dreamworld feeling-scape that I had thought awaited
me was not actually in the future. It was in the past.
I
floated on elation for two days.
And then my previously ordered bottle of flower essence,
prescribed by Dr. Mossell, finally arrived.
As I carried it from the mailbox to my house, I had a flash of memory. Was it actually called... But
wait. I could be wrong. What was it called again? Memory can be iffy--especially
mine.
I opened the box and looked at the label. Oh my Goddess, it was indeed. The
name of the flower essence that was my Rx to help me let go of guilt about
killing my Grandma Mary: Rowan. Want to know the
maiden name of my Grandma Mary? Rowan.
Synchronicity was alive and well and revealing in real time that I was on the right page.
The hairs on our head are not just numbered, but arranged in some of the most compellingly complex and interwoven hairstyles imaginable.
The hairs on our head are not just numbered, but arranged in some of the most compellingly complex and interwoven hairstyles imaginable.
