off to the skies

followed by a chapter of my memoir through the lens of death.

one aspect of privilege

(please be patient with any errors . . . rushing.)

I’ve been wanting to write to you for some time, but just haven’t quite had the creative energy to go to the page. (it’s clear from coughing up just one sentence that it serves me to be here more frequently)

Recently we’ve been planning a three month trip from New Zealand to several ports in the US and on to Europe. It’s no small feat lining up primo house/animal sitters. Me and my husband both feel a sense of renewal understanding that with Mr. 20 living in the US— if we are up to it— we now have freedom to travel.

You know the drill, how many things are put off until “retirement” or some other obscure mark on the timeline of your life. My husband being a doctor, and me in the helping field, we were always saddened by folks, some family, who dreamt of the day to come when they could … only to be taken by disability or death before then.

In a way I think because we had a visceral awareness of that possibility we somehow thought we’d get a pass. Then my energizer bunny cardiologist husband was struck by the heart attack known as the “widow maker.” Not long after that I joined the ranks of those whose body rears in medical malfeasance. It’s all too long and boring to go into a play by play of that, but 18 months after the initial investigation I believe I’ve just completed my final specialist consult. Waits, yes. Bills, no, living in a country with nationalized health. (all hail to the silver f’ing lining)

We know what I have— two serious chronic health issues instead of the one I knew about. This last one is very symptomatic and has drastically changed my functioning. Honestly, it has changed who I am.

My husband and I have both been knighted by the wand of “this too can happen to you.” Honestly? It sucks. (I promise I strive to stay grateful for each moment even if this story is a back drop to SNL’s Debbie Downer's skits = no fun at all)

Back to this trip. What started out as a mission of my husband going to help one of our kids’ family settle in after a move, turned into his announcement, “Let’s both go over, visit them all and then head to Portugal to hang with our besties. We may not have another chance …” I saw the lightbulb go off for him: we have to do what we can while we can.

We’ve both been excited about the travels. I feel much more secure knowing we will be together; he’s my emotional support animal.

Prior to my health bomb I took a solo three month post-covid trip of reconnection with kids and grandchildren in 2022. It was no small task. My daughter asked me why/how could I travel for so long— is this the farewell tour? To which I chirped, smiling, you never know! (right? i know)

Let me pause here for a bit of a catch-up. I started this project because of the intimate experience with my brother and mother’s deaths when we practiced autonomy, including keeping their bodies home with us for three days. It was such a profound and beautiful experience, I wanted others to know the possibility was there. This led to the Death Dialogues Project and Podcast (which you can find here and listen to on this Substack platform or wherever you listen to your podcasts).

A world was opened of connecting with like-minded folks with the similar mission of increasing literacy and awareness around all things death. And wow. Over the past almost eight years that I’ve been in that space, the generations behind me have carried the torch for that mission in creative and poignant ways and awareness towards death, dying, and grief continues to expand.

Recently someone very solid in that death-work community put a post on Instagram saying they were going to have to step away from that work— referring to their emotional and energetic capacity through their personal interfaces with death. Me? Big huge exhale reading those words of honesty. I wasn’t alone.

I can’t even list all the intimate deaths we’ve experienced during those seven years up until now. I want death to give me, my family and friends some respite. Mr. 20 recently said, mom, what is with our family? How can we have so much death and heartbreak. It isn’t normal.

Add to his experience beyond our family and friends, he has had multiple friends who have died. He’s been brought up by grief and death; he continues to process it with each emotional developmental stage he hits. He also has a healthy dose of anticipatory grief, sorry mom, but you guys are old. He will regularly recite his oath that he will move in and take care of us no matter when/if the time comes. Bless him.

Forgive me, but right now I’m in need of a vacation from death.

People in the death and dying space get frustrated when literature or sometimes professionals confuse Elizabeth Kübler Ross’s five stages (DABDA) of grief with post-death emotional response when it was meant to be after receiving a diagnosis of a serious/terminal illness. I’ve been able to witness those for myself.

Denial— I chalk that up to receiving information after a catscan when Crohn’s disease was diagnosed that this condition was actually spotted. And ignored. By my physician, my physician husband, and myself. No fault, no foul. At that state there was nothing that could be done. By the time it could no longer be ignored, denial wasn’t an option for me.

Anger— Yep, I let myself get pissed off about the above fact for a hot minute, but was able to self-talk myself down because official early detection wouldn’t have changed anything. In fact, it would have prevented some life opportunities coming to fruition, so it was a blessing it wasn’t properly diagnosed earlier.

I was angry at chronic illness and death itself because during this period I supported two of my best friends through their illnesses and death. So yeah, fuck death. (an element of that sentiment remains)

Bargaining— To be real? I haven’t really had the energy that is required for bargaining. I’m too well versed with medical journeys to waste what little spunk I have on magical thinking.

Depression/Despair— This phase looks more like despair than depression for me. despair: the complete loss or absence of hope. Again, enough with magical thinking. When you get to the core of what’s happening with me it’s a downward trajectory of unknown rapidity. I don’t have a depression about the possibility of dying earlier than I previously thought I might (I still am part of the faction that knows good and well I could get hit by a vehicle tomorrow). For two folks that have spent careers helping others cope, it’s frustrating to be in the space where there’s nothing more that can be done …

Acceptance— I think I’m there. How can I tell? All the years of being programmed to push through, keep on going, you’ve got this, rah-rah-rah is impossible now. It’s taken a long while to get there, but the action behind my acceptance is what has given me the most comfort. Letting go of guilt related to not being able to function well. Accepting my husband’s (and others’) help without disparaging inner self-talk. Pacing my energy and activities because I’ve accepted this isn’t going away. Staying in the moment. Finding beauty in small, every day ways: the birdsong; the thunderstorm building up and rolling by in the distance; our animals; good movies and shows; love and care of each other …

Part of this acceptance process sees me slowed down enough to recognize some of the full circles of life lessons and how most of the disparaging feelings toward myself stem from family of origin drama that I no longer own.

It’s a radical act when we can circumvent the “should-ing” on ourselves that was put on us from birth by unpacking the painful stories we were not responsible for and rewriting them.

It’s been hard to bring myself to write this. Mainly because of understanding the inherent privilege I and my loved ones have in this life. With all the chaos and suffering in the world, it feels wrong to focus too much on my own experience.

I know many of you have similar feelings. Give yourself permission to process and hold your “hard” gently, even more-so in the midst of unthinkable suffering in the world that can wreak havoc on our tender hearts.

Okay. Back to packing. I’ve been piddling with this for a few days and we are heading to the airport in 15 minutes. As usual, it felt lovely to have the sense of connecting with you through writing this update.

Much love,

Becky

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The next chapter of my memoir through the lens of death “and then the stars spoke …” You can go to previous posts to catch up with earlier chapters shared.

Grandma

My mother was always amazed by my memory.

We had a clear marker in time that pointed to just how early my memories were. Just after my third birthday, we moved to Illinois from Oklahoma. My grandmother died before we left. I remembered that. Kennedy had been assassinated before we moved. I remembered that as well. There were other specifics—playmates, places, scenarios.

Knowing that people won’t believe me, I usually don’t mention that I remember sitting in a baby carrier on the kitchen counter and my mother spoon-feeding me.

I thought I’d be able to remember everything forever.

Even in my twenties, I remembered all of it. The good. The bad. The fits. Each one. Honestly, it felt like a curse. I envied my father, who claimed he had huge gaps in his memories and no memory before five years of age, or friends who swore they remembered very little of their early lives. Never in my dreams did I think those memories would leave.

Some memories remain, but many details have finally taken leave. Many are forever gone. One theory I have is that the memories stayed alive because I was constantly processing them as part of my healing. Maybe the voids there now are more about resolution than a failing memory.

In early adulthood, my brother Tom and I would sit up late into the night, sipping cheap beer and going over the mangled shrapnel of our childhood. Ever the armchair psychologists, our goal was as much to get answers to my father’s behavior and choices as it was to have the cathartic experience of venting with each other.

These sessions never ended with a result that kept us sated long-term. The stories were unpacked, aired, refolded, and repacked throughout our lives.

With my therapy training, I had to dissect all of the memories and chaos and choose which therapy modalities, and why I would use what, with my family, ad nauseam, as well as have my own therapy. So just maybe, the intensity of the memories began to fade after enough processing had occurred. Finally there had been enough rotation of the emotional compost that I could be rewarded with the long-decomposing fertilizer; the stuff that would make my life so much richer and allow me to grow only beauty.

Smug, I was. Done and dusted.

Many of the early death memories, or a version of them, still exist.

What I recall of dealing with death in my young life was that it was actually a time of relative safety within the ongoing unpredictability and threat. My father was always in finest form when he was at a bedside, a coffin or graveside. We were safe; he would never unleash the monster in public.

My earliest experience with death was that of my grandmother, Essie Amanda, my mother’s mother, who lived with us in Oklahoma during her end stage of leukemia.

My mother told the story that when the disease of leukemia was “discovered,” Grandma became obsessed with it, worrying she’d get it. She died of leukemia. Was she psychic, or was this an example of the mind–body connection?

Grandma’s leukemia proved to be a monumental teachable moment for my mother, “Be careful of the thoughts you put in your brain … don’t think about things you don’t want to manifest.”

I see myself, tiny, in the living room with my grandmother. She is leaning over the living room trash can and brushing her long hair over it to catch the strands that fall out with each stroke. I’m such a tiny thing the receptacle goes up to my chest. I beg her to let me brush her hair. After a couple finishing runs of the brush through my own hair, I then attempt to clean out the hairbrush as she did each time, putting that hair in the bin.

My grandma has a soft smile, and she loves me. I feel it. She lies on her side on our sofa. I snuggle up, spooning into her softness. She’ll sleep, but I can’t, so I trace my finger over the rough texture on the faded red couch. I wonder why a material that is meant to be against our body is so rough that it makes marks on my face and feels uninviting.

There comes a time when Grandma isn’t in our home anymore. I’m told she is in the hospital and I’m too young to visit. The hospital has rules.

My soft-spoken, gentle, perpetually cowboy hat–wearing Uncle Hugh, whom I felt a deep connection with, says he’ll sneak me in. I’m standing over Grandma’s bed, head reaching out from under the coat where I was hidden as he carried me. I remember this.

I lean over, reaching for my grandma—I want to lie down with her, like I always do. I’m not allowed. She takes my hands in hers and kisses them.

That’s the last memory of my grandmother. I loved her. I remember the feeling of her love, same as I can feel Uncle Hugh’s. I don’t remember her words or her voice—just the softness and the love of her. My mother adored her “mama,” and her memories kept that softness alive for me.

There was talk of me being too young to go to the funeral. I’m not sure I did. My mom’s dead, so I can’t ask her anymore.

I feel like I ran around a cemetery, possibly after the service. Did I? I don’t know.  Ask me everything you want to know. There will be things you want to know later and I won’t be here to answer them. How many times did my mother say those words?

Later, I would run around many cemeteries throughout my young life, and they are still a place that feels comforting.

There were a couple of revelations surrounding my grandmother’s death in the last few years, after I had experienced my own deep loss.

How deeply had my mother grieved? She adored her Mama. She spoke of her as if she was a saint. Sharecropping in the dust bowl of Oklahoma during the Depression—unimaginably difficult times. She and her siblings were hungry much of the time, living on dried beans and cornbread. How she could continue to love beans and cornbread the way she did throughout her life was beyond me. But now I think I understand. It was the connection to her mother she was consuming as much as the food.

My mother loved her Papa as well, but she held resentment towards him that came out more as she aged. He would take off, “gallivanting” around; a renowned cock-fighter who never brought winnings home that were substantial enough to ease the burden Grandma carried.

“She may as well have been a single parent during those times,” my mother would say with resentment.

As a wee child, Mom could hear the adult cousin that would take her Papa away coming from afar because of the pots and pans and metal jangling on his cart. That sound put an ache in her tummy, and she would see her mother bristle as it heralded the fact her husband would be taking off and leaving them to fend for themselves once again: the farming, the animals, children, and chores. How was she to feed and clothe these children on her own? Those were the days of not only farming your fingers to the bone, but milking and churning your own butter, boiling your water to wash clothes … a life of hardship and heavy labor.

“Mama worked like a man; she had to,” I heard my mother say throughout our lives.

As she would share these emotions I’ve tried to recall, why didn’t she cry more or outwardly grieve? I know she missed her mama greatly. And then I think—of course.

My father wouldn’t have allowed her to show the outward grief. She felt she couldn't speak positively about her siblings and parents. He would have been resentful. Jealous that other people might be taking up her emotional bandwidth. Resentful that he did not have memories of loving parents and family.

The time demarcation of my young life happened when we moved to Illinois, not long after my grandmother died.

I recall Kennedy’s assassination while still two years old. John-John and I were the same age, and I was fascinated by him. Even then, my heart hurt for others when I sensed they were hurting. I turned three in April and we moved to Illinois in July of 1964. Mom left her remaining family in Oklahoma. After 19 moves in 21 years, she told my father she would never move again. True to her word, she did not move for over 50 years, until the last two years of her life, when she lived with my family in New Zealand.

Growing up in our home in Illinois, always bored, I took great delight in exploring my mother’s dresser drawers. One was full of Sunday hats and gloves for church. I’d put them on, model, find a purse and pair of dress shoes, playing dress-up. I have a memory of when I was tall enough to stand on my tippy toes and finally able to open the top drawer of the dresser.

In it, I see a long, loose parcel of tissue paper. Inside it are light brown, almost blond, neatly plaited braids. I touch their smoothness. Overwhelmed with emotion, I run to my mother. “Are these Grandma’s?”

“Yes,” she says, her eyes holding the story of missing her mama. My fingers stroke the braids, wishing I could feel all of her.

A revelation occurred after the birth of my own granddaughter.

I looked up at the photo of my grandmother, and a memory of connection and love flooded me at a time in life when I was feeling tremendous love for my new granddaughter—my first grandchild.

I realized in that moment that if our ancestors can, in fact, watch over us, of course my grandma would be companioning me throughout life. I had been the first granddaughter born, after 13 boys. We spent an intense time of connection together in those three years and at the end of her life. Of course she’s on my team on the other side, if such a thing resides within the great mystery.

Thank you, Grandma, for showing me some of the first unconditional love ever experienced and for embedding yourself deep within my heart.

Song: “All My Life” by Jeen

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I shall try post some updates while away … Not taking a computer so may be easier said than done. x