Welcome to The Grieving Room .
( From exmearden's diary)
A special welcome to anyone who is new to The Grieving Room. We meet every Monday evening. Whether your loss is recent or many years ago, whether you have lost a person or a pet, or even if the person you are "mourning" is still alive ("pre-grief" can be a very lonely and confusing time) you can come to this diary and process your grieving in whatever way works for you. Share whatever you need to share. We can't solve each other's problems, but we can be a sounding board and a place of connection.
This link will take you to past editions of The Grieving Room: http://www.dailykos.com/...
Here is the schedule for upcoming weeks:
July 28 - filled by Beegee Kochav
August 4 - filled by AJsDad
August 11 - filled by Dem in the Heart of Texas
August 18 - filled by bigjacbigjacbigjac (bigjac - please confirm!)
August 25 - OPEN
September 1 - OPEN
September 8 - OPEN
September 15 - filled by NewDirectionsMom
Please contact smnytx at yahoo.com to volunteer to host an upcoming week, or respond in this diary.
In 1979, I graduated early from high school. I was restless, couldn't wait to start living as an adult. Or a safe facsimile, anyway: a college student. I had plans. I was going to go away to school, had been accepted to a well known one in New Jersey. For the first time, I felt things were going according to some beneficent master plan.
I had a complicated childhood; a blended family battered by past tragedies and troubles. There were early deaths (my mother's first husband at 36 to a brain tumor, their son to complications of spinal bifida), illness (my surviving brother's bout with polio), religious complications (one parent Jewish, another Catholic), and even political strife. My parents were old lefties and my half brother, in frustration and misguided rebellion, joined the Air Force in 1970, ending up in Viet Nam. My sister had an unexpected pre-Roe v Wade pregnancy, gave the baby up for adoption and moved to the city, (we were suburban dwellers), interrupting her own education but embarking on a life that was independent and, to my eyes at least, exhilarating.
Her name was Kathy, she was nine years older than me, and 19 when she left home and college to live in "downtown" Chicago. She was brilliant, exceptionally talented in math and art, an accomplished Szechwan cook, a feminist, and spectacularly beautiful. Kathy sparkled. She was witty and charming and - because I can't think of a more descriptive adjective - exceptionally cool. She had wonderful friends; artists and musicians and academics and writers. She had boundless energy and a fearlessness that let her approach life as a joyous adventure. She had a dog named Corky, a funny looking mutt who was utterly devoted to her. She had - should have had - a brilliant future.
The men in her life tended to be intense, attractive, successful, and difficult. She was rarely without a serious love interest, but had no immediate interest in making anything permanent. She was a fascinating companion, a loyal friend, a good daughter and granddaughter, and a great sister. She gave me "Our Bodies, Our Selves" when I turned 12, made sure I had the latest information on everything she thought important, shared new music with me, listened to my complaints about my parents and my frustrations with my own life. She was excited about my future, and I was looking forward to telling her about the new adventures that I, finally, would be having.
I still think of it as a Friday night - July 13th - but really, it was Saturday morning, about 3 a.m., July 14th, when the phone rang. The phone rings at that time, you hold your breath, because no one calls with good news at 3 a.m. I was lying in my bed, down the hall from my parents' room. I heard them answer the phone and froze. I waited - absolutely still - and listened. I wanted to hear them hang up the phone ("wrong number") and return to bed. But what I heard was this: my parents getting up and getting dressed. Time stopped. It's that "time before", that purgatorial ethereal period between when a tragedy has occurred and you actually know what has happened. Someone is late. ("It's probably just traffic"). Or the police are on their way to your door; you can hear sirens, but you're still blissfully going about the peanut-butter-and-jellyness of life, folding clothes, walking on your treadmill, feeding your cat.
I knew something terrible had happened. But oh God, I just wanted to stay in "the before". Because even at 18, I knew this: there's no going back.
When I heard them enter the kitchen, I had a rush of panic - were they going to leave without telling me what happened? I ran out just as they were leaving. I don't know if they simply forgot about me or didn't want to tell me anything until they knew more details. "Your sister has been shot. Pray for her", my distraught mother said as they left. My mother had never asked me to pray before. I don't think I prayed. Because those words "...been shot" - they made no sense. So I sat down, alone. And waited.
I waited alone for the next six hours, when a good friend and neighbor came over, crying, to tell me that Kathy was on a respirator. I didn't realize the significance of that yet. "Will she be okay?" I asked. Wordlessly, crying, my longtime neighbor shook her head. She couldn't speak.
No,she was not okay. But it was complicated. She was brain dead - the neurologists agreed, surgery was not possible, the EEGs were as bad as they get. The police wanted to try something, though. They had no real suspects. Keep her alive for a bit, tell her friends and acquaintances that she has made a slight improvement. This, they hoped, might flush out a suspect. Since my parents spent all day every day with Kathy, unconscious in the ICU of Edgewater Community Hospital, this left me at home with the phone, a phone that rang all day long. And so, all day I lied and lied and lied. Friends would call and I'd say that she had improved a bit, that we were hopeful. Then I'd hang up and remind myself that the words I'd said, the words I desperately wanted to be true, were a lie. I was a little afraid I was going to lose my sanity.
Five days later, her kidneys failing and still no suspects, she died. We buried her next to her father and my half brother in Pennsylvania, where my family had been from originally. We buried her on my grandparents 50th wedding anniversary. A party had been planned for them, a rare event in our scattered family. A party that never took place. Not long afterwards, my grandfather died of the emphysema he'd contracted from working in the Pennsylvania steel mills.
The investigation continued, a suspect emerged, but there was insufficient evidence to arrest him. And that is the end of that part of the story. The other part - the fallout from her death - that part has no ending. Because a bomb went off in my family. When the dust settled, nothing was the same. Ever. There is no holiday that doesn't shout her absence like an air raid siren, no life cycle event that doesn't scream her name. When my mother broke her hip two years ago and nearly died of complications, I locked myself in a bathroom at the hospital and cried - for Kathy. "Where are you? Where did you go? Why did you leave? I need you."
All deaths leave wounds. But there is something particularly supporating about the wounds left by a deliberate death. I stared down at my sister's corpse as she lay in a coffin at the funeral home. My grandmother was desperate to see her one last time, despite our warnings about the condition of her body. Her kidneys had failed, so her body, always slender, was bloated and puffy. She'd been shot in the head, her hair shaved, so they'd put a strange looking hair piece on her. She'd had an extensive autopsy, of course - this was a homicide. It was a disaster; the funeral director had tried everything, wax, make up by the trowel, and finally, a veil over her face, but nothing really helped. And I looked at this wreck that had been my beautiful 27 year old sister and said, outloud to myself, "Somebody thought it was a good idea." And I grew bitter, with an anger that has yet to fade.
So that is part of the story, and it's already too long for this venue, but some things just can't be said succinctly. It's a story about a lot of things, I guess - guns and the culture of violence in America, untimely deaths, and the impact of them on families and individuals. I never went to that well-known college in New Jersey, I stayed home and attended schools closer to my family. And then I embarked on a series of semi-rational actions, suspecting that life and fate were random and safety was an illusion. Those were just a few of many hundreds of changes in my life that occurred because some unknown person pointed a handgun at my sister's head and pulled the trigger one muggy night in July, in a nice neighborhood in Chicago where such things were not common.
Kathy loved music, and sharing that was one of her gifts to me. This song is a signpost to how you get through even the worst things in this world and go on anyway.... Kathy Young, name of care: z'l. I know this love will carry me...