9:06 p.m. - 12/09/03
...when I cannot tell precisely where love stops and loss begins::
No music, no phone calls, no interruptions, no distraction, just me and a pattern of keys I memorized as a third-grader. Just fingers moving against letters, making words. Just me, the right to my tears, and the space to cry them. I've had every reason the past few days to break down and have a good cry, a true cry, an agenda-ed cry... and so little space to have it. Now in a little white box that's come to be as familiar to me as the keys I don't think about, the forgotten letters making up the words, I can spill it all out. And tomorrow, there will be more, and indeed, tonight there will be more. There will be more in me than I know to say or remember to type, but I will cry some of the stress away, and the respite will nourish me even if it's only now. Only now, only me, only keys and my words and my tears and my right to do what I need.

Sometimes tomorrow just takes a few days in getting here.

...Which is my way of saying I guess there's no better place to start than where I planned, at the end of the last entry; there's no better place than to tell of broken things. Here goes. When I was 11, I did community theater, and the group of people I did community theater with - despite the fact that they were generally over ten years older than I was and that I was unfathomably shy and therefore didn't converse much - meant the world to me. They were, in some ways, a mini-Rogers. Really important, really suddenly gone, really terribly grieved. The day of the second or third performance, I wore my cast t-shirt. Understand this is the first time I've ever performed; I'd only done community theater one other summer, and that year I'd been a set geek, nowhere near the stage. This shirt meant the world to me; it was a symbol of my inclusion with all of these people who were so much bigger, older, more sure of who they were. It was my right to walk where they walked, to bypass audience members, to beam with the pride of everyone's good work. Earlier in the day, before call, I was wearing the shirt and painting. I got the smallest dot of green paint on my t-shirt, which was a cream color, and - since my mom is an artist and I didn't grow up using Wal-Mart watercolor sets (solely) the paint was never, ever going to come out. I had permanently stained my symbol. I lost it. Emotionally, I became a total wreck. Coupled with the anxiety of interacting with the cast and of performing, I became beyond anxious. I spilled water in the props room, and when I couldn't clean it up, I tried to run away. I heard the yelling about the mess in the props room, and I confessed to my sister, and she took me to the woman who was ranting and helped me explain this accident, and helped the woman explain to me that she hadn't meant all that anger toward *me* - she hadn't known, et cetera. It didn't matter. I was shaking. I kept saying how the whole day had been horrible, how it kept getting worse, and I remember Sarah asked me if anything else had happened - beyond the shirt and the water - and how I told her nothing had. I'd put a gold angel pin given to each cast member by one of the veterans over the stain, which was low on the right, under the design, which actually drew more attention and comments than if I'd left it alone. A girl a few years older than Sarah sat with me on stage and held me until I started crying; I decided she was one of the greatest people to ever grace the earth. I was devastated. Because I'd messed up, because my anxiety was through the roof and I didn't even know I had an anxiety disorder, and because of everything that was broken. The harmless, innocent perception of me was broken: obviously, I could do horrible, awful things, like knock over a cup of water. My symbol was broken, most importantly. My heart... but perhaps you understand.

I'm a packrat. That's how I operate. I'm able to function living eight hours away (I wonder if it's more now?) from Rogers because I have photographs, cards, a poster, all sorts of random reminders hung to my wall and placed around my room. I have cards from when I was in sixth grades, scrap books that go back to fourth, journals that go back to first. Objects are Swiss banks into which I deposit my memories, my emotions, my affection, both blissful and desperate. Two days ago, I went to take a shower. I was wearing a turtleneck which never happens; I only own one, which is an itchy-sweater type and therefore rarely worn. I'd borrowed the one I was wearing from my mom. Around it, my home necklace, recently returned to my neck, hung- forgotten. It was early in the morning, I was used to the routine of stretching, shedding clothes, showering. I pulled off the turtleneck forgetting the necklace that was tucked under the cuff of fabric. I heard the chain snap and the charm fall to the floor. I remembered that I had broken the chain of Silje's angel necklace by taking off a turtleneck as well. And I was ready to lose it, entirely, maybe even more than with the dot of green paint. I'm stronger now; I didn't have the same vulnerability that I had at eleven...however...the chain from my home necklace broke several months ago. The chain which had held it around my neck that day and the few days before was one my mom had pulled out of her things and given to me. I had asked if she really wanted me to take it, considering it obviously corresponded with a necklace, and after all I could just buy a new chain, et cetera. She said I didn't need to worry about it; she wouldn't be wearing that necklace anyway, so I could use the chain and feel no qualms. Immediately, I recognized that the chain had to be from her Star of David necklace (it's a SoD with a cross in the middle) which was a wedding present from my dad and which I wore nearly every day in middle school. It was the only necklace she could possibly know she wouldn't likely wear again. I didn't say anything when she gave it to me because I didn't want to hear her say anything, and because I kind of liked having the chain. I'd always liked wearing the necklace, and there was something about having that chain around my Rogers charm that put a home and a Home together and gave me both my upbringings at once. I liked the idea that I could carry, with me my parents as they were in tact, even though they will not be that way again. It was a reminder, I guess, that while they'll no longer be married, they'll continue to be my parents. They'll never separate in that regard. In that category, they'll always be together. I liked knowing that. I liked the reminder of it. I even liked stringing that reminder through Rogers, linking my Lastname upbringing to the one at RED. I liked putting them together, something I would never have allowed - let alone appreciated - a few years ago... When the chain broke, I wanted to play Hollywood and break, too. I wanted to drop to the floor and bawl. Because I'd already invested in the symbol, because I'd used it to balance against everything I don't have, because it was just how my Silje-angel broke, et cetera. I just wanted to break down and be done with it. But I didn't. I showered, did all the morning rituals and went to my mom with the necklace, showed her the broken chain. She told me it was no big deal, that I didn't have to worry, she wasn't upset, that chain had already been replaced once, we could get another, and I had to tell her - again and again - that I wasn't upset out of worry over her response, I wasn't upset because of what this might mean to her. I was, in selfish reality, upset because it meant something to me. Because in middle school hell when my parents were a mess the EPA would not have touched, I wore that necklace every day and felt safe when I tugged on it. I think that's how the chain broke the first time - because I tugged on it to feel safe. I think I went to my mom, then, terrified that she'd be mad at me. But not this time. This time I went and I asked her to fix it. I said, "This is the chain from the Star of David necklace." I said, "I care." I want something that's not broken. I want something to help hold me together. I want something to remember it by. Like a picture where we're all together, where we're fucked up but not split apart this way. I had it with me everywhere I went, that knowledge, so new and so important, and it's broken because I was too preoccupied to take off a necklace before I took off a shirt. She offered to loan me another chain if I wanted to wear the necklace that day; I told her I didn't. Lie. I want to wear that necklace all the time; I hate taking it off almost as much as I hate not having it on... But I didn't want another chain. I didn't want it replaced. I wanted it fixed and given back to me. And now I don't even know what happened to it. If she still has it, maybe it can be repaired. If she doesn't, I want to keep the broken string. I'm a packrat; I admit that. But my daddy gave my mommy that necklace to validate who they were and the love that they had as they entered into marriage, and as fucked up as it all became, the necklace could remember everything before it spoiled. The necklace was the hope, never the reality, not even in the beginning - but the wish and the love and the effort. It was a reminder that they were joined in love and are still joined in my love for them. In their love for me, in their love - and struggle - which each other, in the fact that they're my parents. That's one word. One word that they're both in, for always. One word, one label, they'll share. One that they can't divide. And I broke it. I broke it, and it didn't matter that the fate of symbols bears no weight on the fate of what they symbolize. It didn't matter that I didn't, even accidentally, break my parents up. I just knew that the day was horrible and getting worse. My mom was so busy telling me she wasn't upset, she couldn't understand why I was.

And later. We were in the kitchen. It happened so fast I couldn't understand what it was. It happened so quickly, I didn't know I had done it. I just stared at the mess on the floor. ...We have these witches. I don't know how many we have - a ton. They looked appropriate at Halloween; next to snowmen and Christmas decorations, they're bizarre...but it doesn't matter. We have these witches, and they're named after relatives that my mom can see in them: my great-grandmothers, my mom's mom, my childhood caregiver. One of them had a belly which was a snow globe (except it snowed bats) and had a cat inside. That one, despite my grandma hating cats, was my grandma. And that same night the necklace broke, I sneaked past mom in the kitchen and suddenly glass had shattered and there were these black dots - no, bats - on the floor, and there was the head and torso of my grandma's familiar, and me staring at it...completely unable to take in what I had done. "How did I do that?" I asked again and again. "What did I do? Did I do that? What did I do?"

Mom explained that she'd hung her apron on the witch - which she'd known was not smart when she did it - and in passing, I'd tugged on the apron, which had pulled the witch to the floor. She kept telling me it was ok, she wasn't upset; she kept saying Grandma hated cats anyway, so this was good. She told me, "It's not the things; it's the people" and I went into my room and cried because I agree. But so so so so so so so so so so many of my people are far away. Whether they live in Wisconsin or Norway or a state of being I have no ability to understand, they aren't with me the way they once were. And I have so much need and energy around those relationships, energy which I invest in stuffed animals and photographs and notes and witches that belong to my mother, not me. I have so much need, and when all of a sudden, one of the banks breaks, the truth comes pouring back out. My grandma is dead. I can't go visit her. I can't hug her. I can't lean down while she leans up. I can't stroke her hand, feel her hands on my face as she cradles my cheeks to kiss me. She's not in her house. She doesn't sleep in her bed, she doesn't sit in her chair, she doesn't entertain her guests, and offer food to her grandchildren. She isn't there the way she was. She isn't here the way she was. And I don't care if it doesn't make sense; I'm tired of trying to explain to myself how I care so much about people I knew three months or a relative I saw so rarely...I just do. One thing I know about grief, you can't fake it. I hate how barely I've responded to certain deaths in my life - a girl in my high school class, my grandfather, but I can't create grief. I can't make myself remember them, suddenly, wholly, the way I remember sometimes. I can't make myself stop those memories for those people who I am grieving, and it's been...easier...with my grandma. It's been easier because she was ready and she was faithful and strong, and she lived a good life, and she taught me how to be myself as a woman, and she got to hear me come to her when she was dying with no sentiment other than thank you. Generally, that's a very beautiful story, followed by very messy grief. But the messy grief is easier than the grief for Tracy who shouldn't have died in the first place. It's easier than the grief for girls who never deserved to be sick, girls I love, girls I don't deserve to lose.

It just wasn't easier that day. It wasn't easier, seeing her in pieces, hearing my mom say she hated cats; it wasn't easy grief. It wasn't easier when I did my Christmas shopping for my family (only have Joe left, thank love), and I started to think about this horrible, horrible holiday, and how much I don't want to go anywhere near it. This awful holiday where my favorite day of the year breaks in two, where I'm at my dad's without my brother Joe and my mom on Christmas Eve, my mom's without brother Joe and my dad on Christmas day, and God knows where with Joe and one or another parent on the 26th. I hate that Joe doesn't get vacation. I hate that my parents are separated. I hate that Christmas can't be like it was when I was seven. I hate that my family can't be fucked up the way I'm accustomed to, that I can't just be in the same pain I've been in for years. That it has to be new. That Mom doesn't just let him come home. That Dad doesn't just suck it up and face adulthood, get help, give her a reason to believe in change, give her a reason to try again. I hate it, I hate it, I hate it all. I hate talking about how much I like the apartment and hearing Mom reiterate it as "how much we like our new place" (she and I are the new "we" - my dad's on his own now.) I hate my Grandma next to my dad, serving holiday food, looking like life has finally given her the best possible scenario, whether it's true or not. Looking like, after her husband died, all she ever wanted was an Oedipus. The new couples. My mom and I. My dad and my grandma. I hate my mom saying that everyone will be here on the 26th, when my dad will be in his apartment, in Brigadoon. I hate getting my thoughts past that, finally getting past it, starting to think about the rest of the holiday and how it will pull together and be new and familiar at the same time, and we'll be family somehow in spite of this...I hate getting to the point where I can imagine Christmas day, where I can picture us piling into a car and driving to north county, to my grandma's, to my extended family. I hate getting through the whole obstacle course/ minefield of divorce pain and shit in my head only to remember that if we do go to my grandma's house, my grandma will not be there. I hate seeing her in her chair looking up at me, and then seeing the chair without her. I hate watching her disappear in my mind, watching her go from there to not there, remembering how much family mattered to her and wanting so badly to gather with that family, only to remember how impossible it is to sit and joke and be a cousin, niece, daughter ... when I can't go put my arms around the woman who makes me her granddaughter. I have my Nana left, and I'm so so so grateful for that; I really am. But I want my Grandma, too. Once again, I know back may not be better. Once again, I know she was in pain and now she isn't. I know she could be in the best imaginable place right now, and I still want to pull her out of that and bring her back to me. Come back to me. So I can visit you too rarely. So I can confuse you with my quiet and my food and my anxiety. Come back. I forget to think about it because it's less bizarre than Tracy. I forget to think about it, and so I have a harder time believing. She's really gone? Dead gone? She really won't be there to ask me what I'm writing, to tell me that she loves me, to make my mom get me some food? She really won't tell me another story, and she really won't hold me again?

I am blessed. I was blessed. I have enough that she gave me to carry me through; she taught me so much, and it's not that I can't be who I'm supposed to be without further guidance from her. I don't need her to do anything for me. I just want her back. I want her here, in the way that lets me touch her. I want her in her chair when I walk through the doorway, at the table telling stories. I want her there.

My aunt and uncle who have lived seven years in California now (seven years) came in for my cousin's birthday (my aunt's goddaughter.) My aunt has worked for the government as an archivist for many, many years, and she gets a crazy amount of vacation time, so she's made a habit of coming in for the event. My uncle never does, but as he's currently out of work (on a sidenote: fuck the economy, fuck one nation under bush, fuck united we stand - ever heard of, "give me your hand; if I fall you're going down with me"? - and fuck ageism) he could this time. They were in for the funeral in September also, so we've seen them significantly more in recent months than we have over the last few years. This visit, they stopped by Friday and we went to my favorite bookstore - which I probably haven't been in more than once since their last visit. Unfortunately, being introduced (through my uncle) to the people who run the place, having "met" them, makes it far more difficult for me to go there (in terms of the agoraphobia.) But I love the store, and I really want to go there more; it seems their business is bad (fuck the economy, fuck one nation under Bush, fuck another year until the election, fuck it), and I'd hate to see them close. Friday was pretty ok, but my anxiety was pummeling me, and since we were pretty sure we'd get together again, I didn't make a big deal out of the visit. Yesterday, they came over after having lunch with my mom; I woke up from a nap (I've been absolutely exhausted, for several reasons) and found them in my living room. I started to have the world's best time. I love my aunt, and my relationship with my uncle is just...one of the best relationships I have. One of the only *real* extended family relationships I have. And important outside of its rarity. He's amazing. He's goofy and funny and brilliant and supportive and unintrusive but emotionally aware. Half the time we're antagonizing each other, telling on each other the way we have since I was an itty-bitty Braveling who called him "Unka Jimmy"...inside that context, more obvious love, cherish-ing, and respect comes in. When he tried to leave, I sat down and clung to his leg, which meant a lot to him. When he said he couldn't imagine the world without himself, I said I couldn't either. He told me I'm a member of his chosen family, one of his three favorite nieces. (I knew the second part.) We joked about therapy and talked seriously (though briefly) about how my parents' separation sucks. After I pried myself away from him, and let them go downstairs, I nearly started crying, had strong memories of when they moved (which broke my heart)... I had just started to move toward crying and remembering a story I gave them as a Christmas present the first Christmas they came in after the move, a weaving of my excitement about that Christmas (Eve) and my memories of time with them growing up, when they were at our house nearly every Saturday. I was about to break down, when they called to say their plans had changed and they were simply driving over to my grandparents' house, where my aunts Janet ("Jeanette") and Ann live now. Did we want to come?

I was emotionally exhausted, mentally exhausted, nearly in tears that I'd needed to cry for days, entirely spent - and I said yes. I climbed into their car and got very, very quiet as the idea of that house became clear to me. I realized I was headed for what I'd been dreading about Christmas. The emptiness of Grandma's space, the inability to touch her. I haven't been there since September, when crying was expected, and I know I made a promise to Ann that the next time she saw me I wouldn't be crying. (Ann is my aunt with Down Syndrome, whom everyone adores.) I did start to cry at one point. I stood with my mom in an away place, held her, let her hold me, told her I missed my grandma so much, let her say she did too, and cried. She offered to take me for a walk, but I decided to just suck it up and save the tears for later. Truth be told, I knew I needed to cry by myself, and the idea of going off by myself in that house or yard, away from the family and the light and into the dark of my loss was not acceptable. I didn't want to sit on one of my grandpa's swings and feel sorry for myself and my feelings. I pulled it together as best I could, went back into the fray, and held my own with a few rounds of Spongebob uno, an easy Christmas-song game, and some verbal banter. My ability to talk audibly and with risky elements of humor, input, etc, around my relatives, still amazes me. It's like the times I clear my place at the table and am stunned, suddenly, that I've eaten. To have something so different from how it was for so long can shock me. But this shock I like. This change I like. This growth I like.

The rest of it...well, there are pains. But I'm the granddaughter of a woman I'm proud to know, the daughter of a mother I'm grateful to lean on, the sister of siblings I look forward to knowing, the friend of people I can't believe exist, and me - day by day, more and more, me.

This helped.

chord

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