Tag: Mourning

  • The Feels Rollercoaster

    The last couple of years have been a rough go for most of us. I’m not taking a huge leap with that idea, I know. Covid threw everyone for a loop, changed the ways of the world, brought up many issues people had to deal with, and I will also say that on the whole, we are all living in a Post-Covid world now.

    For me, this dark period of life started in 2018 with my mother’s death. She felt a lump in her throat in July, and passed away in October. Three months isn’t necessarily a short period of time, but it still feels like it all happened in the blink of an eye. I’m still dealing with her passing, and probably will forever, but I do know that I am in a better place about it.

    There are many things that can be said about losing a parent, and have been said many times over and over. What I found was that nothing brought me joy or happiness. I was sad all of the time. Not depressed, or withdrawn – just sad. And this sadness was always just below the surface, and if I felt anything too much – laughed too hard, or lost myself in a movie or a song – then I would start crying. And I would allow it to happen, and it felt cathartic, but it also made me feel like I was unhinged, and not in control. I knew I needed to mourn my mother, but I also needed to go to work, and take care of my kid, and that was important too.

    When Covid hit, I still wasn’t in a good place, but I was functional. It was a little strange to be isolated from everyone, but our little family unit clung together. I found that my marriage actually got stronger, and I enjoyed being with my wife all the time. And getting to spend so much time with my kid – playing and teaching her how to read – is a treasured gift that I am so fortunate I was able to take part in. Not that we all didn’t have moments where we needed our space, or got on each other’s nerves; we are human.

    And as 2023 started, I started feeling good again. And I started acknowledging that I had changed. I’m not the same person that I was in 2018. It was tough, but I had to admit that I am no longer a theatre artist or a puppeteer. That was a tough one, as that is how I had thought of myself since 2000, all the way back in college. For the last five years, I hadn’t done a show, and I didn’t have a desire to go back. Same thing with my career in arts management. Though I know I don’t want to go back to it, I also know that I do have some anger with the way I was treated in my last two jobs, and I need to take responsibility for the way I behaved as well. That’s an issue I am still working on.

    What I have changed into is a stay at home dad; that’s my role in the family. It took me a bit of time to come around to it. There is still a pull in me to go get a job, as it is stuck in my head that the only “real” way to contribute to my family is by bringing in money. There is a good chance that I will do that, or need to do that in the near future, but as of now – I got a kid, a home, and a financial future that I am responsible for.

    But I still have to do something creative, which is what you are seeing/reading right now. I have always written something – in a journal since high school, plays, an article for a rock zine, college lit journal, and several on and off blogs. There was a five-year period after high school when I tried my hand at getting published, but other that a handwritten from an editor at STORY Magazine telling me to “keep at it, don’t get discouraged,” nothing ever came of it. This blog that you are reading now, was started back in 2017, back at the tail end of my performing days, so writing has always been hanging around in my life. Sure, in the middle of the Pandemic, I had this crazy notion that I was going to “earn money” through writing… And I have re-assessed this idea. If it happens – great! But I am not counting on it. I’m writing because it makes me feel good, gives me a purpose, and is something to work at that is for me. And right now, that’s what I need most in my life.

    Like I said, with all of these changes, I started feeling good about myself, my place in the world. I started feeling grateful for the like I share with my wife, and kid, my family and my friends. I have a good life – filled my struggles – but it is a good life that I am proud of.

    And then I saw a picture. It was a simple, picture of seven people standing in front of a theatre upstate. One of the people in the picture was a friend of mine, who got tagged in the shot, and it was from an organization that he was working for this summer developing a new theatre piece that involved mime and physical theatre – all the stuff I used to do.

    And that picture made me feel like shit. I was shocked at how awful I felt by looking at it. I wasn’t upset with my friend, nor was I jealous of what he was doing, as he’s been taking part in camp, workshops, and art commune things like this since I met him. I felt like shit looking at that picture because the thought that crept into my head was, “That could have been you if you didn’t quit.” I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had given up on myself, and that nothing mattered.

    I feel that I have a normal level of anxiety and self-doubt. Normal level meaning that I have to work to overcome my anxiety and self-doubt, but it is never so great to keep me from getting out of bed in the morning, or to stop me from trying. But this feeling was more like I had wasted my life – that I could have been doing the cool stuff, creating works of art. That I was just one step away from it, and I was the loser who quit.

    And it was like all the progress that I had made over the past year – working through my mom’s passing, my new role in my family, leaving my career, and working on a new form of expression – was meaningless. It had the added effect of making me feel totally alone and isolated. One picture triggered all of that in me.

    You have to make a choice in a moment like that, and I did what any healthy, well balanced person does – I ate potato chips on the couch while playing video games trying very hard to act like I didn’t feel what I felt. Because I felt ashamed at who I am, and for trying to grow into something else.

    But it passed – all those feels. It passed because I talked to my wife about it. It passed because I took my kid to the community pool on a hot Summer day in Harlem, and we swam and talked about music and going away to camp. It passed because I talked to my partner about it, and it passed because I spent time with my daughter – the person I am trying to better myself for.

    It passed but it still lingers in my mind. It’s there because I still need to take the time and mourn the passing of who I used to be. That’s not to say that I won’t find my way back to a theatre, but if I do return, I won’t be the same person doing it for that old reason. It lingers because I am human, and I will always wonder to some degree if I made the right choice. I wish I was so completely confidant in my decisions that I never look back. That’s not me, and I know that about myself.

    I know a few more things about myself now, that I didn’t know awhile ago. It’s progress. I am happier, and that is a win.

  • Short Story Review: “Wednesday’s Child” by Yiyun Li

    (The short story “Wednesday’s Child” by Yiyun Li appeared in the January 23rd, 2023 issue of The New Yorker.)

    (I will SPOIL this story.)

    Illustration by Camille Deschiens

    I sometimes need to be reminded that grief is an individual experience. Not only does each person grieve differently, but the grief one feels is also specific to the person who is lost. This is what I think was the point to “Wednesday’s Child” by Yiyun Li, and I have to stress the word think as this story, though it pings some fine authentic truths, ultimately is an uneven exercise.

    This story is about Rosalie, a middle-aged woman who is traveling by train from Amsterdam to Brussels. The train is delayed due to a person having walked onto the tracks, and it so happens that Rosalie’s fifteen-year daughter had committed suicide by laying down on a set of train tracks years earlier. We also learn that Rosalie’s unloving and harsh mother has recently passed away, and this trip to Europe is an act of dealing with Rosalie’s grief. As Rosalie contemplates the life she had with her daughter, a pregnant woman on the train goes into labor, which Rosalie goes to help before the train stops and EMT’s arrive.

    I’m a sucker for a slow, contemplative piece that examines the nature of grief and what we choose to remember and obsess over, as if we could make changes to past events. This is what Rosalie does in the story, and that is when I found the writing to be the most honest. Yet, I had a few issues which stuck up, and caused me to be pulled out of this reality. First was the climax of the piece, which was the pregnant woman going into labor. And of course the woman was going to go into labor because the second the woman walks in the train, you knew she was going to go into labor. The use of this cliché is completely jarring to the quiet, introspective nature of the story. It feels more like a climax was forced in, rather than being organic with the piece. Second was the flatness of Rosalie’s mother, who just plays a single note of awfulness. There is no dimension to this character who, like the climax, seems to exist only to say awful things to thus move Rosalie’s character development forward. Rosalie wrestles with why her daughter killed herself, which is a question that can never fully be answered and is wrapped up fully in her grief. But Rosalie never questions or wonders why her mother was such an awful person to her. I found that difficult to accept as Rosalie’s character questions everything else that happens.

    It’s too bad, because there are some finely written parts of this story that work very well. Grief and loss are never easy to deal with, let alone define and explain to another person. “Wednesday’s Child” gets very close to hitting the mark, but unfortunately, stumbles and falls a little short.

  • Closing Out 2022

    This will be my last real time blog post for 2022. I have some posts in the can that I have scheduled for the next couple of days, but for all intents and purposes, I am done blogging for the year. Christmas is right around the corner and I am intending to spend time with my family, reading, and napping as much as my kid will allow.

    Looking back on this blog, I will clock 255 posts, with a word count well north of 101,200, which means I was writing on average close to 500 words a post. I find this stat rather amusing as when I started writing here, way back in 2017, my original goal was to only write 250 words per blog. In five years, I have doubled my word count. Quality might still be questionable, but quantity has increased.

    Looking back at this year of creative writing, I have to admit that I did not get published, nor did I earn any money from my creative endeavors, which had been two of my goals. Was I overly ambitious? Well, obviously. But what’s the point in playing the game if you don’t swing for the fences? Yet, I did write more in this year than I ever have. Not only with the blogs, but I kept up my pace of journaling daily, and working on my fiction. I think what I accomplished this year was creating the habit of writing. I gave myself weekends off, but I was at this computer every weekday, putting something down, trying to get better at expressing myself and ideas.

    Maybe I’m looking for a silver lining, and so what if I am. I’m looking back on 2022, and I’m feeling good about it, which is a feeling I haven’t felt in sometime. Since 2018, when my mother died, I feel like I have had this feeling of sadness wrapped around me. Not depression or mourning, even though those two have stopped by and hung out with me often in the past several years, but a sadness that makes it difficult to get excited about anything. I don’t feel sad about 2022.

    And I’m looking forward to 2023. And that is important, and it means something.

    So, thanks for being a part of this, all 4 to 9 of you, who regularly stop by. But, before I go, I wanted to pass on;

    Watch ANDOR!

    Peach Pit is a new favorite band of mine.

    Call your mom, she misses you.

    See you next year.

  • Short Story Review: “Come Softly to Me” by David Gilbert

    (The short story “Come Softly to Me” by David Gilbert appeared in the October 17th, 2022 issue of The New Yorker.)

    Illustration by Millie von Platen

    Sometimes a story comes along, and calls me out on principle. Such as, a story will ask me, “If you were okay with this trick being used in that story, then you have to be okay with this same trick being used in this story, right?” That is what I feel “Come Softly to Me” by David Gilbert did. I mean, if I was okay with “Wood Sorrel House” not making much sense, then I should be okay with this story not adding up.

    Now, I’m not saying all of this to be derogatory to David Gilbert. I did like his story. I enjoyed the different elements of the family interacting with each other. The quick glimpses of issues family members had, and how they were either dealing with them or hiding them. I picked up easily on the blanket of death and mourning that was all tucked into this story, and not that this diminished the piece, as I felt it added a depth.

    Yet, I couldn’t shake the feeling that this story was an excerpt from a novel, or had once been a part of a novel. There were a great number of characters mentioned, and it felt like even more ran in and out of this story. Everybody had a backstory, and in a few cases, I wanted to know more about them, and not so much about feeding tubes. As the story came closer to the ending, I was expecting a payoff of all these tangents being pulled or tied in together. But that didn’t happen. What occurred was a ceremony, which did connect to the theme of the piece, but wasn’t really explained.

    Hence the feeling I was being called out on principle. I have pointed out and defended many short stories that have contained inconclusive endings with the reasoning being that a short story need only have a rise in action, and not a conclusive climax, like a novel, if theme or character or mood is the driving force of the piece. As such, I find “Come Softly to Me” is that type of short story.

    Yet, I still found myself wanting more from the story. That’s a compliment to the writer and the story, and perhaps that is the reason why I felt like there was a novel connection to the creation of the story. But wanting more can also create a feeling of frustration, though I was enjoying this ride.

    (Hello again! Ya, I see you. Look, if you are here, then I want to say thank you for reading. Not that this is a transactional relationship, but if you could help me out with giving a like, or comment, or sharing the post, or even following the blog, really would be appreciated. Just trying to build a following.)

  • The Reason Why I Am Edgy This Week

    I had mentioned in my post on Friday that my family and I were going out this weekend for some apple picking, and I had joked about how silly the act of picking apples was, but deep down I really enjoy doing it. The place we went was Apple Dave’s Orchards in Warwick, NY, and we’ve gone there for several years and have always had a really enjoyable time. I recommend you head out there, and get the apple cider donuts while you’re at it.

    And after the apple picking, we ran a few errands in New Jersey before we headed home to Harlem. While we were running these errands, I felt myself getting edgy. I didn’t have an outbursts, or get mad at anyone, but I could feel this slight level of annoyance building in me. I know myself well enough to know that I needed to remind myself to relax, and not take anything serious.

    But for the rest of the weekend, this feeling of frustration never left me. It was also a feeling of stress and anxiety. My shoulders ached. I got a canker sore in my mouth. I had trouble sleeping. I was feeling like I was falling apart, but I could think why? I’m having the normal stresses in life, such as nothing has changed recently. We are plugging away, trying to get ahead like we have been trying for the past two years. Life’s normal.

    As I was taking our laundry to the laundromat this morning, I started thinking about my weekend, and how I might want to write a blog about apple picking. I took some pictures of our apple adventure on Saturday, and thought I might want to use them in the blog, which reminded me of the first time we went out to Dave’s Orchards with my parents, who had come to visit us in the fall of 2017. And the reason we go back to Dave’s every year because it is a place that we have fond memories with my mother, who passed away four years ago on October 14th.

    And then I knew.

    I had forgotten about the anniversary of my mother’s death. Well… consciously I had, but not sub-consciously.

    I know that my mother is dead. It’s not like I forgot that. I am at the point now that I can talk about my mother without an issue. I can even talk about her death and the awfulness of losing her. What does get to me is thinking about the things Ma isn’t here for; birthdays, holidays, and a simple phone call. It breaks my heart not being able to share things with her. Whether she wanted it or not, I did talk a lot to her.

    It will be a tough week, and I’ll be subdued while just feeling sad. It’s not like I won’t be able to function this week, or that I will be angry or something. What it’s like is having a blanket of melancholy around me, and all events will be filter through that feeling. And that will be manageable.

    I just miss my mom, still. That’s all.

    (Hey. Thanks for taking a second to read this. If you could, please take a moment to give a like, share, or comment, and follows are always welcomed.)