Back from Permabuzz

I returned yesterday from the annual Memorial Day gathering that the Misfit Toys and I have. We recently gave it the nickname Permabuzz, since that is the state of being that many of the attendees strive to be in while there.

Many things happened on this trip, but I’m at work right now and still fairly drained by the whole experience. Once I’ve gotten home and really rested tonight, I’ll do my best to sift through the last 7 days and explain some, if not all.

Family

A week ago today, Fortunate Son’s mother passed away, the cancer that started in her breast and spread to her brain finally consuming her body.

Sunday night, in honest and poetic terms, he praised her life, her love and all that she had done for him, his wife and everyone she knew. He told stories about how she would drag race cars at the age of 19, pushing her mother’s GTO to the limits and often winning. He shared part of a goodbye letter she had written him.

Monday morning, surrounded by those who loved them both, we brought her body to its final resting place.

A number of the Misfit Toys were there over the course of the weekend. We distracted him when we could, let him cry when he needed to, supported both her and IT Goddess the best we could.

Several times the both thanked us for being there, for our love, for all the small and large things that we’d done  as individuals and collectively. As was said back to them each time, there was no need for thanks.

Those are the things you do for family.

Be well my brother. The days will get easier after a time.

Death and Grief

Wednesday night, Fortunate Son’s mother passed away.

I didn’t get word until Thursday morning, and I am now where I was then – stuck in Phoenix for work. I’ve played phone and email tag with several people since I got the news. I’ve even traded a few emails with IT Goddess, his wife, about plans for the wake and the funeral on Monday.

But I haven’t heard from him yet. Not directly.

And while I want to be there, while I’ve wanted to be there to give him a hug and look him in the eye and let him know that I understand without saying I word, I’m stuck waiting.

Waiting for my flight back tomorrow. Waiting for the chance to get up to Long Island. And most of all, waiting to speak to him. As of Friday night, I haven’t heard back from him directly.

Grief is a strange beast. Everyone fights it in different ways. I’ve gone through my days and kept trying to distract myself with work and inane things. It works for a few moments and then something reminds me of him, of his Mom – a sweet lady who lavished her only child with love, attention, guilt, support and devotion that only a good mother can. I touch my arm without things, pressing the sleeve of my shirt into the flesh where I marked myself to honor my father who died five years ago. Picturing Fortunate Son having to watch them take his mother’s body away makes me hear the sound of the gurney that they strapped his body into, it’s wheels clacking against the metal frame of the screen door as he left the house forever. I hear my Ma telling me not to worry about her, as I wonder when the cancer that has infected her body will return and take her from me. Just as cancer took my Father. Just as cancer took that lovely women who away from the man who I call my brother.

Grief is a necessary beast. It gnaws at us, driving us to push back. To fight and deny and struggle and weep and accept. It makes us selfish, because we have to be to go past the pain. It makes us ache, if for no other reason to remind us that we still are here and that while we may pause, we cannot stop.

There is no road map, no formula for this journey. Signs and clues, surely. But each of us charts the course of our own pain, of our own grief and our own healing.

If we are fortunate, then we have others to hold our hands along the way.