Marking Time

Philip would have been 16 this year, and I find that the way I hold his memory has changed these past few years.  At first, I held my grief so tightly in my fist, afraid to let it go lest I forget somehow.  That letting it go would mean letting him go.  And then there was grieving a lot of other things in my life that felt hard to move away from.  I suppose the past couple of years have been about prising my fist open and letting in light and air, and finding that I don't need to keep it clenched like that to hold Philip near.  I still miss him, and wonder what might have been if he had lived, and I'll always love him, but it doesn't suck the air out of me the way it used to.  At least not most of the time.  Maybe that is acceptance.  

The Christmas season has just begun here, as we celebrate on the Julian calendar, so we are only three days in.  It's a busy time, with a birthday, two namesdays, and two major church feasts, plus another namesday coming close on the heels of it all, so we've got a lot on this month.  I'm trying to pace myself as best I can, which is one reason why I didn't do my annual year-end post.  Another reason is that I continue to pull back from online engagement of most types, as I find it doesn't serve me well.  A blogger I've read for a number of years who is at a similar age and stage to me wrote recently that much more of her middle-aged processing is internal and she finds she has less she wants to share.  That resonated with me. 

Maybe I'm just tired of the "move fast and break things" mindset of our age. I prefer "be still and mend things." With that in mind, my making is much slower these days. After the veritable flood of stress-sewing in 2021 and early 2022, I find I can hardly persuade myself to get my machine out to do even minor repairs lately. I've been using needle and thread whenever I can just to avoid it. And there are the inevitable body changes of middle age that have pushed my closet into flux. Again. I'm working hard to be okay with it all. So it goes. At least there's ThredUp and Ebay for thrifting. And my knitting needles are always occupied.

I'm supposed to give a few lectures on communism and the Soviets to the seniors at my kids' school in a few weeks and have been poking away at what I want to say since late summer.  And there's the two-part presentation I gave to the 4th graders on Russia last year that the teacher has asked me to give again this year sometime.  I gave a lecture to the 6th graders on medieval sacred music up to about 800 AD in the fall, and plan to do a second part on polyphonal medieval music sometime this spring, God-willing.  The first part covered the development of music in the Western and Eastern Christian churches, so I had to cover quite a bit of ground in 40 minutes' time.  Maybe I'll post the broad outlines of the music lectures here some time.  

So, my apologies for being somewhat AWOL here for a while.  I'm not really sure how many people still care to read what I have to say, but I'm glad for those of you who are still along for the ride.  Happy Christmas and New Year!

Fourteen

 

“He Is Not Dead

I cannot say, and I will not say
That he is dead. He is just away.
With a cheery smile, and a wave of the hand,
He has wandered into an unknown land
And left us dreaming how very fair
It needs must be, since he lingers there.
And you—oh you, who the wildest yearn
For an old-time step, and the glad return,
Think of him faring on, as dear
In the love of There as the love of Here.
Think of him still as the same. I say,
He is not dead—he is just away.”

― James Whitcomb Riley

Watchful Waiting: Holy Saturday

From Holy Week and Pascha published by Holy Transfiguration Monastery

Hindsight is easy.  It is easy to look back on events and say, "Oh, of course," or to have a better understanding of the whole course of things than when you are in the midst of them.  I keep thinking about how Saturday is a day of waiting, that day between death and resurrection. 

On the day of crucifixion, all those years ago, the disciples and women with them retired to an upper room to wait out the Sabbath and remainder of the Passover holiday, unable to even properly bury the man they called Messiah.  Their grief must have been intense, for they did not know what waited them the following day. 

All they knew was the fathomless grief of the loss of the man they had loved, and who had loved them like no other. And there was nothing to do but wait.  The Jewish laws regarding the Sabbath must be observed on pain of stoning, and they would have to wait to anoint the body on Sunday.

Little did they know that an empty tomb would await them on Sunday morning.

This morning, I remembered Lents past which were agonies of waiting, of seemingly endless Saturdays.  The year that Philip died, I was churched on Clean Monday (the first day of Lent).  I was still in the depths of my grief, and wondered whether we would ever have children, as my underlying fertility problems had made Philip's conception difficult.  I spent the Fast in a daze, and sleepwalked through that Holy Week. 

The Pascha service was chaotic at the monastery where my husband was attending seminary, with dozens of tired children and their exhausted parents. I spent most of the service joggling the restive youngest child of a friend with three children under four.  My husband and I took the Paschal flame to Philip's grave in the dark of the night, sheltering the flame from the wind.  There was still snow on the ground. 

Little did we know that we would welcome Piglet about nine months later. 

The year Birdie was a baby, she spent Lent in and out of the hospital with respiratory crisis after crisis, as we struggled to get to the bottom of what was ailing her.  I watched her fall further and further behind, my heart in my throat, wondering if she would ever walk or run or play like other kids.  I wasn't even sure it was a good idea to take her to any of the Holy Week or Pascha services, she was so fragile.  On Holy Saturday, for the first time, she was able to hold her head up by herself for a few minutes while propped in a Bumbo.  She was 8 months old at the time.  Bright Week landed her inpatient for a week in the hospital again, tubes and wires everywhere. 

Little did we know that she would not only walk and jump and run, but would be one of our most recklessly physical kids. 

This Lent has been marked by lockdowns and quarantine, virtual church and school, heroic health care and essential workers, economic uncertainty, and fear of a stealthy virus that snakes its way through our world, leaving death and destruction in its wake.  We don't yet know what comes next, as we wait on this long, seemingly endless Saturday.

But we do know what the disciples and Mary and the women did not know on that Sabbath long ago:

Sunday is coming. 

But today, we wait.

The Depth of Ourselves

Longtime readers will know that we live in a small house with inadequate built-in storage (read: basically no closets), and that managing the stuff of six people occupies a greater amount of my time than I would really like.  Too much "stuff" stresses me out, and frankly, I think it stresses my kids out, even though they still want to have new things, and have a hard time letting go of some other things to make room.  I have two children who are legit hoarders and their stuff just has to be gone through regularly to cull out the hair clippings, random trash from the playground, school papers, and other "treasures" they squirrel away.

The first few years that we had kids, the gifting at Christmas was a bit insane.  Don't get me wrong--I'm grateful that we have so many relatives who want to love our kids with physical gifts, and I know there are lots of kids out there who don't get any presents at all.  That said, my kids couldn't even process all the stuff they got, and since the fill-and-spill stage of play seemed to last FOREVER, it felt to me like it was just more stuff I had to pick up all the time.  One of my children always seemed unhappy on Christmas day, no matter what the presents were, and it was just so frustrating to me.

A few years ago, I decided to simplify things and do three gifts only--a book, a pajama, and a toy.  I realized that my kids were unable to handle surprises at that time, so they picked out exactly what they wanted, and each of the grandparents chose which of the three things they wanted to give the kids, and we gave the final gift.  (There were always a few little extras from aunts and cousins and friends, but just having the three main things was helpful).

It worked okay for a couple years, but I realized last year that things needed to shift (we substituted an "experience" for the book last year and the kids got a year-long membership to LegoLand).  This year, I decided throw the whole system out the window and let the kids pick out a number of toys each.

Why? I realized that my unhappy child was unhappy because that child feels good when there is a big pile of presents to open.  This child didn't want to have to choose just one thing, or two things, but felt guilty when unable to make a decision because the want was so strong and the stakes felt so high to make the "right" choice.  (I understand this feeling well).

We talked through it all in the weeks before Christmas, as each child sorted through what they wanted on their lists, and I saw that I had to let go of this vision of "simplicity" at Christmastime.  (This has been part of a larger picture of me letting go as a parent.  I have made a number of shifts in my thinking in the past year about how I want to parent my kids, and letting go of unrealistic expectations, and living where my kids are at is one of them.  I don't always succeed, but I'm trying).

My concern these days is less about the accumulation of "stuff" and more about the why of what they want.

Do they want a new toy because they just want it, or do they want it because they think it will fix something inside them that feels bad?  One child in particular struggles with this, and we've talked a lot about it over the past year as we've struggled through it together.  Every opportunity for gifts and purchasing has come with a conversation about why the desire for this thing is so desperately high.  Often it is because this child feels bad about something, and can't stand to live in those feelings.

So we are working on living in the bad feelings, and not using "things" to make the feelings go away.  Because actually, the things don't make the feelings go away.  At least not for good.  Sure, they might go away for a little while, but as soon as the "new toy" shine is off the thing, the bad feelings are back, and the desire for a new thing to fill that bad-feeling place is back.

This has been a hard lesson for me to learn over the years as well.  If we are really honest with ourselves, I think most people living in this late capitalist period do this in some way or another.  I'm trying to learn to live in the bad feelings and go through them instead of trying to smother them with stuff or drown them with food.

At the same time, however, I don't want my kids to feel so deprived that they make reckless financial decisions as adults or spend their lives chasing things instead of building relationships.  It's a fine balance, to learn to live with less, make do and mend, to value and use what you have, but still feel that you are worthy of receiving love from others in the form of physical things.  Because gifts do speak about worth louder than words sometimes.   There's a reason why Gary Chapman identifies gift-giving or receiving as one of the five primary love languages.

I suppose what it really comes down to is exploring the reality and depth of love: what it is to love another person fully, to meet their needs how and where they are, and to affirm their worth and value in lots of different ways.

~

{It is Philip's day today, and while I'm certainly thinking about it, I have little to say about it today.  I'm unwell and emotionally exhausted, and I can't poke around inside myself to see what I find.  Thirteen years is a long time.}

Twelve

I feel somewhat obliged to write something about this day today, but I find I do not have the words to do so.  It is not that this year is particularly hard in terms of my grief journey; it isn't.  Twelve years ago, Philip left us for the bosom of Abraham.  I've written a fair bit about it over the years, and I have nothing new to add. 

I'm melancholy today, and I have been hyper-aware of the date, but mostly it has just been a day like any other. 

I do reflect a bit more on grief these days, in part because it is the backbone of my book, but also because it changes over time, as I have changed over time.  Twelve years is a long time to live without someone.

But it has become bearable, the absence.  A note in the background, rather than the symphony of my life.

Eleven

I have nothing to say about this day this year.  Just to say that I can't believe it is eleven years.

Rest easy, dear Philip, and pray for us sinners.  Your mama misses you.

Talking Tuesday: Laurus

I find myself in a small conundrum today; it is 10 years since Philip's repose, and I generally take the day to write about him, to remember.  It is also Tuesday, however, and I had intended to start writing about Eugene Vodolazkin's excellent spiritual novel Laurus this week.  Upon reflection, I find these two things not incompatible.  I find I have little to say specifically about Philip this year.  I thought about him a lot last week, as I always do in the days leading up to the anniversary, but this morning was almost an afterthought.  Almost.

Ten years ago seems like a lifetime; so much has happened in the past decade, so much that has ontologically changed me.  Would I even recognize my younger self now?  

Eugene Vodolazkin's novel is concerned quite a lot with time, and the way that the self changes over time, particularly in pursuit of repentance.  We meet the central character, Arseny, as a young boy, and journey with him throughout his long life until his death in old age.  Several passages in the book stood out to me, but this particular one seemed appropriate for today; Arseny (now called by his first monastic name of Amvrosy) is entering old age, and has joined a monastery.  He is reflecting on the past while talking with his spiritual father, Elder Innokenty.

"I have already been at the monastery but, you know, somehow I cannot get my thoughts together.  Apparently I can no longer understand this myself.  Time, my love, is very shaky here, because the cycle is closed and it corresponds to eternity.  It is autumn now:  that may be the only thing I can say with anything approaching certainty....

Monastic time truly does lie close to eternity, said Elder Innokenty, but they are not equal.  The path of living, O Amvrosy, cannot be a circle.  The path of the living, even if they are monks, has been opened up because, as one might ask, how could there be freedom of will if there is no way out of a vicious cycle?  And even when we replicate events in prayer, we do not simply recall them.  We relive those events once again and they occur once again....

So you think time here is some sort of open figure rather than a circle?  Amvrosy asked the elder.

That's exactly it, answered the elder.  After I have become enamored of geometry, I will liken the motion of time to a spiral.  This involves repetition but on some new, higher level.  Or, if you like, the experience of something new but not from a clean slate.  With the memory of what was experienced previously.

A weak autumnal sun appeared from behind some clouds.  Elder Innokenty appeared from the opposite side of the wall.  He had managed to walk around the monastery during the time he spent talking with Amvrosy. 

And you, O elder, are making circles, Amvrosy told him.  
No, this already the spiral.  I am walking, as before, along with the swirl of leaves but--do take note, O Amvrosy--the sun came out and I am already a little different....

There are events that resemble one another, continued the elder, but opposites are born from that similarity.  The Old Testament opens with Adam but the New Testament opens with Christ.  The sweetness of the apple that Adam eats turns into the bitterness of the vinegar that Christ drinks.  The tree of knowledge leads humanity to death but a cross of wood grants immortality to humanity.  Remember, O Amvrosy, that repetitions are granted for our salvation and in order to surmount time."

~Eugene Vodolazkin, Laurus. Trans. by Lisa C. Hayden.  London: Oneworld Publications, 2015. Pages 308-309.

Nine

Taken October 2008

Eight years...

Death is funny--it marks you forever, changes who you are irrevocably.  Sometimes the change is small, something you can carry in a corner of your mind, to examine periodically, and then tuck away again.  Sometimes the change is so tidal that you don't recognize who you were before.  

from Uncut Mountain Supply

I've been thinking about this day on and off all week.  Some years I find myself going over the events of the week, running over the timeline in my mind over and over again, wondering what we could have done differently to change the outcome (nothing).  Some years, like this year, I mark time in the week before by simply repeating his name to myself like a heartbeat.  Philip.  Two syllables, liquid on the tongue, but so full.  I no longer keep his memory book on display, and the flowers that I dried from the graveside service finally began to crumble this year.  It is okay, I realized.  You can't stay in the eye of the storm of grief forever, and at some point, you take a step forward, and then another, and then another, until you can turn around and see the hurricane behind you.  The wind still whips at your back and howls in your ears sometimes, but at least you can turn your back on it now instead of having to face it full on with your chest to the maelstrom. 

I miss him, so so much.  Rest easy upon the bosom of Abraham, our beloved sweet boy.  

The beat of my heart

This day is different every year.  Last year was fairly awful; I was a mass of pregnancy hormones, and

brittle and edgy for days after a difficult Christmas for reasons that had nothing to do with this day.

This year is less so.  The sadness, the missing, it is there, but more like a heartbeat.  I can attend to it or not.  I don't feel the need to go over the chronology of those days seven years ago when Philip died and was born.  I'm just remembering him today, to honor his memory, and trying not to focus too much on anything else.  I remember the rapid, surprisingly strong, fluttering against me a few days before he went that told me he was there.  His waving hand on the ultrasound two days before the end.  The dream of a chasing a chubby blond boy who, when I finally caught him, told me his name was Philip.

To our precious boy, resting on the bosom of Abraham, we miss you, we love you, we'll see you someday.

Another Year Gone

It is another year gone, and six years since Philip died.  The baby who came after him turned five this week, and I'll admit to more than a little brittleness this week.  It isn't like I have Philip on my mind all the time, or even that I've consciously thought about how this week was six years ago (although I did have a few moments of remembering several days ago), but today I feel that hurt place in me all over again--the place that just never comes back together quite right.  So I'm feeling fragile and edgy today (helped in part by some seriously crazy hormones) and just trying to get through.

Forgive me for any offenses this day (and indeed everyday), as everything in my brain is a jumble of tears and hurt.

About What Was Lost

It has been five years since our firstborn, Philip, died.  There are few days that pass that I don’t think of him in some way, even fleetingly.  My heart still aches with his absence, and I’m still angry on some visceral level that I was robbed of the chance to be his mama.  There are so many things I could write about Philip, but that isn’t really what I wanted to say about it today. 

I painted this icon of St. Philip in memory of our Philip

What I want to write about is how Philip’s death has made me much more fragile than I ever thought possible.  I lost my innocence with his death, and once lost, can never have it back again.  It is a soul-deep wound.  It’s not the sort of wound like a thorn, where if you pull it straight out, it heals clean and easy.  It is the sort of wound that changes you on an existential level.  I think of my life in terms of before Philip and after Philip.  I feel I can hardly relate to the person I was before him.  And perhaps I learned a few things I needed to learn about compassion and empathy, but mostly I just learned about pain.  A pain so deep and so wide I thought I’d never see the other side of it.  I became a fathomless glassy black lake of grief.

The icon corner in our bedroom.

As with many things I find hard to explain myself, I turn to books to explain them for me.  The following exerpt is from Outlander by Diana Gabaldon (one of my favorite series).  While the context is different, I felt the sentiment to be very much the same.  Jamie is explaining to his wife, Claire, how he feels after an extremely traumatic event.

“I think it’s as though everyone has a small place inside themselves, maybe, a private bit that they keep to themselves.  It’s like a little fortress, where the most private part of you lives—maybe it’s your soul, maybe just that bit that makes you yourself and not anyone else.”  His tongue probed his swollen lip unconsciously as he thought.

            “You don’t show that bit of yourself to anyone, usually, unless sometimes to someone ye love greatly.” The hand relaxed, curling around my knee.  Jamie’s eyes were closed again, lids sealed against the light.

            “Now, it’s like…like my own fortress has been blown up with gunpowder—there’s nothing left of it but ashes and a smoking rooftree, and the little naked thing that lived there once is out in the open, squeaking and whimpering in fear, tryin’ to hide itself under a blade of grass or a bit o’ leaf, but…but not…makin’ m-much of a job of it.”  His voice broke, and he turned his head so that his face was hidden in my skirt.”  (Diana Gabaldon, Outlander, NY: Delacorte Press, 561).

My own fortress was blown away with Philip’s death, and it was a long time before I no longer felt defined by my grief.  I still miss him, still think of him, and wonder what would have been.  I still bitterly regret not taking better pictures of him after he was born.  I’m still angry at the hospital personnel for their careless indifference during the whole traumatic process of his birth.  I have few memories of Philip that aren’t filled with the pain of his loss.  I hope someday to remember more often those few and fleeting moments when I felt with him.  The day I felt him move against me, that rapid fluttering that told me, Hello Mama, I’m here!

  

I wish I could say that this post was about how I’ve found peace and healing from what was lost.  That isn’t my story, at least not yet.  I hope someday to find those things.  I think the best I can say, five years on, is that while my fortress may be gone forever, at least I’ve rebuilt the shelter, with a roof to keep out the rain.

Dear Philip

Four years ago today, we said good bye to you before we had a chance to know you, to cuddle you, to rock you to sleep. We miss you every day and love you so so much. Rest easy upon the bosom of Abraham and pray for us.

Love always,
Mama and Papa

Memory eternal!

Remembering Philip

Today we remember our first born son, Philip, who went to be with the Lord three years ago today.

Memory Eternal!