Elders and Technology: An Awkward Pairing

Posted by Dia in Elders and tagged with change, Relationships, Respect January 3, 2011

This morning I received an email with an attachment from my out-of-town brother-in-law (BIL) that was actually for my mother-in-law (MIL).

So if it’s an email for MIL, you ask, why did BIL send it to you?

Why you silly twit, I answer. Because MIL is elderly of course. She doesn’t know how to email.

MIL has a computer. In fact she has three; two desktops she bought for herself and a laptop gifted from her son. But none of them are presently hooked up because, even though she really wants to learn how to email, every time she’s tried so far she hit a wall. She got overwhelmed and quit, turned off the service again, because computers and technology are just not coming easy for her.

As pretty much everyone knows by now, there’s a huge generational divide where technology is concerned. My kids, on the one hand, use electronic devices like prosthetics. They’re physically attached to their laptops, cellphones (with bluetooth, GPS, browsing, cameras, youtube, and wifi capability plus downloaded ringtones and extensive music libraries), gaming systems, and complex entertainment systems with blue ray and live streaming (and accompanying battery of remotes.) They communicate via texting, email, IM, Facebook, Twitter, et al, and…once every ten thousand years when the planets all align…they’ll even make a phone call. They also both have dedicated closets for the graveyard of outdated devices they’ve abandoned over the years.

MIL also has a dedicated closet but she’s abandoned her devices for a completely different reason; she couldn’t figure out how to make them work. She’s not unusual in this way. My father and father-in-law (FIL) can’t use most modern technological devices either. I also ran into this problem a lot when I was working with hospice. Most of the elderly people I cared for not only couldn’t use a computer, they often struggled just to navigate a simple telephone voice mail system. Sometimes, at their age, it was because hearing had become a problem. But even those who could hear perfectly well seemed to have trouble. They resented the fact that they couldn’t just talk to a person.

This morning it occurred to me that, where the new, modern world of technology and electronics are concerned, most of our elders are like first generation immigrants from the old world. They come from a different set of customs, a slower pace, a different, simpler world view. The new language is proving to be sophisticated and difficult for them, and they often get lost trying to navigate a landscape that can seem foreign and incomprehensible.

MIL (almost eighty) is from the old country so emailing, as part of the new language, has been hard for her to learn. Still, I admire her tremendously because at least she wants to learn. She tries. She’s frustrated and overwhelmed by it all, but even so, she’s still tickled by the prospect of laptops, and camera phones, and digital picture frames, and thin, sexy, LCD TVs. She takes risks and buys gadgets she doesn’t know how to use, hoping she’ll be able to figure them out and sometimes she even does. Little by little, she really is making progress.

So BIL and I, and all of her children, continue to try and be patient and supportive. We’re the second, bridge generation, straddling the divide between our parents’ world and that of our children. Hopefully, in helping our elders, we’ll be able to sort out and harvest the best of their world, then preserve it, adapt it, and pass it down to our kids to be folded into the new one.

That’s what I’m hoping for anyway, because I think an evolving world with deep roots is the strongest, most nourishing kind.

The Favorite, by Georgios Iakovidis (1890)

(Image from Wikipedia)

Facing the Coward Within

Posted by Dia in role models and tagged with Relationships, role models October 25, 2010

Bullying: Image from Wikipedia

I was raised military. My father was a career warrior, my mother was a career warrior’s wife and, in our house, adherence to a code of honor was required. The code went basically like this: honorable people practice courage. They stand up for what’s just and try to protect those who are more vulnerable than them. It’s what my father was fighting to do for us every time he went off to risk his life, and it’s what we were expected to do back home while he was gone.

The opposite of honorable people, we were taught, were bullies because they target the vulnerable instead of protecting them. An act of bullying was cowardly and dishonorable because it didn’t offer any kind of meaningful challenge. It was weak, a sign that they didn’t think they could face somebody their own size. That’s why men never hit women or children, women were the protectors of children, older kids didn’t lead younger kids into trouble, and nobody targeted old people, disadvantaged people, or animals.

It’s was okay to fight with equals though. That’s how we honed our skills.

In the last month or so the disturbing number of boys and young men committing suicide because of bullying has finally hit the headlines. The recent cases were all targeted because they were gay or perceived as gay and the bullying grew so vicious and sustained that it finally became unbearable. This is hardly a new phenomenon. Our gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender children have always been among our most vulnerable, but far from receiving the additional support and understanding every vulnerable child needs, they’ve traditionally been scapegoated. And they’re not the only children being driven to these kinds of extremes. While those who seem different are always at highest risk, with the anonymity that cyberbullying provides, any child can now be targeted and potentially destroyed. We’ll probably never know just how many of our children we’ve lost to the pain and despair this kind of treatment inspires, but the rates seem to be rising and I’m deeply grateful the issue is finally getting mainstream attention.

It’s not easy to manage the intense rage these incidents can invoke. However I know that, while justice is necessary, we can’t just turn around and scapegoat right back in a blaze of self-righteous smiting. Even though that provides a measure of relief in the short-term, in the long run it won’t change the dynamics of the bullying going on. It’ll reinforce them. Bullying the bullies is not a strategy for lasting change.

Like any kind of deep and meaningful change, it has to happen on the individual level first before the society as a whole can change. We each have to look in the mirror and find the bully that’s lurking within. Then we have to own it and challenge it, whenever and however it shows up. We all have issues of cowardice and dishonor hiding down there. It’s part of being human.

Look. If we, as a society, genuinely valued honor and courage the way we claim to, this level of bullying would never have gotten a toehold. But we haven’t valued those things. We’ve valued their opposite.

Not only have we tolerated escalating levels of bullying for years, we’ve encouraged and rewarded it. We’ve laughed at the comedians and gossips (conservative and liberal) whose jokes are harmful and belittling. We’ve tuned into radio stations and analysts (conservative and liberal) that blast, rant, spew, and demean. We’ve allowed ourselves to be swayed by the politicians (conservative and liberal) who turn us against one another. We’ve divided our very communities, neighborhoods, and schools into those who are like us and those who are not, and then shunned, mistrusted, belittled, or even targeted, the latter. We have all done these things to varying degrees.

And now we’re reaping the whirlwind that we’ve sown.

These shining, beautiful boys who are now lost belonged to every last one of us, and we’re all to blame for the fact that they took their own lives in order to escape the society that we created for them. The gifts they carried and contained for the rest of us– their joy, determination, promise, insights, creativity, solutions, strength, courage, sacrifice, and love–is now gone. Lost. Forever. We’ve not only flagrantly and stupidly wasted the greatest treasure that any nation has, its children, but we’ve also invited an epidemic of suicide into our midst. While there were specific individuals involved in each case, that in no way absolves the rest of us from the thousand, thousand little ways we each helped to establish a culture of bullying in the first place. Nor does it relieve us of the responsibility to do whatever is necessary to change it now.

Here’s a role model that’s helped me. I’d like to leave this post with one of the most inspiring examples of courage and selflessness I’ve seen come out of all this. If anyone is wondering what the kind of honor I’m talking about looks like in practice, please take the time to watch this. It’s a video (about thirteen minutes long) of a city councilman in Fort Worth, Texas who is risking his career in order to reach out to those who might also be considering harming themselves. He’s speaking specifically to gay children but the message goes far beyond that.

It’s one of endurance, love, and faith, and speaks to anyone who’s ever experienced the kind of despair that can lead to a journey down the dark road.

Shhhhhh…..

Posted by Dia in Uncategorized and tagged with Relationships, talking, Talking about dying October 21, 2010

image: Shhh by Str8UpSkills

Once again I’m reminded that most people don’t enjoy talking about dying the way I do. Last night we had a guest.

A long-time friend of the hubster’s arrived yesterday evening after a lapse of at least fifteen years, and the three of us sat down to do some catch-up over platters of nachos, ginger snaps, and tea. The conversation ranged back and forth between us, as good conversations are supposed to, until it tripped over the subject of my hospice work at which point my enthusiasm for the topic hijacked the next half hour or so.

Looking back now I can recall a few moments that should have cued me to our guest’s growing discomfort. Initially he squirmed, but that wasn’t definitive. It was always possible that our cozy, leather couch was making him uncomfortable. Then he took a stab at changing the subject…twice…but I can be like a rat terrier when locked onto something that interests me. The hubster finally stepped in to back him up on a third attempt but I deftly steered that topic back around to dying, too.

Finally, I started hearing terms like “morbid” and “depressing” thrown into the mix at which point I realized I really, really needed to shut up, but it was too late. I was having a Toyota moment. My tongue was like a gas pedal pushed to the floor, resisting any and all attempts to disengage it, and I couldn’t for the life of me close my mouth. I just couldn’t. I watched our guest’s eyes dart around the room, looking for a path of escape as I came barreling down on him, but no matter how I pumped the brakes my mouth just wouldn’t stop.

The hubster finally seized on a millisecond of silence (supplied by my need for air) and stretched his arms, yawned, and claimed it was time for bed. At 8:30. Our guest seized the opportunity and made a break for his room, a polite good night trailing over his shoulder as he disappeared behind the door.

Needless to say, I woke up in the middle of the night feeling the peculiar kind of dismay and regret that only 3:00 a.m. can inspire. Why do things always look so much worse at that time of night anyway? The darkness and silence of those hours are like some kind of weird, mental magnifying glass, blowing up even harmless thoughts into looming, misshapen monsters, never mind an embarrassing, social faux pas. I spent the next two hours tossing and turning, obsessively crafting a range of apologies (from dignified to humorous to prostrate) before finally dozing back off again from sheer exhaustion.

The hubster woke me up in the morning and the first thing I did was sit up, throw my arms around his neck, and tell him how sorry I was for being such a motor mouth. He burst out laughing.

Tough night? He hugged me back. You weren’t that bad. Really. I stopped it before it went too far.

And by god, I loved him for the effort….for trying to tell me it wasn’t as bad as it was, for laughing at my flaws instead of condemning them, and for shrinking the midnight monster back down to a more manageable size. Whether what he said was true or not is beside the point. (I’m pretty sure our guest paused and peered both ways before venturing out of his room this morning.) The important thing is that he cared enough to say it.

I ended up not apologizing to the hubster’s friend. Partly because I thought it would just embarrass him to bring it up, partly because I didn’t trust myself not to try and explain again why the topic of dying is so important to me. He didn’t need to hear anymore about it. Unlike me, his earliest experience with dying was traumatic and scarring, and no amount of sharing from my side was going to wipe away the long shadow it left in its wake. I can’t believe I missed that. I wish I would have talked less and listened more.

I’ll try and remember that next time.

Master of Surprise

Posted by Dia in Uncategorized and tagged with Happiness, male virility, Relationships, Surprise October 11, 2010

October is a big month for me. It includes my mother’s birthday, my daughter’s birthday, my patron saint’s day, the anniversary of the day I was initiated into Eastern meditation (I used to convert a lot,) the anniversaries for my mother’s wedding, my brother’s wedding, and my own, a dentist appointment, a trip back east for the hubster, and what is arguably my favorite holiday of all time, Halloween.

So guess which one the flowers are for?

(If you guessed the dentist, you’re wrong. Everything went okay this time.)

No, these are an anniversary surprise from the hubster, something he arranged to have delivered while he was far, far away in New Jersey on our special day. The card is actually signed in his handwriting so I know they aren’t just an FTD.com cover-up. He really pre-remembered and went to all the trouble of setting things up, which makes me feel warm and fuzzy and loved, but then totally awful, too, because I pre-forgot and didn’t arrange anything. (Which is why I’m now writing this blog post.)

Unlike me, who can’t keep a secret long enough to surprise our dog, the hubster is a master of diversion of surprise. Yesterday morning at the crack of dawn, just as he sat down on the edge of our bed to wake me up to take him to the airport, I surged up from a dead sleep in a panic because I just remembered that I forgot.

Oh no! I wailed. I forgot our anniversary! I didn’t do anything for you!

Then, crafty devil that he is, he assumed a look of chagrin to match my own, hung his head a little, and echoed, Oh no…I didn’t do anything for you either.

And because not only am I incapable of keeping a secret to save my life, I’m as gullible as the day is long, I believed him. I was wildly relieved and made him promise not to do anything to try and make it up, and then I promised him I wouldn’t either. We agreed to do something when he got back after which I thought I was home safe and guilt-free.

But he lied, he lied, he lied…which is just one more reason why I adore the man.

Happy Anniversary, sweetheart. And thank you, too, for marrying me on that breathtaking, autumn day back in Jefferson County Park all those years ago. Thank you for chasing me when I took off running during the ceremony, for catching me before I got to the trees, for carrying me back to the preacher in your arms, and for understanding why, after my first marriage, that I just really, really needed to make sure.

I sure do love you.

Of Troughs, Wombs, Longing, and Loss

Posted by Dia in Uncategorized and tagged with Gratitude, Grieving, Living and Dying, my mom, Relationships, Surprise October 8, 2010

Today is the sixteenth month anniversary of my mother’s death. Her birthday was a week ago and I’m experiencing some sort of strange sadness-lag. Kind of like jet lag, only emotionally. I was fine on her birthday. I actually had a great day with lots of fun and happy thoughts about her.

The hubster and I spent that day taking his father on a belated birthday, airboat ride down in the Snake River Canyon.

There were storms rolling in across the southern part of the state later in the afternoon and we were treated to thunder echoing off the canyon walls, one of the most spectacular double rainbows I’ve ever seen, and some distant lightning.

“Hand of God” looking isn’t it?

(Smiting? Anyone? Anyone?)

It was wild and intoxicating and celebratory, the kind of day my mom would have adored, and there were a few times during the day when I secretly felt like what was going on in the sky was the meteorological equivalent of confetti and giant candles on a big afterlife cake.

But that was the anniversary of her birth. Now I’m at the anniversary of her death and the happiness engines have reversed and I’m feeling sad instead, gliding back down into one of the shadowed troughs between waves on this huge ocean of grieving. I thought I’d grown accustomed to the ups and down of the whole process but this slide has taken me by surprise. The troughs have grown farther apart over time, and I guess it’s been long enough since the last one that I actually forgot and thought I was done.

Silly, silly me. Like the waves of the sea are ever done.

Maybe in the end this isn’t so much an ocean of grieving as an ocean of love, and this vast, rhythmic fluctuation of ups and downs, joy and sadness, fullness and loss is simply a continuation of the love my mother and I always shared…and still seem to share in some new yet confusing way.

On the morning that she died my sister and I gathered water, soap, and washcloths by her bedside. We closed the door to the room and together bathed her for the last time, gently touching her arms and legs, her face and hair, all the intimate, beloved parts of her body that granted us entrance and life so many years ago. At one point I stopped and rested both hands over her womb. I closed my eyes, struggling to remember what it was like back then, when I was infinitely fragile, tiny, and curled. Waiting and dreaming. Contained and safe in the first home I ever knew in the world.

Perhaps this ocean of love I’m drifting up and down, up and down in now is like some second, larger womb I came into when I exited the first. A continuation of the warmth, protection, and nourishment she enveloped me with after I left her body and began to grow outside of her. What she smiled and still cradled me in as I pushed her away, developed into a woman, and came to believe I was somehow separate. Only in the end, not quite so separate as I thought.

Thank God.

And now, even with her beautiful body collapsed and dead and returned to ash, I can still float along in the waters of this other great womb that her love for me once created, and my love for her now sustains. It’s probably okay to welcome today’s weight of longing as much as I welcomed the joy of a few days ago because in the end, they’re each a different expression of the same exquisite gift.

I miss you, Mom. I’ll always miss you. Thank you for loving me.

Thank you for everything.

Taken on her 70th birthday, playing in a tributary of the Salmon River: The River of No Return

The $3,399.28 Cat

Posted by Dia in animals, role models and tagged with animals, financial costs, forgiveness, Relationships, role models October 5, 2010

I’m home again. Finally. Two weeks is a long time to be away, even when I’m away somewhere that I love.

We traveled all day yesterday to get back here. Up at 4:00 a.m., long drive down to St. Louis, long wait at the airport, long flight with two stops in Denver and Salt Lake City, then home sweet home at 8:00 at night. I was frazzled, exhausted, and shutting down hard. My cell phone went dead around 2:00 in the afternoon, so I didn’t pick up the two frantic voice mails left on it until after recharging around 9:30 p.m.

That was when I learned that Dane the mangy, rescue mutt, oh mighty predator of predators, attacked the neighbor’s sixteen year old cat Tinkerbell in the afternoon and mauled her pretty badly.

The first voice mail was from our daughter (voice trembling uncontrollably) telling me that the attack took place but everything seemed to be okay. Daughter was house-, dog-, and garden-sitting for us while we were gone. Daughter was overwhelmed by those additional duties on top of the five course load she’s carrying this semester at college and the thirty hour week she works as a waitress. Daughter couldn’t manage Dane’s afternoon walk so she called Sweet and Helpful Neighbor Lady across the street who cheerfully offered to help. But Daughter didn’t realize that Neighbor Lady had cats and made the mistake of taking Dane Cat-Hater over to her house off-leash. The rest, as they say, is now history.

The second voice mail was left about four hours after the first. It was from Neighbor Lady (voice also trembling uncontrollably) letting me know they were at the vet where they’d discovered that Tinkerbell was not okay at all. In fact, Tinkerbell had multiple broken ribs and a punctured lung, and surgery on her was going to cost about $3,000. She was sobbing into the voice messaging center that they couldn’t afford it and, if we didn’t pay for it, they were going to have to put her down. I about shit. Then I told the hubster. He about shit, too.

Which is when I first noticed the interesting little voices piping up in my head, having a spirited referendum in there. The first voice (naturally) was Guilt.

I told you! I told you a thousand times. We should have made it a rule that he’s always on leash when he’s out of the house!

The next voice was Blame.

It’s the hubster! The hubster hates leashes! He refuses leashes! And how in the hell could Daughter not know that Neighbor Lady didn’t have cats? We’ve been neighbors for thirteen years for godsakes!

Then Wheedle and Cheat chimed in.

Y’knooooow…mentioned Wheedle. It must be close to an hour and a half since Neighbor Lady called.

Yeaaaaah, that’s right…seconded Cheat. I wonder…what-oh-what could have happened since then?

Do you think they may have already put her down? continued Wheedle. It would be so sad…

…so sad…echoed Cheat.

But it wouldn’t cost us nearly as much…suggested Wheedle.

It would save us a fortune! chimed Cheat.

It would put the cat out of its suffering, too…said Wheedle.

It would be a kindness, Cheat nodded his head emphatically.

Maybe…Wheedle tilted his head to one side and gazed up at the ceiling…we should just say we didn’t get the message and call in the morning?

How compassionate! Cheat agreed.

Compassionate? said Guilt much struck.

Can we really do that? said Blame perking up.

It was only after this exchange that Tattered Shred of Decency finally spoke up.

Oh, come on you guys, her voice was gentle but firm. Couldn’t you hear the anguish in Neighbor Lady’s voice? Tinkerbell is like her child. We can’t dump this off on her.

But we don’t even like cats, muttered Cheat.

Remember how Tinkerbell used to come in our backyard and shit in the pea gravel pathways? reminded Blame.

And y’knoooow…Wheedle slithered back into the conversation. Tinkerbell is a very, very old cat…

There was a significant pause here. It was a hurdle even for Tattered Shred but she powered up and managed to clear it.

Doesn’t matter, she finally crossed her arms over her chest. Neighbor Lady loves her and can’t bear the thought of losing her. Not like this. Don’t you remember all the times Neighbor Lady helped us when we were in a tight spot?

Nobody answered.

Has she ever, ever done anything to hurt us? Or anybody else for that matter?

Silence.

And is the pain she’s in right now any fault of her own?

Four heads hung down in shame and wagged slowly back and forth.

So the hubster and I called her back. Neighbor Lady and Neighbor Hubster were still at the vet and Tinkerbell was still alive. Only somehow, during that hour and a half delay, the surgery’s cost had grown from $3,000 to $4,000. And by the time I actually talked to the front desk person to give her our credit card number, the upper estimate had mysteriously mushroomed to $5,000. I wasn’t sure what was going on but at that point I thought it wisest to let the clinic know we were capping the amount we’d pay at $4,000. Privately, the hubster, Tattered Shred, and I remained flexible about covering more, but we didn’t want the emergency clinic thinking we were patsies.

The final amount topped out at $3399.28 and we considered ourselves lucky. (Could that be what the clinic was trying to accomplish by raising the upper end?)

I’m not sure why it’s so much harder to be a good human being when large sums of money are involved, but it is. Thousands of dollars just hurts. Ow. However, the fact that Neighbor Lady is such a genuinely good and loving person made it a whole lot easier for me to step up to the plate and do the right thing.

Is goodness contagious then?

(Shittiness certainly is. I admit if the cat had belonged to the lady who lives behind us, the one who wanted to chop down our apple tree to keep a few apples from falling in her yard, the referendum in my head would have been longer and the outcome uncertain.)

It’s the old Golden Rule I guess. Be unto others as you would have them be unto you.

Only you know what? Neighbor Lady doesn’t have any strings attached where her be-unto is concerned. She’s not kind and decent because that’s how she wants to be treated in return. It’s just who she is. She’s a naturally stellar human being. Frankly, I don’t think I’ll ever be that good a person but at least her influence helped raise me a little higher this time around. Maybe if I put a little effort into it there could be some kind of trickle down effect from all this. Next time I’m dealing with Apple Tree Hater, maybe I’ll strive to be a little more understanding and forgiving, too.

Maybe this incident could even morph into something that winds up improving our little part of the world. I owe it to Tinkerbell to at least try.

This morning, the hubster and I drove past a dead cat flung to the side of the road that had been hit and killed by a car. I felt the twinge of regret I always feel with roadkill and then heard the hubster mutter, That better not be our three thousand dollar cat. We looked at each other and started laughing as we realized that for the first time, for whatever time she has left, we’re now heavily invested in the welfare of a feline.

Could it get any stranger than that?

A Parrot’s Grief

Posted by Dia in animals, Depression and tagged with animals, Beliefs, denial, Depression, Economy, financial costs, Gratitude, Grieving, Living and Dying, Relationships, Respect, Science, Surprise August 27, 2010

We once had two dogs. They joined the family two years apart, lived most of their lives together frisky and inseparable, then died at the end, also two years apart. Our big guy died first. Swift and unexpected. He was fine and healthy for years and years, and then one day got sick and three days later died. Just like that.

Our second dog was lost without him. For a month following his death she withdrew. She’d still come to us if we called and try to look happy to see us, but as soon as her duty was done she’d slip away to the corner where they used to sleep together and lie down again, eyes open and unfocused and numb.

We were heartbroken for her and heartbroken for ourselves. We all missed him terribly.

But time worked its magic and one day, for no particular reason, she returned. She followed me around the house that morning, trying to flip my hand up on her head with her nose again, and my heart eased knowing she’d be okay. We had two more wonderful years together before she, too, eventually died.

There’s a lot of controversy on whether animals experience emotions, but the suggestion that they can’t feel things like simple grief makes me angry. I usually try to respect the beliefs of others but, because this particular belief is so often used as a justification for exploitation, neglect, or abuse, I don’t respect it. I find it suspect. The claim is far too riddled with conflicts of interest to take at face value. Besides, in five decades of living, every interaction I’ve personally had with animals and birds, (and reptile, fish, and even a few insects believe it or not) has confirmed that these other strange and wonderful companions I share my world with feel a great deal, even if most of the time I don’t understand what exactly that is.

A case in point:

One of my first hospice patients had a parrot she said she’d smuggled over the border from Mexico twenty years earlier. She was a wild, untamed kind of woman and her parrot was just like her.

I don’t remember now what kind he was, but he was smallish, maybe a little bigger than Snowball the dancing cockatoo, and he spent most of his time in those final days perched on the valance above the window next to her bed. I was a little nervous at first because family members warned me that sometimes he flew down on people, swooping at them again and again, testing to see if they would duck and run. He was a fierce little thing, tolerating only a handful of people and attacking the rest, but he clearly loved and needed that woman lying on the bed and was made achingly vulnerable by her approaching loss.

He never flew down on me. I used to speak to him gently when I was on that side of the bed, changing her sheets or dressing or incontinence pad, and he’d closely monitor everything I did, anxious and curious, sometimes fluffing up into a ball of down and shaking his head rapidly, raising his wings for a moment like he just couldn’t stand the uncertainty anymore, then settling back down to watch and wait again anyway. He’d sidle back and forth along the length of the valance, first to the left, then to the right, over and over again like a loved one pacing the corridors of a hospital. He knew something was wrong and it seemed to fill him with unease.

Once I saw him fly down to the bed while I was in and out of the room, doing laundry. She was asleep and he seemed to want to just be next to her, to touch her. He awkwardly waddled up next to her head, curling into the warmth still emanating from her. He bent his head over next to her mouth as though checking for breath and just stayed there for a long time, frozen, his feathers brushing her lips. My heart broke for him and I wanted to pick him up, cradle and croon to him, but I knew he’d bite me if I so much as extended my hand.

First her sister told me and then her daughter. How he wept on her body when she died. He flew down from the valance to her chest and started nuzzling and nipping at her, trying to make her respond. Stroke him. Yell at him. Anything. But when she didn’t move he went still and stunned, and it was then that he started making the strange, small noises, noises unlike anything they’d ever heard him make before, like sobs. His head bobbed slowly up and down to the rhythm of the sounds, and her family just stood there around the bed, surprised and stricken by his grief.

Later, when the men from the funeral home came to remove her body from the room he attacked them. Viciously. Angry and hysterical, he dive bombed at their heads repeatedly until one of the men ran in the bathroom to hide. The family finally captured him and put him in his cage while they took her body away.

I’ve often thought about him over the years and hoped that he eventually found someone else he could trust, someone he’d allow to love him, to bring him back in healing and wholeness.

Like just about every other person I’ve ever known, the deep emotional bonds I’ve shared with animals over the years have provided me with a well of strength, beauty, unconditional love, and hope. My ties to these companions have helped shape me, often healed me, and even saved me, more times than I can count. I really, really hope that some day soon we’ll grow past the economic and scientific need we have to deny the depth of their vulnerability to us, and instead forge a higher, kinder relationship based on mutual respect. They’ve already given us all so much. They deserve something far better than what they’ve gotten in return.

The Compass

Posted by Dia in Uncategorized and tagged with my father, Relationships August 11, 2010

My father sent me his compass this week. It’s military issue, camouflage green, weighs in at half a pound, and is nigh onto indestructible. It’s the one he carried with him for fifty eight years, the one he used through wars and special missions to guide him across mountains, jungles, and deserts around the world. It’s also the one, as he put it, that probably saved my life more times than I can remember and always got me home.

My father sent me his compass because he believes that I’m lost.

He and I don’t communicate all that well, which is not a big surprise. He’s a man’s man, from the greatest generation, and prefers his communication simple, short, and aimed at a swift resolution. He’s uncomfortable and impatient with the delicate dance required in talking about feelings and tries to either ignore a conversation that introduces them or, if that doesn’t work, shut it down altogether. This can make it difficult for the women who are intimately involved in his life.

Because women have to talk about feelings. It’s in our DNA. Relationships are our genetic job and the drive to talk about them is as relentless as the instinct to protect our young. It’s a diagnostic tool to help us determine if everything is running smoothly. Preventing a woman from talking about the relationship is as counter productive as stopping a man from checking the oil in the car. All that happens is the engine of each eventually blows and we all know how hard it is to get them up and running again after that.

Which is what happened with my father and I. I needed to talk about something important but he silenced me instead, and even though we lasted a few years longer, the pressure built until it finally blew after which I stopped talking to him altogether. And for the life of him he can’t understand why.

Yet he’s still reaching out to me with his compass. He’s sending me a message in the language he knows, and while I stiffen at the inference that I’m lost, I’m also moved and shaken by his longing for me to come home. Because I want to go home. I love and miss him. But I still don’t know how to survive closeness with a person who demands my silence.

I think all of us have an internal compass we steer by, a deep sense of knowing about what we need, what we believe in, and who we are. This knowing is what fuels our passion and shapes our dreams and we can always tell when it’s not functioning properly because without it, we feel lost. The directions on this internal compass are unique to each person, and I think that mine are different from my father’s in significant ways. He steers by things like loyalty, courage, secrecy, and discipline while I find my way through curiosity, exploration, expression, and truth. These are not qualities we’ve voluntarily chosen for ourselves, things to try on and discard at will. They’re what we are, the cardinal elements out of which we were created, and he can no more stop being what he is than I can.

And yet, and yet. He keeps calling and calling me home, and I keep searching for some way…some way…to reconcile the differences so I can survive a return. Because, in spite of the hurdles and confusion and pain, we still share the same magnetic north; we love one another deeply and can’t seem to forget it.