ninanevermore (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ninanevermore) wrote2006-06-26 03:16 pm
ninanevermore) wrote2006-06-26 03:16 pm
Monday - Crying Someone Else's Tears
Today on my drive into work, I was thinking about the phone call I am waiting for from my cousin Leslie or, more likely, her significant other, saying that it is over, that her son Cameron has died. My grief has been held in a state of suspended animation for years now in anticipation of this one phone call. Knowing that it is immanent weighs heavy on my mind these days even as I think it will be a blessed relief when it comes.
My grief will be so much greater now than if Cameron had died 13 years ago. I had lost touch with Leslie and I had not seen either her or Cam in a few years when I heard about his aneurism. It would have been sad news and a funeral to attend for a cousin who was little more than a few distant memories to me at the time.
I went to the hospital to sit around the waiting room of the Neurological ICU that spring day in 1993, and visited Leslie there because I felt that I should go as a stand-in for my mother. My mother was a rock, a pillar of strength, and her presence would have been a great comfort to Leslie. My mother would have offered her shoulder and would have been one of the few people that Leslie would have allowed herself to cry on. My mother would have been able to offer Leslie counsel and she is one person that Leslie would have listened to. If my mother's absence, I had only my own company to offer my cousin. She had watched me grow up and still considered my a bit of a kid since I am halfway between her and her son in age. I think at that point that she thought of me as more his peer than her own. But while I was an inept counselor, I was a good listener and I thought I should do what I could.
She accepted my help, but not in the way she would have from my mother. She embraces me, but she does not cry. She talks to me, but she does not take council.
Over the years, our relationship developed over letters. I don't recall when they started. Out of the blue, I started getting long, hyperactive letters from her, sometimes illustrated with little cartoons. The text would leap from hilarious to heartbreaking, just like her words do in conversation. I wrote her back and did my best to make her laugh by telling her about little things that were going on in my life. She said she loved my letters and looked forward to them, so every time I received one of her fat envelopes sealed with tape because it was too stuffed to close, overflowing with as many as 6 or 7 letters written and dated over a span of months, I would try to write to respond with words of my own. It has been awhile since I got an evelope full of her letters; not since she moved to Tennessee, though she told me once that she had letters to send me and that the stack was as thick as a book now. I offered to send her postage, but she turned me down.
Lately, it has been just the occasional phone call with Leslie talking a mile a minute, out of breath, angry, sarcastic, tough as nails but coming apart at the seams.
Through these letter and calls, I grew to know Leslie and Cameron and the detached sadness has germinated into a genuine grief. It has grown each year, as my few memories of Cam have been enhanced by her stories about him. The grief isn't even all my own; I have been carrying her grief around with me and it has taken root in my heart and become a part of me, much more than it is a part of her.
Leslie does not feel her grief; she only feels anger and a love so fierce that it consumes her. Grieving would mean accepting defeat to her, and all she knows how to do is fight. When Cam dies, she does not intend to bury him or to let him go even then. She will cremate him and carry his remains with her wherever she goes, where ever she lives. She will not have a funeral, because a funeral would mean saying goodbye. She has held on to her damaged, dying son for so long that it is as if her hands have lost the ability to release their grasp on him.
I wanted to tell her that some of us do need a funeral. She has passed on the grief that she will not let herself feel on to those around her. This loss, this tragedy, has to leave more than her rage in its wake. Someone has to feel sadness and shed the tears to wash it away so healing can begin. There are several of us who feel the grief she refuses to feel, in proxy for her. Even if she can't or won't do it, we have a need to say goodbye for her.
* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *
My grief will be so much greater now than if Cameron had died 13 years ago. I had lost touch with Leslie and I had not seen either her or Cam in a few years when I heard about his aneurism. It would have been sad news and a funeral to attend for a cousin who was little more than a few distant memories to me at the time.
I went to the hospital to sit around the waiting room of the Neurological ICU that spring day in 1993, and visited Leslie there because I felt that I should go as a stand-in for my mother. My mother was a rock, a pillar of strength, and her presence would have been a great comfort to Leslie. My mother would have offered her shoulder and would have been one of the few people that Leslie would have allowed herself to cry on. My mother would have been able to offer Leslie counsel and she is one person that Leslie would have listened to. If my mother's absence, I had only my own company to offer my cousin. She had watched me grow up and still considered my a bit of a kid since I am halfway between her and her son in age. I think at that point that she thought of me as more his peer than her own. But while I was an inept counselor, I was a good listener and I thought I should do what I could.
She accepted my help, but not in the way she would have from my mother. She embraces me, but she does not cry. She talks to me, but she does not take council.
Over the years, our relationship developed over letters. I don't recall when they started. Out of the blue, I started getting long, hyperactive letters from her, sometimes illustrated with little cartoons. The text would leap from hilarious to heartbreaking, just like her words do in conversation. I wrote her back and did my best to make her laugh by telling her about little things that were going on in my life. She said she loved my letters and looked forward to them, so every time I received one of her fat envelopes sealed with tape because it was too stuffed to close, overflowing with as many as 6 or 7 letters written and dated over a span of months, I would try to write to respond with words of my own. It has been awhile since I got an evelope full of her letters; not since she moved to Tennessee, though she told me once that she had letters to send me and that the stack was as thick as a book now. I offered to send her postage, but she turned me down.
Lately, it has been just the occasional phone call with Leslie talking a mile a minute, out of breath, angry, sarcastic, tough as nails but coming apart at the seams.
Through these letter and calls, I grew to know Leslie and Cameron and the detached sadness has germinated into a genuine grief. It has grown each year, as my few memories of Cam have been enhanced by her stories about him. The grief isn't even all my own; I have been carrying her grief around with me and it has taken root in my heart and become a part of me, much more than it is a part of her.
Leslie does not feel her grief; she only feels anger and a love so fierce that it consumes her. Grieving would mean accepting defeat to her, and all she knows how to do is fight. When Cam dies, she does not intend to bury him or to let him go even then. She will cremate him and carry his remains with her wherever she goes, where ever she lives. She will not have a funeral, because a funeral would mean saying goodbye. She has held on to her damaged, dying son for so long that it is as if her hands have lost the ability to release their grasp on him.
I wanted to tell her that some of us do need a funeral. She has passed on the grief that she will not let herself feel on to those around her. This loss, this tragedy, has to leave more than her rage in its wake. Someone has to feel sadness and shed the tears to wash it away so healing can begin. There are several of us who feel the grief she refuses to feel, in proxy for her. Even if she can't or won't do it, we have a need to say goodbye for her.