Making Peace With Our Lady Parts: Why Hillary Clinton’s Bathroom Break Matters

Soraya Chemaly has written an excellent piece in the Huffington Post about Hillary Clinton’s bathroom break at the last presidential debate, and what it reveals about institutional sexism and the lack of respect for and understanding of women’s bodies, and what makes us human. Under normal circumstances I would perhaps nod, perhaps feel a twinge of fellow-feeling at the thought of Candidate Clinton having to stand in the bathroom line–something we women understand all too well. Who among us hasn’t pushed open the bathroom door, only to have our hearts sink at the sight of a long, long line of women and girls, snaking along the cubicle doors, past the sinks and towel dispensers, and sometimes out into the hall? Who among us hasn’t stood with an aching belly and crossed legs, terrified that our internal systems might fail us before we get into the stall and managed to get our pants pulled down far enough to pee without soaking ourselves? For women who have borne children–particularly for those who have borne several children–the problem is compounded.

There’s a case to be made about the sexism of our public spaces. But right now I read this piece with far more than a wince, because for me right now, and for thousands–perhaps millions–like me, this is more than just a matter of discomfort and quite possibly humiliation. It can be a matter of life and death.

For far too long, matters relating to “lady parts” have been dismissed as the sole province of women–the how and when of birth control and limiting childbearing is still seen as primarily a “women’s issue”–and conservatives have used shame, religion, and violence to strip women of the very tools they need to do those things effectively. Consider conservative statements about incest and rape, and their utter refusal to treat them as anything other than women’s responsibility, or God’s will. Childbirth as a result of incest is “beautiful.” Raped women gave “mixed messages,” or “dressed provocatively,” or let things progress beyond “the point of no return.” In other words, a victimized woman is to blame for her own victimization.

The answer in every case is, for conservatives, simple. Women must modify their actions to “protect” men from the reality of female bodies and sexuality–beyond the pleasure men derive from sex. Rape is okay–the baby that may result is the woman’s fault. It’s okay to make women pay for the processing of their own rape kits. Reporting a rape is often incredibly humiliating, starting with the questioning, moving on to the exams, and then, for those comparatively few bold women who persevere, facing the demeaning, patronizing faces of all too many legal professionals.

And it’s not just about rape and sex–there’s also the issue of menstruation. When I began the process four decades ago, the Tampax pads lived in a big box hidden back behind the gooseneck pipe under the bathroom sink–even though there were five women and only one boy living in our house for the vast majority of the time. Used pads had to be wrapped up like nasty little gifts and buried at the bottom of the trash can.

Girls were advised to avoid swimming and extremely strenuous activities while menstruating, but even in this there was a double standard. In my world, “strenuous activity” was defined as “strenuous recreational activity.” Farm work–lifting bales, hauling and toting all sorts of things, and walking miles and miles of fields was somehow not “strenuous activity.” It would be easy to excuse the men in charge of this labor because “they didn’t know.” And they didn’t, unless we women and girls were betrayed by our bodies–a flooded pad or tampon, cramps that doubled us over, blazing headaches. When that happened, when we were revealed as biologically female, the response was often impatience, combined with the suspicion that we were somehow using our femaleness to cadge undeserved breaks.

It’s not like that for every woman, but it was for me.

And then we had the whole religious thing. Women were cursed with painful childbirth (and by extension, periods) because Eve messed up. Women were responsible for not “leading men into temptation.” In my world, far too many of the men we encountered were pedophiles, so we started “not leading men into temptation” before we started first grade.We wore concealing clothing, since a hint of even pre-teen knees or breasts might turn men into ravening beasts. We didn’t wear makeup or jewelry because it was vanity to want to look beautiful. Our “beauty” was supposed to be “a meek and quiet spirit.”

For the record, the clothing didn’t work. The men in my world seemed to be “led into temptation” by remarkably little. What I remember most about the aftermath of those events is the corroding guilt, humiliation, and shame. A “nice man” had done something to me that “nice men” just didn’t do unless they were driven to it by the overwhelming reality of a female body.

Female reproductive health was something that we “didn’t need to worry about,” unless we were “doing things we shouldn’t be doing.” Even our uteruses were supposed to be good Christians–meek and quiet. Even now, after years of counseling, an ugly divorce from the “faith of my fathers,” and the birth of a child, the reality of my body both shames and eludes me.

All of this, perhaps, goes some way to explaining why I did a dangerous thing–and I did it because everything in our world–access to healthcare, attitudes toward women’s bodies, the force of conservative religion, even the very design of our effing public buildings, reinforces the desirability of “meek and quiet” as a female ideal. Here’s what I did: I went for seventeen years without having a pap smear or mammogram. And I did this in spite of the fact that I have a terrible family history of cancer.

In my family, lady parts are not “meek and quiet” unless they’re plotting something. Mine started bleeding–not all at once, just more and more, as the months passed. For the last four years or so, I have had about two months total when I wasn’t bleeding. I had no health insurance, and I was living very close to the poverty line, but a combination of just enough money to raise me almost out of poverty, the humiliation of acknowledging that I qualified for public assistance and my ingrained body shame made it easy for me to pretend that it was “just a bad period (for four years?), “peri-menopause,” “hormones,” “being fat.” Below all those “reasons” lay the unexamined, unbearable knowledge that my body was “disgusting”–it bled, it stank when that happened, and it kept me from traveling far from my own bathroom, where I had supplies to deal with the situation.

Because of my past, I lived in my head–I was a balloon, bobbing along at head level. And so I just ignored the messages that my unquiet, unmeek uterus was sending. But then something happened. My son reminded me of three things–that I have a body, that something was seriously wrong with it, and that he, for one, wanted to have me around for a while.

Which is not so say that he, too, had adapted to our circumstances. He has long been immune to shame at having to buy sanitary pads. From the time he has been able to work the credit card, he has fearlessly strode into Safeway, loaded up his cart with groceries and “lady things,” and checked out. I tried to time these things for when none of his peers were around, but the fact remains that he accepted that particularly reality as a fact of our life. I took care of disposal, because let’s face it, used sanitary pads are like snotty kleenex–you really should dispose of your own, but there have been times he’s dumped the bathroom trash with never a word about it being disgusting.

So when I developed a craving for ice and a sore mouth, when I managed to chomp up two big Safeway bags of ice in one week, he pulled up a chair and said, “Mom, something’s not right. You need to google this.”

Googling led to blood tests, which led to a pelvic exam, which led to a D&C, which led to a biopsy, which led to a diagnosis–uterine serous carcinoma.

I seem to be lucky. All those years of bleeding don’t seem to have been cancer-related (after all, all those excuses I gave myself hadn’t just been things I dreamed up–they actually do often contribute to out-of-cycle bleeding). The cancer seems to be a comparative newcomer. And if it weren’t for the ice, and my son, I still wouldn’t know about it.

The past few months have forced me to confront many of my own attitudes toward my body. I’m learning to understand that having a loud, sassy uterus can be a life-saver. I’m learning to accept the reality of my body as not just a good thing, but a necessary thing. I’m learning to treasure each and every minute with my son. I’m learning that I have a lot of really good friends, and some great family members, too.

Mostly, at last I’m learning to understand that I am a woman, with a woman’s body, and that if I love my son I have to not just be okay with that, but learn to love it–as much as I love him. I have to follow my uterus’ example and stop pretending that “meek and quiet” is okay when it means that people–including me–are being put at risk. I have to be honest about my own reality.

So Hillary’s long bathroom break? Not funny. Not something to sigh over. Not something it’s okay to say, “It was just the building” about. Because it’s more than just that building–it’s far too many of our buildings. It’s our schools, our churches, or government offices, our factories. It’s our buildings, and it’s what we’re still teaching our daughters and our sons in those buildings–that it’s okay that women be routinely, unnecessarily shamed, inconvenienced and victimized because of the reality of our bodies, that somehow we’ve decided that women should pay and pay and pay not for what they’ve done, but for who they are. It’s time that we’re honest with ourselves.

And in my case, it’s long past time that I made peace with my lady parts.

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Women at the Pen

“We’re going to the State Pen,” Dad said one night as he waited for Mom to finish filling his soup bowl and buttering his bread.

“The Pen?” my brother Matt asked. “What for?”

“We’re gonna chop their alfalfa. They didn’t get enough to bale, but they need to clear the fields so it doesn’t ruin the next cutting. We’re gonna do it. I’m gonna go talk to’em tomorrow about it; there’s a lot of restrictions.”

The next night at supper he was full details. “They didn’t want to let you girls in,” he told Mom, Sally, and me. “There haven’t been any women contract workers inside for over fifteen years—only the guards. But I told’em, ‘You haven’t met my girls. They’ll be fine. They’re my crew, and if they can’t do it, I can’t either.’ The warden talked to a few people, and they finally said it was okay, but there are some rules.”

“What rules?” asked Sally nervously.

“You can’t go into any building without a guard. There’s a bathroom in the dairy barn, but if you need to use it you have to get a guard first. No talking to prisoners. They’re not going to be allowed in the fields we’re cutting. There’s to be no contact. Absolutely none. And no provocative clothing.”

I wondered if he was joking. I was frightened at the very thought of being inside the prison compound, with no walls between me and thousands of dangerous men, and what with one thing and another our wardrobes were the very definition of ‘non-provocative.’

Still, though, Sally and I made a special effort. The day we started work at the Pen we dressed for the occasion by donning long-sleeved flannel shirts, buttoning them up to our necks and around our wrists, pulling bib overalls and then coveralls on, braiding our hair tightly, and stuffing it up under John Deer “gimme” caps. It would have been funny, if it weren’t over a hundred degrees out, and our trucks un-airconditioned. We were boiling hot, but we felt safer for our camouflage.

We drove our unlikely caravan up to the massive concrete walls and stopped at the heavily barred gates. Guards with guns stared down at us. Dad got out of the pickup and walked up to the guardhouse. Uniformed men carrying what looked like machine guns came out. They walked toward the trucks. I gripped the wheel nervously. Dad stepped up on the running board.

“They’re gonna search the trucks,” he said. “The scale’s outside the walls, so you’ll have to stop each time you go weigh, pick up a guard, have him ride to the scales with you, and drop him off on the way back. They have to be sure we’re not smuggling anything in.” I opened my door, dropped to the ground, and watched as the guard poked around in the dust, alfalfa leaves, and desiccated chopped corn that had accumulated under my seat. To my mortification, his probing turned up an unexpected mummified mouse. He sneezed, buried the mouse again, and backed out, satisfied. “It’s clean. Go on in.”

I hastily shoved the mouse corpse out the door with a gloved hand, then climbed back into my truck and pulled it into gear. The massive gates swung open and we chugged through, then waited for Dad to get back into the pickup and lead us to where the prison farm foreman waited. Men were everywhere. They turned as we drove in, gaped, and called to other men who came running and gaped, too. I pulled my John Deer cap down to my eyebrows and drove by, trying not to look at all the murderers, robbers, arsonists, and rapists. And around us all, on the high towers, stood the guards, staring down at us, machine guns at the ready.

We pulled up to the farm office. The warden came out, a gun holstered at his hip. He talked to Dad, who came back and told us, “Just follow the warden to the field. The bathroom’s in there—” he gestured to the dairy barn—“but you have to come here first and get a guard. Remember that. No going in buildings alone.”

Sally and I shook our heads. No, we wouldn’t go into any buildings alone. The murderers, rapists, arsonists, and robbers circled like sharks, keeping a safe distance, mindful of the guns overhead. Our caravan pulled out of the prison yard. Matt’s truck, pulling the bagger on the trailer, turned right and chugged out of sight around the dairy barn. Sally and I followed Dad and the warden’s pickups down a dirt road. The road wound out of the farmyard and past a massive gray building on the right. A huge yard, fenced with cyclone fencing and topped with tangled razor wire, ran beside the road on the left. Guards patrolled the perimeter. Inside men in blue denim shirts and jeans lounged, played basketball, and smoked. They looked up at the sound of our engines, stared, and ran for the fence.

“How do they know?” Sally asked, tugging nervously at her cap.

“I don’t know,” I answered, and tugged at my own, resolutely not looking at the crowd of men who now stood packed along the fence. We left the prison yard behind for a row of pigsties, then we were in familiar territory—fields. A cornfield came first, followed by a fallow field, and then the alfalfa field we would be cutting.

A man in a blue denim shirt and jeans drove a tractor in the fallow field. He stopped and stared as we drove by. Sally and I drove into the field and pulled up behind Dad, resolutely ignoring the man on the tractor. We unchained the chopper and Sally climbed into the high cab, fired it up, and backed it carefully onto the ground while Dad set the jacks and unhitched the trailer.

Matt drove up in the other truck, climbed into the idling chopper, shoved the throttle ahead, and we were off. Dad and the warden chatted by the field while we filled the trucks. The convict from the neighboring field climbed off his tractor and joined them. The three men talked until Sally’s truck was full, then the warden led her back to where the bagger was set up and Mom waited.

I pulled into the field and Matt filled my truck. I followed Dad’s pickup back to the bagger. Dad stayed to help Mom empty the trucks, and Sally, Matt and I were basically on our own. When I got back from dumping my truck I interrupted Matt and the convict from the fallow field, leaning against the chopper, talking. Sally said she saw the same thing. All day, Matt and the convict talked between trucks. When Sally or I showed up the convict hot-footed it back to his tractor. By the time we pulled up he was industriously tilling his field again.

The day heated. The alfalfa had been lying in the field for far too long. It chopped into a fine powder and coated us with light green-gray dust. The trips fell into a pattern: the fields, then the pigsties, then the prison yard with the watching men crowded along the fence, then the farm yard, then a wait if the guards were transporting a prisoner from the old prison to the new maximum security building, then the bagger—if the warden hadn’t asked for the load to be weighed—and then the whole trip in reverse. A guard rode with me the first time I took a load outside the walls to the scale, jouncing along on the passenger seat, gun in hand. He waited while I weighed the truck, then we jounced back. The next time he simply waved me through. The whole thing would have been monotonous, if it weren’t for the guns, the convicts gazing enthralled at pale green women completely encased in flannel and denim, and the pickup loads full of convict farm laborers.

The pickups—tiny Datsuns packed with men—seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time careening past the field we were cutting. When we met on the road the men filling the cabs and beds of the pickups and standing on the running boards grinned maniacally and nearly fell out of the trucks with the vigor of their waving. And then there was the jogger. The jogger never waved. He simply ran, every day, long, even, single-minded strides, his dog running with him, tongue lolling.

And, back at the field, there would be Matt and the convict. We learned his name was Reg. Reg told Matt he had been framed for armed robbery. The warden said Reg was in for murder. “Reg is a nice guy,” the warden told us. “He was a Golden Gloves boxer; his hands had to be registered as lethal weapons.” Reg was in prison because of a woman. “He just can’t stay away from her,” the warden told us. “Problem is, she cheats on’im, then he gets mad and loses his temper. Last time he took a swing at some guy made him jealous, and killed’im. So now he’s here.” He shook his head at the perfidy of the woman, forcing a nice guy like Reg to kill somebody and go to prison. “If he could just make a break, get away from her, he’d be all right.”

“But he said he was in for armed robbery, that he’d gotten drunk and was asleep in the car and the guys robbed a liquor store and—” Matt started.

“Son, in here they was all framed,” the warden said gently.

Every time I pulled into the field Reg would be ambling back to his tractor. Once Matt came over and swung up on my running board and stuck his head into my cab, grinning.

“Reg has been in here too long.”

“What makes you say that?” I asked, curious.

“He said, ‘You’ve sure got some good looking sisters.”

I laughed. Sally and I, though we both cleaned up fairly well, were, if not frights in those days, certainly very, very plain. We had set out to be. Matt laughed with me. “Let’s go, ugly girl,” he teased. And away we went, still laughing.

That night at supper Sally and I were discussing the jogger. “I didn’t know they could have pets,” Sally said. “What is he, a special case?”

“Maybe he’s blind,” pondered Matt. “It’s nice that he gets to have his dog in prison with him.” Matt’s dog had been hit by a car a few years before, and he still missed him.

“But he runs. The dog follows him,” I objected. “He can’t be blind.”

“I’ll ask Reg,” Matt said. Reg had quickly become our authority on all things penal. Matt wasted no time. After my first trip he came over to my truck and said, “I found out about the jogger’s dog,” he said.

“And?” I asked.

“The jogger’s a mass murderer, in for life and then some. They let him run for exercise. The dog runs with him so they don’t have to send a guard. The dog’s been trained to kill him if he leaves the road.”

I lifted my eyes and looked up the road. The jogger ran by, strides long, even, powerful, looking neither to the right nor the left. The dog ran beside him, tongue lolling. I imagined him running, running, then leaping for the wall, hands tangling in the razor wire at the top, the dog savaging his back.

“Let’s go, ugly girl,” said Matt. We filled the truck and I started for the bagger. One of the farm pickups careened by. By this time I recognized the faces, though I had spoken to none of them. When they waved I waved back, lifting my hand nervously. At the bagger I sat in the truck, ran the chain belt unloader, and watched the convicts in the yard playing with a little black and white kitten. They had named it “Cop Car.” Cop Car looked fat and sleek. As I watched a prisoner picked him up and tickled his round little belly.

The day grew warmer. I had emptied my water jug, and now had to go to the bathroom. I held it for several trips, too embarrassed to ask a guard to take me to the restroom. I considered peeing in the field, but had no idea when or from which direction one of the convict pickups might come. Sally was in little better condition. Finally we gave up and went to the farm office together.

I knocked on the door. A guard stuck his head out. “Yeah?”

“We need to go to the bathroom,” I muttered, red-faced.

“Just a sec.” He disappeared and then emerged, carrying his rifle. “Follow me.” Sally and I slunk through the pathway of prisoners in his wake, knowing that every person in the farmyard knew exactly where we were going, and why. At the door of the barn the guard stopped. “Everybody out!” he shouted.

Men filed out of the barn and lined up in two rows. The guard went down the rows, checklist in hand. When he was satisfied everyone was indeed outside he cocked his gun and led Sally and me past the gauntlet of eyes and into the barn. At a door halfway down the dim passageway he stopped, knocked, pushed the door open, and looked inside. “It’s clear,” he said. Then he turned his back and stood, feet apart, gun cocked and ready, while Sally and I scuttled into the filthy bathroom. We looked around nervously.

“We could get AIDS,” Sally said nervously. And what are those funny lights on the floor?” I tore my eyes off  the filthy black sink and looked at the floor. Little circles of light lay everywhere. We looked up, tracking the lights to their source. The bathroom walls were full of bullet holes.

We had come too far to back out now. We raced through the process, dropping our pants, peeing from a safe distance above the seat, and foregoing washing our hands so we wouldn’t have to touch the filthy taps. I balanced on one foot and flushed the toilet with my boot. We opened the door to see the guard’s broad back. When he heard us he turned. “Finished?” he asked impassively, then led us back outside and to our trucks. Of everything I experienced at the penitentiary, going to the bathroom was the scariest.

It was easy to forget that the truckloads of men who smiled and waved at us were in many cases guilty of terrible crimes. We were farmers, working with other farmers, as we had for years. These farmers never spoke to us, but they talked to Matt, and to Mom—even though it was against the rules—and they waved. Sally and I soon thought nothing of waving back. The trips past the prison yard were the worst, though passing the new maximum security building with its narrow window slits was almost as bad. Matt told us that he had seen a face on one trip. The man had had to turn his head sideways to fit both eyes in the narrow window slit, but he had done it. He was looking out the window, watching us. After that whenever I passed the big concrete building with the neat little prison cemetery nearby I looked for faces.

I left the penitentiary a changed person. The convicts had become more than beasts in numbered denim shirts; they had become people. It was easy to forget their crimes. Even the mass murderer with his dog had lost his aura of terror—and I found that loss of fear more than a little frightening. Was I losing my natural survival instincts, or was I simply becoming more humane? I didn’t know.

We spoke of Reg often, laughing ruefully at Matt’s conviction that he had been imprisoned for too long if he could find us attractive. Early that fall Dad told us over supper that the prison had called again; we would be bagging their corn. We looked forward to going back and seeing the familiar faces grinning and waving from the racing pickups, to hearing what Reg had to tell Matt about prison life, to watching the prisoners play with Cop Car. Sally and I still dressed for the occasion in loose, concealing, aging clothing, but we only put on the John Deere caps when we drove past the prison yard.

We arrived on a crisp, cool morning. The guards saw us, opened the gate, and waved us in. We roared past and out to the field, looking for the racing pickups full of convicts. The pickups were there, but the faces had changed. Reg still chugged around the fallow field in his tractor. “That has to be the best-tilled field in the state,” Sally and I joked, but we were relieved to see him there. Maybe he could tell us what had happened.

Matt filled my truck and I made the trip to the bagger, passing Sally on the return trip, as usual, and arriving at the field to see Reg jogging for his tractor. Matt waited for me to stop, then swung up on my running board and said, “A bunch of’em got sent back inside the walls.” “The Walls” was how the convicts referred to maximum security.

“Why?” I asked.

“They were growing pot in the cornfield and the guards caught’em.”

“Really? In the prison cornfield?” I snickered.

Matt chuckled along with me. “Yeah. Sally and I found their little garden on our last pass. It was sort of sweet, really. There was a watering can, and a blue shirt. One of the guys must have been out peacefully tending his little garden when they caught him.” The image of the convict gardener tenderly caring for his pot plants, nurturing them lovingly amid the cornstalks until the guards came crashing in like Demon Kings, struck me funny. The sheer gall it would take to do such a thing in a prison farm awed me. Matt and I started across the field. Sure enough, deep in the heart of the cornfield was a little clearing, trampled corn, a little tin watering can, and a twisted blue denim shirt. We left it as a sort of memorial, though to what, I wasn’t sure. Perhaps initiative. Perhaps quiet rebellion. I missed the familiar faces.

Cop Car had grown into a teenage cat, and no longer liked to have his tummy tickled. His convict owner had been released. The days passed hot, sticky, and long, even though it was fall. And then one day everything went wrong. It was hot and still. The prisoners in the medium security prison yard stood by the fence, staring and hooting at Sally and me. The chopper kept plugging. I had to go to the bathroom, but was too embarrassed to ask the guard to take me. My head and neck ached. Sweat stung the in scratches on my hands and arms. Early in the afternoon I pulled into the bagger, engaged the chain drive, and waited for the truck to unload. Dad was operating the bagger. I wondered where Mom was, but then she appeared at my door, a plastic bag full of little ice cream and orange sherbet cups in her hands.

“Here,” she said.

“I didn’t know anybody’d been to town,” I said, surprised. I took one, peeled the top back, and let the icy goodness slide down my throat.

“Nobody was. Reg stole them from the prison cafeteria for us. Here, take some more; there’s a whole bag. And take some out to Matt.”

I choked. My mother was knowingly giving me stolen ice cream. “He ripped them off? From the prison cafeteria?” The thought of Reg risking getting sent back inside the walls for ice cream cups horrified me.

“He just handed them to me and said, ‘You guys look awful hot out here.’ What was I gonna do, tell him to take’em back?” She laughed ruefully. I ate the ice cream gratefully and took several out to Matt, who reacted much as I had—first with shock, then with laughter at the sheer improbability of it.

But the laughter wasn’t the end of it. Those ice cream cups made me question myself. Would I have thought to bring ice cream to the convict farm workers, hot as it was? I doubted it. I hadn’t really seen past the number-stamped denim shirts, the guard towers, the razor wire fences, the guns, the dog trained to kill a running man. I had been thinking in terms of “us” and “them,” convicts, who slept within walls here, and free contract workers, who slept within walls half an hour away. Where was the difference? Reg’s ice cream cups said, “There is none.” They spoke of our common humanity, rather than our putative differences. “There is no “us,” they said, “there is no ‘them.’ There are only people, some kind, some terrifying, most a mixture.”

As a general rule people don’t get into the Washington State Penitentiary for parking violations. Most of the people there had done some very bad things. Reg himself was in for murder. I had always believed that it was right and proper that dangerous people be locked away from the rest of us. But then I thought of the ice cream cups, and I realized it wasn’t quite that simple anymore. I could no longer simply write off men behind bars as “them.” Instead, it had become “we,” hungry, thirsty, hot people, who felt better for the kindness of a little stolen ice cream. “Us” and “them” had become moving points, defining the person using them more than the people defined.

I would have liked to have thanked Reg, but the rules were there, and there for a reason. “Tell him thank you,” I told Matt.

“Will do,” he said. “Let’s go, Ugly Girl.” Then he swung up into his cab, still licking ice cream off his little wooden spoon, shoved the header into gear, grinned, licked his ice cream again, and we roared across the field and past the forlorn garden. The mass murder and his dog jogged by. Reg puttered around in his fallow field. Everything looked the same—and utterly different.

 

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Cosmic Hugs

Here’s part of how I said “good bye” to Leroy.

A friend of mine is losing his mother. They’re to the hospice stage now. Having just lost Leroy a few months ago (3 months ago today, actually) how we say “good bye” has been very much on my mind. Leroy’s passing wasn’t my first trip to the rodeo–I’m at that point in life where the world begins shrinking, a grandfather here, an uncle there, a father here, a Leroy there. I’ve been reflecting on how I did–or didn’t–say good bye in each instance. The most traumatic passing was probably my dad’s, largely because of the family issues that surrounded it. I couldn’t say “good bye.” I didn’t cry for him for a year. The odd thing is that, as awful as that time in my life was, it taught me more about saying “good bye” than any other death I’ve experienced. The lessons from that terrible time were many. Here are a few of them.

1. Nobody really understands what you’re going through. Grief is an intensely personal thing–as unique as the relationship between two people. No one can know what you’re experiencing, the things that cause you pain–or the things that bring you comfort. Each of us walks through grief alone, not because no one wants to be there for us, but because no one really can. Yes, family, friends, and even strangers can throw a lifeline, but in that deep, intimate place where we grieve, we are alone.

2. I relied on the kindness of strangers. When Dad was dying, the people in my parents’ church brought food. I remember one woman in particular. She didn’t come inside, even. She just showed up, handed off a big pot of soup, smiled, and left. That touched me deeply. I learned from that. Now when people I know lose someone I take food, not because I think they’re broke, but because the kindness of strangers is a lifeline.

I also started offering my design services for free to grieving families. It started by accident; my local Kinko’s called me one day and asked if I could help a customer. They knew I did design work because in those days Kinko’s was where I printed out my proofs. I drove down to Kinko’s and met the woman. It wasn’t hard to pick her out; people who have just lost a loved one often look gobsmacked. She couldn’t focus. She had a hard time articulating things. Making decisions was completely beyond her. I found myself thinking like a teacher, rather than a designer. I found us a table in a quiet corner. We sat down. I thought of all the platitudes: “How sad you must feel,” “What a terrible loss,” “He’s in a better place now,” thought of my dad’s incredibly complex death, and realized that I didn’t know if she felt sad, if she felt loss or relief, or even if she thought of him in heaven. I didn’t know her, and even if I had, I wouldn’t have really understood her feelings.  In the end I just said, “Tell me about your husband.”

And she did. She told me that he had been the postmaster for years, that he loved his church, that his family was important to him. She told me stories. She cried. She laughed. And I realized that we would put together a program that captured something of her husband’s essence–it would be a way of not just letting mourners know who was doing what, but of really honoring a person who had been here, and now wasn’t, at least not in the same way. More than that, though, she reminded me that because grief is personal, having someone try to assign you to a category, to tell you what they are sure you must be feeling, is really not helpful. What is helpful is being invited to talk about what you are experiencing, who the person you have lost was to you, who they are to you now, who you were with them, and who you might be without them. Grief is a time for listening.

I’ve done a lot of memorial programs since then, and they all start with the same question: “Tell me about…” And when they have told me, we turn the program into something intensely personal–the lace off a mother’s wedding dress might become the background, an award or medal might become part of the front, a lifelong unrealized dream might become part of the interior. I offer my hands, and my ears. I treasure those times. It’s my way of returning the sense of love I felt from that woman standing on my parents’ porch, holding a soup pot.

3. Start before you need to. Grief is debilitating and overwhelming. The paradox of loss is that when you are experiencing it, it can be very difficult to actually think of a way of expressing it–of saying “good bye” in a way that’s meaningful to you. When Dad was sick my sister and I took the time to sit down with him and watch old slides. It was something he loved to do. In his younger years he loved driving up into the mountains with the camera and taking pictures of wild flowers. He didn’t pick them for pressing–he was a proponent of “leave it as you found it” long before that was popular. Those slides were his flower collection. They were important to him. As we watched them my sister and I listened to his breathy voice talking about the ones he loved the most, and my sister laid those aside, had them drum-scanned, and sent them to me. I used them to build Dad’s memorial bulletin. As I worked I cried–building that became an important part of saying “good bye,” and would probably have remained intensely meaningful had all hell not broken loose between the time I made the bulletin and the time we used it.

When Leroy had his second heart attack and he told me he just wanted to enjoy the time he had left, I remembered Dad’s bulletin. I came home, and I started going through pictures. Before he came home from the hospital I took the time to write down what he meant to me. I talked to The Boy, and suggested that he consider how he might want to say “good bye,” precisely because when the time came, thought–particularly coherent thought–might be difficult. On Leroy’s last birthday, we took him to the casino. While Leroy played “21” and the slot machines, The Boy wrote him a song.

And then we came home. I took the song, typed it into the computer, and then we were done. Three and a half months later Leroy left us. I was figuring out death certificates, supporting The Boy, working with the mortician in organizing the cremation, planning a quiet afternoon for the people who loved Leroy best. Had I waited to gather all the pieces something would surely have been left out. But I had planned ahead. I had pictures. I had words. I built a powerpoint and added music. And then I looked at it and realized what I really had was a book–so I made one, and because we had delayed the memorial service, I was able to get the books printed in time to give them to the people closest to him. Planning ahead was necessary, since I didn’t have anyone to take me aside and say, “Tell me about Leroy.” But it also became an important part of understanding who Leroy had been to us–and who he still was. We spent our last months wrapping him in love, honoring who he was. An important part of that was possible because in preparing to say “good bye” in a meaningful way I had reminded myself of the things I wanted to tell him while I could still do so.

4. Make private space for mourning. The day after we hosted Leroy’s farewell gathering, The Boy said to me, “It was nice, but there wasn’t really time for us to say “good bye.” And he was right. That gathering was wonderful–it offered people who loved Leroy a time and space to grieve, to comfort each other, and to begin the hard process of moving on. It was good and right that we honor Leroy that way. But because we were hosting it, we were necessarily taken up with things like food, making sure everyone had what they needed, offering comfort where we could. And that was right–but it meant that we needed to make a private time when we could say our own “good bye’s.” And we did. We planned an evening out on the patio, with a fire burning in the fireplace, and a dinner made up of Leroy’s favorite foods. The Boy wrote a letter. I took a copy of the book I had made.We read them, and looked at them, and then we sent them off to Leroy in the smoke of our fire. It was private, and it helped.

5. Don’t be afraid to laugh. Grief is intense. For some of us, laughter helps. When my grandfather died, I found laughter a great way of releasing some of the intense emotions. I won’t tell the whole story here, because it really deserves its own blog post, but to summarize my uncle, who was videotaping the memorial service, had a heart attack and died. And the camera was rolling. It was terrible. And laughter helped, not because it was funny–it wasn’t–but because…well, because it helped me. And that’s the whole point, isn’t it? Anything that helps us not mask the pain, but experience it, make it a part of ourselves, and then move on is a good thing.

By the same token, treasure the periods of “okayness” that seem to be a part of the grieving process, at least for me. It’s like a roller coaster, and thank goodness it is, because we need those comparatively tranquil periods between the periods of intense grief to give us respite. Enjoy them. Understand that this doesn’t make you a bad person. Feeling okay doesn’t mean you didn’t love the person, and that you’re not grieving. It just means that for right now, you feel okay. Be grateful.

So there it is–all I got about losing someone. As I said at the beginning, grief is intensely personal. Maybe nothing here means anything to you. That’s okay. We each have to find our own way. This was mine.

6. And finally–grief doesn’t have a time clock. It takes as long as it takes. There is no schedule, no set time beyond which grief is inappropriate. Yes, grief evolves over time–I no longer grief my dad and my grandpa in the way I did, but I still have moments. There are a lot of cheerleaders who will advise you to “move on,” to “let it go,” to “get on with your life.” Grief makes people uncomfortable. It reminds us that none of us are immortal. But your experience and mine will not be the same, and you will experience grief in different ways for different people. And that’s okay. It’s more than okay. Feel it until you don’t need to feel it anymore. Talk about it until you realize you want to talk about other things. There is no schedule.

 

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To my son on Father’s Day

Dear Son,

It’s Father’s Day. I’ve never really known what to do about that. It was just the two of us until we got the House Leroy, then it was just the three of us, and he was very clear that you had a dad–however far away he might live–that I was the Parent of Record, and that he was, well, our House Leroy.

The last time we talked about Father’s Day you said thoughtfully that, while your father didn’t really feel like a dad, you hoped that the two of you could be friends. “You’ve really been both my mom and my dad,” you said. And then you insisted that we go to Dairy Queen, where you went inside and explained that to the server, and wangled me a free Father’s Day ice cream cone. I wanted to cry, but I didn’t. I said “thank you,” and gave you a hug, and tried not to think about all the things a dad might have taught you that I hadn’t.

But that wasn’t true. You had Leroy, who showed  you how to do home repairs, and sat and joked with you, and drove me to all your out-of-town games, meets, concerts, and solo festivals, and bragged to all the neighbors that he wished he’d had a son like you. You have your football, wrestling, and weight-training coaches, men who have taught you about sportsmanship, and about what it’s like to be a man among men and boys. You have Uncle Tommy, who by living his life honestly as a “little person” in a “big world”  teaches you every day what it’s like to be a man in the face of enormous challenges. You’ve had a number of teachers who have seen things to admire and foster in you–and have done both things. And this year, your dad has started helping with some of your musical expenses.

None of those men are–or were–your “fathers” in the traditional sense. None of them were married to your mother (though the House Leroy came closest). None of them left our house to go to work every day, and came home every night and threw a football around the yard with you, fought with you about your hair, and taught you how to drive. Those things matter, but we’ve filled those needs if we decided we needed them filled. Having Leroy live with us taught you that it’s possible for men, women, and children to not only live in peace, but to actively enjoy each others’ company. I work every day. We don’t fight about your hair because, hey, it’s on your head, and it’s clean and you’re not running into “Stop” signs.

So why is it that I feel that there’s still something missing for you? Why is it that when your friends’ dads and grandfathers spend time with you I see a side of you that I don’t see otherwise? Why is it that I look in your eyes I sometimes wonder if you understand that you’re growing into a wonderful man, as well as a wonderful human being? I wish I could say that to you in words you could hear. I’ve tried. And I’ve done a pretty good job.

You know how to mow the lawn. You are a whiz at math, writing, literature, music–just about anything you set your mind to. You’re kind–I love watching you with my friends’ children and grandchildren. You’re respectful, even though you have a mind of your own. When we fight, we fight to find a solution, not to hurt each other. You know how to be part of a family. In a household as small as ours everyone plays an important role. And you play yours well. You’re amazing. I wish I could say that it was my doing, but you’ve always been that way. True, I’ve tried not to screw you up too badly, but you are who you are because that’s who you’ve always been. I just wish I was sure you understood what an incredible person–what an incredible man–you are. Do you? Do you really?

When you were little you worried that  some flaw in you had driven your dad away. “Maybe if I was lean..” you’d say. “Maybe if I liked football more…” “Maybe if my eyes were blue…” I don’t think that my explanation that people are who they are, and that if your dad’s love depended on those things the lack was his, not yours, soaked in. Maybe because secretly I was asking myself the same sorts of questions. Maybe if I were thin…maybe if I were blonde…maybe if I earned more money…maybe if I were better at sex…Maybe if I weren’t so smart…Maybe if I weren’t an artist…Maybe if I were funnier…maybe…maybe…maybe…

Maybe the truth was that some people just aren’t meant to be together not because they can’t be, but because relationships are hard, and they only work if at some point both parties see something irreplaceable in each other. I was with your dad because I wanted to be part of a family, I wanted to be loved and to love, he was funny, and it was better than being alone. He was with me because, hey, money and free sex. The things that made me unique weren’t things that he valued. And so we were better apart. All that happened before you ever came into the picture. The flaws were ours, not yours. He went on and found someone he loves, and who loved him. We went on and found Leroy. We found teachers. We found coaches. We found friends. Each of those good and caring men has helped you find something amazing in yourself. I hope you see those things for the gifts they are. I hope you realize that in our efforts to replace the gap not having a dad left in your life have in some ways challenged you to become more than you would perhaps have been otherwise. I don’t know. Woulda shoulda coulda.

There’s a saying that the people who best know what childhood should be are those who never had one. I suspect that not having a “real dad”–even though you’ve had a lot of good and kind men in your life–has taught you what a dad should be. You will have fortunate children. Happy Father’s Day, son. I love you.

Mom.

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