Smoke screen

 

I venture into my mother's condo for the first time in a while.

My nephew has occupied it for the summer, which is fine - it lowered our insurance premiums for a bit.  The problem was negotiating each time I wanted to go in to sort through my mother's stuff.  I didn't strictly have to, but everyone needs privacy.

With his departure, I can now drop in when the opportunity arises.  This first time, I limit myself to watering the plants.  

In my mother's tiny greenhouse on the balcony, I discover fifteen joint stubs in a tin.  I don't think this has anything to do with my nephew; I'm pretty damn sure this is his mother.

Last February, I caught Double Leo Sister lounging in a deck chair on the balcony, and firing up.

I explained to her at that time - gently, I think - that condo bylaws, pretty well across the province, prohibit smoking anywhere on the property, and that cannabis consumption, even gummies, is not allowed, period.  It's to do with insurance and property values, I think.

Double Leo Sister hasn't lived in a condo for seven years, and cheerfully told me she was unaware of the regulation.  Fair enough.  I didn't say anything about my bewilderment that someone who has lifelong issues with asthma - to the point of steroid treatment - would subject her lungs to smoke of any kind.  It was the eve of my mother's memorial service, and my sister is, after all, a Double Leo.  I'm not crazy.

I just hope my mother's neighbours don't bring it up.  What do I tell them?  That I've told my sister about the bylaw, and that she doesn't care?  I suppose she thinks she can afford not to care; she doesn't live here.  

But I do, and the inhabitants of my mother's condo will continue to be my neighbours, even after we've sold her unit.

I drown out my rage and resignation with music in my earbuds, which mitigates the silence and encroaching emptiness of my mother's home, as things vanish, bit by bit and piece by piece.  As she did in her final months.

Doing it for Demeter - Part Three

Demeter was advanced in years when she died, and made quite extensive notes about twenty years ago about her memorial service preferences.  It was a time when she was attending lots of memorial services at her church, and it must have been frequently on her mind.

As a result, it was much upon my mind as well, as she mailed documents and poems to our house in Hades.  I often thought fleetingly about what I might say at her memorial, and imagined it would be about my loss and how each of us loses a different person when a particular loved one dies, because we're all multifaceted in our relationships - never the same person to those around us.

I wrote about this in my blog a decade ago, when I attended the memorial of a friend's husband, and wondered at the varied perceptions of him, reflected in the testimonials. Which one was accurate?  All of them, in a way.

As it turned out, I, as the eldest child, was assigned Demeter's eulogy, and that's a different business, because it meant I had to tell my mother's life story in ten minutes, which didn't leave much room for going on about my own particular sense of loss.

I was actually pretty grateful for that.  I was also grateful for what I'd learned from being a hospice volunteer, and making family history presentations for BIFHSGO.

Hospice taught me many things, but chiefly, that grief may be universal, but it is not, by any means, identical, and varies wildly even within a single human experience.  I didn't journal at all in the week preceding and following my mother's death.  When my entries resumed, they contained a certain amount of sorrow, guilt, and rage -- not always, and not always at the same time.  Fortunately, I knew this was not abnormal, because a tenet at Hospice was:  "Anger is a secondary emotion."  

The primary emotion isn't always grief -- but it often is.

Doing presentations for a family history society is good preparation for taking on a eulogy.  You have to be organised, clear, reasonably entertaining, and accurate.  

But not too accurate.  That's why they call it a "eulogy".

So, just as I had for my presentations, I wrote in chunks, edited, and reshaped.  I read it out loud to myself, and timed it.  I pushed aside the rage and irritation, knowing it was the grief talking, and repeated to myself:  "I'm doing this for Demeter."

The rage and irritation was, of course, largely a result of how Double Leo Sister was manifesting her own grief, i.e. almost frantic over-busyness, not only wanting to run most of the memorial service, but fretting about emptying and cleaning up Demeter's condo.  (Demeter owned her condo outright, and there is no deadline to vacate it.)

DLS was anxious to bring friends with her from her up-Island community to help with the condo-clearing, friends whom I don't know, and who did not know our mother.

"You've done so much already; we want to take some of the burden off you," DLS declared.

I kept my retorts to myself.  I was doing this for Demeter.

I engaged in defensive condo-clearing ahead of my sister's arrival for the memorial service.  I knew I couldn't sort through everything on my own, but I had some idea of where Demeter's private and personal stuff -- her toiletries, her journals -- were stashed, and went in for ninety-minute sessions to dispose of some items and to ferry others out of the reach of relative strangers.  It made me feel better, anyway.

And I hit pay dirt.  Not only did I find photos, documents, and keepsakes that brought my mother's life more sharply into focus, but I found the Once Upon a Lifetime workbook, and an accompanying notebook - two items for which I'd been searching diligently since Demeter's death.

Still available online!

Back when I had two really young children, I had somehow snatched an opportunity to browse at Bolen Books one afternoon, when this item caught my eye. I believe I gave it to Demeter as a Mother's Day present. I was not prepared for how seriously she took it.

She meticulously answered each question (except for the military section - she didn't serve) over the next few years, using, as suggested, a supplementary notebook in order to go into detail.  She added and updated over the next decade.

I now had a tool to help me step away from myself and my perceptions, and steer the eulogy towards what she thought was important.  At least I hope I did.  She would have had some feedback and corrections.  Fair enough.  It's her story.

Delivering the eulogy promised an extra benefit.  My part would be first, after the minister's introduction and the lighting of the chalice.

So, I found myself, sitting in the front row of the sanctuary, listening to the pianist play "Suo Gan", and for the first time since my mother died, suddenly feeling overcome.  

I sternly put my tears aside.

I'm doing this for Demeter, I thought.

Swimming while sitting down

They've been experimenting with the occasional "light classical" playlist at the coffeehouse, a bit of a break from the boomer tunes, and nineties nostalgia. I half-listen while I work at "my" table, having stolen it back from another interloper in my bid to become The Coffeehouse Crank -- I have quite a bit of competition for that title. 

 I slowly become aware of the piece that's currently playing:

  

When I was very little, my mother would play classical music, the "programme" type, because she knew I loved stories; although I would add my own stories to the music, if none were available.

A favourite was Saint-Saëns' The Carnival of Animals (1886), for obvious reasons.  My mum would read out the comic verses that accompany each animal, composed by Ogden Nash in the late 1940s:

The swan can swim while sitting down/ For pure conceit he takes the crown.

He looks in the mirror, over and over/ And claims to have never heard of Pavlova.

Being four, my reaction was immediate and indignant:  "Mummy! Stop laughing!  The swan is sad!"

Now, I'm the one who's sad.

The music plays on.  She's everywhere and inextricably within.  Someday, this will be a comfort.

In my absence -- and hers

The year following a bereavement is littered with stumbling blocks. Holidays and anniversaries catch at you like brambles.

But you probably know this.

So this weekend is a double-whammy:  Mother's Day.  And younger daughter's birthday.  This is the fifth time since younger daughter's actual birth, that both have coincided, but it's the first one since Demeter died.

We'll be okay.  So far, we've made it through Demeter's birthday, St David's Day, Valentine's Day (the day of Demeter's memorial service), my birthday, and elder daughter's birthday.

We also made it through Easter.

I had just recovered from my very first cold in over six years. (There were a lot of things I missed during the pandemic; having colds wasn't on the list.  I bloody loved not having colds.)

This meant I didn't make it over to my mother's condo for more than five days, and on Good Friday, I was finally well enough to go and resume sorting through her things, and water her plants.

Evidently, her Christmas cacti didn't know that it was Easter.

Kept me afraid and cold

 Well, it's been a hell of a month.

February, once more, has maanaged to be the longest month, while being the shortest month. 

 I haven't quite summoned up the courage to weigh in on world events, nor the personal loss resulting from said events and my enraged response to them. 

Maybe later. 

 In the meantime, I was listening to one of my playlists while getting ready for the day and striving for some grace to shield myself, when this song came up. Is someone trying to tell me something? 

Relief grief

I was watching a documentary about Rita Moreno recently.

Filmed in 2018, at the time when she was celebrating her 87th birthday -  I should look so good now - we see her preparing to film an episode of the updated Latino version of the 1970s sitcom One Day at a Time.  She's breakfasting in her dressing room, watching the Ford/Kavanaugh hearings.

This is pertinent, because Moreno, as a very pretty, very young woman in 1950s Hollywood, experienced more than her share of sexual harassment, even violence.  This was, of course, considered a normal way for men to interact with women at the time, so the narrative wasn't a shock so much as a weary recognition.

What was a shock was the revelation at the end of the film, as Moreno reflects on her forty-eight-year marriage to Leonard Gordon, who died in 2010.  We'd just seen a series of images and films that seem to demonstrate the playful nature of their relationship, and heard her daughter and a family friend affectionately recalling their memories of the couple.

Then, the camera rests on Moreno, who pauses, and declares:  "No."

It was not a successful marriage, she tells us.  He was controlling.  I should have ended it sooner.  Yes, he was funny. Yes, he loved me.  Yes, he gave me my daughter.

She's asked if she felt relief when he died.

Long pause.

"Say 'no'," I found myself inwardly pleading.

The answer is yes.

Afterwards, I wondered why I didn't want her to feel relieved.

I think it's because I have experienced, not often, but more than once, the awkwardness of being a person officially in mourning for someone neither loved nor liked.  It is grief, please understand: grief for those I love who do feel the loss, and grief for that which had gone past repair years ago.

And that comfortable/uncomfortable paradox: relief.    

I hope my passing is mourned, not incessantly, but sincerely, and I especially hope that no one is relieved.  I don't know how realistic that is.                                                 

Because I knew you

I sent the Christmas cards early this year, and felt that now annual pang, editing the list, sometimes removing a name, sometimes reducing the names from two to one. 

I met Caitlin in university, through a mutual friend.  She had a thoughtful energy that fitted her in well with our circle, which, up until then, had been mostly made up from those of us who had attended the same high school. She was slightly older, but looked younger.

As we drew closer, she had a front-row seat to the very beginning of my relationship with the Resident Fan Boy.  On the day I married him, she drove me to the church, because I didn't want a fancy car, just a sensible, kind, and dependable friend.

She moved miles away, up to the northern coast of British Columbia.  She married a younger fella, and I was delighted to attend her wedding in Victoria.  They set about building a home in the small community where she taught, and having two carefully-spaced children, as blond as her husband and herself.  I saw her every couple of years, as long as she had family in our area.

After I moved to Hades, I saw her once, when she accompanied her son on a school field trip to the Nation's Capital.  I had lived there less than a year, and was still in culture shock.

I did not know then that I would not see her again.  Not long after her trip east, she developed ovarian cancer.  She'd caught it early and fought it off.  A few years later, it returned, and once again, she prevailed, taking advantage of early detection and good medical advice.

About two years ago -- dammit -- it came back.  My heart sank, but hers didn't.

She set up a blind e-mail for those of us who wanted updates, always written with cheerful and realistic optimism, detailing the latest treatments and giving family news.

Finally, the message I'd been dreading:  her physician was discontinuing her medication because it wasn't adding to the quality of her life, nor to the length of it.  Even then her quiet buoyancy tempered the news.  The cancer was slow-growing and although the prognosis was a couple of months, she had hopes of making it to her daughter's wedding in the spring.

She was gone within three weeks.

I found out in that twenty-first century way; I opened up Facebook one evening, and saw a beautiful recent portrait of her, then realized it had been posted by her family.

A friendship is, by its very nature, symbiotic, though I can't say what my contribution to it was.  Steadfastness?  Loyalty?  I'm pretty good at those.

Caitlin was a model for me, of grace, good manners, and patience.  I bought an SLR camera when I saw her pictures of northern BC.  She guided me to a counselling centre, when I had the crushing realization that I was not what my future in-laws had in mind for their precious son, and there, I learned, at least intellectually, that this didn't matter.  Caitlin's acceptance helped enormously.

I listen to the words of "For Good" from the 2003 Broadway musical Wicked, written and composed by Stephan Schwartz (responsible for, among other things, Godspell), and based on Gregory Maguire's "origin" novel.  It's not a perfect fit; the characters of Elphaba and Glinda, the late-adolescent/young-adult versions of the Wicked Witch of the West, and the Good Witch of the North, are "frenemies".  Caitlin was my friend, period.

However, much of this song rings true. And I should have told her, while she was still on the planet.

In this version, Idina Menzal and Kristin Chenoweth, who created the characters on Broadway, are singing about a dozen years later.

Let the world turn without you

 In an up-Island hospital, Double Leo Sister was ministering to her best friend in all the world, smoothing the cracked skin of her hands and feet with lotion, while singing softly from Jesus Christ Superstar:  

Try not to get worried/ Try not to turn on to problems that upset you/ Don't you know everything's alright, yes, everything's fine?/ And we want you to sleep well tonight/ Let the world turn without you tonight/  If we try, we'll get by, so forget all about us tonight.

Sleep and I shall soothe you, calm you and anoint you/ Myrrh for your hot forehead/ And you'll feel everything's alright, yes, everything's fine/ And it's cool and the ointment's sweet/ For the fire in your head and feet/ Close your eyes, close your eyes, and relax; think of nothing tonight.

It was a song from their shared late childhood, a song as old as their friendship, begun when they were both twelve, continuing through adolescence, marriages, children.  Four weddings between them, one for each decade.  For each ceremony, one served as the chief attendant for the other.  Their lives were spent mostly in distant communities, the connection unbroken.

The Best Friend, always suspicious of mainstream medicine, finally was drawn to her local hospital by the belief she had COVID.  It turned out to be late-stage lymphoma.  Best Friend quickly deteriorated, as Double Leo Sister drove the 500 miles to be with her.  Well, her husband the Jolly Not-so-green Giant did the driving.  DLS was far too distraught.

DLS stroked on the lotion, singing, and was startled when her best friend burst out, with surprising force and energy (and on-key):

Woman, your fine ointment, brand-new and expensive/ Could have been saved for the poor/ Why has it been wasted? We could have raised maybe three hundred silver pieces or more! /People who are hungry, people who are starving/ Matter more than your feet and hair!

A few weeks later, the world turned without her.

Here's the song, as performed in the 2012 "Arena Tour" revival, by Mel C., Ben Forster, and Tim Minchin:

Proximity

A CBC News photo from Gilmour Street

Awaking to two texts from one's daughter in Ottawa, saying she's safe, but shaken, is an effective way to banish sleepiness in a hurry.

She's safe? Wait a minute. She was in danger?

I quickly checked my newsfeeds, and learned there had been a shooting this morning, on Gilmour Street in downtown Ottawa. This is two blocks north of elder daughter's office.

At 7:30 am EST, elder daughter had not yet left her apartment, a ten-minute walk away. Police had cordoned areas off, and her office wasn't fully operational for another couple of hours. In the interim, the now ever-present barrage of fuzzy social media reports: "Multiple victims" "Active shooter" "Suspect at large" Rather like that ghastly October morning five years ago, when no one knew what was happening, and terror froze everything.

It seems to have been at an Airbnb. Four young men, unknown to the surrounding neighbours: one dead, three seriously injured, including a fifteen-year-old. The neighbours suspect a gang incident. The police are describing it as a "targeted attack", which apparently means everyone else is safe. Really?

This is on top of the agonizing ripples of bereavement affecting nearly every sizeable city across Canada, as the identities of the sixty or so Canadians aboard last night's doomed flight out of Iran are revealed.

My daughter told me she was safe this morning. So many families can't say that this evening.

The demise of an accent snob

The rain has held off, so the streets near our house were hissing with fallen leaves.  In some places, they had been ground to a fine powder by passing feet.

One late afternoon, I made my way in the fading golden light, past two small boys bagging glossy horse chestnuts with their dad.  I pushed on until I had the Strait of Juan de Fuca in view.  There was a mist below the setting sun (or a fire?). Across the strait, long puffy clumps of cloud were draped over the Olympic Mountains, which rose above a calm stretch of silver.  I felt tension in my face, and realized that I was grinning.

I turned and there were dozens of dogs, trotting, cavorting, and sniffing up and down the Dallas Road path, and I remembered how I'd dreamt of living here again -- and walking the Accent Snob by the sea. The feeling of longing and loss washed over me like a wave.

Some weeks ago, my cell phone rang as I walked younger daughter up Fort Street to the Dutch Bakery.

"It's today," elder daughter choked, standing in a veterinary examination in Hades. "I didn't think it would be today."

I did, I thought to myself, as younger daughter and I maneuvered a crosswalk.  I wasn't going to tell elder daughter that.  Apparently, the vet, on being told that the Accent Snob was having a good day, responded, "Oh, dear..."

Elder daughter needed to do the paperwork, so I told her that I was available when she needed me, and we rung off.  Younger daughter and I took our seats in the café, and I told her that the Accent Snob had come to the end of his eighteen-year-old life. 

The Accent Snob was still alive at that point, but I wasn't going to tell younger daughter that.

Younger daughter's eyes filled with tears, and she took out her compact mirror, repairing the damage, and weeping quietly.

Text from elder daughter:  "They've sedated him."  I waited, knowing it was only a manner of minutes.

When my phone rang again, elder daughter was on the floor beside our old roué, still wanting to scratch his ears.

With younger daughter crying quietly across the table, and elder daughter sobbing in my ear, there was no time for my own tears.  I told elder daughter how brave she'd been, and how well she had cared for the old boy in his two final years.

The next day, we engaged in that very twenty-first-century form of grieving - posting photos of the Accent Snob online, and receiving condolence messages, mostly referring to the Rainbow Bridge.  Elder daughter texted me that she'd made the mistake of Googling the term.  Curious, I did the same - even though I've been aware of the expression for years.

It turns out that it's from a "poem" (really a mini-essay set out like a poem) that's been around for about twenty to twenty-five years.  It's a bit on the precious side - be my guest and look it up - but in these days, when people refer to their animals as "furry children", it seems to strike a chord.

I am on record as being against comparing pets to children.  The Accent Snob was a dog, not my child.  We loved him dearly, but we put his food on the floor and took him outside to pee.

And anyway, aren't dogs colour-blind?  Maybe the Rainbow Bridge is a spectrum of smells, leading to a land beyond pain, fear, and skateboards, where the Accent Snob always has someone to play Tug-of-War with him, and he can eat all the pizza he likes.

A cold and friendless time

Nineteen years ago, when the move to Hades was looming, and the Resident Fan Boy was transferring, I'd take younger daughter to a gym class at the Y, while elder daughter was in school.  It was a fairly unstructured class, more of a playtime.  I'd hover while younger daughter climbed, and half-listen to a tape of Disney classic songs that played at each session.

There was one song, though, that, even if I couldn't quite hear the lyrics, always brought me to the edge of tears.  I'd swallow them back, and attend to the task at hand.


I'd never seen Pete's Dragon; it was one of those kids' films that post-dated my childhood, and predated my motherhood. (I did see the 2016 remake with younger daughter, and remember next to nothing of it.)

Listening to it today,  I'm just as glad I couldn't make out all the lyrics.  Mind you, back then, I probably wouldn't have realized how apt they were - although I think a part of me knew.  It's that desperate promise every mother longs to keep: that she'll always support you, guide you, never leave you.  Sometimes, she can manage it for the first fleeting years, but children can't be shielded forever.

I'll never let you go.

We have to, eventually.  It's the point of the exercise.

Grief encounter

Nurses, I find, tend to be tough-love care-givers, with strong streak of skepticism and a sense of humour as dark as dried blood. I've worked with them as a youthful home support work, and as a hospice volunteer, and rather liked knowing where I was with them, even if it was a bit uncomfortable from time-to-time.

I ran into an ex-hospice-nurse last week. Our paths have crossed once or twice in the past few months, but she didn't seem to recognize me, so I didn't waylay her -- after all, I was just one of hundreds of volunteers. I remembered her as a mother of young children, with a grim set to her mouth (which may have been scar tissue), and a no-holds-barred way of speaking which was disconcerting even by nursing standards. I like her well enough, but was wary of her jarring candour.

I was striding up the aisle in a smallish drugstore, and I nearly ran straight into her. She greeted me by name, so she clearly remembered me, and as we caught up, I realized she wasn't aware I'd been out of the city for seventeen years.

Not that it mattered. Her husband died a couple of years ago. He had a neurological disease, and being an LPN himself, didn't want to stick around for the inevitable, so he committed suicide. All this related matter-of-factly, of course.

Since we were both hospice veterans, I found myself casting around for the training I'd been given years ago. The volunteers were trained in what was called "active listening". The point is to feed back what you're hearing, so that the speaker can hear what you're understanding. It's actually a pretty exhausting way to listen, and I'm out of practice, which is a shame, because it's a useful skill.

She spoke of the toughness of the second year of loss: "During the first year, there was such a lot to do, to iron out. Now I feel his absence. I wish ---" She pauses, and grimaces. I remember that about her. "I wish I knew where he was. My children dream about him. I guess I don't because he's in my conscious mind all the time, and dreams come from your subconscious. I wish I could feel him."

I say, "The older I get, the more I think that every gift we're given will be taken back."

That's not active listening. But I feel a nasty jolt of truth when I say it. Probably not helpful for her.

She embraces me as we say goodbye. She says she's seen me many times. Perhaps as many times as I've seen her?

When doves fly

Younger daughter held back, gazing raptly at the beautiful old-fashioned wooden cage containing twenty-one doves.

In the closing moments of the memorial service, after the eulogies, poems, and slideshow, the guests had stepped out into a beautiful and temperate afternoon, facing Georgia Strait.

The "dove-wrangler" told us the doves would return to their home in Qualicum Bay, and drew out two doves for the two young-adult children of the poetry man to hold. The doves looked like soft white feathery ships; held firmly in two hands, their heads poked up like periscopes and swiveled, blinking.

The lady invited the other hesitant guests to come forward, and she saw the longing in younger daughter's eyes. Unfortunately, the first bird pooped on younger daughter's hands, so the handler passed it on. The second dove struggled in younger daughter's uncertain grip, and broke free in a fluttering burst, wheeling away home.

The dove-handler calmly handed younger daughter a third dove and asked someone to cover its head to lull it. I step forward to do so, and those of us with the remaining twenty doves waited for the signal.

Later, young daughter gazed over the water.
"He was kind to me," she said.

That deadly piper

When I rose yesterday morning, there was a birthday reminder from one of my online calendars, and my heart lurched. It was the birthday of a recently deceased friend.

Two weeks ago, word came from a mutual friend that the poetry man had died two weeks before that. The length of time between his departure and its announcement in an email from the university department where he'd worked, the lack of an obituary, and the knowledge that the poetry man had battled depression for years all seem to indicate a suicide.

I felt punched, bruised, numbed. The only clues I had to my feelings on the matter were strange, intermittent leakages of tears as I fired off a brief and, I hope, compassionate email to his estranged wife, to let her know that I'd heard. She's someone I've known since adolescence, and it's entirely in her character to keep a discreet silence, shielding their vulnerable children.

Eventually, I moved to the bookshelves in the study, and pulled out a baggie of poems, sent to me, at my request, some time after we left for Ottawa, when I first learned that the poetry man wrote poems. I remember my relief when I first read them and realized that they were good.

The poetry man was a gracious fellow with a gentle, erudite Alabaman accent. Even before I knew he was a poet, I was always struck by his measured and lyrical way of speaking. He introduced me to the novels of William Faulkner, each one a challenge, each one not like any of the others.

While I may not have been quite as enthusiastic about Faulkner as he was, he and I did share an appreciation for the Hooters. I sat up for a while, listening to a couple of my favourites, including this one, which turns out to be about suicide.


Surrender into the night,
Silently take my hand.
Nobody knows what's inside us,
Nobody understands.
They handed us down a dream,
To live in this lonely town.
But nobody hears the music,
Only the echo of a hollow sound.

Where do the children go,
Between the bright night and darkest day?
Where do the children go,
And who's that deadly piper who leads them away?

Together we make our way,
Passengers on a train.
Whisper a secret forever,
Promises in the rain. No, whoa...
We're leaving it all behind,
While castles are falling down.
We're going where no one can find us.
And if there's a heaven,
We'll find it somehow.

(Bazilian/Hyman)

Irrevocable

It's irrevocably January.  I rummaged in the early morning darkness of our study, and caught myself trying to make out the outline of the Christmas tree which isn't there.  Not much later, I stood at the bedroom window and watched the city worker dragging the corpses of our neighbour's tree and our own -- still beautifully shaped and bushy -- to the waiting truck where he pushed a lever and they were sucked out of sight.

Early yesterday morning, I was still in bed when the Resident Fan Boy shuffled in from the bathroom and informed me that David Bowie had died.  Like millions of others, I didn't believe it.  Bowie had been all over the internet; he'd just had a birthday and an album released.  As the news was confirmed, I thought: Well, he'd know how to keep his illness private.  (Evidently, by telling people on a need-to-know basis.  And few people needed to know.)

The day was spent like many others spent it:  elder daughter got a Bowie playlist off Spotify and, being a millennial, downloaded Labyrinth to watch on her laptop in her bedroom.  I resorted to YouTube, because I don't actually own any Bowie albums; I liked his music, but not enough to purchase it.  I was therefore astonished at how sad I felt. I suppose it really hit me yesterday how ubiquitous Bowie was:  his music was everywhere, his influence was pervasive.  If you look at any rundown of his long career -- and those were all over the news -- you see a long stretch of collaborations that put him into close contact with most of the successful rock musicians of the past forty years.

However, he's also etched into the memories of those of us who will never be famous.  I remember classmates dressing like him, I attended countless wedding receptions blaring "Modern Love", saw television shows based on his songs.  One of the first YouTube videos I sought out was "Suffragette City", a favourite dance tune at the "SUB Pub", in the basement of the Student Union Building at the University of Victoria.

I've always been a bit of a rule-follower, so I felt a rebellious thrill in shouting out "AAaaaaaaw.....WHAM BAM THANK YOU MA'AM!" (The blond dancer is none other than Montreal's own Louise Lecavalier of LA LA LA Human Steps - Eduard Lock choreographed this particular 1990 tour.)

I looked up another one of my favourite Bowie songs. This is "Blue Jeans" from the comical short film "Jazzin' for Blue Jeans" - in which Bowie plays a loser called Vic trying to impress a pretty girl by taking her to see a drug-addled rock star named Screaming Lord Byron -- also played by Bowie.

The 20-minute film from which this is taken is mildly amusing, but it's fun to watch Bowie take pot-shots at himself.

However, I liked Bowie best in collaboration. After Freddy Mercury's death, an epic memorial concert was held for him at Wembley Stadium on Easter Monday, April 20th, 1992 - this was three days before elder daughter was born. Heavily pregnant, I watched tributes from Extreme and Lisa Stansfield - yes, I know.

The whole atmosphere of the concert changed when Bowie took over for his segment, which started with "Under Pressure", which he had written and recorded with Queen in 1981. This is Bowie's performance with Annie Lennox. It nearly blew me off the bed; I can't imagine what it was like to have been there.

If you listen carefully, you can hear the Wembley audience recreating Mercury's scat-singing perfectly.

Elder daughter, in utero, must have wondered what the noise was when I saw Ian Hunter taking the stage next. I'm a massive Mott the Hoople fan, even when not nearly nine months pregnant, and I understand that Joe Elliot and Phil Collen of Def Leppard are as well. You can see them singing back-up to "All the Young Dudes" (written by Bowie and Mott's greatest hit), and looking as if they were the ones who had died and gone to heaven. Playing guitar is Mick Ronson, a musician strongly associated with with both Bowie and Hunter. A little over a year later, he would be dead of liver cancer, which is what eventually killed Bowie himself.

If you've taken the opportunity to watch the whole video, you'll see that Bowie finished the set with another of my favourites, "Heroes". Looking back nearly 24 years, I wondered how his sudden kneeling to recite the Lord's Prayer would have been received by the largely atheistic London audience of today, even when delivered by the likes of Bowie.

Bowie sang of heaven in his final video "Lazarus", which is being described in the press and online as a "final gift to his fans". I don't know about that; it looks more like something Bowie was working through for himself, using his art as a palliative. I was far more spooked by the haunting ten minutes of "Blackstar", which starts with the remains of an astronaut who could be Major Tom of "Space Oddity" from 1970, and moves through images of shaking suffering interspersed with a sort of "Rites of Spring" dancing. At the 4:45 mark, the song shifts into a tune that is more identifiable as a Bowie song, and we see three scarecrows who resemble Jesus and the two thieves at Golgotha (which is supposed to mean "place of the skull").

Mesmerized and disturbed by the images, I was startled when it all faded away. Rather like Bowie himself.

It's a bleak way to begin the new year, but here in Hades, January is always bleak. Perhaps it is better to follow David Bowie's example. Hold on to what is yours, even if that something is pain and suffering - keep it private and precious, and share it only with those closest to you.

Then, make it as beautiful as you can and share it with the world.

Does the name Custer mean anything to you?

When Robin Williams died a couple of weeks ago, Facebook and Twitter and all those other social-media-type-things were abuzz, mostly with clichés.  Hey, people in grief aren't that original and besides, everyone was in a hurry to post something.  You could tell how old the posters were from the nature of their tweets.  Since most people on Twitter are under 40, the most repeated sentiment was: "Part of my childhood has gone!"

Anyone who reads this blog - I know there are at least half a dozen of you - will have guessed by now that I'm not under 40.  When I think of Robin Williams, I think of his stand-up, and my favourite memory is a crack he made, several times, in 1986.  Well, I don't blame him, it was a classic. I first heard it when he was performing in London, some sort of Royal Variety thing, with the Prince and Princess of Wales in the Royal Box.  During his routine, he kept ducking under the balcony to hiss conspiratorially to the audience:  "Are they laughing?"

In a routine mostly about current events, he imagined Lester Maddox, the ex-governor of Georgia, being asked to intervene with then-South-African Prime Minister PW Botha:  "Mr Botha, there are three million whites and fourteen million blacks in your country.  Does the name Custer mean anything to you?"

For the full impact, you really have to hear it in a Georgian drawl.  I've search all over and can't find this clip, but I found Robin performing before Prince Charles and his current wife in 2008:  

After a long wait for a non-clichéd tribute to Robin Williams, Billy Crystal finally broke his silence and delivered this eloquent elegy at the close of the annual In Memoriam for the Emmy Awards last week.

I have nothing to add.  Clearly, unlike the rest of us, Billy Crystal actually knew Robin Williams.

Purgatory for fascists

We're entering into what I think of as The Birthday Season at our house. My birthday is in a few days, followed immediately by that of elder daughter, then a host of friends' and family birthdays in early May, including that of younger daughter. Just before that, before we topple into the topography of Taurus, we trip over the hurdle of a troubling birthday which is today. I mean, elder daughter was born on Shakespeare's birthday (or what is assumed to be, based on the day of his christening three days later) which is nifty. I was born on Lenin's birthday which is considerably more ambiguous, but what about someone born today? Today is Hitler's birthday. I suppose you could concentrate on other much nicer people born today, but he's a heck of a person with whom to share your day, isn't he? Actually, one of my favourite songs is about Hitler, but to explain why, I have to back up a bit:

For some years, I was a volunteer at Hospice Victoria. Being a volunteer meant attending a lot of workshops, and we were well versed in the Kübler-Ross Model, otherwise known as the Five Stages (of Dying, of Grief, of Loss, etc.). We learned that the five stages didn't just apply to death and bereavement; you experience the stages every day, sometimes within seconds:
"I can't have lost my keys!" (Disbelief)
"Dammit! Where are the *&$%# keys?" (Anger)
"Please, not today..." (Bargaining)
"Well, this blows everything..." (Depression)
"I'll meet so-and-so from work, get his keys and then figure out what to do." (Acceptance)

I read somewhere a few days ago that Elisabeth Kübler-Ross's model is now losing its hallowed status, as many people apparently recover from loss without the long period of "grief work" that the five stages imply. I don't know; the theory always made sense to me. Kübler-Ross went into a rather odd stage after she became well-known, where she was interested in the afterlife. Not that it's odd to be interested in the after-life, but she seemed to be under the spell of some character named Jay Barham who was one of those people who claimed to channel dead spirits. I remember reading a magazine article (I think it was in Mother Jones) where the interviewer was asking her questions about this and sounded very baffled and bewildered, as Kübler-Ross said how every soul is redeemable. Naturally, the interviewer came up with the old war-horse: "What about Hitler?"

Now, I'm trying to paraphrase this from memory alone, so I'll probably get it wrong, but she answered something like this: that Hitler would be brought to a place where he could see, and come to understand, the consequences of what he had done.

This fuzzily-remembered idea has haunted me for years. At the Resident Fan Boy's church, they used to have a pre-confession prayer. I say "used to", because churches seem to be phasing out confession and saying you're sorry. Anyway, they used to say: "Some sins are plain to us; some escape us; some we cannot face." So, try to imagine being made aware not only of what you've done wrong, but of what you've done wrong that you didn't know was wrong. Is that purgatory? Or is that hell? We all wound others without being aware of it. Oh geez...

Back in the days when I still had LaunchCast, I was sent a song by John Wesley Harding (who was born Wesley Stapes), called "Hitler's Tears". I've tried to find a way of embedding or linking the actual song here (it appears in Why We Fight, and in a slower more acoustic form in The Garden of Eden), but the best I can do is an Amazon sample that gives you thirty seconds. (Update:  someone has posted it on YouTube -- but for how long?) 

I don't know if I understand the song at all, but whenever I hear it, I think of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, who moved into the afterlife about seven years ago, standing with her hand on the shoulder of Hitler as he's made to look beyond the veil of unknowing that protects us all. And he's sobbing. I also wonder if you looked into the heart of every dictator, would you find the face of a broken-hearted little boy?

Hitler's Tears

One man's tears stain the pillow
Where he used to lay his head
She's left him for another man
So how come they're both sleeping in his bed?
He can hardly sleep for misery
You can hear him catch his breath
He grinds his teeth into the night
And God says "Hey, Adolf, are you all right?"

One boy's tears stain the paper
Where he writes his Christmas list
And he inks in broken German
"Send me the skill of a fine artist."
Then he wipes out half a continent
With a flick of his wrist
He's so lonely, so misunderstanding
As he pulls his blanket across the landing

You can hear them falling every day (Hitler's tears)
Just open up the newspaper (Hitler's tears)
You can hide, there's no escape from Hitler's tears--
Just what makes the Führer blue?
He's crying for you

One man's tears--he was fascist
Before it was cool
'Cause now it's so expected
Just accept it that power is cruel
So he'll apply for reinstatement
Using new reincarnation rules
'Cause he's the only man, most certainly
Who could claim to have learned from history

Hitler cries himself to sleep, alone in Brazil, no one calls
How must it feel to be the biggest loser of them all?

One man's tears--salt water salutes the final trip
A thousand naughty Nazis
A fraülein with a bullwhip
A lullaby of Über Alles
A shaking upper lip
It's all become a Whitehall farce
That's how we tear our fears apart
But you shouldn't take it straight to heart
So the rest of us can get some sleep tonight
-John Wesley Harding (Wesley Stace)

The Silence is Rest

My half-brother was found dead in his fetid apartment in England today. He had been dead for several days. I never met him; he did not learn of my existence until seven years ago. I only spoke to him during two endless long-distance phone-calls where I mostly listened in helpless bewilderment to his incoherent grief, rage and despair.

But blood goes deep. Blood goes beyond knowledge. I am diminished by his loss, the current loss and the ongoing loss that was the final two decades of his life.

This isn't why I haven't written for nearly two months. It is why I have little to write today. I will endeavour to do better.