Pathos, Eros, and Aramis

 [This will be posted as a Silken On Sex podcast episode in the near future]

The weather is California cliche: the sun is bright, the sky is a cloudless blue. The scent of California bay and eucalyptus waft by on a sea breeze. Children splash in the pool. Laughter bounces around the courtyard.

From my chair on the balcony I try to extend my senses, to feel something -- anything -- but what I’m feeling now.

Pathos.

I am doing my best to be present with my body, to understand how this pathos feels, not just emotionally, but physically.

Right now, it feels under-oxygenated. My breath is shorter, faster. It no longer fills my center. My muscles are tight. Twitchy. Restless. My shoulders ride higher, up near my ears.  I feel it in my gut, too, the tightness. An ache has settled in my chest, my eyes. It is a long list.

This is what anxiety and anguish feels like in the flesh.

In my head, it feels like being small and afraid in the face of uncertainty. Trapped. Cut-off. Cornered. I feel like I must act, must do something, anything. But what?

And so I remind myself to breathe.

Life is uncertain, and no amount of resistance to that fact is going to change Reality. Reality is mutable, transient, turbulent. Unpredictable. And yet, it is what it is.

Accept, my mind says. But my body betrays emotional resistance.

I figured that my sisters and I would grow old together, the three of us. The Three Musketeers. I thought we’d be hard-of-hearing old ladies sitting on the back porch swing, laughing until we had to pee, talking about the good old days with Grandmother, the rides down the hill in our little red wagon, and riding horses on the mesa in Colorado. I thought we’d go on vacations, bicycle rides for three, and scold grandchildren.  Then one sister died in 2008 after a long illness, and I revised that dream to just the two of us. But today, the likelihood of my baby sister surviving to my age is slim, never mind to old age. And I feel. A lot of things.

I know we all die. And I know it isn’t anything to be afraid of. I got that, really got it, when I was holding my grandfather’s hand as he exhaled the last bits of himself two years ago.  I understand the beauty of the life-cycle, the transitory nature of it, the glory of a life well-lived. You could say that I am at peace with Death.

But to die young, ah. To lose someone in the prime of life. To watch them hunch in on themselves with pain. The pain of living. Of breathing. Of being. I can handle it. Watching someone die from cancer isn’t a new experience for me. But I’m not enjoying it. It is very stressful on everyone. Especially my sister.

Underneath it all, I’m sad for me. And for her kids. And for our parents — who will have to deal with out-living another of their children.

Life is. And quite often these days, life is Pathos.

Eros and Aramis.

Citrus, cinnamon, and sandalwood: the scent of his Aramis cologne envelops me as Gabriel’s arms do. I rest my forehead against his shoulder and breathe him into me. He always seems to know when I’m in that place, that overwhelmed, anxious and impatient place. He hugs me hard, his arms forming a tight band that pops my back. A welcome release.

“You’re cold,” he murmurs against my ear. “How can you be cold? It’s over 80 degrees out here.”

“I’ve forgotten warmth,” I mutter back, dispirited and exhausted. And cold. I’ve been sleeping with the electric blanket on. In Summer.

He steps backward, holding me at arm's length. He starts to say something, but his eyes are riveted on my breasts. My nipples. Bra-less and cold, my nipples were already hard, but his nearness, the scent of him, have added additional length.

His hand reaches toward my right breast, thumb grazing the nipple. His touch sparks through me, little electric arrows racing along my nerve-endings, dissipating the fog of despair wrapped around me like a comforter. I feel!

Another brush of his thumb and I gasp and sway, my eyes closing. So good. So sweet. Pleasure is so life-affirming.

He steps nearer, his hand never leaving my breast. I can feel the warmth radiating from him. I tilt my face up to his, eyes closed, like a flower following the sun. My mouth trembles with a sad smile and tears well up under my eyelids.

“Make love to me,” I ask him, implore him. “Make me feel alive.”

He steps around me. Pulls the hair away from my neck and brushes my skin with his shadow.  A sharp, hissing intake of my breath. I feel that! Mmmmm… yes!

His arms encircle me, one around my shoulders, the other, my midriff. He draws me backwards, off the balcony, and guides me down onto the persian carpet. With feather-light kisses and touches he opens my blouse, exposing my breasts.

More tears at his gentleness. I need this.

When his mouth closes over my erect nipple, my entire body vibrates with erotic energy. My pathos subsides beneath a tide of Aramis-scented eros as I surrender to a new feeling: I’m alive!

So gloriously fucking alive!

*  *  *

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Two years ago today

Two years ago today, my 38 year old sister suffered the massive brain hemorrhage which is the official cause of her death. She went to the emergency room complaining of a Very Bad Headache. It was one of more than 20 visits to that hospital in the previous year, and thinking it was just more of the agony related to pancreatitis-induced malnutrition, they sent her home with a prescription for Tylenol #3. A few hours later she was back at the hospital, this time, in a coma. On the morning of January 8th, she was declared brain dead. At the time of her death she weighed 80#, down 100# from two years previous. Photos of her that New Years Eve show an ethereal pixie. She glowed, as if the barrier that held her life-force within her had thinned considerably. Egg-shell thin. She knew she was dying. She'd been on hospice care for months. She'd already said her goodbyes, and asked everyone to let her go. "I'm so tired," she said at Thanksgiving. "I'm ready to go be with Mom."

Today, I can write this without sobbing uncontrollably. The tears are there, yes, hovering under my eyelids, threatening to spill, but they break the surface tension one at a time, these tears, rolling slowly down my cheeks. I miss her. God how I miss her. But I'm not angry any more, just terribly sad. I thought we'd grow old together, me and her, be two weird old ladies together, laughing until we needed to pee, helping each other down the steps, chastising our other sister's grandchildren and great-grandchildren for being, well, children.

I suppose we'll still grow old together, in my mind. But for now she is still young, glowing with that terrible beauty I've only seen in those near death, smiling her little girl smile, and giggling.

Miss you, sis.

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Say what you need to say

I am enjoying my life in San Francisco. I am writing, recording, and enjoying the beautiful weather. I have a fun and interesting companion and we go on adventures together. I am happy. I am doing my best to live life fully, with my heart wide open to everyone I meet.

My companion and I watched the movie The Bucket List earlier today. As the final credits rolled and the song Say What You Mean To Say Played, he said, "Maybe we should make bucket lists."

Have no fear of giving in... Have no fear of giving over...

"Sure," I said.

You better know that in the end... Its better to say too much... Than never to say what you need to say again...

"But I'd rather make lists of things I want to do in the next 2 to 5 years."

Even if your hands are shaking... And your faith is broken... Even as the eyes are closing...

"Why is that?" he asked.

Do it with a heart wide open... Say what you need to say...

"Because I don't want to be one of those people who makes a list of things I want to do before I die and then die before I get around to doing it."

Say what you need to say... Say what you need to say...

I miss my sister. I miss my sister. I miss my sister. I miss my sister. I miss my sister. I miss my sister. I miss my sister. I miss my sister. I miss my sister. I miss my sister. I miss my sister. I miss my sister. I miss my sister. I miss my sister. I miss my sister. I miss my sister. I miss my sister. I miss my sister. I miss my sister. I miss my sister.

Say what you need to say... Say what you need to say...

I miss my sister. And some days... some days it feels like I've got to live my life fully enough for two.

Say what you need to say... Say what you need to say...

Miss you, little sis.


AND Thank you so much for the trip to Japan, sweetie. My sister always wanted to go there.


Ah, much better. I said what I needed to say.

Visitations

I thought I was reconciled to my sister's death. It has been 14 months now, and I thought I'd accepted it, as I accepted Grandfather's death a few months ago. I thought I was at peace. Until I woke up sobbing this morning.

I had a heartbreaking dream. At the end of it, Tammy said, "I don't want you or Terri to come see me anymore," and then walked away from me. She was so slender and frail she was nearly transparent in the sunlight. I said, "Please Tammy, lets talk about this." She kept walking, her blonde hair a halo of light. "Why won't you talk about it?" I followed her and she went around a car, putting it between us. "There is nothing left to say," she said. In my dream, her words hit me like a blow to the chest. "How can you say that?" I cried out to her. "We're so young! We can't spend the rest of our lives not talking." I saw her moving on the other side of the car. She bent down to look at me through a window and I did the same. When she spoke, the world cracked, throwing me into wakefulness and tears. "There is nothing left to say. I'm dead."

I sobbed in the shower. Huge, body-wracking sobs. I don't know that I've ever cried like that before, though I'd seen it. She cried like that when we finally got to Hawaii to bury Mom. I miss her so much. Every day. Where Grandfather was, there is a place of peace and acceptance. But where Tammy was, there is emptiness, sadness. I try to remember good things, happy things. I remember the summers spent so near where I am living now: playing in the redwoods, swinging in hammocks, legs dangling high up in the plum trees eating not-quite-ripe fruit until we were sick. I try to fill that empty space with beauty, but its often sucked away like water in sand, leaving me aching.

My lover held me as I cried. Said it was ok when I apologized for alarming him. I told him I missed Tammy so much and he kissed me and said, "You tried so hard... You did everything you could... She chose to go."

Yes, she chose to go. I know. Her life became nothing but pain and shadows and she let go. She became the angel my niece talks about all the time, the Auntie who took her on magic carpet rides and keeps her company when her mommy is 3000 miles away. I have Tammy's ashes in a box with a teddybear that smells like Grandmother for company. But that is what remained of her body. Where is her spirit? WHERE IS MY SISTER?

I'm pretty sanguine about the Big Unanswerables. Most of the time it is enough just to be able to frame the questions and recognize which ones can be answered empirically and which ones cannot. And most of the time, I let the Unanswerables go and focus on what can be solved. I thought I'd let this one go, but my subconscious served it up to me once again. I guess that is part of the grieving process. I just hope it doesn't clobber me so hard next time ;)

Halloween

Halloween!
Portland is crawling with people in costumes. Hundreds of scantily-clad women walking around, turning my head and that of my guest. He and I have different tastes in women, but we still enjoy looking and comparing notes. Since he did not have a costume and was not certain he was up to HOWL or the Erotic Ball, we went instead to the Bagdad Theater in the Hawthorne District. We got our pizza and pitcher of beer and watched a hysterically funny movie.

Halloween!
Tammy's birthday. God how I miss her. God how I tried to save her. Some find comfort in thinking that she has gone on to another, better place, but that comfort is a luxury I cannot seem to buy into. The only certainty in life is death and there is no comfort in that. She is gone 10 months now and it feels like the ache of loss will never go away. I know it will, eventually. I know this, but there is no comfort in that knowledge either, just immense sadness and a pervasive sense of failure. I think, in some ways, it is this sense of failure that drives me south, this feeling of having failed my sister and my family and myself.

Thanksgiving!
I am giving up my life here in Portland to move to California, where I will be near my loved ones. The feeling of relief once I made that choice was profound. The emotions are complex. Do I sense within myself hope for redemption for this imagined sin of failing to keep my sister alive? Who knows? In a few moments it is the Day of the Dead. It seems fitting.

Life just is

I know you think the world is a warm and gentle place
she breathed into my ear from 3000 miles away
That life is good. But for me its a shithole
she sighed and dragged on her cigarette
I heard the exhale, saw the smoke apparitions
saw grandmother, mother, and sister dying
of tobacco in my mind's eye
rolled the ghosts up and stashed them away
for another conversation another day
Oh baby, life is what it is, neither good nor bad
its attitude that gives it colour. We wear glasses
some rose-coloured, some shit-brown coloured
(she coughed a laugh of recognition)
You've just got to hope one day you can exchange
those glasses, change your attitude.
Life just is what it is, it happens
we get to choose what we make it mean

Phone call.

His was the last number I called from the airport.

"I'm here."

"Where is 'here'?"

"I'm walking up the ramp from my plane."

"Oh good! You're close."

"I am?"

"Yes, I'm at the marina, just put the boat back in the water."

"I thought you were keeping it in dry-dock til next year."

"Meet me here?"

"I'm tired, Kurt."

"I know, but I want to see you, see how you are doing."

"I'm tired, its after 10. How about I see you tomorrow morning?"

"Good idea. You can sleep here on the boat and I'll see you when we wake up."

"You're so bad..." I chuckled tiredly.

"I'll hold you, and the boat can rock you to sleep. I know you like that."

"I do..."

I stopped by the escalator. I was so tired that I swayed under the weight of my briefbag.

Kurt gave me directions from the airport to the marina, the rich timbre of his voice flowing through me. Potent, it was like a caress down my spine. I felt his large hands scoop my ass and pull me close to him.

"See you in what--half an hour?"

I was too tired to argue, and his boathouse was much closer than my place.

"Sooner than that. I left my luggage in San Francisco."

"You're going back?" Kurt sounded cautious. He accepted my relationships with the other men in my life, but he was concerned about the one in San Francisco.

"Yes. My sister..." My throat tightened and tears welled up.

"Ah. Poor Kay. Come here and let me pamper you."

"Deal."

Does heaven have enough angels yet?

Taking a moment to grieve and miss my sister Tammy, I went through some photos while listening to music. This song came on, and I dissolved into tears when I heard Tracy Chapman asking "Does heaven have enough angels yet?" Such an achingly sad song. I flashed to Caro laying in her bed, arms slathered with methadone and promethazine and haloperidol. She looks like an angel when she is sleeping, when her face is smooth and peaceful. And we find ourselves asking when heaven will want to add another angel, when her suffering will end...


The Only One - Tracy Chapman (Telling Stories album)

She was the only one
Of my flesh and blood
Now I have no calling
I can do no worldly good

I sit silent
I sit mourning
I sit listless all the day
I've mostly lost the voice to speak
And any words to say except
Does heaven have enough angels yet?

I've gone hard
And I've gone cold
I can't make the piece of this cracked life fit
Please forgive me for wanting to know
Does heaven have enough angels yet?

Together oh together
No there'll be no more of that
But I would not dare for myself to ask
Does heaven have enough angels yet?

She was the only one
Of my own flesh and blood
Sometimes I hear her calling
Straight from the house of god

weariness

There are many kinds of weariness.
There is physical weariness, which is remedied by rest.
There is mental weariness, which is remedied by sleep.
There is emotional weariness, which is remedied by love.
And there is weariness of the spirit, which is assuaged by time.

I am bone-deep weary on all fronts. Had I the energy, I might even be in despair, but alas I'm too weary even for that.

A dear one opened his home to me and I slept 14 hours--unheard of for me, the woman who never sleeps more than six hours. I slept, making up for the long nights of giving meds every hour to the sister who is still living but jealous of the one who died. I am so sad that every ounce of water in me feels like a pound of tears.

I am home now, and in a short while I will be going back to work, back to the world of taxes and financial services. A world of precision. A world whose parameters I know well and know how to control. A world in which the solution is always 'zero', regardless of the problem. At work, when my colleagues get caught up in the drama of an error, I remind them that they are focusing on the problem, instead of the solution.

What is my solution to loss and death and weariness? WORK.

Leaving Massachusetts

The sun shone. The rain came, a torrential downpour complete with thunder and lightning. And then it snowed. And rained some more. All in 10 days. I'd forgotten how bizarre the weather could be in New England.

She was brain dead but we kept her on life support long enough for them to find donors for her organs. Four people were given a second chance at life. This is a comfort to me somehow, knowing that some part of her lives on in others. Like me, she had no children.

She was cremated. Her urn is actually a beautiful wooden box, which we will take to Hawaii. We will disburse her ashes in the same place we did our mother's ashes 6 years ago.

I went to her boyfriend's house to get her things. I had this odd moment, this memory-echo, when I went to get into the rental car stuffed full of clothing and paperwork and medical supplies. I remembered Tammy and me in Hilo, standing next to my mother's car, which contained all of her belongings. It seemed so sad that her life fit into a car, and my sister Tammy sobbed then, horrible wracking sobs that echoed in the jungle with the same mournful quality as wolves howling. My other sister unpacked the rental car when I got to her place. I couldn't seem to do it. I was so blocked on it, for some reason. But she understood and did it for me.


We had a quiet ceremony at the funeral home. Just family and a few close friends. Friends of hers opened their restaurant early and served us lunch. I had homemade tortellini soup and a portobello mushroom salad. It was all quite tasty. It was the first thing I remember tasting in a week, actually.

Friday we opened her bar for a goodbye party. Last call for alcohol. It was just for 4 hours, but there must have been 250 people who showed up to pay their respects and send her off. I think she would have liked it. She always threw a good party.

I'm in Portland now, with an 18 hour turn-around and then to California to see my sister Caro before she dies. She said come now, she is tired. The tumor on her aorta makes every beat of her heart painful, and she is ready to go. And so I am coming.

Such a painful way to start a new year, with so much loss and suffering. I could make it mean a lot of different things about the world, about life... I could chose to make it mean that life is unfair, that it sucks--all sorts of things. I choose instead to make it mean that Tammy is free of suffering and Caro soon will be, and that life is what it is and every day we have is the most important day of our lives.

Beautiful Soul

I was fortunate to be her sister for all of her 38 years. She was a vibrant, extraordinary woman with a smile that never grew up. She always looked so vulnerable and sweet when she smiled, like she was six years old and sharing a part of her soul. Her last two years were pain-filled and exhausting, and now she is free. For this I am grateful, though selfishly, I wish she was still here.

I'd gotten lulled by the daily routine of my life, and forgotten its transience. If the only certainty in life is that we will die, and the time of death is uncertain, then it is best to live each day as fully as possible, lulled by nothing, taking none of it for granted.

Life, Death, and the Amaryllis

I am the dance of snowflakes as they tumble down a chasm. My nature cannot overcome the howling wind nor the inevitability of gravity, but I dance anyway. Is it the dance of life, or is it the dance of death? I do not know. I know only that I dance.

I packed two suitcases last night, one for the East Coast, one for the West Coast. I awakened from a bad dream at 2am. So much on my mind, so many trips ahead. California to see one sister who is dying, Massachusetts to be with another for surgery to remove cancer, and lo, phone calls at 4am, a third sister in a coma. The brain aneurism fairy visited her in the middle of the night. Frantic father, torn between two coasts -- the deathbed of one daughter, and now another. How sad, to have three daughters in their thirties sick or dying. He must feel like the biblical Job.


"How are you holding up?" a friend asked.
I answered, "The amaryllis on my windowsill is blooming."
A moment later I thought, How Zen.

Solstice on the Coast

It is quiet here. Very quiet, except for the wind and the surf. It sounds like there is an airco engine running outside. The seagulls are grounded. The dunegrass and brambles are waving at me, trying to get my attention. I think they want inside. The sea is gray-green--big stormy swells with colliding whitecaps in a rush to reach the shore.

I am listening to Dead Can Dance's Toward the Within album. The Piece for Solo Flute with its haunting melody provides a soothing counterpoint to nature's rage. Solstice has passed, the sun is reborn. The days will grow longer, and yet Winter has formally begun.

There is a New Year on the horizon, hovering out there in the fog and mist, as yet unformed. I have great hopes for that New Year... and no small amount of dread. Who will I chose to be to meet the challenges and opportunities of 2008? Looking into the future is like looking into that mist, and the only certainty right now is my sister's Jan 2nd surgery to remove the cancer growing inside her.

The coffee is brewed and the muffins are cool enough to eat. My friends are awake. Time to start my Sunday.

Confessing an inauthenticity

I spent 12 hours in a workshop yesterday. Friday I was all jazzed about going there, about hearing about what everyone was up to. But Saturday morning I had this pall hanging over me. I felt down, suppressed, contained and constrained. When I tried to examine why I was feeling that way, I touched upon the issues of my mother's death 6 years ago and my sister's imminent death sometime in the next 6 months. I sat down and wrote the blog entry for September 8th, titled "Death, peace, and beauty" as an attempt to work through what I was thinking/feeling, but what I ended up doing was rationalizing and deciding how I should think and feel.

I was being completely inauthentic, because I was evading allowing myself to feel what I was feeling. For some reason I've always found intense emotions personally dangerous, and with regards to my mother and my sister, there is such a swell of emotion that if I even so much as crack the hatch on those feelings, tears well in my eyes. So I wrote up this elegant little lesson to myself about what was appropriate for me to think and feel about the situation, hopped into my car, and drove to the worshop. And the closer I got to this workshop that I had been looking forward to, the worse I felt. I was positively glum when I got there, and when someone asked me how I was, I said "I'm here, but I don't want to be."

The woman I sat next to asked me what was going on. I told her. She asked me how I was feeling. I told her I was feeling sad, angry, resentful that I had no choice but to accept that my sister was going to die. She said to go with those feelings. Tears filled my eyes. I was appalled as a couple slid down my cheeks. I rarely cry. I hate crying. I shook my head and said, "No." She asked, "Why not?" and I answered, "Because it won't make any difference." She said, "You're being inauthentic. You won't even honour those feelings. Be with them. Be present to them." And then we were interrupted, and I was grateful. The tears subsided, and I did my best to be present to what was going on in the workshop: a discussion about self-expression and leadership, about integrity and personal power, and creating successful community projects.

Early on, someone expressed that she had a real breakdown in progress on her project: she was stuck. So the leader of the workshop coached her by asking her some questions. And the questions resonated with me, and I answered the questions she asked in my mind, and as I did so, I made some powerful connections. I had not spoken to my mother in the five years before her death. It is one of the very few regrets in my life, and it had a profound impact on me--I told myself never again. Today, my sister is very sick, and she won't talk to me. Oh, she will say hello, and when I ask her how she is doing, she says fine, but that is it. If she cannot find someone else to hand the phone off to, she tells me she has to go. She doesn't want to talk to me because she is mad at me about what happened a year ago when I tried to have her involuntarily committed to medical care. She saw it as me trying to take over her life and humiliate her. I saw it as me trying to save her life, trying to prevent her from deteriorating to the point she is at now: the point of no return. So she is still angry with me and her illness comes with a form of psychosis when it reaches the advanced stages, and her periods of lucidity and connection with reality of her condition are fewer and farther between. And the overlap of the anniversary of our mother's death and the hopelessness of my sister's situation in conjunction with the life-coaching questions brought about a breakthrough.

A breakthrough in recognizing the inauthenticity in nearly everything I'd been thinking and feeling about the entire situation...

Yes, I was sad and angry and resentful--but not about her death. No. I could accept that she was dying, that she had made her choice a year ago. I was at peace with her choices and mine. No, what I was upset about was the fact that I was facing another situation in which someone I love is dying and because she won't talk to me, yet another person I love will die and there will be unresolved issues and bad feelings and no closure. I've made it about me, not her. I've made it about my loss and my frustration and my feelings of helplessness, instead of about her. And then to avoid being honest with myself, I wrapped it up in more acceptable packaging: my sister is dying and I'm terribly saddened by it.

Something clicked when I recognized this, and while I still have those feelings, and while I still feel stuck and unwilling to allow myself to really be present to how I am feeling and who I am being and the impact it is having on me and on her, I feel fairly certain that I'll connect with my real feelings and work it out soon, and be able to read yesterday's blog entry and honestly say "Yes! My sense of connectedness with myself and others is the measure by which I understand the the beauty of life and the beauty of death. I am at peace."