gratitude

the sermon in church this morning was about how we are not orphaned from god, even when we feel orphaned by the circumstances in our life - be it a divorce or the loss of a loved one or some other great tragedy that makes most people feel alone.

the sermon really struck me today - because in a sense i have been "orphaned" by the death of my mother but have felt so incredibly held by my community that while i have felt deep sadness i have not felt alone - and amazingly even now, even as i expect that everyone will forget that i am still grappling deeply with this incredible loss, i am reminded (and for some strange reason surprised) that people have not forgotten, that i am still being held by that amazing web that i felt so strongly right before and right after my mom died. just a few examples of love i have received recently...

cj who sent me a kick ass care package which included SIX, count em SIX cds, all for the different moods that one who is grieving finds themselves in. dad who calls faithfully every weekend. lj and tim who ALSO sent a kick ass care package with delicious ginger snaps and yummy coffee. the person from mom's church who sent me a tape of mom's funeral. jenny who sent me a book of poetry. the people at my church who eagerly wanted to know this morning how last weekend's garage sale went. mom's friend who came over last weekend with food and helped us manage the crowd at the garage sale. another friend of mom's who invited us over to dinner on sunday after we had had an utterly exhausting weekend - who fed us nourishing food and then sent us promptly to bed. people who have called multiple times with offers to listen and sweet messages even when i haven't returned their calls. and those friends here in my life in philly who listen and sit with me while i cry. still.

i am aware that this process of grieving and healing has just begun and i am so grateful to feel the love of all of you so constant and strong that allows me to take my time, unhurried and sure in the knowledge that the amazing web is strong enough to hold me.

the sex columnist is always right.

this is dan savage's (syndicated sex columnist) column this week. it really hit home. especially the part about his mom going into the hospital not expecting to die and so not being ready to go. and also his sense that he has been able to get through a bunch of other tough times, but this one really has him "at a loss." check it out if you haven't already in the stranger, the philly weekly, or your local weekly.

At a Loss

April 3, 2008

By Dan Savage

I thought I could bang out a column today—a regular column, a column about my readers' problems and their freaky fetishes and all those asshole politicians out there. You know, the usual.

The day my son was born, I managed to slip out of the maternity ward and write a column; I wrote one the day I was indicted by the state of Iowa for licking Gary Bauer's doorknobs. (I was actually indicted for voter fraud—on a trumped-up charge, your honor—but Bauer's knob needs all the attention it can get.) I've written columns on days that I was dumped and on the morning of 9/11. So I figured that I could bang out a column today.

I opened my laptop and started reading your letters. I love reading your letters—I do. But I couldn't get into it. I just don't have a column in me this week. I'm disappointed in myself. I write this column at Ann Landers's desk, for crying out loud, and the old lady banged out a heartbreaking, truncated column when her marriage collapsed. If Landers could bang one out under that kind of emotional strain, then I could damn well bang one out, too. Just do it, right? Just fucking do it. But I just fucking can't.

My mother died on Monday.

Perhaps a sex-advice column isn't an appropriate place to eulogize an articulate, elegant woman, a practicing Catholic named for the patron saint of hopeless causes and, perhaps consequently, a Cubs fan. I mean, really. Eulogizing my mother back here with the escort ads? So let's not think of this as a eulogy. Let's think of it as a thank-you note, the kind of nicety that my mother appreciated.

Forgive the cliché: My mom gave me so much. She gave me life, of course, and some other stuff besides: her sense of humor, her bionic bullshit detectors, her colossal sweet tooth. She also gave me—she gave all four of her children (Bill, Ed, Dan, Laura)—her unconditional love. Long after I came out, she told me she always suspected that I might be gay; I was the quiet one, the boy who liked Broadway musicals and baking cakes and shared her passion for Strauss waltzes. When I asked my parents to take me to the national tour of A Chorus Line for my 13th birthday, that should have settled the matter. Your third son? Total fag, lady. But my parents were Catholic and religious and it somehow still came as a shock when I told them. My mother came around fast and she came out swinging—rainbow stickers on her car, a PFLAG membership card in her wallet, and an ultimatum delivered to the whole family: Anyone who had a problem with me had a problem with her.

But the real reason I feel compelled to thank her in this space, back here with the escort ads, is because I wouldn't have this space if it weren't for her.

My mother, as my brother Bill likes to say, made friends like Rockefeller made money and George W. Bush makes mistakes—and she was that friend you confided in and went to for advice. I was a mama's boy—hello—and I spent a great deal of time in my mother's kitchen listening to her tell her friends exactly what they needed to do. Sometimes gently, sometimes brusquely, always with a dose of humor. My mom liked to say that her son got paid to do something that she did for free—and isn't that the way the world works? Women cook, men are chefs; women are housewives, men are butlers; she gave advice, I got paid to give advice. (And for a few years, she did too; my mother and I wrote a joint column for a couple of websites in the 1990s.)

So I want to thank my mom. I wouldn't be writing this column today if it weren't for her gifts and her ability to find the humor in even the most serious of subjects.

Even death, even her own.

After a long struggle, we had to go into my mother's hospital room and tell her that nothing more could be done. She didn't go into the hospital expecting to die and she was not ready to go. But she took the news with her characteristic grace. She said her farewells, asked us never to forget her (as if), and paused for a moment. Then Mom lifted an eyebrow, shrugged, and said...

"Shit."

My mother wasn't crude; I didn't get my foul mouth from her. She used profanity sparingly and then only in italics and quotation marks. When she said "shit" on her deathbed, we understood the joke. What she meant was this: "Now, the kind of person who casually uses profanity might be inclined to say 'shit' at a moment like this. But I'm not the kind of person who casually uses profanity—and certainly not at a moment like this. But if I were the kind of person who casually used profanity, 'shit' might be the word I would use right now. If I were that kind of person. Which I'm not."

Everyone gathered around her bed—my mother's husband (my son has two fathers and so do I), my sister, my aunt—knew what Mom wanted: She wanted us to laugh. This woman, so full of life, who wanted so badly to live, having just been told she would not, she was trying to lift our spirits. ("Shit," for the record, wasn't her last word. Those were just for the family.)

Anyway, my mom is dead, and I am not in the mood, as she used to say. ("You are so," one of us kids would usually respond. "You're in a bad mood.") So I'm going to take a week or two off, from the column and the podcast, hang out with the boyfriend and the kid, and burst into tears in coffee shops and grocery stores. I'll run some greatest hits in this space while I'm away—I'll find a column or two featuring Mom—and then I'll be back, just as filthy minded as ever. In lieu of flowers, please send pictures of your boyfriends' rear ends. (Lesbians may send flowers.) If you're the donation-making type and you're so inclined, my mother would be pleased to see some of your money flow to PFLAG (www.pflag.org) or the Pulmonary Fibrosis Foundation (www.pulmonaryfibrosis.org).

Oh, one last thing: I was supposed to take my mother to see the national tour of The Drowsy Chaperone in Chicago this Friday, April 11. It was her birthday present. I got us great seats: seventh row, on the aisle. But I won't be able to use our tickets now. Not because it would be too depressing to go without my mother—not just because—but because, as rotten, stinking fate would have it, I'm going to be at my mother's wake on Friday night.

But I'm practical, like Mom, and I'd hate to see perfectly good tickets to a national tour of a hit Broadway musical go to waste. And it occurs to me that there has to be a teenage boy out there—in Chicago or close enough—who likes musicals and has a mother who loves him for the little musical-theater queen that he is. If you know that boy or you are that boy or you were that boy a decade ago or if you're that boy's mother or grandmother, send me an e-mail and I'll arrange to get these tickets to you.

Like I said, they're great seats. I would go if I could. But I can't.

Shit.

mail@savagelove.net

well said Daniel

m and i went to mom's house this weekend to continue the cleaning out process.i had the longest and deepest cry i've had since she died this weekend - i think having some distance, and then coming back to her house was what did it. i finally had some feelings of anger (elizabeth kubler-ross would be pleased) -why am i here to pack up mom's belongings intstead of here to visit her? it's not fair!

thanks to jenny for thirst, by mary oliver (one of my and jenny's favorite poets).

one of my favorite poems in the book so far is called Heavy.

Heavy

That time
I thought I could not
go any closer to grief
without dying

I went closer,
and I did not die.
Surely God
had His hand in this,

as well as friends.
Still, I was bent,
and my laughter,
as the poet said,

was nowhere to be found.
Then said my friend Daniel
(brave even among lions),
"It's not the weight you carry

but how you carry it--
books, bricks, grief--
it's all in the way
you embrace it, balance it, carry it

when you cannot, and would not,
put it down."
So I went practicing.
Have you noticed?

Have you heard
the laughter
that comes, now and again,
out of my startled mouth?

How I linger
to admire, admire, admire
the things of this world
that are kind, and maybe

also troubled--
roses in the wind,
the sea geese on the steep waves,
a love
to which there is no reply?