Wednesday, March 15, 2006

Restoration

It's been a year since my stepmother died, and I tried to honor her at that time with this post.
Today I'd like to say something about my father. He's 74, widowed twice before he was forty, divorced after a long third marriage, and widowed again last year. He said last year that it was harder than he had remembered, maybe because he had had work and children to occupy himself the first two times he lost wives. Who knows? Loss is always its own story. My mother, baby brother, and first stepmother died as the result of sudden accidents, leaving husband, children, parents and siblings all stunned by the insistent totality and permanence of death. My stepmother died last year after an illness of several months, which is a completely different experience for those left behind. Not necessarily any easier, just different. I don't think the fantasy of "this is not happening" is one that we ever escape, whether confronted by the immediacy of crisis or the drawn-out saga of a tormented decline.
Nevertheless, my father called the other night, when I wasn't home, and left the following message: he had just completed a terrific Sierra Club work week in the Ocala National Forest in Florida; he had spent a couple of days with lifelong friends in Vero Beach and felt that he had successfully disabused them of their erroneous Republican views, but was fearful of their backsliding in his absence; and he was at Cedar Key, sitting on the porch and drinking a margarita.
I don't for a second think that he is done grieving. But he is an extraordinary example of the human capacity for striking out anew in the face of catastrophe. I don't know where he learned that. As a child faced with similar demands, I certainly never appreciated the example he set. And as an adolescent, I behaved as badly as I possibly could, at least partly in retaliation for the failure of my family to make up for the loss of my mother. As if they could have done that.
My first inkling that they might have done something right came when an older relative, newly a member of the family by marriage just as I was beginning college, told me that his daughter had dropped out of college after her first quarter. "Of course, she couldn't go back after her mother died, " he said. Hmm, I thought to myself. No one had told me that I couldn't go back to second grade after my mother died. How was it that I had never heard of this special dispensation for children of dead mothers?
Many years later, when Princess Diana died, much of the press railed against her husband for his stiff upper lip as he escorted their sons to various events connected with her funeral. What's wrong with those reporters, I wondered? Do they think that real life is loved a la' Jerry Springer or Montel? Have they ever heard about dignity, or self-control, or moving forward?
When my stepmother was dying last winter, my father did many things differently than I would have. His decisions and responses are not my own. But he always behaved with such quiet generosity toward others, keeping his occasionally stinging comments about those who were more burden than blessing within the confines of his own family.
So, in a post he is unlikely ever to see, I would like to say thank you to my father, and to his parents, and to my mother's parents, for teaching me how to respond to life's traumas. I am grateful that, as a response to the capriciousness of death, they've always chosen life. Not always easily, or even willingly. But always eventually, and always with integrity.

10 comments:

Cynthia said...

What a beautiful and touching entry. Your father sounds like such a fine man, and his example of strength and embracing life after loss deserves this recognition.

Anonymous said...

beautiful post robin.

Anonymous said...

The phrase "capriciousness of death" shook me. You really just never know.

You have an incredible family -- just to have survived all that let alone thrived. As you said, they chose life and taught you the same. L'Chaim!

Lisa :-] said...

I think my parents' generation was much better prepared for "the capriciousness of death." My folks were a bit older than yours...about ten years. They lived through several wars (including the Big One,) polio epidemics, children still died of things like whooping cough and scarlet fever. Death was much more a fact of life for them than it was for me when I was growing up. My father's people had a saying, "Life is for the living." And they really did live by it.

V said...

These are 2 wonderful tributes.
Thanks for your beautiful writing.
V

Judith HeartSong said...

this is a beautiful post.

Anonymous said...

What a beautiful post, Robin. Your family sounds as though it lives life the way that my family does. My father's father died in a plane crash when my father was just 7 years old. He, too, was told that life is for the living and to dwell on the past doesn't help us live for tomorrow. While I disagree with the way my family handles its grief (they don't acknowledge it at all), I have learned much from them.

You are indeed blessed to have a family with such strength, wisdom, and grounding.

Vicky said...

Such a moving tribute, Robin, How wonderful to think that he might read it someday. What do you think?

His strength is carrying on through, my dear. And you are a fine example to your children as a result. There's much to the "modeling" school of thought. Our children see infinitely more than we think they do.

Thank you for sharing these tender and thoughtful words,

Love, Vicky

sunflowerkat said...

An exceptionally beautiful post.

It certainly touches close to home for me. As hard as it is, I think that the quicker you find your way back to life, the better. The survivor guilt still stings...but I KNOW my sister would want me to go on living.

I had no idea you suffered so much loss early in life. It couldn't have been easy, but obviously your family gave you the necessary guidance and support to learn to keep living.

betty said...

what a great thing to have learned from your dad

betty