Let it Be

I sometimes listen to music on YouTube, and I wanted to hear this song again because it's still rattling around since that Walaid, Delayed, and Detoured day. I usually open another tab and let some music play, while I work or surf for other information. But, today, I wanted to study the lyrics as I listened, because there is clearly a reason my mind and heart are not done with this song. I was reminded how inspirational the song is for me personally, especially as a bereaved mother. Also, the connection to the religious iconic figure from my faith is pretty powerful as well--beautiful words the writer hears whispered from a bereaved Mother. While I'm ruminating, I catch an error in the lyrics typed for the video, "here will be an answer" instead of "there will be an answer." Well, there it is, a kernel of something new I gained from focused study on something my mind wanted me to look at (though it didn't know about this error), I think that error might be a typical unconscious statement of how this song is used to speak to how the song may have the power to comfort.

Here's what I mean: "There" means, the answer will come someday, but "here," means an answer, and for me meaning, is here already, embodied in melody and voice. Meaning that is fashioned in my mind and heart as I remember Caitlin in the here and now, perhaps as the light that shines on me. And answers are here within myself, as I explore my connections with my religion and my reason.

Dream Explained

I wrote about a dream where I saw myself sitting on a blue marble bench. Because it stuck with me in my waking hours, I wrote about it and that helped me release its hold to me. I have a personal conviction about dreams. I believe they have meaning. I believe that if I work at it, I can discover the reason why my mind needs to work on something in my unconsciousness, because I'm unable to work on it in consciousness. Sometimes that's because I don't have time or it's too difficult. Here's what I discovered about the blue marble bench.

1) It exists. In fact there are four of them outside the building that houses the preschool where I volunteer.

2) My volunteer work is teaching young children music, and I sing many of the songs I sang to Caitlin when she was alive.

3) I love teaching young children music. I teach them to use their voices, to learn to move creatively to music, to pay attention to life with their ears not their eyes, and to express themselves through creating their own songs and musical sounds. It's rewarding work, when teachers and parents tell me that their children love music, but more importantly when they tell me that they see that their children are musical (when they never were before). Of course they are! Music develops as a mode of expression long before speech, but I digress.

4) My heart was in deep sorrow every time I sang those songs and watched little precious faces light up -- faces that were not my child's face. And one of those cold blue benches was where my heart sat, while the rest of me nurtured other people's babies. I don't resent that nurturing, it's the kind of mother Caitlin has. I am, however, distressed that I nurture my child's memory and no longer nurture her in this physical realm.

And that I believe, is the meaning of the dream of the blue marble bench.

Under the Tree

How long has it been since you lost your child/ren? Has your grief changed at all? Is your life becoming any easier or is it just harder as time passes? These are some of the questions for us to think about and talk about as we share our grief Under the Tree.

Caitlin died over a year and a half ago. It's odd to measure how long I've been parenting her memory in days or months or years. For me it doesn't help to mark the dates as the months go by. I have a personal dislike of the term "angelversary" though I know it's healing for lots of babyloss mamas. I'm not particularly happy that Caitlin is in heaven, I'm of the mind that the best place for her is here on earth with her mother. Plenty of time to get to heaven, and so that brings me back to how long---it's been a year and a half, but we all know that it's forever in mother-speak.

Has my grief changed? Yes, acute at first, where I was barely able to breathe. I walked around for about a year hunched over and stared with wide eyes, and friends and colleagues would notice that my mouth would hang open. I first lost weight and then packed it on as I tried to fill myself up. The periods of wailing and pounding my first were followed by periods of silent rumination over her pictures or listening to her music at her grave site. Then the numbness set in with no sleep and wondering if I would ever feel anything again. Then the days came where laughter would erupt from me. And troubles that "should" send me in a worry-spin barely phase me. Those days remind me of a song lyric by Cindy Bullens (also a bereaved mother) "I laugh harder and I cry louder, and I take less time to make up my mind."

Is life easier or harder? I have had a "pearl of wisdom" that goes like this--It doesn't get better. I used to tell myself this (and began telling my students) to get myself to move forward and address the challenges that faced me, rather than throw up my hands in defeat. "It doesn't get better." It sounds a bit harsh, I suppose and not particularly hopeful, but here's what I mean. Life doesn't get easier. It's hard work. And if one wishes to thrive in life, to experience a little more joy than sorrow, to navigate "crap" with grace, then, I'm convinced that accepting that challenges will increase in difficulty is a good step in identifying what needs to be done to overcome those challenges as well as building the skills necessary to handle what comes along. The second half of the "pearl" is "so you better figure out how to handle this."

How have I managed this second half in light of Caitlin's death? I've grown in understanding. I've embraced the mother I was when she was living, the mother I am in her death, and the mother I continue to believe she deserves to have. I listen more. I notice more--the buds on the trees, the color of the birds. I look into people's eyes more sincerely. I say "no" and when someone hurts me, I tell them to stop. There's plenty of evidence that I have trouble "figuring out how to handle this," in that I don't answer emails or phone calls very well, and I forget to send thank you cards. Though, I keep trying.

Both grief and joy are welcome in my heart, meaning I let it hurt as bad as it hurts and I let happiness in when happiness comes.

As usual one question under the tree is all my heart can explore. Thanks for prompting some healing. Peace to all.

Editing without Deleting My Own Thoughts

This blog has been a tool for me to use in pausing and reflecting and allowing myself to grieve as I need. I reread my posts on a frequent basis, and when I wait a day, I sometimes have this experience that I'm looking inside my thoughts from another point of view.

Without deleting my own thoughts, I wish to edit, rather to clarify.

Saying that I don't connect with God's loss of his only son, is not dismissing the magnitude of God, rather it's bigger than that. It is so far beyond my understanding that my lame attempt to use my human feelings to connect do not aid me in the least. And when others suggest a human connection, I can't wrap my brain around it. I chose to focus on a connection that I can make, that with a bereaved mother. I did not focus on the significance of who Mary's son is historically or according to my religious tradition, because that would take me into proselytizing and this blog is not about preaching or witnessing to others about belief. Part of this grief journey includes making sense by taking all the broken pieces of me--mind, body, & spirit--and refashioning them to fit in new ways--beautifully painful ways. I'm comfortable with both reason and religion and so while I may include religion, I will do my best not to preach it.

In short--I love that song, and I think it can speak beyond a particular faith or belief, and I don't know why I felt it necessary to begin with a religious discussion. Well, actually I do know why--it's because I am incapable and unwilling to shed the essence of who I am and where I came from. Which brings me to song #2. And I would change just one line: "I am Caitlin Anne's Mother" (Well, and I'm not young either, so that lyric would have to change too--heh heh).

Mary My Mother

I caught this song by Patty Griffin in one of my many searches for music to include on my iPod playlist "Caitlin & Mom." The song is "Mary." It speaks to me, because it reaches deep inside of me and resonates the strings of a loving bereaved mother.

I shrink when people tell me that God knows how I feel, or that I must remember that God gave his only son. I'm stunned, because for me, there's little sense in this. If we're gonna go all Bible-literal here (which I will barely attempt, so put your bible away--you won't need to get those verses ready for quotin'.), God was separated from his son for three human days; I can't even imagine what that would feel like for him. My mind goes crazy--if Caitlin had come home after three days?! But this is crazy talk. I won't launch into a ridiculous discussion of what God feels or what some proselytize that God feels, because, I can't imagine. I'm left unconnected to God's experience, and I know better than to play a comparison game with another bereaved parent.

There's nothing wrong with me for feeling this way; it's simply an honest statement of how I feel. I seek a lesson that goes beyond any literal translation or dogma articulated by others. Mary waited the rest of her life to see her son (until ascension for those who believe in this aspect--I mean it, put the Catechism away this is not an attack on an established religion, I'm just trying to be inclusive).

Mary was left to grieve--and it is that experience that resonates with me. Being left to grieve, is something that I not only imagine, I live.

The birth and death of a child, and the mother who nurtured that life, loses that life, and is left to grieve and continue her motherhood is a timeless story. I'm one of millions of mothers who experience this. And because this is an archetypal story, I am held by Mary, My Mother. She was left as Griffin sings, "cleaning up the place." And Caitlin's passing left me to clean up the ordinary. I cleaned up our house by putting away the dead flowers from funeral, the stuffed animals that laid in her crib, and her clothes, and books, and sympathy cards. And in "cleaning up," I made a new place for Caitlin in our home. More importantly, I'm left to tend to my heart, my soul, and my mind, and make new meaning and find ways to survive and thrive. I remain behind to hold those whose hold me in my sorrow, to mend and maintain relationships and foster new ones. Caitlin couldn't stay a moment longer, and I am left stained by her death and still loving because of her life, still nurturing, still her mother. I must "lift the shroud" that is my task.

In Griffin's song, the Marian anthem lives on. The dedication and honoring of a woman who suffered the loss of her child, helpless to change the course of what was to be. Mary becomes every woman "covered in roses, covered in babies, covered in treetops, covered in stains." who suffers and endures, and from that sorrow new life and new joy emerges. From my little world to the world, I find that others have found that Griffin's song aids in expressing this sense of everywoman. Dr. Estes describes Africa as a bereaved mother in the opening of her article with "Mother Africa: for hundreds of years she's groaned under humans who have harmed her by looting her treasures, setting enmity between peoples, and by forcing stones atop her greatest minds and hearts so they could not grow into giants." And she later calls for Griffin's mother Marian anthem to be the "prayersong" that petitions for Marys everywhere to endure with strength and a great heart.

But, I digress. In short: I found this song, it makes sense to me for little things and big things.

Here's the anthem and here's the lyrics.

"Finding Our Tongues" by Dean Falk

I've been reading "Finding our Tongues: Mothers, Infants & The Origins of Language" by Dean Falk. I've encountered the "putting the baby down" theory a few other times. In summary, our ancestors lost the ability to grasp and hang on to their mothers as mothers swung from trees and gathered food in the forest. Primates rarely vocalize to infants because the infant is usually attached. However, if the infant is dislodged or left then the infant cries and the mother returns to pick the infant up. Anthropologists' studies of hunter and gatherer societies (what few there are left), found mothers used slings to keep infants attached and that when they had to "put the baby down" they would have to reassure the baby and how was this done? That's right, singing, vocal soothing melodies that say, "I'm here and you are OK." Falk believes that these melodic vocalizations led to the first baby talk. And that first baby talk/sing played a crucial prehistoric role in "kindling the first sparks of language." Motherese or these melodic vocalizations are found across all cultures and are the first steps in language acquisition.

There's more, but why am I writing this here?
1. I miss singing to Caitlin, holding her and singing. It didn't matter if she was sleeping or awake, I sang whenever I could. I left a digital recording of her songs so she would know I was there when I wasn't. I sang her to heaven when she passed, I didn't sing for a very long time after she died. I sing at her grave sometimes or play her songs and think, "Do you hear me? Do you know that even in death I am here with you?" I guess most view the dead singing/saying to those left behind, "I am here with you, I'll never leave." But, I'm more worried about Caitlin knowing that I am with HER.
AND
2. It breaks my heart that some adults view "baby talk' and "singing lullabies" as not needed, or they are embarrassed or believe they are "tone-deaf," or they just don't know that that fabulous CD by the latest children's star is not what your baby needs. Your baby needs YOUR voice, your love, and your interaction. Please, sing. Our children need to know that we are here and they are OK. Your voice performs the amazing feat of taking the intangible (love) and making it tangible (real physical vibrations that move through air).

True Story

Out of no-where here comes True Story:

I once pulled out of a parking space so enraptured with how much I was in love with my new boyfriend (now my DH) and encouraged by "This Kiss" by Faith Hill on the radio I ran my car into a high curb and when people would ask about the dent, I would shrug my shoulders.

I heard the song on the radio today. It was sweet, until I remembered how I backed into a curb because I was giddy in love. Ah....it was worth it.

DH is my compass, my true story, still.

Teaching and Tears

So, I've grown pretty strong since Caitlin's death. I carry my grief pretty well. But these last several days have kicked my butt. I begin with my economic stimulus plan day, then the holding a baby day, then ignorant-unthinking hurtful comment day (I didn't write about this one at length, but will as soon as I make sense of what happened), then Phoebe Snow story day, and then a brief hibernation (literally, we had a snow day), and finally today--the day of teaching and tears.

During a lecture that I've delivered a hundred times about the importance of singing to infants, I tear up in class. I see Caitlin in my arms. I hear our songs. I feel that hope that physically hurts me--the hope that she live, that she gets better, that we get to bring her home. It was all so sudden and extreme that I tears welled, and I had to turn away from the class. I choked out more of the lecture until it passes enough to go on. But the rest of the lecture offered more outward evidence of my grief, the stuttering and the slumped shoulders of defeat.

I am sick of the snow here, but long for a cave of quiet to hibernate until spring truly decides to join us.

[And in my cave would be a video phone with a direct line to my parents, because I owe them a phone call and I feel so crappy guilty about it, and yet in my state, I can't bring myself to call anyone. It just feels like I suck as a daughter, you'd think bereaved mother of a daughter would know better! Love you mom and dad. I'll call soon.]

Phoebe Snow "A Mother's Song"

DH and I have a few TV shows we watch, and fewer still that we will record. Well, I love Sunday Morning, so we record and then after church we drink coffee and watch the stories about life, politics, art, music and bet on whether the nature scene will include birds or not (it usually does!).

Well, today there was a story about Phoebe Snow of "Poetry Man" song fame, but oh, that song is not what defines her. The interview with this songstress was poignant and real. She told her story of her daughter who suffered afixiation at birth, and lived until she was 31 with her Phoebe. Phoebe's grief was apparent and so what the strength and joy of telling her daughter's story. I was grateful she told it. She talks about how hard it was to sing after her daughter died, and the tears that were already welling in my eyes at last let go. Her friend Linda Ronstadt told her that she had to sing about Valerie. In Phoebe's performances, she now dedicates a song she originally wrote for her mother, and now sings for her daughter. I immediately went on iTunes to download below is a youtube vid if you would like to listen.

The lyrics that most resonate for me are "Everything good I am you taught me. Everything good I am." It's not that I started out as an unloving person, but Caitlin made me love in ways I didn't know I could. This growth of understanding and actively loving in deeper and more profound ways is typical of parents with living children, I know. But, my experiences is that another dimension is experienced when too soon that love must be expressed through grief. One struggles to express love to a child no longer living. You hug the air, stare at the moon and try to pull it to you, and wonder at how the world continues when all has ended for you. Then you struggle to love in this new strange world, and something bursts open in you--an echo of the first time you saw your child only louder than the first sounds of love in your heart, a bit of a reverse echo, if you will. And this something makes you love others more, love nature more, love struggle more. The possibilities for loving overwhelm you that sometimes you are rendered inert and other times you write, paint, and, as Phoebe shares with us---sing.

The song's title is "You're my Girl," and the album she describes as a "love letter to my daughter."




Here's another link to her story if you are interested.
Interview with WOW The Women on the Web

My Personal Economic Stimulus Plan in Play Today

So, I have to go to the dentist today. I don't like it, so I decided that the rest of the afternoon will involve putting into play my personal economic stimulus plan--translation: I go shopping. I don't like shopping either, so I start with Starbucks (insert "Sound of Music" melody . . . a very good place to start . . .). Mmmmm $3+ coffee and one of those new turkey bacon sandwiches-that ought to help. I sit at a table and write some letters--yes letters that require stamps to help the post office succeed financially and stay open on Fridays. Then off to the shoe store, for the shopping. I wander the aisles, try on a few shoes, and then get irritated that I look the profile of the typical shoplifter (middle aged white female) because when the third extra-smiley employee interrupted my quest for shoes I don't need, I was certain that DSW would not benefit from my spending plan. But, alas, I did what was right and left with a pair black low-healed shoes. On, to the book store for more wealth spreading.

I go to the music rack and pick up "Classic Songs" a book of lyrics to songs. This irritates me too, because I'm so frustrated with this culture that doesn't have the music literacy to know a tune by just looking at lyrics, but I digress. I open the book and Caitlin sings this song to my heart:

Farewell, Mother Dear

Farewell! Mother dear, I go,
Where loved ones never can be parted.
We will meet again I know.
Be not weeping and downhearted.

Last night I dreamed of thee,
Saying pleasant things to me,
Still again those vigils keep,
While I lay me gently down to sleep.

Weep not mother dear for me,
When I'm laid underneath the willow
I'll keep guard upon thy soul,
Thou hast guarded over my pillow,
Far in a radiant land,
I will join a sister band,
They are singing a sweet refrain,
I am called, Farewell! We meet again.

I put the tiny book under my arm and find a chair to slump in and think, "thanks baby girl." I start to think that she misses me, too. Heaven may be nice, but her mama isn't there. So, she finds a way to nestle her head into my breast and sing a spirit song to my soul. I hear the lyrics again. I continued my shopping and find another book, "My Mother Gave me the Moon"

My mother gave me the moon.
My mother gave me the stars.
My mother gave me security.
My mother gave me warmth.

I'm unable to continue reading and I gently place the book back in it's place. Then as I walked out, I pick up a children's book about caterpillars and lovingly wandered through the pages until the last turn reveals ten beautiful butterflies.

I no longer question when I experience these signs or visits or memories or coincidences or whatever one chooses to label them occur. They are important ways of living for me and parenting the memory of my child as she parents my heart. Save a place in that sister band for me, daughter!

And that ends my personal stimulus plan day.

Vocal Life Chords

Fear sings with broken sounds
Stuttered lyrics and phrases inert
The performance lays bare a mother’s
Sorrow

Love sings with broken sounds
Stuttered lyrics and phrases in motion
Melodies soaring then softening
rendering Fear
forgetful and indecisive
Reformed
A dissonance resolved

Death Ain't You Got No Shame

"Death Ain't You Got No Shame" is a white spiritual, a folk song collected by Alan Lomax. The words are simple and repetitive, but the power of the sorrow is rich. I haven't found a free example of the song that's "listenable" to my ears, but the lyrics (truncated) are: 

Death ain't you got no shame. 

Left his pappy to moan. 

Left his widder alone. 

Left his mammy to weep. 

Death ain't you got no shame. 

The folk song speaks to me, because the bereaved do often personify death. When we make it a someone, all be it a mysterious and unknown someone, but, when we make it a someone it makes it possible to express our anger, sorrow, and pain at this someone. It gives us a place to put our thoughts and feelings. You can't shake your finger at an event and "ain't you got no shame," but you can at a mysterious someone. Once again, it seems that it is the arts that allow us to manage the unmanageable, in this case the literary and poetic art of the words and the sounds over time that express those words. 

"If I Could Be Where You Are" by Enya

"I Still Cry"

Below is a reflective video to the song "I Still Cry" for Liam's mom using her poem "September Sun"as bookends to this beautiful song.

"A maman" by Victor Hugo

A maman

Mon coeur me dit que c'est ta fete
(je crois toujours mon coeur quand il parle de toi)
maman que faut-il donc que ce coeur to souhaite?
De tresours? - des honneurs? - des trones ? - non, ma foi
Mais un bonheur egal au mien quand je te vois.

In France, I spent a good deal of time reading. I purchased a song book for children that had French folk songs, tales, and poems for children. As I was singing through them, I thought of the time I spent singing new songs to Caitlin as she lay in my arms awake or sleeping. I turned the page and my heart skipped a beat. I saw a picture of a child offering a note to his mother, and on the opposite page is this poem by Victor Hugo. My ability to translate French is rough at best and by hurriedly using the French/English dictionary I may have actually muddied my understanding a bit, but I think my heart figured it out.

My heart tells me that it is your day (holiday or birthday)
I always cross myself when I think/speak of you
Mama, what is it that you wish for?
Treasures? Honors? Trophies? - No, my faith
There is no happiness to equal (that of) when I see you

Have you see the way a mother looks upon her child? Have you truly studied the complexity of that expression? Look again when your mother looks at you. Linger a while longer and watch a mother listen to her child speak or watch her baby sleep. There is no happiness equal to loving.




[My apologies for not using the proper accents in the French text. And if you translate better than I, please, I welcome your corrections!]

Breath of Heaven

Preserve Your Memories

Go In Peace

I received this recording of my sister singing "Go in Peace" for a Mass on All Souls Day. The choir included a powerpoint with text for the parish and pictures of those loved ones who had passed. That my sister sang for Caitlin and she was part of this remembrance was comforting for me. Remembering and and the outward signs of those remembrances matter.

[I added a few pics to fit the music for this medium.]

Make video montages at www.OneTrueMedia.com

How Can I Keep From Singing?

The pain of this bereft heart of mine has reached a terrible place. I've been trying to sing again. I promised Caitlin I would. Singing would heal us and keep our connection tangible by connecting my earthly world to her heavenly one. But, I find the experience of singing again to be like swallowing rocks.

In choir tonight we sang beautiful arrangements of lullabies for Christmas. I choked. Then a baby cried and I became frozen. The rest of the rehearsal was for me to remember the night my baby cried, horribly. The night I knew that she was in pain. The fear that engulfed me wasn't even recognizable, because, well, I always thought in the end it would be OK. She would live. She didn't and the last I saw her conscious she was crying and in pain. Then I sang to her until she passed in my arms. That night and into the next day, I would sing her to heaven and I begged her to be there to sing to me when it was my time. But, tonight, I think, I can't continue. And I didn't, I left rehearsal at the break.

I sang myself home with one of the hymns I used to sing to her in the hospital--the one our friends and family sang at her funeral. Sorry I can only include the lyrics, it's not really a song without the melody to carry the meaning so your heart can understand, but here are the words, lifeless, all the same.

My life goes on in endless song
Above earth's lamentation
I hear the real, the far off hymn
That hails a new creation
Through all life's tumult, pain, and strife
I hear my music ringing
It sounds an echo in my soul
How can I keep from singing

What though the tempest around me roars
I know the truth it liveth
What though the darkness round me close
Songs in the night it bringeth
No one can shake my in most calm
When to this rock I'm clinging
For Love is lord 'or heaven and earth
How can I keep from singing