In my teens and early adulthood I had undiagnosed and untreated bipolar disorder. My life was full of good things, too, not just the difficult things. But when I was in college, I partied hard--in all of the ways that phrase can be used. I used to have so many regrets about the ways I sought relief and release from the effects of the gymnastics meets taking place in my mind, body, and soul.
After I had my own children, I learned how to give myself (and those earlier versions of myself) the same compassion and care I so easily gave to my daughter and son. Then, when my daughter was four years old and my son was two, I had a huge manic episode that required hospitalization in an inpatient psychiatric facility. I finally received the diagnosis, meds, therapy, and spiritual direction I'd needed for more than 15 years.
Madeleine L'Engle once said something like "we are all the ages we've ever been." I love that. I love that every version of me is still me. Now, memories of my partying self make me smile. I take a deep breath and honor that bright young woman who needed more care than she knew, more care than anyone knew. I lift my wine glass or coffee mug or LaCroix can to her and say, "Cheers. We got through that, didn't we."
Charlotte, I love L'Engle's idea, too. I FEEL like I am all the ages I've ever been. You probably heard Kate DiCamillo talk about "the eight-year-old in you" with Krista Tippet. Same idea. Beautiful. I feel like my younger selves are feeling safer now. We all (my interior community) are with yours, "We got through, didn't we!!" Cheers to you.
Just last Wednesday, I “changed the past.” A few years ago I was in a relationship, with a powerful neurotic hook, that ended poorly. I ended it with what I thought was a heart of compassion, and was met with the hurling of poison, or so it felt that way to me. The narrative of that relationship had been how I was the listener 95% of the time, how he was unreasonably critical at times, how I had to ask to be paid attention to as he was so mired in his own woes me suffering. Though the volume of the narrative had become quieter and quieter over time, it still had this taste of bitterness, of being wronged. Then, last Wednesday! I was sitting in a guided meditation and the teacher asked “think of someone who has offered you patience.” To my complete shock, this particular ex popped into my head, and a specific memory. I was cooking eggs at his place, and doing so in a carefree way, wanting the yellows to stay unbroken, but they broke so I just swirled it all together. He made a cutting sarcastic remark at how this was the result of my American education. At the time, I felt the sting of his comment, as it was yet another example of not being seen, of being mis-seen, and of being summed up in a oversimplistic way. By some kind of magic, in the meditation last Wednesday, he came into my mind, and that specific memory, and I thought, “wow. given how he was, everything had to be “perfect” or not done at all (eg, didn’t like to dance because he didn’t think he was a good dancer), it must have involved profound patience to be with me, who cracked eggs carefree, or as he might see it, carelessly). I suddenly then recalled how when we first started dating, he was making a soup for me, quite nervous as it was early on, and when it was time to crack eggs into the soup, I noticed he was almost frozen. He muttered that usually his son cracks the eggs. I offered to do it, and he accepted, and that was that. Recalling this opened up so much compassion for this man. AND, then I remembered a story he had told me once as we lay in bed.. of how when he was a youngster, maybe 9, or 11, I can’t recall, his parents sent him to stay with his uncle to protect him during a time of political unrest in his hometown. He shared, quite vulnerably, how on one occasion, his uncle bashed his head against his cousin’s head as punishment for taking an extra dessert. On Wednesday after meditation, walking in the streets of Manhattan, I remembered that story, and then his inability to crack the eggs, and then his remark (that I had been quite insulted and hurt by) about how I cracked the eggs. And suddenly it all made sense. Tears rolled down my cheeks as I had this different understanding ... the past changed. Then, as if I were simply a character in a play, I walked into Whole Foods to pick up some blueberries, and this song “kiss me” by sixpence was playing, and without launching into a whole other story (that also transformed in that very moment from disappointment and hurt, to - joy! sounds crazy but it’s true).... it was a song that held significance for me as I had planned to sing it to him, but never had the chance. How the past just changed!!!! I have felt so liberated, so humbled, so grateful. And how wonderful to have this opportunity to reflect on it here and now. Thank you so much Pádraig for your wizardry and wisdom!
“I look at that choice not with the luxury of regret, but with curiosity, wondering how it’s working its way out in me now, and how I can live with everything that was made alive by the choices.” -- wow. thank you.
Thank you. This is such a vivid description of a subtle interior change. The truth of your ex's unkind behavior didn't change but your way of holding it did. It's beautiful that your heart was ready.
An amazing story. Thank you for sharing this. I'm struck by how much meaning lies in our experiences that is, in the lived moment, beyond our ken but, in the remembered moment, a treasure(s) to be revealed. And while that is usually a treasure of understanding, it can also be one of solace, compassion, reconciliation and, perhaps, even enlightenment. It seems to me that regret is an indicator of a story that has yet, at least to be revealed, if not told.
Just love the magic of this experience, though I note that magic so often happens when we situate ourselves intentionally in places of nurture - your meditation class in this case - as though we stand open to the chitty chat universe ready to hear things we couldn't hear before. So lovely for you......
Ah Mona - so so thoughtful and curious and willing to "see" anew. I love your writing and I am so happy that this "ex" relationship is now acquiring depth, compassion and - even - respect and wonder. Nice!
Thank you so much! I tried hard to see it differently before, and “it worked” sort of, partly, but this spontaneous arising and the shifts it’s brought feel so true. So grateful!! Thank you for your kind words!
I LOVE this, Mona!! What a beautiful and well-written story! It's so lovely the way little moments can take you through so many changes and perspectives! Grateful for you and your story. XO
It’s interesting, isn’t it, how knowing where someone is coming from, what they have experienced, helps bring understanding to their actions? It doesn’t excuse the unkindness, but maybe it lessens the sting, knowing that all of it emanates from a hurt child.
Yes! And somehow, although I knew all these things and had connected the dots before, it was how he came to mind when asked to contemplate on when I’ve received the gift of patience from another that somehow shifted my subconscious that was holding onto the pain, and resentment. It really feels like a gift! I actually feel genuine warmth for the man now. So, so thankful. Thank you Elaine for reading and sharing your thoughts!
Wow, thank you Mona. I can FEEL the process as you explain it here, how the pieces of the past came together inside of you in a different (more accurate??) way, and released you. And from a place of understanding and release you can hear the music, in the store!, and feel JOY. Very powerful. Thank you for taking the risk to share.
Thanks so much, Lori! And how much fun it’s been to listen to that song on repeat the past few days and feel joyful and recall the feelings in me when I wanted to sing it to this man. Playful, desirous, affectionate... thanks for taking the time to read and share your thoughts!
This week, "Replay" struck a chord with me, as did this writing this morning. It is almost ten years since my husband's death, and still it replays over and over for me. I am hoping that this year I will redeem it from the world of regret and sadness and turn it into a song of hope and resilience. So here is my story:
2013
(On the 10th anniversary)
It is the year of driving.
Our house sold, we travel south past fields of something unnamed:
Long grainy stalks that sway in breezes. I am now at the wheel while you just stare
out the window, away from me, glaze-eyed, hypnotized, narcotized as we move toward
the house you built in the mountains, so remote it does not even register on GPS.
I drive you from one doctor’s office to the next, sitting in infinite identical waiting rooms,
Writing, writing, rewriting a litany of drugs, summoning the gods and goddesses,
Promethegan, loperamide, temazepam, and the man in the white coat conjures
yet another map that will lead to somewhere else. And I dig deep to stay on the road. With you.
It is the year of silence.
It grows, the silence. First the music stops.
I wash your phone in my rush to clean up after the drugs and disease,
and there is no more playlist.
I sell your birds and drop our child off at college,
and he takes his words and laughter with him and leaves us behind.
And you stop talking
and turn off Rachel Maddow. And then even baseball.
It is the year of hunger.
You stop eating and even a glimpse or slight whiff of food
makes you shudder and turn your back. So I grind your pills
into fine powder, mix them with a portion of Ensure, and siphon them
into your stomach through a tube.
And I disappear down into the basement away from your eyes
to eat saltines and peanut butter
while I do your wash.
It is the year of regret.
When I leave your side and you fall, crumpling down to the cold bathroom floor helpless,
and I have to engineer a pulley to move your skeleton across the bathroom floor
and back into bed.
You bleed onto the sheets when I scrape against your paper skin.
When I tell the doctor, No more, your eyes tell me that I am guilty of your death.
Your eyes follow me as the black hospice car follows us home. They give me oxygen and morphine, settle you into bed, and leave.
In the corner of the bedroom, I set up a jigsaw puzzle of cows grazing in a green pasture and I silently fit the pieces together and drop morphine on your tongue every time you move.
It is the year of death.
I slip out for a stolen cigarette and stare into the darkening forest and
down to the creek where sunset is shrouding over the valley.
When I return to you, there is a new silence, a stillness, as if the very air is holding its breath.
I stand over you and I sigh. I know that you are gone.
I turn away without a sound and fill a tub with warm water and soap and bring it back to you and run the washcloth over your gray skin. You no longer flinch or bleed at my touch.
I dress you in fresh jeans and the red-check shirt with sapphire streaks that match your eyes.
I button each button, roll up the cuffs to your forearms and slide on socks and shoes.
Then I strap on the gold watch you never leave home without.
When they come and wheel you out, your dog strains forward to follow you,
And I hold him back, gripping his soft fur.
We sit on the porch together and watch as the tail lights disappear around the mountain curves.
Later, I gather every piece of your clothing and stuff it into garbage bags and leave it at Goodwill.
I take every piece of stained bedding and burn it in the fireplace and then go out to buy thousands of dollars of thousand-thread Egyptian cotton sheets, fleece blankets, a white goose down comforter to cradle me at night.
But it does not help.
Once you told me you wanted me to keep your ashes on my bureau forever,
But I plant them under a Japanese Maple tree, so every morning I can tell you I am sorry before I leave for work.
I can't hit "like", it would so misstate the enormity of your story, like saying "that was okay" after eating the best meal of my life. Thank you for opening this trunk full of remembrance and honesty, full of layers of experience and emotion.
I am overwhelmed by all of your comments. I was blessed to attend the Returning and Becoming retreat where Padraig spoke and read, and at the end I prayed for a small measure of his courage to not be invisible. Your comments have made me feel so very seen, and my heart is full of gratitude.
It sounds like you are beginning to do what my therapist calls “allowing yourself to take up space”. It isn’t easy to do this, but you did it beautifully here. All the best to you, Nancy!
What a good thought... allowing myself to take up space. Been working on understanding all the ways I disappeared myself for so many years. It is time (at 69) to start taking up space... Thank you!
"Your eyes tell me I am guilty for your death......"
You who made a scaffolding for his skeleton and sat in endless waiting rooms. You who took care of his body in life and then in death.
Regret is inevitable no matter whst you did or didnt do. ...you both knew you could never do enough. Death is bigger. It may still feel raw to be comforted by the comforters and sheets even after 10 years. I pray that something bigger than Death will comfort you still.
"And I disappear down into the basement away from your eyes/
to eat saltines and peanut butter/
while I do your wash."
This image in particular captures the poignant agony of beloved care giver. It touches me deeply. I am sorry for your loss. I am grateful for your poetry. 🙏 May your heart be lifted by your sharing.
My god, my god, my god. Nancy. I have no words. But tears. And respect. And tenderness. And awe (your writing, so so beautiful). Thank you 🙏🏾. I so support you in your hope that a song of hope and resilience will emerge. Sitting with moist cheeks and a heart so tenderized after reading your story, I believe I can already hear such a song ....
I am moved and reminded by your tender and loving account of this care and I am reminded of the power of the bittersweet. I am also reminded of moments of such care that I have witnessed, if not been a small part of, in my life. Thank-you.
Thank you for sharing so fully. Pádraig said he’d “love to hear this in stories, not theories — as much as you can bear to share.” You did that and more.
I don’t know what to say. Your writing of the end is so honest and it feel like we are along side in the room. I hope peace comes to you. The body does what the body does as it stops working and you were there to help, to take care of, to not run away.
Yes. To my mind, a Japanese Maple tree could embody forgiving and being forgiven. I planted a Coral Bark Japanese Maple tree a year ago in a nearby park, after twenty-five years had passed. Sending love and hope and resilience to you.
Nancy, thank you for sharing your story. I felt the shame, the guilt, the Mother, the Wife, the Caregiver, but mostly the Lover. I felt the enormous love you had for your partner. In every sentence, love and compassion, repeated over and over.
My older brother has the kind of autism which presents with noticeable and bizarre social behaviors. He has a loud monotone voice, slack face and even as a child looked like a scarier version of Boo Radley but instead of hiding away, my brother was "in your face". For my whole childhood I was intensely embarrassed of my brother and yet felt a natural love equally as intensely. But growing up in a cookie cutter social climbing suburb didn't help the anxieties I felt being associated with him in public. In this bullying, conforming corner of the world I found it very tough as a child and as a teenager to figure out how to come to terms with all this. I was sensitive and intuitive which worked for me and against me all at once. I also knew I was a different kind of kid, not the conforming kind and that added to my overall distress. As a teenager and as I grew older I wrote a lot, treasured solitude and received help from several good places and my philosophical temperament enabled me to mature, but when I gave birth to twins with significant cognitive and medical diagnoses I brought both a host of resources and continued baggage. Perhaps my most comforting turning point in all this came one day when I was leading a wine blessing after worship services I had just led as a cantor and my twins were present among the other congregants who had gathered. Everyone grew quiet in anticipation of the blessing. That's when Jack started flapping his hands and making his usual inarticulate noises because he was excited and as I started to feel a flush of that familiar old embarrassment this magnificent and unexpected flash of freeing thought came to mind. My God, what is Jack's big crime here? He is loud when he should be quiet. Bill Clinton has just been called to account for his affair with Monica Lewinsky and I'm ashamed of Jack? I thought to myself: Every moment in this crazy world so-called "normal" people commit multiple public and private acts of damaging harm and violence done by words and body towards selves and others in secrecy, in quiet places Why in the world would I waste time on shame around the public quirky behaviors of my brother or sons? Well, the cup of Sabbath joy shifted for me that day. That was the last time I felt any embarrassment around them. This has helped me be a confident advocate for my children and a better sister to my brother. It was truly a culminating turning point. It helped me become more accepting of myself. And unexpectedly, instead of feeling more hostile, it led me toward a gentler approach in encounter with people who fear the "other". When people are given the safe space to voice their fear or discomfort and increase their exposure to what is different, over time I have witnessed remarkable changes in many, even the most resistant even as I have witnessed and even been hurt by those who cannot or refuse to engage a more tender heart and never will. I wish we lived in societies more conducive to really getting to know each other better over time. But this is how my past lives a little better in me now.
How precious the teachings from those who are “other”, so very human and gifted if our eyes and ears and hearts can open to receive their gifts.
And, yes, being a sibling or parent to one who appears so differently abled and/or expressive can be a struggle as you so beautifully described.
You touched my experience of finding freedom from entanglement from mothering a child who over time taught me the truth of love and grit and grace and perseverance and resilience and so much more.
And yes, joy and laughter and humility.
I appreciate your sharing this along with your vulnerability and insight. ❣️
This is beautiful Amy. I often think we feel same when we should not and then there are things we do as a society that fit under normal, that are actually quite toxic and harmful.
Love this, the way you remind us of the wider lens, a whole world of complicated human beings making mistakes and being imperfect and beautiful all at the same time. In one sense we are all the "other" to someone else, and that makes everyone part of the same community, vulnerable and trying our best to figure it all out.
Thank you for this beautiful sharing, Amy. I am reminded of a podcast I heard years ago about a community in Geel, Belgium, in which folks with mental illnesses are cared for by being welcomed into the homes of the people who lived there. The key element that was highlighted was how there was acceptance of these folks by the families that "adopted" them. At the end of the program, they said, this has worked very effectively, with one exception - it seemed that if the person was actually a member of your own family, acceptance was the hardest. Ooof! Truth. I so hear you, and the difficulties... and how beautiful that moment of transformation. Thank you for sharing!
It's so interesting that you share this. My guess is that there is no guarantee thst any given family is equipped or born with the natural ability to know how to be hands on with mental illness or exceptional developmental challenges. When you think about it most parents aren't equipped to raise so-called neurotypical kids. So imagine the extraordinary. At the same time there are only segments of Geel willing to take in these folks not the majority I'm guessing Still....what a splendid model for shared community responsibility. I am nearly ecstatic at the thought of how many of the community get to really know these people which can only mutually enrich everyone's lives and and make the more vulnerable safer and more secure. I'll have to check out the podcast.
This is a tender and apt question for me on this Pride Sunday here in New York. My relationship with the past has changed tremendously as I’ve made peace with my identity as a gay man over the years and integrated all the parts of myself and my personal story. There was a violence in my queerness before I fully explored and accepted it, and the target of that violence was often the past. Memories of life before I started coming out (a process, not a moment), my family’s cultural heritage, my hometown, my old friends—all of these were seen as things I needed to sever myself from, and I did. Thankfully, the past was not dead, and I am still breathing life into it to fully bring it back to my consciousness the more I can fully breathe myself. My coming to understand the concept of being gay in my teen years (very much in private) also intersected with the sudden death of my mother, so the trauma of that experience can’t be separated. How grateful I am to have a contemplative practice, a wonderful therapist, 12-step recovery for addiction, and forums such as this that allow me so many opportunities for repair.
While I was never consciously unhappy about being gay, it did cause a shame in me for which I didn’t have words for a very long time. But as I developed the words, they also brought me understanding, self-compassion, and a community, and from that place of care and safety, I have begun to explore and reconnect with my own past. I wrote last week about my annual visits to Provincetown, and going back to New England is very much a welcoming in of the past for me. Allowing my brother and sisters to tell stories of the past and reminisce with them without leaving the room or finding ways to change the subject—that has been a seismic change in my relationship to the past. And my willingness to reflect on where I came from and believe for a moment that my old world Irish and Italian ancestors may have actually accepted me for the person I am and loved me more than I initially proved capable of—that is a choice, and has opened up a door for me that I am more regularly willing to walk through. I have spent some time in Ireland (and am actually now a citizen), and in 2024 will be making a trip to Italy for the first time. My parents and grandparents are all gone, but the ancestral past still holds a great potential for healing, I think. Time will tell. And in the meantime, I have an explanation for why readings from Irish poets (including Padraig) can so quickly bring me to tears.
So the violence I referenced was obviously not in my queerness, but in fear and shame. As experience, age, and conscious action help them to dissipate, it’s a relief to begin to piece together my life and the lives that made mine possible. What a deprivation it would have been to make it to the end of life without reflecting on this. It’s a beautiful “hello” and just in time. Happy Pride.
"I am still breathing life into it to fully bring it back to my consciousness the more I can fully breathe myself." Such a beautiful way to think about it.
I’m so grateful to you for posting this, Tom. I’ve not had this experience, but you took us through the process of coming out in a way that opened up my understanding. ♥️
Reading your story I was struck by the intersectionality of the past as you describe it. Fear and shame; siblings and friends and ancestry; places and seasons.
So glad to hear that, Lori — thank you for saying so. I will admit I tend to let these things flow when I respond on Sunday mornings, and this time I re-read and thought, “oh wow, that’s a lot…oh well <post>.” 😆 Thank you for your kindness and Happy Pride to you!
Happy Pride Tom! Thanks for sharing this. I have been reflecting a lot on similar things of late. I wrote about it in my post this morning if you want to check it out.
The Past? Funny you arrive again. Just yesterday I saw you in my mirror. The wrinkled sadness of my mothers eyes beseeching me to make it “right”. And behind her face my grandmothers, and behind hers another. Each defying me to try and leave them behind.
Thank you for providing words for what I, too, have been experiencing. My mother died three years ago at age 89, yet I see her every day in my mirror or in my wrinkled hands. Mom is gone, yet her DNA lives on in me. Perhaps this gives me a new perspective for my aging years :-)
In the past, I learned how to read the people in the room for bad moods or sometimes even good ones. I learned how to be quiet. I found other worlds in books I read, quietly.
In the past was fear, and then anger, and now sadness for the one with bad moods.
But because of the past’s reading of many books, I gained much knowledge and appreciation and love for reading. And reading people has come to be useful in the world of work. I found my voice and some ease with not keeping quiet.
When I was 12 or 13 years old an older student at my school was killed in a car accident. I vividly remember hearing people at his funeral express all their deep regret for things left unsaid. I vowed that day to live as honestly as possible and to say what my heart felt in the moment if at all possible. Have I been perfect at that, no. But I have been true to my heart more often than not, it has gotten easier to do with practice, and it has made such a huge difference in my life.
I love this philosophy, Cyd. You never know what will open up in your life and relationships when you communicate your feelings. I made an amazing friend a few years ago, and we can say anything to each other without judgement. Being able to do that is glorious! It gives our friendship so much depth, trust, and empathy. ♥️
There is an island in the Saint Lawrence River that has been a gathering place for my family since 1875. My grandsons are the 7th generation to come to these shores, explore the flora and fauna, scramble over the rocks, collect acorns, splash in the water. They say water has memory. The trees, rocks and mosses do too, of that I am sure. When I am on this island, my body and soul reverberate with the happiness and sorrow of my mother, grandparents, great-grandparents, great-great grandparents and countless cousins. I feel both consoled and trapped by their memory when I am there. Unresolved grief has settled on the land, the water momentarily setting it free. Children's laughter breaks through to bring us all back to the present moment. Can we build a future with new ideas or will we always be governed by "the way it has always been done"?
Tracy, I just returned from my first trip up the St Lawrence River and am moved to imagine being of seven generations gathering with water, rocks, acorns, trees that hold memories of grief and laughter along with the wish for new ideas going forward. I, too, was absorbed by the deep, dark, magnificent history that took place along this extraordinary river all the time wondering what we have learned to live in harmony with our waters and earth going forward.
Juju, thank you so much for your reflection. I feel a kindred connection to you through our experience of the river.
My great great grandfather sailed a ship up and down the Saint Lawrence transporting coal and lumber. It is a storied river and deeply in need of reconciliation in this time of de-colonization.
Were you on the Canadian Empress? If so, you will have moored overnight very close to our island.
Tracy, I just looked up the Canadian Empress to see what I missed !
My journey was on a larger ship yet the stories that came to me from fellow passengers and later from you brought me to my family roots from the aisle of Man, an island in the Irish Sea.
As you so eloquently express, our ancestral stories are carried through our personal “songs” of sorrow and happiness deepened with wisdom of becoming an elder.
Your grandsons are fortunate to return to this ancestral island of refuge and release. They will grow strong and their paths rooted in trust.
In part due to your strength and care, your grandmother’s mind. 💓
Understanding how regret has worked in my life necessitated understanding the virtually titanic regrets that my parents carried all their lifelong. In August of the year my mother died (which was in October) we attended a family wedding in Acadia. My sister and I accompanied our mom on what we all knew would be a final visit. Though my siblings have a quite different experience of our mother, as the first-born, raised in my earliest years in Acadia, I had always experienced my mother's sadness very strongly. Though I did not understand it, I did not expect to learn more. And yet, the few days we spent visiting the places where, and the people with whom, my mother was young was like a powerful light shone in the darkness. The tenderness and sorrow and longing that I witnessed in my mother for those few days were like a long-unspoken truth. Now I could see that she had spent her life grieving the loss of this place from which she fled as a young woman (but that's a much longer story). Two visits still shine brightly in my memory. In visiting the farm of her grandfather we learned that an aunt still lived across the street (she would have been well into her 90s) but she was grieving the loss of a daughter who had recently died. My mother wanted to offer condolences so we made our way across the street. A personal care nurse met us in the drive and explained that my mom's aunt was very sad but would enjoy receiving us. My mother entered the house first and I could see through the large window immediately adjacent to the door as my mother entered the living room and immediately burst into tears. My sister followed and i witnessed the same thing. I took a deep breath, walked in, and was immediately overwhelmed by the sorrow that was, in that moment, being shared. I thought for a moment that our tears would cause a flood. But we eventually gathered ourselves together and had a lovely, if brief, visit. There was so much love in those few moments and it felt like a kind of time travel. It was almost as if I could see my mother as the small girl who would visit here for the wee pastries we called pets de soeures (literally Nun's Farts). Leaving this visit we had learned that a cousin, Jean-Guy, had returned home (three doors away) to care for his mom who, we were warned, suffered dementia. We stopped in to say hello. Jean-Guy answered the door and recognized my mother immediately. Rather unexpectedly, he was wearing a bright hawaiian shirt, was deeply tanned, and had hair coiffed with highlights and curls. His style was, to say the least, loud. The only word for his behaviour that I could think of was flamboyant. And his joy in seeing us was as overwhelming as the grief from which we had just come. He explained right away that his mother would love seeing us but that we had to know that the dementia she suffered was one of short-term memory loss - i.e. she couldn't remember things from one minute to the next. After we had done two rounds of introductions (since she had forgotten immediately that they had happened) we spent perhaps an hour visiting, with my mother reminiscing with Jean-Guy and his mother. Jean-Guy's mother understood that she could not remember things but seemed only to find this highly amusing. Her laughter, as well as Jean-Guy's, was constant and infectious. And our laughter was as much a flood of emotion as were the many tears we had shed mere moments before. Those visits and that week that I spent with my mother at the end of her life provided more insight into who she was than the life I had lived with her. I've continued to remember and reflect upon that time and learned to see yet more facets of that world gone by.
Oh my, Chris. How deeply moving. The sorrow, the regrets, the flood of tears, the laughter! This quality of time and experience shared with your mother ... so precious. And so beautifully told. Thank you 🙏🏾.
Until my 40s, I believed it was my father who killed my mother. The unkindness of a flaunted affair in our "good Catholic family" the shame of which my mother wore until a massive aneurysm exploded in her head when she was only 62. I have held tightly to the story of their marriage with he the villain and she the victim.
Deep into my career as a couple counselor (laugh if you will!), I could no longer justify my parents’ marriage as being so one-sided. "An affair is either a death knell or a wake-up call" I'd say to other couples. "You really do have a choice" I'd say to bring comfort.
And suddenly I saw my parents differently. As I see my clients. As two wounded, vulnerable, complex beings caught in their own blind spots and limitations but also with agency, courage and possibility. But back in 1975, there was no one to help them.
The past is not at all fixed. It is only freeze-framed by the limitations of our sight today.
Mona - thank you! I had not thought about the past this way until writing today. I wonder if you find that to be grue for you. Sometimes we don't know what we know / believe until we are invited to write.
Yes! I definitely find I discover things through the act of writing. (So why don’t I do this daily, as a practice???). But grateful for Pádraig’s Sunday invitations...
Summers when I was young we would visit my grandparents at the cottage, on a long lake. It was a wild space in more than just the setting. It was imagnitively open. I would use my imagination and transform my surroundings into fantastical adventures. My grandmother, who's imagination had refused to shrink into adulthood, would weave these fantastical adventures with me. I could explore, and often did, the large Canadian shield ridge behind, climbing to a rocky lookout over the lake valley below. I remember observing small things like droplets in spider's webs. I remember days wanting to hide and not play outside too, days of reading, building plastic worlds with lego blocks, card games with my grandfather. I remember my father, brothers, aunt and uncle, and other relatives always full of energy to be out and doing one thing after another - swimming, kayaking, climbing, canoeing, water skiing. I did these sometimes, but never had the same energy, vigor perhaps. I needed to recharge more, withdraw more. I didn't fit the social patterns and norms of life, even then, even there. I didn't want to do - much of the time I just wanted to be.
I am still like this.
I want to stop life, press pause.
Can I rewind it all to the start and play it again?
Play it at a speed where I keep up with the world around me?
Biscuits and roses come to mind early morning after a week away traveling solo on the St Lawrence River.
This morning’s forecast: Eight straight days scattered thunderstorms in the afternoon.
Growing up on the banks of Lake Erie, wild lightening and thunderstorms brought my cousins and me out to a cliff’s edge where we perched on an old fallen log to participate in the sound and light show with shivers of excitement and fear.
To dry off and warm up we would scurry to our grandma’s home anticipating smells of fresh baked bread, cookies, biscuits.
On sunnier days I loved cutting thru her rose beds, often meeting up with Cedar, an avid gardener, who would hand me the clippers reminding me to cut off all the thorns before taking them to grandma.
Now, today, back home, my daughter requested biscuits. It is strawberry festival time at our local framer’s market. My husband is the family biscuit maker.
Strange, as he is Armenian, and we have such different ancestral foods but biscuits are one of his specialties. Roses are mine.
Tonight we will have a simple welcome home supper with freshly cut roses on every surface, warm biscuits with those splendid ripened red berries, and possibly a thunderstorm.
How soothing these particular memories are to the precious nature of passing time as I enter my 81st year.
A few days ago a memory popped up, one that used to be painful and often left me feeling ashamed. And for the first time I didn't feel the weight of that shame. I realized that I was just doing the best I could at the time, with very inadequate emotional tools. I was able to offer myself grace, to let the memory go, and it's left me with a deeper capacity to be open to the world.
My past is in a country parish churchyard in Ballinafad, County Mayo, Ireland. My past is also in the garage in a box while I wait for my mother tell me where she wants to rest. Not with my sibling or Dad in Ballinafad - someplace else. But that's the past isn't it? Someplace else. I've been researching vacations online and I'm getting lots of online ads and brochures in the mail. Will someone please send me a brochure on a 5-day all inclusive stay in the past so I can finally release it?
This poem was used for Poetry in Motion on the subway in NYC! I remember reading it on my way somewhere or other. I love: "We'll all go back together" and that this place is "not as it was to live" but "as it is remembered". I once wrote daily for a month about 30 different imagined responses to a key scene in my life -- something someone said to me at my father's funeral. For me, it's not just as remembered, but as imagined.
“But that's the past isn't it? Someplace else.” I love those lines. And I think a short story about a travel agency that sends you to the past would be a deliciously fun and deep story indeed.
As I’ve looked into my ancestral history, the past has become a fluid place — lots of comings and goings. I remember one pivotal moment when I stood in a tiny, over-grown graveyard in a place where the eastern woodlands give way to the tallgrass prairies of Turtle Island, (America). I had traced my fourth great-grandmother here and although I couldn’t find a headstone, she assured me this was the place.
I looked between the trunks of two old oaks that framed a view to the southeast — the direction from which she had come when she left her family’s homeland in the Appalachian Mountains. The way I’d heard that story was a vague reference to how we headed West in search of opportunity — as if we moved toward something shining, beckoning in the distance — finally settling along the shores of the Pacific Ocean.
But having just been East, searching for the details of this grandmother’s life, I now knew what she had been running from. The family had been driven out of their mountain-cradled cornfields by jealous neighbors that persecuted them for having the audacity to love people who weren’t the same “color” as they were. My family mixed and matched where they pleased, combining Turtle Islanders, with Africans, with Europeans and raising children who ended up like my fourth great-grandmother, hard to categorize, (if you were of a mind to.)
That hidden history had lead me to this grandmother’s resting place, far from her mountain home and far from where the rest of the family would end up. I may have been the only descendant to return for a visit.
I knelt down and told her she was loved. She, in turn, gave me the long journey back to the truth.
Such a beautiful life story, and a setting right of a life’s story. I hope this will travel through future generations of your family so that her struggle and determination can be shared and celebrated.
You are a faithful descendant to your fourth grandmother, following her path and finding her final resting place. May she rest in peace. She has been a faithful ancestor to you.
In my teens and early adulthood I had undiagnosed and untreated bipolar disorder. My life was full of good things, too, not just the difficult things. But when I was in college, I partied hard--in all of the ways that phrase can be used. I used to have so many regrets about the ways I sought relief and release from the effects of the gymnastics meets taking place in my mind, body, and soul.
After I had my own children, I learned how to give myself (and those earlier versions of myself) the same compassion and care I so easily gave to my daughter and son. Then, when my daughter was four years old and my son was two, I had a huge manic episode that required hospitalization in an inpatient psychiatric facility. I finally received the diagnosis, meds, therapy, and spiritual direction I'd needed for more than 15 years.
Madeleine L'Engle once said something like "we are all the ages we've ever been." I love that. I love that every version of me is still me. Now, memories of my partying self make me smile. I take a deep breath and honor that bright young woman who needed more care than she knew, more care than anyone knew. I lift my wine glass or coffee mug or LaCroix can to her and say, "Cheers. We got through that, didn't we."
Charlotte, I love L'Engle's idea, too. I FEEL like I am all the ages I've ever been. You probably heard Kate DiCamillo talk about "the eight-year-old in you" with Krista Tippet. Same idea. Beautiful. I feel like my younger selves are feeling safer now. We all (my interior community) are with yours, "We got through, didn't we!!" Cheers to you.
Love Madeleine L'Engle! Continued grace to you.
Just last Wednesday, I “changed the past.” A few years ago I was in a relationship, with a powerful neurotic hook, that ended poorly. I ended it with what I thought was a heart of compassion, and was met with the hurling of poison, or so it felt that way to me. The narrative of that relationship had been how I was the listener 95% of the time, how he was unreasonably critical at times, how I had to ask to be paid attention to as he was so mired in his own woes me suffering. Though the volume of the narrative had become quieter and quieter over time, it still had this taste of bitterness, of being wronged. Then, last Wednesday! I was sitting in a guided meditation and the teacher asked “think of someone who has offered you patience.” To my complete shock, this particular ex popped into my head, and a specific memory. I was cooking eggs at his place, and doing so in a carefree way, wanting the yellows to stay unbroken, but they broke so I just swirled it all together. He made a cutting sarcastic remark at how this was the result of my American education. At the time, I felt the sting of his comment, as it was yet another example of not being seen, of being mis-seen, and of being summed up in a oversimplistic way. By some kind of magic, in the meditation last Wednesday, he came into my mind, and that specific memory, and I thought, “wow. given how he was, everything had to be “perfect” or not done at all (eg, didn’t like to dance because he didn’t think he was a good dancer), it must have involved profound patience to be with me, who cracked eggs carefree, or as he might see it, carelessly). I suddenly then recalled how when we first started dating, he was making a soup for me, quite nervous as it was early on, and when it was time to crack eggs into the soup, I noticed he was almost frozen. He muttered that usually his son cracks the eggs. I offered to do it, and he accepted, and that was that. Recalling this opened up so much compassion for this man. AND, then I remembered a story he had told me once as we lay in bed.. of how when he was a youngster, maybe 9, or 11, I can’t recall, his parents sent him to stay with his uncle to protect him during a time of political unrest in his hometown. He shared, quite vulnerably, how on one occasion, his uncle bashed his head against his cousin’s head as punishment for taking an extra dessert. On Wednesday after meditation, walking in the streets of Manhattan, I remembered that story, and then his inability to crack the eggs, and then his remark (that I had been quite insulted and hurt by) about how I cracked the eggs. And suddenly it all made sense. Tears rolled down my cheeks as I had this different understanding ... the past changed. Then, as if I were simply a character in a play, I walked into Whole Foods to pick up some blueberries, and this song “kiss me” by sixpence was playing, and without launching into a whole other story (that also transformed in that very moment from disappointment and hurt, to - joy! sounds crazy but it’s true).... it was a song that held significance for me as I had planned to sing it to him, but never had the chance. How the past just changed!!!! I have felt so liberated, so humbled, so grateful. And how wonderful to have this opportunity to reflect on it here and now. Thank you so much Pádraig for your wizardry and wisdom!
“I look at that choice not with the luxury of regret, but with curiosity, wondering how it’s working its way out in me now, and how I can live with everything that was made alive by the choices.” -- wow. thank you.
Thank you. This is such a vivid description of a subtle interior change. The truth of your ex's unkind behavior didn't change but your way of holding it did. It's beautiful that your heart was ready.
An amazing story. Thank you for sharing this. I'm struck by how much meaning lies in our experiences that is, in the lived moment, beyond our ken but, in the remembered moment, a treasure(s) to be revealed. And while that is usually a treasure of understanding, it can also be one of solace, compassion, reconciliation and, perhaps, even enlightenment. It seems to me that regret is an indicator of a story that has yet, at least to be revealed, if not told.
Thank you, Chris! So much insight and wisdom in what you say here. All the possibilities for meaning in the remembered moments...
Just love the magic of this experience, though I note that magic so often happens when we situate ourselves intentionally in places of nurture - your meditation class in this case - as though we stand open to the chitty chat universe ready to hear things we couldn't hear before. So lovely for you......
Ah Mona - so so thoughtful and curious and willing to "see" anew. I love your writing and I am so happy that this "ex" relationship is now acquiring depth, compassion and - even - respect and wonder. Nice!
Thank you so much! I tried hard to see it differently before, and “it worked” sort of, partly, but this spontaneous arising and the shifts it’s brought feel so true. So grateful!! Thank you for your kind words!
What a beautiful testament to the power of stories—particularly the ones that live in us. Thanks so much for sharing.
Wow. What a great change in perspective! That’s huge.
I LOVE this, Mona!! What a beautiful and well-written story! It's so lovely the way little moments can take you through so many changes and perspectives! Grateful for you and your story. XO
That’s so kind of you, Danielle! ♥️
It’s interesting, isn’t it, how knowing where someone is coming from, what they have experienced, helps bring understanding to their actions? It doesn’t excuse the unkindness, but maybe it lessens the sting, knowing that all of it emanates from a hurt child.
Yes! And somehow, although I knew all these things and had connected the dots before, it was how he came to mind when asked to contemplate on when I’ve received the gift of patience from another that somehow shifted my subconscious that was holding onto the pain, and resentment. It really feels like a gift! I actually feel genuine warmth for the man now. So, so thankful. Thank you Elaine for reading and sharing your thoughts!
Gorgeous portrayal Mona,of how one truly CAN change the past and free it... not through control...but through an opening in the heart....
What a moving experience of understanding! Thank you for sharing. ❤️
Wow, thank you Mona. I can FEEL the process as you explain it here, how the pieces of the past came together inside of you in a different (more accurate??) way, and released you. And from a place of understanding and release you can hear the music, in the store!, and feel JOY. Very powerful. Thank you for taking the risk to share.
Thanks so much, Lori! And how much fun it’s been to listen to that song on repeat the past few days and feel joyful and recall the feelings in me when I wanted to sing it to this man. Playful, desirous, affectionate... thanks for taking the time to read and share your thoughts!
This week, "Replay" struck a chord with me, as did this writing this morning. It is almost ten years since my husband's death, and still it replays over and over for me. I am hoping that this year I will redeem it from the world of regret and sadness and turn it into a song of hope and resilience. So here is my story:
2013
(On the 10th anniversary)
It is the year of driving.
Our house sold, we travel south past fields of something unnamed:
Long grainy stalks that sway in breezes. I am now at the wheel while you just stare
out the window, away from me, glaze-eyed, hypnotized, narcotized as we move toward
the house you built in the mountains, so remote it does not even register on GPS.
I drive you from one doctor’s office to the next, sitting in infinite identical waiting rooms,
Writing, writing, rewriting a litany of drugs, summoning the gods and goddesses,
Promethegan, loperamide, temazepam, and the man in the white coat conjures
yet another map that will lead to somewhere else. And I dig deep to stay on the road. With you.
It is the year of silence.
It grows, the silence. First the music stops.
I wash your phone in my rush to clean up after the drugs and disease,
and there is no more playlist.
I sell your birds and drop our child off at college,
and he takes his words and laughter with him and leaves us behind.
And you stop talking
and turn off Rachel Maddow. And then even baseball.
It is the year of hunger.
You stop eating and even a glimpse or slight whiff of food
makes you shudder and turn your back. So I grind your pills
into fine powder, mix them with a portion of Ensure, and siphon them
into your stomach through a tube.
And I disappear down into the basement away from your eyes
to eat saltines and peanut butter
while I do your wash.
It is the year of regret.
When I leave your side and you fall, crumpling down to the cold bathroom floor helpless,
and I have to engineer a pulley to move your skeleton across the bathroom floor
and back into bed.
You bleed onto the sheets when I scrape against your paper skin.
When I tell the doctor, No more, your eyes tell me that I am guilty of your death.
Your eyes follow me as the black hospice car follows us home. They give me oxygen and morphine, settle you into bed, and leave.
In the corner of the bedroom, I set up a jigsaw puzzle of cows grazing in a green pasture and I silently fit the pieces together and drop morphine on your tongue every time you move.
It is the year of death.
I slip out for a stolen cigarette and stare into the darkening forest and
down to the creek where sunset is shrouding over the valley.
When I return to you, there is a new silence, a stillness, as if the very air is holding its breath.
I stand over you and I sigh. I know that you are gone.
I turn away without a sound and fill a tub with warm water and soap and bring it back to you and run the washcloth over your gray skin. You no longer flinch or bleed at my touch.
I dress you in fresh jeans and the red-check shirt with sapphire streaks that match your eyes.
I button each button, roll up the cuffs to your forearms and slide on socks and shoes.
Then I strap on the gold watch you never leave home without.
When they come and wheel you out, your dog strains forward to follow you,
And I hold him back, gripping his soft fur.
We sit on the porch together and watch as the tail lights disappear around the mountain curves.
Later, I gather every piece of your clothing and stuff it into garbage bags and leave it at Goodwill.
I take every piece of stained bedding and burn it in the fireplace and then go out to buy thousands of dollars of thousand-thread Egyptian cotton sheets, fleece blankets, a white goose down comforter to cradle me at night.
But it does not help.
Once you told me you wanted me to keep your ashes on my bureau forever,
But I plant them under a Japanese Maple tree, so every morning I can tell you I am sorry before I leave for work.
I can't hit "like", it would so misstate the enormity of your story, like saying "that was okay" after eating the best meal of my life. Thank you for opening this trunk full of remembrance and honesty, full of layers of experience and emotion.
Exactly!
I am overwhelmed by all of your comments. I was blessed to attend the Returning and Becoming retreat where Padraig spoke and read, and at the end I prayed for a small measure of his courage to not be invisible. Your comments have made me feel so very seen, and my heart is full of gratitude.
It sounds like you are beginning to do what my therapist calls “allowing yourself to take up space”. It isn’t easy to do this, but you did it beautifully here. All the best to you, Nancy!
What a good thought... allowing myself to take up space. Been working on understanding all the ways I disappeared myself for so many years. It is time (at 69) to start taking up space... Thank you!
Wow. That’s all I’ve got. Couldn’t hit “like”… just wanted to let you know I heard you.
ditto🌱
please count this comment as a "LOVE".
you deserve that and so much more love.
"Your eyes tell me I am guilty for your death......"
You who made a scaffolding for his skeleton and sat in endless waiting rooms. You who took care of his body in life and then in death.
Regret is inevitable no matter whst you did or didnt do. ...you both knew you could never do enough. Death is bigger. It may still feel raw to be comforted by the comforters and sheets even after 10 years. I pray that something bigger than Death will comfort you still.
Wow! That hit home for me. Reframing guilt into love and comfort.
"And I disappear down into the basement away from your eyes/
to eat saltines and peanut butter/
while I do your wash."
This image in particular captures the poignant agony of beloved care giver. It touches me deeply. I am sorry for your loss. I am grateful for your poetry. 🙏 May your heart be lifted by your sharing.
Wow. Heartbreaking and yet so beautifully told. Thank you for sharing your story.
This took my breath away. Thank you for sharing, and I’m wishing you peace and warmth.
My god, my god, my god. Nancy. I have no words. But tears. And respect. And tenderness. And awe (your writing, so so beautiful). Thank you 🙏🏾. I so support you in your hope that a song of hope and resilience will emerge. Sitting with moist cheeks and a heart so tenderized after reading your story, I believe I can already hear such a song ....
I am moved and reminded by your tender and loving account of this care and I am reminded of the power of the bittersweet. I am also reminded of moments of such care that I have witnessed, if not been a small part of, in my life. Thank-you.
Thank you for sharing so fully. Pádraig said he’d “love to hear this in stories, not theories — as much as you can bear to share.” You did that and more.
I don’t know what to say. Your writing of the end is so honest and it feel like we are along side in the room. I hope peace comes to you. The body does what the body does as it stops working and you were there to help, to take care of, to not run away.
to not run away... What a good thought. Thank you.
Yes. To my mind, a Japanese Maple tree could embody forgiving and being forgiven. I planted a Coral Bark Japanese Maple tree a year ago in a nearby park, after twenty-five years had passed. Sending love and hope and resilience to you.
You touched my heart. Thank you.
Nancy, thank you for sharing your story. I felt the shame, the guilt, the Mother, the Wife, the Caregiver, but mostly the Lover. I felt the enormous love you had for your partner. In every sentence, love and compassion, repeated over and over.
Nancy, This is so incredibly moving. Thank you for sharing your story. Have you ever considered publishing this?
Thank you for sharing, this is really beautiful.
"...an impoverished imagination." Yes.
My older brother has the kind of autism which presents with noticeable and bizarre social behaviors. He has a loud monotone voice, slack face and even as a child looked like a scarier version of Boo Radley but instead of hiding away, my brother was "in your face". For my whole childhood I was intensely embarrassed of my brother and yet felt a natural love equally as intensely. But growing up in a cookie cutter social climbing suburb didn't help the anxieties I felt being associated with him in public. In this bullying, conforming corner of the world I found it very tough as a child and as a teenager to figure out how to come to terms with all this. I was sensitive and intuitive which worked for me and against me all at once. I also knew I was a different kind of kid, not the conforming kind and that added to my overall distress. As a teenager and as I grew older I wrote a lot, treasured solitude and received help from several good places and my philosophical temperament enabled me to mature, but when I gave birth to twins with significant cognitive and medical diagnoses I brought both a host of resources and continued baggage. Perhaps my most comforting turning point in all this came one day when I was leading a wine blessing after worship services I had just led as a cantor and my twins were present among the other congregants who had gathered. Everyone grew quiet in anticipation of the blessing. That's when Jack started flapping his hands and making his usual inarticulate noises because he was excited and as I started to feel a flush of that familiar old embarrassment this magnificent and unexpected flash of freeing thought came to mind. My God, what is Jack's big crime here? He is loud when he should be quiet. Bill Clinton has just been called to account for his affair with Monica Lewinsky and I'm ashamed of Jack? I thought to myself: Every moment in this crazy world so-called "normal" people commit multiple public and private acts of damaging harm and violence done by words and body towards selves and others in secrecy, in quiet places Why in the world would I waste time on shame around the public quirky behaviors of my brother or sons? Well, the cup of Sabbath joy shifted for me that day. That was the last time I felt any embarrassment around them. This has helped me be a confident advocate for my children and a better sister to my brother. It was truly a culminating turning point. It helped me become more accepting of myself. And unexpectedly, instead of feeling more hostile, it led me toward a gentler approach in encounter with people who fear the "other". When people are given the safe space to voice their fear or discomfort and increase their exposure to what is different, over time I have witnessed remarkable changes in many, even the most resistant even as I have witnessed and even been hurt by those who cannot or refuse to engage a more tender heart and never will. I wish we lived in societies more conducive to really getting to know each other better over time. But this is how my past lives a little better in me now.
How precious the teachings from those who are “other”, so very human and gifted if our eyes and ears and hearts can open to receive their gifts.
And, yes, being a sibling or parent to one who appears so differently abled and/or expressive can be a struggle as you so beautifully described.
You touched my experience of finding freedom from entanglement from mothering a child who over time taught me the truth of love and grit and grace and perseverance and resilience and so much more.
And yes, joy and laughter and humility.
I appreciate your sharing this along with your vulnerability and insight. ❣️
Ohhh your words move me more than you can ever know
This is beautiful Amy. I often think we feel same when we should not and then there are things we do as a society that fit under normal, that are actually quite toxic and harmful.
Oh yes Mary! If we refuse to dig into the depth of things I really think that is what dooms us to a dangerous inversion of values.
Love this, the way you remind us of the wider lens, a whole world of complicated human beings making mistakes and being imperfect and beautiful all at the same time. In one sense we are all the "other" to someone else, and that makes everyone part of the same community, vulnerable and trying our best to figure it all out.
Thank you so much for your understanding insightful response Carri.
Thank you for this beautiful sharing, Amy. I am reminded of a podcast I heard years ago about a community in Geel, Belgium, in which folks with mental illnesses are cared for by being welcomed into the homes of the people who lived there. The key element that was highlighted was how there was acceptance of these folks by the families that "adopted" them. At the end of the program, they said, this has worked very effectively, with one exception - it seemed that if the person was actually a member of your own family, acceptance was the hardest. Ooof! Truth. I so hear you, and the difficulties... and how beautiful that moment of transformation. Thank you for sharing!
It's so interesting that you share this. My guess is that there is no guarantee thst any given family is equipped or born with the natural ability to know how to be hands on with mental illness or exceptional developmental challenges. When you think about it most parents aren't equipped to raise so-called neurotypical kids. So imagine the extraordinary. At the same time there are only segments of Geel willing to take in these folks not the majority I'm guessing Still....what a splendid model for shared community responsibility. I am nearly ecstatic at the thought of how many of the community get to really know these people which can only mutually enrich everyone's lives and and make the more vulnerable safer and more secure. I'll have to check out the podcast.
...and you have helped us all by sharing a part of your past. Thank you, Amy.
I would have rather clicked love than like on this Manuel. If I have helped then I could not be more honored. Thank you.
And I add not as an afterthought, my brother and sons were and are my teachers and the "others" too.
Phew...the posts this week are really tugging at the heartstrings. ♥️ Thank you for talking us through your discovery.
Thank you for your comment!
Beautiful!! Thanks for sharing and for your openness and vulnerability and for loving and accepting all people. XO
This is a tender and apt question for me on this Pride Sunday here in New York. My relationship with the past has changed tremendously as I’ve made peace with my identity as a gay man over the years and integrated all the parts of myself and my personal story. There was a violence in my queerness before I fully explored and accepted it, and the target of that violence was often the past. Memories of life before I started coming out (a process, not a moment), my family’s cultural heritage, my hometown, my old friends—all of these were seen as things I needed to sever myself from, and I did. Thankfully, the past was not dead, and I am still breathing life into it to fully bring it back to my consciousness the more I can fully breathe myself. My coming to understand the concept of being gay in my teen years (very much in private) also intersected with the sudden death of my mother, so the trauma of that experience can’t be separated. How grateful I am to have a contemplative practice, a wonderful therapist, 12-step recovery for addiction, and forums such as this that allow me so many opportunities for repair.
While I was never consciously unhappy about being gay, it did cause a shame in me for which I didn’t have words for a very long time. But as I developed the words, they also brought me understanding, self-compassion, and a community, and from that place of care and safety, I have begun to explore and reconnect with my own past. I wrote last week about my annual visits to Provincetown, and going back to New England is very much a welcoming in of the past for me. Allowing my brother and sisters to tell stories of the past and reminisce with them without leaving the room or finding ways to change the subject—that has been a seismic change in my relationship to the past. And my willingness to reflect on where I came from and believe for a moment that my old world Irish and Italian ancestors may have actually accepted me for the person I am and loved me more than I initially proved capable of—that is a choice, and has opened up a door for me that I am more regularly willing to walk through. I have spent some time in Ireland (and am actually now a citizen), and in 2024 will be making a trip to Italy for the first time. My parents and grandparents are all gone, but the ancestral past still holds a great potential for healing, I think. Time will tell. And in the meantime, I have an explanation for why readings from Irish poets (including Padraig) can so quickly bring me to tears.
So the violence I referenced was obviously not in my queerness, but in fear and shame. As experience, age, and conscious action help them to dissipate, it’s a relief to begin to piece together my life and the lives that made mine possible. What a deprivation it would have been to make it to the end of life without reflecting on this. It’s a beautiful “hello” and just in time. Happy Pride.
"I am still breathing life into it to fully bring it back to my consciousness the more I can fully breathe myself." Such a beautiful way to think about it.
I’m so grateful to you for posting this, Tom. I’ve not had this experience, but you took us through the process of coming out in a way that opened up my understanding. ♥️
Reading your story I was struck by the intersectionality of the past as you describe it. Fear and shame; siblings and friends and ancestry; places and seasons.
Thank you, Tom. The way you unpack several layers of your life in this post is of great comfort to me. Happy Pride!
So glad to hear that, Lori — thank you for saying so. I will admit I tend to let these things flow when I respond on Sunday mornings, and this time I re-read and thought, “oh wow, that’s a lot…oh well <post>.” 😆 Thank you for your kindness and Happy Pride to you!
Happy Pride Tom! Thanks for sharing this. I have been reflecting a lot on similar things of late. I wrote about it in my post this morning if you want to check it out.
Peace, Tom. Thank you for sharing.
Happy Pride Tom!!
The Past? Funny you arrive again. Just yesterday I saw you in my mirror. The wrinkled sadness of my mothers eyes beseeching me to make it “right”. And behind her face my grandmothers, and behind hers another. Each defying me to try and leave them behind.
Thank you for providing words for what I, too, have been experiencing. My mother died three years ago at age 89, yet I see her every day in my mirror or in my wrinkled hands. Mom is gone, yet her DNA lives on in me. Perhaps this gives me a new perspective for my aging years :-)
In the past, I learned how to read the people in the room for bad moods or sometimes even good ones. I learned how to be quiet. I found other worlds in books I read, quietly.
In the past was fear, and then anger, and now sadness for the one with bad moods.
But because of the past’s reading of many books, I gained much knowledge and appreciation and love for reading. And reading people has come to be useful in the world of work. I found my voice and some ease with not keeping quiet.
When I was 12 or 13 years old an older student at my school was killed in a car accident. I vividly remember hearing people at his funeral express all their deep regret for things left unsaid. I vowed that day to live as honestly as possible and to say what my heart felt in the moment if at all possible. Have I been perfect at that, no. But I have been true to my heart more often than not, it has gotten easier to do with practice, and it has made such a huge difference in my life.
I love this philosophy, Cyd. You never know what will open up in your life and relationships when you communicate your feelings. I made an amazing friend a few years ago, and we can say anything to each other without judgement. Being able to do that is glorious! It gives our friendship so much depth, trust, and empathy. ♥️
There is an island in the Saint Lawrence River that has been a gathering place for my family since 1875. My grandsons are the 7th generation to come to these shores, explore the flora and fauna, scramble over the rocks, collect acorns, splash in the water. They say water has memory. The trees, rocks and mosses do too, of that I am sure. When I am on this island, my body and soul reverberate with the happiness and sorrow of my mother, grandparents, great-grandparents, great-great grandparents and countless cousins. I feel both consoled and trapped by their memory when I am there. Unresolved grief has settled on the land, the water momentarily setting it free. Children's laughter breaks through to bring us all back to the present moment. Can we build a future with new ideas or will we always be governed by "the way it has always been done"?
You leave us with a very existential question. Thanks Tracy. Can we fuel an airplane with hay and steer it with reins and horsewhips?
Tracy, I just returned from my first trip up the St Lawrence River and am moved to imagine being of seven generations gathering with water, rocks, acorns, trees that hold memories of grief and laughter along with the wish for new ideas going forward. I, too, was absorbed by the deep, dark, magnificent history that took place along this extraordinary river all the time wondering what we have learned to live in harmony with our waters and earth going forward.
A beautiful sharing. Thank you 🙏🏼
Juju, thank you so much for your reflection. I feel a kindred connection to you through our experience of the river.
My great great grandfather sailed a ship up and down the Saint Lawrence transporting coal and lumber. It is a storied river and deeply in need of reconciliation in this time of de-colonization.
Were you on the Canadian Empress? If so, you will have moored overnight very close to our island.
Tracy, I just looked up the Canadian Empress to see what I missed !
My journey was on a larger ship yet the stories that came to me from fellow passengers and later from you brought me to my family roots from the aisle of Man, an island in the Irish Sea.
As you so eloquently express, our ancestral stories are carried through our personal “songs” of sorrow and happiness deepened with wisdom of becoming an elder.
Your grandsons are fortunate to return to this ancestral island of refuge and release. They will grow strong and their paths rooted in trust.
In part due to your strength and care, your grandmother’s mind. 💓
Your words are a blessing to me. Thank you.🩷
Understanding how regret has worked in my life necessitated understanding the virtually titanic regrets that my parents carried all their lifelong. In August of the year my mother died (which was in October) we attended a family wedding in Acadia. My sister and I accompanied our mom on what we all knew would be a final visit. Though my siblings have a quite different experience of our mother, as the first-born, raised in my earliest years in Acadia, I had always experienced my mother's sadness very strongly. Though I did not understand it, I did not expect to learn more. And yet, the few days we spent visiting the places where, and the people with whom, my mother was young was like a powerful light shone in the darkness. The tenderness and sorrow and longing that I witnessed in my mother for those few days were like a long-unspoken truth. Now I could see that she had spent her life grieving the loss of this place from which she fled as a young woman (but that's a much longer story). Two visits still shine brightly in my memory. In visiting the farm of her grandfather we learned that an aunt still lived across the street (she would have been well into her 90s) but she was grieving the loss of a daughter who had recently died. My mother wanted to offer condolences so we made our way across the street. A personal care nurse met us in the drive and explained that my mom's aunt was very sad but would enjoy receiving us. My mother entered the house first and I could see through the large window immediately adjacent to the door as my mother entered the living room and immediately burst into tears. My sister followed and i witnessed the same thing. I took a deep breath, walked in, and was immediately overwhelmed by the sorrow that was, in that moment, being shared. I thought for a moment that our tears would cause a flood. But we eventually gathered ourselves together and had a lovely, if brief, visit. There was so much love in those few moments and it felt like a kind of time travel. It was almost as if I could see my mother as the small girl who would visit here for the wee pastries we called pets de soeures (literally Nun's Farts). Leaving this visit we had learned that a cousin, Jean-Guy, had returned home (three doors away) to care for his mom who, we were warned, suffered dementia. We stopped in to say hello. Jean-Guy answered the door and recognized my mother immediately. Rather unexpectedly, he was wearing a bright hawaiian shirt, was deeply tanned, and had hair coiffed with highlights and curls. His style was, to say the least, loud. The only word for his behaviour that I could think of was flamboyant. And his joy in seeing us was as overwhelming as the grief from which we had just come. He explained right away that his mother would love seeing us but that we had to know that the dementia she suffered was one of short-term memory loss - i.e. she couldn't remember things from one minute to the next. After we had done two rounds of introductions (since she had forgotten immediately that they had happened) we spent perhaps an hour visiting, with my mother reminiscing with Jean-Guy and his mother. Jean-Guy's mother understood that she could not remember things but seemed only to find this highly amusing. Her laughter, as well as Jean-Guy's, was constant and infectious. And our laughter was as much a flood of emotion as were the many tears we had shed mere moments before. Those visits and that week that I spent with my mother at the end of her life provided more insight into who she was than the life I had lived with her. I've continued to remember and reflect upon that time and learned to see yet more facets of that world gone by.
Oh my, Chris. How deeply moving. The sorrow, the regrets, the flood of tears, the laughter! This quality of time and experience shared with your mother ... so precious. And so beautifully told. Thank you 🙏🏾.
The layers of responding to and sharing memories. Thank you for sharing.
Until my 40s, I believed it was my father who killed my mother. The unkindness of a flaunted affair in our "good Catholic family" the shame of which my mother wore until a massive aneurysm exploded in her head when she was only 62. I have held tightly to the story of their marriage with he the villain and she the victim.
Deep into my career as a couple counselor (laugh if you will!), I could no longer justify my parents’ marriage as being so one-sided. "An affair is either a death knell or a wake-up call" I'd say to other couples. "You really do have a choice" I'd say to bring comfort.
And suddenly I saw my parents differently. As I see my clients. As two wounded, vulnerable, complex beings caught in their own blind spots and limitations but also with agency, courage and possibility. But back in 1975, there was no one to help them.
The past is not at all fixed. It is only freeze-framed by the limitations of our sight today.
Thank you for this sharing! “The past is not at all fixed. It is only freeze-framed by the limitations of our sight today.”
Mona - thank you! I had not thought about the past this way until writing today. I wonder if you find that to be grue for you. Sometimes we don't know what we know / believe until we are invited to write.
Yes! I definitely find I discover things through the act of writing. (So why don’t I do this daily, as a practice???). But grateful for Pádraig’s Sunday invitations...
"I have held tightly to the story..." I love that.
Thank you Nancy!
Summers when I was young we would visit my grandparents at the cottage, on a long lake. It was a wild space in more than just the setting. It was imagnitively open. I would use my imagination and transform my surroundings into fantastical adventures. My grandmother, who's imagination had refused to shrink into adulthood, would weave these fantastical adventures with me. I could explore, and often did, the large Canadian shield ridge behind, climbing to a rocky lookout over the lake valley below. I remember observing small things like droplets in spider's webs. I remember days wanting to hide and not play outside too, days of reading, building plastic worlds with lego blocks, card games with my grandfather. I remember my father, brothers, aunt and uncle, and other relatives always full of energy to be out and doing one thing after another - swimming, kayaking, climbing, canoeing, water skiing. I did these sometimes, but never had the same energy, vigor perhaps. I needed to recharge more, withdraw more. I didn't fit the social patterns and norms of life, even then, even there. I didn't want to do - much of the time I just wanted to be.
I am still like this.
I want to stop life, press pause.
Can I rewind it all to the start and play it again?
Play it at a speed where I keep up with the world around me?
Biscuits and roses come to mind early morning after a week away traveling solo on the St Lawrence River.
This morning’s forecast: Eight straight days scattered thunderstorms in the afternoon.
Growing up on the banks of Lake Erie, wild lightening and thunderstorms brought my cousins and me out to a cliff’s edge where we perched on an old fallen log to participate in the sound and light show with shivers of excitement and fear.
To dry off and warm up we would scurry to our grandma’s home anticipating smells of fresh baked bread, cookies, biscuits.
On sunnier days I loved cutting thru her rose beds, often meeting up with Cedar, an avid gardener, who would hand me the clippers reminding me to cut off all the thorns before taking them to grandma.
Now, today, back home, my daughter requested biscuits. It is strawberry festival time at our local framer’s market. My husband is the family biscuit maker.
Strange, as he is Armenian, and we have such different ancestral foods but biscuits are one of his specialties. Roses are mine.
Tonight we will have a simple welcome home supper with freshly cut roses on every surface, warm biscuits with those splendid ripened red berries, and possibly a thunderstorm.
How soothing these particular memories are to the precious nature of passing time as I enter my 81st year.
Thank you Padraig 😘
A few days ago a memory popped up, one that used to be painful and often left me feeling ashamed. And for the first time I didn't feel the weight of that shame. I realized that I was just doing the best I could at the time, with very inadequate emotional tools. I was able to offer myself grace, to let the memory go, and it's left me with a deeper capacity to be open to the world.
It gives me hope, that you were able to come out of self-criticism and move into self-compassion. ♥️
My past is in a country parish churchyard in Ballinafad, County Mayo, Ireland. My past is also in the garage in a box while I wait for my mother tell me where she wants to rest. Not with my sibling or Dad in Ballinafad - someplace else. But that's the past isn't it? Someplace else. I've been researching vacations online and I'm getting lots of online ads and brochures in the mail. Will someone please send me a brochure on a 5-day all inclusive stay in the past so I can finally release it?
Your plea for a brochure of the past brings to mind the poem Heaven by Patrick Phillips:
It will be the past
and we’ll live there together.
Not as it was to live
but as it is remembered.
It will be the past.
We’ll all go back together.
Everyone we ever loved,
and lost, and must remember.
It will be the past.
And it will last forever.
This poem was used for Poetry in Motion on the subway in NYC! I remember reading it on my way somewhere or other. I love: "We'll all go back together" and that this place is "not as it was to live" but "as it is remembered". I once wrote daily for a month about 30 different imagined responses to a key scene in my life -- something someone said to me at my father's funeral. For me, it's not just as remembered, but as imagined.
Thank you for sharing this - and this made me think of the song "Wild Mountain Thyme - and we'll all go together to pick wild mountain Thyme"
“But that's the past isn't it? Someplace else.” I love those lines. And I think a short story about a travel agency that sends you to the past would be a deliciously fun and deep story indeed.
“Would someone please send me a brochure...” Love this ironic plea!
As I’ve looked into my ancestral history, the past has become a fluid place — lots of comings and goings. I remember one pivotal moment when I stood in a tiny, over-grown graveyard in a place where the eastern woodlands give way to the tallgrass prairies of Turtle Island, (America). I had traced my fourth great-grandmother here and although I couldn’t find a headstone, she assured me this was the place.
I looked between the trunks of two old oaks that framed a view to the southeast — the direction from which she had come when she left her family’s homeland in the Appalachian Mountains. The way I’d heard that story was a vague reference to how we headed West in search of opportunity — as if we moved toward something shining, beckoning in the distance — finally settling along the shores of the Pacific Ocean.
But having just been East, searching for the details of this grandmother’s life, I now knew what she had been running from. The family had been driven out of their mountain-cradled cornfields by jealous neighbors that persecuted them for having the audacity to love people who weren’t the same “color” as they were. My family mixed and matched where they pleased, combining Turtle Islanders, with Africans, with Europeans and raising children who ended up like my fourth great-grandmother, hard to categorize, (if you were of a mind to.)
That hidden history had lead me to this grandmother’s resting place, far from her mountain home and far from where the rest of the family would end up. I may have been the only descendant to return for a visit.
I knelt down and told her she was loved. She, in turn, gave me the long journey back to the truth.
Such a beautiful life story, and a setting right of a life’s story. I hope this will travel through future generations of your family so that her struggle and determination can be shared and celebrated.
You are a faithful descendant to your fourth grandmother, following her path and finding her final resting place. May she rest in peace. She has been a faithful ancestor to you.