I Have A Thought…

I watched the news this morning and cried as I watched a woman rescued from the rubble, her husband heralding all the help of his neighbors.  They were powerless to lift her out of the tumbled structure of concrete until the LA Firemen showed up with their equipment. After three hours, they lifted her out and she burst into song, joined by the crowd around her, thanking God for saving her life. When the reporter leaned in to ask her if she thought she would survive, she said “Yes, why not?”  I laughed through the tears now streaming down my face. Why not, of course.

Turning off the news of Haiti, I feel guilty, like I am turning my back on their suffering. What right do I have to come into my office and my computer, my writing, my life going on uninterrupted while their loved ones are dying from simple infections because of lack of antibiotics and medical care? One mother said she would rather her daughter die than have her leg amputated. The life of an amputee is grim in Haiti. When I turned off that report, they were still searching for another relative to give permission for the amputation to save the child’s life.

For those of us of modest means, all we can do is to give to reputable charities that are getting aid to Haiti right now.  They will need so much help to start to recover. I can only add my voice to the plea.

Text Your Donation:

Text “Haiti” to 90999 to donate $10 to the American Red Cross. The $10 will be charged to your phone bill.

Give More:

Click here to give to the Red Cross, which is my choice of a trusted entity getting help to Haiti.

So–I’m looking out my window and this big old black crow is yelling at me in a hoarse voice. Staring right at me as I type and demanding that I pay attention. A friend’s words about the dead and how their souls take up residence in birds for a time after their death haunts me, makes me pay attention. How crazy do I sound?

Ok–so this will be a pretty disjointed post, to go along with how my mind works in abstract distracted thought patterns. Also why I have 10 different ideas for themes of my next book, and have started none yet.

First, watching mind junk TV last night I couldn’t help but draw parallels from Desperate Housewives to Replacement Child. How absurd is that? But, the plane crash into the little house, the killed and injured and saved, the subsequent loss of a child (Lynette’s baby) are so thematically reminiscent of my memoir, that I couldn’t let go of it. Will Lynette’s surviving twin be a replacement child? Will they continue to develop on the theme of her loss of her child as they started to do in last night’s episode?

And, then I see that Replacement Child just got a new review posted today that notes that the book would be a good read for those who counsel people who are going through the grieving process. I was delighted to see that they thought Replacement Child could be of some help in that regard. Even though the specifics of tragedies may differ, grief is remarkably the same. It is a process, and a little bird told me that it lessens but does not fly away.

It is always chilling for me to read about yet another plane crash, and even more so when it’s American Airlines–the same carrier that crashed into my family’s home.  Thankfully there were no fatalities from this crash in Kingston, Jamaica.  You can be sure though that those passengers will be changed by the event. They may think about the flight they almost took, or missed by a few minutes–or how they raced to catch this one. Some may have been convinced to take the trip by others, or talked out of another one.  Details are always telling–and sometimes chilling.

In Replacement Child, some of the people on the ground escaped the plane crash and death by a twist of fate, or a last minute decision. A teacher who kept his class late, a rehearsal cut short. And, then again, the fateful decision of my sister Donna to come home early from school that day. I think often of how small decisions have a ripple effect and it makes me hesitate to suggest a certain flight, a specific mode of transportation for my loved ones. What if I push them to the one that crashes and burns?  No, I let them make those decisions themselves and back away from that particular responsibility.

Every time I hear of another plane crash it reinforces one of the main tenets of my personal philosophy: Anything can happen. We are held here by a mere twist tie, at the mercy of the forces of nature and every decision of every other human on the planet. It isn’t an easy philosophy to carry–but it does make me grateful for each and every day.

I was so glad to see that Michael Brewer is being released from the hospital in time for Christmas with his family. He is the 15-year-old who was burned over 60% of his body when a group of kids surrounded him, doused him with rubbing alcohol and set him on fire this past October.  Michael’s courage is obvious when you watch the video of him during rehab on the Today Show, and at CNN.com.

I remember my sister telling me about how she used to be lowered into a water tank for hydro therapy because she couldn’t tolerate rehab exercises any other way after some of her reconstructive surgeries.  Her surgeries went on for some 20 years after the plane crash and fire that critically burned her over 80% of her body.  Like Michael, they didn’t know if she would make it.  And, like Michael, she pulled through because of sheer determination.  I was so moved to see Michael attacking his exercises with such focus.  Hearing his mother talk about reserving her positive energy made me think of my mom too,  throughout all of my sister’s hospitalizations. Always looking to recovery and the positive result of each surgery.  These mothers share the knowledge that their children need their undivided positive cheerleading. Michael’s mother sees that she can’t waste her time or energy on negativity. Her son’s survival depends in part on her encouragement and support.

My heart goes to Michael Brewer and his family with prayers for his continued recovery, and a joyous holiday together.

I just finished Lit, Mary Karr’s new masterpiece of a memoir.  It was her first memoir, The Liars’ Club, that inspired me to begin writing my book Replacement Child, so I impatiently waited for Lit to appear in my bookstore.

Besides being side-swiped by Karr’s incredible poetics and hard-hitting truisms throughout her new book, I found that we were both replacement children. In her story, she tells of how her mother sought to replace the babies that were taken from her by their father, and she traces the seeds of her mother’s craziness to that loss. Her replacement status was surely a main ingredient in Karr’s particular struggle for her own identity throughout her life.

We had other similarities in our lives too.  When I saw pictures of Karr with her son Dev, and learned how having her child brought her to face the stark reality of her alcoholism, it struck a chord. Though she credits prayer with saving her, I see motherhood as her catalyst, as it was my own. Mary Karr’s prose and poetic phrasing never cease to mesmerize me. What a beautiful book.

When I was a kid, my mother invited everyone in our extended family to share Thanksgiving at our house, along with anyone else that had nowhere to go for the holiday. I remember our split level filled with a hodge podge of tables and chairs to seat everyone. Mom didn’t believe in buffet dining Everyone had to have a seat, pass the potatoes, reach for the salt, yell down the line for the sweet potatoes. She didn’t want everyone traipsing around the house with full plates. “Sit and eat!” she would be saying as she pulled out the turkey.  She was in her full glory with a full house of people eating her food.  This is the holiday I miss her the most.  It was more sacred than any of the religious ones. When I went away to college, and then later got married, it was the one holiday I made sure to get home to celebrate. I still try  to recreate my mother’s spirit of the holiday.  The more friends and family I can muster up, the better I like it.  I’ll make Mom’s stuffing and try to remember her advice about when to cover the top of the turkey with a foil tent, as she used to call it. I’ll resist the urge to reach for the phone to call her and ask her what temperature to put it at for how long, and how long the sweet potatoes will take. But, I can still hear her voice telling me–“Be sure you have enough for people who might drop in!”

I came to grief late in life, protected and coddled in my own death-free existence. Save for a poisoned rabbit and a disappeared gold fish, death avoided me for many years. There was certainly death hiding under the bed, the unspoken grief for my sister who was killed before I was born–but that grief was never truly mine. Not until my parents died, and recently my other sister Linda, have I gulped down the waves of grief that threatened to drown me. Like love and childbirth, I had no frame of reference for the intensity of the experience. Being immersed in these life changing circumstances, seems to be the only way to learn to navigate through–whether it’s an ecstatic journey or a mournful one.

Generally, I am a positive person! I swear I am. And a few weeks after the death of my sister this summer, I told myself I was ok. I could smile and laugh, go out with friends, enjoy visits from my son and his girlfriend, my stepson’s wedding. But, I could not play music. Picking up my guitar was something that could not be done. Playing it seemed incongruous to something that had settled in me–a darkness that I held close. I tried it once, but all the songs I sang came out in a minor key. The beats were all wrong.

Now, I’m headed out on a book tour for Replacement Child. It’s a dream come true for me, and I’m truly excited about it. But, of course, Linda should have been a part of the launch of this book. The story is her life as much as mine, and not having her here is painful every step of the way. I am toying with bringing her photo with me for my book events, just to have her with me in some physical way–but I’m afraid it would be too morbid for my audience. I may opt for wearing the last gift she gave me, a bracelet engraved with “Sister, Friendship, Love” and my initials.

Just when I think I’m doing fine, hurtling loss like an Olympic star, a certain song will come on the radio and knock me backward, push me from behind and hit me in the chest with brutal force. It could be one of Linda’s favorites like “Knockin’ on Heavens Door,” or a country song telling me “when you get the chance to sit it out or dance–dance.” When Linda couldn’t speak to me the last days she was alive and intubated, she knew that my stepson’s wedding was coming up and wrote on her pad “no matter what happens, dance at that wedding.”I did, and I’ll keep trying until I get the steps right, and the music comes back to me.