The Answer

The intersection of grief, creativity, and writing remains a place of such deep beauty and personal horror, I stand in awe of people getting their hands and souls dirty in it, exploring it with art, music, and writing. Kenny is a songwriter and musician from Bloomington, IN, whose band Gentleman Caller, has just released their fourth record, Wake (Mariel Recording Company). This record meditates on the loss of his daughter, Roxy Jean, who was stillborn at thirty-eight weeks on August 1, 2007. His music breaks me wide open in such an important way. I learn more about my own grief. Kenny agreed to join us at Glow as a regular contributor where he will be exploring his grief with his wise insights, brutal honesty, and dark humor, and of course through his music and words.  —Angie

In the year following Roxy’s death, I was just hunched, squinting and holding on.  I tried to outrun my thoughts, but they were in every hiding place I ran to.  I self-medicated with booze for a few weeks.  Became an expert on panic attacks. Sometimes I just waited, counting days away from the day she died. There was more comfort in math than hugs. I held on and flailed, as quietly as possible, inside my hollowed-out flesh-cage. I went to therapy, took anxiety meds and tried to get to know and understand my new, messed up self. 

During that god-forsaken year, 3 friends also died early, tragic deaths.  One by house fire.  One by drowning.  One by aneurysm.  All three under the age of 40. It seemed unreal and impossible at first… then, inevitable.  Remember, in The Empire Strikes Back, when Han Solo snaps “NEVER TELL ME THE ODDS!” before successfully flying through an asteroid field?  My life, the lives of my friends and family… ours had become the exact opposite of that.  We weren’t beating the odds, but being destroyed by them, and those odds were giggling.  

Hollowed out by losing my beautiful, dark-haired daughter, and managing my anxiety with medication (prescription and other), I was sliding down and increasingly absent of hope. I started recognizing patterns in the memorial services I was attending. The hollow, crying eyes of the mother, the trembling, shaking hand of the father, all while speakers talked about what the deceased loved, how they loved and who they were… and there was always a song. I was so embittered by all the loss, and death just seemed right around the corner for everyone I loved. I was certain I would not live to be an old man. I felt that no one I knew would. 

So, I decided to write my own funeral song.

I wanted a song that would just tell the bleak truths of my life… a song that wouldn’t put a bow on the end of my life, but a thudding and appropriate period. Somehow, it felt like the bravest thing I could do.

It happened immediately upon returning home after the last memorial service I would attend that year. It took literally the amount of time to write that it does to sing it. It remains, easily, the quickest I’ve ever written a song. It also remains the most cathartic:

THE ANSWER

I did not find the answer in church
I did not find the answer in church
I did not want a god that would not spare the rod
I did not find the answer in church
I did not find the answer in my home
I did not find the answer in my home
I was a stranger to my kin
I was a stranger to them
I did not find the answer in my home
I did not find the answer in school
I did not find the answer in school
I was sucker-punched and thin
I was not like the other kids
I did not find the answer in school
I did not find the answer at the bar
I did not find the answer at the bar
Beneath the stale embrace
I was always out of place
I did not find the answer at the bar
I did not find the answer in prescription drugs
I did not find the answer in prescription drugs
I took every pill they make
But I was still awake
I did not find the answer in prescription drugs
I did not find the answer in your eyes
I did not find the answer in your eyes
Not your hands and not your lips
We were always passing ships
I did not find the answer in your eyes

 What songs, if any, have been a comfort to you since your loss?  What songs can you no longer listen to? What would be your funeral song?

Holding On

KING PHILIP

You are as fond of grief as of your child.

CONSTANCE

Grief fills the room up of my absent child,
Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me,
Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words,
Remembers me of all his gracious parts,
Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form;
Then, have I reason to be fond of grief?

King John III.iv, William Shakespeare

I love the thought of ghosts and lingering souls

Spirits present, dark shadows with intent

I don’t fear eerie noises or the cold

Air shivering in our ancient vents.

And as I want my living children to

 Fulfil their full potential so I wish

For silent Iris to turn poltergiest

Possess my house and lightbulb filaments

Or leave me gothic portents where she can

Prevent calamity or incident.

More than only ash at least, more than

Dust and tears for my lost innocent.

I still hold on despite advice and proof,

Can one let go of nothing? Empty air,

Would she drift off to haunt another womb

If I moved on and left her memory there?

I’m ever fondly constant in my grief,

It must go on, it must go on for her,

There is an odd betrayal in relief,

That loyal in my love I shall abjure. 

How do you feel about the possibility of "moving on"? Do you want to?

comfort

There are the nightmares. It had been so long. I almost forgot them. My children kidnapped, shot. I stand in front of the masked men, offer myself up, belly first, like a fertility sacrifice. I wake in a start. I tap into the collective consciousness, the collective anxiety. I tap into the anxiety that is always there. That anxiety resides right in my chest in the place where, when Lucia died, a dragon woke. He coughs little impotent puffs of smoke. 

You can never protect your babies. Not really, his raspy voice whispers. I will wake in you, breathe fire, swoop in low, carry them off. I will fight until your death for them, but only if I can see. So much I cannot see.

Vulnerability seeps out my pores. I dampen shirts with it. The dragon thinks there is real danger, so I dampen him too. I wrap my children in bubble wrap, place them on a low shelf. They tear through my packing tape, giggling and stir-crazy.

WE CAN'T SIT STILL, MAMAAAAAAAAAAA! WE WANT TO RUN!

They run wild, climb walls, jump and twirl and become trapeze artists, skydivers, lion tamers, lumberjacks. And they want to go to school. And I can only see them sitting there while madmen shoot into locked doors. They will always seek freedom and independence the more I seek isolation and protection. I know because I was once them.

Twenty children died on Friday in Connecticut. Another twenty-two children were attacked in China by a knife-wielding man. It happened in a primary school as well. None were killed. As the news came in on Friday, I sat in my daughter's elementary school auditorium, my cell phone video recorder pointed at the stage, watching class after class of children walk onto stage singing holiday songs. It was terrible knowing the news, but I hadn't heard any of the details. I could only think of how small each of them looked, even the big ones. So much smaller than I remember being. When I arrived home, I read that one full class at Sandy Hook had been massacred. I shudder. I visualize one whole class from my town. I just sat in front of six classes of students ages 5-10--their parents hopeful, proud, delighted, enchanted, trusting. It is too much to think about. I turn away, ashamed that I cannot stare at the grief, not completely at first. It takes me a few hours to turn fully toward the young lives, to read the names of the dead, to see their faces. And when I do, the grief steamrolls me, the anxiety overtakes me, the dragon wants blood.

photo by pirindao.

I face east, like Maoi, waiting for answers. The spring moves in, damp and alive, reminding me of tomorrow. I ask the dragon, but he's reeling too. "Nothing to be done," he grumbles. Then south, the deserts offer me a dry breeze, thorns and poison and the elements of survival. The west offers me a damp cloth, and a sip of tea. "Catch your breath, child. I have no answers either." Finally north. I plant my feet firmly on earth, bellow a guttural, throaty noise, more animal than human. The earth opens, slowly I sink until just my eyes stand above ground. No more questions. There are no answers in the snow and frost. Not in the cold. Not in the desert. Not in the sea. Not in the quarters, not in the elements. They understand nothing of humans. The murders are senseless.  I grapple with my footing again. Four years later. The silence cruel and unnerving.

You must look within, the wind creaks. You must look within. You must look for the place that weeps, the place that hides, and ask it to release you. You must answer the question yourself. You must face that grief, because it is another expression of love. There is great beauty in this world. Look at it longer than the murders. Look at the people holding one another. Look at them longer than the murderer.

I weep for the mothers and fathers, the siblings, the grandparents, for the humans who miss everything now, who have to rebuild themselves, who have to find a reason to get out of bed, who have to go through a first year, who have to come to December, like me, and mourn their children. I tear up thinking of the journey they will lead, the peace that will never come. My own loss seems so small, so meaningless. And that is okay. It is. But it was seismic to me, catastrophic even. 

Lucia is dead four years on Friday. All of these losses coexist and don't battle for dominance. My grief and their grief and the grief of a nation, the world. I have to sit with undeniable truths. In this world, babies die. Twenty innocent children die together in the place that everyone considered safest for them. All this mingles together, jumbles up, and I forget for whom I am mourning. And it doesn't matter. Perhaps I should have always been mourning for all the children who die before they've lived, who die by the hands of violence, who die by the random placement of umbilical cords in wombs, who die by knives on the other side of the world. And I was.

My husband and I held each other and cried. Blubbered, even. It has been a long time since we have done that. We talked about the school shootings. "I can't imagine losing a five year old. I couldn't handle it, Angie. I couldn't." 

I know. I couldn't either, except I would have to, and so would you. Because before she died, we said the same, and then we did.

There is nothing left of comfort. It is meaningless, and besides, we need something more than comfort. We need hope, a sheer idiotic belief in something. I take Mr. Roger's advice to look for the helpers, the assistants, the compassion, the grief, the expressions of love, the people throwing themselves in front of bullets, so children don't die. And I think of this babylost community, who holds each other in the face of grief, lights candles, abides when people no longer will. Compassion is all that is left of good.

Please use this space to share the ways in which the news of the murders in Connecticut have affected you, your family, and your grief. 

Double cherry

When we were

Eleven

I told on her

And another one of

Our friends for

Being slightly

Snide

About my

New blue blazer.

She was in my class

Very smart

Straight A’s

All the way.

Like me

She struggled

With her body image

Like me

She had a wild heart

That loved the wrong men

Like me

She was ambitious, strong

Worked long, rose high

Like me

Her baby died

And as I stood by her side

As she said goodbye

I wished that we were

Different.

Has anyone close to you also had a baby or babies that died? How did that affect you in your own grief?

Her Ashes Will Ride In My Glove Compartment

My second daughter died on our sidewalk. Just a few steps from our front door.

Everything was fine and then it was over.

I walk over that patch of land nearly every single time I leave the house. My firstborn daughter rides her scooter over the spot, back and forth, screaming and hollering as she glides down the path. Our bedroom is in the front of the house, as close to the scene as you can get without being outside. A street lamp shines through our curtains in the darkness, like a beacon, as if it shines to remind me. Crickets hop between grass and concrete and I can hear them chirp, chirp, chirping away, into the evening and throughout the night.

The slab of concrete where she died just sits there idly still, two feet by two feet, day after day, gray and lifeless.

I thought my home would be ruined for me after she died. I thought it would be impossible to spend every day and night in the exact same place where her life abruptly ended. I wondered how I could avoid walking on that stretch of cement, how I could ever step foot on it without wanting to weep, or build a monument, or take a sledgehammer to it.

I wondered if this city would be ruined for me too.

I'm realizing now, after twenty-one months without her, that these places are all I have.

This was the last place she was alive. It was the last place our living bodies came into contact as I hugged her Mother, my belly against her body, a few minutes before it was over.

It's here in my home, here in this city where I've bonded with her through support group and countless conversations with my wife, through experiencing her with our friends and grieving with my living daughter, by watching my subsequent son being born in the exact place his sister died. We may not have brought a living daughter home from the hospital, but we have spent month after month parenting her, connecting with her, here in this place, even in her absence.

+++

In two weeks time, we will be packing up our meager possessions and moving from Los Angeles to Indianapolis, some two thousand miles to the East.

Los Angeles is where she was conceived, on a blistering July night, bedroom windows open. Los Angeles is where she miraculously grew and where we first saw her and where we felt her kick and where we set up her nursery. And Los Angeles is where she died on an overcast Thursday afternoon. It’s where we last held her and where we said goodbye. It’s the place we faced our greatest darkness, the place our friends whispered her name and lavished us with understanding and kindness. It’s where we spread her ashes, where we have spent night after night talking and crying over our lost baby girl. And we’re leaving it all behind.

The sidewalk isn’t coming with us. Neither is the river where we spread her ashes or the home where we mourned her. Our friends, the ones who selflessly trudged with us through the pain, the ones who know as much as you can really know, they aren’t coming either. The street lamp will continue burning brightly and the crickets will keep chirping and we will be long gone from the only place on earth that I really knew her.

And it scares the hell out of me.

How will we make friends with people who don’t know this part of our story? How will we handle a place that shows no sign of her? How will we feel connected to her in a place she’s never been?

+++

The packing list for what we will take in our car includes three things so far:

travel pack n’ play
leo mattress
margot

The only thing I know to do, as I leave my home, is to take her with me. In whatever ways I can, in whatever form, however possible it may be. Her ashes will ride in my glove compartment. The rocks from her river will be in a glass jar on the floor near my feet. Her necklace and ornament and the framed picture of water will be carefully packed, safe and sound in the back seat.

And truth is, there ain’t nothing a move can change about the girl who resides in my fractured heart, the girl who has left me for better and for worse. She is there regardless of geography. Regardless of happiness or a subsequent child or death or moving or Christmas presents. I'm the one who carries her memory.

Perhaps that will be enough.

Have you moved away from the place where your children lived and died? What was it like? Did it change the way you grieved, the way you thought about them? Can you imagine moving from the place you experienced your loss?