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?

Dead babies from the time before

Baby Cosmo

Died

When I was

Fourteen

They made

A documentary

About him

We saw his image

On the screen

Of a 30 pound TV

But of course

He never breathed

And we just saw

His ghost on our

Machine.

He wasn’t the

First dead baby

I had been

Aware of, grieved

My cousin William

Died

Inside

The womb of my

Uncle’s wife

While they were

Far away

Unseen by me

But missed

And wondered over.

I imagined

Her hurt

Felt something

Approaching empathy

Although I was

Still young enough

To find the whole

Birth thing

Faintly obscene

And then another loss

Not mentioned

To me personally

And so I will not speak it here

It is not mine

To share

But I was aware

And felt keenly

The broken dream

Of another family

And then some weeks before

My baby died

I spoke to my friend

About her infant brother

Lost just days after

He was born

And we mourned

For him a little

In the car

On the way to work

I remember as we turned

Onto the road

With the lovely violin shop

On the corner

That I felt a sudden

Premonition

I just knew

That one day I would know

That feeling too

I didn’t realise it would be

So soon,

That I would come to

Speak with such

Authority

About small corpses

And their consequences

But those four came before

When dead babies were a rarity

What was your experience of babyloss before your baby or babies died? When you heard their stories did you ever imagine that it might happen to you?

Sounds

In a departure from my usual style for Glow in the Woods I have written and recorded a poem. You can hear me read it here:

Do I sound sad?

Can you hear it in me?

When I utter banalities

Or common courtesies

About inclement weather

Or paying bills, or other

Everyday utilities

Is that all I’m saying to you?

Or do your ears twitch at

A catch, a crack

A different quality

So “Tea or Coffee?”

Comes with neither milk nor sugar

But rather a side of

“Your choice doesn’t matter to me because neither will bring my dead baby back to life”

Or when I ask

For someone to email me some

VERY IMPORTANT THING

Does my reply seem to be

In some kind

Of dolorous code

Thanking them for

Distracting me

From my melancholy?

Or when I say

“A return ticket to the city please”

Perhaps you’d be aware of the silent addendum

“Not that she’ll ever return to me… because she’s DEAD”

(These are all thoughts I’ve had by the way

So please laugh at me and

My ability to

Dramatise

Catastrophise

And generally

Over-egg

The grief-pudding-of-my-eternal-sense-of loss

Some things deserve derision

Occasionally. Maybe.)

Perhaps

Now

Four years out

My subtext

Has truly

Become

Subliminal

I no longer

Shout my pain

In every word

I even talk about

Sad things

With an air of

Warm reassurance

Then I eavesdrop on myself

Hear

A fragment

Of my voice

On someone else’s

Answer phone

Or notice something

Alien in my

Sister’s tone

That used to be so

Similar to my own

But now seems

Less familiar.

And I hear it plainly.

The sound

Of ancient

Agony

Rasped across

My vocal chords

And I wonder

How it’s possible

That people can

Hear me speak

And not weep?

How anyone can

Ever answer me

Without their own

Remembered grief

Bursting out

Until we are all wailing

At the sky

Sorrow’s choir

Swelling loud

Out out up

Wildly shaking the world

Hurling us about

So we’ll never

Forget her or anyone!

Lost names thunder

Against the horizon

And burst the

Eardrums of the lucky ones

Windows shatter

The plates of the earth

Shift and grate

Teeth rattle

Trees are wrenched

From the soil

Violent noises

Siren voices

All around

Surrounded

Until it seems

The ground would yield up

Her dead.

Is that how I sound?

Is that how I sound?

Or am I only sad in silence now.

Do you have a grief radar? Can you hear it or see it in other people? Do you think they feel it in you?

Despite Silence

I cannot stop missing Silas
despite everything. 

Despite time broken into before and after.
Despite new life in our lives.
Despite a distance beyond comprehension.
Despite the black, despicable wall of death.  

I feel his absence in my brothers and parents.  

I see them not seeing him
where I don't see him either.  

To this very moment years from his grave,
I cannot believe this is part of us:
that my parents have a life where their grandson died.  

Awful.  Outlandish.  Ridiculous to the point of unbearable pain.

How brutal this world,
where this is something that can happen in life,
where Death takes children and shatters lives to pieces.

That mocking Sun that goes on shining.
The blithe lives that go on living
while our little one is gone.  

All of us in my family feel it together
and that shared grief eases the burden enough
to make another day doable,
with Silas only in our hearts.

I find that sometimes it is easier to access and understand these brutal emotions via poetry.  To that end, I invite you to write a poem about your lost child or children and the living family around you.