The Day I Buried My Wife

The day I buried my wife was warm.  The sun shone as I drove the rental car south out of Chicago.  I hate the goddamn city traffic and dissociated a bit to get past it unremembering.  In Northern Indiana, disproportionate fans suck the vitality from the air and transform it into television programs for other dissociating victims of unconscionable tragedy.

Clare sat in the back seat, silent and still.  I didn't want to put her in the front, so as not to disturb her sister to quickly.  Neon green corn, a foot high (by the Fourth of July) streamed past in smears against an azure backdrop.  Do you remember when summer in the Midwest meant stopping every hour to clean the windshield?  I read recently that some underpaid graduate students counted bugs in the dank wilderness and there were only a quarter (by volume, apparently) as many as collected twenty years go.  Even the gnats and beetles are dying off these days.

Later I would talk to Clare, but at that time it was too new, too raw.  It was unfaceable and incomprehensible.  Clare was on a trip.  I missed her, but she would be home soon.  Any day now.

Clare's sister, Natalie has lost every member of her family.  She would graduate college the year after, but not one of her two parents and their 2.3 kids would attend.  Her father broke his neck doing somersaults down a flight of stairs (same way my step sister's mother died.  An epidemic of acrobatics?), and her mother's brain devoured itself while the sisters watched her die, personality first.  Their brother breathed, but the Navy stole his soul and now he lived with his mail order bride, with whom he did not share a language, in his abusive father's house.  They don't speak.

Natalie was blessedly home alone in her Indianapolis suburb.  Her guardians had not approved of Clare, though one came to the funeral and kindly kept her mouth shut.  I had steeled myself to be polite to people who had thrown my love out the door and cursed her from their righteous church pews.  Instead Natalie showed me where the shovel and post-holer was and I broke the tension by teasing her about the tool.  It would turn out to be useful, however.  Natalie is not to be underestimated.

"Is she in there?"  Natalie pointed to the reusable grocery bag, bulging with the shards of a shattered future.

"Yeah," I said, "In a bag in a box in a bag."  Nothing more was said about it.

As we traveled south, the heat stayed constant, but the air filled with the wet scent of grass rotting.  The air became sticky and the bugs, when they finally found us, could never again take off once glued to our gleaming skin.

On the way to the unmarked, un-Googleable cemetery that fondled Natalie's parents, we stopped to buy a headstone.  The old lady stayed open late for us and we paid her a heaping grand for a rock with a rainbow.  I guess it's what Clare would have wanted. We actually never talked about it.  Funny how, before 30, such discussions lack urgency.

The cemetery wasn't actually hard to find, once I realized the church was the real landmark.  On a side road of a side road, a flaking pail box sat with a half-hearted steeple.  The building was suspiciously devoid of windows.  Does God covet his privacy?  Natalie knew the way by heart.  She came here often.  Not for the church, but for the company beneath the lawn.  Soon she would have another family member to visit here.  But, never on Sundays.

We had paid our $100 for plot beside Karen and her self-swallowing brain.  We counted steps and tried to figure where the headstone would be, as if it mattered where the hole was dug and filled in.  Would someone come and judge our work?  Would she be exhumed and measured?  Really we were avoiding that first shovel full.  Avoiding the commitment to a world without a rainbow.  Finally we looked at each other.  I decided to be the hero.  Sometimes action is less painful than the anticipation, than the consideration of the meaning behind it. 

I split the earth with my dull blade and ripped the peaceful grass from its roots.  I sliced worms and severed roots in my search for eternal peace for my love.  Death marks the trail to the grave.  Filled with a sense of entitlement, with a purpose grander than care or consideration, I dumped the dismembered earth in an unceremonious pile.  Nothing mattered at that moment but the work I had begun.  I dug for my life.

Natalie watched for awhile, her thoughts opaque.  What does one think, when burying one's sister beside one's parents?  It's one thing at the end of life, but standing at this, this strange and haphazard grave as the threshold of adulthood?  How does one process such obscenity?  She must have sought refuge from whatever dreams may have come because she asked for a turn with the shovel.  Clad in flip-flops and an outfit more suited to a day sipping mimosas and shopping at the gap than grave digging, she showed her strength by adding another foot to the hole. 

Meanwhile, unwelcoming of the morbid comprehension of our situation, I returned to the car to fetch Clare's sack.  The weighty box within hung askew, corners pressing against green woven plastic.  I set her nearby where she could watch what inconvenience her suicide had wrought upon us.  Bitch.  My love, my dearest love.  Light of my soul.  How could you?

I harried Natalie with advice unneeded and paced as if details of the cavity were consequential.  How wide?  What angle to the sides?  Gratefully I took another turn to dig, until I was forced to step inside my own wife's grave in order to continue.  What part of myself did not follow me out?  I had imagined we would breach the six foot mark.  I had brought a tape measure, perfectionism like a shield against grief.

Natalie was more practiced at such things and called a stop at four feet.  I at least used the post-holer to widen the tip of the inverted cone we clumsily called a grave.  No carefully carved 8'x3'x6' home for my love.  She slides from her sack and we debate whether we should remove the box as well.  A careful peak shows a plain, clear bag filled with grey dust.  I heard somewhere that it's actually ashes.  The flesh is vaporized and the bag is filled with bone dust, flame-dried and pulverized.

Natalie makes the call to bury the box as well.  It's a little more ceremonious.  At least it has her name on it.  In a thousand years someone will find the little aluminum clip that held the bag shut, Clare's enduring contribution to history.  I lay her in the hole, prone on my belly to reach.  I have to drop it the last few inches, and once again she lays askew.  I hadn't widened the bottom enough.  I try to jostle her into place.  I committed my life to hers, and now there I was, gracelessly committing her to the earth.

Finally I gave it up as adequate and stood again, feeling awkward in the moment. 

"Do you want to say anything?" 

"No,"  Natalie replied. 

"Goodbye Clare," was all I could think of.  I had bawled all my incomprehensible nonsense at her funeral, smothered in uncomfortable and condoling stares.

I took a last look, not sure what I should be seeing, other than a box in a hole.  It was like playacting, but the script had been lost.  We knew the form, but specifics remained ethereal.  Action again covered the emptiness and dirt began to cover the box of the bag of the bone dust of the love of my life.  Grave filling is faster than grave digging.  I had carefully set aside the mutilated grass chunks and tried to fit them back together over the mounded dirt.  On hands and knees I tried to reassemble, piece by piece the life that once was.  Did this one go here…or was it here?  Did it matter?  I didn't want that gaping, bleeding raw earth visible to everyone who walked past.  Sunday parishioners would soon be shuffling past, looking for something to judge.  Could I hide the evidence of my inept mourning?

I stopped somewhere between defeat and satisfaction, feeling guilty for the disruption to the life of the corpse nourished field.  I hoped the wounded earth would heal quickly.  Natalie tired of the intrusive flying things gluing themselves to every fleshy extrusion.  I assuaged my feelings of inadequacy by treating her to a burrito before taking her home.  We relaxed and laughed over stories of Clare.  We had certainly known the same woman, and Clare did not have two sides to her.  She was what she was and what she appeared.  Even in her vulgarity she had that purity of earnest honesty.  Natalie and I are more reserved, never giving it all away, but only feeding it out in ever shrinking rations.  We have layers hiding layers defending layers.

Burritos make everything better.

Cart Before the Horse

I've seen this over and over.  A parent has a kid who is rebellious, or somehow "can't get right."  Sometimes they have two, a neglected angel and a demon who just can't seem to get it together now matter how much punishment is heaped upon them.

If asked to explain, parents will say that the good child doesn't need all the attention, all the punishment and consequences and extra rules and removed privileges.  The rebellious child does.  And yet...and yet, it doesn't work.  Over and over the misbehaving child gets all the attention and the one desperately performing obedience gets hardly a second look.

I invite you into the possibility that the rebellious child is rebellious BECAUSE of all the negative attention, because of the stifling restrictions, because of the punishment.  I invite you into the possibility that the obedient child, the over achiever, the maker and doer and pleaser is that way because of their neglect. 

The disobedient child has two agendas.  One, they get all the attention.  In much of human evolution, more attention meant a better chance at survival.  Children naturally seek attention.  In fact, both of these children seek attention, each in their own way.  It's the problem child that wins that fight, though.  But there is another struggle.  Even as children struggle to stay close to us, they also struggle to create distance.  They need space to develop themselves.  The need out of the hovering watchfulness, the shadow of their parents to find themselves, to experiment with ways of being.  The problem child also seeks places to hide, places to call their own.  This is both physical space, but also  mental space to work out their own ideas, and emotional space to figure out their own feelings.

It's the good kid that gets that space.  While isolated and craving attention, they also get the room to grow, the sunlight out from beneath the parent's shade.  They explore passions, find themselves, become strong, resilient, and self-controlled because they are not constantly under the control of another.  Someday, however, they pleaser will get tired of chasing their parent's attention and rebel.  They will see that the game unwinnable and reject their parents.  Paradoxically, this brings them into the problem arena and their rebellion gets them exactly what they always wanted...as soon as they stop wanting it.  Suddenly as teens the angels turn to demons, and parents pivot to keep them close.  They find approval and attention from peers who encourage rebellion and experimentation.  The obedient child has built a strong enough self to turn their back on the demands of parents, and has found a new source of approval.

Martial Arts and Inner Strength

If there is one thing loathe, it's hurting people.  The only thing worse is when someone else hurts someone I care about.  I've never gotten into a real fight, outside of rough-housing with friends and family, or some spats with siblings.

However, martial arts changed my life.  I'm often afraid around others, especially other men.  I'm easily intimidated.  This prevents me from really connecting to a lot of people, and being my best, most confident self in many situations.  Martial arts changed that.

Some people get into martial arts to defend themselves.  That wasn't really my goal.  I don't want to hurt anyone, and I've always been able to talk my out of trouble.  (Overwhelming respect and friendliness go a long way!)  The self-defense aspects of martial arts has helped me feel less afraid, though I don't know if I would actually use it, but imagining myself doing so helps me defeat fear and anxiety.  It makes me feel powerful and confident.

From my perspective and training, I see martial arts divided into three parts.  There is self-defense, which many people think is all of it, but it's not.  Self-defense is about hurting someone badly enough, quickly enough, that you can run away.  Gouging eyes, breaking knees, crushing gonads, things like that.  Not pretty.  The second piece of martial arts is the sport.  In the sport of martial arts most of those self-defensy kinds of things are banned.  The purpose is not to cripple your opponent, only to defeat them.  You also aren't going to run away.  Plus, fighting a trained attacker is much, much different than fighting an untrained attacker.

Self-defense is not very applicable to the sport, and the sport is too inefficient and slow for real self-defense.  Bruce Lee once said that in a real fight, you need to win in eight seconds or less, or you will probably get seriously hurt.  Plus, most random attackers are not trained martial artists.  Martial arts requires discipline, self-confidence, restraint, and many other qualities in order to master.  These qualities are not often found in the sorts of folk that randomly attack women from the shadows.

The final piece of martial arts is the art.  Watch martial arts demonstrations, or choreographed fights on TV and you are seeing the art form.  (TV fights are nothing like real self-defense, or sport fighting.  They are beautiful dances.)

Self-defense requires brutality and a desire to escape.  However, knowing that you can defend yourself grants you an amazing confidence.  This can lead you to put yourself in dangerous situations, so wisdom is still required.  This confidence can bleed into other realms of your life.  It's easier to stand up for yourself verbally, to a boss, or teacher, or other person.  You know you can be okay.

The sport of martial arts is FUN!  My favorite opponent was my good friend.  He and I had known each other for years and started training around the same time and in the same class.  We were equally matched.  As one of us would learn a new technique, they would dominate sparring matches for awhile, until the other learned the counter, and then moved on to their own new techniques to gain the edge.  We pushed each other to ever higher skill.  This is the magic of competition.  Too many people see competition as a judgment.  Who is better?  If you lose, that's a stamp upon your character:  INFERIOR!  However, sportsmen know that skill is always changing and no one can teach you better than an opponent.  Those seeking constant improvement seek opponents who are superior, or equally matched.  The loser always learns more than the winner!  So, in training, losing is good!  Fighting our best is how we honor our opponents and help them the best we can.  Especially if we talk afterward and discuss why we won or lost, what we can do better next time.  This is good sportsmanship.

The final aspect of martial arts is art.  Over centuries martial arts masters have developed special ways of moving the body.  Those who train gain amazing body control, much like dancers.  We are aware of every inch of our bodies, where they are, what they can do, how one motion flows into the next.  Just like dancers find themselves dancing when no one is looking, martial artists' bodies want, need to move in those special ways when they are alone.  It's almost an addiction.  The result is discipline.  Discipline means self-control.  Control the body, control the mind, control the heart.  Bring out anger and push it into your art, then bring out triumph, joy, sadness, or fear and feed it into your art.  Body, mind, and heart all under control and flowing out from you and into your audience.

I would recommend martial arts to anyone who wants to have more control, anyone who is often afraid or anxious, and anyone who wants to have a great time and loves competition, win or lose!

Martial arts is a way to get in touch with our sacred selves, and the sacred selves of others.  It sharpens the tools of being and opens new possibilities.

Institutional Dehumanization in School (and Prison) Locker Rooms

   I fell in love with the game of American football in 6th grade.  My middle school didn't offer football for 6th graders so I played in a community league.  After practices and games I would go home to shower.  When I reached 7th grade I was excited to play with my school mates, but after the first practice I was met with a memorable trauma.  The coaches insisted that the whole team shower, naked together in the locker room.  I had never been naked in front of my friends and I was more than self-conscious.  I was terrified.  My heart palpitated and my mind spun.  Even now, 25 years later, I remember the experience with crystal clarity.  So it goes with trauma.
   Teens' bodies are changing and so is their social awareness.  They are aware of themselves, their transitioning bodies, and others and their bodies in a way that is strange, frightening, and sometimes exciting.  They are also aware of the social status and how their bodies can affect their status among peers in new and uncertain ways.  They are hyper-critical of themselves and others.  According to the developmental psychologist Erik Erikson, teens are, developmentally developing their sense of who they are in the society around them.  In the modern world of age segregation, this means they are finding their place among their peers.
   Today there are raging debates about where transgender children should use the bathroom, where they should change and shower.  There is concern on both sides about the effects of any solution.  But, the reality, of course it's going to traumatizing.  It's traumatizing for everyone.  I don't mean to normalize it.  I don't mean to say it's okay.  I mean it's not okay.
   During the teen years are when many people discover they are gay, or trans, or fatter than everyone else, and become aware of differences that might get them ostracized, or even beat up.  While the real agenda for many bathroomers is to deny that trans people exist, others are genuinely concerned.  The truth is, the problem is not anyone's gender.
   The problem is that our culture institutionalized, humiliates, and dehumanized children (and prison inmates, similarly).  There is an inherent power discrepancy between the gym teachers supervising, clothed, and the inmates (oops, I mean children!) enduring public nudity.
   Adults in gyms demand the option of private changing stalls.  Some use them and some do not.  Who among you uses a gym with open air public showers?  Every one I've been to has private shower stalls.  Why do adults get this privilege but not our young, self-conscious, terrified youth?
   This is just one small part of the attack on the individual, the attack on the sacredness of each person's human-ness that begins when we start school.  Watch out for future explorations of age-based segregation, standardized curricula, and primacy of the teacher's role as authority in a classroom (ask any teacher what percentage of their time they spend on behavior management and tell me it doesn't sound like their primary job is assert authority!) and how that contributes to the collective trauma and neurosis each of us carries with us.