When The Circle Is Broken

 

I don't remember when I started making wreaths for friends homes and the graves of family members. Certainly, some time ago.  A longstanding friend lost her husband this year.  He had gone from physically fit with regular sports activities to sitting in a recliner staring blankly into space.  Dementia.  Early onset.  Her living room was full of gifts for her family, but she hadn't decorated her house.  As she told me, "Who will be here to see it?" and now she's starting to notice that her family is moving away and involved in their own lives.  One grandchild is at Oxford. Another in Vermont.

 

 

I'm glad we did this today, because it's supposed to grow bitterly cold as soon as Thursday. My friend asked for a John Deere "Gator" ride out to the grave. It's up on a hill and far from the road. She had twisted her ankle the last time she went out there. I drove and walked the hill behind them. They were talking during the ride, and my friend learned that Pat was also from New York. Earlier, in the Visitor's Center, my friend ...solemnly turned to me and said, "I want apples on my wreath because of New York. The Big Apple." I told her that if she pre-deceased me, it would be done. I told Pat this story when they were getting out of the Gator, and she laughed and said, "She really believes in being pre-prepared, doesn't she?"

 

 

We both talked to her husband while we were standing there. I had cut some non-invasive dwarft nandina fronds from the shrub at their home, and while we were talking I was tucking these in. They had gone a rosy copper and matched everything perfectly.

 

My friend noticed the figures and said, "Oh! There are cherubs in there," and I told her "yes," for the two of them. She said, "Look, Honey. Just like when we first met. Naked all of the time."

 

 

I looked across to where her parents are buried. I glanced to the right where my parents are. I was thinking about how I used to take my parents to the Blackwater Wildlife Refuge in Cambridge, Maryland to see the geese (and snow geese) migrating from Canada. They would stop there for a few days on their Southern migration path and had done so for a long time. Now? They are in that cemetery and all over the D.C. area, including golf courses. Anywhere there are large swaths of grass.

Oddly, I didn't see one goose that day, and normally there are swarms of them.

 

The next wreath was for a family I've known since diapers.  The husband was the chief elder in the church.  The wife was my primary sunday school superintendent.  Their daughter was a dear friend (she died last year) and their son is my attorney.  The wreath is for him, and we go out to a civil war cemetery where his family is buried and take pictures, then he walks around and shows me all of his clients that have died in the past year.  That sounds like a queer thing to do, but some of the stories are over the top, as life can be.

 

 

This was a larger wreath, so more to fill in.  I had a bag of pine cones, and I admit I used liquid glitter eye shadow to fix them up on the tips.  I also had cut and dried my hydrangeas, and I shoved one in the wreath for filler.  It worked out fine.

 This bit was from one of my decorator boxes.  I was loathe to give it up, but I needed additional filler.

I won't make the mistake of using live eucalyptus again.  It's resin sticky so that when you cut it, you get black goop all over your fingers and it's hard to remove.  Dried is fine, you just don't get that lovely menthol scent.

This will probably go out to the cemetery tomorrow.  Also tomorrow--I need to finally get to me and make the wreath for my front door.  It was my mother that started with wreaths.  The tradition continues.

Apocalypse Now: Why We Really Love Zombies

Who's Your Stylist?

I have questions about zombies after watching World War Z last night:

 What happens when everybody becomes a zombie (an apparent zombie goal) or do they not even have a goal…are they just zombies?   They don't seem very organized.

What is worse: having a zombie on the plane, or snakes on the plane? If zombies are on the plane, can you ask for their peanuts since they won’t be eating them--just you?

This harkens back to the question, "What if everyone is now a zombie?"  It seems when people become zombies, they have a radical weight loss and are wearing rags. So if everyone is a zombie, THEN what do they do…just stagger around…or open Zombies R’ Us? Zombie toys. “The flesh tears away in a realistic manner.” Zombie boutiques. A zombie buying a McDonald’s franchise and calling it McDead?

The zombie glass where you will drink...what else...Zombie cocktails!

 Zombies are dead so they can’t die. So what happens if everyone is now a zombie and there is a lack of living flesh? Do they starve? They can’t die. They can’t reproduce and having tiny zombie babies. But. If there were zombie babies, the zombies could open milk bars and call them “First and Last Latch.”

Just what the heck are zombies so pissed off about anyway? Being undead? Get over it. 

 I remember reading that Brad Pitt had a difficult time with studio heads in selling the idea of this movie, and consequently, getting funded for it. A studio executive argues, “World wide domination of zombies? Think of what that would cost to cast, or the special effects?” Would Brad Pitt counter with, “Zombies are a growth industry.”

The new Thanksgiving Thursday and Black Friday

 How could Brad Pitt work at the United Nations with that hair and be taken seriously?  His boss, even though he was fighting a world war zombie epidemic, had on a suit and tie the entire time. What is Brad Pitt going to say? “I need time off for low lights?” (For zombies: that’s a hair highlighting technique.)

 One zombie survived the plane crash and was twisting and snarling held in by his seat belt. If he can’t open the seat belt, and Brad Pitt doesn’t help him, which he didn't,  does that mean he spends eternity stuck in seat 12A?

 Brad Pitt figures out we need an inoculation of viruses and bacteria to camouflage us from zombie interest, but don’t we carry those things around in our bodies anyway?   And…would this be a productive counter argument to those parents who are anti-innoculators. “Your child will become a zombie.” 

 Why don’t the zombies like Nova Scotia and Wales? What do they know that we don’t know.  At one point, looking for a safe destination, it was said, "India?  Forget it.  It's a black hole."  I thought, "Whoa. Calcutta, maybe." I heard the populace of India yelling "HEY!"

 In the book “The Last Myth,” by Matthew Barrett and Mile Gilles, the authors postulate that allowing the challenges of the 21st century to be high jacked by the apocalyptic story line, we find ourselves awaiting a moment of clarity when the problems we must confront will become apparent to all—or when those challenges will magically disappear, like other failed prophecies about the end of the world. 

The real challenges we must face are not future events that we imagine or dismiss through apocalyptic scenarios of collapse—they are existing trends. Collapse of the economy, the arrival of peak oil, global warming and resource wars. The evidence suggests much of what we fear in the future has already begun. We can wait forever while the world unravels before our eyes,  or we can wait for an apocalypse that won’t come.

You think this is bad?  Bring on the zombies!

We're Gonna Rock Down To Egyptian Avenue

Egyptian Avenue, Highgate Cemetery

I just finished reading Necropolis: London and Its Dead, by Catharine Arnold. It covers burial practices in London from tribes through the Romans and the Plague. Ornate Victoriana and into the present. The premise (in a nutshell) is that London sits on centuries of its dead...and here's how they did it. 

Years ago, longer than I care to remember, I used to live for long stretches in London. I knew it like a native; sometimes better than a native. There is an old early 19th century cemetery in the northern part of London called Highgate (for the community where it is located.) Karl Marx is buried there. Charles Dickens' wife. Many notables. The cemetery had to be closed to the public in the 1970's when neglect was rampant and grave robbing was occurring (mainly from a local warlock in the neighborhood.) In 1975 an organization called "Friends of the Highgate Cemetery" was formed, and I contributed and participated for many years. In the autumn I would be there with my trowel or clippers, taking away ivy (but leaving it in more artistic array,) and general overall care giving to the acreage.

The Lion Sleeps Tonight

Now you can visit the cemetery yourself, although the West side is still tour only. They even have events there. Much changed over time, and more open: http://www.highgate-cemetery.org/index.php/home

One unique feature, among many, about the cemetery, and Highgate in general, is that it sits at the top of London and in certain spots you have an overview of the city, looking down. It's rather unique and very lovely.

At the end of Necropolis, the author quotes from Ford Madox Ford's The Soul of London.  When I read the passage, it reminded me of that view:

 "For all of us it must be again London from a distance, whether it be a distance of six feet underground, or whether we go to rest somewhere on the other side of the hills that ring in this great river basin. For us, at least, London, its problems, its past, its future, will be at rest. At nights the great blaze will shine up at the clouds; on the sky there will still be that brooding and enigmatic glow, as if London with a great ambition strove to grasp at Heaven with arms that are shafts of light. That is London writing its name upon the clouds. And in the hearts of its children it will still be something like a cloud--a cloud of little experiences, of little personal impressions, of small, futile things that, seen in moments of stress and anguish, have significance so tremendous and meanings so poignant. A cloud--as it were of the dust of men's lives."

The Angels Want To Wear My Red Shoes

I hedged posting this piece after burying teeth and so many matters of loss and death. I was talking to a commenter on this blog, "Home Before Dark," and we swapped some e-mails back and forth about degree of loss to the point it seems bottomless, half joking, "When does it end? When does a period of happiness ensue?"

I have never wanted happiness more than now in my life. Mentally and physically I have had enough. So I write this next bit with tongue in cheek, since, well, "Here we go again."

Over the weekend, I had a lot of errands to run. I had switched handbags from the very chi chi Mark Jacobs to the "seen a few years" Kenneth Cole, thinking it would be fun to carry a red purse during the holidays, but it needed a bit of touching up, so I went scouting for saddlesoap and red shoe polish. Trust me. Red shoe polish? Not easy to find. I knew of a few sources: the shoe repair shop at White Flint Mall (wonder if it's still there?), Fortuna Shoe Repair in Bethesda, and a tiny hole in the wall shop run by this Greek man named Joe. I can hear Velvet saying, "Go to the Greek."

I ran my errands. It was a long day and one heading for dark, stormy thunderheads. I did go to Joe's, and that's when it hit. An older obviously Greek woman was in there. The rest of the staff, Hispanic. They had my red polish from England, and the saddlesoap. I asked the old lady if she was married to Joe and how was he? She immediately teared up and held up one finger to make me stop. She was choked with tears. My eyes welled with tears. We stood there staring at each other with tears in our eyes.

She told me he had died a year ago. She was "all alone." I know she had had two sons, at the least, but I swore she told me one died in his teens. I'm still not sure about that. She was very emotional when she was talking to me. That and a language gap and who knows. I told her that I had loved Joe: his wonderful work ethic and business, and what a great personality he had--tons of charm. I said all of the right things. I did not have enough to cover the two items I was buying; falling 35 cents short. She debated about it. Quite a while. Finally, a Hispanic woman said, "That's ok," but I could see it bothered Mrs. Joe to let it go. I know. 35 cents. Yet, I understood.

I told her I would be back tomorrow with the money, also bringing a friend so they could express their sympathy to her about Joe. As soon as I left, I drove to the bank, not only to get some money, but another roll of quarters, (God bless you D.C. parking meters,) and...the money to pay Joe's widow. I drove right back to Joe's and gave her 75 cents. At this point, she was waving it away, telling me, "That's okay," but I insisted and she took it, telling me, "You and I are the same. I cannot sleep knowing I owe someone."

I agreed I was the same and that is why I had gone to the bank and come back. Finally. She smiled at me. I again reassured her that I would be returning with someone to let them pay their respects to her, and she told me to come back at any time.



Home? Are you reading this? Are you laughing? I mean right after our discussion?

I was up and having coffee yesterday morning, purusing The Washington Post, and reading the obituaries (a habit since childhood.) You are born and grow up in Washington, you read the obits. You know people. There was a period, during my parents prime years, where someone was always showing up. Now. Not so much.

There she was. My mother's old church friend: a lady whose family I grew up with, whose daughter I played with, and a woman I had been meaning to call for the past few weeks.

About a month ago, I made a call to one of the "church ladies," the few remaining who were part of my family's social circle at church, and I had to track them down because they had shifted residence. In fact, in calling another woman who had also lost touch with "the group," I found she had moved as well. So now with two women found, I told them both I would make two more calls. I knew where woman #3 was, as well as #4, but I wanted to tell them the plan on the telephone: that I would be writing them all a group letter, and then have a separate sheet of current names and addresses. They all loved the idea. I knew Mama was smiling down, saying, "I brought you up right, and thank you for helping my friends."

There's also this whole issue of social groups. The church group had splintered when a massive, old church with history in Washington had sold the church for millions, then moved to the suburbs. Demographics changed. People weren't happy. People left. Networks were broken. People were angry, too. The church's pastor had wanted to preach to college students, somehow overrode everyone and gotten the church moved to a piece of land my father had rejected ages ago for NASA due to it's problems, and the millions went into the bad soil and were lost. Then to make it even better, the pastor sought transfer and went to a parish in Florida with five churches. Money gone, church hanging by a thread, and long gone (those with money) parishoners. So the church will die, I am sure.

In the interim during of all of this, another woman died who they all knew, from a sister church. Another one down. I scanned her obituary, in case they had missed it. This is why, when I was talking to "Home Before Dark," I meant what I said, "Where does it end?" I sat yesterday evening and wrote for hours in my private journal what this woman had meant to me, to our family; and how she was one of a very few sources I could turn to for adult sympathy and support. I called the ladies. Some knew. Some didn't. Since they were her friend, as well, I knew they had to be secretly wondering, "Which one of us is next?"

The visit with Joe's widow? The shrinking generational circle? It's all taking it's toll on me. And I have to laugh because the next piece I was going to write was about London and Highgate Cemetery. Do you think you could stand it? Even if I made it funny? Even if I told you that Karl Marx is buried there? I dunno. We'll see. After that, what a deadbeat Lord Byron was, and come to think of it, he left a messy death as well.

Well....As Hamlet Would Say... "What Is This Quintessence Of Dust?"

I’ve been writing about an older woman I knew who died last September at age 96. I’ve been dealing with her estate, and all of her personal effects, for the past year. Let me tell you another story about this woman.



Her parents were from Russia, and they came to this area at a time of great turmoil in their country. Her teenaged mother had fled their burning village during the Russian Revolution with only a copper pot and pillow. She was smuggled out and never to see her family again. I knew her mother, as well. When "Granny" was in her last week of life (and she lived to be a grand old age,) she reverted back to speaking only Russian, and she kept talking to her mother (whom she hadn’t seen since she was seventeen) up high in the corner of the hospital room. She had once told me when I was a young girl that she loved her mother so much, she would put two chairs together to sleep next to her. I found the copper pot in the basement about a month or two ago.



I had heard about this pot for quite some time. You can't imagine how I felt when I found it. Realizing that this teenage girl ran from her village during a revolution. Never saw her family again. And she entered this country with only a pillow and this pot. To paraprhase Nabokov, "Speak, History."

They ran a little Mom and Pop store named after their daughter over on A Street on Capitol Hill. When they died, they were buried in this really old cemetery over off Benning Road which is a part of D.C. you don’t want to linger in, not even the residents, not even during the day. Things were so bad, they had to keep the cemetery gates locked, so to visit you would have to call the caretaker and meet him there so he could let you in…and wait to let you out. And yes, I've heard of muggings and murders in graveyards. We aren't even safe with the dead.

Several times I was asked to go with the lady so I could re-landscape the gravesite. It was a very dark, dank, dismal place to be. High iron gates, a lot of overgrown vegetation. Leaning markers. Very little sunlight (so shade plants) and always the danger some “youth” would come through the back way and attack you. I was never comfortable there. The place reeked of neglect and being forgotten and lost in this changed world where it was plopped down under lock and key. Everything said “stay away.”

All of this upset the lady greatly. She wanted to be able to visit her parents in peace. She decided she would unplant them and move them to a cemetery not far from where she lived. Her family was there, all in a row: her sister, her brother-in-law and her niece. She approached her spiritual leader about how to go about this, and he forbade it; saying it was against religious law…which was hogwash on toast.

What was odd, (to me,) was that she had worked for Congress in the 1930’s…up through the 1970’s. She never married, was a career woman and very opinionated and strong minded; i.e. not a woman to hold her tongue, but just lay it right out there. She had subscribed to The Village Voice since it’s inception. The same for Rolling Stone. Very attuned to her culture. I have to admit it's interesting to know that you can yell at Bush on the television when you're ninety. She was highly political, and even in the last weeks of her life, loathing Nixon, Reagan and the Bushes to the end. She desperately wanted to be well enough to vote in the last Presidential election and she missed the opportunity by weeks. I thought about her a lot on that day.

Her parents had been Orthodox, but she never really pursued religion until after her mother died. This adherence and obedience to a controlling bully, I could never understand. There are so many stories I could tell against this man, but won’t. While I never called him a self absorbed, lazy creep to her face, I did tell her to go ahead and move her parents, because it was so important to her. She never did, and she carried that upset with her to the end.

In the last year of her life, she lost her teeth, and we went through hell with that. It took a good nine months to replace them (a lot of trips to the dentist on day’s off,) as she was so frail and it was hard to get accurate measurements. It was also an out of pocket expense, so a lot of sacrifice on the part of everyone to get this done. And when the teeth were done? She wouldn’t wear them.



A few weeks ago, I was in her basement: bad lighting, overheated and tossing, tossing, storing, and I found a pair of teeth. I had to wonder. “Are these hers?” I showed them to her nephew, and he held them up to the light, much as Hamlet hoisted that skull, and he said, “No. This is my grandmother.”

Later that night, the nephew said, “I think we should go to the cemetery where she is buried, and bury Granny’s teeth there.” You have to understand. I’ve been doing quirky things like this my entire life, so I was game. Soooo…this past weekend I said to the nephew, “Let’s go bury the teeth” because it was the week of her birthday.



As bizarre as this seems, I hope I am doing things like this when I’m eighty, because it sure keeps life interesting. I’ve dug graves in my past, I’ve landscaped them, and now I’m doing burials. So yeah…..we didn’t get Granny replanted next to her daughters….but on the other hand….we did.

Postscript: I went to see my dentist this morning. He's originally from India and into high tech interactive server everything. Huge enthusiasm about you name it. I got a tour of his new offices, very modern, very elegant, and we talked about all that he had done. He just kills me. He has got "a guy" for everything: "You like that tile? I got that from a guy in Philadelphia who knows a guy in Italy. You need a plumber? Call my guy. Computer tech? Carpenter? Jewels? I've got a guy in Jaipur." His wife is a pip, too.

I was telling him the story above, and he listened and nodded--he got it, then he told me his story. In moving his offices, he was getting rid of some things, including plaster molds of teeth. One set belonged to a young man of eighteen that had died not long ago. He was driving on River Road in Potomac at 3 a.m. and hit a tree. The car burst into flames and he died trapped inside. My doctor had kept the mold because it was an interesting dental correction, and in the end, the parents sent the police to him to identify the young man's remains through his dental records. He had just completed this sad task, so it was still fresh in his mind. He hated to toss the molds, but it was obviously a very sensitive thing to ask the parents about; i.e. "Do you want your son's dental molds?" He approached them with delicacy, and in the end they did want them.

He understood my story completely. I told him, "I have my own plaster molds, and my mother's molds, on a shelf on one of my bookcases." They make an interesting conversation piece." Then we stood and both of us took pictures with my camera of the beautiful vista out his office windows. "Look at that sky," he said. "I need that sky."

The Shooting Of The Hip Yoga Death Goddess*

Woody Harrelson just shot me in yoga class. I was dreaming I had returned to my yoga class. The studio was dark and people were in class in the shadows working through a series of movements. I told myself I was only returning to retrieve purple pillowcases from my locker. I was wearing the wrong clothes. I walked into the studio and fell in line doing the poses. I was thinking, "I can't do this. I am wearing the wrong clothes." Yet I could.

My yoga instructor left the room and Woody Harrelson walked in, (as the teacher,) and he seemed normal at first, but then he shifted into political tirades a la Oliver Stone, just talking madness. I tried to speak to him rationally. He kept babbling insanity.

I was holding an art book, and in the back was this folded diagram in green and white expounding and building out as a "tree" chart on some art movements. Woody ripped it out of the book, claiming it was a book he had written, and he taped the diagram on the wall, still ranting and pointing at the paper and talking political conspiracy.

Savasana Corpse Pose

He came over to me while babbling at the others. He grabbed me and produced a gun and pressed it into my flesh. I kept talking to him as if he were normal, knowing he wasn't. When I realized his intent: to kill me, I started wrestling with him for the gun, but he was stronger than I was, and he shot me in the side. People pulled him off of me, and I sat trying to stay very still to assess how damaging the shot was. It took a long time for the EMT's to arrive. I thought, "If I am conscious this long, I won't die from this."

When we arrived at the hospital and they had me in the emergency room, I asked the doctor who was prepping me for surgery if I should say my final goodbyes to the world, meaning I wouldn't make it through the surgery. He had a funny look in his eye.

I awoke with a start. Now I'm sitting here with a pain in my ribs where the phantom bullet went in. I guess I should go back to sleep and see what happens next.

*The title refers to an Ultimate Spinach song entitled, "Ballad of the Hip Death Goddess." It's on YouTube. I tried embedding it, (with my phantom bullet pain still hurting,) and it kept failing, so foo, yanno? Go look it up.

In Memory Of Emily

Emily Dickinson
December 10, 1830 – May 15, 1886

'T was just this time last year I died.
I know I heard the corn,
When I was carried by the farms,--
It had the tassels on.

I thought how yellow it would look
When Richard went to mill;
And then I wanted to get out,
But something held my will.

I thought just how red apples wedged
The stubble's joints between;
And carts went stooping round the fields
To take the pumpkins in.

I wondered which would miss me least,
And when Thanksgiving came,
If father'd multiply the plates
To make an even sum.

And if my stocking hung too high,
Would it blur the Christmas glee,
That not a Santa Claus could reach
The altitude of me?

But this sort grieved myself, and so
I thought how it would be
When just this time, some perfect year,
Themselves should come to me.

…and yet she died in the season she didn’t list in the above poem. Spring. Today is the anniversary of Emily Dickinson’s death in 1886. On May 15, 1886 Emily Dickinson died at the age of 55. Her brother Austin wrote in his diary that "...the day was awful ... she ceased to breathe that terrible breathing just before the whistle sounded for six."

She could see West Cemetery from her window in that room she never left. The funeral was held in the library of her family home. The service was short. A favorite poem by Emily Bronte, “No Coward Soul of Mine,” was read, and Emily’s coffin was carried out the back door and across a field of buttercups, where she was buried, laid in a white coffin with vanilla scented Lady’s Slipper heliotrope (a popular Victorian flower) and “a knot of blue field violets placed about it.” There she lies in the family plot on Triangle Street in Amherst, Massachusetts.

In the poem above, she speculates if her father would still lay out her plate at Thanksgiving, or just how she would be missed within her small social circle, but still her place in the world. I know she has haunted me for years, and I’m not sure “haunted” is the right word, but I have definitely felt an “affinity,” which seems a more appropriate and Emily-like word. I searched her poems, and apparently she never used it. She should have. I'll use it for her:

A field of yellow
Under coffin white
Petaled in varied purple hue
Lady’s slipper in wooded shade
With shy faced violets, too
Blooms that shrink
From sun of day
Have been my affinity
Now see me on my way

The Stuff Of Life

Last night, I was talking to an old friend online. He has lived out in San Francisco for some time now, but he's originally from Baltimore. He was drinking tequila while he made his dinner.

Today he sent me a news article debunking past medical advice that we drink eight glasses of water a day, calling it a health myth. I told him I did so nonetheless, as I like the taste of water, and I prefer to think I'm keeping my system hydrated and flushed.

I told him how the night before, a television ad had come on for Don Eduardo Tequila and I had thought of him. "More like Don Pardo," he replied. Then he added. "…like my champagne….Dom DeLuise."

We didn't get around to discussing the dangers of Hyponatremia: fatality from water intoxication (too much Ecstasy.) Maybe we'll save that for another time. We did discuss the living dead, and I don't mean the party girl who had a heart attack from dancing for eight hours, blowing a whistle.

His neighbor is dying of a pancreatic cancer. He told me, "One day I saw him and something told me inside he was dead . I said, "You can see death inside people at times. I know twice in my life I've looked into someone's eyes and seen death lurking in there. It's like they've already given up and let death in." He replied, "Yeah. I couldn't drink at a bar one night because the bartender looked like a corpse. I told my friend this and he was laughing, that was Thanksgiving. On New Years, they found his corpse in his apartment. He had stroked out over Christmas."

:::Thinking About The Whistle Song by Pulsedrive:::