Grief Takes Many Forms (For Marylin)

View from Marylin’s, Cody, Wyoming, iPhone Shots, May 13th, 2019, photo © 2019 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

It was a month ago to the hour when my mother-in-law died. Liz was on her way back from a business trip in Tulsa, Oklahoma when her sister called. I was sitting by Lake Como in St. Paul, Minnesota about to eat my lunch when the phone rang. The Dallas airport echoed in the background; Liz’s voice was brisk but heavy. “Mom just passed away,” she said. “She went peacefully.”

Marylin had requested a bath the night before. Tracy, Liz’s sister and her mother’s caregiver, had gotten up, given her mother a bath, and was combing her hair when she stopped breathing. I could picture this because when Liz and I were in Cody, Wyoming in May, Liz brushed Marylin’s hair as she sat in her favorite chair by the window with a clear view of the bird feeders. When Liz was finished, Marylin gently closed her eyes, smiled, and seemed in total peace after a night of tumultuous dreams.

I miss my my mother-in-law; grief takes many forms. Marylin was like a second mother to me. She championed my writing like my own mother, Amelia, who supported my creative life even when it twisted, turned, and spiraled up and down. Marylin and Amelia never met, but felt a love and kinship to each other. They were there for Liz and I through courtship, dating, and marriage. They saw only our love for each other and the compatibility of our lives together; there was never any doubt. I will always be grateful for that.

A few weeks ago, Liz and I watched the documentary on writer Joan Didion, “The Center Will Not Hold” by her nephew Griffin Dunne. When the film ended we sat in silence and wept. Dunne uses intimate archival footage, photographs and on-camera interviews to document the span of Joan Didion’s life. Having lost her husband and daughter within the span of two years, Joan knows grief; it gnaws at her bones.

I know why we try to keep the dead alive: we try to keep them alive in order to keep them with us. I also know that if we are to live ourselves there comes a point at which we must relinquish the dead, let them go, keep them dead.

We are not idealized wild things. We are imperfect mortal beings, aware of that mortality even as we push it away, failed by our very complication, so wired that when we mourn our losses we also mourn, for better or worse, ourselves. As we were. As we are no longer. As we will one day not be at all.

-Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking

After Liz called on September 5th, 2019, I could not finish my lunch. I sat in a Chevrolet Silverado staring at the lake, wondering at the breadth of Marylin’s spirit as it lifted skyward. The day was cloudy, the wind erratic and scattered. Summer was letting go.

Summer’s End, September 5th, 2019, iPhone Video, Rain Garden, Lake Como, St. Paul, Minnesota, video © 2019 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

Rest In Peace, Marylin. I miss the way you smiled and called me your daughter-in-love. I miss the depth of our conversations around writing, haiku, and politics. I miss the way you held Liz and me in your heart in a bubble of love. I miss your love of theater, your writing and your contributions to redRavine. I miss your optimism and the way you gave back to your community and the world around you. I know you are with your father, maybe running by the Pacific Ocean with Queenie, wild and free. I am a better person for having known and loved you. We will meet again.

-written October 5th, 2019 between 10:45 and 11:30 a.m. CST. Everything is in Divine and perfect order right now.

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Joan Didion & Martin Ramirez

Sunday Morning really rocked today. The least of it was that it ended with my beloved sandhill cranes roosting on the Platte River. Beautiful.

And Stevie Nicks is still rockin’ in middle age, after 30 plus years, with no sign of stopping. She said she’s not the least bit interested in telling a partner when she’s leaving and when she’ll be home. She chose art over relationships. Liz and I saw her a few years ago at the Target Center in Minneapolis. She is a performer like no other.

 But what I want to mention is that Vanessa Redgrave is opening Broadway this week with a one woman play on Joan Didion’s work, The Year of Magical Thinking. They interviewed both Joan and Vanessa. Compelling material. Redgrave is up there on stage by herself for an hour and a half.

“I’m not alone,” she said. “Hopefully, the audience will be filling these seats, right up there with me.”

Didion showed up at every rehearsal to watch Redgrave. The best quote from her about writing Year of Magical Thinking: “I had to write it down. I can’t think unless it’s in terms of writing.” The play includes the death of her daughter as well as her husband. It is hard to imagine her grief. Impossible.

 My favorite segment was on Martín Ramírez, an artist who was confined to a psychiatric hospital in the 1930’s after being diagnosed as a catatonic schizophrenic. It is a sad story. He hardly said a word in 30 years but found room under tables, wherever he could, and drew his heart out. Painter, Wayne Thiebaud, was allowed to visit Ramirez and talked about his work which is hanging in the American Folk Art Museum in New York City.

I wish I could see it in person. He drew with wooden matchsticks on whatever paper he could find. Some of his work used pages from books or candy wrappers. Some was on the roll paper that a doctor pulls out in the office and spreads across the stainless steel table for exams. His drawings were striking. Busting out of silence.

 There’s also buzz about The Secret being based on the Power of Positive Thinking work of Norman Vincent Peale, though he is not credited in the book. They made it sound like another James Frey.  

 If you get a chance to see this week’s Sunday Morning in an archive, take advantage of it. Otherwise, you can read about these items at the links provided. It’s one of my favorite shows on TV.

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