On Death, Eventually

I fear greatly the answers to the questions surrounding death. It pains me to think too much about any of it. Rather than the belief in something after, I believe solely in attempting to make the best of these precious earth-bound moments. And yet, usually catching me entirely unaware, the thoughts creep back into my brain. What lies after? How can we succinctly tie our own spiritualities with the scientific, with the known, with the cold reality of it all?

I remember the immensity that was the moment - that singular moment - when we put down our beloved golden retriever. His head coming to rest for the last time on my shoe. My jerky response as I stood, smashing into the paper towel dispenser. The nurse (nurse? vet tech? lady in scrubs?) attempting to comfort me and me pushing her away because the tears were coming too fast and I couldn't wait to break away and be alone, where no one would see me crying. I realize that this is in no way comparable to the deaths of those humans we come to love so much, but then again, I think perhaps that even those mammalian deaths hold the keys to true humanity. The singularity that ties us all together: love.

No matter how it happens, death holds some sort of quiet whisper, a moment in which time stops rushing and instead, lingers for the exhale. It's not something that will ever leave you. (I do not speak as one wizened by so many experiences, thankfully, although the few that I have had with death have been personally profound.)

I was reading in the bathtub (now that I'm taking baths again, my reading material has multiplied immensely) and I found myself falling in love with the protagonist of the book I'd just started - it's been languishing in one of my book suitcases (yes, I have those) for ages and I've just now gotten around to picking it up. She embodies, for the moment, everything I find wonderful: strength, intelligence, determination, the juxtaposition of masculine and feminine, beauty, courage. And yet, I found myself terrified that she'd die before the end of the book. In that moment, I was certain of her death. I flipped to the last page (a terrible habit, but one I take great comfort in - I even do it with romance novels, and you know from the third page how those are going to end) and sure enough, she dies. It's a beautiful death, really, her soul personified by birds. But now I'm happier to read about her life. I can take comfort in the fact that I already know how she dies, yet I've not at all ruined the book for myself.

This is the point of all of this, I guess: even though you can not know the exactness of your own death, you know that at a certain point, it must come. I look at those yellow feline eyes that I love so much and realize that I can't keep them forever. I push away the melancholy thoughts, realizing that loving him now is so much better than focusing on the pain I'll feel when he's gone. I circle back, from time to time, working myself up thinking about the emptiness that the deaths of those I love will leave. I think it stems from the knowledge that one day, I will be without my mother. In my attempts to soothe myself, I have begun to steel myself against the void I know will exist. Void is inadequate. It will be like a roaring vacuum. It will pull at the edges of my soul.

But it is natural. (I remember this book they got us to teach us about death. I'll never forget how incredibly mystified I was when I read it. I hated the book and yet something drew me to it. It calmly taught children that everything must die, and yet it horrified me. I hated connecting dead leaves to people. Something resonated somewhere deep inside of me. I often think of that book and wonder what it would be like to read it again now. I wonder if it's in a box somewhere in a basement.)

Death and taxes, they say. But they're not wrong. To know the eventuality of it before it happens is to hope that one will be able to fully embrace everything that is life knowing the finality of it all. The chance to struggle and create, to learn and understand, to think, to feel, to be, to love passionately and freely is a gift. Those moments are the footprints we leave behind. To love deeply and live fully are my only goals. If at my funeral, people don't laugh and tell horrifyingly embarrassing yet endearing stories, I will be incredibly bummed.  Life is a wild adventure. It's beautiful and bittersweet.

Either way, it is certain. It's comforting, in a way, to know that everyone has to do it. Someone's doing it right now. Someone did it yesterday and someone will do it tomorrow. We are all born and we will all die, but what we do in between belongs solely to us. That's the best part.

On the Celebration of Life

It's days like Saturday that make me realize that the human capacity for emotion is much deeper than we could possibly even realize. Necessities like food, water, and shelter are nothing without love.

Brian and I are standing by his golf clubs. I'm asking what the difference between a wood and an iron is. He tells me that woods are made out of wood. Then he pulls out a club. "So that's an iron?" I ask. (The club is not made of wood.) No, he tells me, it's a wood. We laugh. I understand the difference now. If you can imagine that it might be made of wood, it's a wood, even if it's made of metal. Irons are more like fireplace instruments. Heavier. Deadlier.

Brian is fiddling with the cover. "Grandpa never had the right covers for his clubs," he says. And that's when I feel it. His loss is so palpable in that moment. The fact that everything Brian knows and loves about golf, he got from Marshall. The fact that Marshall and Brian used to go golfing and then go get lunch. It was his childhood. He and his grandpa were inseparable, even at the end.

I don't know how to say I'm sorry. I do know how to learn about something that they both loved, so I ask more golf questions.

"I'm only telling you this because I know you'll appreciate it," said Juanita, leaning into me. She introduces me as her adopted granddaughter. I am so happy in that moment. She didn't want them to bring that picture, she says, but she's glad they did because it's one of her favorites. She tells me that on their wedding day 63 years ago, there's a picture of him looking at her exactly the same way. My eyes were on her sweater, rhinestones at the wrists. I didn't dare look up. My eyes were already full. She tells me that even though he was a quiet man, he always reminded her that he loved her. "And he really did love me," she says. I smile. I mean, I really smile. My heart is full of love and a little bit of hurt - the pull of the sadness of a great loss.

(I couldn't get a picture of the picture without the glare! I'm sorry for the poor quality!)

The speeches are beautiful. There is nothing better than honest memories. Laughter fills the space. When one of my cousins gets up to say something, I feel my eyes start to fill up again. Even though this is sort of the worst part of life, the saying goodbye, it's also the best. It reminds you how much love you have surrounding you. It reminds you how much every single person can mean to you, how much they can impact you.

My adopted grandparents. My other grandparents. My spare grandparents. My not grandparents. We never could figure out just what to call them. So we threw terms out and tried them on. They mean just as much to me as my actual grandparents. And I mean just as much to them as their grandchildren. Mom tells me that when I was little, we were leaving Grandma Mary's house and I asked her, "Who are those people?" They've been a part of my life since I was little, since before I could figure out how they fit into the scheme of things.

And I'm so grateful for that.

Marshall was a wonderful father, a wonderful husband, and a wonderful grandfather. I am so happy that I got to be a part of it. And I promise to help take good care of Juanita.

"Shame on all of you."

Yesterday's post got me thinking.

Racism blows. We can reiterate that until we're blue in the face.

And qualifying my perspective as being that of a white person isn't nearly enough.
I need to qualify myself as educated, white, woman, and liberal.
That changes things.

I compared it to being gay. (Why? I don't know - it was the easiest [not the best] way to make my point during our lunch discussion.) I spend so much time around my gay friends that I don't see them as gay. It's normalized for me. It's not a thing. There's no need to draw a line, to point out the distinctions, to separate.

I want my kids to be so exposed to people that they stop seeing lines and start seeing people.

It's the same as being _____. [Insert "other" there.]

The more we talk about "other," the more we emphasize it. The more we dwell.

Then I started thinking about the real world. (Sighing as I type this. Oh, real world.) There's not as much integration, not as much teamwork, community building, respect, tolerance....my list could go on.... as there could be. Certain solutions to "other"-ism or "other"-phobia aren't going to work for people with different mindsets - I forget that. The solution remains elusive.

But I would like to point out that even as we evolve to tolerate and eventually accept one "other," we replace it with another "other."

Division based on class differences, social differences, education differences: we're all guilty of it. I think part of being human is forming bonds with people who share similarities to you and then ostracizing people who don't have those interests, features, or characteristics. It's up to us to transcend that.

It's hard, though. I judge stupid people for doing stupid things. I'm sure people judge me for doing stupid shit all the time. I judge girls who wear Ugg boots, yet I get judged for my "if you can't wear it with black flats, why are you wearing it at all?" mentality (I do consider that judgement entirely deserved, for the record. I've grown out of Birkenstock mode...at least until I find my other black clog). I really try to promote a sense of solidarity among women, yet I know a few women I'd like to punch in the face. So here I am, being just as much of a hypocrite as the rest of us. At least I'm thinking about it, though.

Granted, we all aren't going to get along. It's not possible. But we should at least strive to respect and understand. Also, not possible.  But ideal. And beautiful.

I was going to post last week about the suicide of a gay teen on the East Coast. I didn't. I was too disgusted (not by him, by his tormentors). After his death, the people who taunted him continued to do so. They said they were glad he was dead. That the world was a better place. For him, it didn't get better. That's one reason we need to stop spreading hate.

That night I was watching the Big Bang Theory at home. And this clip really put it all into perspective for me. Please watch it.

A girl brings home a rather unintelligent date, and her neighbors (all science geeks) make fun of him mercilessly.

Zach (date): "Oh, I see. You guys are inferring that I'm stupid."

Sheldon (one of the neighbors): "That's not correct. We were implying it. You then inferred it."

...

Penny (girl): "You know, for a group of guys who claim they spent most of their lives being bullied, you can be real jerks. Shame on all of you."

Truth.

On Impatience

No one would ever call me a patient person. It's just not in my nature, I guess. Once I want something, I want it right then and there. I'm not good at playing waiting games.

But lately, I've been wondering if we're not more impatient as a result of our media consumption.
I watch tv with Mike - usually one of our shows. They're an hour long (with commercials, average of 41 minutes without). In that hour, we see a situation unfold, explode, and be resolved neatly by the end.

So how much of that are we carrying over to real life?
In simulating real-life situations via television, broadcasting them, creating fantastic realities in which ordinary people do extraordinary things, are we limiting our ability to actually process like humans? Have we redefined reality to be a mirror of these simulations?

Television shows and movies have necessitated the cutting of extraneous things - such as waiting - from their plot lines. It won't do to have the entire courtship shown in an under 2-hour romantic comedy. Instead, we are treated to a montage, often accompanied by music. Or some sort of situation that represents the relationship.

So the time between things is often understated and underrepresented.

Arguably, our society has started to do the same things. Gone are the days of snail mail, instead, love happens via one-night stands and text messages. War, something sensationalized by television and movies, glorified by the 24-hour news channels, is left forgotten once there is no quick conclusion. We triumphantly marked the fall of Saddam Hussein but have neglected to mark the minutes since.

Everything looks easy. Conflict is solved with a single conversation, brooding becomes a beautiful expression of anguish, and all love affairs are solved with a passionate expression of love at just the right time. People wait for other people, their schedules always magically line up.

Are we becoming jaded? Bombs? Cars blowing up strategically?

Would any of us even know what to do in case of an actual emergency? "I saw this on tv once" certainly isn't going to help. Those bombs and magic fires that burn exactly where they're supposed to are movie magic rather than the stuff that real life is made of. Mike and I were talking about being a spy. And I reminded him that being a spy in the real world is hardly as sexy as it seems on screen. Lots of dead drops and waiting.

Even criminal behavior. It's not that easy to hack into just any old bank system. Or any government computer. Of course, magically, the screens you need are up just in time for you to enter your data. I spend a good percentage of my work day digging through our drives, looking for a single file. And I know the layout. Imagine walking in cold to steal data. Yes, it can be done. But it's just not that simple.


I often wonder if I am a victim of this kind of conditioned thinking. How have my expectations been molded by the media I take in?
How have certain things become normalized?

Dreams

It's been one of those weeks where your dreams are too real. I am living in those moments, making conscious decisions, and ultimately, freely thinking my own thoughts.

That's the weirdest part for me. The thoughts.

I woke up startled, not quite terrified, on Thursday morning. I'd just had a pregnancy-labor dream. I realize I've probably just been reading too much of NPR's Baby Project (it's sort of cute; if you're into that sort of thing, you should check it out).

In my dream, I was in labor, at the hospital, walking around with my mom and wearing one of those horrible hospital gowns. But the strangest part of the dream was that I kept thinking how I was only x amount of time into labor and already bored.

I sincerely hope that someday, my worst fear for childbirth is how bored I am. I reached down and felt my flat stomach and breathed a sigh of relief. Carlos meowed as he usually does when I bother him too early in the morning, and then came up to snuggle me, and I fell back asleep just as the sunlight was starting to creep through the trees that shelter my window from the street.

And last night, again. But nothing like babies this time. Last night I was an assassin. Don't ask - it was one of those vivid, shifting dreams where it's suddenly winter and you're in Minnesota and then you're creeping around a house/building/warehouse and you're killing people. I went down a faux-grass (astroturf) slide like a fish and killed a Japanese guy with crazy hair and a nice suit who happened to be a better at imitating fish movements than me.

That was probably really weird for you, so: Imagine a dark room with a giant, twisty slide that's not a slide at all, but rather an astroturf covered ramp, and in order to get down it with your gun in your hand, you have to flop like a fish. (I'm not even graceful in my dreams. Great.)

This is the prime example of why I'll never work for the CIA. I'm not graceful, I'm bad at stealthily fish-flopping, and I have a conscience.

Usually, these wild dreams mean I have a lot on my mind and that I'm overtired. Surprise! Guess what? Both are correct.

The Chicago trip was so worth it, but it nearly killed me, even though I got to spend most of Monday asleep on the couch (as much as I hated missing work, it was so nice to veg out and watch bad television).

Anyway, I'm hoping to get caught up on my sleep this weekend. Babysitting means I'm usually exhausted by the time I get done, so there's little chance I'll want to go out dancing (which so bums me out - I haven't had one of those wild, reckless and possible regrettable [just kidding] nights in ages). Which means sleep - definitely necessary since I have to work essentially a full day tomorrow. The 9-5 hours I missed on Monday and then more babysitting!

Maybe I'll be able to get to the park before I babysit on Sunday. Or maybe I'll get to work and log more hours! (That's ambitious - it won't really happen and we all know it. I'll sleep, I'll probably make some pasta, I'll be slow to get going - and by then, my weekend will be over.)

But I'm excited for real work tomorrow because I am in creativity mode and thus more prone to devoting my attention to the task of brochure creation. We'll see how it actually turns out.

Ferocity.

Something I'm learning from Carlos.

Act preemptively and base everything on your gut.

Your past guides you more than you think but shouldn't affect anyone's future perceptions of you.

I'm hurt; I'm annoyed; I'm angry.

No one should make me feel like I'm less than a human being, whether it's intentional or not.

I am Katie Barry and I do what I want.

Futuresque

I have a plan:

Double majoring in English with a concentration on creative writing and Journalism.
Minoring in Political Science, Communications, and Women's studies.

The Communications minor could be dropped.
Total, however, it's only 105 hours which means it's doable.

I am beginning to slowly bring things from my room back to the apartment. The great move has begun.