Heading to Mendo to have a night off with Tha Gurlz (yes, I actually just spelled “girls” with a ‘z’) and then coming back in time to attend a real live Ho-Down (hot doggie: we have hay bales, a barn, and a live band) for New Year’s in my grand hometown of Penngrove.

In the meantime, start thinking about New Year resolutions, and what and if you want to make them. It is a practice with which I have been long fascinated. Does anyone make them anymore? And a better question — does anyone ever stick to them?

Counting down the rest of 2007…

I’ve been having the wish to just go and get away from my skin, my head, my life for the past couple of days — to get out with friends, and pretend like things are “normal.”

My wish was granted when a very dear friend and ex-roomie, “Foote”, now living in Brooklyn, said she was in town and would pick me up. She came bearing granola, and whisked me away to see an old friend: San Francisco.

Walking down Polk Street, I suddenly became aware of this second world out there — I stared at young, hip, urban kids passing me on the sidewalk, with a destination, purpose, busy making a life for themselves in the city — and I wasn’t one of them.

It was like talking to your ex and being reminded that in the past two years, he has moved on with his life, too. (Which is another thing I’ve done recently, much to the tweaking of my central nervous system.)

It felt strange and exciting to be in SF; she welcomed me back with bittersweet familiarity. She reminded me that I no longer fit there.

Foote had a room at the Westin for the week, and after dinner with friends in Berkeley we drove back across the bridge. We succumbed to paying $47.81 for valet parking (no joke), we schlepped ourselves up to the room to retire.

While she tucked herself into bed and read Steven Colbert, I ran the water for a shower.

I undressed, and sat on the toilet, naked and tired, while the water turned warm, and then warmer, and then hot. Steam jumped from the flow and crept up the mirror. I closed my eyes and felt the weight of my bones settle.

The night had been wonderfully spent with very close friends, laughing and drinking and “philosophizing.” (As the DD I drank mulled cider; as the linguist I winced at the word “philosophizing.”)

But it had also been a trying day. I felt like people kept looking at me askew, saying they were “worried about me,” that it was so incredible I was out having fun, “under the circumstances.” I kept feeling like people wanted me to be crying my eyes out. I was sorry to disappoint.

I suddenly wanted to be very, very alone. I slipped my foot over the lip of the tub and let the sting of the temperature run up my back. I tilted my hair into the stream from the shower-head, and exhaled until I thought I would turn myself inside-out. I imagined the water washing off memory and consciousness, the tub filling with the past couple of days, the past month, my childhood, down the drain. I rinsed and repeated three times.

After I showered and readied myself for bed, I slipped under the thick, floating white covers. Foote had fallen asleep already, so I clicked out the light.

Just as suddenly as I found myself alone, I wanted to be very, very not. The city pulsed on the other side of the floor-to-ceiling window, sirens singing a familiar tune.

Ah, yes. I remember you.

My heart fluttered in my chest and my eyes found rest only on the bare white ceiling overhead. I could not sleep.

I tried imagining I was on an Island in Belize. The down blankets around me I imagined as sand, the creaking from the person in the hotel room above became the clacking of palm trees, the incessant bathroom fan that did not turn off — the sighing of the ocean.

No cigar. The city was too talkative. The swishing of cars and blinking of lights reminded me of everything I didn’t want to be reminded of.

The next morning, Foote drove me back to Sonoma County. The burden of reality was immediate, as if crossing county lines made my brother’s death real.

What I need, I thought, is to be away in some OTHER rural country town.

That night three friends emailed, telling me to pack my sleeping bag, because they were taking me to a Mendocino retreat Sunday. Could I be ready to leave early?

I wrote back that I would be ready at 6am.

Wrapped in grief is the gift of joy.
– Nell Tomassen Reboh

My sister-in-law, C., and her brother came over for Christmas brunch, and card games, and Dance Dance Revolution. We even opened a few presents. C.’s brother, who lives in Japan, gave to me a stacking bento box with glittery butterflies on it. I adore it.

It makes me feel orderly and thin and hygienic — as if I live in a tiny, tiny wood-floored apartment with metal and plastic furniture, and have canned goods organized alphabetically and by category in my spotless pantry.

I thanked him very much for the gift. He goes back to Tokyo Jan. 8th. I wanted him to take me back with him.

I think it was the sadness peeking from behind every corner. So far, I’ve been fairly good about accepting that loss is a process, and I have to let feelings come and go.

But today, I’m feeling like “I’m done” — I’m done with trying to smile through the holidays, I’m done with “staying strong” and “sitting in sadness,” I’m done with living with “integrity” and “facing my feelings”… I’m just plain done.

I need a vacation from myself.

Christmas was as perfect as it could have been: we laughed, we cried; we looked at old pictures, and thought about the future; we honored my brother’s memory and we embraced life la de dah dah.

And yet — as sentimental and “healing” as it all was, I can’t help but go to bed tonight with a kiss’s worth of bitterness in my heart.

— this whole honoring-honesty-openness thing? Is exhausting. And I feel weak, and tired, and small.

* * *

For Christmas dinner we were on our own. My mom — the master natural chef — cooked quinoa, peas, and kale. Then we let the dogs in. Then we watched “Elf.” Then I kissed forehead’s goodnight, and grabbed my cat.

And now I’m sitting at my desk, Christmas sinking away, trying to remember that I’m still unwrapping my gift.

Instead of doing more Christmas shopping, or wrapping presents, my friend Whit invited me on another beach hike to Bodega; so much better.

It was sunset on the lowest tide of the year — sun sunk west beyond naked seaweed beds; 5 minutes later a blossoming full moon peered over the Eastern cliffs.

We explored smooth rock faces otherwise inaccessible, covered in anemones, horse-neck barnacles, and orgies of starfish. So much Creature.

Saw exposed kelp gardens, with individual stalks standing erect, like miniature palm trees. Primordial. Walking on virgin sand, we are dinosaurs.

Climbed back up led only by the light of the moon, past Spirit Rock, where mammoths nestled rock thousands of years ago. I hug the cliff, wrap my arms around the largest piece of granite I can find.

Salt fog. Wet stones, mustard and crimson and black and jade. Muscle shells like shrapnel. Water breathing. So much ocean.

So much life.

So many wonderful things happen in a day.

I take a nice long walk; I am fluid. I stretch, I work, I buy a new book (or 20). I feel the soft rub of a scarf as I wind it around my neck; I am warm. I drink fresh, gritty, strong dandelion tea in a ceramic mug with my friend Whit, and feel so so proud of her for putting her work up online; I am inspired. I eat delicious food my mother has cooked in her natural foods class; I am nourished. I make plans for the weekend, the month, the year; I am optimistic.

So many wonderful things, simple things, joyful precious things for which I am grateful. But — all it takes,

all it takes,

is one slip of ribbon, one corner of a Christmas card, a mind’s glance to imagine what Tuesday will be like, and my mind fogs over. Thinking of Christmas without my brother, I cannot remember what I’ve been doing for the past week, where my body has been traveling since Thanksgiving. I keep picturing the hole that will be un-sitting at the table as we eat Christmas toast, the mug that will be unused, unfilled with coffee, an inverted drink; the tree we did not get, un-smelled by nostrils taller than I.

* * *

My parents and I went to Hospice. We met with a woman who surveyed the forms we filled out and hummed little sighing condolences as her eyebrows cradled her hairline. “That must be hard. Yeah. So how are you doing? Yeah. Oh, I bet you miss him? Yeah. Yeah, that must be hard.”

She made me feel thick and stoic. Her sympathies were so soft in my ears my brain convinced me I was Russian and without the ability to cry. I felt made out of clay.

She spoke to each of us, one at a time, asking us questions of my brother’s passing, our experience with loss, inquired about how we were “holding up.”

She showed us a chart, with the Seven Stages of Grief, and then a timeline of a possible experience with the loss. She used her pointer finger to spiral around the chart, indicating where we were now, where we’d be in three months, six months, one year.

“Shock can last up to three months. Deep grief usually doesn’t set in until 3-6 months.”

I suddenly felt like we were acting. My dad would smile knowingly at everything said, without dialogue. My mom would tenderly cradle her hands, letting a tear slip out every 4 lines. The Hospice worker, in character, would coo and smile, wince and sigh. That left my role, which was to deliver every line with regret and optimism, filling the big picture with a story everyone could wrap their arms around and cradle, like a newborn, helpless with potential.

* * *

I just now finished wrapping presents. My extended family agreed on no gifts this year, but my parents, sister-in-law and I all agreed that we needed something with a goddam bow on it.

Our “Christmas tree” is a plant two fee tall, but hell if it’s not gonna have some gifts under it.

The problem is, none of us want anything, and none of our brains work well enough to think of ideas, let alone remember how to drive a car.

[Family present spoiler warning!] For my mom, I wrapped up a book she ordered and paid for from Amazon. My dad is getting a pair of wiper blades. My sister-in-law? A foam roller. And her brother, who is visiting from Japan, gets a basketball. For myself, I spent $250 on used poetry books, despite the fact that I’ll have a net income of $50 for December. I’m putting a tag on the top of the brown paper bag that will wrap the books, reading:

“To: Shannon | From: Santa | When trying to fill a void, better books than any other addiction.”

That Santa is one smart and generous man.

Because I’m just too tired to write anything new, I’m posting my speech from my brother’s Celebration of Life ceremony.

Each of us has a spark of life inside us, and our highest endeavor ought to be to set off that spark in one another. –Kenny Ausubel

There will always be the past to miss.
the headpats and teasing
elaborate chairs constructed to collapse under me at his cue
how i tried to trade in my Barbies for his Transformers,
“how about i just borrow this one?”
the messy room and exotic friends I wanted to be a part of
and how much he hated it when I yelled for Mom or Dad because he said they always took my side
or more recently, after my grandfather’s death
the pact we made about family priorities:
“I swear to prize above money, above pride, above selfishness,
the sentimental, the important, the family.
To take care of mom and dad. Each other.”
Feeling so lucky to have a sibling
which is really nothing more than a friend
promised to you by Life.
There will always be this past to miss.

There will always be the future to mourn,
its continual non-arrival.
The getting old together we will not do.
The aunt I won’t become.
The adventures we will not complete.
There will always be this future, to mourn,

But I won’t. I won’t, because there is, right now, the present to embrace.
The present is a spark – a snap in time, a burst inside that tells us Yes. You are alive.

* * *
My brother called me one night. In these conversations, we would examine life with teeny verbal microscopes, and would inflate life to see faraway possibilities, like giant hot air balloons. I could always call my brother. So this one night, I think we were talking about jobs. I had just decided to leave mine, admitted I was struggling to find the “right” answer, I didn’t know what I was doing. He said “Shannon, do whatever you most want. You have so much at your fingertips, go out and taste the world. Me? I’ve found my career, but you go discover something for you. Don’t worry about whether it is “right” or not, just go after your dreams.”

He actually said “Go after your dreams.” This, from someone who used to call me “Dumbo.”

That kind of confidence in me, from him, was invaluable. It wasn’t about success or money, it wasn’t about judgments or expectations, or even finding a job I loved— when I really listened, it was about soaring. It was about being ignited to the present. He was telling me that it did not matter, a job, no job, someone – my peer – believed in my power to live.

He taught me to open my eyes.

* * *

A son, a brother, a husband, a family member, jokester, a buddy, a precocious child, a best friend – Chris was these, and, after going to the El Cerrito High memorial last night, I can tell you Chris was also a damn good teacher, an inspiration, a hero.

A spark.

Something that catches and multiplies. A chain reaction, or as Chris would probably like, a chemical reaction, of life – Chris’ internal spark lit so many of us, and so many more that are not here today, children who will grow up to be adults, adults who will grow up to spark more children, and so on, carries this fire within them, a fire inextinguishable, even in death.

One spark starts a wildfire. I will carry my brother’s with me for the rest of my life. I will let him keep reminding me, wordlessly in death, that I am alive. And that my life is here to ignite another.

Let us all be ignited. Let us all be blessed with this kindling called Life, blessed with a Today, a bright thing indeed, made more brilliant by those who shown before.

For Chris – may we all live with such a spark inside us.

We had Chris’ memorial yesterday. It was an amazing tribute to an amazing man, my brother.

It was also one of the most exhausting days of my life. My body hurts with fatigue; I woke up at 4am moaning. Not even a four hour nap today cured the aching that drips down my shoulders and reminds me that, although the weekend is over, the job of grieving is not.

Tomorrow is the first day with nothing to do. No papers to sign, no people to call, no flowers to buy. Tomorrow is the first day I have to wake up and go about a “normal” life without my brother in it.

Another strange week…

By the weekend, my stomach was feeling better, so I went back to yoga.

Got together for the first time with the extended family. We celebrated a few December birthdays, and talked about my brother’s memorial service.

Went on another long walk in Corte Madera and listened to how good it felt to walk, simply walk, nothing more in the brain, nothing less in the heart.

Monday The Parents and I were proud of ourselves for making dinner. Dad barbecued, mom steamed veggies and cooked rice, I sauteed tofu. This was only the second time in 16 days that we’ve cooked for ourselves….

…By Wednesday we were tired of cooking and ordered out again.

My brother was cremated on Tuesday.

My mom and I had a spa day: yoga, facials and massage. It felt strange to enjoy things.

Yesterday we got final details for the ceremony ready, today I have to get ready my speech (I still have not written a damn word of what I’m going to say for the Saturday service), and tomorrow we ready our hearts.

I went on a beautiful hike with my friends Whit and Leslie to the Tule Elk Reserve in Pt. Reyes.

Along the beach at sunset, low tide, there were two dead seals on the shore. One didn’t have a head.

As the tide drained back toward the ocean, pulling, carving, etching trees in the sand, thin watery branches grew, arched, reached toward the yellow cliffs. A jellyfish, shapeless and translucent, was slumped at the trunk of one such eddy. At his end.

I found a starfish with cramped arms and violet skin, gripping a wet clump of sand. I picked him up. Do starfish have gender? Pale, he released nothing, moved nowhere. Thinking by chance he might still be alive, I threw him as hard as I could, back into the frothy sea.

As the sun crashed into the ocean, round halos of sea foam, many feet high, many feet wide, formed at the mouth of the tide. I chalked it up to the recent oil spill. Figures, I scowled, and closed my eyes.

* * *

I have slivers of moments when this is not real: in the first snap of waking, before sleep blossoms into consciousness; in the morning, when the cold air forms steam from earth’s breath; for small blinks in the day, when the sun is so bright it both warms and stuns; and in between the third and fourth belly-glass of red wine, my brother is not dead.

All other times, the clock jerks, voices are slightly off key, and at every taste, my tongue is salt.

* * *

I opened my eyes. The sun was cut in half at the horizon. Orange. A single gull was flying to its left, like a freckle. As the waves hit the rocks and cliffs, splashing high into the air, they momentarily eclipsed the sun; the sand turned purple. The water rang black. My hands, cold and searching, grew five pink petals.

Everything dead came alive again in the sharpness of the light.

I stared right into that tangerine semi-circle and let it burn a hole deep into my eye — I let it tell me, for a sliver of a moment, everything I needed to hear.

I’m going on long walks. Taking a breather.

Let children walk with Nature, let them see the beautiful blendings and communions of death and life, their joyous inseparable unity, as taught in woods and meadows, plains and mountains and streams of our blessed star, and they will learn that death is stingless indeed, and as beautiful as life.
– John Muir, American Naturalist (1838-1914)

Will post soon.

The 7th of December was the 66th anniversary of Pearl Harbor, the Petaluma Hospice Light Up a Life celebration, and my mother’s birthday.

Not the kind of birthday a mother ever hopes to spend, my father and I offered to take her to the Hospice ceremony, and then to sushi.

* * *

Still sick, I spent most of the day asleep on the couch; but I did manage to help my mom and her friend Lynn, who lost her daughter Jamie four years ago, dawn the house with Christmas decorations.

I am especially grateful for Lynn (and her husband John)’s presence in my parents life. They were very close before, but for them to be able to talk to someone so close to them who understand what it’s like to lose a child… it’s a bittersweet blessing.

Lynn and I hung stockings over the fire place: Mom, Dad, Chris, Shan. Somehow four stockings seemed a cruel number, so we made sure to add a few extras — one for my brother’s wife, one for my boyfriend, one for a friend who might join us, and two small ones, for Chris’ dogs.

We put up the ‘Baa Humbug’ garland — with white, fluffy sheep and the word humbug; the nativity set I used to play with for hours when I was a kid, making baby Jesus ride the donkeys; and the snow-globe collection I don’t remember starting.

When we finished, even my father, who was reluctant toward the idea of decorating, welcomed the cheer.

For the rest of the day my mom and I napped, and walked dogs; we agreed it was the perfect way to spend a birthday.

In the evening, my parents and I went to the Light Up a Life ceremony, where you can “purchase a light” to illuminate the huge redwoods in the center of town.

Someone had purchased one for my brother.

I had purchased one for my brother, too; and one for my grandmother, and also my grandfather, who died of cancer; I purchased one for Jamie, who was killed in a car accident when we were 22, and one for my ex-boyfriend’s sister, who passed away after a brain tumor.

At home, writing down all of these names of people I’ve lost in my life, I felt overwhelmed and alone. Why had I seen so much loss in such a short time?

But then I got a call from a friend, who commented that “he didn’t have a mommy to tuck him in” [reference to my last blog post]; another friend had lost her grandmother; another had had a miscarriage.

And when my parents and I went to the Hospice tree-lighting ceremony, the square was filled with several hundred people. If each of these people, I reasoned, had suffered the loss of at least one person…

I understand my suffering is hardly a solo venture. And although it does not make the pain of losing my brother evaporate, there is a quiet comfort in remembering that loss is age old, and humanity deep. And that there is enough suffering to light up a forest’s worth of trees… but there must also be a strange kind of beauty in seeing the woods light up with life that was.

Suddenly, I can’t eat.

I keep waking in the dark, early mornings, and have to vomit. I haven’t been able to keep anything down since Tuesday, save two pieces of bread and a cup ’soup. My stomach is roiling, and I feel anxious and tired, but can’t sleep. I either have a stomach bug, or a very strange way of grieving.

* * *

This is the time when the shock wears off and the nauseating reality sets in; when in the middle of sending a fax you look down to realize you are about to send your credit card information over to pay for a cremation…

…you are paying by VISA.

No person, at 26 years old, should have to decide how to ‘process’ her brother’s body as calmly as deciding paper or plastic. And when the newspaper says it’ll be an extra $200 to run the obit on Sunday… how does a family say ‘no’?

“We’d rather save the money for Christmas presents, thaaanks.”

There is an ugliness to death, before it becomes beautiful again. It must curl its lip and reveal a smelly, rotting tooth before it can sprout wing.

The ugliness comes in the form of imagination, and revisits. Before childhood memory and fond remembrances can blanket you, there is a cold wind of What Ifs, and Guilt, and Should’ves.

I should have driven over there sooner; What if I had been able to get into the house before police; Why didn’t I do something the first time he didn’t pick up the phone?

For the rest of my life, I have to live with the knowledge that while I was reading a New Yorker and drinking kombucha from a wine glass, my brother was lying dead in his garage.

These are the things no one talks about during the grieving process, and these are precisely the things that bare the meanest bite.

Visits from family members and calls from friends help; they temporarily distract and soften. But those moments between lights-out and sleep, the hour circling dinner when it’s dark but still day, the mid-afternoon slump — all have empty corners where a hideous truth emerges.

At night, I close my eyes and try not to return to that scene, that dreadful scene, where the police officer turned his head in my direction, enraging in his ease, descended down the front stairs of my brother’s house, and, before he ever reached me, before he ever opened his mouth, I knew what he was going to say.

In these quiet moments, there is nothing to do but pet the cat, turn over, and make another attempt at sleep. For all the Whys in the world, there aren’t enough; aren’t enough to save my stomach, and my heart, from turning sour once my mind has given up trying.

Last night my cat woke me up at 1:30am to (I thought) go out, but after standing dumbly in the hallway for 3 minutes, I realized she had re-curled at the foot of my bed. Perhaps she woke me up because she knew I was having a nightmare. Only, she could have done me the courtesy of making all of this, once I woke, just a bad dream.

So tired. Stayed in bed all day. Ate two pieces bread, then applesauce, then tea. Think I’m getting sick. But good news: no jury duty. Also, got cat catbox so she can sleep inside all night without pissing on my floor cushions. Getting tucked into bed by mom, will write later.

Today I joined a gym and finished my brother’s obituary.

Gym: treadmill for 30 mins.

Obituary:

Christopher David DeJong, (February 14, 1976 – November 21, 2007) – beloved son, husband, brother, nephew, grandchild, teacher, friend – passed away unexpectedly in his El Cerrito home.

Donations can be made to the El Cerrito Drama Department, c/o Christopher DeJong Fund. A celebration of his life will be held at the Jackson Theater at Sonoma Country Day School, 4400 Day School Place, Santa Rosa Saturday Dec. 15, at 1:30 PM.

Today I went to yoga, had a facial, and took a nap. That’s it. I have been sitting in my fuzzy red robe and drinking tea for the past 5 hours.

And I know it seems crude at a time like this to be doing something like having a facial — but the thing is, I can use all the distraction I can get. My parents and I are realizing that it’s much better to leave the house at least once a day no matter what — even if only to buy broccoli — than to stay inside and stare at the ever-growing pile of sympathy cards.

I had very big plans for today: I was going to join a gym (my body, heart and brain desperately need to pound the pavement), finish writing my brother’s obituary, make sure the cremation house got the necessary paperwork, pay the pile of bills that have accumulated on my desk, take the dogs for a walk, and call the San Francisco courthouse…

…I have jury duty. [cue the irony bells]…

…But I didn’t. I retired at 5pm, at which point I made myself some chamomile tea, changed into my robe, and called it a day.

My parents confirm the prevailing fatigue. We have concluded that just being awake is so emotionally draining that it takes a physical toll; I feel like I have Pre-Flu 24/7. (And I thought I was done with the Dengue Fever!)

But I did tell myself that my only work, after checking in with my parents and sister-in-law, was to make an effort to write — write something — every day.

(I’m so sorry, Dear Readers, that that Something is something like this; well-written blog posts are a little elusive for me right now).

And so, having accomplished that, I’m signing off for today. I will leave you with something from Zen Master Layman P’ang (c. 740-808):

When the mind is at peace,
the world too is at peace.
Nothing real, nothing absent.
Not holding on to reality,
not getting stuck in the void,
you are neither holy nor wise, just
an ordinary fellow who has completed his work.