Death of A Loved One, The Soul, and 21 Grams

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Postby Project Willow » Tue Dec 30, 2008 3:03 pm

I just posted this in the members notice section when I saw your thread, Ahab. I am sorry for your loss.
I was holding my friend when she got the diagnosis on Nov. 3 and I was holding her when she passed on Christmas day. She was an extraordinary woman. She believed in me and supported me about my past. She was a teacher and a mentor and she died as she had lived, giving those caring for her the gift of trust and an amazing positive attitude through the experience. She died at home as she had wanted, surrounded by loving friends. When the initial tears had passed, we sent her out with a big party.


Su Job, 1956-2008

http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/art/archives/158132.asp#extended

http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2008/12/27/su_job_1956_2008
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Postby AhabsOtherLeg » Thu Jan 01, 2009 7:25 am

I'm back before I expected, and deeply disappointed that this forum doesn't have a multi-quote function!

I just want to say thank you to everyone who has replied, and believe me, all of your contributions have helped me. If I can quote folk individually by using the @ thing without looking like a dick - and without collectively boring everybody to tears - I will. In fact, I'm going to regardless.

@ AVALON: "Dealing with the dying can be hard, but dealing with those left behind can be far harder. [rueful grin from experience]"

That didn't take very long to come true! Jaysus... They're probably thinking the same thing about me, now, though, so no harm done. As for incorrigible, non-stop toxicity - the real deal - I've seen it before now, and those who embody it are luckily no longer welcome at this time. Thank God.

"It's like being born all over again for you, there are a lot of major shifts possible. For those of you who are one of several people at a death, know that each of you will have a differing experience of it."

There were a lot of people present, I should've said - and probably only to me did it feel like he had (as Joe Hillhoist rightly put it, twice) escaped. But it's okay. I'm not going to start telling the rest of the family that I see it that way - everybody deals in their own way, and according to their own beliefs. But there's no doubt that towards the end he was imprisoned, and he had to get out. In my view. He got too big for his body.

"We usually come into this world at 7-8 pounds. The cremated ashes I've weighed were 7 pounds. There's a pleasing symmetry to that."


Hehe. My Dad would've said - "We come into the world at eight pound?
W leave it around seven....? Somebody musta skimmed a pound off the top. Fuckin' taxes."

He never stopped making me laugh, over 30 years. Now that's the kind of miracle they should be studying.

But I know what you mean, Avalon, and it's the simple truth. "All that lives must die, passing through nature to eternity." Eternity being a part of nature, presumably.

Thanks for your kindness, and all the best in the New Year...
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Postby AhabsOtherLeg » Thu Jan 01, 2009 8:29 am

Project Willow, thanks for those links. Su Job sounds brilliant - the kind of woman whose works I will have to look more closely at. What a sneaky but brilliant rhyme in the second article: "Bourgeois is still living; she's just turned 97." Phillip Larkin or Kingsley Amis (or any poet of their generation) would've queued all night for a line like that.

That's not the main point, though. If it's any consolation, Su went alongside my dad and Harold Pinter... what a bus journey that'll be! :lol: It's not right to say that I wish I was with them, but, well, I do wish I was with them. And it's not wholly wrong to say it either.

Penguin (man, you know I love you too), Ian Eye, Crikkett, SonOfKitty, Username, Kurish, Sounder, Uncle S$am, Vigilant, and Op Ed, you are all my friends, as far as I'm concerned. I hope I haven't missed anybody from this thread. Hugh, I love you too (goes without saying).

Anyways, Op Ed, you're my friend. It might be embarassing for you, but it is simply the case - it is established fact that I like you. Always have done, since me lurky/reading days.

@LiLyPatToo - "I seem doomed to just miss being present with each of my own lost loved ones at the moment of their death. I want (need) to experience what you did, so that I can believe that some part of them lives on. Tomorrow would have been my son's 39th birthday, had he not died in Children's Hospital in Pittsburgh 26 years ago last month. Last week I was in PA and visited his grave and my parents' too and stood and longed for something--anything--to believe about their survival beyond Death's door. So much unfinished business between us and so many regrets and questions in the case of my mother.... "

Lily, I can't assure you of anything. I think you have seen and experienced enough to know better than me anyway. But I can honestly say that, as I feel it, they do live on - and not in an abstract or figurative sense. They live on within you. And it's almost physical, or feels so - and I suppose if it feels so, it is.

But you have been through this already, in harder circumstances, and there is nothing I can tell you... except that I, myself, really didn't want to be there in the room when it happened. But now I am glad I was.

It is a far harder thing to lose a child than a father. I had time to say everything I wanted to say - and to say (and hear) a lot of stuff I neither wanted to say or hear. But nothing went unsaid.

Nothing goes unsaid between a mother and son either, though. It never needs to be said. Both sides know.

I wish you happiness, and all the best. And I should've said it at 0.00 last night (or 12.00, as Geogeo calls it, hehe) but Happy Hogmanay to you all.

Time we were worrying about the Gazan and Israeli kids, again, all things considered. A lot of them won't even get the chance to gather the memories I've got for myself.
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Postby barracuda » Thu Jan 01, 2009 4:58 pm

I lost my father about twenty-five years ago, Ahab. He's the guy who tuned me into Waller and the great jazz players. He never saw any of his four grandchildren, but you can sure see him in their faces, their voices, and their mannerisms which have traveled through my brother and sister and I and been transmitted generationally. It's pretty strange to recognize the idiosyncracies of a man who died twenty-five years ago surfacing in a five year old girl, but there it is, there's no mistaking it, and in this rather materialistic way no one is lost to the world.

When my dad died, an old friend told me, "you're not really a man until your father is gone," which at the time I considered bullshit. All these years later I still think it is, but there is a sense of completion which accompanies the loss that is undeniable.

His name was Jack, same as his father, same as his son. He still comes to me in my dreams, same as he ever was, and it's always good.

Best to you, man.
The most dangerous traps are the ones you set for yourself. - Phillip Marlowe
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Postby RocketMan » Thu Jan 01, 2009 6:28 pm

I just read your post, Ahab, and none of the replies (yet, of course), but I have to say that that was one of the most beautiful pieces of prose I've read in a long, long time. I'd say "may you find peace in your loss" if I didn't know you have already. I'm coming around to the the view that the fear of death is one of the most potent factors enabling the evil we see in the world and, by everything that I hold sacred and true in this world (and indeed, all others), your post has only strengthened my faith in this regard.

Bless you, AhabsOtherLeg, and your father, for you have committed a great act of compassion, revelation and understanding with your post.
-I don't like hoodlums.
-That's just a word, Marlowe. We have that kind of world. Two wars gave it to us and we are going to keep it.
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Postby AhabsOtherLeg » Sat Jan 03, 2009 1:59 am

barracuda wrote: It's pretty strange to recognize the idiosyncracies of a man who died twenty-five years ago surfacing in a five year old girl, but there it is, there's no mistaking it, and in this rather materialistic way no one is lost to the world.


Bizarre, isn't it? And yet it's brilliant. Might be materialist, in a way, but I've never seen the problem with that myself - we are living in a material world, and I am a material, um, personage. "Life is an aggregate of all the lives that have ever been lived. I'll say it again. Life is an aggregate of all the lives that have ever been lived." Not an exact quote, but I'm starting to see the truth of it - nothing's ever lost, nothing's ever wasted, but it can, at times, look like a huge mess.

barracuda wrote:When my dad died, an old friend told me, "you're not really a man until your father is gone," which at the time I considered bullshit. All these years later I still think it is, but there is a sense of completion which accompanies the loss that is undeniable.


Yeah, I think it's bullshit too. Barroom sub-Bukowski bullshit, at that, but I mean no offence to your friend - it was twenty five years ago, and God knows I've probably said worse myself. But plenty of men are men before their Dad's go - some are even better men than their Dads - and plenty of others never really get beyond a sort of charmless version of childhood with a layer of cynicism laid on top. I hope I will get beyond that, myself. Can't say I have yet, to be honest. Can't make any promises either, except that I'll try.

His name was Jack, same as his father, same as his son. He still comes to me in my dreams, same as he ever was, and it's always good.

Best to you, man.


I have my Dad's name too. And we were joint-tenants and joint-account holders (not at the bank - he was never that stupid - but the post office, which is guaranteed). It's a wierd thing (and come to think of it, the opportunities we had for low-level identity fraud were endless) but I was technically him, and him me, not just in spirit but in all the official documentation too.

It's going to be a nightmare sorting it all out now.

All the best to you too. And 8-bit Agent, who I forgot to mention as another of my pals. And C2W. And everybody here, really, including anybody I've ever had a go at. I even quite like Jeff! :D
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Postby AhabsOtherLeg » Sat Jan 03, 2009 2:19 am

RocketMan wrote:I just read your post, Ahab, and none of the replies (yet, of course), but I have to say that that was one of the most beautiful pieces of prose I've read in a long, long time.


By God, Rocketman, I thank you sincerely for your kind words, but you need to get reading more! Hehehe. My prose is mostly prosaic.


RocketMan wrote:I'm coming around to the the view that the fear of death is one of the most potent factors enabling the evil we see in the world and, by everything that I hold sacred and true in this world (and indeed, all others), your post has only strengthened my faith in this regard.


I agree with that. Fear of death paralyses people - stops them from taking actions that would help others. Not just fear of death, though - fear of scorn, ridicule, social failure, the loss of a job, even the loss of a loved one. Fear stops people from doing the right thing.

I've fell back on the Phillip Larkin recently (nobody else can handle death like he does - though he admits his fear of it, and the paralysing effect it has on his "better nature" - and like most poets, even his better nature wasn't particularly admirable).


Courage is no good:
It means not scaring others. Being brave
Lets no one off the grave.
Death is no different whined at than withstood.



Well, he's right, for sure, about death. But there are plenty of things in this life that are better, or can be made so, if they are both whined at and withstood.

Like most other humans, though, I'm still just doing the whining, hoping somebody else will withstand the ongoing onslaught on my behalf... because of fear. Not even the fear of death, anymore. Just the fear of effort.

It's pathetic. And I hope I can change.

Um.... you set me off there, I think, Rocketman. Sorry for that wee rant, and I'm glad you got some good from my post.
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Postby stefano » Sun Jan 04, 2009 7:36 am

I'm sorry for your loss, Ahab. Thanks for what you wrote and thanks to everyone else who posted in this thread.

He was added to me, and to something bigger than all of us, and he's still here now. More present now than he was at the end.


I don't often put these things in words, and struggle when I do, but yes, absolutely. I used to be a full-on Dawkins-style atheist, the rational skeptic, until my grandfather died. He was sick for a few years before but his death was perfect for him - he fell down stone dead in church, in his best suit, on the last note of one of his favourite hymns. Since then he's been with me more (in a manner of speaking... see what I mean about the words), and that's changed my mind about the God-ness and about what a proper and noble way is for a person to live.
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Postby AhabsOtherLeg » Fri Jan 09, 2009 6:15 pm

stefano wrote:I used to be a full-on Dawkins-style atheist, the rational skeptic, until my grandfather died. He was sick for a few years before but his death was perfect for him - he fell down stone dead in church, in his best suit, on the last note of one of his favourite hymns.


And he'd shaken hands with Wouter Basson! It really is a small world, when you think about it, and an incredibly strange one. Actually, I'm just assuming that it was the same grandfather... we talked about him ages ago in the ABC Anthrax thread, if you remember. Was it the same man? He must've been quite a character.

I have no real problem with the Dawkins'-style atheists, except that they keep going on about it. I've been an atheist myself (though never a proselytizing one) - but I'm increasingly seeing atheism nowadays as a bigger cop-out from reality than the belief in a higher ( and lower) spirit.

Not that i'd want to argue about it with any atheists. They are entitled to their disbeliefs.
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Postby stefano » Fri Jan 09, 2009 6:42 pm

Hey Ahab - yes, the same man. He was quite a character, I think about him a lot. He also told me never to trust a man who dyes his hair, and that you're only properly dressed if you're carrying a handkerchief and a penknife with a corkscrew.
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Postby AhabsOtherLeg » Fri Jan 09, 2009 7:08 pm

stefano wrote:Hey Ahab - yes, the same man. He was quite a character, I think about him a lot. He also told me never to trust a man who dyes his hair, and that you're only properly dressed if you're carrying a handkerchief and a penknife with a corkscrew.


Hehe, have to agree on the penknife and corkscrew thing. You never know when a bottle will need opening. I had a friend who literally wouldn't drink booze from a bottle - even if we ended up sitting on a park bench, he always had a shot glass in his pocket. Took it everywhere with him. Dressed immaculate too, despite being not far from homeless. A good guy, but I recently discovered he'd started using moisturiser! Male moisturiser!

I was scandalised. Men should never, ever take care of their personal appearance, beyond dressing well, smelling good, and shaving if they want to. Anything beyond that is an affront to the Lord!



As an update to the thread itself, the funeral, though so long delayed, was beautiful, and I still feel he is truly at rest now, and I still have an odd (and rare) sense of peace within myself. The wake, of course, was a bloody massacre of inappropriate home-truths being yelled and slurred by everybody present - but that's what wakes are for.

I didn't join in. I just feel weirdly calm and normal.
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Postby Joe Hillshoist » Fri Jan 09, 2009 9:32 pm

I just feel weirdly calm and normal.


I'm glad you're at peace with all this.

Men should never, ever take care of their personal appearance, beyond dressing well, smelling good, and shaving if they want to. Anything beyond that is an affront to the Lord!


My wife reckons i smell best when I'm sweaty and unshowered.

I brought a $4 pair of jeans at Vinnies yesterday (St Vincent de paul society op shop) - that'll be me dressing well.
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Postby AhabsOtherLeg » Fri Jan 09, 2009 10:42 pm

Joe Hillshoist wrote:
I just feel weirdly calm and normal.


I'm glad you're at peace with all this.

Men should never, ever take care of their personal appearance, beyond dressing well, smelling good, and shaving if they want to. Anything beyond that is an affront to the Lord!


My wife reckons i smell best when I'm sweaty and unshowered.

I brought a $4 pair of jeans at Vinnies yesterday (St Vincent de paul society op shop) - that'll be me dressing well.


Another "small world" or "Coinkydinky" point - my Dad was very briefly a member of the St. Vincent De Paul Society. They do good work. He left when the usual "office politics" started up - when people doing voluntary charity work start arguing about money (and bumping their gums about God instead of working) it's time to bail.

I think he enjoyed it while he was there, though. It was over ten years ago, and I wasn't really paying attention at the time.

Thanks for caring, Joe. You are a permanent soul.
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