Grief and the Living

Yesterday we drove from North Carolina to Virginia visit with some of my wife's family. They have a comfortable cottage on Gwynn Island. Its a smallish island in Chesapeake Bay. A bit east of Richmond, a bit south of Washington DC.

The drive up was pleasant, most of the way we took I-95 - which is the major highway that runs north-south in the eastern United States. The North Carolina Stretch as least is a flat corridor lined with stolid pine trees at either, each exit promises the cheapest gas and cigarettes, and the best fried chicken. I assume that more than one of those claims is exaggerated.

My wife's favorite aunt Sandy was visiting from Hawaii to spend time with her brother Gary - and they decided to make weekend of it at the cottage. It was good to see Sandy again - when we lived in Hawaii we often spend time together. Sandy is joyful to be around. Her side of the family is a mixture of Hawaiian and European and she has a distinctive poise and demeanor.

Dinner was enjoyable - Sandy brought food from Hawaii - we had laulau. Laulau is a Hawaiian dish - pork and fatty fish is wrapped in young taro leaves, that is then bundled in ti leaves and steamed, completely delicious.

After dinner I got to know my wife's uncle much better, as we shared our stories. This part is hard for me - when we meet with new people (in this case new to me) - we get asked why we would ever chose to leave beautiful Hawaii. We then have to recount the house fire in January - where we lost eveerything we owned our dogs, and my wife's father. We left our apartment like any other day - to do our shopping and errands - and less than 30 minutes later we were called back and told it was in flames. Almost a year later we have no clear answers what happened and why the fire was so intense and quick. The fire department and insurance investigators were never able to discover the source of the fire and why it was so intense - we didn''t have anything unusual in our home - no fuel - nothing particularly combustible in our home. Our story about leaving Hawaii is not polite dinner conversation. For much of this year we have avoided meeting many new people to avoid telling our story.

Humans want to make sense of tragedy, to understand it, classify it, categorize it - the probing - the quesstioning it seems to be the way we manage pain. Some things are senselesss though, answers elusive, and our way forward is learning to bear and live with grief.

During dinner we learned that my wife's uncle Gary had Parkinson's disease. I'm familiar with it, my late father had it himself and I was his caregiver for a time. As Parkinson's progressives those with the disease lose both cognitive and motor control.

The next morning I woke up early - I haven't slept well this year. For years my wife and I had slept with our two dogs between us - I grew very accustomed to waking up and seeing a toothy doggie grin on the edge of my pillow. When i wake up without them these days I feel disoriented then sad. This is a picture of "Wiggles" a dog we adopted from a rescue shelter - when she was happy and wagged her body her whole body would wiggle - so her name became Wiggies/Wiggles.

I got dressed quietly, trying to let my wife sleep. I shuffled into the kitchen found where our host hid the coffee and brewed a cup. I wandered outside armed with coffee to walk down to the water and have the morning's first cigarette. Between the cold stiff breeze, the nicotine and the caffeine any remaining drowsiness faded with the rising sun.

Wandering back inside I made a second cup of coffee and sat down to read the news. Israel and Hamas both still seem hell-bent in starting World War III, and nothing I or you dear reader can say or do will sway the course. We can promise never to forget as every generation has done before us and mourn and grieve for the dead and dying. Each generation seems to believe itself morally superior to the past yet manages to repeat the same evils the world has known since it was young.

The rest of the family eventually roused and after breakfast - my wife and her aunts decided to go shopping leaving Gary and I to get to know each other better. Gary like my wife is "hapa" part Hawaiian part European. In the morning Gary's Parkinson's symptoms were surprisingly mild and his intellect and education shown through in our conversation. After graduating at the top of his class in high school (Kamehameha) Gary went to a Stanford to pursue a degree in Biology. Gary wryly observed "my first year of Stanford was humbling - i was used to being the bug man on campus, and the smartest guy in the room - at Stanford almost everyone was taller, smarter, and richer..."

Gary had decided as a teenager he wanted to be a Doctor, so the Biology degree was a logical choice. Gary took a slight detour after graduation - rather than heading straight into medical school - he decided on a stint in the Peace Corps. Two years in Micronesia building water catchment systems and setting up radio networks gave him some unique perspective. Half the materials they used to build infrastructure for the Micronesians were won in poker games or creatively diverted from US Military projects. An old Navy seabee who had settled in Micronesia was Gary's partner in altruistic crime organized and directed building across the islands.

After the Peace Corps, Gary enrolled in a newly medical college in Hawaii - he told me "I was just a week back from Micronesia - almost everyone there already had a PHD in a medical or a scientific field. My first class was biochemistry- the Professor was talking excitedly about a new amino acid identified in watermelon. After living in Micronesia for two years sleeping on the ground on mats someone so ecstatic over amino acids seemed so ridiculous i started laughing and had to leave the classroom because I couldn't stop."

The program at Hawaii a the time required medical students to transfer after two years, and Gary went on to complete his studies at Johns Hopkins where he specialized in pediatric medicine and earned his MD. Gary went on to research, practice and teach at the University of Wisconsin Madison, and the University of Virginia Richmond.

Gary's practice was cut short entirely too soon by the progression of his Parkinson's disease. As we talked into the early afternoon and he tired dyskinesia set in and his tremors increased. While still articulate he had greater difficulty voicing his thoughts. It was clear he was grieving the loss of his career, academic life and the meaning that came with his neonatal and pediatric practice. An absolutely brilliant man - he had to accept going from caring for others to being cared for himself, betrayed by a disease - medical science could reduce the symptoms but not cure or stop the progression of the disease.

I'm glad i had the opportunity to meet Gary and we are planning additional trips to spend more time with him and his family. I think he enjoyed the conversation we talked everything from medicine to politics to philosophy. Mental stimulation and engagement becomes perhaps more important as we age, and I did my best to hold my up my end of the conversation.

Grief and loss will touch all of our lives, and like a bad penny will turn up tome after time. I would like to be able to tell you i have learned some secret to cope with it - but I've often been mastered by it myself. Some days the depression from it certainly overwhelming. For much of this year we have sequestered ourselves on our homestead just venturing out for shopping and church. I pray often and read my Bible and the great philosophers. As Solomon said in Ecclesiastes there is a season for everything, and now is our time of mourning. Learning to live with and bear grief and sorrow will likely be a season in all our lives.

My partial solution is to find new challenges and purpose and to strengthen my faith and my relationships with my family.

I've given myself a goal to learn and connect with the Hive Ecosystem and to become and to become an effective advocate for it.

If you've made it this far, thank you dear reader. Leave a note so that we can connect and please share your journey in life and on this network we share.

Edwin