Today we mourn a wound that will forever remain another ugly scar on these so-called united states in North America.
The very public funeral of Jayland Walker who was slaughtered in a barrage of bullets fired by eight officers of Akron, Ohio’s police department on June 27th is happening as I type this. I arrived about ten minutes after ten and followed the local chapter of Zulus in to pay my respects.
Undertaking is an art unto itself. What I saw when I stood before this beautiful, valuable and worthy young man who unjustly lost his life was nothing like the pictures that stood on either side of his casket or the videos that flashed on the adjacent screens. Like seeing a disfigured person in a public place and catching yourself staring, I impulsively rushed myself along unnecessarily. Afterwards I sat and watched others walk up, so many did the same. It is not easy to see the repaired features of a human face no matter how talented the artist and I must say, whoever the undertaker was, they did do an amazing job considering what they were left to work with.
The courage, insight and immense strength Pamela Walker has shown by making her son’s funeral public is nothing short of miraculous to me. I’ve lost my husband and still feel like I’m barely surviving that. Receiving news of my son’s death would surely be the end of me and I quickly banish those thoughts when they come.
Mourners continue to walk through Akron’s cherished Civic Theater to pay their respects and bare witness to this historic event. Never in my life did I envision we would have to fight against racism and hatred like I saw in books about the “civil rights era”… it’s still the civil rights era and there has never been reprieve or repairs! Promises made fifty years ago are still not honored and actions speak louder than words. This is why we can all see Jayland today. We can see what abuse of power and excessive force does to a person, a family, a community, a country. We can see.
Justice has always been only for those of a certain group, the rest of us…well, it’s just us.
They advise no major changes in the first year after the loss of a spouse. Every widow’s calendar is different but our years all begin with the date of our better half’s death. No major changes makes some sense to me…definitely not in the first three months (1st qtr).
My 1st qtr found me severely depressed, isolated and traumatized. I reverted back to behaviors I haven’t exhibited since my adolescence. I learned A LOT about myself and continued to into my 2nd qtr.
My 2nd qtr was an awkward balancing act of maintaining my sense of self and purpose, implementing boundaries and learning how to keep myself calm throughout this stormy existence. I stumbled continuously and throughout my sisters kept lifting me up. ♡
I’m a month into my last quarter and things are starting to align in ways that both scare and excite me. I feel like I’m close to something but skeptical of my tendencies towards creative thinking and fantasy. All I know is this calendar of firsts without is pretty awful to exist through and the thought of it coming to an end is even worse!!! It’s like I’m drifting further away from him and I can’t do anything to stop it…the world just keeps whipping me around.
Is it even possible to experience life void of scars?
I have a jagged scar beneath my bottom lip that I don’t remember getting. The explanation I was given was that it happened when I was a toddler while my sister and I were playing. She was chasing me and I ran into a wall, biting through my lip. This was before my parents bought the house where my own personal memories began. The scar is still pretty noticeable unlike the others I have; it is on my face though.
The first scar I do remember getting is on the left side of my bum (yep, my derrière, dupa, ass). There’s a bit of back story about my father you need to know before I get to the story about my butt scar. My father did his own home improvements but I can’t vouch for his abilities there. All I know is the house was always in various stages of remodeling throughout the six or so years we lived there. If I sit and think about it I might be able to piece together the projects, but that could end up another blog entry … I don’t know what I’m doing tomorrow, let alone some future blog post, so whatever… I digress.
My father insisted his daughters get their hands dirty and build strong muscles by moving bricks in our backyard every summer. I’m sure he did this to keep us busy while he worked; to me he appeared sadistically enthusiastic whenever he declared it “Moving bricks day!” The bricks were those generic red rectangular pavers and he wanted us to move tons of them (okay, maybe not tons but there were a lot). Every year these bricks were relocated to some new space in the backyard; one year around the cherry tree, another along the garage, and so on. I loathed moving bricks because beneath each one I would find centipedes, millipedes, roly-poly bugs, ants, earwigs, and everything slimy, squirmy and gross. If you’ve been with me from the beginning you might recall me mentioning our house was infested with cockroaches too. I’ll also divulge that I was terrified of bees and allergic to mosquitoes. So, yeah, for me … bugs = NOPE. Lightning bugs were cool though, go figure.
Back to my butt scar…it was a moving brick day and we were taking a break. There was a new cement patio in the back of the house we loved to roller skate on, but this day my sister had the weeble-wobbles and little people play sets out. Up against the house there was a kid sized chair next to a garbage can filled with sharp broken panes of glass. I remember talking to her as I was walking backwards to sit down in the chair and I can still see her face changing from no expression to one of horror as she watched me sit on glass. It didn’t hurt until I stood up, looked and saw blood running down my leg. Needless to say, what should’ve been treated at a medical facility was just drenched in Bactine and covered with gauze and bandages. I’m guessing I was around seven years old at the time. I remember showing kids at school in the bathroom. It was cool to show our wounds and scars when we we’re kids, wasn’t it? This scar, from my perspective, is a good square inch and forms the shape of an upside down tear drop; it’s on the left side of my left side. It’s much faded now from the years of spread, I mean spread of years.
Sibling squabbles resulted in a scar or two. Being the younger sibling naturally makes one the receiver of teasing and torment. Growing up in an abusive home guarantees it. The next scar memory happened when my sister and I were home alone, fighting over who knows what. There was a garbage bag in the kitchen under the phone, which unbeknownst to us had sharp pieces of metal shrapnel in it from another of my father’s home improvement projects. Well, my sister had a hammer and was threatening to hit me with it if I called our mom, which terrified me because that hammer added to her visible rage meant I was in very real danger. I ran to the kitchen to call our mom and I stepped on the garbage bag, slicing my toe on a piece of scrap metal. Her threats stopped and she helped me to the bathroom, stuck my foot under the sink faucet and wrapped it in toilet paper. Then she helped me hop to our neighbor’s house because she was a nurse. Well, of course she called our mother and I got stitches at an urgent care center shortly after. Whatever scar was there is now a nice thick callus from years of high heels. I laugh recalling the irony of it now and consider myself fortunate to have escaped childhood without any broken bones, skull included. I mean it was a fucking hammer after all.
Small scars from cat scratches, bicycle mishaps and careless lit cigarettes left marks too, but those were customary for any child growing up in the 70s and 80s. As were the cuts from climbing fences, running through pricker bushes, and picked scabs. So many of us had scars from childhood illnesses like chicken pox, puberty’s bane of acne, and the self-inflicted markings of our teenage angst; all display our unique identities while recognizing our similarities.
The ugliest scars I have are on my left leg. What is this with my left side I’m just noticing now? It was in early March and it had snowed after a thaw causing a layer of ice beneath the snow. I fell in my driveway and my leg slammed right into the tire of our minivan; I heard my own bones crack and consider myself very fortunate it wasn’t also a compound fracture. They scheduled me for surgery to set the bones and eventually put two plates and ten pins in my leg just above my ankle. I was a cigarette smoker and I remember the surgeon telling me my bones were very brittle and split like wood which made it difficult for them to repair the damage. Fuck people – please try to quit smoking… for real, though…I love you.
I exhibit all the customary scars and markings that accompany pregnancy, childbirth and motherhood, but those are misnomers to me. I’m quite fond and proud of my stretch marks these days. This is a new experience for me since I’ve spent my life despising my naked image. My ears are unevenly pierced, two on my right and three on my left because my sixteen year old Libra self felt I needed some form of permanent imbalance on display. I also have a number of tattoos and since they’re also permanent markings they’re included as well. My first tattoo was an original I had drawn up when I moved to Los Angeles and I went on to get three more by the same artist while I lived there. I added to one of those when I lived in Illinois in my twenties and didn’t get another until I moved to Ohio. It wasn’t until our 15th wedding anniversary that Jim and I got matching sun tattoos. Since then I’ve added three more and am planning a sleeve on my left arm.
I consider scars and markings to be tributes to the trials we’ve faced in life and if we’re still alive, the battles we’ve survived. Scars do not guarantee a person’s moral integrity though. Nor do our own deliberate unique markings prove our sincerity. But isn’t it comforting to see others with scars and markings surviving in this world too? It’s probably a good thing we grow out of showing all of them to each other though. 😉
Try not to cause unnecessary scars on others and avoid getting unwanted ones on yourselves when you’re out there livin’ your lives peeps and I promise to do the same. ❤
I feel as if I am in a fluid state right now. It’s as if all that I knew of me, all that I felt was rock solid and true, is now spilling out of me like a leak in a tail pipe and I’m losing bits of myself everywhere I go. I am the solder under fire, once containable but now flux. My only comfort is in knowing that solder will harden again. I also know that whatever I become when I’m reattached, this join will be a weak point and something I’ll need to monitor and reinforce from now on. Hopefully I’ll have the tools and means to do so as I forge ahead.
The new year is growing stale and my thoughts are void of inspiration. I dread the weekends and then the long week starts. I try to motivate myself to create art but I look at it and feel empty. I push myself to write and I stare at blank pages and cry. I can’t even bring myself to get out into nature and take pictures. It is a scary state to find yourself in, no direction and no desire to do anything at all. Food spoils in my fridge and I wonder why I even bother buying it. My fur babies are getting fed but not on schedule like they were accustomed to. I missed taking the trash out last week but it wasn’t full and it’s winter so whatever.
The bonds and connections to people I held closest to me and relied on are broken and seem irreparable. This is my greatest regret. I own my actions over the past three months which have contributed to my current predicament, but no one person is responsible for everything failing in any friendship/relationship. The things I’ve said or done weren’t so horrible to exact the consequences that resulted. I’ve asked for forgiveness, compassion and reassuring from those I’ve made emotionally reactive mistakes with. I must forgive myself as well, which I’m doing. I own my mistakes but I won’t own anyone else’s. We all gotta choke down our doses of humility and my cup is already full.
If it weren’t for my understanding of how solder works, I would probably not be here writing this right now. Seriously. The only thing I’m holding onto right now is the hope that I can harden up enough to survive this cold, harsh world alone. My faith in mankind has been significantly depleted. I haven’t determined my ‘test over’ date yet, but I doubt I’ll hang around this constricting and claustrophobic climate very long, everything is getting worse everywhere I look and everyone is fucking oblivious.
It’s interesting but not surprising considering society collectively doesn’t care about people. All you have to do is look at the growing numbers of homeless people in your neighborhood. You see them, don’t act like you don’t. Do people only help others because it benefits them in some personal way? Is this the gist of today’s ‘productive member’ of the population, approach all relationships with a ‘what’s in it for me’ attitude? Remember, capitalists didn’t become wealthy and powerful by themselves. I see story after story of people doing amazing things which should comfort and inspire me but I know they didn’t do those things alone. No one does anything alone. Now I am alone. What can I do now?
THIS LITERALLY JUST HAPPENED, RIGHT NOW WHILE I WAS SOBBING & SPILLING MY DEMONS, FEELING HOPELESS:
My phone just rang and it was one of the dear friends I have been mourning the loss of along with the loss of my Jim. She knew him, loved him and has been mourning him too. She said she was talking to him and he told her to call me. Not ten minutes before she called me, I thought of her. I’ve lost more than one friendship along with my best friend, so the fact that she was who I thought of and who actually called restored my faith that there was a light to find. I’m crying as I write this now because of all the unnecessary torment I put myself through.
It’s okay; y’all can be at ease and know that everything is right in my world again. Well, not really but I’m not planning on liquidating everything and running off to Giza to impale myself on a pyramid anymore (what a way to go though, no?). I’m not better now just because my friend called me either. Yes, that was what triggered the event that restored my hope, but not what made my conscience click back into survival mode. What happened is a synchronicity that is difficult to explain but something I think everyone has experienced in some way in their life. I know this wasn’t my first experience of it, but all my previous faith in this energy, for lack of a better way to describe it, wasn’t enough to sustain me through this most recent dark period. It was the combination of the despair I felt, her name popping up in my head, and my phone ringing with her name on the screen; the whole chain of events. I looked at a picture of Jim on my desk after we hung up the phone and he seemed to be smiling bigger at me…almost laughing at me which he likes to do now, but only when he knows I can handle it (thankfully). Religious people might give their god credit for what I experienced but that’s too simplistic and unimaginative in my opinion.
All I know is people need people.
Love is grace and grace is forgiveness.
We are all connected. Love conquers all.
When I lose faith in others and I lose faith in myself, I must hold on to faith in the process of life itself I guess and when it is over for me, we’ll all know. 😉
Peace
♥
“Many miles away something crawls from the slime
At the bottom of a dark Scottish lake.”
I initially wrote this two years ago. I shared it with one friend only…why her? I don’t know but I do know I had decided then to finally write… I told her I was writing my story. I asked her if she was interested. She was. I was glad but not enough to keep writing then.
I’m doing it now.
I cannot write my story in one long stretch though, mine has to come out in bits and chunks, like the phlegm from the bottom of my lungs after a big hit.
1-9-17 – edited and added to 1/6/19
When I’m asked to conjure my earliest memory, not one I was told about but an actual memory I have, I tend to reply with one from my childhood in which I can explain my actions in reference to the other circumstances surrounding it, but that wouldn’t be a true answer. That wasn’t my first memory. So as I sit here quietly remembering … retracing paths through smoky rooms, peeking through dirty windows in my mind, and listening to the quiet house sounds for anything familiar, something tangible … and then there I am.
There I am in a basement. Not my childhood home basement, but Nana’s basement. I remember it was her basement because it was then and there, in that moment when I received the one thing that I would find some form of comfort from. Comfort that I didn’t know or understand that I so desperately needed. I was old enough to walk but too young to write. I was old enough to know who in my family circle thought I was special and who didn’t. If I were to guess my age that day, I would say I was three years old.
Nana, my father’s mother, had many talents and she deserves much credit for my ability to create art today. Though I never had the opportunity to learn how to sew from her, she created for me my most treasured possession, a blanket. It was silky smooth on one side and soft and cuddly on the other. It was known from that day until it became a shred of itself as my covey blankey. It was what I slept with every night and what I carried around with me everywhere every day. It definitely had white but it could have also had pink and blue, maybe even a pattern. None of the decorative details of the blanket came flooding back, all I have now is the feeling, both the feel of the blanket and the way I felt receiving it. My covey blankey even inspired an idea for a children’s book I intend to write one day.
If I concentrate now and try to connect with my little self then and look around all I notice is this doorway to a room which she has me wait outside of. I see her emerge with this blanket and she’s giving it to me, telling me she made it special for me and it’s the best one she’s made. It feels like a secret that it’s the best and that it is mine. I don’t remember anything else about her house, her husband, her dog, our visits, nothing. This is my earliest memory and my only memory of Nana’s house; interesting that my memory begins in a basement.
I’ll elaborate on this house because as I grew in body I also grew to understand its influence on my core values. This house formed my early understanding of what I perceived men value most. Interestingly, even after all these years, I still have the same conclusion…men value wealth and money more than love and friendship. Anyway, this house was a Spanish style house with porticos on the porch, tiled roof and floors, etc. Nana absolutely loved her house; it was her pride and joy. She grew up a poor and terribly abused child during the Depression, so her house really was everything to her. Her husband (my grandfather) of 20+ years (?) forged her name on a second mortgage, took the money and moved to California. The only ‘home’ I remember her ever living in was a one bedroom apartment on the other side of the tracks, we could walk to her old house from there….if she wanted to. She never wanted to. I never asked to. Funny (eerie funny, not ha-ha funny) how after all these years I was able to Google her house and found it after trying to retrace the route from memory, all while looking at an onscreen map.
I have lived my whole life never feeling attached to a house. The only house I knew as a child was the one I lived in when my parents were married. It was infested with cockroaches and the memories I have of living in it are not happy ones. In fact, I cannot recall any happy memories *in* that house. I remember being told I was happy on a Christmas morning getting barrettes and putting them all in my hair at once but I do not own this memory, it was created for me by my father. If it really happened I can’t recall it. There are many instances of this in my childhood by the way but I digress.
The only other house I’ve ever lived in was the one I bought with my husband and I have never let myself get attached to it or love it. I like it well enough. I am definitely NOT house proud…never was and I wonder if I ever will be? To me, it seems unnatural to attach myself so deeply to inanimate objects, even if they hold memories.
I feel as if I am in a fluid state right now. It’s as if all that I knew of me, all that I felt was rock solid and true, is now spilling out of me like a leak in a tail pipe and I’m losing bits of myself everywhere I go. I am the solder under fire, once containable but now flux. My only comfort is in knowing that solder will harden again. I also know that whatever I become when I’m reattached, this join will be a weak point and something I’ll need to monitor and reinforce from now on. Hopefully I’ll have the tools and means to do so as I forge ahead.
1.5.19
A Musing Stef 