Seven Weeks

I brought his ashes home with me.  They are heavy, and dense, settled inside a large round tube. Sunday, I drove up a scary, winding path to the summit of Monk’s Road, near Glossop, where, on a clear day, you can see all the way to Manchester, and where he took me, the first weekend we spent together, to show me the place he wanted his ashes scattered. It is a beautiful spot, with nutty brown grasses swaying in the wind, surrounded on all sides by his beloved green hills, their patchwork fields bathed in shadow and light. One day, we will make sure his wishes are carried out. I am not yet ready to let him go.

I have made him a little shrine, in the bedroom, with our picture above it, and it is a comfort to me, this cardboard barrel of bones and ash. It is what I have left of the body I loved. In the mornings, I rise, from his side of the bed, still imprinted with the weight of him, my head having rested on his pillows, and I pat the tube that holds him.  His dressing gown hangs on its hook at the back of our door, and sometimes I press it to my face, in search of his scent, but it has faded, now, and I can’t remember it. 

I try to keep him close to me, to recall his voice, his funny ways, how he sat at the computer with his headphones on, music blaring from them, waving his pen in the air, like a conductor. Once, shortly after he died, I awakened with a start, and rushed to the door of his office, to look for him. It was where I could usually find him, in the early morning hours, if he was not sleeping next to me. He wasn't there. The chair was empty, and the computer screen black. 

His computer and chair are with his son, now, and his music system has been dismantled, and placed in a box, for one of his other sons. His clothes, too, are gone, donated to his favourite charity shop.

It is difficult, this step, letting go of his things, passing them on to others, saying goodbye to the constant reminders of his presence in this house. And perhaps I am moving too quickly to do it. Yet he was more than his things, and it is important that some of them go to the people who loved him, so that they, too, can find solace in those reminders.

There are no roadmaps for this thing called grief. It is a private and solitary path, and we trudge clumsily along it, hoping someday to find our way through to another side. It will be a long road. It will be months, perhaps years, before I will be able to awaken in the morning without the immediate recognition of his absence, to leave work and not weep for him on the train ride home, knowing he is not there to greet me, to clamber up the stairs to bed and not panic at the thought of sleeping another night without him.  I will walk it, reluctantly, because I must.

I have friends to help me along this road, spiritual friends from the Sangha he loved, who have embraced me and warmed me with their welcome. I have friends in Glossop, who regale me with stories of his antics, who are also suffering from this loss. And I have his family, too. It does not take away this pain. But it lightens the burden a bit, to share it.

The internet is full of grief blogs, and I am sure that my entries here will not reveal any new insights on this journey. Perhaps, instead, my words can bring comfort to the people who knew him, and perhaps we can use them, as I do, to keep him close to us, for just a little while longer.

On The Seventh Day

My beloved husband is dead. There are no other words to describe it. Waves of grief

followed by moments of laughter. Layers of memory stained with loss. Feeling him just beyond my reach. Outpourings of love from all corners of this wild, expansive area he cherished—those who wear his imprint from years of friendship, or those he touched with a momentary exchange over a cup of tea. The spirit of him wafting through these gentle hills.

Where do I go, now? And what do I do with myself? I had these thoughts, even before I lost him. Somehow I knew that our time together was short, that I would outlive the gift of his presence, that one day, I would be alone, again. I never dreamt it would be so soon.

Perhaps I’ll learn Italian and find a cottage on a southern beach. Perhaps I’ll pull out my worn, neglected hiking boots, and train to tread the Appalachian Trail. Perhaps I’ll put my words to use.

But today, I am here, in this bed we shared, his car parked on the road outside my window. Today, I sit, with the thwarted plans, the lost years of us, our teasing banter, our warmth, our mutual admiration, our easy ways.

I will miss him, how he danced around the room when he was happy, his mispronounced words, his love for this world and the people he met, all the tiny pleasures he relished, his recognition of the beauty contained in this painful and delicate life.

I do not have an answer for this loss. I cannot ascribe to it any meaning—why some of us get to grow old together with all of our children beside us, get to share our lives with our siblings, to enjoy our parents into their old age. Why others of us suffer one loss after another, watch our loved ones topple, one by one, year by year, like bowling pins.

But I do know this: the world goes on. In the midst of my deepest sorrow, I awakened this morning. I watched the sun perch between the sloping hills my husband loved. I crept down the stairs and made myself a warm drink. I took up this paper and pen.

Despite the suffering, mine and that of others, the world is still here. 

What choice do I have, but to shake hands with it?

The Fetter of Fear

For several years now, I have struggled with a lack of sleep. It began after my mother’s surgery, when she slept in a hospital bed in my living room, and I would get up several times a night to check on her. It continued after she died, when I would awaken around 3 a.m., most nights, at the precise time my brother had phoned me from Hospice House, to tell me she had taken her last breath.

 Most recently, my sleep problem was exacerbated by hormonal changes and numerous hot flushes that came over me in a rush, like a volcano erupting from the inside out. As soon as I fell asleep, it seemed, I awakened, again, in a mire of sweat. I switched the fan on or off, rustled the sheets and covers, fluffed and punched the pillows, until finally, I would give up, and turn on the light. I’d read Facebook posts or emails or news articles about the state of American politics. I worried. I wondered how I was going to function in my stressful social work job the following day. I thought about my son. I watched the hands of the clock creep from 3 to 4 to 5 a.m.

Sometimes, on particularly difficult nights, I would recall the story of the Family That Could Not Sleep. Since the 1700s, most members of this family from Venice have struggled with a condition that hits them at middle age, and prevents them from sleeping at all, no matter what the treatment. Their inability to rest leads them through a series of horrifying stages that includes hallucinations, dementia, and, eventually, death. My brother once told me that no one ever died from lack of sleep, but he was wrong. Sleep deprivation can kill. This is where my mind would take me.  By morning time, I would be exhausted, resentful, and overwhelmed. Then I would go to work.

Since I left my stressful job, and moved to the countryside, my sleep problem has lessened, somewhat. I have stopped looking at Facebook and reading political articles on my phone at night. And now that I sleep full time with my husband, who is disturbed by light in the room, I no longer read books or magazines in bed when I wake up. Some nights, I am able to soothe myself back to sleep with deep breathing and practicing gratitude. Yet nothing seems to help for long.

But last night, awakening at my customary time, I came downstairs and picked up a book of Buddhist teachings instead. The teaching was about fear. As I read, I began to understand that the fears I have built up around my sleep issues have compounded the problem a hundred-fold. And for the first time, I felt a sense of spaciousness and calm around it. Perhaps this sleep problem was not the end of the world, I decided. Perhaps I will not end up like the Family That Could Not Sleep, slowly deteriorating into hallucinations and dementia and death. Perhaps I would get through this. I returned to bed, closed my eyes, and drifted into slumber. I still awakened again, several times. But in the morning, I rose peacefully, freed from the usual string of irritation and sadness that runs rampant through my thoughts.

The Buddha teaches that fear of the unknown causes us to grasp and cling and resist the present moment. He says it is the basis of our suffering. We cannot bear to come to grips with the basic fact of impermanence, he says, the reality that everything changes, and that nothing is fixed.

 In an effort to prove we are in control, we shore up identities for ourselves, comforted or traumatized by the stories of our childhoods, buffeted by our opinions, soothed by material possessions and the distractions of technology, intoxicants, and sex.

Christianity, too, speaks often of fear. The angel Gabriel tells Mary to “fear not,” and to trust in the life that is about to unfold inside her. Jesus tells his followers not to “worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will take care of itself.”

The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous speaks also of fear. It tells alcoholics that fear is behind most of our troubles, calling it a soul sickness in its own right. Most spiritual traditions, in fact, speak to the malady of fear. It is a thread that permeates every facet of our human existence.

My mother was often afraid and, as a young girl, I remember being irritated by what I felt to be a weakness in her character. She fretted about money and about my sister and about my dad. She cried often and paced the floor at night. I promised myself that I would not be like her, that I would grow up to be bold, and strong. So I let my fear of weakness govern my life, instead, and it hardened me. In my younger years, I clung desperately to the myth of self-reliance, preferring to stand on my own. In the end, my mask of strength crumpled, and I was forced to ask for help. I could not face the enormity of my sister’s and mother’s illnesses by myself. I had to soften enough to reach for the hands of others. And when I did, those hands were there to hold me up.

One night, after her surgery, I came out to the living room to find my mother quivering in her bed. I pulled the covers over her and made sure she was comfortable, but still, her shaking did not stop. Finally, I asked her what was wrong. “I had a dream I was already gone,” she said.  I sat with her, and held her hand, and promised her she was getting better, that the dream was just a dream. I told her she was gaining strength every day. I soothed her with the certainty of my words.  I told her she wasn’t ready to die yet.

My mother was trying to talk to me about her fear of death. I wish I had been strong enough, in that moment, to sit with her and her fear, to let her embrace it, and sort through it, with me at her side. I thought I was assuaging her fears, but it was me that was afraid. I could not bear the thought of letting her go. My fear of losing her shut her down, and the moment passed. And she died two weeks later.

The fetter of fear is a chain that binds us in so many ways. It keeps us tethered to a past that no longer serves us. It keeps us steeped in our own opinions and separates us from those who see the world in a different way. It causes us to build up material treasures in an effort to exert control over our future. It keeps us from sharing the most important and intimate parts of our lives with others.

Perhaps our fears will not kill us. But they will stop us from realizing and revealing our most fully human selves. And isn’t that a certain kind of death?

Watching the Wheels Go Round and Round

Watching the Wheels Go Round and Round

"I'm just sittin' here watching the wheels go round and round--I really love to watch them roll. No longer riding on the merry-go-round. I just had to let it go..." John Lennon

I feel compelled to start this entry with a confession--it has been two years and three months since my last writing on this blog. My last entry, in fact, was in December, 2010, at Christmas time. I had just come from a carol sing-along at the Royal Albert Hall, surrounded by old white ladies wearing reindeer antlers and blinking hats, and I was filled with memories of my sister, who donned festive hats and socks for any occasion, but especially loved the ones at Christmas, who belted out carols from Halloween until New Year's Day, driving us all to madness with her myriad recordings of them, played incessantly, at her house and in the car and wherever she could find a place to play them.

Shortly after that blog, I met Stan, a wild and sensitive man, and I was drawn to him, to his kindness, his humour, his spirituality and his depth. He brought to me a sense of how to treat the world and the people in it with a lighter touch. He taught me an awareness of the sights and sounds and startling details of the natural world. He lived 200 miles north, in Glossop, a village on the edge of the Peak district, and we have spent the last two years commuting back and forth from there to London each weekend, in order to be together. 

On weekends in London, we'd eat at Indian restaurants in my neighbourhood, go to a play at the West End, or a concert on the South Bank of the River Thames. We'd take in a movie at the independent cinema in Brixton, or stroll the culturally rich markets there, sampling the Jamaican curries, visiting the reggae record shops.

On alternate weekends, I would journey north, pushing my way through the turnstiles and crushing crowds of central London on Friday afternoons, scrambling to find a seat on the coach or the train. And as the world outside my window slowly shifted, from strings of skyscrapers and littered streets to rolling green hills, dotted with sheep, to stone walls and gurgling streams, I could feel myself begin to breathe a bit deeper, my heart slow its rhythm, my neck muscles lengthen, my shoulders relax. 

 I fell in love. I fell in love with Stan, and his maddening, wonderful spirit. And I fell in love with the north, with the century old pubs serving home-cooked, Sunday dinners, with his family and friends, who welcomed me warmly into the fold, with the sloping moors, bursting with the purple of heather in the fall, with the sound of the wind, the smooth shape of yellow stone cottages, the old mills, still standing, some empty and maybe haunted, some rebuilt into offices or flats.

Through the months of our long distance relationship, the weekly separation and the exhausting travel took a toll on us both. But it was harder on me, I think, to return to the swirl and the stink of the bustling streets of south London each fortnight. The work, too, was wearing me down, with its bureaucracy and its unrealistic expectations and deadlines, its relentless pressure under draconian budget cuts. I had spent my whole life in Social Work, and often I had felt I was beating my head against the unyielding walls of government. But  there, the walls seemed harder to penetrate. I felt like a hamster in a cage, constantly churning the wheels of the system, accomplishing only a little, helping a limited few.

So in November, we married. We had an intimate ceremony at the Registry office, surrounded by family and friends, followed by an afternoon meal and a bigger reception that evening at his favourite pubs. It was simple and colourful and a happy celebration of the new life we would share. Then I returned, to Croydon, to work for the next two months. And in January, I moved up here, intending to take a little break from the rigours of work, to breathe, and to rest. To begin our life together.

Stan's family at our wedding

In the two months of our new life together, we have sorted some things, adjusted to living in the same space, and deepened our love for and appreciation of one another. And I have found an easy rhythm to my life, awakening in the morning, listening to the silence, sometimes meditating, sometimes doing yoga, writing in my journal, hiking, when weather permits, in the hills just a few steps from our front door. It has been two months, and I am letting go of the craziness of society's merry-go-round. I am conserving my funds (I have just a little), trying to make it stretch, learning not to covet and buy at the drop of a hat, to resist the impulse to fill my days with material goods and desires. I am letting go of the destructive habits and distractions that fueled my participation in that crazy world, the world of striving and endless pursuit and relentless toil. I have applied for some jobs, but I am hoping to give myself, for the first time in my life, the time and space to write. To breathe. To be content to watch the wheels roll. 

Christmas In the UK, 2010

Christmas Carol Singalong at the Royal Albert Hall

Happy Christmas from the UK, where it is a tradition to give out ‘crackers’-- cardboard tubes wrapped in festive paper that, when pulled, pop out a tissue crown, a useless toy, and a silly joke! Where the Christmas meal includes brussels sprouts, sausages, and this weird, flaming clump called Christmas pudding! Where everyone gathers around the telly on Christmas afternoon to listen to an address from the Queen! Where Boxing Day is celebrated with as much enthusiasm as the day that commemorates the saviour’s birth!

It is snowy here in England, one of an endless stream of wintry grey days that fold early into dark, black night. We string lights around windows and wear colourful scarves and cling to any spot of sun that brings a bit of brightness to our dreary winter season. We plan long weekends on warm beaches or desert resorts and wait in quiet acceptance for the promise of spring.

On days like this, I wonder if I did not lose my mind, almost two years ago, when I left family, friends and the comfort of a predictable job to move halfway around the world at the age of 52. On days like this, I am mindful of what I miss about life in the US, but also of the things I love about living on this quirky island in the North Sea.

What I Miss Most

Space: London houses roughly 12,500 people per square mile, a sliver of land bulging at the seams with humanity, leaving little room to move and breathe. In the mornings, we cram onto buses and trains, scurry down steps to the subway ‘tube’, bump into each other on skinny sidewalks, trudge home at night to tiny sitting areas too small to be termed ‘living rooms.’ No large, sweeping lanais, grand back yards, or walk-in closets here, at least not where I and most of the working class live.

I miss wide streets, miles of saw grass dotted with ponds and canals, patches of trees that line highways leading to long stretches of sugary, sandy beach.

Infrastructure: Duo-mat washers that crumple clothes into a wrinkled heap, ageing radiators that sizzle and boil but leave the room with pockets of frozen air, refrigerators the size of the dormitory fridges we had in college, plumbing pipes connected with duct tape to toilets that were not brought indoors until the 70s. The 1970s. Crumbling streets that cannot handle the bumper to bumper traffic, repairs that take weeks to schedule, and the laughable ineptitude of the Royal Mail.

Six weeks of holiday and working days that start at 9 a.m. and end promptly at 5 are great for employees, but an infuriating lack of service is one of the unfortunate consequences of a society that is not so work-driven. Queuing up, (or standing in line), is a daily activity, here, for 30 minutes to an hour, in the shops or on the telephone. Even the subways close down at midnight, leaving people who have attended late concerts ‘scrambling to make the tube.’ And an inch of snow brings the entire country to a grinding halt. Apparently those who manage the inner workings of this country have never heard of a shovel or a snow plow.

I miss the ease with which things flow in the United States—late night stores and restaurants, providers willing to accommodate working people, clothes you can pull from the dryer and wear without ironing, more than two cashiers in a busy grocery or clothing shop.

My friend said that England is called the “land of inconvenience.” It is a title that fits.

Family, Friends, and Familiarity: It is the country that birthed ours. It is a country with a shared language, shared history, and shared culture. But it is only now becoming a familiar place. They drive on the wrong side of the road, love baked potatoes with weird fillings stuffed in them, have an odd fondness for Heinz beans, and smoke like chimneys on the streets. They are a distant and formal people, who hide their detachment with polite speech and terms of endearment like ‘darlin’ and ‘love.’

I miss the known world of the country from which I came. I miss being able to pick up the phone and call best friends, and drive to see them when I am feeling alone. I miss the daily connection with my son, who is studying hard at University, whose life has blossomed in spite of his mother’s absence. I miss being able to visit cousins and aunts and uncles and siblings and nieces and nephews with a few hours’ drive or a short flight.

There is something to be said for living a life at ease, surrounded by people who know you best.

What I Love

No Guns: Crime exists, here, of course. People are robbed, burgled (I myself was robbed in February), sometimes stabbed. But the streets here do not carry the same feeling of paranoia and tension as American city streets. Mass shootings occur rarely and, when they do occur, are met with outrage and shock. Even the police do not have guns, a feature of their role that requires them to rule through collaboration rather than coercion.

Progressive, liberal, bleeding heart: There is a safety net for the poor here that, while insufficient, at least exists. People receive housing. Jobless receive a small allowance. Everyone is entitled to a basic level of care, including health care. Though the Tories are now in charge, and are making massive cuts, there are certain things they do not dare to question: the right of people to have a bed in which to sleep, a roof over their heads, and food to eat--the right of people to seek medical care without it crippling their future. Trade unions are celebrated and not a dirty word. People still protest in the streets. And the only tea baggers here are ones who pull them from their English tea!

Diverse: The other day I was walking down the street when an old Jamaican lady became tickled by the greeting honk of a bus driver speeding by. She spoke to me in a blend of Patois and English that I could not understand. But I delighted in her joy. Every day I share my work space with people from Zimbabwe, the Congo, India, South Africa, the Caribbean, Iran. I work with young men fleeing war and persecution in Eritrea and Afghanistan. I ride the bus home with women in saris and men in kufis and others in dreadlocks that reach the middle of their backs. I have learned about the Hindu festival of Diwali and the Muslim observance of Ramadan and their celebration of Eid. I have shared foods and juices prepared by foster carers who come from all over the world. Each day I learn something new about the people and cultures that surround me here, where we all manage to live together in community.

Culture and History: I have seen live theatre productions with Kevin Spacey and Jeff Goldblum and James Earl Jones. I have seen plays that I read and cherished as a child enacted on the greatest stages in the world. I have been to concerts at the Royal Albert Hall, and seen the original works of Vincent Van Gogh. I am surrounded by the spirits of the greatest writers that ever lived—Charles Dickens, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf. I have seen the great works of art at the Louvre. I stood at the site of a 6th century monastery in Ireland. I have experienced a world far beyond an Indiana girl’s wildest dreams.

Travel: My father once boasted that he had been to two foreign countries and all the states. His two foreign countries were Canada, and Hawaii before it was a state. My sister’s last wish was to visit a foreign country, a wish that she did not live to fulfill. I like to think that part of this travel is for them. I have been to the highlands of Scotland in search of the monster at Loch Ness. I walked the freezing streets of Paris with my son, and sat in "Le Deux Magots” that once fed Hemmingway and Oscar Wilde. I stood at Chopin’s and Jim Morrison’s Paris graves. I have been to Dublin and Wales and Denmark and walked the clean, symmetrical streets of Sweden. In January I go to Morocco and will catch a ride to Casablanca on the Marrakesh Express. In February I travel to Istanbul. I have other destinations planned, places I had thought beyond possibility not so long ago. Amsterdam in August. Italy in July. Prague in September. Vienna for Christmas next year.

I do not know how long I will be here. Immigration laws are becoming more severe. Events and circumstances may eventually call me home. If I have learned anything from the last few years, it is that it is foolish to believe in the sanctity of plans. Our lives can change in a moment, our futures turned upside down. Perhaps I was slightly mad when I decided to make this move. But I am so happy that I did.

Happy Christmas to all from across the pond~

~ Until we meet again.

Hair! The Musical

I recently had the privilege of witnessing the phenomenon of Hair! The Musical, playing in London, and I remembered when I first became aware of it, around 1969. I was twelve years old. It was a bold production, surrounded by controversy, with nude bodies on stage at the end, a story of drugs and hippies and the horror of sending young boys to war. I stood around the bonfire in the back yard of our house with my brother and many of his friends, the summer it came to Indianapolis, and listened to Junior, one of the wild ones, regale us with his tales of the performance. I had been deemed too young to attend, and, as with many experiences of the sixties, I was forced to learn of it second hand, from the mouths of those older and wiser than me.

The current cast members of Hair were not even born when the first production hit the stage, yet they were able in some small measure to capture the scent and the feel of those heady times—the sense of freedom and the naive hope that filled the air, the firm belief that we could actually change the way the world worked, that we could operate with a new paradigm, and from that paradigm build a new society based on love and togetherness and mutual respect for the earth and each other. It was a short lived dream, dampened by hard drugs and Charlie Manson and the assassination of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, finished off by the violence at the Rolling Stones concert in Altamont Springs. But, for awhile, it was a glorious ride.

I was only twelve years old at the end of the decade, too young, most would think, to have taken in the flavor of those days. But I was lucky. I was the youngest of four, with older siblings, and my home was, shall we say, a rather open environment, a place that inhabited all the sordid and profane and beautiful elements that belonged to the era. We provided shelter for many houseguests, during those years, some dodging the draft, some hiding from police, some who came to either indulge in or kick their drug addictions. Smoke filled the upstairs bedroom, (the smell of ‘burning rope,’ my mother used to say), drifting down the steps and through the windows into the yard, where bonfires were held, guitar notes picked, folk songs sung in unison. I sat on feather mattresses with people ten years older than me who engaged in deep discussions about communes and rock music and the draft and the war. I grew my hair long and parted it in the middle, like them, made sand candles, learned to macramé. Our coffee table held underground newspapers sold in the street markets of Talbot Village in Indianapolis. I listened to my sister argue with my dad about the Chicago 7 and the Democratic Convention of 1968. Our bedroom, painted white with black curtains, in honor of the “White Room with Black Curtains” song by Cream, held posters blazoned in psychedelic colors and declaring “War is not healthy for children and other living things.” I spent hours with my face in front of the hi-fi, my ears against the speakers, the albums of Jefferson Airplane, the Moody Blues, Janis and Jimi and the Doors, piled all around me.

As a chubby girl from a family with no money, surrounded by kids dressed in crisp trendy clothes whose parents had boats docked on freshwater lakes in the south, I struggled with a sense of isolation and alienation most of my young life. I received Ds in citizenship at Crestview Elementary for my outbursts of temper and endless streams of tears, and I developed a reputation on the school bus for my ability to beat up all the boys. Let’s just say I had issues.

But then I discovered “the sixties,” and I drank it in, all of it, like milk laid out for a starving cat. Suddenly I had found a place I belonged. If I couldn’t afford the latest white fringed go-go boots the girls bought from Ayres Department store downtown, I could tie dye old tee shirts and string love beads to wear around my neck. If I couldn’t shake pom poms and put on a cheerleader outfit, I could wrap a leather band around my forehead and sew patches on my bell bottom jeans.

And “the sixties” gave me another gift: a sense of purpose. No longer did I think only of myself and my own perceived problems and sorrows. I could focus instead on the suffering of others, and try to do something to put an end to it. I could take all the outrage that had been smoldering in my internal cauldron and unleash it on the world. I read all I could about the movements of the day, inhaling the literature of the Black Panthers, the Yippies, (Steal this Book!), the anti war movement, the American Indians. From them I learned that there were other ways to live and be in the world, that there were things more important than shopping and grades and homecoming dances (to which I would never be invited anyway) and proms. From them I found a world outside the tiny, myopic vision of suburban Indianapolis. From them I gained a sense of the new world and my place in it.

That sense of purpose is with me still, though perhaps the anger and passion have waned a bit, having been tempered with loss and sorrow and joy and reflection and age. Today I live in the most ethnically diverse area of London, where I sit on the top deck of my double decker bus and listen to the languages of the world—Farsi, Urdu, Pashto, Dari, Mandarin, Polish, French, Italian, Spanish—being spoken. I tread through government bureaucracy to help young Afghan boys who come from a country at war, who seek shelter and asylum and receive it, here, who are stuffed together behind boxes in trucks lined on ferries and, if they are fortunate enough to escape the watchful eye of the UK Border Patrol, manage to land in a place where they might have a chance to survive and thrive.

The sign outside the production of Hair! The Musical calls it “A Beacon of Hope in a Fallen World.” In spite of all the silliness and impetuousness and ultimate destructiveness of “the sixties,” they still carry the flavor of hope for me. I am so happy that I had a chance to be a part of those wild and heady years. I could not have survived my youth without the gift of their vision.

Stuffed

                                                Stuffed

Saint Kevin's Monastery in the Wicklow Mountains, Ireland

On Wednesday nights, I’ve begun to tune in to a riveting reality show called “Hoarders.” It is set here in England, and profiles the lives of people who hang onto piles of unusable and unnecessary collections, until their piles have spilled into the outside world, devastating their neighbours and their families, and most tragically, themselves. Space is a precious commodity here in the UK, our homes much smaller than those in the states, so their collections fill up the skinny hallways and tiny sitting rooms much faster,  thus exacerbating the severity of their plight.

These people may function fairly well in careers and in friendships outside of their homes, although not all of them do. Some of them have become imprisoned by the stacks of papers and plastic cartons and boxes that permeate their world, and they hide among their piles in shame, embarrassed to allow anyone else into their sphere. Others are able to find clean shirts and trousers, somehow, amongst their piles, and trot off to their workplaces and afternoon pub gatherings with friends, never revealing the enormity of the problem that lurks within their homes, behind closed curtains and locked doors.

I am fascinated by them for a variety of reasons. My sister was a hoarder, and my mother, and my father, to some extent, as well. Perhaps this compulsion to collect became a part of our genetic history, I have thought, passed down by ancestors who lost so much in their treks from their home countries to the United States, and across the states in wagons, where all that they owned was reduced to a couple of trunks and a few old dusty pictures. Perhaps it is just a facet of human nature gone awry, accentuated by our western focus on material wealth. I don’t know—but it seems to flow through our family’s blood, an inexorable trait, like our stocky builds, our angular faces, our sturdy thighs.

This peculiarity of the human condition fascinates me, too, because I have struggled against it myself. I moved many times, as a young person, from a tent in a field, to a pickup truck, to hole in the ground (or kiva) in Santa Fe, to a dorm room in the Marin Headlands, to a room that once held pigs in a village in Mexico. Each move, back then, forced me to come to terms with the amount of stuff I held onto, and through it all, I managed to keep my hoarding to an acceptable level—a few boxes of books and pictures, a can full of protest buttons, a container filled with posters and tee shirts.

Then I became a mother, a wife, a householder. And for the last 25 years of my life my definition of necessary stuff expanded, until it encompassed all things related to my son, my husband’s interests, my spiritual beliefs, and my career, eventually filling a three bedroom home. Books, clothes, Christmas decorations, pictures of my son in all his stages, school mementoes, all his awards, articles I found interesting, literary journals, magazines, boxes of my own writings, in various drafts, with and without critiques, pens, markers, scrapbooking materials, books on social work, religious texts, books about how to write, how to organize your writing, how to publish your writing, how to get over a writing drought—the stuff surrounding me, creeping into every available space. I kept it neat and tidy, stacked and hidden, but still. It was too much stuff.

From time to time, I would venture into the home where my mother and sister resided, attempting to help them come to terms with the mounds of things they held onto, and several times, when my sister was away, I would plough through it myself, filling dumpsters and second hand stores with the things they had collected, clearing the hallways of debris so that my mother could get through them without falling, cleaning off their beds so they could actually sleep in them. But usually, within months of my efforts, their place would be packed, again, and I would be filled with feelings of helplessness and resentment. Finally, I decided, for the sake of our relationship, to leave them to sort it out on their own, and I would meet them at the door, when I came to visit, taking them to dinner or to church, rather than trying to spend time in their home.

It hindered their quality of life. They’d lose things and misplace important papers and spend hours searching for documents that were hidden under piles of trash. They couldn’t organize their daily activities, they’d forget to write down dates for appointments, and, if they did write them down, they couldn’t remember where they had left their calendars. They couldn’t have friends come to visit. Once, my mother fell over a vacuum sweeper and broke her shoulder. Another time, she fell out of the small area she had carved out as a sleeping space at the edge of her bed, and broke her nose.

My social work training and my writer’s nature led me to search for and to analyze the deep seated issues that drove their need to hold onto things that did not matter, and their almost psychotic refusal to part with the most inconsequential collections. (I once came across a bag filled with dryer lint, that my sister had been saving, she said, to use as a stuffing for a pillow one day.) For both of them, the collecting was a response to their many losses, I think, an effort to claim back a part of themselves, to hang onto history, to return to a time that was somehow more meaningful, when they felt more complete. Or, perhaps it was an effort to stave off the emptiness they felt inside, as if their things could protect them, somehow, from feeling alone.

Then Debra got sick, and it began to dawn on her that her time on this earth was short. Shortly after she was diagnosed, she let me go through the boxes in her bedroom, and she became willing to part with the Oprah magazines that she had saved for five years, her collection of greeting cards, enough to open a Hallmark store, her Child Life book series, that filled an entire bookcase, along with myriads of other collections. It was as if a light switched on in her head, and she saw, suddenly, how little these things meant to her.

A month later, I returned to visit, quickly realizing that they could no longer manage on their own, and I brought them to live with me. The night we left, my mother scurried around, trying to figure out what to bring with her, but, by then, my sister didn’t care about any of it. She wanted to feel better, she wanted to sleep comfortably, and she wanted to be able to eat. She left all of her stuff behind, not giving it a second glance.

My sister died at hospice house, in a room that held a few of her favourite belongings, some Christmas decorations, my mother, and me. And, in the end, it was all that she needed.

It was very hard for my mother to let go of her things, and I tried to surround her with the possessions that mattered most to her. We brought her china cabinets into my living room, and filled them with her depression glass and her Indianapolis Race Car glasses. We put up all of her old pictures and hung her plates on the wall. Still she felt uncomfortable and displaced, in my home, as if, without her things to define her, she no longer belonged in the world. And before long, she became ill herself, dying less than a year after my sister. Perhaps parting with her possessions was just too much for her, along with losing her daughter. Perhaps the loss was too great for her to survive it.

When they passed, I became obsessed finding a way to change my life. I wanted to experience the world free of the clutter that had turned my mother and my sister into prisoners. And six months after my mom died, I arrived in England, my new home, with two suitcases. I gave away my record albums, shelves full of books, clothes and dishes and pots and pans. I left my furniture for my son, and gave Mom’s china cabinets to two of my nieces. I still have stuff stored back in the states, but I hope to pare it down each time I return, to get down to the bare essentials, to free myself of the material possessions that clog my life and weigh me down. I’ve lived a whole year with just a few things, and for the most part, I haven’t missed the stuff I’ve left behind.

Recently, I travelled to the site of a monastery outside Dublin that was formed in the 6th century by Saint Kevin. It was a cluster of stone buildings and churches set in a beautiful valley at the foot of the Wicklow Mountains. The story goes that he allowed anyone to come to his monastery, to take refuge there, but they had to leave all their possessions at the archway, and they could enter only with the clothes on their backs. Mother Teresa required the nuns in her order to limit their possessions to only what could fill one paper bag. It is who we are, that matters, she told them, and how we treat each other, not what we own.

I don’t know that I could emulate the example of Saint Kevin or Mother Teresa. But I know that my life feels simpler, now, that I own less, and that I am able to tread much more lightly through my days, no longer shackled by the treachery of stuff.