Loss through the eyes of a child

My two year old daughter Aine recently experienced, what was to her, a great loss. A loss that she has had some difficulty coming to terms with. She lost two of her favorite toys to the abyss. On the day of Halloween, she managed to remove the air vent in her room, and although the events that followed are sketchy, two of her beloved Cars, “Blue car” and “Orange car” fell into the duct work. Molly, my wife, heard the sound as they fell down to the basement level.

That night, before putting Aine to bed, I went to the basement to see if it would be possible to access the part of the duct that the cars came to rest in, but as I am no Bob Vila, I decided I would not risk pulling apart a system of duct work that I was not so sure I could reassemble. Blue car and orange car were effectively gone.

Since it was Halloween, we had managed to distract the girls with trick or treating (we hit about 20 houses before they were tuckered out), and the subject of the lost cars did not come up until bedtime. And then Aine was distraught.

“Blue CAAAAARRRR!” [She did not seem as upset over Orange Car’s passing]

“I’m sorry, honey,” I tried to console her, “Blue Car is gone.”

This was met with hollering and yelling. Aine went to the air vent, pulled off the air vent cover again and began yelling into the duct: “Blue CAAAARRRRR!”

I put the cover over the vent and walked down to the basement to see if I could fashion a rescue device with a magnet and rope. I found a magnet and some suitable thin rope [I came to find later that this would not work since the magnet stuck to the side of the duct-work like a, well, like a magnet], but before I could begin to craft my rescue rope, I heard a clattering through the ductwork, like the sound of a two year old taking the cover off of the vent in her room. I then heard, amplified through the air vent: “Blue CAAARRRRR!!!”

I went back upstairs. This time I put a heavy plastic dresser on either side of the air vent so that Aine could no longer remove it. She made her anguish known. I tried to comfort her with the offer of a story. She yelled and mourned for Blue Car. I decided to give her a few minutes.

When I returned, she was calm. We read a story and she went to bed.

Two nights later, Sylvie, our four year old, was at gymnastics class with momma. Aine and I began our usual routine, watching an eight minute episode of a computer animated cartoon show eight times in a row. Aine is fond of watching this particular show while Sylvie is at dance class because Sylvie does not like to watch it anymore. Moreover, it is a cartoon about one of her favorite subjects: racing cars. And naturally, it reminded her of Blue Car. But this time, she was not as distraught.

“Where Blue Car, Daddy?”

“Oh, honey, Blue Car is gone.”

“Oh no, Blue Car gone! Where Blue Car go?”

“Blue Car has gone away.”

“Ooooooh, Blue Car gone.”

We repeated this exchange several times.

It was as though she had to repeat it over and over again for her to come to grips with a new reality: a life with no Blue Car. [To be sure, we could have just bought another overpriced blue checkout-line car. But we were trying to teach a lesson about NOT dropping things down the air vent – don’t worry though, Blue Car was survived by Red Car, and recent arrival, Purple Car].

I am sure it is not the last time we will stop to remember Blue Car. Aine’s grieving process reminded me of Sylvie’s loss of her pacifier. Ok, true enough, she did not “lose” pacifier. Instead, I announced to her one night at bedtime that she was not going to have pacifier (or “yummy”, as she called it) any more.

Just as Aine had to repeat repeatedly that Blue Car was gone, Sylvie also took a while [several hours] to come to grips with her new reality: a life with no “yummy”.

“Sylvie,” I said, “you are a big girl. It is time for no more yummy.”

“But, I can have a new yummy.”

“No honey, no more yummys.”

“But, we can go to the store and get a new yummy.”

“No, honey, no more yummys.”

“But, Gramma can give me a yummy…”

I was in Sylvie’s room for hours that night discussing this with her. By the end, she seemed to be at peace with it. The topic came up a few times after that, but Sylvie had no yummy relapses. And, we learned our lesson; we took Aine’s yummy away much sooner, before she could try to talk her way around it.

Thinking about Aine’s loss of Blue Car also got me thinking about the losses in my life, and how, as we get older, we do not always talk or cry through our grief quite as well as kids do.

I remember back to how I expressed my grief for my Grandfather, who died when I was in my second year of college. I cried quietly when I got the call. I cried quietly while Molly comforted me in her arms that night. I cried quietly, and alone, now and again: like when a holiday phone call from his wife brought memories and sadness to the surface; or when I climbed into the car he gave me and the smell of the upholstery in the hot summer sun reminded me of the time he tried to teach me to drive the car with it’s manual transmission; when my grandmother expressed her sadness that they had divorced, and shared with me that she still loved him and had long hoped for reconciliation. But I never really shared that grief with anyone. I never spoke it, I never worked through it aloud and I always made sure to hide my tears from others.

I did work through a lot of that grief over time, but on my own, as I have done with other less weighty periods of grieving in my life. But as I watched Aine ask again and again about her Blue Car, and noticed that she seemed more and more comforted as we repeated together again and again that Blue car was gone, I was touched by the potential for healing that can come from sharing your grief and working through it with the support of your loved ones.

I know it is just a toy car that led to all this “philosophizing”, but it was Aine’s “Blue Car”, and that means a lot to a two year old.

I blow the steam off my coffee before...

I blow the steam off my coffee before I sip. Staring out the window at the strip mall reminds me that I hate the suburbs. It was the dream of my parents and grandparents generation to move to the suburbs and own a home. But the empty storefronts seem cold, especially when around the corner there is a new strip mall with new big box stores, while the others rot a few hundred yards away.

In this family restaurant I look around at the other early morning diners. Mostly old men complaining about the government and discussing the same things they probably discuss every time they meet up here. I pretend i am in a small town, or maybe a bustling city, probably the type of place most of these old-timers started out in, since this suburb was just a few farms not even twenty-five years ago. I idealize the small town and the city. My wife and I plan our move, we plan our escape, but I remind myself that nowhere is perfect. But there has to be a place for us better than here.

I once expressed my disdain for the suburbs, and my mother tearfully replied that they had moved here for us, so that we could have a better life and good schools. I realized that these rows of identical subdivisions and strip malls had been a promised land for some at one time. Hell, maybe even today it is a place of hope for some. But to me, it just feels bankrupt of individuality, spirit and promise. There is nothing to do here but shop, go out to eat and go back to your home entertainment center until you get sleepy and crawl off to bed. Sate your hunger with shopping, then take a siesta. No community. No community to speak of. If there is community, I have not found it.

We tried at church, and it almost worked, but most of the people there are older than us and we just don't see eye to eye. Not on politics or religion or anything. Not that our values are so much different. Not that they aren't nice people with good hearts. Not like we are trying to throw out everything we were raised under. It just does not feel right. We need to move on.

The coffee has cooled enough that I can almost gulp it down, and I do. The hot liquid almost scalding my throat as it goes down, down, down to the last drop and the few grounds that had settle to the bottom. I swallow the grounds too.

I stopped driving the surface streets to work, even though it is more direct, because it takes me through rotting suburb after suburb. It is almost like a history of urban sprawl. From our little suburban paradise, built up in the eighties and nineties, you move back in time to the idyllic suburbs of the seventies, then the sixties and fifties and forties until you arrive in the city where my employment is found. Right on the edge of the old inner city, where it is hard to tell where one municipality ends and the other begins, a line used to be clearly drawn. A racial and economic line. A line that kept opportunity and a better life separate from the abandoned inner city. An artificial line built up by racism. This line was defended vigorously as whites were allowed to cross safely to the side of opportunity while blacks were held back, locked into the city limits. Capital and jobs and ownership left with the whites. The brought the titles and deeds with them and then jacked up the rent prices. The whites retreated and scorched the earth as they did so. They had scorched the earth, sewn the fields with salt and then balked at the blacks for not growing their own economic success. And the whites continued to retreat from the city center and each decade spread out farther and farther. That is all I can see when I drive through suburban stronghold after suburban stronghold. The legacy of segregation writ across a metropolis.

So after tipping my waitress I pay my bill, pull on my coat, pull into traffic and am on my way. I bypass the surface streets by taking the freeway. It is a path that is nine miles longer than just driving straight through suburban kingdoms, lined up like a living suburban timeline, but it takes me ten minutes less time, and it avoids the scenery that reminds me of how much I hate the suburbs.

I would move out, but my family is here and my mortgage is here and I have nowhere to go just yet.

I don't want to move in haste, or I could end up somewhere worse!

The freeway is crowded with other suburbanites flooding the city for their daily work.

And together we will rush back out again in the evening.

Quote:

O my Lord, if I worship you from fear of hell,
burn me in hell.
If I worship you from hope of Paradise,
bar me from its gates.
But if I worship you for yourself alone,
then do not withhold your eternal beauty from me.

– Rabi’ah al’Adawiya,
Muslim & Sufi mystic poet; she was born in Basra, Iraq
(717 - 801 CE)

music

music sounds differently when it comes from the back of my car while I’m driving down the highway at dusk mid fall.
as though there is a band in the backseat, inspired by the view that we are sharing;
out of the front window at the road unfolding before us;
out of the side at the skeleton trees--leaves clinging to the branches--next to the full trees of winter, about to enter their season;
and out of the back at the wisps of clouds, illuminated by the orange setting sun.

November 2000

Hopefulness

You don't realize the wall you'd constructed around yourself until it begins to crack.
The ramparts you had raised in defense, every new stone laid with every instance you felt faith broken, defensive placements of cynicism against the rhetoric used against you.
All 'round-about you the wall rose higher and higher until you'd enclosed yourself in bitterness against a culture that had seemingly purged you from its midst.
But when the cracks begin to appear you realize how high the wall had become.
And when the cracks grow and spread the width and height of your enclosure--as it begins to crack and crumble--you are struck by the raw emotion of hopefulness.
Like fresh air or rain or sunlight striking you, newly revealed from behind your defenses, it reminds you by its very essence of its goodness and cleanses you of the stale feeling of confinement.
The joy of simply being included in the national identity is surprising, when you had long written it off as a mantle co-opted for exclusion, like the garb of ideological identity.
Oh it does feel good to be able to feel pride in your nation again.
It does feel good to be hopeful again.
I am of the US.