Loose Leaf Notes

But what you cannot bear to see is all that you will find ... as mine is now and always yours, and yours is always mine ... From "For Wayne" by Mara

This is the page in my son Josh's collage journal that he randomly opened to while talking with a friend named Melissa last week. Josh didn't know it at the time, but it was the day before Wayne (pictured in the center) would die and just hours before he received a phone call from Floyd that Wayne's death was imminent. "Is that your father?" Melissa asked, pointing to Wayne. Josh smiled and explained how Wayne was like a second father to many young people, including to him.

Mixed with the sadness of beginning a month long separation from my husband has been the death of such a friend, a well loved and iconic member of the Floyd community, and the father of one of my closest friends, Mara.

Josh came from Asheville for the memorial on Sunday. Joe's last message left on the answering machine before starting his month of silence in meditative retreat was: "I know you and Josh are at the memorial for Wayne. I just want you to know that I'm very much alive and very grateful that I have such an awesome family."

It's strange to be so uplifted while also grieving the passing of someone dear. The memorial did that. The hug I shared with Wayne's wife Vera made me realize I had been holding my breath for days. Her loving embrace allowed me to let it go. Awkward even under the best of circumstances, I felt accomplished that my first face-to-face words to Mara since her father died made her laugh ... "I know this is not what you'd expect me to say, but I just want you to know that I have peanut butter balls (my traditional survival food of choice that I'm known to carry) in my pocketbook for you and Kyla (her daughter) if you need them."

Witnessing the loving care expressed between Mara and her siblings was a testament to Wayne. Katherine - friend and ceremonialist who has been guiding so many in our life passages over the years - spoke to us of Wayne's life. Her words rang true like the ringers Wayne made in his favorite game: horseshoes.

The song Scott Perry played, "You Got a Friend," touched such a nerve that the whole chapel room of people peeped in to sing along ... slow and low with lyrics that expressed the epitome of Wayne's life and the message he would want to leave us with. Mara's sonnet brought a chill and Kyla's heartful words about her grandfather settled in my heart.

When the service was over, I stood for a long time on the funeral parlor porch and watched friends, old and new, who were gathered on the lawn hugging and talking to each other. I took in the sight and felt blessed to be a part of such a loving community. I thought of Katherine's words, which began:

Wayne's tapestry has never been small. His heart extended with many threads and layers and diversity ever expanding his connections to family, friends, community, and environment. Do we have enough words to express how large was the landscape this man moved through? Peacemaker, communicator, shapeshifter, counselor, coordinator, fun-loving, humanitarian, concerned citizen, listener extraodinaire. Wayne was a man who changed people's lives. He always made time for whoever needed him (sometimes to the frustration of his family who admits that friends would really be coming over to visit Wayne, not them.) I heard there was an estimated count of 85 young people (many of whom are here today) that Wayne made time for. He was father to many in this community. His non judgmental aura allowed him to be present to a wide variety of people, even in the same room. He was a forerunner of non-violent communication when it was not even called that!

Along with remembrances and revelations about Wayne's full life, Katherine spoke with humor of his fun loving nature. She reminded us of Wayne's choice to live simply with few material and emotional attachments, closing with ...

So, yes, Wayne would want you to have parties for him. Of course. But, he would also want you to be present to your life, care for those around you, deepen your own connection and honesty to yourself, and get your priorities straight! Life is to be lived. . . NOW. We shall all shepherd his spirit. He loves you more! He loves you more!

P.S. I don't know why my son, on the left in the photo, is wearing a wig, but I'm not surprised. That's Wayne's son Ben on the right. Wayne died from complications of esophageal cancer.

Update: Wayne's all day full moon epic party is set for Saturday, October 3rd. Anyone who loved Wayne Bradburn and his family is invited to share potluck, river dipping, bonfire storytelling, song and more, starting at 3 p.m.

Posted by Colleen at 9:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (14)

I don't know that you ever get over losing a loved one or if you just become hardened to the fact.

It's been 8 years since my brother Jim's unexpected death, followed by my brother Dan's a month later. Yesterday I was reminded at how far I have come from those first few tender years of grieving when I received a Sports Illustrated mailing in Danny's name that boldly announced on the envelope "We Want You Back!" and I was able to laugh and say to myself, 'yeah, I know what you mean.'

The week before, I got a phone call from a stranger asking me if I knew Jimmy Redman. "I had a brother Jimmy but he passed away," I answered without choking. The caller knew a Jimmy Redman and wanted to get back in touch with him. "Was your brother from the south?" "No," I answered determining that our Jimmy's were not the same person.

The call about Jim reminded me of one a few short years ago when someone asked for "Daniel Redman" and having to say the words "Daniel Redman is deceased" broke my heart.

Walking to the mailbox with Joe, I explained what had happened and then said to him, "It's as if thoughts of my brothers are tucked away in the back of a drawer. I know what's there (I've been through every detail more than once) but I don't want to open it anymore. Why? Because it doesn't change anything!"

Sometimes I miss my own tender yearning for my brothers and the heightened sense of awareness I felt in the first few years after they died, as opposed to the almost jaded acceptance I feel now.

It seems easier now but it's also harder. As time passes, the memories of them in my life grow farther and farther from my grasp.

~ James Michael Redman, November 22, 1946 - July 25, 2001.
~ Daniel Mark Redman, October 7, 1951 - August 29, 2001.

Note: This post is dedicated to Amy. Click and scroll HERE for more on losing a loved one.

Posted by Colleen at 9:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (13)

What's it all about, Alfie? Is it just for the moment we live? ~ Joss Stone lyrics

Whenever I slow down enough to where I’m not ruled by deadlines, a schedule, or commitments to others, I begin to be aware of underlying and subtle sadness that makes me wonder if all my activity isn’t actually a coping mechanism to avoid feeling sad.

‘Who am I and why is it important what I do?’ I ask myself, usually in the middle of the night or upon waking in the morning. Where does this sense of emptiness come from? Who am I when I’m not doing? How dare I waste precious time?

I could blame my feelings on the state of the world, the government, the weather, aging, or on thinking I don’t have enough of something. But a little self-analysis and inquiry eventually brings me to the same conclusion every time. Layer after layer comes the realization that my sadness is rooted in knowing that I will eventually lose everything and everyone I love. Even my own existence as I know it is impermanent.

I think this sadness (for lack of a better word) is what the Buddha called “suffering” (a word I find too dramatic). I think about all the consuming and self-medication humans engage in to not feel this feeling and I wonder if an underlying sadness might be a common feeling we all share.

Taking time to think and feel, before I know it I move on. My schedule starts filling up, my creativity returns and the cycle starts again.

Posted by Colleen at 11:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (16)

Joe shuffled papers like a TV newscaster as people filtered into the Jessie Peterman Library's Community Room. I smiled as they entered, just happy that the temporary crown on one of my front teeth that fell out earlier in the day was still in place. The talk my husband and I were scheduled to give was number five in a six part series, presented by the local library in conjunction with the End of Life Development (EOLD). The EOLD is the brainchild of Rosemary Wyman (who I wrote about HERE) and is under the same CERC non-profit umbrella that sponsors the Museletter, the monthly community newsletter that I and others put out each month.

To a group of about fifteen, from behind a speakers table, I shared my personal experience of losing two of my brothers a month apart. I talked about the magical line-ups before and after their deaths, the hole of grief I found myself in, and the daily field notes I took from the trenches of grief’s frontline, which became my first book, The Jim and Dan Stories.

... Since my brothers’ deaths, life has had a sharper focus. There are things I can see that I couldn’t see before. If I can describe what I see from inside this hole, will it help others when they are down in one? What place is this? How will I survive it? How deep does it go? I want to know. I’ve never been here before. Can I make something constructive out of the powerless feeling of loss? Am I digging my way out, word by word?

The book weaves stories of growing up in a family of nine siblings during the 50’s and 60’s, the stories of my brothers’ deaths, and the experience of coping with grief day to day in the first six months after the losses. I read the book’s introduction and some chosen passages out loud.

... Today I made copies of Dan’s death certificate at our small local library and hoped that no one I knew would come up to say hello and see what I was doing. I didn’t want to explain. I didn’t want them to feel awkward. There’s a lot of paperwork involved with death, and I am often sad. Still, I can manage a smile when I think about Jim and Dan who both had credit card debt. Wouldn’t they love to know that all their debts are forgiven?

Joe spoke from a counselor’s point of view. He touched on some common experiences of the grieving process, but also emphasized that each person has their own way to grieve and has their own timetable. Anger can be one response, so can withdrawal, he said.

“A new parent can get as much as three months off work for a birth of a baby, but we usually only get three days off after the death of a loved one,” Joe said, pointing out that our culture is set up to expect us to get over a death quicker than most of us do.

... Some of the most meaningful interactions I have had lately have been with people I barely know, while some people I thought I knew well have been silent. Some have shared their own intimate stories of losing loved ones; others have given me a knowing touch, a hug or nod. Even the smallest of gestures has meant a great deal to me because a gesture of condolence, however awkward or slight, creates a bridge, a way for relationship to go on. Without it, one feels estranged, unseen, or left behind. As much as sadness is awkward to be around, avoidance is worse.

The death of a loved one can bring profound sadness, but it can also be an opportunity to deepen as a human being. “I’m a better person than I was before losing my brothers,” I told the group. "Grief is an expression of love. It carved me out, making room to hold more compassion for others.”

... In this physical world, we have to mine for treasure. Gold and silver and precious gems are not usually found laying around on the surface of the earth. It’s the same with us; we have to excavate our own treasure, down through the door of our childhood, through the pain of what hurts, into the grief of our losses. Life nudges us to go deeper because to live only on the surface is superficial. There’s so much more.

“When a loved one dies it’s as if a color is missing from the world … If you let yourself go deeply into your sadness, you might realize that you haven’t been seeing any of the colors fully,” Joe said, suggesting that the experience can wake you up in new ways.

I shared how writing was a way to actively grieve and to control my grief. “I wasn’t happy with my day’s writing until I hit and nerve and was bawling,” I said. Remembering my brothers through stories and sharing the intimate details of personal grief was a leap of faith that has rippled out to enrich my life in ways I could not have imagined.

Family bonds were strengthened. The sense of separation I used to feel between myself and others has largely fallen away. The book is being used in a grief and loss class for counseling students at Radford University. Not only was I able to make some meaning out of my brothers’ deaths, the tragedy of their deaths was, at times, transformed into celebration. When a woman from the small town where my siblings and I grew up read the book, it spurred her to plan a reunion and book signing. Two-hundred people who knew Jim and Dan came, the story was covered by the local paper and the Boston Globe, and a video of it aired on the local TV cable channel.

Does it get any easier knowing what to say to others who are grieving after you’ve had a loss of a close family member yourself? What about when someone grieving is having a hard time moving past anger? How do you help someone grieve? What about the complications of grief when one death is followed by another? Those were some of the questions posed during the question and answer session.

Joe and I answered the questions as best as we could, noting that more open dialogue about death, dying, and grief is needed.

I closed the 90 minute talk with the sharing of a humorous reading from the book, a story from my childhood involving a plunger, some pop gun ammunition in the form of a potato, and a clogged toilet in the one bathroom we shared between eleven people.

... Its funny how as you get older, even the bad memories seem good, or how when someone dies, the most ordinary of objects can be traced back to them. So many of my actions have been triggering childhood memories. Most of my conversations either revolve around Jim and Dan or eventually get steered back to them. The space they inhabit in my heart and mind is larger and deeper than when they were alive. It’s as if a part of Jim and Dan lives in me, just as a part of me has left with them? Is that what death does? Funny, isn’t it?

Note: Visit the EOLD website HERE.

Posted by Colleen at 9:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (13)

It’s the eternal sadness from the Great Beyond. Everything’s coming and everything’s gone. ~ Donna the Buffalo

I feel like I’ve been around the world in eighty days, although it’s only been twenty-one days that I’ve been vacationing up and down the east coast of Massachusetts, Delaware, and Virginia by plane, car, and bike. Now, at the end of my summer travels, I’m like a split personality with pieces of me left behind in different places.

While in Hull visiting my family, my life in Floyd faded away. The more I connected with the roots of my past, rode my bike up and down the beach town streets of my childhood, and spent quality time with family members; the more my life in Floyd began to feel like a dream. It felt like how I imagine it would be to let go of my life through death and then re-awaken to a new reality.

After ten days in Hull, I had one day at home in Floyd before heading out again with Joe to visit his family in Bethany Beach. There, in the midst of days spent on the beach and hours spent being immersed in the ocean, there were group dynamics, tourist traffic, and large meals cooked by teamwork to navigate. Children were about and family and family friends floated in and out of the large beach house.

Usually when I travel, I eventually hit a speed bump where I become over-sensitive to my surroundings. As the weeks of being away from home wore on, bouts of melancholy came over me in waves. Had I missed the opportunity to absorb my trip to Hull or grieve leaving it by adding a second trip on top of the first?

I had missed two Spoken Word Events and several of my Writer’s Circles. I abandoned my garden during peak harvest, and haven't had anything in the newspaper for a few weeks (with nothing in mind for upcoming issues). Who was I without these familiar activities? I felt distant from my sons who are grown and involved in their own lives. Feeling nostalgic for my youth in Hull, for my sons as children, and for the Floyd of my past, I said to Joe, “I don’t know myself here. I’m empty of ideas. I’ve lost my place and my momentum.” But what was all that momentum ultimately for? With the busyness of my life routines ceased, I seemed to be tapping into a groundswell of sadness.

As one who strives to take responsibility for my own happiness, I investigated why I felt out of my element and what ‘being in my element’ might mean. Routine, comfort, familiarity, safety, and periods of solitude all came to mind. But it wasn’t until I spent some time alone at the beach, swimming, snapping pictures, and writing that the full answer came to me. “Whenever I’m engaged in my own creativity, that’s when I feel at home,” I happily updated Joe later that day.

While in Hull, I drew sustenance from walking the beach each night at sunset. On my last day of beach vacations I watched the sunset through the windshield of our car while Joe drove us home. Listening to Ziggy Marley sing Tomorrow People … you don’t own the past … you won’t own the future … I felt emotional watching the Blue Ridge Mountains come into view. But I couldn’t tell if the mountains were those of my past, present, or future. “You can travel miles but not time,” I said to Joe. Joe said having his identity stripped down always feels exciting to him, like a chance to begin anew. I said it felt confusing and deeply bittersweet. It was then that I realized that the sadness I had been feeling was related to the ultimate truth, the fact that nothing and no one lasts.

Making the climb up the mountain, I knew I had caught a glimpse of the beginning of a new life stage, one that involved letting go of life’s attachments. I also knew that with each chore done, each meal prepared, each meaningful conversation engaged in, and each spontaneous idea followed, I would find my footing again, and that through these life activities, step by step, I would feel at home in the world again.

Posted by Colleen at 9:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (17)

~ The following was published in the Floyd Press on May 1, 2008.

Rosemary Wyman's business, New Day, has been providing home health care and support to individuals and their families since 2005. The business is a natural extension of a life long interest of Wyman's.

"Whenever I was asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would always say a nurse," Wyman, a tomboy who grew up in New York, said. "The only reason I played with dolls was to use them as patients," she added.

Wyman and her family moved to Floyd from Charlotte, North Carolina in 1999. She and her husband, Walter Charnley, have been parents to eight in a blended family that Wyman refers to as, "his, mine, and ours."

Certified in hospice and as a palliative nurse assistant, Wyman has extensive experience with end of life care and has been educating others about this life passage. She's worked for Good Samaritan Hospice in Roanoke and has done fill-in work at The Beulah Hospice House in Dublin. Although she's provided care to a number of Alzheimer patients - including her own father - and has a special interest in the needs of the aging population, not all her clients are elderly. Last year Wyman provided care for two young women with terminal illnesses.

Tom Vangunten, who lost his wife, Laura, to cancer last fall thinks the contribution Wyman makes is "invaluable." Like Wyman, he believes people would benefit from more education and preparation for end of life.

"We don't prepare for death. I can't believe I got to be forty-nine and didn't know a thing about this. I think grief and loss should be taught in school along with Driver's Ed and how to balance your check book," he said.

Vangunten, who is now a single parent to his and his wife's two young sons, explains how the support Wyman offered was for the whole family. "For people dealing with terminal illness, it affects everyone in your family. It's helpful if you have someone who can guide you through it. What Rosemary did was invaluable. She coordinated with doctors and other care givers, and provided the personal. What ever needed to be done - if someone needed a hug - she stepped-up," he said.

Many families dealing with the terminal illness of a loved one need more support than the one or two hours a day a hospice worker provides. New Day can offer what Wyman refers to as "hospice support." While she gives direct care to clients - which might include bathing, wound dressing, and assisting with pain management - much of Wyman's work is more subtle than that. Her presence often has a calming effect because she accepts people from where they are and can approach each new situation without family history, she says. "Sometimes things not being addressed can be addressed easier with someone outside the family. I like to go in like a breath of fresh air."

Not all of Wyman's clients are dealing with a terminal illness. Riner resident, Betty Bowman has a handicap that inhibits her balance and mobility. Wyman visits her one day a week to clean, organize, assist with personal care and grooming, and whatever else Bowman needs.

"She takes me to the doctor and the grocery store," Bowman said. When asked if Wyman helps with cooking, Bowman explained that since her mother died four years ago she's been heating up frozen dinners in the microwave for herself; although she did remember a delicious bean salad that Wyman prepared from a recipe Bowman provided.

"Cleaning and cooking equal care. Whatever makes someone feel better is care," Wyman said, recalling a day she spent washing one client's entire knick knack collection. "Sometimes people feel better when their homes are clean and their lives are organized," she added.

Since the inception of New Day, Wyman has worked with approximately twenty clients. Some have been referred to her by other agencies, but most come by word of mouth. Although she provides services considered typical in her field, sometimes her work involves the unusual and requires some on the spot problem solving.

On one such occasion, she was flown to NY to transport a local family's elderly aunt, who had broken an ankle and was in rehab, back to Floyd. Upon arriving in New York and after locating the woman's apartment, Wyman packed a month's worth of whatever she thought the woman might need. She then negotiated the transport, first with rehab staff, and then with overzealous airport security, all the while reassuring the woman - who didn't know Wyman - that everything was okay. Her short term memory was failing but "she had a great sense of humor," Wyman remembered.

Support for care givers is an important component of Wyman's work. In 2004, after being approached by Our Lady of the Valley, an assisted Living and Nursing Care facility in Roanoke, Wyman presented an "Intuitive Emotional Clearing" workshop for care givers that involved guiding them through the use of creative outlets, such as music, art, and movement. Wyman has also facilitated the formation of a "Share the Care" circle in Floyd, based on the book of the same name. She says when she first saw the book, which outlines a step-by-step model for organizing group care for someone ill, she knew it was "the wave of the future."

Another aspect of the educational side of Wyman's work played out when she participated in a day long event called "Successful Elder Care," hosted by the Social Justice Committee of the Lutheran Churches of Floyd. She had planned to share a presentation about home assessment for people with limitations, something she and her husband do together, but ended up talking about Alzheimer care when another workshop leader who was scheduled to do that was unable to attend. Wyman remembers a fellow-presenter at the event who cited a Virginia Tech study on the growing needs of the aging population. "It was sobering," she remarked.

Following her involvement in the Zion Lutheran Church day of resource sharing, Wyman embarked on a new venture, "End of Life Development," with the intention of building on the educational outreach aspect of her work. Immediate plans include the formation of an advisory board made up of various professionals, social workers, doctors, clergy, and nurses - to determine what the greatest needs are for the aging population, she says. She also envisions workshops on how to manage progressive care, advance medical directives, and to set up proxy care for decision making. "Plans should be made before we are in crisis," she said.

Last month Wyman received non-profit status as a subsidy of the Community Educational Resource Cooperative (CERC) for "End of Life Development," along with a small seed grant. This support will be instrumental in assisting her educational initiatives in the community. It will also be helpful in allowing her do what she does best: easing the discomfort and grief of others and making it more viable for individuals at the end of life to remain home with their loved ones. "I consider every day spent at home a success. And sometimes you have to count these successes in days," Wyman says. ~ Colleen Redman

Posted by Colleen at 7:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Joe took the day off to study for his upcoming counselor’s licensure test. I had just returned from a morning Scrabble game, the one where Mara complimented my lime green shirt and I explained how I had pulled all the little rhinestones off after I bought it at thrift shop. She and Rosemary, whose dining room table we were playing on, laughed at the thought of me wearing anything with rhinestones.

Now, back on my own front porch, illuminated by forsythia light, I pulled a book from the stack that Mara had lent me. I opened her autographed copy of Claudia Emerson’s “Late Wife” and began to read.

The air bubble that choked and then popped in my throat caused tears to fall from my eyes as I read the poem called “Riding Glove.” While unloading groceries from the trunk of the car that once belonged to her husband’s wife who had died of cancer, she found the dead woman’s glove. It floated up from underneath the shifting junk – a crippled umbrella, the jack, ragged maps, Emerson wrote … It still remembered her hand, the creases where her fingers had bent to hold the wheel, the turn of her palm, smaller than mine.

The description of the glove made me think about my brother Danny’s shoes in my closet. I took them from his Houston apartment after he died. Now I wanted to put them on, wear them around the house, and let my bare feet plop around inside them, like a little girl wearing her father’s shoes. But then I remembered how stiff and un-scuffed they were, how cut short their use was.

There was nothing else to do but return it – let it drift, sink, slow as a leaf through water … C.E.

I thought about my brother Jim’s royal blue Nike sweat shirt, the one he left in my house when he and Danny visited me in the summer of 2001, just three weeks before Jim was killed in a metal milling machine accident and less than two months before Dan would die from liver failure. To the sound of my neighbor’s distant and incessant hammering on the new garage he's building, I wondered if Jim was ever cold during the last three weeks of his life without his sweatshirt. I wondered where the one little stain on the front of it came from.

The sweatshirt is too big for me and I don’t want to see Joe wearing it. I can’t imagine giving or throwing it away, so I just stuff it deeper into the limbo of the back of my closet, next to Danny's shoes. 4/10/08

Posted by Colleen at 9:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (24)

Death is associated with murder or disease, pain and dread. What would it be like if we didn’t die? Would we appreciate the time we have and use our life well? Existentialists think death is what gives life meaning. Susun Weed says that sometimes death is the cure. My friend Alex Wind, who died in 2006, said, “Don’t think of me as dead; think of me as making room for someone else to be born, like someone made room for me.”

When I was a girl I used to lie in bed at night worry about the unknown, of growing up and being expected to find a stranger to marry and start a new family. Why would I need a new family, I would think, when I was happy with the family I already had? Lately, I find myself pondering this other unknown and asking a similar question. And I’ve noticed that I have more sympathy cards in my greeting card stockpile than I have birthday cards now.

Post Note: The poetics of Porch Vacations are HERE.

Posted by Colleen at 9:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)

Taking my bath at night with the lights dimmed low, I notice that the veins in my hands have started to become dark and raised like my father’s were. When my house clothes get that rumpled lived-in look and I forget to brush my hair because I’m immersed in a project, I feel his undomesticated nature within me. I got my love of rhyme, giving people nicknames, and breaking out in song from him. I don’t whistle or like cashews as much as he did. I don’t yell as loud as he did, or fall asleep stretched out in chair. But I do like to tell stories and make people laugh the way he did. I got his impish Irish nature, his mix of being shy but outgoing, his pronounced way of pronouncing words, and his habit of choking up easily at both sad and happy occasions. Every time I stoop over the stove and sip homemade soup from a big spoon, I’m reminded of him doing that. He was always doctoring soup and wanted everyone who came into the kitchen to taste it.

When I pick up a magnifying glass to read the small print on CD liner notes or a vitamin bottle, I think of my dad. His eyesight was bad in the last twenty years of his life and he had magnifying glasses all over the house. The one I use now used to be his. Am I becoming more like him each day, I wonder?

My dad often said, “I’m the king of my castle.” I’m a homebody too. He liked the music of his generation, the way I like the music of mine. He was sentimental, and whenever he sang songs from the 40’s, he did it with emotion. When he sang, “You always hurt the ones you love, the ones you shouldn’t hurt at all,” we knew it was his way of apologizing. He whistled and snapped his fingers when he danced the jitterbug.

Whenever I come across a photo that didn’t come out right and I’m tempted to throw it away, I remember that my dad kept a stack of photos no one wanted in the drawer by his kitchen chair. I got the biggest kick out of him saving the pictures that anyone else would have throw away. They weren’t complimentary to anyone. (In fact he probably could have used a few to bribe others with.)

My dad was the king of his castle and a bit court jester too. He wasn’t tall in statue. (Ditto that for me.) But his sense of humor was big and mostly off beat. I inherited some of that from him, but he was the real master of it. I miss his playful ways.

~ Robert Redman: March 1924 – November 2005. Read my WVTF Radio tribute to my dad HERE. Eulogizing My Father is HERE.

Posted by Colleen at 11:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (26)

I don’t go to the graveyard to feel the spirits of my loved ones. I dance. Through sustained dance I can forget my self. And if I dance long enough I sometimes come up against the veil between worlds. Sometimes I dance myself scared.

I like to turn up the music and dance in the living room by myself. Not long after my brothers, Jim and Dan, died, I did this until I felt transparent and Jim and Dan’s presence loomed so large in the room that it startled me. I had to sleep with the light on that night.

Yesterday when I danced in my living room I thought about my father. Four months before he died, he was breaking a sweat, dancing the jitterbug at one of his grandchildren’s wedding. When he danced with my mom, he snapped his fingers, and his lips would purse like he was huffing and puffing, but he was really just whistling along. It was obvious watching him that he had all the hippest 1940’s moves.

The baby of eleven, my dad outlived all his siblings and most of his peers. He and my mother were the last of the jitterbuggers at family weddings. She, who has outlived him, all his siblings, and her two younger brothers, has lost her dance partner of 60 years.

As I’m dancing, I’m wondering, how long before my dance steps look antiquated? Will they translate to the next generations? Will my kids play a song for me and Joe to dance to at their children’s weddings? Will they stand around and watch the show?

I’m thinking about Jim dancing at the Surf Ballroom in his mohair sweater and the pressed pants he paid me a quarter to iron, and Danny who swayed to music with his eyes closed and a soulful look on his face. Thinking about my brother Joey dancing makes me smile. He needs such a big space to strut around. And like me, my three sisters all love to dance. When we get together, we get up on the first song and don’t sit down until the last. But I wonder how long our dancing tradition will survive? And who will be the last dancer?

“It’s wanting more that’s going to send me to my knees.” Gravity by John Meyer, the song I was dancing to when this post came to mind.

Posted by Colleen at 8:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (13)

I was putting on mascara in the bathroom mirror when Joe called out from the kitchen to ask me where something was. “Ah nunno,” I mumbled back to him, trying not to break my concentration.

The act of mumbling caused me to immediately remember my brother Danny’s last words, three hours before he died. With his consent, the nurse on duty had taken off his life support. “Ihm awright,” he was barely able to say.

But he wasn’t alright. He was dying. How could he say he alright?

He tried to say something else, but it came out in an undecipherable garble. It didn’t seem to matter too much at the time. He had told us he was alright. We were beyond needing language.

But now I find myself wondering. What else was he trying to say? Did we miss something? What did he want to tell us that he couldn’t?

It’s been six years since Dan died and I think I’m wondering what he was trying to say because Im craving to hear what he thinks and to hear his voice again. With Dan, the past is all I have to puzzle together because there is no present day conversation and no future to plan or imagine.

Post note: Read an excerpt titled The White Feather from The Jim and Dan Stories about losing Dan HERE. Other samples from the book are HERE.

Posted by Colleen at 9:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (18)

Last night while watching The News Hour, I couldn’t take my eyes off Ray Suarez, a PBS senior correspondent. At first I didn’t know why I was drawn to look at him so intently and why I felt soothed when I did. Then I realized that if I shifted my eyes slightly -- the way I do when I look at computer generated magic art or try to see a variation of an illusion -- I could make Ray Suarez look like my brother Danny.

I found myself imagining that Dan had moved out west, started a new life, and had become Ray Suarez. It was a stretch to see Dan under Ray Suarez’s beard, but the hairline was the same and the features similar. I was enjoying fleeting glimpses of what it would be like to see my brother Dan alive again. I was marveling at how well he was doing in his new life, interviewing people on TV, when I became aware of the game I was playing.

But really, is it any stranger that Danny may exist somewhere in an afterlife than it is to think he is Ray Suarez?

Post Note: I had imagined that Ray came from Los Angeles, but in reality he’s from New York and lives in Washington, D.C. His ethnic background is Puerto Rican. More about losing Dan HERE.

Posted by Colleen at 9:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (13)

It’s a yearly class on grief and loss for counseling students, taught by Radford University Professor Alan Forrest. The curriculum includes reading Tuesdays with Morrie and The Jim and Dan Stories, the book I wrote about losing my two brothers a month apart in 2001. The students, usually about twenty or so, watch a video of Morrie being interviewed by Ted Koppel, and also get to meet me in person for one of their classes.

It begins with all eyes on me, which after being a guest four times in the last four years I’m starting to get used to. I broke the ice this time by reading my writer’s blog bio – Whenever I don't know exactly what it is I'm doing and it borders on wasting my time, I call it research. 'Dear Abby, How can I get rid of freckles?' was my first published piece at the age of eleven. The bio caused the group to erupt into laughter, which is always a good thing, especially considering our primary subject matter was death.

I generally spend anywhere from a half hour to an hour talking about how the book came about, what it was like to write it, and what has happened since. My husband, Joe, who took Alan’s class when he was a counseling student, has accompanied me to each class, giving support and adding comments that help me stay on track. He pulls up my webpage and blog on the classroom screen. I pass out photos, tell stories, and usually read one of my essays on death and a poem or two.

My favorite part of the class is when it’s opened up for discussion. I’m always surprised by how thoughtful the student’s questions and comments are, and I find myself thinking about them for days after the class is over.

The only male, besides Alan and Joe, and one of the few older students posed the first question. It was a variation of one I had heard before:

“I almost felt like I was violating your privacy when reading the book. How were you able to share such a personal story?” he asked.

I explained that it is an intimate story about a family's loss, told from one family member’s perspective. But it was also a universal story.

“Death is real and one of the most important subjects there is, but one that hardly anyone talks about,” I said. I also explained that I was shy at first about sharing my story, but the book unfolded in steps that I and other family members were comfortable with.

Someone usually wants to know how my process sorting out my beliefs about an afterlife is going. Discussions about family dynamics are always explored, because ultimately the book is a story about family and love.

This most recent class had a very special feature. My friend Mara and her ten year old daughter Kyla attended. Mara and I are both poets and Scrabble enthusiasts who also share a grief bond. Not only is she a reoccurring character on my blog, but she appears in my book on more than one occasion. She lost her husband, Cory, two weeks before my first brother died, and we supported each other from a place of knowing acute grief in the aftermath of the deaths.

After the class break Mara and Kyla read from the booklet they co-wrote five years ago. When Mara discovered there were no books available geared for young children that would explain death in a realistic way, she helped Kayla tell the story in her own words, using photos to illustrate them. Kyla may have gotten even more questions than I did. My favorite was when a woman asked what she told her friends about her dad. Kayla answered that she had to get to know them and trust them before she could tell them that her dad was dead. Mara, who has a grief counseling relationship with Alan, read some of her poems about death. Some comic relief by way of poetry was also offered.

A bond is created by sharing a sensitive and emotionally charged subject so openly. After the class people hug, share more of their own stories, and ask me to sign books. Even the ones who were utterly quiet during the three hour class come up to me to thank me for sharing.

Post Notes: You can read an excerpt of Alan’s review of my book HERE, excerpts from The Jim and Dan Stories in which Mara is mentioned are HERE, and a post about last year’s class HERE. That's me, Mara, and Kyla (standing) in the photo taken at the class break. For all my posts on grief and loss go HERE and scroll down.

Posted by Colleen at 9:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (16)

It ain't the heart, or the lungs, or the brain. The biggest, most important part of the body is the one that hurts. – poet, Sekou Sundiata

It takes energy to hold a sharp focus on the memory of a loved one who has died. It’s like holding an arm wrestling position; after a while you get tired and have to give in. Giving in can be a relief, but it also has its own compounding sadness. As you return to your everyday life and memories start to blur, so does the piercing clarity that comes from living on edge, so close to death. Your loved one left you, and now it feels like you are leaving them.

When my brothers Jim and Dan died six years ago, my life was turned around. It was the first time I had experienced the death of an immediate family member. I was surprised by the strength of the sibling bonds between my brothers, me, and my remaining seven siblings and caught off guard by the intensity of grief I felt. It wasn’t just the heartbreak of losing Jim and Dan as adults. Because I knew them as children, I grieved for the loss of that part of them as well. I referred to mourning them as being in the trenches of grief’s front line. In what would become a book about my brothers’ lives and deaths, I wrote about being in a hole: Maybe the way an animal goes off alone to heal, I go down – into a mine, an archaeological dig, the shadow of the valley of death. Once tripped into the hole, I wasn’t in a hurry to come out, at least not empty handed. If I couldn’t bring my brothers back I at least wanted to mine some meaning from their untimely deaths.

The hole I wrote about could also be viewed as a metaphor for the deepening that was being carved out in me, as though more room was being made for me to hold more. Although the edges of the hole have softened over time, the span of it seems to have widened to include other past and future losses; the loss of my youth, my sons as children, the anticipation of losing physical abilities and beauty that seem destined to come with aging.

Losing my brothers showed me that death absolutely will happen. So, in vulnerable moments I play out other death scenarios. When my husband, Joe, goes out of town, as he did last week, and I’m alone in the house, I find myself ruminating on death. I remember the woman in town who lost her husband last year. My eyes well up with tears when I think of her because it’s been obvious how much she loved her husband, as I do mine. Is pain the price we pay for truly loving someone? If so, why do we let ourselves love so deeply? Do we even have a choice? The pain of losing someone close seems unimaginable from a distance, but when it is your pain and your reality there’s no alternative but to feel it.

So what would my life be like without Joe? Where and how would I live? He comes from Maryland, I’m from Massachusetts, and although we’re both happy where we live, neither of us wants to be buried in the local cemetery here in Virginia. So where will our dead bodies go? Cremation? He wouldn't care, but I wouldn’t be able to bear to look at a container full of his ashes. The thought of scattering his remains into obscurity leaves me cold. And I’ve not let go of the idea that a grave in a cemetery gives the dead and those who loved them a sense of belonging, a place in common, a concrete marker.

Such are the thoughts and questions that come with grief survival. The immediate wound that a death exacts eventually heals, but scars and fault lines remain. Once a grief fault line becomes apparent, it can grow. I don’t know whether my playing out death scenarios is an exercise in preparation, self-torture, or a byproduct of the trauma of watching one brother die before my eyes and imagining the other brother being violently crushed to death.

Yesterday was so hot, at midday I went to my bedroom, lied down, and let the fan blow on me. In the restful quiet that followed, I was struck by an uncomfortable feeling. As If I had rolled across something sharp, I remembered that my father was dead. When he died two years ago, four years after Jim and Dan, I grieved freely, but I didn’t have the heart or the energy to inhabit the hole again. It was too big, and having been there so recently, there seemed no point to further explore it.

But now, standing at its precipice, looking down, a flush of anxiety washed over me. For a few seconds, I was a child again, abandoned, unprotected, without a father.

Every death chinks away at my identity because my identity is intrinsically tied to those I love. But maybe life is designed to do that, so that when it comes my time to leave this world, my ego-self will have receded enough that I can finally let go of it all. Even so, the sting of not having a father, the fading memories of my childhood with my brothers, and the certainty of eventually losing others that I love, makes me want to splash cold water on my face.

Post Notes: James Michael Redman – November 22, 1946 – July 25, 2001. Daniel Mark Redman – October 7, 1951 – August 29, 2001. Entries on last year’s anniversary of Jim and Dan’s deaths are HERE and HERE. Photos of all nine Redmans HERE.

Posted by Colleen at 10:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (17)

The Irish look within and see behind – know the heart and read the mind ~ written on a plaque in my father’s bedroom

Turns out my dad had the best room in the house. In the past when I visited him and my mom I slept in the small third floor attic bedroom that could double for a sauna on hot summer nights. Now that he’s gone, my mother has set me up in his room on the second floor. Not only is it cool and breezy because of the windows cross ventilation, but I recently discovered that I can pick up free wireless from the bed. The digital scale I used to slip in his room to weigh myself on is here. So is the best morning meditation chair. But I miss his suspenders and sweater that used to be draped across the back of it. His shoes are not on the floor by the chair waiting for him to put them on.

The patterns in the wood furniture that dates back to when my parents were newlyweds stir childhood memories as I look at them now. When I was a girl the dresser and bureau held adult mysteries, and sometimes I would peek into that world. The pictures on the walls are familiar. Mostly they're photographs that tell my father’s life story. The one above the bed hung in our living room for years when my siblings and I were growing up. It's a seascape with a big rock on the shoreline that we used to think was a giant horseshoe crab.

Cassette tapes of big band music and songs from the 40’s are still on a bedside bookcase. Their melodies used to play softly in the background, but now they are only memories. There’s no clutter, and the simple things I associated with my father – bottles of Vicks vapor rub, eye drops, and vitamins – are gone. The Chinese medicine balls that I gave him as a gift many years ago are still here in their blue satin container. I find myself staring at them and remembering his hands as he twirled them. They rang like a bell as they clanged together.

When I first arrived for my weeklong vacation I noticed that my father’s scent was gone from the room. But now I'm not so sure. Sometimes when I take a deep breath I think I can sense a faint hint of it.

Posted by Colleen at 9:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

When my brothers, Jim and Dan, died in 2001, I was shattered awake to the reality of death. As I struggled to penetrate its mystery, I allowed myself to grieve long and deeply. One of the ways I immersed myself in actively mourning Jim and Dan was to write a book about their lives and deaths, growing up together in an Irish Catholic family of eleven, and the first six months of the grief process.

When my father died four years later, although I grieved, I protected myself against the full weight of the loss. Although losing him ushered in a period of self-analysis and therapy, when it came to feeling the reality of my father being literally gone, I hardened myself. It felt good to be somewhat in control of my feelings. I had grieved Jim and Dan intensely and the outcome remained the same. They were gone. I didn’t have the heart to do it again that way.

I don’t remember much about Father’s Day last year, the first one without my father. But this year, I kept finding myself in front of racks of Father’s Day in shops, grocery stores, and gas stations. I guess my denial had caught up with me because the realization that I didn’t have a father anymore seemed strange and shocking to me.

I wrote in The Jim and Dan Stories that after my brothers died a part of them lived on in me and that I looked at the world differently, through the eyes that they no longer had. Jim's interest in weather, sky watching, and photography was transferred to me and other family members. Dan’s generosity inspired me to be more generous in his name. His love of music made me appreciate it even more than I already did. I knew soon after my brothers died the ways their lives expressed themselves through me. It took me longer to recognize how my father lives on in me.

I’ve always loved birds, but my interest in them this past year has heightened. It’s the first year that I’ve kept our birdfeeder consistently filled and have made a real effort to identify them by color and song.

The last time my mother and father visited me in Virginia was the spring of 2005. An early riser and all day napper, my dad would wake up at the crack of dawn, make coffee, and take it on the porch where he sat and watched the birds. At his home in the South Shore of Boston, Massachusetts, he had a favorite chair on his porch where he watched them from as they perched on the electrical wires in front of his three story house. He claimed to have seen some exotic ones, but it was hard to tell with my dad. He was as a big a kidder as he was a napper.

When I bird watch, I do it for my dad, the way I listen to music for my brother Dan, the way I watch the sky and snap pictures for Jim. As I mentally check off the new ones I’m able to identify, it’s like being in conversation with my dad. I had imagined he would sit on my porch and do some more bird watching with me. If my mother died first, maybe he could come and live with me, I once thought.

But there’s another way my dad lives in me. I used to make fun of at his rumpled appearance as he went about the house doing house projects. Mostly he’d spend time in his video room where he had several TV’s, VCR's, and a table that looked like an artist’s station. He liked to copy videos to give to his kids and grandkids and design his own covers for them. Sticky with tape and printer ink, it wasn’t unusual for his pants to have marks where he wiped his hands. If it wasn’t for my mother periodically collecting his clothes for the washer, they would have been worse.

I laughed at my dad’s lived-in appearance, the way I used to laugh at my brother Jimmy’s weather photos. Besides taking ones of storms, ocean waves, and clouds in the sky, he loved to capture the oddities of life, scenes that hardly ever had people in them. “I don’t like pictures without people in them," I told him. But now I have developed an eye for the unusual and out-of-place. More than half the pictures I take have no people in them.

Watching the birds in my lived-in house clothes, garden dirt stained on fingers that are holding a mug of tea, I feel my dad living in me. When I start getting older and doze off like he used to, it might be hard to tell who was who.

Post notes: The above photo is of a tribute collage my son Josh did. To read more about my father’s and my connection with birds, read The Black Feather, HERE.. It's about a transpersonal experience I had related to his death, written and posted last year at this same time. Right now I’m on my way to my hometown in Massachusetts. It will be my first extended time home without my father there. Posting here should continue but will likely be erratic. If I miss Thirteen Thursday you can go HERE. Scroll down and read one from the past.

Posted by Colleen at 11:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (13)

With a blanket spread out on May’s green grass, my husband and I are finally idle. Balanced in between Friday and Sunday, in between household chores and calls to take care the body, we extract the essence of the moment. As the breeze pollinates me with the scent of spring flowers, he tells me about a beautiful dream he had. In it he sees his dead father. Tears well up in his eyes. “Oh, the sad mystery,” I say. “There’s such a bittersweet beauty to anything that makes us remember our soul.”

I stroke his black crow hair and hover over him like a hummingbird writing in my notebook, as he drifts off to sleep. I resist the urge to get busy working in the garden. So I listen. Every sound is amplified; the whish of wind, the flap of notebook paper, the shrill trill, chirp, and tweet of birds. The birds are busy for me.

“Doing nothing expands time. It’s all right here,” I write in my notebook. ~ 5/19/07

Posted by Colleen at 9:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (15)

Four days before this past Christmas, I went to my friend Alex’s memorial service. She died on December 17th after a three-and-a-half year battle with eye melanoma, and after living for two years longer than her doctors expected. A large hoop with ribbons dangling from it dazzled in the sunny doorway of the Glade Church, in Blacksburg, where Alex had been an active member and where the memorial service took place. The minister spoke from the pulpit wearing a vestment adorned with butterflies. A large round mosaic that Alex had made with the word JOY in the center hung above the altar instead of the traditional crucifixion cross.

Sitting in the pew beside my close friend Alwyn, taking in the scene, I understood how Alex, a feminist and artist, had been drawn to the church, described in a hand-out as “a caring faith community, open and affirming in the free church tradition where worship and diversity is celebrated.”

Alwyn, who first met Alex through their mutual animal rights activisim, squeezed my hand during the eulogy as the minister was sharing Alex’s thoughts on death. Because she knew she was facing a premature death, Alex prepared the words she wanted to leave us all with. “Don’t think of me as dead,” the minister related Alex saying, “Think of me as making room for someone else to be born, like someone made room for me.” I reached up to my neck and ran my fingertips along the turquoise and jade gemstone necklace that Alex had made and gifted to me.

She was a realistic and brave person who rarely spoke about the toll that fighting cancer had on her. So when her husband, Paul, read her most recent poem about her struggle, Alwyn and I looked at each other with tears in our eyes. The poem, “The Balance Gets Tipped,” begins: I had not known which way to yearn … Was I to move toward life … Or towards death?

Paul continued reading … This morning I knew certainly … I curled my toes like a ballerina … I shook off the pain, sweat and shallow breathing of the night … I got a look in my eye … Like a horse that is going to bolt … While brushing my teeth … I took a few dance steps … Ready to fight for my life … I descended down the stairs … bent on breakfast. Alex was not the type to brood for too long. She was upbeat and always interested in learning what life had to teach.

After the church service, everyone adjoined to a room for refreshments. There, while nibbling on cheese and crackers, I counted a dozen other necklaces that Alex had made hanging from the necks of other women. I asked about the hoop of ribbons, and Paul explained that Alex, always the artist, had requested the last week of her life that an array of colorful scarves be draped around her bedside, the bed she was confined to in the study of her home where family, friends, and hospice volunteers gathered to visit and care for her. She died before her wish could be fulfilled, so friends made something beautiful they knew she would approve of to hang in the church. On the ribbons people wrote their last words to Alex, along with blessings and condolences for her family.

Before leaving the church that day Paul and I promised each other that we would put together a booklet of Alex’s poetry in time for an art show the following month in her honor. I agreed to type the poems and email them back to Paul so that he and Alex’s daughter could print and bind them.

A few weeks later, I received from Paul two notebooks full of Alex’s handwritten poetry. Many of the older poems had appeared in the Museletter, a Floyd community forum, and I was familiar with them. I was particularly interested in the ones written in the last few years of her life that I hadn’t read because I was hoping to get some insight into how she managed to cope with the fight she endured.

I am permanently shut out of the pool of human normalcy … where most people splash unconsciously … All my joy in seeing this creation … is pinned on my one remaining eye … She revealed in a poem titled, “One Eye Shy.”

As she went on to describe how easy it was to lose her eye, in and out of surgery in a couple of hours, but how hard it was to get used to, I wondered why I never really looked at her prosthetic eye as we sat across from each other playing Scrabble. She seemed whole and not disabled to me.

I was newly shocked thirty times a day … By my halved vision … And the possibility of recurrence … It was like ogling the sword of Damocles … Inside the building … Wherever I moved … It followed … she wrote.

Choosing which poems to include in the collection and then typing them felt like being in Alex’s presence. Like her paintings, sculpture, and fiber art, her poetry strikes a balance between reverence and playfulness and inspires me to strive to do the same. With titles that include “How I Got on My High Horse and Never Got Off,” and “A Mother Daughter Memo,” her poems highlight the sense of humor she had, her love of animals, nature, and family.

In a poem called “A Poet of 20 Carats,” Alex’s description of a poet’s words as rare diamonds is reminiscent of the poetic ability that she possessed herself.

Ready to dazzle … Priceless, yet within reach … Formed under pressure … and …Bequeathed to the next generation, her poems are like those diamonds, and like the gemstone nuggets she used in the jewelry she made. Created to stand the test of time, Alex’s words radiate out, inviting others to enjoy their value and the insightful impressions they make.

Note that appeared in the most recent Museletter along with one of Alex’s poems : Alex was a past sister member of Floyd Woman’s Circle community. She passed away December 17th 2006 after a brave 3 ½ year battle with cancer. A Memorial Art Show featuring her multi-media art and the art of others is currently showing at the church she belonged to, the Glade Church in Blacksburg through March 25th. A booklet of Alex’s poetry is available for sale in Floyd at the New Mountain Mercantile, the proceeds of which will go to the Church Building Fund. You can also make a donation to the church fund in Alex’s name at 1600 Glade Rd, Blacksburg, VA 24060 or contact Colleen for a copy at credman@swva.net.

Posted by Colleen at 8:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (15)

Dear Goddess of the spreading starry skies … whose shawl is the northern lights … and whose shoes are the polar ice floes …. Lead us ever in circles … Don’t stop dancing with us … Should disastrous death try to cut in … like an asteroid tapping on your shoulder … keep whirling … We don’t mind if our toes get stepped on … We’re having the time of our lives … ~ Excerpt from “A Line to the Goddess,” a poem by Alex Wind.

My friend and Scrabble partner Alex, who died this past December of eye melanoma, was an only child; a daughter who had one daughter of her own, and one granddaughter. Alex was revolutionized in the presence of a Black Madonna with Child on a trip to Poland in the 1990’s, and she incorporated the experience in her art. For her Master’s in Fine Arts Thesis, she sculpted a life-size Black Madonna with child, which was on display at the opening of her memorial art show this past weekend at the Glade Church in Blacksburg.

My Floyd friends, Katherine and Jayn, who have studied with the Machi (female shamans) of Chile, opened the show with a kultrun drumming and a four directions blessing. Alex’s husband, Paul, and I read selections of her poetry from the poetry booklet we worked on together, and then the chapel floor was opened up for the sharing of Alex stories, which highlighted her sense of humor, her love of animals, family, and art.

Even though Alex’s relationship with her own mother was less than ideal, the bonds between mother and child were an ongoing theme in her life and her art. The last thing I did before leaving the art show was to give Alex’s daughter, Chandra, a big hug. I whispered in her ear a reminder that her mother was as close as the very DNA she carries inside her body.

But I understand that Chandra is not likely to be comforted by the thought of such things at this early stage in her grieving. I remember after my brothers Jim and Dan died whenever someone would make a comment about them being “in a better place,” I’d think, “Where? Can you show me?” Even though I wasn’t convinced they were in a better place, I appreciated every effort, no matter how awkward, that each person made to acknowledge the loss I felt. Their caring intention transcended any words that were used.

In the end, I was the one who was comforted but what I said to Chandra, because of what she said to me in return. After acknowledging that she still feels inconsolable, she said, “I’ve been so much more aware of and thankful for my daughter since losing my mother.”

I know Alex would be comforted to know that the love she had for her daughter will be passed on, and that her granddaughter, who seems to have inherited her grandmother’s artistic flair, will be cherished.

Photos: 1. Alex’s Black Madonna and Child sculpture. 2. One in a series of Black Madonna collage prints that Alex did and which are now on show at the Glade Church in Blacksburg. 3. Colleen, Katherine, and Jayn at Alex’s Memorial Art show.

Posted by Colleen at 8:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (10)

I haven’t listened to my John Mellencamp CD with the song “Your Life is Now” on it since right after my brother Danny died in 2001. One of my favorite last good memories of Dan was dancing to this 1998 CD with him and my sister Kathy. It was during a family Labor Day cook-out in Massachusetts, and Kathy, Dan, and I left the outdoor party to play this new CD that Dan had brought with him from Houston, where he lived then. Somebody was filming with a camcorder as we danced and sang loudly along with the songs in Kathy’s living room.

Dan especially liked the song about John’s hooligan sons, probably because he was one himself when he was a kid. Well I got two circus clowns here who like to fight … They got one black eye and a bloody nose … They are the hoodlums of my third wife … Whatever I say they will oppose …

I liked “Your Life is Now,” and as I sang it I felt like I was singing it for Dan. He wasn’t sick yet, but somehow we all knew that he was vulnerable and wanted him to take better care of himself. See the moon roll across the stars … See the seasons turn like a heart … Your father's days are lost to you … This is your time here to do what you will do … Your life is now …

When the wound of loss is new and wide open you tend to live close to it. You probe it and try to purge it by looking at old photo albums and watching videos of your missed loved one. Hearing their voice one last time before you have to store it away is especially important. Soon after Dan died I wanted nothing more than to see images of him and my brother Jim, who died just one month before Dan. I wanted to hear their voices and remember everything I could about them.

That kind of active grieving doesn’t last. There comes a time when you don’t want to look long or listen too closely. You want quieter and less frequent memories. You protect yourself.

It’s been 5 years since I witnessed my brother Danny die. Today I pulled out the John Mellencamp CD and listened to “Your Life is Now.” At one time it was my favorite song to dance to. I was warmed up, had already been dancing. I wondered if I could handle it.

When I was five years old, my brother Danny, who was four, went to Florida with our grandparents for the summer, but he stayed longer than that. For most of that period, from my point of view, it was “out of sight out of mind” when it came to him. But one day I found his shoes in a closet and the memory of him suddenly overwhelmed me. I carried his shoes around with me all that day and cried inconsolably. I can still remember how it felt, a vague awakening, like the jarring and blurring of past and future memories. A dress rehearsal for what was to come?

In this undiscovered moment … Lift your head up above the crowd … We could shake this world … If you would only show us how … Your life is now … Within the first few notes of the song I knew how the rest would go.

The pain is as immediate as it ever was. I’m five years old again and my brother is gone. I’m Inconsolable.

Post note: My brother Dan and John Mellencamp share the same exact birthday, October 7th 1951. Some say they look alike. I can’t seem to post photos of my brothers here, but you can go to my website for photos of Jim and Dan HERE.

Posted by Colleen at 8:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (19)

The sadness is already there; the crying just lets it out.
~ Colleen - from the Jim and Dan Stories.

I read through tears from the July copy of the Time magazine that my husband brought home from the eye doctor’s office. The cover, which read “How Your Siblings Make You Who You Are” by Jeffery Kluger, got his attention, and although we both come from families of 9 children, he brought the magazine home for me.

When I lost my brothers, Jim and Dan, in 2001, I experienced firsthand how powerful the bond between siblings can be. I also learned how far off the radar sibling loss is in our culture. The feelings of loss I and my other siblings felt at losing two of us were overwhelming. Nothing in our culture had prepared us or validated the extent to which we grieved, as if we had indeed lost a part of ourselves.

I’ve been trying to understand the unfathomable depth of blood ties that rose up in me and my family members when Jim and Dan died. In looking closer at the sibling relationship, I realized that siblings who have the same mother and father are closer biologically than any other relationship. The only way to be closer is to be a twin. ~ The Jim and Dan Stories

Most everyone agrees that we are shaped by the genes we inherit and our early childhood environment. The latter mostly focuses on parenting, but it’s siblings who largely socialize each other (for good and for bad).

I couldn’t even look at the look-alike sibling faces in the Time article without crying. Through tears I read:

“From the time they are born, our brothers and sisters are our collaborators, and co-conspirators, our role models and cautionary tales. They are our scolds, protectors, goads, tormentors, playmates, counselors, sources of envy, objects of pride. They teach us how to resolve conflict and how not to; how to conduct friendships and when to walk away from them. Sisters teach brothers about the mysteries of girls; brothers teach sisters about the puzzle of boys. Our spouses arrive comparatively late in our lives; our parents eventually leave us. Our siblings may be the only people we will ever know who truly qualify as partners for life. “Siblings,” says family sociologist Katherine Conger of the University of California, “are with us for the whole journey …”

Or so we hope.

“Full-blown childhood crises may forge even stronger lifelong links…” I read on, nodding my head. The bad memories I shared with Jim and Dan, mostly related to our father’s WWII Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and his struggles with alcoholism, have proven to be just as bonding as the good memories, if not more so, and I feel the pains that my brothers endured in life as if they were my own.

Reading that scientists are finally validating just how formative sibling relationships are, reminds me of how I felt when the Center for Disease Control finally gave a name to Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, something I have struggled with since before it had a name. Putting a name to what I had didn’t lead to a cure, just as new findings on the power of sibling bonds won’t bring my brothers back.

What it brings is more understanding, which can act as a salve to suffering. Understanding is what allows those of us who grieve to feel less invisible.

Note to my friends who have no siblings: There’s a sidebar, “Only Doesn’t Mean Lonely” included in the magazine article, “The New Science of Siblings,” citing research by social psychologist Toni Fablo that debunks the belief some hold that only children are not as well adjusted as those who have siblings. Read more HERE.

Photos Taken in 1997 at a Labor Day cook-out: 1. My brothers, Joey, Dan, Jim, Bob, and John. 2. My sisters: Kathy, Sherry, Colleen, and Trish.

Posted by Colleen at 8:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (20)

The last time I played Scrabble with Alex it was late October. I don’t remember who won, but I do remember that she was out of breath from just sitting and playing and that by the time I was getting ready to leave she had already retired to the couch and had hooked herself up with some oxygen.

Because of her cancer, her doctors didn’t expect her to live past last Christmas. But it was last year at Christmastime when she drove out to Floyd to meet me for a game. The ornament she made for me sat in a shiny sliver gift bag on the Café Del Sol table while we played.

Not only did Alex prove her doctors wrong by still being alive last Christmas, but in the months that followed she traveled to Iceland and to Greece with her husband. She read my book, The Jim and Dan Stories, even though I warned her that, considering her state of health, it would probably be rough for her to read, especially the passages describing how I watched my brother Dan die of from liver failure.

She loved the book, got her Glade Church book club to read it, and invited me to talk to the group. The night the group met, I snapped a photo of Alex under the mosaic she made that hangs above the altar. The mosaic, which spelled out JOY, was built with shards of pottery that had been accidentally broken and was initially part of an art show at the church called “Strong in the Broken Places.”

A few weeks ago, I got word that Alex was in the hospital. When I called her hospital room, she was upbeat and so I joked, “So Alex, what are you going to be doing for the rest of the day?”

“I just played Scrabble with Paul (her husband). He beat me and I’m still a little mad about that,” she answered, making me laugh.

She was only in the hospital for a couple of days. The IV fluids and nutrition she received helped her feel better. “I’m in the early stages of liver failure,” she told me bluntly before we hung up.

A week later, Alex was home, stretched out on a bed in her living room, when I and another friend went to visit. She looked dramatically different from when I had seen her in October. Because her face was drawn, her features were sharply defined, making her beauty strangely more obvious. Her doctor didn’t think she could withstand anymore treatment, she told me.

I knew I probably wouldn’t be playing Scrabble with Alex again, but I thought I would get to visit her again, at least one more time. This past Sunday, her husband sent out a group email: Today we mourn the passing of our companion, friend, Wife, Mother and Grandmother, Alex, who died this morning after a courageous fight with cancer which lasted nearly three and one half years. Alex was a special woman who loved life, who cared deeply for her family, who respected animals, especially horses, and who fought injustice in the world. She will be missed by all.

Sitting on the porch this morning, while jotting these words down in my notebook, the wind stirred up. I put my pen down and listened, remembering that Alex’s last name was Wind. Closing my eyes, I let myself feel the world without her in it and tried to understand the mystery of that reality.

Posted by Colleen at 8:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (35)

The last few weeks of my brothers' lives played out like the conclusion of a dramatic Hollywood script, a plot with a twist. The road trip they took, two weeks before the first death, became the beginning of a larger journey, the one in which they would both leave this world. ~ excerpt from the back cover of The Jim and Dan Stories

Rick, from Verb-ops, read “The Jim and Dan Stories” (the book I wrote about my brothers’ deaths) in Paris while on assignment for his job this past summer. That’s the short answer as to how the book came to be there.

Rick is an artist and was sketching at Les Deux Magots on the Bloulvard Saint Germain, “thus the eraser and glass of Sancerre,” when he snapped the above photo of “The Jim and Dan Stories,” lying on the café table. Now I am eating lunch at my kitchen table studying the photo and sketching these words that I hope will explain how I feel when I look at it.

The café table looks like a runway on which Jim and Dan, who both died in 2001, have landed in their other-world form. They have no arms and legs, no need to eat (even in Paris). Their surreal existence is now dependent on others. The couple in the background calmly eating are unaware of the book, as if it doesn’t exist. Are they real? Are they living their lives still, as I type? How do I know? Where did last summer go? Have Jim and Dan’s lives been erased?

When I sent Rick’s photo to the Love-Link, our family group e-mail that we started when Dan was sick, my sister Sherry responded by saying, “Jim and Dan seem to be traveling more than us.” Are they living an alternate reality somewhere? What are the chances? What do we know? After 5 years my family and I are still trying to figure it out.

Post Note: So far as I know, books have been Germany, Norway, Nova Scotia, and Alaska. Where else are they destined to go, I wonder?

Posted by Colleen at 8:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (16)

After completing “The Jim and Dan Stories,” my writing didn’t abruptly stop, but the book had its own rhythm and timing and there came a point when the story was told. I continued to take notes and some stories came like aftershocks, too late to be included in the book. Soon, I put “The Jim and Dan Stories” aside and moved onto other things. The war in Iraq was gearing up at the time, and I had a lot to say about that, and so I let myself be consumed with writing political commentaries. I wrote a couple of small poems and went to my writer’s workshop, where I mostly gave feedback on other people’s writing.

“The Jim and Dan Stories” was published a year later using local resources. A few months after that when I was in my hometown of Hull, Massachusetts, I was interviewed by Susan, the editor of the Hull Times newspaper, about the book. I remember looking out from her large picture window onto the bay. It was a bright sunny day and a sailboat was going by. She was asking me some typical questions and taking down notes in a small notepad. Towards the end of the interview, she posed a question that caught me off guard. “What’s next?” she asked pointedly and put down her pen.

Writing a book is a bit like having a baby. There’s a point of conception, a gestation period, followed by hard labor and lots of aftercare. After you’ve had a baby, or have written a book, you feel pretty accomplished (having followed through with it) but you also don’t want to think about another one, at least not right away.

“I can’t imagine another story as compelling as what happened to my brothers and how it played out,” I eventually answered. Maybe I would put a book of poetry together (which I did), I suggested.

Back at home in Virginia, I wrote an update for my webpage about the trip. I began taking notes about my experiences following the book’s publication and the feedback I was getting. Even so, I felt uninspired, less alive than I did while I was writing the book, and as though I was a writer laid-off from my job. At that time, my muse was a lingering presence that manifested as a sense of weighty tension.

Three weeks after I returned home from Hull, the tension finally broke when Susan emailed me my first look at the newly published interview. In it she wrote, “The Jim and Dan Stories reads like a writer’s diary, a keenly observed, anecdotal account of small-town life nearly a half-century ago in Hull, and today in Floyd, Virginia …”

Susan’s descriptive naming of my style of writing was like getting permission to do more of it. Her words to me in the week that followed, as we struck up an e-mail conversation, were an encouraging validation as well. She said:

I don't think you need tragedy to find an audience for your work. Yours is an authentic voice and, whatever the subject matter, if you market the piece correctly, it will find an audience.

A downpour of writing soon ensued.

Posted by Colleen at 8:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (15)

Remember when you were a kid and you made an ugly face and someone told you that you better watch out because your face could get stuck that way?

I recently came across the following description of grief in my journal: Grief is like the heat it takes to soften metal. Yes, it hurts. Yes, it will re-shape you. I think you have to want for it to re-shape you into something positive and valuable; otherwise it will only leave you hardened, stuck in a shape you will have to live with.

The writing I did after my brothers, Jim and Dan, died 5 years ago became the book “The Jim and Dan Stories.” Writing it was a form of active grieving and an attempt to shape something constructive out of loss.

Considering that Jim and Dan both worked in metal shops, I think my description is particularly fitting.

Dan would have been 55 today.

Posted by Colleen at 12:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (12)

Death is a season rather than a single date. I hadn’t been home from the last funeral for even a week when the terrorist attacks on the U.S. took place--September 11, 2001. Two towers came down, one right after the other like my brothers did, killing over 3,000 innocent people. Now the whole country was in grief. Maybe I wouldn’t stick out so, like a sore thumb. From The Jim and Dan Stories.

The 5th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on the U.S. is also the 5th anniversary of my brothers' deaths. My brother Dan, who was suffering with a liver illness, planned a road trip with our older brother Jim (a.k.a. "the weatherman"), thinking in the back of his mind that it might be a last chance for them to spend time together. They traveled from our hometown of Hull, Massachusetts, where Jim still lived, down the east coast, before heading back to Houston, where Dan lived and where Jim would fly home from. They went to a baseball game together, gambled in Atlantic City, saw the Vietnam War Memorial, and visited me in Virginia. It was Jim's first time visiting me and the first time he had been out of Massachusetts since he was in the Army during Vietnam and stationed in Korea. Two weeks after Jim returned from the trip, he died unexpectedly and tragically in a machine shop accident.

Dan missed Jim’s wake because he was too sick to attend, but he pulled himself together to make the funeral. My mother and I helped dress him that morning. Dan knew in his heart that as he watched his brother’s funeral, he was seeing what his own would be like. He died a month later in a hospital in Houston. My sister Kathy, sister-in-law Jeanne, and I were with him when he took his last breath.

It was my niece Chrissie, my only other family member who also lives in Virginia, who called on September 11th to tell me what had happened and to tell me to turn on the TV. I didn’t want to watch. I didn’t care. I didn’t want to see more death. And then it hit me. And then it sunk in.

The following is another excerpt from the Jim and Dan Stories:

Jim had his teeth cleaned a couple of days before he died. He left a “things to do” list on his night stand table. At Dan’s apartment, The Houston Chronicles piled up at the front door. The messages on his answering machine piled up too.

“There are a couple of the World Trade Center buildings before they came down, taken from the highway. Can you believe it?!” my mother asked.

Posted by Colleen at 9:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (17)

When someone close to you dies, you begin to look at life through the eyes they no longer have, or you find yourself doing things they loved to do because they no longer can. When I hear music that I know my brother Danny would have liked, I close my eyes and let it sink in, listening for him. I write checks to the Red Cross or give money to the panhandling homeless, because I know Dan, who died in 2001, did and would still if he was here.

My brother Jim was a weather buff who kept detailed daily weather records, photographed and videotaped storms, and volunteered at the Blue Hill Weather Observatory giving tours. Since he died, a month before Dan, I watch the sky more closely. When I see a particularly outstanding cloud formation, I want him to see it too, and I remember the story one of Jim’s colleagues at the BHO told about how Jim first fell in love with cloud watching. He was under one of his junk-box cars, fixing something, and complaining about it when he realized that he could watch the clouds from that position. From that day on he was hooked.

Today I ate a fresh garden tomato for my dad, who died this past November. It was a Big Boy, salted to perfection, just the way he would have liked it. I had practically eaten the whole thing before I realized what I was doing … enjoying it for him. It was sweet, plump, and red, like my dad, whose name was Robert Redman. I remember him sitting in his favorite kitchen chair by the red gingham curtained window, eating with gusto and smacking his toothless mouth. “Don’t you want one of these delicious tomatoes?” he asked me last summer when I was visiting him and my mom. He actually had gotten up at that point and was holding one under my nose in an attempt to entice me. I knew he was trying to pawn it off on me because there were others where it came from, in the patio, in the pantry, getting over-ripe. The boy in him, who grew up during the Great Depression, didn’t want it to go to waste.

“No, I’m not hungry,” I told him.

Today I ate a tomato for my dad. It’s the first summer he’s not here to eat his own.

Post note: You can read the WVTF radio essay I wrote about my dad HERE.

Posted by Colleen at 8:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (15)

My sisters and I have an unusual family trait. We remember events by what clothes we were wearing at the time. On the day my brother Dan’s doctor at St. Luke’s Hospital in Houston told me that Dan would not likely recover from the liver disease he was battling, I was wearing a short dungaree skirt, a white tee shirt and a matching dungaree jacket. My hair was pinned up, and I had my favorite leather sandals on.

The doctor, who was wearing a white lab coat, spoke in an English accent, which gave his announcement a sense of formality and made the distance between his reality and mine seem more dramatic. A woman was with him, also in a white lab coat, holding a box of tissue. We were in the Intensive Care Unit, next to Dan’s room, and nurses in green scrub suits were walking by us.

I was trying to figure out where I could go to get away from what he was telling me. I wondered why he hadn’t taken me to a private room to tell me such devastating news. Dan only had a 2% chance of living … they weren’t going to perform liver transplant surgery with those odds, he said. The words 2% were the equivalent of a death sentence, but he spoke them as though he were giving me the fat content of a carton of milk.

If I was home I would have gone to my bedroom, shut the door and thrown myself on my bed. I wanted to hide my face in a pillow, but it seemed that the doctor and the woman with him were waiting for me to ask questions. They both stood silent, looking at me. I didn’t know how I was still standing because my legs felt like they were made of weak cardboard. I felt like I was holding up a body that I had ceased to inhabit. “Is that all you have to offer me, a box of Kleenex?” I was thinking. She held it out towards me like a box of candy, but I felt sick. “How could Dan be too well to be transplant priority one week and then too sick to withstand the surgery the next?” I was thinking.

I wanted to run, but I didn’t know where to go. Eventually, I found myself in one of the hospital bathroom stalls, where I locked the door and cried. I felt like a teenager back in high school when a bathroom stall was the only place we could get any privacy. We would go there if we had bad menstrual cramps, or to sneak a few puffs of a cigarette. But the innocence of those days was lost to me now.

The weight of what the doctor had told me was too heavy for me to bear alone. I was the only family member in Houston with Dan at the time. I thought about the phone calls I would have to make to the rest of my family. I worried about how I would get back to Dan’s apartment that night. Driving in Houston traffic terrified me, and I had no confidence in anything now.

Dan didn’t have the luxury of time, and so neither did I. I didn’t stay in the bathroom for long. I fumbled as I called my sister Kathy on a hospital phone, telling her that she had to come to Houston immediately because I needed her.

Once I knew that what I said to Kathy had sunk in and that she was on her way, we said goodbye and I hung up the phone. It was clear what to do next, the only thing I could, the thing I had done for a week before and would do for one week more; sit by my brother Danny in his hospital bed and just be there.

Post Notes: These are the countdown weeks leading to the anniversary of my brother Danny’s death 5 years ago. I recently came across the above as a sketched draft meant for “The Jim and Dan Stories." Touching into the nerve that is exposed this time of year, I was able to finally finish it. The photo is a page from one of my collage journals (a photo of Dan is on the second page in the right hand corner). To read more about the summer my family lost Dan, and our brother Jim a month before, go to my website HERE, or click on the Loose Leaf category sidebar "Losing a Loved One."

Posted by Colleen at 10:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (13)

Joe paddled his kayak back to the house to get sunscreen. I was alone in the middle of the canal, drifting for a moment in my kayak when the realization hit me: It was 5 years ago on the same day that my brother Jimmy died. Like a wound scarred over is tough, I resisted the urge to soften, to dwell on his death and missing him because I’ve done so much of that in the past. It’s painful and doesn’t lead anywhere.
“Look at me now in a kayak, Jim,” I said to myself. Because he was an avid weather and nature enthusiast, I knew Jim would be as excited as a kid about the Osprey nest I was drifting near. As a single parent who never had any money for vacations, there was so much that he didn’t get to see.

But my wound is not impenetrable. The opening created by my thoughts about Jim grew wider over the next couple of days, especially on the drive home from our beach vacation when I was alone in my car, following Joe in the truck. I can never think about Jim without also thinking about my brother Dan, who died a month after Jim.

Dan was sicker than anyone knew. He planned a road trip to spend time with Jim, thinking in the back of his mind that it might be his last chance to pull something like that off. When Jim died unexpectedly in a machine shop accident two weeks after returning home their road trip, the first thing Dan said was, “It supposed to be me, not Jim.”

I can only imagine what it was like for Dan to experience his brother’s funeral and burial knowing in his heart that he was watching what his own would be like. I remember giving Jim’s eulogy from the pulpit at St. Ann’s chruch and looking out at all my sibling’s faces, especially Dan’s. It was drawn and discolored from the liver illness he was battling. He looked like he was straining to understand how Jim could have died and was hoping I would say something to explain.

I listened to Jack Johnson on the drive home, a musician that my son Josh introduced me to, after I had complained to him repeatedly that I needed some new musical inspiration and didn’t know where to begin. “Wouldn’t Danny love Jack Johnson,” I thought, and with that thought, the way opened for a flood of others that caused my best defenses to crumble.

I was so proud to have turned Danny on to The Dave Matthews Band, because it was usually him introducing me to new great music. One of the last and most vivid memories I have of Dan comes from our last family Labor Day cookout at my sister Kathy’s house. Dan wanted to share his new John Mellencamp CD, so some of us went up to the living room to listen. Kathy and I were dancing to “Your LIfe is Now,” and Dan just got soulful … See the moon roll across the stars …See the seasons turn like a heart … Your father's days are lost to you … This is your time here to do what you will do … Your life is now … Dan walked around snapping his fingers, swayed a little, and then stood still with his eyes closed and let the song sink in … Would you teach your children to tell the truth … Would you take the high road if you could choose … Your life is now.

After wiping away my tears, I looked up and saw the most magnificent cloud formation, dark and silver lined by the angle of the sun, hopeful.

“Wouldn’t Jim just love this cloud!” I thought.

Post Note: To learn more about Jim and Dan, go HERE.

Posted by Colleen at 2:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (13)

I’ve been trying to understand the unfathomable depth of blood ties that rose up in me and my family members when Jim and Dan died. In looking closer at the sibling relationship, I realized that siblings, who have the same mother and father, are closer biologically than any other relationship. The only way to be closer is to be a twin. ~ From “The Jim and Dan Stories”

When I lost my 2 brothers in 2001, I was overwhelmed with grief. I might have wondered if the degree and length of it was normal if it wasn’t for the fact that I had 6 other siblings who were obviously as stricken as I was.

Losing a parent is painful, but it’s something we expect to eventually have to deal with. Losing a child is unthinkable, and every one understands the heartbreak of losing a mate. Why did losing my adult brothers, who didn’t even live in the same state as I did, feel like an amputation, as though I had literally lost a part of me? I suspected that there was more to sibling loss than our culture lets on.

In my search to better understand the unique aspects of sibling grief, I found “The Sibling Connection,” an online site hosted by Pleasant Gill White, Ph.D. Ms. Gill is not only a counselor who specializes in grief and loss, she is also a survivor of sibling loss herself. When she was 15 years old she lost her 13 year old sister.

Within minutes of reading the information shared on The Sibling Connection, I better understood the magnitude of the sibling bond and felt supported in my grief: When someone has been a part of your life since birth, your identity is based on having them there. They form a part of the field or background from which you live your life, and as such, they are essential. They make up part of the unbroken wholeness that defines who you are. This relates to the concept of birth order. When the first child is born, he or she develops certain characteristics and talents. Other siblings will most likely choose other characteristics to develop in order to differentiate themselves from each other ... siblings actually loan each other their strengths …

The Sibling Connection provided me with my first introduction into “bibliotherapy,” using books on grief to access one’s own feelings. Because the site included a list of grief and loss books, I emailed Ms. White and then sent her a copy of the book I wrote about losing my brothers, “The Jim and Dan Stories.” She reviewed the book for her January 2004 online newsletter and listed it on her site.

Last week I received this in an email: Do you remember me? I am Pleasant Gill White from the Sibling Connection. I wanted you to know that your book inspired me to write one of my own. It is called Sibling Grief: Healing after the Death of a Sister or Brother ...

After we re-established our connection, she sent me a copy of her new book, which arrived today. Not many books can cause me to cry on the first page of the introduction, but this one did: My sister did not know that she was dying and we were not supposed to tell her. But one dark night, as I sat in a chair, leaning on her hospital bed, I thought she was asleep. Out of the silence, she began to speak. “Promise me you will keep on singing,” she said quietly. “Promise me you will go to college,” Ms. White wrote.

And this insight on page two is worth the price of admission: In some ways our siblings never age. If they die when we are adults, we feel the loss of the child they once were. If they die when we are children, we grow up and feel the loss of the adult they would have become. It’s true that when my emotions about Jim and Dan surface, I’m often grieving the loss of our childhood together and them as the children I remember so well.

After they died, I was profoundly changed, but I didn’t look any different to others. I experienced not only an identity crisis, but a sense of alienation in my own community because no one in my immediate surroundings, apart from my husband and sons, knew my brothers. Here’s what Ms. White has to say about the feelings of alienation that may come with the loss of a sibling: When adults lose a sibling, they often feel abandoned by society. The sympathy goes to their parents, but brothers and sisters are supposed to "get over it" quickly so they can comfort the parents or replace the lost sibling. This is one of the reasons why adult sibling loss falls into the category of "disenfranchised grief". Bereaved individuals are encouraged to feel guilty for grieving too long.

A large component of Ms. White’s book deals with using creativity as means of healing. Although I never related to the standard stages of grief that I read in other books, I resonated with Ms. White’s “Five Healing Tasks,” which are: 1. Learning about sibling loss and the grief process. 2. Allowing yourself to grieve. 3. Connecting to other bereaved siblings. 4. Telling your story. 5. Finding meaning in the loss.

A sampling of intriguing headings found in the book include: Bridging the two worlds, My scrapbook Life, How children grieve, Sibling rivalry beyond death, Seeking a new identity, The energy of grief, and The best gift.

Drawing on hours of research, counseling others, and personal experience, Ms. White’s contribution to sibling loss is a valuable and insightful life’s work. Like her online site, her book offers a wide range of resources, personal stories, and even poetry. I highly recommend it for anyone who has lost a sibling, and I thank her for writing it.

Post note: To read more post on sibling loss click and scroll HERE.

Posted by Colleen at 8:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (21)

My brother Jim, who was a lover of storms, was more at home with the elements than he was with people. As the stories progressed, his essence began to emerge as the mysterious changing qualities of the moon. Dan was compassionate and generous. His bright light was personified by the sun. A silver and gold thread began to shine through the dullness of my grief and weave itself through the stories. The mythical presence of Jim and Dan, expressed through dreams, symbols, and the coincidences that my family and I shared, supported me in my grief and became the signposts out of it. ~ From “The Jim and Dan Stories”

“Two words,” I said to my husband as we were walking through the front door of Sal’s Restaurant, ready for a late supper.

“Cue cards,” I blurted out.

It was 9:00, and we had just come from the Radford University grief and loss class that is using my book, “The Jim and Dan Stories,” as part of their curriculum. I was the guest speaker, and Joe was telling me what a good job I had done. For once I didn’t deflect his feedback.

It was the 3rd time I had spoken to a class of Radford University counseling students in the last 2 years, and so I suppose my improved public speaking abilities could be due to the fact that I’m finally getting the hang of it, but it was also the first time I used noted index cards, and I think they helped immensely.

In “The Jim and Dan Stories,” I mentioned my ongoing fear of public speaking, so this group of 16 who had all read the book, smiled knowingly when I shuffled my index cards and began our hour-and-a-half together by saying, “I write better than I talk.”

Having my husband, a former counseling student who enjoys speaking to groups, by my side gave me an added boost of confidence. Although he injected less than he has in the past, he was able to overview the direction of the presentation, gauge the responses of students, and remind me to slow down when necessary. He also logged onto my webpage and blog and displayed them on a screen for everyone to see.

The evening included a show-and-tell of newspaper articles about the book, photographs, a scrapbook, and emails and letters from readers. My index card notes of talking points included headings such as; How the Book Came About, The Shadow Epilogue, The Turning Point in My Grief Process, What has happened since Writing the Book, The Hull Village Reunion, and Grieving My Father's Death. When my mind either went blank or became overloaded with what I wanted to say, I could glance down at my index cards and stick to my own script. Other times, I could refer back to them, after having veered off into a class-led discussion.

In the chance that the students might be hesitant to be vocal, I came equipped with a short series of questions that past readers had asked and a few questions that I like to ask readers, but I didn’t need to use them. The class, mostly women of various ages, was welcoming, intimate, and engaging.

In closing, I read “The Black Feather,” an account of a recent transpersonal experience related to my father’s death in November. By the look of the wet eyes in the room and by the feel of the hugs at the end of the evening, I knew it was a worthwhile shared experience, one that I would find myself thinking about later.

On my way out of the building, a woman who had been in the class but had not spoken a word approached me shyly and asked, “Just how did you conquer your fear of public speaking? I’m not even able to speak up in class.”

“I’m still working on it,” I answered. “The more I do it, the easier it gets. But it’s never easy, even with cue cards,” I told her.

Outside, I emerged, feeling like I had passed a milestone. Looking up, I noticed that the sky was filled with an amazing formation of large clouds. Seeing them, outlined by the gold of the setting sun, I instantly thought of my brother Jim, the weatherman, and my golden-hearted brother Dan. The clouds were like a “thumbs up” from them and a visual validation of something I had just said in the class. Death doesn’t only take away. Because Jim and Dan lived and because I wrote about them, so much love and insight has been given, received, and shared.

Posted by Colleen at 8:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (17)

On the same day my father was in a car accident that eventually led to his death, my sister, Tricia, had a grand mal seizure. Family members were in the hospital supporting her when my father was wheeled in on a stretcher. His vital signs were fine. He was talking and joking, coherent enough to tell the nurses that his daughter had just been admitted that morning. Although we were shocked by the turn of events and amazed by the synchronistic line-up, the phone calls and emails spanning the seven-hundred miles between my family in Massachusetts and my home in Virginia were encouraging. We thought my father was being kept overnight for routine observation.

When I called Tricia’s house the day after her seizure, I choked up when I asked her husband how she was. I was stunned when he said, “I’m more concerned about your father.” My eighty-one year old father had a broken vertebrae in his neck. He would have to be put in a brace and would likely be bed-ridden for some time.

The screen door slammed behind me as I headed out to the mailbox. Walking our long gravel driveway with woods on either side, I was absorbed in thinking about my father when I was startled by a SWOOSH, and then the loud flapping of wings. A brazen vulture had swooped down close to my head, and then, as quickly as it had appeared, disappeared into the woods.

I don’t remember what mail came that day, but I was midway in my walk back to the house with a stack of it in my hand when I looked down and noticed a large black feather in my path. A white feather had appeared in a similar manner just after my brother Jim died, four years before. Another white feather turned up a month later, before the death of a second brother. A part of me knew the instant I picked up the black feather that my father’s journey out of this world had begun.

He endured six weeks of hospital interventions and complications before he passed away. It was a heavy loss with layers of grief that took time for me to process. Six months after he died, I wrote a poem after waking up in the morning with a sense that he had kissed me on the cheek. I called the poem “My Father’s Kisses.”

From the creased and fading underlining
of the mind’s lived-out stories
I summon them up
to soothe a new hurt

Although my father was sober in the last two decades of his life (except for an outbreak following the deaths of his sons), he struggled with alcoholism all his adult life. He was nineteen when he joined the army as an artillery soldier in WWII. Combat was almost more than he could bear, but it was witnessing first-hand the inhumanity at Buchenwald Concentration Camp that he always claimed broke him. Later, as a father of nine children, providing for a family of eleven took a further toll.

After the last kiss goodbye I mourned
the part of him that was always absent
compelled to purse his lips for a kiss of death
against the slippery edge of a glass or bottle

My father was a playful, loving man who expressed his affection as easily as he did his anger. I both loved and feared him when I was a child. I struggled writing the poem. It was like a lid on a Pandora’s Box of emotion that needed to be lifted slowly.

If actions speak louder than words
then his kisses should drown out my hurts
the sting of his words harshly spoken
under the influence of post traumatic stress

Can you make it all better, daddy?
I’m afraid when you yell like that

I don’t normally post long personal poems on the online journal that I keep, but I impulsively posted “My Father’s Kisses” on Father’s Day, the first since my father’s death. The discomfort that followed was unexpected and dramatic. I felt as if I was “in trouble” for sharing such a personal poem. I worried that my words would disturb others and wondered how my family would receive it. As my distress intensified, I couldn’t sort out what was rational or irrational about my fear. I not only thought about deleting the poem, but I worked myself up to the point where I considered not writing on my weblog anymore.

In response to my anxiety, my husband, Joe, suggested we go for a walk. By this time I was aware that the poem had unearthed a dark childhood fear. I knew I had done nothing wrong; but I still felt threatened. Walking on the dirt road paralleling the Blue Ridge Parkway, we were immersed in conversation, reviewing the roots of my feelings, when Joe stopped abruptly in the middle of the road.

“Why are you making us stop?” I demanded. “I need to either keep moving or go curl up in the fetal position somewhere.”

He just stood looking at me until I gave in and let out a big sigh.
“That’s why,” he said.

I took his hand and we began walking again until something in the periphery of my vision caught my attention. It was another black feather, about eighteen inches long. I wanted to believe it meant nothing, but I knew it was mine to pick up.

Turning it over in my hand, I reminded Joe about the first black feather that appeared the day after my father’s car accident. “Did you know he was the only one who knew I put a white feather in Jim’s coffin? He was nearby and saw me do it,” I explained. “He asked like a curious little kid what it was for. I told him – purity, journey, freedom – and he smiled like he was learning something new.”

Joe and I walked in silence after that. With my hands clasped together behind my back, holding the feather in one of them, I shifted into a timeless place. With my head down, I watched my feet move, feeling the reverberating cadence of each step. The dirt road became the sandy shoreline of my childhood home; the dusty gray gravel was beach pebbles. I felt small like a little girl again, and the feather quill I was holding onto was like holding my father’s hand.

With that realization, a feeling of peace floated over me. I knew my father was pleased that my poem told the truth of his story. I felt his presence bearing a message: Don’t be afraid. Don’t be afraid to use your voice.

Post Notes: You can read "The White Feather" from my book "The Jim and Dan Stories HERE and the poem "My Father's Kisses" HERE.

Posted by Colleen at 8:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (27)

My book, “The Jim and Dan Stories,” started with a poem I wrote about being with my brother Danny in the hospital when he was taken off life supports – like taking Jesus off the cross he was nailed to… He died 3 hours later.

After the poem, I wrote a tribute about the deaths of both my brothers, Jim and Dan. Jim died in August of 2001 in a machine shop accident, and Dan died a month later from liver failure. The tribute was published in the town newspaper in Hull, Massachusetts where my eight siblings and I grew up.

After the tribute, I got out my notebook, thinking I would write some more poetry to help me process my grief; instead, “The Jim and Dan Stories” poured out of me. The original poem and the tribute got incorporated into the new writing, which I didn’t realize would end up as a book.

Once I knew it was a book, I didn’t know I was going to publish it.

After I knew I was going to publish it, I thought I would do so in a small number for family and close friends.

When the first printing of 300 books was done, I thought I was going to get stuck with lots of extra books.

When the first 300 sold in a few months time, I had another 300 printed up. Again, I thought I was going to get stuck with a lot of extra books.

When I sold that 300 and invested in a 3rd printing of 300, I thought I would surely get stuck with those.

I’m now more than half-way through the 3rd printing and wondering about a possible 4th.

Will the day ever come when someone asks about “The Jim and Dan Stories” and I say, “Oh, I don’t have any copies of that anymore?

Post Note: The cover design of “The Jim and Dan Stories” was done by my brother-in-law, Nelson Pidgeon. For more information about the book, how it came about and what has happened since it’s been published, visit my website, Silver and Gold, which Nelson is also the creator of. Also, if you haven’t checked out my sister Kathy’s post, "Flowering Expression," you can do so here. It’s about a message from beyond, a new installment of “The Jim and Dan Stories,” from those that continue beyond the book. She also has the poem I wrote about Jim and Dan on the first anniversary of their deaths posted.

Posted by Colleen at 9:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong in the broken places. ~ Ernest Hemingway

“Strong in the Broken Places” was the theme of the art show that hung on the walls of The Glade Baptist Church where I met with the woman’s book club group that had just read my book, “The Jim and Dan Stories.” It didn’t occur to me until the next day how fitting it was that I was talking about the deaths of my brothers with a group of women in a room adjacent to an art show with such a theme.

...I didn’t know when I began writing that to tell my brother’s story I also had to tell my own. I knew it was a family story, but I was surprised to discover that Jim and Dan’s deaths revealed an identity crisis in me, one that was underscored by the distance between my childhood home in Massachusetts and my present one in Virginia. Writing became a way to bridge those two places, and a way to piece together what was shattered in me. It was like a broken mirror was being put back together with each memory retrieved, so that I could see myself again. ~ From The Jim and Dan Stories, introduction.

Alex is a multi-media artist who I sometimes play Scrabble with. I gave her a copy of “The Jim and Dan Stories,” insisting that we make a trade after she gifted me with one of her handmade necklace creations. Once she read the book, she recommended it to her book club, which is how I came to be in the church that evening.

We met at Zeppoli’s, a Blacksburg Italian restaurant that makes home-made pasta, before the book club meeting at 7 pm. Alex arrived first. I found her sitting in a dark corner of the restaurant and immediately noticed that she didn’t look right, as if she was holding her breath. It didn’t take long for her to blurt out what was wrong; she had put down her favorite old horse that very day and was grief stricken about it. I tried to console her and wondered out loud if she would have the emotional stamina to attend the book club. What was the alternative, she questioned? She didn’t want to go home and be reminded of what had happened. At least the book club topic would be relevant.

At the church, while touring the art show, Alex shared that just days before in the same room the book club members were beginning to gather, she taught an art class on making mosaics. What kind of church hosts art shows and classes and has a giant mosaic with the word JOY spelled out hanging over the altar? Baptist is part of the church’s identity, but they have recently chose to be affiliated with the United Church of Christ because, "The UCC placed a comma in our lives where the Southern Baptists had placed a period," the pastor, Kelly was quoted on the United Church Press webpage as saying.

Alex made the Joy mosaic with shards from the minister’s own prized pottery that had been broken in an accident. It hung above the altar well before the “broken in the strong places” show. Perhaps it was the inspiration behind the show’s theme.

But I was there to talk about my book, and I did. The women were welcoming, the format informal. I was moved by how willing they were to share their own stories of losing loved ones, and I’m still thinking about some of the questions they asked me.

Sometimes memorable events can mean even more to me after they’ve happened. The next day, I was able to step back and see the theme through the previous evening that was not just the name of the art show. Alex’s mosaic was another fitting piece to the art of the evening, and so was my book. It too was like a mosaic, one of broken pieces and retrieved memories constructed by words to tell a story of love.

Even the book group related to the theme. We were a roomful of different women coming together as a whole to talk about grief and loss in an effort to make meaning out of it.

Posted by Colleen at 8:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (15)

AKA: We’re All in It Together

After my brothers, Jim and Dan, died, I went through an identity crisis, which caused me to question why I lived in Virginia when the rest of my family was in Massachusetts. One factor that complicated my distress was that, besides my husband and sons, no one in my close-knit community knew my brothers. While I had 6 other siblings, five of them back in Massachusetts, grieving along with me, here in Floyd I was, for the most part, grieving alone. But I wanted everyone to know my brothers and to know how much their lives mattered. It was a desire that became the impetus that led to my writing a book about them.

We buried my older brother, Jim, who died suddenly at the age of fifty-four, in July 2001. My younger brother, Dan, died a month later at the age of forty-nine. Since their deaths, life has had a sharper focus. There are things I can see that I couldn’t see before. If I can describe what I see from inside this hole, will it help others when they are down in one? What place is this? How will I survive it? How deep does it go? I want to know. I’ve never been here before. Can I make something constructive out of the powerless feeling of loss? Am I digging my way out, word by word? I’m writing Jim and Dan’s story because after living this story no other seems worth telling, because what else can I do down here, because there’s no where else to go. I’m writing Jim and Dan’s story because I’m proud of their story. I want to shout from the rooftop how irreplaceable they are. ~ excerpt from “Down in the Hole” from the introduction to “The Jim and Dan Stories.”

After the book came out and many people in my community read it, the sense of alienation I felt changed, as people approached me with feedback and comments about my brothers. My brother Jim especially made an impression with readers, probably because he was such a paradox. Jim, was opinionated, pessimistic, capable, constructive, and (regardless of how much he complained) passionately engaged in life. He was also an avid weather enthusiast who published weather photos, worked at The Blue Hill Weather Observatory as a volunteer, and was well known and respected throughout his local weather community.

The Blue Hill Observatory, where Jim volunteered, is planning a dedication ceremony to honor him. They’re raising money to erect a flag with a tribute to Jim inscribed on a plaque set in its base…All this for a guy who didn’t think he accomplished much in life, a guy who, when I asked him, “Jim do you think you’d try for a liver transplant if you need it (for Hep C)?” answered, “No, give it to someone who enjoys life!” A guy who, when asked by Kathy with a video camera, “Who are you?” answered with a laugh, “A loser.” A guy whose key chain read, “Not a happy camper.” ~ From The Jim and Dan Stories

I reached a turning point in my solitary grief and knew that writing the book made a difference when, while at a community gathering just after Hurricane Isabel, a friend approached me and said, “Wouldn’t your brother Jim just love all this weather?”

More recently, another Floydian asked, “Did you get those photos I emailed you?”

“No.” I answered. “My computer was probably in the shop. What were they of?”

“A photo of my baby girl…and some weather photos. I was thinking of your brother Jim when I shot them.” he said.

Missing Jim and Dan and grieving their deaths is something I’m still involved in. I know that because I’m crying as I type this. But the sadness is mixed now with a sense of gratitude that I’ve been able to share a small part of who they were with others who wouldn’t have known them otherwise.

Photo: On the back of the above photo that Jim took, he wrote: Virga at Sunset over Boston. I looked up the word and learned that “virga” is “any form of precipitation that doesn’t reach the ground.”

Posted by Colleen at 8:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (16)

Bibliotherapy means using the reading of books (or the watching of movies) as a way to heal yourself, gain insight, or solve a problem. ~ from The Sibling Connection

Suppose you were struggling with grief after losing a loved one, and so you sought out a grief counselor for guidance. Because it is often less threatening to deal with painful emotions indirectly, your counselor might use a treatment modality called bibliotherapy, suggesting a book for you to read or a movie to watch with themes that relate to your issues. I first learned about bibliotherapy when my book, “The Jim and Dan Stories” was reviewed by Pleasant Gill White, Ph.D. and listed in the bibliotherapy section of her sibling loss website, “The Sibling Connection.” Some of the ways bibliotherapy can help facilitate healing, listed on the website, include: It can give you a vocabulary, reduce your feeling of isolation as you recognize characters who remind you of yourself, and help you work through your grief experience by giving you an opportunity to compare and contrast your experience with others.

But you don’t need a therapist to practice bibliotherapy. Some who are coping with loss will find themselves instinctively reaching for books and movies about death and grief. After losing my brothers 4 years ago, I did. I browsed through so many books on death that I can’t remember one from the other now. “Tuesdays with Morrie” was one I do remember that was so good I bought an extra copy to have for lending to others.

Over the last few years only a couple of movies with death and grief themes continue to stand out in my mind. One is “Moonlight Mile” with Susan Sarandon and Dustin Hoffman, and the other is “In America” about an Irish immigrant family who lost their young child. I saw both too long ago to comment on in detail, other than to say that they were deeply moving and dealt with the subject intelligently and sensitively and in a way that I could relate to.

I recently saw another movie to add to this list of favorites. It’s an independent Canadian film made in 2003 called “My Life Without Me.” The plot line described on the video box that drew me in was something like: Young woman conceals the fact of her terminal cancer to live her life with a passion she never had before.

In the movie, the main character, played by Sarah Polley, decides to face death on her own terms. She rationalizes that by keeping her pending death a secret she will spare her family months spent crying in hospital corridors and eating bad cafeteria food. She sets about to make her children audio tapes for each birthday, reunites with her incarcerated father, looks for a new wife for her husband and mother for children, and explores doing things she’s never done before. It’s sad but not sappy with balance of tragedy and resolution, and the fact that the lead role was a strong female character wasn’t lost on me. One reviewer summed the movie up like this…it makes you think twice about what’s really important and a movie that can do that is a movie worth seeing. Ultimately, that’s probably the underlying reason that I’m involved in the study of death.

“My Life Without Me” and the other movies I mentioned will probably make you cry, but you won’t feel manipulated to do so, as with some Hollywood fare; at least I didn’t. But why watch movies that you know will make you cry? How can that be therapy? I think watching movies about death when you’re grieving can act like a homeopathic remedy, aligning with feelings you’re already having and bringing them to the surface for you to plainly see. Another reason not to avoid what you know will make you cry refers back to a line in the “The Jim and Dan Stories,” the book I wrote after losing my brothers: “The sadness is already there… the crying just lets it out.”

Posted by Colleen at 8:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (19)

“Drop by drop we cry a river of tears and the earth is washed with our love.” ~ Jan Seivers Mahon, reader of the “Jim and Dan Stories.”

I received an email recently from a subscriber of the Museletter, the monthly community forum that I co-edit. She was thanking me for my written contributions that have appeared in the publication, particularly recent ones on the subjects of death and grief. I think she was referring to my questions, posed to author Joan Didion, ‘Is it any stranger to think that a loved one can return from death than it is to accept that they died in the first place? Isn’t the vanishing as fantastic as the idea that they might return from it?’ when she commented that her take on death was similar to mine…that maybe there isn’t any.

I appreciated her feedback, as I appreciate any conversation about death and grief that others are willing to have with me because too often it can be an awkward subject that people avoid. Death and grief have played heavily in my recent life and to not acknowledge that or not talk about it with others tends to make me feel invisible. But I haven’t pinned down any one fixed take on death, and I don’t think I ever will.

I emailed her back saying that my study of death is ongoing. On a lighter note, I added, “I might be willing to die just so I can penetrate the mystery of it. That’s how curious I am!”

A few days after that, Pearl, a Loose Leaf reader, left me an intriguing comment. Knowing that I’m engaged in an in-depth exploration into the mystery of death, she sent me a link to some writing on the subject, which ultimately led me to “Dan Blogs,” authored by a man who had recently lost his wife and whose insights I found to be fresh and honest. He wrote: Actually, I think it's more accurate to say that you aren't dead until everyone of whose social atom you are a part is dead. This is because we don't live solely inside our bodies, we live outside them, too. We are social beings. We are defined by, we come into existence through our relationships.

I was so affected by my brother’s deaths four years ago, that I felt like I had been abducted by aliens. I found myself looking for others who had also been abducted so I wouldn’t feel so strange and alone. I still feel like that but to a lesser degree, and since then have lost my father, which is why I gravitate to others who are dealing with loss and why I was interested in what Dan had to say on his blog. I particularly liked his post entitled “Time doesn’t heal. The only way out is in.” In it, he writes: What does happen over time is that memory of the loved and lost begins to fade and so the daily experience of pain at the loss reduces. You begin to form new life patterns so the reminders of the difference gradually diminish. This isn't healing the wound, though. It is simply the wounding process winding down. The knife gradually being withdrawn…

He also has a post titled, “What to say and do with someone who has lost a loved one,” which is something I also wrote about in “The Jim and Dan Stories.” I know from experience, as one who has been changed fundamentally by loss, that it’s better to say something, as awkward as it may be, than to say nothing to those who are grieving. Even a knowing gesture can offer a bridge to a person who is feeling alienated by grief.

I don’t think our culture prepares us for dealing with the death of a loved one (particularly when it doesn’t come at the end of life, which is considered more normal). I think it's up to us. We need to reach out to each other.

Posted by Colleen at 8:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (17)

I saw a movie recently that I can’t get out of my mind. Not because it was a great movie or because of the filming, soundtrack, or special effects.

It was low budget, filmed with a hand held camera, and described by its writer/director as an autobiographical confessional documentary-type of film. I enjoyed the “director’s cut” menu feature (where the director narrates over the movie dialogue) more than the actual film, but I had to have watched the film to enjoy it.

The movie, “Manhood,” is described in one review as a darkly funny, compelling family drama that probes the depths of masculinity, specifically Jewish masculinity, in America. Interesting enough; but what interested me most was what I learned from the writer/director, Bobby Roth, in his behind the scenes narrative. In the movie, and in Roth’s real life, his sister was violently killed. Re-living his trauma through making a film about it, using dream sequences and his own son as an actor, Roth used his art to process his sister’s death and to honor her life.

I wrote “The Jim and Dan Stories,” the book about losing my brothers a month apart, for the same reasons. And while Roth’s film tells a modern story through a Jewish experience, mine is told through a working class Irish Catholic one, covering the 60s and up until my brothers’ deaths in 2001.

Another reason I liked and the film was that it was filmed on a shoestring budget using local resources, as my book was. In the directors cut, Roth tells how he and the cast got creative and stole some scenes in places they didn’t have permission to be. He explained how he used his friends as extras in the movie, his real son’s bedroom to save money, and rather than pay to film in a pawn shop, he had John Ritter, one of the actors, walk past a pawn shop to imply that he went in, which was part of the story line.

Even the movie’s soundtrack drew on resources close to home for Roth. At first glance, you wouldn’t think the music of Bruce Springsteen would be so, but in the director’s cut Roth reveals that he’s married to Springsteen’s sister.

The actors, John Ritter, Janeane Garafolo, Nestor Carbonell, and others didn’t get paid upfront for their work. They got involved because they support independent film, the director, his message, and his methods. Those who support independent film know it as an art. They know that human stories deserve to be told… from the living room to the big screen… and everywhere in between.

I enjoyed watching Manhood, and while I recognized right away that it wasn’t a Hollywoodized production, I wasn’t aware of the bare boned and personal way it was created until I heard Roth explain it. Mostly, what I liked about the movie was that it was a testament to what art is, what art is for, and why we, as human beings, are compelled to make it.

Posted by Colleen at 8:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (18)

My brother Jim died in July 2001, and my brother Dan died a month later, in August. In the six months after they died, I wrote “The Jim and Dan Stories,” a chronicle of the grieving process that weaves together stories of growing up as one of nine siblings with the details of my brothers’ last weeks. By Christmas that year, I was nearing the end of the book and felt the need to bring the stories full circle, back to my hometown, the peninsula of Hull, Massachusetts, where the stories began and where my parents still lived. I don’t usually visit my family in winter, but that year was different. I was homesick for my childhood and confused as to why I had been living in Virginia for the past 20 years when the rest of my family was in Massachusetts. I wanted to see that my parents and my remaining siblings were alright. I didn’t know how the book would end, but I knew I had to go home and find out. Below is an excerpt from the book about that Christmas trip home and a family excursion into Boston.

On the Red Line to Park Street from the subway train window, I saw the December full moon. I was sitting next to two year old Patrick who was on the look-out for Christmas lights. “I see something!” he would periodically exclaim. I followed the moon while walking with my family to the Boston Commons and then to Fanueil Hall. Under this full moon we found The Enchanted Village, a magical world of moving mannequin children who, dressed in late 20’s clothing, were placed in Christmas settings. I had seen the Enchanted Village in the downtown department store windows of Jordan Marsh when I was five years old. It was a vague memory that I questioned the reality of. What a wonderful surprise to find out it was true, to find the Enchanted Village (now in a pre-fab heated building) again. And how well it fit the theme of my trip, a re-visitation of my childhood roots.

After a few days of transition, I called all my friends to tell them I was home and to tell them I was thinking of them. After doing that, I took a deep breath and felt ready to begin the New Year.

Posted by Colleen at 11:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

From a scoop of luscious moon... at the Milky Way counter...the stars have spilled over...in an icy cold night.

My brothers, Jim and Dan, died a month apart in the summer of 2001. The first Christmas after their deaths, I was still mourning and deeply involved in writing what would become my first book, “The Jim and Dan Stories.” The book, a chronicle of the first 6 months of the grieving process, weaves together stories of growing up as one of nine siblings with the stories of my brothers’ last weeks. Below is an excerpt from the book, written on the Winter Solstice, the darkest day of the year. It was my hope at the time that my burden of grief would grow lighter as the light returned and days grew longer, and the excerpt marked a turning point in that direction.

It’s one mile to our neighbor’s farm where the Winter Solstice Celebration is held. There’s a spiral labyrinth there made of evergreen boughs that we walk with a lighted candle each year. Bundled up to protect us from the cold, one by one each person arrives at the center where they say a few prayerful words before walking back the same way they came, leaving their candle somewhere along the spiraled path. What starts out in the dark, ends up brightly lit, a hopeful reminder of the days growing longer, of the in and out breath of the year.

Still, I peered through my window looking for that cat and that’s when the moon’s delightful richness struck me…From a scoop of luscious moon, at the Milky Way counter, the stars have spilled over, in an icy cold night, I wrote. The poem got me thinking about Lime Rickey’s and Frappes and the L Street soda fountain we grew up with. But I’m not going to write about that. ~ From Nature Taking its Course

Posted by Colleen at 9:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (15)

Death is like an arrow that is already in flight, and your life lasts only until it reaches you. ~ George Hermes

Is every grieving the death of a loved one different? Or are we different each time a loss visits us?

When my brothers, Jim and Dan, died 4 years ago, I felt like part of my heart had been ripped out. The grief I experienced recently when my father died was felt mostly in my gut, as though I had been punched in the stomach and left with a sick sinking hole. Several of my siblings expressed at the funeral that they felt like they had a stomach flu.

Some of my recent symptoms of grief feel familiar, but some are different. With both, I felt identity confusion. After losing Jim and Dan, I wondered why I lived in Virginia, when they were buried in the Massachusetts town we all grew up in, in the very cemetery we played in as kids. I mourned the loss of my childhood as much as I missed my brothers.

The identity crisis I'm experiencing with the loss of my dad is less about where I live and more about who I am. Who am I without a father? Who is my mother without my father? Who am I to my mother now? Can I let go of the burden my dad carried that all his kids shared the weight of, the burden of seeing the Holocaust first hand, WWII combat trauma, and his battle with alcoholism?

There is a sense of calmness (or is it numbness) along with my sadness that I wasn’t able to feel when Jim and Dan died. Is it because my dad lived for 81 years and had been drifting away from us before the accident that led to his death? Since the deaths of his sons, and especially during this last year, he sometimes seemed to be going through the motions of life more than living them. “He did everything he wanted to,” my mother recently said to me on the phone.

The loss of a parent can shake our sense of security, identity, and foundation. But unlike losing a sibling, child, spouse, or a parent prematurely; losing an older parent is something we’re conditioned to expect. We know life ends, just as we know the day will end when the sun goes down. As hard as losing a parent is, we don’t have to feel alone in it. It’s something we all have in common or will someday.

I’ve only begun to absorb the impact of not having my dad in this world, but I’m grateful that I feel more in control of my grief this time around. At least today, I do.

Photo: Icy path to the driveway illuminated by the setting sun.

Posted by Colleen at 9:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (16)

How does a part of the world leave the world? How does wetness leave water? ~ Rumi

I’m reading Joan Didion’s book, “The Year of Magical Thinking,” which is about the sudden death of her husband while their only child was hospitalized and gravely ill. When my brothers, Jim and Dan, died 4 years ago everything I thought I believed about life and death came into question. My understanding of death was reduced to that of a child’s, but I wanted to understand and to penetrate the mystery of it. My desire for understanding manifested in the reading of many books about death and the grieving process.

After my father’s accident this past October and while he was in the hospital, I picked up Didion’s book as though I had signed up for a refresher course on my study of death. While reading, I braced myself for the worst, losing my dad, which ultimately did happen.

As I understand it, Didion’s book is a personal exploration into the pathological symptoms of grief. The underlying premise of the book is that while she logically understands death, there is an irrational part of her that does not. She re-tells how she analyzed every detail of the night her husband slumped over with a heart attack at the dinner table, hoping to discover a different ending. Months after his death, she couldn’t bring herself to give his shoes away, thinking what? That he might come home and need them.

My study of death began because I wanted to find proof that I would see my brothers again. And so, I understand firsthand Didion’s magical thinking, and to it I add a further question: Is it any stranger to think that a loved one can return from death than it is to accept that they died in the first place? Isn’t the vanishing as fantastic as the idea that they might return from it?

Posted by Colleen at 9:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (13)

May the road rise up to meet you. May the wind always be at your back. May the sun shine warm upon your face, and rains fall soft upon your fields. And until we meet again, May God hold you in the palm of His hand. ~ Old Irish Blessing

My brother John, the black sheep of the family, sober since our brothers, Jim and Dan, died 4 years ago, flew in from Minnesota to bury our father, feeling heartbroken and thinking that he wouldn't have a role to play in the funeral services. As it turned out, he, the eldest existing and unmarried son, had a very important role. He was my mother’s escort throughout the two days of services.

My sister, Sherry, a nurse, had taken a prominent role in overseeing my dad’s hospital care, and her husband, Nelson, read a moving tribute to my dad at the wake, as did Jamie and Rachael, two of my father’s grandchildren. Jamie remarked how his grandfather was like everybody’s Santa Claus, and he reminded us of one of my father’s trademark saying: “I love you more than you’ll know,” the last words he spoke to Jamie. We all laughed when Rachael remembered my father looking around at a family cook-out and saying, “Look at this population I created!”

At St. Ann's church, the next morning, granddaughters, Beth and Molly, shared readings from the Bible, my youngest sister, Tricia, read the funeral mass intercession prayers she had written, while my older sister, Kathy, opened the eulogy part of the services. Taking her place at the church pulpit, alongside my brother Joey and me, Kathy spoke of the circumstances of my father’s death before turning the microphone over to me. I read my essay, “Let Me Clue You in about My Father,” that was originally inspired by a “father’s day essay contest” I was a judge for. I read it on WVTF public radio this past Memorial Day and felt grateful to have honored my father with it before he passed away. While reading to the church full of people who loved my dad, I was remembering this past summer when I visited him and my mother, and he read the essay for the first time. Judging from the tears in his eyes and the number of times I saw him re-read it, I think he approved. I was happy that my description of my father evoked some laughter from the crowd because one of the last things I remember him saying to me was, “I like to make people laugh.”

My sister’s and my words were well received, but it was my brother Joey who stole the show. Joey has a severe case of dyslexia. During his school years, the school system was on the cusp of ignorance and awareness of learning disabilities. At one point, they wanted to put him in with the kids who had mental retardation, but my parents, knowing how bright he was, took him into Boston and got him tested, which led to special services and inclusion in regular classes. Although Joey couldn’t read, or even talk in elementary school with anything other than his made-up language that our brother John (Joey’s sidekick) had to decipher for us, we all knew he was smart as whip.

Through sobbing tears, hunched over the podium and with Kathy, me, and his niece, Heather (who was his designated support person), at his side, Joey spoke of how much it meant to him that my father praised the D’s he got in school, and how it was our father who encouraged him to build his first house…and the next and the next. Joey, who got his driver’s license by taking the drivers test orally and is now the president of his own company, had to work hard for days to write his eulogy and then read it out loud in public. There wasn’t a dry eye in the place.

Later, at the restaurant where the reception was held, it was my youngest brother Bobby who got the crowd’s attention with a piercing whistle so that his wife, Jeanne, could read the above Irish blessing. Jeanne also read a poem she had written and reminded us all that my dad was not only our Most Valuable Player (MVP), but that he chose to leave us while he was still at the top of his game (after beating pneumonia and getting off a breathing tube).

The population my dad created came out in droves to honor his good run. The stories were told, and laughter mixed with tears as we remembered how much we all loved him.

More than he’ll ever know.

Posted by Colleen at 9:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (26)

Dreams are real as long as they last. Can we say anymore about life? ~ Henry Havelock Ellis

If, as Carl Jung proposed, the psyche has a foreshadowing of death before it comes, how do the physical circumstances of death line-up with it? And if the psyche does indeed experience a foreshadowing of death through dreams and intuition, where does it come from? Does the foreshadowing imply a design?

I believe the life force was draining out of my father long before the car accident that led to his death, in the same way that a bright leaf hangs from a tree in October, and when you see it you know it’s only a matter of time before it will fall. A hard frost or gust of wind is like the equivalent of the physical circumstances (illness, accident, etc.) that precipitate death. And the leaf dropping from the tree is like the body, something we slip out of when it’s old.

“The tree doesn’t die when the leaves on it do. But are we like the tree, or just a leaf growing on it?” I posed the question to my husband on the ride home from my father’s funeral in an effort to convince myself of the continuity of life. As one who struggles with religiously framed tenets, understanding life and death by looking at nature appeals to my sense of logic.

But I don’t understand! Not really.

“The tree does die! Eventually,” I blurted out an hour later, as if I had the discovered the answer to a riddle, or a hole in the theory.

“The earth doesn’t die when the tree does. Are we like the earth, or just the tree growing on it?” I quipped, knowing my line of questioning could go one endlessly. “Do we go on endlessly?” I seemed to be asking.

Hospice caregivers and others who work with death report that many dying patients who start out fearfully resisting death often come to accept it. Acceptance is facilitated through dreams, contact with unseen forces, or an internal process, and is often accompanied with a burst of energy and marked lucidity. Is that what was happening to my father when, after being frustrated, impatient and confused for weeks, on the last two days of his life, he was (in my sister Sherry’s words) “almost ecstatic.” On the last day of his life, he announced excitedly “Today’s the day! Everything is coming off (tubes, neck brace, etc.),” and he looked at the calendar repeatedly as if he knew (in my sister Kathy’s words) “his contract was up.”

Some people believe that the soul makes a decision to be born. Maybe we don’t die either, unless some sort of agreement is made, whether we are consciously aware of it or not.

Posted by Colleen at 8:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (12)

He was, in his own words, “an operator,” which I understood as a reference to his street smarts. And he had the lingo to prove it. For my dad a beautiful woman was always “a hot tomato,” people who didn’t know what they were talking about were “blowing smoke,” “hatchi katchi” meant “fooling around,” and so did “hot to trot.” He wasn’t bigoted, except maybe against homely girls in favor of the pretty ones. And he never tried to hide the fact that the reason he tuned in to TV football was to watch the cheerleaders at half-time. ~ From “Let Me Clue You In About My Father.”

My father was born in Boston Massachusetts in 1924 on the first day of spring. When he died, on a recent rainy November evening, the wind was howling all the way from Boston to Virginia, where I live. The rain continued into the next morning, so much so that the creeks flooded over onto the roads, reminding me of the tears that were being shed by everyone that loved him.

For some reason my father had convinced me that he was indestructible. I might have gotten that impression from the wild stories he told of his past that usually ended with him shaking his head and saying, “I don’t know why I’m still here. I guess someone upstairs must like me.”

“There’s going to be some mad Irish wake stories going on for this man,” I said to my son over the phone after I broke the news to him that his grandfather had died. He was holding a page he had ripped out from his collage journal with a photo of his grandfather in Germany during WWII on it, he told me. “There will never be another “operator” quite like Grandpa,” he said.

“He was operating till the end,” I answered. No one could get into his hospital room without bringing a scratch ticket for him to play. He was winking at the nurses up until the end and holding the TV remote in his hand..."

But he had started to drift away long before the car accident that brought him to the hospital. I noticed a change when I visited him and my mother this past summer. At times he seemed withdrawn. Other times confused. On some days, it seemed that he was going through the motions of life and covering up his failings with his humor. But when the mood was just right, he still had a good story to tell:

“You’ve never heard this one before,” he said to me. “It will explain everything. Even why I drank so much.”

“Does Ma know?” I asked. My interest was piqued.

“Only me and the devil…and God know,” he answered.

It was a story of combat, one that I vaguely remember he might have told me before, one that would make a great movie but is too personal to re-tell here. I felt that he was purging himself and setting the record straight that day, and I got the sense that the process of leaving this world was beginning for my father.

I just didn’t think the end result of it would come this soon.

Post Notes: The photo is of one of the photo collage boards made by family members and displayed at the funeral home for my father. My son’s collage journal page, dedicated to his grandfather, is posted on the bottom of the board. The song that was played at the end of the funeral services was one that the Andrew Sisters sang in 1943, “I’ll Be With You in Apple Blossom Time,” a wonderful send off for our spring-born daddy who so loved the music of his era. My sister, Kathy, has also been writing about the experience of losing our dad at her blog. And here's a link to one of my dad's obituary. Click on "Robert Redman."

Posted by Colleen at 11:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (16)

Dream from Howard Johnson’s in Pennsylvania on the way to my father’s funeral: I dreamt that I was staying in a big house next to my mother’s house, but I didn’t go over to see her. Eventually, she came to visit me. She seemed frail sitting at the kitchen table. I don’t know if I thought it or said it out loud, but I realized the reason I hadn’t gone to see her was because I couldn’t face seeing my father’s things, especially his chair that sat in front of the TV with the footstool next to it where the TV remote control sat. Next to the remote were all the other things my dad used to “operate” (a magnifying glass, eyeglasses, scissors and etc.) that no one else was allowed to touch.

The day before I dreamt this, while riding 81 north towards Boston, my husband reminded me that my dad would be buried at the gravesite with my brothers, Jim and Dan. “Oh! I hadn’t thought of that,” I answered and then pondered the image it conjured. “All I can think about is his chair with him not sitting in it. For me, his chair will be his place-keeper shrine and the place I will go to, to hopefully feel his spirit"

Posted by Colleen at 2:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (20)

I’ve been hit in the gut – not with the flu – but with loss.

My father died unexpectedly Monday evening.

I feel deflated…and defeated.

Ironically, the most upbeat day in the 6 weeks he’s been in the hospital since his car accident was also his last. Everyone was excited that he was making such noticeable progress, and on the same day he was to die, he also got up with a walker for the first time. He was wheeled to the room where he would soon begin physical therapy in a wheelchair by my sister, Sherry, and my mother as everyone cheered him on. Did he take one look at the work-out equipment and figure (on some level) that he wasn’t up for the task? My husband, who has worked with Hospice, tells me that it’s typical for people to rally before they die. It’s also common that on some unconscious level they frequently know they’re going to die.

“Today’s the day!” he had said enthusiastically to Sherry and my mother when they visited him on that day. When Sherry questioned him about his announcement, he added, “It’s the day that everything’s coming off!” He meant the neck brace, the tracheotomy apparatus, and anything else they had him hooked up to.

“Today’s the day you’re getting up!” Sherry corrected him, wondering if he was confused.

A few hours later, after they left, he quietly slipped away. A blood clot? An aneurism? A mucus plug in the tracheotomy tubing? We don’t know yet. The hospital staff were as surprised as we were.

It looks like my writing is destined to continue the ongoing theme of grief and loss...

Photo: July, 2005 at sunset: Robert Leo Redman Jr. assisting Robert Leo Redman Sr. down to the parking lot at The Blue Hill Weather Observatory where my brother Jimmy’s annual memorial picnic was being held. The flag seen in the background is the one that was erected in Jim’s honor and has a dedication plaque set in its base.

Posted by Colleen at 8:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (46)

My brother Jimmy died in the summer of 2001, and my brother Danny followed him just a month later. Jim’s birthday, November 22, sometimes fell on Thanksgiving Day, and so Thanksgiving and the days leading up to it remind me and my family of Jim. Below is an excerpt from “The Jim and Dan Stories,” the book I wrote chronicling the grief process in the first 6 months after losing my brothers, titled “Thanksgiving.”

The leaves are falling as fast as the words in my head are spilling onto paper. A squirrel scampers by and a sense of urgency fills the air. I must get this all down. Tie this together. I must think harder to recover memories of Danny and Jim that I can lavish in. I have an impatience to do it all now. Death is a real motivating force. It teaches us that we don’t have forever. Understanding our own mortality is an opportunity, urging us to re-set priorities.

The words are winding down (for now) as memories of past Thanksgivings drift through my mind. Like a favorite dream I am trying to reconstruct, I superimpose those memories over the harsh reality, which is this: There are empty chairs at the table this year, and never has emptiness been so concrete.

Post Note: Blogger friend, Naomi, from Here in the Hills recently posted her personal and moving account of the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated, also on November 22, that ties into her life in the theatre.

Posted by Colleen at 9:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (11)

Even a pen has a lifespan, I think to myself just as mine has run out of ink in the middle of writing a sentence. The pen doesn’t come back the following season like the leaves on the poplar tree outside my bedroom window will come back in the spring… ~ From “The Jim and Dan Stories” ~ by Colleen

During my husband’s study for his master’s degree in counseling, he did an internship with Hospice and helped to facilitate a grief group. Knowing my experience and interest in the grief process, he invited me to be a part of the group. I would have appreciated a support group after I lost my brothers, but it had been 3 years since their deaths, a little late for that sort of thing, I thought. Even so, my husband encouraged me to participate, thinking that I could be of help to others who had more recently lost loved ones, and eventually, I agreed.

Our first meeting – a small group of all women except for my husband – was held at the local library. For introductions, we were directed to go around the room and share with the group a little about ourselves and why we were there. I should have known when I had to hold back the tears while listening to other people’s stories that sharing wasn’t going to be easy, but I was still surprised to discover when it was my turn to speak that, even after 3 years, I couldn’t be counted on to articulate losing my brothers without falling apart.

How is this going to help others, I wondered? What happened to my open book philosophy of taking death and grief out of the closet? I could go to the Radford University class that was using my book as part of their grief and loss curriculum and talk about the book, what it was like losing my brothers, how I got through it. But on this day and with this group, I couldn’t seem to state the facts, form the tragic words, or even use their names without losing it. I felt like an alcoholic admitting a disease that I had thought I was in remission of. Hello, my name is Colleen and I lost 2 brothers. Jim died in a violent machine shop accident. I watched my brother Dan die of liver failure.

Ah, is this what they mean when they say that you can come to accept losing a loved one but that you never really get over it? It was a rude awakening to remember again that Jim and Dan are really gone and then to speak it out loud to others. But I learned a good lesson that day: There comes a point in the grief process when it’s not a good idea to pick at an old wound.

Posted by Colleen at 9:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)

Death is like sex. It’s something everyone does, but you hardly ever see it, and no one talks much about it--not publicly any ways. Death, like sex, is raw. It demands that you give it its due. ~Colleen, “The Jim and Dan Stories.”

My poet friend, Mara, who I share a grief bond with and often play Scrabble with is in LOVE! When we played Scrabble last weekend, she was not only on the phone with her lover half a dozen times during our game, but she was playing Scrabble with her online…in-between turns.

Two-timer! I shouted across the table.

Three of us played that day, and when it wasn’t Mara’s turn, or she wasn’t on the phone, or playing online scrabble with her girlfriend, we talked about the paper she is writing for school, “Physical Symptoms of the Early Stages of Love and Grief: Exploring the Connections and Correlations.” Mara, who lost her husband a couple of weeks before my brother Jim died, can speak from experience on both.

Her paper begins: The initial reaction is disbelief. How could there be a connection between love and grief? One is positive, the other is negative – at least that is the common misperception. When some of the physical manifestations are examined, however it’s startling how similar the symptoms are. They mirror each other: mind, emotion, and most especially body. Loss of appetite. “Butterflies” in your stomach. Sleeplessness. The world becoming strange and surreal. Grief and love are different only so much as our perception changes them. They both change us inexplicably, often affecting our entire manner of viewing the world…

Besides the obvious similar physical symptoms of falling in love and losing someone you love, both are experienced with a wide open heart and both are tied up in longing. Does the body know the difference between tears shed for joy or for grief? And what about bittersweet tears that blur the lines of emotion, such as those brought about when in the presence of something painfully beautiful, feeling proud of your child when he leaves home, or being so deeply touched during lovemaking that you come undone.

Mara asks two good questions: Why do we continually strive towards love, not simply love of family, work, purity, but the eternally complicated conundrum of being “in love,” which tortures far often than it satisfies?

And…Why do we avoid grief with such a dogged passion? Why do we try to protect ourselves and those we love from the very realities of death? Often mourning provides similar heights of joy and clarity to the struggle and pain love can give.

Being with my brother Danny when he died was a gift, while at the same time it was a trauma. Even so, I look back on the last two weeks of his life that I spent with him in the hospital with such fondness. Every day I was excited to see him, knowing in the back of my mind that it might be the last time I could. With a heightened sense of awareness, I lost myself in caring for him. I saw only him and thought of only him, and when he was gone, I missed that one pointed focus. Maybe the experiences of love and grief are so related because with both you forget self, with both the illusion of separation falls away, and you are one with another human being.

Ultimately, what is grief, but an expression of love? The more love felt, the deeper the grief.

Post Note:: For the first time in 9 months, I’ve updated my Silver and Gold Website, a contact place for my books that is dedicated to my brothers, Jim and Dan. You can view it here. Photo is of Mara playing online scrabble while her Scrabble board players look on.

Posted by Colleen at 9:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (11)

How come you can get 3 months off work for maternity leave and only about 3 days for bereavement? ~ My husband, Joe.

When I wrote the “Jim and Dan Stories,” about losing two brothers a month apart, I was really putting myself and my family “out there.” And so much has come back to us because of it.

Since the publication of the book in 2003, I’ve received dozens of “thank you” emails and letters and phone calls from readers. Some have stunned me. Some have brought me to tears. And some I want to frame.

Today, I received one of those “frame-able” letters from a reader who lost her mother as a child. She wrote, “I wanted to write you and affirm how important your message about grief is and that it gets out to the larger community…Thank you, for publishing your writings; for sharing what’s in your heart!”

In reference to the book’s introduction in which I wrote about feeling like I was down in a hole and described writing the book as “taking field notes from grief’s frontline,” she had this to say… “By the end of the first page of “The Jim and Dan Stories” I was in tears and connecting with your experience. That hole that you speak of that one must dive deep into to fully encounter the feelings of grief doesn’t go away. For me, it’s just not so cavernous a place that I fall into any longer, but more like a familiar pothole on the road home.”

I feel privileged that readers of my book feel safe to share their own stories of loss with me, but that alone isn’t the most meaningful thing that sharing the book has brought me. What is even more awesome is that the book doesn’t just reach out and touch others. Those who have been touched by it often reach back and touch me.

Not only did this reader share her innermost self with me through the poetry she included in her letter, she sent me a copy of an article listing insights into grief, which starts out by announcing: “Grief has its own timetable; sometimes it never goes away.” Considering how shrouded and misunderstood the subjects of death and grief can be in our society, I found the tips – which come from a book by Therese Rando entitled “How to Go On Living When Someone You Love Dies – to be very helpful. They include (in part):

~ Your grief will take longer than most people think.
~ Your grief will show itself in all spheres of your life: psychological, social, and physical.
~ Your grief will depend on how you perceive the loss.
~ You will grieve for many things both symbolic and tangible, not just the death alone.
~ You may be obsessed with death and preoccupied with the deceased.
~ You may search for meaning and may question your religion and/or philosophy of life.

Touching others and being touched back is extremely rewarding. But there’s more. Reconnecting with old friends through correspondences and the reunion in Hull that was spurred by the book, making new bonds and friendships with people who have read the book all spring forth from the fact that my brothers, Jim and Dan, lived. They are the center from which it all has rippled out. Even this blog is an offshoot of the book that likely wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t for them. Losing them was the impetus that propelled my writing forward and urged me to reach out and share.

Not only is the circle unbroken; it continues to spiral out...

Posted by Colleen at 8:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (13)

“Everything has its roots in the unseen world…Every wondrous sight will vanish…Every sweet word will fade” ~ Rumi

We buried my older brother, Jim, who died suddenly at the age of fifty-four, in July 2001. My younger brother, Dan, died a month later at the age of forty-nine. Since their deaths, life has had a sharper focus. There are things I can see that I couldn’t see before. If I can describe what I see from inside this hole, will it help others when they are down in one? What place is this? How will I survive it? How deep does it go? I want to know. I’ve never been here before. Can I make something constructive out of the powerless feeling of loss? Am I digging my way out, word by word? I’m writing Jim and Dan’s story because after living this story no other seems worth telling, because what else can I do down here, because there’s no where else to go. I’m writing Jim and Dan’s story because I’m proud of their story. I want to shout from the rooftop how irreplaceable they are. ~ From “The Jim and Dan Stories,” the Introduction.

After my brothers died – one unexpectedly in an accident and the other from an illness – I read lots of books on death. I wanted to penetrate the mystery of death (as if it was possible to) and find proof that I would see my brothers again.

Recently, on the Charlie Rose Show, Charlie was interviewing Joan Didian, author of “The Year of Magical Thinking.” Didian lost her husband unexpectedly while her daughter was ill, and then lost her daughter. I related to the unexpected death followed by a more likely one, and the fact that she dealt with her grief by writing a book about it, as I have.

On the show, she said something about her husband’s death that poignantly describes part of the grief process, “You get obsessed and go over and over it… trying to find a different ending.

My blog bio reads: “I write to synthesize what I’m thinking at the time.” Didian put it this way: I had to write to know what I was thinking.

When Charlie asked her what has been the hardest part of writing the book, I knew what her answer would be.

“Finishing the book,” she said. And then she went on to explain that writing her book was a way to stay in touch with her lost loved one. Finishing it was hard because, she had to let go of that connection.

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Posted by Colleen at 10:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (18)

My poet friend, Mara, lost her husband, Cory, unexpectedly just before Jimmy died in July. She was with Cory when it happened. By October I was ready to drive out to visit her. We picked apples from her orchard and sat on the edge of the woods by a rock cropping, Cory’s favorite spot, and compared notes. “Do you want the community to start a food tree for you?” she asked. “No, I don’t want to see people now,” I answered. “I didn’t want to be alone,” Mara said. “I throw things away easier now, but I save things easier too,” I shared. She knew what I meant (something about knowing what was important and what was not) because we were speaking the same language. ~ From Death’s Poetry, The Jim and Dan Stories.

Mara and I share a love of writing as well as playing scrabble, but because she’s been busy with her creative writing classes at Hollins College, we haven’t seen each other much lately. Even so, she called me the day before I left for Boston to visit my father in the hospital, feeling that something was wrong.

“What can I do to help? Can I come over?” Mara asked when she learned that my father was in the ICU.

“I’m busy packing to go to Boston. Just keep me in your heart.” I answered, and then I added, in the language that we share, “I know that you know that I know you know, you know?”

Mara did know. She and I share what she has coined as “the grief bond.” And her phone call reminded me of another one described in “The Jim and Dan Stories…”

My friend, Mara, called to see how I was doing. I was crying over George Harrison’s death at the time. “I’ll call you right back,” I said… “If I had just lost a husband, it would be hard to find a few other people, let alone nine, who had just lost theirs and could offer support,” I said after she told me she was seeing a grief counselor. I had a built in support group! Is that why I couldn’t go a day without talking to my family members on the phone or through e-mail? Each of us has an individual way to grieve, yet I had nine others who really did know what I was going through. Two brothers dead a month apart, who else could relate to that? Mara had a little girl to take care of, and she hadn’t been back to the Pine Tavern to read her poetry since a woman there made a comment about her dress. “Red? I thought your husband just died,” the woman had said. Mara lost her boldness right there. ~From The Red Dress

Later, on the same day of our phone conversation, we ended up running into each other in town. She was coming from the Harvest Moon Health Food Store as I was on my way to it. We pulled over in front of "Oddfellas Cantina" and shared a big knowing hug on the side of the road… another language we have in common.

Update: I'm posting from the Hull Public Library. After this, my mother and I are heading out to see my father at the Tufts New Enlgand Medical Center. Over the course of the last few days, he has undergone several ups and downs. He's back on the ventilator but stable with that. He's lucidly present, which is a blessing. We're holding him in the light...

Posted by Colleen at 8:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (13)

AKA Landing: I found the dentist’s appointment card while rummaging through my pocketbook on October 29th. I was cleaning it out in preparation for my trip to Boston to visit my father in the hospital. The card said my next cleaning would be March 20. Isn’t that my dad’s birthday? The first day of spring? Will he still be here then? I wondered as my heart sank.

Everything was moving too fast. Even the sun moves across the sky fast this time of year, making the hours in a day short, and the pace of my trip preparation frantic. But I didn’t mind. I was trying to hold onto every last bit of normalcy. I felt safe in the daily routines of my life, even if packing added some extra work. I worried about what I would find in Boston and knew that once my plane landed there that my life might never be the same. The hospital staff had told my family that my father needed surgery to repair a broken neck vertebra, which he sustained in a recent car accident. At that point, a ventilator was breathing for him, and he was being tube fed. We were beginning to fear a worse case scenario and were gravely concerned about him undergoing surgery at his age (81) and in his condition.

On my last day home, one of the last things on my to-do list was to plant the 8 daffodil bulbs that I had recently bought at the Garden Center. Last year, I planted tulips and held a few aside, hoping to plant them the following year, once I had a better idea of where I wanted them. But when this year came along and I opened the brown bag of tulips bulbs, I found that they had crumbled to dust. I didn’t know how long I’d be in Boston. The ground might be frozen by the time I get home. I might really need to be cheered up this spring, I thought while digging in the garden.

Everything I did on that last day had a sense of intention and permanence to it. I learned when I lost my brothers, Jim and Dan, 4 years ago that the last few weeks of someone’s life might as well be set in stone because those are the memories you will play in your mind, over and over. Will my dad still be here when these daffodils bloom was all I could think of as I buried them.

If he wasn’t, I knew that daffodils wouldn't be enough to cheer me up.

The Good News Update: My dad was transferred from the regional hospital he was in to the New England Medical Center, where, according to their reassessment of his condition, it was determined that he would not be operated on. When I saw him Saturday, he was breathing on his own, and we were all feeling more encouraged and hopeful for his eventual recovery.

Posted by Colleen at 9:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (14)

Love makes people ferocious. ~ Michael Mead

My family tends to go through dramatic events in pairs. First there was a sister and a brother who were both hit by cars when they were teenagers. Both were pedestrians about the same age and needing to change the life course they were on when it happened, both sustained broken legs which required surgery and hardware, and both went on to live with an older sibling after their long recoveries.

When one of my niece’s was fighting for her life due to complications of pneumonia, a nephew was coming into the world under emergency duress. And of course losing my brothers, Jim and Dan, four years ago was the epitome of a family pattern of tragic symmetry. Their deaths paralleled and intertwined as though a plan was unfolding.

Earlier this week, another unbelievable family story unfolded in a synchronistic way. It started when I received a shocking email from my sister, Kathy (who has also blogged about this), telling me that our youngest sister had a grand mal seizure and was in the hospital. It was not her first seizure, but the last one she had was 13 years ago, incredibly…on the same date as this one. Her two young sons, heroes of the day, were with her when it happened. The six year old called 911.

Later that day, a second shocking email arrived in my mailbox. My mother and sisters were with my youngest sister in the hospital when a nurse came in and asked if they knew Robert Redman, my father! My father had been in a car accident, and the nurse did some detective work after he told the hospital staff when he was admitted that his daughter had a seizure earlier in the day and was in the same hospital. One was in room 12, the other in room 21.

My sister is home now and doing well, but my dad is still in the ICU. Although he is expected to recover, I can’t help but think of Jim, who was killed in a crushing industrial accident, when I think about the impact that my father endured. And I can’t help but re-live the experience of being with Dan in the ICU the last weeks of his life when I hear the ups and downs of my dad’s daily progress. Emails and phone calls between family members are flying across the air waves, nerves are raw, and tears are on the surface, just like those last weeks with Dan.

Blogging can also be a vehicle of synchronicity. On the same day, I was held in the grip of this family crisis, my blogger friend, Lu, unknowingly reminded of the strong bonds and love I have for my family. She had recently read my books and then reviewed them on her site. Here’s what she said about "The Jim and Dan Stories…"

…as much as this book is about colleen and her family and their tragedies...it is about my family and your family and anybody's family...it's about unconditional love...and bonds that can’t be broken...its about memories and legacy...it is about the human spirit.

Thanks, Lu! It seems that the story goes on…and so does the strength of the human spirit.

Photo: Family events occurring in pairs aren’t only those of a tragic nature. After the first 5 of us were born, the last four came in sets of two. These are the last two of the 9 Redman siblings in the early 1960s. They were inseparable at the time this photo was taken, and we could barely say the name of one of them without following it with the name of the other.

Posted by Colleen at 9:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (15)

I thought of my brothers, Jim and Dan, a lot during our road trip out west. Every time I saw an unusual cloud formation, I thought of Jim, the amateur weatherman with a flag at the Blue Hill Observatory erected in his honor after his death 4 years ago. Listening to music on the truck stereo, I thought about Dan, who died a month after Jim, because Dan was the one who used to turn me on to all the latest good music. I especially thought of him when “Let it Be” came on, the song my sisters and I sang to him just hours before he passed away.

It’s hard not to look out a stretch of endless highway, or stand on a mountaintop with an expansive view and not look for my brothers. In these situations the lack of them looms as large as the mystery of death feels close.

On the road trip, we drove our new/used Toyota Tundra, the same kind of truck that Dan drove when he and Jim came to visit me in Virginia just weeks before the first death, which made me remember the following conversation I had with Dan, excerpted here from “The Jim and Dan Stories.”

…Dan was proud to show off his new 2001 golden-beige Toyota Tundra to me. “I never would want a brand new car or truck. You need so much insurance and have to worry about every scratch,” I complained.

He had wanted Jim to have the Tundra if his liver transplant didn’t come through, and he took out a credit life insurance policy on it, just in case...

Ironically, I was writing this entry, while riding home from Colorado in the Tundra, on my brother Dan’s birthday, but, being on a road trip and barely knowing what day of the week it was, I didn’t know it. Later, when I checked my email, I saw a message from my sister Sherry to our family Love Link with the heading, *Happy Birthday to Dano.* No wonder I was thinking so much about him, I thought!

My brother Jim, who was a lover of storms, was more at home with the elements than he was with people. As the stories progressed, his essence began to emerge as the mysterious changing qualities of the moon... Dan was compassionate and generous. His bright light was personified by the sun. A silver and gold thread began to shine through the dullness of my grief and weave itself through the stories… The mythical presence of Jim and Dan, expressed through dreams, symbols, and the coincidences that my family and I shared, supported me in my grief and became the signposts out of it. (Jim and Dan Stories/Introduction)

Because Dan was not married, he named my parents the beneficiary of his new truck. After he died, the Tundra went to them. But at ages nearing 80, they weren’t about to drive a big truck and were able to get two cars, one for each of them, in trade for Danny’s. One is gold and the other is silver.

Two brand new cars sit in their driveway as big as life. One is gold and the other is silver. The physical manifestations of Jim and Dan in spirit? Two vehicles, or magical chariots to carry my parents safely and comfortably through the rest of their old age? The gold dust of sun? The silver dust of moon and stars? What magic is being woven? (Jim and Dan Stories)

Post note: Silver and Gold became the name of the small press my husband and I started and the web page in honor of my brothers, which is a contact site for my books.

Posted by Colleen at 9:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

It was the 4th anniversary of my brother Danny's death this past Monday. In honor of it, I’m posting an excerpt from “The Jim and Dan Stories,” the book I was compelled to write after losing my brother Jim, and then Dan, a month later.

Written in a conversational style, the book is structured by short seemingly disjointed stories that eventually tell a whole story, which is reflective of the way the mind re-members during the grief process. It's part a recounting of the last few weeks of my brother’s lives; part a humorous re-telling of growing up in an Irish Catholic family of 9 siblings during the 50s and 60s; and part a chronicle of the day to day living and writing my way through heartbreaking grief.

I thought I would post a favorite photo of Dan, but I can’t seem to bring myself to inject such a visual reminder into the present right now. There are photos of Jim and Dan and the rest of my large family (some of whom are mentioned below) on my website, Silver and Gold, a site dedicated to my brothers. My sister, Kathy, has also posted about losing Dan on "A Particularly Persistent Point of View."

The excerpt, “Shoes in the Closet,” is one of J&J’s Mom’s favorite, who said she laughed and cried while reading the book…sometimes at the same time!

Shoes in the Closet
My brother John had a dream shortly after Dan died. He had arrived at Dan’s apartment with the U-haul (which he actually did do weeks later) to close it down, and Dan was there. John was astounded! “Dan, you’re dead! How can this be,” he asked?

I asked for a pair of Dan’s shoes because I don’t want to forget my brother, the child he was, the man he was. I wish he could come back, like he did from Florida.

Posted by Colleen at 8:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (14)

This past Monday was the 4th anniversary of my brother Jimmy’s death. My brother Danny was destined to go a month after Jim. The photo is of my brothers, Bobby and Joey, raising Jim’s tribute flag at the 1st annual James Redman Memorial picnic, held at the Blue Hill Weather Observatory in Milton, Massachusetts, where Jim was a weather club member and volunteer. My sister-in-law, Jeanne, is our resident family clergy person who has married some of us. I attended the recent 4th annual memorial event when I was in Massachusetts. There, we came together as family and friends of Jim’s and at the end of the evening, Jeanne shared the following touching and original invocation.

We Remember

With the crash of the waves, We remember.
With the whisper of the wind, We remember.
With the sun on our face, We remember.
With every record breaking meteorological event, We remember.
With the storm on the horizon, We remember.

We remember that you are like the storm Jim,
just over the horizon, Though we cannot see you,
We remember that you are just beyond our view, waiting for us. And so it is with joy and gratitude that we remember. . .

The crash of the waves say "I love you".
The whisper of the wind says "I love you".
The sun kissing our face says "I love you".
I love you. . .we remember.

Note: “I Will Remember You” is the title of the song by Sarah Mclachlan that was played for Jim at his wake. Also, this past Monday, my sister wrote a moving piece about my brother's death on her blog "A Particularly Persistent Point of View." You can read it here.

Posted by Colleen at 9:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)

Walking on Nantasket Beach in my hometown peninsula of Hull, Massachusetts, makes me think of my brother Jim. Jim lived in Hull for most of his childhood and all of his adult life. He was an ardent weather enthusiast and a respected member of the local weather community who frequently took photographs at the beach, some of which were published. Later this month is the anniversary of his unexpected death in 2001, and The Blue Hill Observatory, where Jim was a volunteer, will be hosting the 4th annual Jim Redman memorial picnic (part of the reason I’m in Hull right now). After his death, the Observatory erected a flag with an inscribed dedication in Jim’s memory.

My brother Jim’s life and death were intimately intertwined with my brother Dan’s, who died a month after Jim did. This is the time of year that my family and I relive our heartbreak, and I find myself remembering a certain white feather…

Below is an excerpt from “The Jim and Dan Stories,” the book I wrote about losing my brothers.

It was a perfect white feather that must have just fallen, but it seemed to have been placed in my path just for me. I was walking on the beach in Hull, the beach that Jimmy so often took storm photographs of, trying to gather my strength for his funeral and thinking of the eulogy I was to give. I found myself picking up that feather to save in my pocket and then later putting it with Jim’s body when I said my last goodbye. For me, it represented other-world, freedom, and purity.

Weeks later, we were facing the worst with Dan in the hospital, an unlikely place for a white feather to show up, but it did. Jeanne, my sister-in-law, pulled it out of her pocketbook (not knowing about the white feather I left with Jim’s body), saying her daughter had given it to her. We called ourselves “the three ministering Mary’s,” Jeanne, my sister Kathy, and myself, tending Danny at his death bed, the way Mary Magdalene, Mother Mary, and her cousin did for Jesus. That was when it occurred to me that death faced willingly, and especially after suffering, was a sort of sacrifice and generator of grace. And didn’t Danny say “I’m all right” the first chance he got when the breathing tubes came off, the way Jesus said “forgive them, Father,” comforting us when he was dying? continued...

Continue reading "The White Feather" »

Posted by Colleen at 12:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (26)

I recently posted a photo of my childhood home in Hull, Massachusetts, which was taken by eminent domain and burned to the ground to make way for a town sewage plant. Several people who loved that house as much as I did left comments. I also got this comment from a blogger friend, “I didn't realize that so many of your readers are your siblings. I'm a little jealous.”

“Well, there were 9 of us. So the odds of me getting some of my siblings to my blog are pretty good,” I told her. But the real reason more than half of my siblings and niece have been to my blog is probably because of something called “The LoveLink.” Let me explain…

After my brother Jimmy died unexpectedly 4 years ago, my brother Dan’s health, which was compromised by a liver disease, deteriorated rapidly. Because our family was still recovering from the shock of Jimmy’s death, a childhood friend of Dan’s flew with him back to Houston, where Danny had been living for the previous 22 years. He wanted to go home for “closure,” he told us.

He only got to spend part of one night in his own bed, before being transported to the hospital, where he remained for the next 2 weeks, until his death. Since it was looking pretty serious for Dan, one of us had fly to Houston to be with him. I volunteered. It wasn’t long before the doctor gave me Dan’s shocking prognosis and I called my sister, Kathy, to say, “Come now. I need you.”

In the weeks that my sister and I lived at Dan’s apartment, my mother came and left and my sister-in law, a hospice nurse, came just days before Dan passed. It was during this time that the LoveLink, an e-mail group consisting of mostly family members and a few Redman family fans, began. Each night, Kathy or I would type the day’s events and news about Dan to the group, who were hanging on our every word. It was actually called “The Sister Group” back then. I’m not sure why, because the brothers were online too. Maybe it was called “The Sister Group” because the sisters in my family are either more talkative than the brothers or they type faster.

After Dan died, I typed my last wrenching post to the group…For those of you who don’t already know, we lost our precious Dan today…and the e-mail group ended.

Just weeks after Dan died, the twin towers in New York came down. My niece, who also lived in Virginia, revived the e-mail group under the new name of VA/MA LoveLink so that we could keep each other updated on changing world events. Since that date, nearly 4 years ago, we haven’t missed a day posting something…political, personal, or comical… to each other on the LoveLink. Because Jim and Dan were online before they died, I can’t even bring myself delete my siblings e-mails, knowing how much Jim and Dan’s e-mails meant to me after the died, and fearing another loss.

I started blogging only recently, in March of 2004. I wanted my siblings to participate in my blog from day one, but it took time. Except for my sister, Kathy, who has her own blog, most didn’t completely understand the nature of blogging. I cut and pasted each day’s entry and sent it to the LoveLink… until slowly and occasionally some of them came to my site and even left comments.

It means the world to me when they do.

To read more of my family story you can go to my silver and gold website, which is dedicated to my brothers.

Posted by Colleen at 9:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (11)

Death is real. It comes without warning. No one escapes it. Soon my body will be a corpse. ~ Buddhist passage

When my brothers, Jim and Dan, died a month apart in 2001, the reality of impermanence hit me hard. I’ve been reading about death and contemplating it ever since. Although I’ve experienced firsthand how it feels to have a loved one die, I still don’t understand death. Most of us don't. We know it happens, but when it happens in our own family, our innocence is shattered and our understanding is reduced to that of a child’s. Where do we come from? Where do we go? How do you lose a person? Below are some of my attempts at putting into words the stages I’ve lived through coping with loss over the last few years.

~ In the first year, you look the same, but you’re different. Someone who was a part of you is gone. You feel as if you’ve been abducted by aliens who have conducted experiments that have changed you. You look around for others who have also been abducted (lost a loved one) to compare notes with. You know those who haven’t lost someone close yet will be abducted someday too. But you can’t tell them much about it, because they won’t believe you.

~ The first couple of years: You know how it is when you’ve lost a tooth, and your tongue keeps going to the spot where the tooth used to be? Your tongue is drawn to feel the remaining sharp edges and to repeatedly examine the huge gapping hole left in the tooth’s place. You realize you’ll have to learn to eat differently. It’s sort of like that, losing someone you love. Your mind is compelled to review every detail of your loved ones life and death. It’s a seductive kind of torture that feels good while it hurts.

~ By the 3rd year after losing a loved one, you’re busy with your life. You don’t cry much. Things seem okay, but then you remember: They’re gone. They’re still really gone. It’s like getting the punch line to a very bad joke, over and over.

Posted by Colleen at 9:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (32)