My Uncle Tom committed suicide this week.
I left work early on Monday when I found out. I stayed home Tuesday and most of Wednesday. I attended a meeting on Wednesday afternoon and faltered. Not so that you would know that someone in my family died, but more like I skipped a track or two: off somehow. Unfortunately, it was a meeting with the top ‘executives’ from the School excepting only the Dean: COO, Registrar, Director of Marketing and Director of IT. My best guess is I still have a job Monday, but it is entirely possible that cutting off the COO, correcting the IT Director, followed by laughing at the Director of Marketing might undermine my request for a raise. Fortunately, I have not yet isolated the new Registrar, which is good because I genuinely like her.
So, it was probably good that Thursday I had signed up for an all day training. Remarkably, I kept my forehead from smashing into the monitor on multiple occasions. I even responded verbally to a question. Kudos to me.
The remaining time, when not actively trying to keep it together for my kids, I have been walking/running or submersing myself in distraction. From Monday through Thursday, I logged 60.5 km walking/running and 20km bicycling (Tuesday only). I watched an entire season of Bosch, an Amazon Prime, while completing a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle before leaving for the training Thursday morning. Laugh you may at my achievement, but it was a puzzle entirely made up of fruit (the grapes were especially difficult).
What I have not been able to do since I found out Monday is write. I have logged 44 blog entries since I started this blog in mid August. Taking off five days since the last post seems noteworthy.
Writing this blog began as a way to replace journaling. My fingers simply cannot grip a pen for an extended period of time anymore. Typing comes easily – or at least I have a strong familiarity with the Delete key. Why blogging instead of Google docs? I guess because I always expected someone to read my journals someday. This simply removes one or two barriers to entry. Of course, I am still conflicted about the public nature. I want people to read, but I don’t want certain people to know. I look everyday to see if posts have been read (I cannot tell by who just a hit count), and sigh when a post has no visits. Yet, I fear people reading it, because I am pounding posts out with numerous typos and ill-formed sentences/concepts. I cringe at Sandy’s frustration with others reading tales about him. But somehow, I better understand myself for being understood, and the only way I know to share these dreadful thoughts is through words.
My mother’s family is filled with manic and morbid thinkers. My mother writes beautifully. Much better than I do. My aunt Autumn used to write before she died, but honestly, I think her gift with words was verbal. She could speak so compellingly. I was not the only one to think so; over the years she developed a following. Given a little more confidence and consistency, she would have made a fine guru. Likely the Jim Jones sort, but inspirational until the end. My grandmother can speak endlessly. Every few words sprinkled with a self-effacing laugh. For her, words have never been wrestled and wrangled together to convey some greater meaning. Each one is its own unique puzzle: crosswords a daily treat for her. Language was never my uncle Tom’s friend. My memories of him almost always include comfortable silences. He could listen like few others. From my childhood well into my adulthood, he would listen to me ramble on. For his own expression, he painted or drew. But mostly he just withdrew. Often instead, he drank. From what I know now, he gave that up for years until this episode. Of course, my mother used to drink, too. Words cannot prevent alcoholism. Their remaining sister, my aunt Midge, well, I don’t know. I suspect that her thoughts have always been something she sprinted after but never quite captured into the words or sketches. When I think of my aunt Midge, I get the manic but less morbid. This is not to say that she has a positive world view. My mom referred to them all as broken. Her exact words:
We are all broken – glued back together the best we know how. Sometimes the fractures weaken us, so that any jot causes us to crumble. Sometimes the light that is our soul shines through the cracks, making us like lanterns, leading others through the dark.
Yesterday, I spent an hour facetiming with my cousin, Ryan, Midge’s son. We slipped readily into a conversation that we had paused over a decade ago. Our words capturing less than the shared look in our eyes. Something so sorrowful in the smiles we both wear so readily. But I should not dismiss the vocabulary we share. Our dictionaries are compiled and edited by the same publisher. I do not know if he captures his thoughts into written words, or if he finds the same release when vocalizing his thoughts that I do, but I can hope for him that he does. Whether it is discussion or journaling, I often find it’s the only way that I can untangle the knots and threads of racing thoughts in my head.
Tom’s suicide momentarily stripped me of words. In doing that, it undermined and threatened everything that I had gained in the past months. The weekend before I had been considering taking one of my blog posts and editing it for submission. I had small, unripe fantasies blooming in my brain of writing regularly. Of a publication and then a following on the blog. I imagined quitting my job and typing away like Jenny Lawson or Elizabeth Jayne Liu. Never that funny or poetic, of course. Never a complete book, but still something.
Then Tom died. My first thought was that his suicide would be a deterrent. Instead it rang true. Too true. I stopped being angry and wanting change. I just felt trapped again. Days I spent trapped in a wordless cave. Today, I am peaking out. The whole world feels absurd, like a Dr. Seuss tongue twister. But I am able to look at it. Observe it. Be in it to some small extent.