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Page 1Sinister Wisdom 68/69

Audre Lorde$9 US

Fall 2006“...within the war we are all waging withthe forces of death, subtle and otherwise,
conscious or not - I am not only a casualty,
I am also a warrior.”

sinister wisdom

Death, Grief
andSurviving

68/69

194603_inside

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Page 1

Publisher: Sinister Wisdom, Inc.

Sinister Wisdom 68/69
Fall 2006

Managing Editor: Fran Day
Guest Editors: Judith K. Witherow and Sue Lenaerts
Layout and Design: Sue Lenaerts, Judith K. Witherow
Board of Directors: Judith K. Witherow, Rose Provenzano, Joan Nestle,
Susan Levinkind, Fran Day, Shaba Barnes
Coordinator: Susan Levinkind
Proofreaders: Deb Friedman, Sue Lenaerts, Meredith Pond, Riggin
Waugh, Judith K. Witherow
Web Design: Sue Lenaerts
Mailing Crew for #67: Linda Bacci, Fran Day, Roxanna Fiamma, jody
jewdyke, Susan Levinkind, Moire Martin, Jan Shade and Stacee Shade
Special Thanks to: Deb Friedman, Kim Fusch, Meredith Pond, Riggin
Waugh
Front Cover Art: “Grief ” by Sue Lenaerts
Back Cover Art: “Bedstead” by Morgan Gwenwald
SINISTER WISDOM, founded 1976
Former editors and publishers:
Harriet Ellenberger (aka Desmoines)
And Catherine Nicholson (1976-1981)
Michelle Cliff and Adrienne Rich (1981-1983)
Michaele Uccella (1983-1984)
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz (1983-1987)
Elana Dykewomon (1987-1994)
Caryatis Cardea (1991-1994)
Akiba Onada-Sikwoia (1995-1997)
Margo Mercedes Rivera-Weiss (1997-2000)
Sinister Wisdom is a multicultural, multi-class, female-born lesbian space. We seek
to open, consider and advance the exploration of community issues. We recognize the power of language to reflect our diverse experiences and to enhance ourability to develop critical judgement, as lesbians evaluating our community andour world.
Copyright © 2006 Sinister Wisdom, Inc.
All rights revert to individual authors and artists.
ISSN: 0196-1853. Printed in the U. S. on recycled paper.

Sinister Wisdom, Inc. PO Box 3252, Berkeley, CA 94703, USA
www.sinisterwisdom.org

Submission Guidelines
Submissions and correspondence for SW #71 only should be sent to:sbirdstone@hotmail.com or to Chrystos & S. Birdstone, 3250 S 77th #8,
Tacoma, WA 98409. Send material for SW #72 to fran@sonic.net or FranDay, PO Box 1180, Sebastopol, CA 95473. See page 7 for details. Please
read the submission guidelines below before sending material.
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Submission Guidelines: Please read carefully.
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fall 2006

1

A Journal by and for LesbiansContents
Notes for a Magazine .................................. Judith K. Witherow .................. 5
Upcoming Issues: Call for Submissions .......................................................... 7
Grief ............................................................... Pam McAllister .......................... 8This Morning ............................................... Meredith Pond .......................... 9
Keening in Bangor ...................................... Carolyn Gage........................... 10
Blessings on this day of challenges ........... Susan Eschbach ...................... 15
again ............................................................... Kamila Rina ............................. 20
No Lights, No Sirens .................................. Riggin Waugh .......................... 22
Fierce Love in Times of Storm ................. Pat Browne .............................. 23
Jeans Jacket ................................................... Maria Fama .............................. 30
My Beautiful Friend .................................... Tee A. Corinne ........................ 32
For Gloria ..................................................... Michelle Sewell ........................ 40
Her Face in the Mirror ................................ Tita Caldwell ............................ 41
Swallows on the Coast ................................ Janet E. Aalfs ........................... 46
Home ............................................................. Meredith Pond ........................ 47
Gloria, I Remember .................................... Janet E. Aalfs ........................... 52
Nana Love .................................................... Shan Casey ............................... 53
Somewhere Between
Hell and Eternity .................................. Janet Mason ............................. 54
Janie’s Saxaphone ......................................... Riggin Waugh .......................... 60
Some Thoughts on Not Dying .................. Judy Freespirit ......................... 62
Surrender ...................................................... Joan Annsfire ........................... 68
Your Suicide, My Mop-up .......................... Marcia Perlstein ....................... 69
Thursday Night Sketches............................ Stacy Traiger ............................ 75
How it Was ................................................... Jean Sirius ................................. 78
Where Do Poems Come From ................. Silverbear .................................. 85
I See Her in Her Braids .............................. Carmen de Monteflores ........ 86
Tisha B’Av .................................................... Elliott Femynye bat Tzedek .. 89
Precious Dog Love ...................................... Loonwomon ............................ 90
Rope ............................................................... Teya Schaffer ........................... 95
Flung, Holding a River/At My Father’s Funeral ........................ Gigi Ross .................................. 96
First Anniversary of Her Son’s Suicide .... Suzanne Gary .......................... 97
Devil’s Slide .................................................. Chana Wilson .......................... 98

2sinister wisdom #68/69 — Death, Grief and Surviving

Janet Sergi Lives ........................................... Chocolate Waters .................. 103
Sestina for Two Women ............................. Rachel Pray ............................ 104
Silent Conversations .................................... Chelsey Clammer .................. 106
With My Mother at the Women’s Museum/My Mother Asleep ....................................... Jeanne Lupton ....................... 111
Death, Disability, andGifts from the Future.. ........................ Pat Gowens ............................ 112
Headstone for Dad ...................................... Chocolate Waters .................. 116
David My Son .............................................. Ruth Mountaingrove ............ 117
Dead Brother ................................................ Esther Morris Leidolf .......... 120
Bo Dog Teaches the
Meaning of Tashlich ........................... Elliott Femynye bat Tzedek 122
Grief Monologue ........................................ Stacy Traiger .......................... 124
Conversation ................................................ Uncumber .............................. 127
I Miss You Much ......................................... Angela Lester ......................... 128
The Loss........................................................ Joyce Frohn ........................... 129
Butch Hug ..................................................... Hawk Madrone ..................... 130
Why I Don’t Play the Guitar Anymore .... Maria Fama ............................ 136
Silence ............................................................ Susan Eschbach .................... 138
Midnight Sun ................................................ Joan Annsfire ......................... 139
It All Seems Like Dying .............................. Lynn Brown ........................... 140
Steel Shapes Our Lives ............................... Julie R. Enszer ....................... 142
Constant Blame ............................................ Lisa Kraft ............................... 143
Losing Ambrosia ......................................... Catherine Friend ................... 144
Beverly ........................................................... Suzanne Gary ........................ 147
One More Time ........................................... Shirley Brozzo ....................... 148
The Cat Contacts My First Lover ............. Kit Kennedy .......................... 154
Didn’t Feel Like Myself ............................... Trena Machado ..................... 155
Forever Changed ......................................... Donna Mattucci .................... 156
Alien in the Land of the Yellow Eyes ...... Pam McAllister ...................... 158
Handheld Objects ........................................ Mary Merriam ....................... 159
Turning the Wheel ....................................... Brenwyn ................................. 160
Coping With Loss ........................................ Teresa Campbell ................... 162
Remembering ............................................... Carla Schick ........................... 167
Memory ......................................................... Louise Moore ........................ 168
Sheila Hein .................................................... Peg Neff ................................. 169
The Unimaginable Gift ............................... Nancy Taylor ......................... 170

fall 20063

Spring 2000 ................................................... Lilith Rogers .......................... 175
A Somebody Else’s Funeral ....................... Izabela Filipiak ...................... 176
Two Worlds ................................................... Janell Moon ........................... 182
Tanka ............................................................. Linda Zeiser ........................... 183
Body Loss ..................................................... Rebecca Frye ......................... 184
Jean ................................................................. Marjory Nelson ..................... 186
So Long Old Mate ....................................... Barbara Taylor ....................... 190
Fall Out of Bed/
Two Daughters ...................................... Judith Rechter ........................ 191
Gorse Lodge Greystones ........................... Gabriella West ....................... 192
In a Deeper Sense ........................................ Vicki Currier .......................... 198
Funeral Arrangements ................................ Riggin Waugh ........................ 200
Ode to Sarah ................................................. Jessica W. Giles ...................... 202
Nettle ............................................................. Teya Schaffer ......................... 205
CODA ........................................................... Cynthia Rich .......................... 206
Grief ............................................................... Sandy Tate .............................. 212
In The Vestibule .......................................... Jane Mara ............................... 214
Cardboard Coffin ........................................ Judith K. Witherow .............. 216
Time ............................................................... Laura O’Brady ....................... 218
To Jane ........................................................... P.E. MacDavid ...................... 219
Letting Go .................................................... Lynn Martin ........................... 220
Searching for Dyke in
My Family History: ............................... Maura Ryan ............................ 222
Do We Have Enough Heat/
Half-a-Century Old .............................. Lynn Strongin........................ 226
losing/pause ....................................................... Alice Mohor .......................... 228
Moving On ................................................... Barbara Taylor ....................... 229
Approaching Sestina ................................... Rachel Pray ............................ 230
Book Review
Midwifing Death ...................................... Lilith Rogers .......................... 232
Contributors’ Notes ....................................................................................... 235
Back Issues ...................................................................................................... 254
Subscriptions ................................................................................................... 255
Sinister Wisdom News ...................................................................................... 256
Submission Guidelines ..................................................................... Back cover4sinister wisdom #68/69 — Death, Grief and Surviving

ART
Grief ............................................................... Sue Lenaerts .......... Front Cover
End of the Line ........................................... Sue Lenaerts .............................. 6
Crying Womon ............................................. Sudie Rakusin .......................... 11
Untitled .......................................................... Morgan Gwenwald ................. 31
Beverly, Five Days Before She Died ......... Tee A. Corinne ........................ 34
Garden Womon ........................................... Sudie Rakusin .......................... 43
Michigan Womyns’ Music Festival ............ Meredith Pond ........................ 49
After a Michigan Rain ................................. Meredith Pond ........................ 51
Fran Day’s Altar for Gloria ........................ Roxanna Fiamma .................... 52
the anniversary pictures .............................. Jean Sirius ........................... 80-81
Altar for My Dead ....................................... Jean Sirius ................................. 83
Sudie Rakusin ............................................... Girl and Her Dog ................... 92
Cathy .............................................................. Elita Nieri............................... 112
Cathy and Pat Dancing ............................... Elita Nieri............................... 114
Daisy Wolf Womon .................................... Sudie Rakusin ........................ 121
Search ............................................................ Judith K. Witherow .............. 129
Death Beckons ............................................. Judith K. Witherow .............. 141
Stairway ......................................................... Morgan Gwenwald ............... 154
Pond Womon ............................................... Sudie Rakusin ........................ 161
Multiple Sclerosis ......................................... Sue Lenaerts .......................... 165
Bodyworks 2 ................................................. Saskia Scheffer ...................... 185
Portal ............................................................. Morgan Gwenwald ............... 195
Untitled .......................................................... Morgan Gwenwald ............... 203
Gooseflesh .................................................... Sudie Rakusin ........................ 221
Midwifing Death .......................................... Courtesy Plainview Press .... 233
Bodyworks 1 ................................................. Saskia Scheffer ...................... 234
Judith’s Dia de los Muertos Altar .............. Sue Lenaerts .......................... 250
Bedstead ........................................................ Morgan Gwenwald . Back CoverUncredited photos and artwork by Sue Lenaerts and Judith K. Witherowfall 2006

5

Notes for a Magazine
If anyone decides that an issue about death, grief and surviving is too
depressing to read, she will miss a major chance to understand how thisthreesome profoundly affects Lesbians. The overwhelming majority ofwriting on coping with illness or death is geared towards the heterosexual
community, neglecting what often are some of the most difficult aspects
for Lesbians.
The writing in this issue makes it clear that we need to define what isrequired to help one another surpass unnecessary mental and physicalsuffering. Too many times planning is either neglected or done in such a
way that the medical establishment won’t adhere to the wishes of either
partner.
There is one certainty in life—none of us will escape death of self or
numerous loved ones. During the past few years a number of famous women
and women activists in our community have passed away. Added to thisnumber are countless family members, partners, friends and pets who loved
us as we loved them. Knowing how to ease the ongoing pain requires the
input of everyone who has survived such trauma.
Sadly, I speak these words from recent experience. The sudden deathof a precious younger sister intensified the agony more than I ever imagined
possible. In retrospect I feel her loss more than that of my parents. Perhaps
the death of someone younger eludes my understanding. I thought sharing
the editing with my partner of thirty years, Sue, would uncover the feelings
we were suppressing, and help both of us work through the grief. Thisbelief couldn’t have been further from reality. No one truly knows what
tragedy feels like until it touches her personally. Every individual has toexperience loss and recovery at her own pace.
To begin the quest for answers to the countless questions involved, weneed to understand what brought each to this place in time. The stories,
poetry and artwork woven together in the issue speak in heartbreaking terms
about what losing a loved one involves.
Reading about the crushing grief of so many others non-stop broughtme to my knees countless times. We know the inner and outer suffering
when it’s our own, but when the description of borderline unbearable pain
is repeated over and over and over again by strangers, it touches a part of us
we never knew existed. If we truly care for each other as a community, we
should be willing to share these burdens when they arise. Offer needed help
without waiting for an invitation. Should your mind start searching for an6sinister wisdom #68/69 — Death, Grief and Surviving

excuse, don’t be surprised at the quietness of your phone when the Spirits
whisper your name.
If you learn nothing else from what’s written and shared, be sure tohave others help monitor the care provided when a crisis occurs. Death is
not the only outcome of various health matters. I’ve had enough close calls
when hospitalized to know mistakes happen on a regular basis. Trust yourinstincts and the knowledge of those who are aware of the overall situation.
Equally important is recognizing that the amount of time for grieving
is limitless. No deadline exists when losing someone you love is concerned.
Grief is like pain—whatever affects you is the worst possible ache. You
can’t compare your own pain to the hurt of another. Understanding, without
placing time limits, is a major step in the direction of healing.
The tremendous work by the women who contributed to this issue ofSinister Wisdom will insure that others believe Lesbians seriously need toconfront death, grief and surviving as an important ongoing effort. We
need to recognize that we are as
closeted in our outlook on loss as wehave been in every other aspect
touching our lives.
In closing I’d like to say weregret that contributions by everyone
couldn’t be published. Even a double
issue didn’t allow for room to include
all of the submissions. In an effort
to make sure a variety of ideas on thissubject were covered, some writing
and artwork had to be omitted.
Last, but not least, if Honey
hadn’t shared and supplied non-stop
work, this issue wouldn’t have beenpossible—like so many things in life.

Judith K. Witherow

Photo by Sue Lenaerts

fall 2006

7

Upcoming Issues: Call for Submissions
See Submission Guidelines on the inside back cover. Please help spread theword about these issues. Thanks.
#70 Sinister Wisdom’s 30th Anniversary Celebration Issue
Forthcoming Spring 2007
Editor: Fran Day#71 Two Spirit Women of First Nations
Deadline: March 1, 2007
Guest Editors: Chrystos (Menominee) and Sunny Birdstone (Ktunaxa)
Colonialization has marginalized Indigenous women (as well as men), making
Native Dykes almost completely invisible. We celebrate the survival of Two
Spirit women of First Nations in this issue. Submissions may be in any
format - taped interviews, dialogues, as well as fiction, poetry, etc. Pleaserespect certain definitions, which have often been violated - ie. we ask forwork from Lesbians who are Native in this lifetime only, recognized by theirtribes or communities (although a BIA number is not required) and willingto use their name rather than a pseudonym (this is to help prevent
submissions of non-authentic work). We define Indigenous Dykes as comingfrom the Americas, as well as the Pacific (Hawaii, New Zealand, Australia),
with a land base (ie. reservation, ranchero, etc.) and a tribal affiliation (Maori,
Koori, Cree, etc.). Government recognition of tribal status is not necessary(ie. we recognize the Duwamish). We are particularly interested in stories
from dykes who were in residential schools, Elders, incarcerated, & in honorof those who have passed on (Barbara Cameron NationShield, Smiley
Hillaire). Edited by Chrystos (Menominee) and Sunny Birdstone(Ktunaxa). Megwetch.
Send material for #71 only to: sbirdstone@hotmail.com or to Chrystos& S. Birdstone, 3250 S 77th #8, Tacoma, WA 98409#72 Utopia Deadline: August 1, 2007 Editor: Fran Day
Send to fran@sonic.net or Fran Day, PO Box 1180, Sebastopol, CA
95473.
Details at www.sinisterwisdom.org

8

sinister wisdom #68/69 — Death, Grief and Surviving

Pam McAllister

Grief
Evicted from happiness,
I arrive at grief’s shabby motel,
suitcase in hand.
The conditions are appalling,with tear stains everywhere in a corner of the ceiling,around the hissing radiator,
under the sink.
The bed is lumpy; I won’t sleep.
A bare bulb glares; all is bleak.
There are etchings on the wall,
stark memories, black and white.
I know every corner of this room, I’ve visited before,
remember well the smell of dust and mold.
The wallpaper has faded from blue to gray.
It’s peeling or has been torn as if one could allay
This useless clawing, a gesture of despair,the futility, fear, frustration that’s here.
I vow not to stay long,
but for now, these stains, peeling paper, bare bulb
are all I need. The clock is unplugged;
the curtains drawn.
I trust I’ll want the sun, flush hours, flowers,
concerts, friends again, but for today
observe the “Do Not Disturb” signand stay away.
I’ve closed the door
and moved in.

fall 2006

Meredith Pond

This Morning(for Joan Dickenson)
A cardinal as red as a valentine
perches on the fencepost this morningand in the neighbor’s yard, the silver oaks
reach up through the white sheet of sky
as if to beckon you back to earth.
You could be here, Joan, all healed,
perusing today’s politics in the paper
as I bring you some tea and remind youof that morning on Block Island
when you decided to do another load of laundrywell before the others were even awake.
I found you standing on tiptoes, bare breasted,reaching into the dryer with both arms
disappeared deep inside, feeling for a sockor one of your startling bandanas.
You have resplendent breasts, I said,
and you turned, smiling, to show me
your handiwork laid out on the table, all neatly folded,
like a baroness from the Middle Ages revealing her riches.
We were East of everything that day
twelve miles out from Galilee and Sand Hill Covesharing a week of writing and cooking
and good company with our friends
Your old blue station wagon in the ferry lot
on the mainland waited for you to returnlike a devoted dog sound asleep on the warm asphalt,
not worried about anything, and with no ideaof your body giving out, or up, or in, any time soon.
“Love each other,” you said on the phonefrom your hospital bed. “Love each other.”Staring into the receiver, I promised to try.
“Get well,” I said. “Please.”9

10

sinister wisdom #68/69 — Death, Grief and Surviving

Carolyn Gage

Keening in Bangor
On March 27, 1998, at 9:30 PM on a Friday night, two sixteen-year-old girls, CassRoberts and Emily Stupak, drove their car into a grove of birch trees at a speed estimatedby police to have been over 100 miles-an- hour, at “Dead Man’s Curve” on LevantRoad, just outside the town center of Levant, Maine, west of Bangor. Cass and Emily
were in love with each other.
“Keening” is derived from the Irish word, “caoineadh,” meaning to
cry or lament. It is a deep, heartfelt vocalization over the dead, somewhere
between a scream, a sob, and a wail. The sound of keening is profoundly
disturbing to the human ear, which may be why it has been associated withsupernatural traditions. It was believed that keening provided the soul of
the recently deceased with a chaperone to the Otherworld. To keen too
soon after death was to risk waking the devil’s dogs, who could potentiallyintercept the soul in its passage. On the other hand, if the keening was toolong delayed, there was the danger that the soul would have already departed
for its journey in a perilously unchaperoned state.
Whether as a spirit escort or a catharsis for the living, keening wasperceived by the Church as a political threat, and, for a time, it was banned
as a pagan practice. Silence was officially instituted as the only dignified andappropriate response to grief. Apparently, those piercing, eerie, and peculiarly
female-sounding wails were considered outside the bounds of Church
decorum and colonial occupation.
But grief itself lies on the extremity of human experience, and whatmore fitting expression than a sound situated on the boundary of humanexpression? Keening has been characterized as a way of emotionally purging
an unassimilable loss, in much the same way as vomiting (another indecorousact) can purge the stomach of potentially toxic content.
I practiced keening for the first time this year. It was in a small town incentral Maine, about two hours north of Portland, where I live. I had gone
there on a mission. One might even call it a pilgrimage. I wanted to visit
the site where two sixteen-year-old girls had driven their car at what wasestimated to be over a hundred-miles-an-hour into a grove of birch trees.
The treacherous ninety-degree curve in the road was known locally as “DeadMan’s Curve,” but these deaths had been no accident. There were no skid

fall 2006

11

marks, alcohol had not been involved, and a suicide note had been left on
the seat of the car. The contents of the note were never disclosed to the
public, because the police had chosen to turn it over to the parents. Their
official explanation for their silence? “The families have already sufferedenough.”No doubt the families suffered, although I am not sure what it means
to “suffer enough.” One thing is clear: The two girls had suffered beyond
what they could bear. And nobody was allowed to talk about that. The
silence was and is still deafening. Keening has been banned. By the unspoken
rules of small-town
preservation of family
secrets, keening had again
been banned.
The media gave thedoublesuicideperfunctory, evasive
coverage, either out of
respect for the privacy of
the families, or concern
for their own reputation,
or both. The disappearednote, which could haverelieved the media of
their temerity overascribing the “L word” toCrying Womon
Sudie Rakusin
the victims, had been
ignorantly suppressed. In a small rural town in the middle of Maine, people
would not have understood that lesbianism was an integral part of the story
and that acknowledgement of it would have been a mark of respect for thedead. Instead, they would have taken their local newspaper to task forsensationalizing a tragedy and desecrating the memory of the girls. Highschool friends, possibly even more intimidated than the press, shuffled
their feet and gave vague responses to reporters: “You never saw one without
the other . . .” and “They were always pretty much together.” One especiallybrave classmate, went so far as to say, “I hope this has made kids think . . .
Did they know we loved them?”
Probably not. According to one recent study, 97% of students in a
public high school hear homophobic remarks from their peers.1 One reporterin Iowa found that the typical high school student hears anti-lesbian or anti-

12sinister wisdom #68/69 — Death, Grief and Surviving

gay slurs more than twenty-five times a day.2 In a fourteen-city study of gay,lesbian and bisexual youth, 80% reported verbal abuse, 44% reported threatsof attack, 33% reported having objects thrown at them and 30% reported
being chased or followed.3 Lesbian and gay youth are two-to-six times more
likely to attempt suicide, and this population may account for nearly a thirdof all completed suicides among teens.4 In the Massachusetts study, 46%
who identified as gay, lesbian or bisexual had attempted suicide in the past
year compared to 8.8% of their peers. 5
Despite the silence of the press, there were the rumors. According toa source close to one of the girls, they had both come out to their families
just one day before the accident, and the members of one of the families
had been Christian fundamentalists – fundamentalists who viewed
homosexuality as perverted and sinful. If this was true, it might explain
why only one family had reported the girls missing on the night of theaccident.
If it is true the girls had just come out to their parents, this paints us apainful picture of the girls’ last day together. Had they been forbidden to
see each other? Had they spent the day together anyway, knowing that they
were defying their families? The day was a Friday. Were they unwilling toface their first weekend without any contact with each other? The time ofdeath was 9:30 PM. How long did they drive around? Had the suicide
been planned earlier in the day, or was it a last-minute, panicked response to
the approach of their curfew? Were they afraid to go home? Was this thefirst time they had ever violated curfew, openly defied their parents? Were
they afraid of violence? Was lying an option? Wasn’t there anyone, anywhere
to whom they could turn? Was the note something they composed together,agonizing over the precise use of words that would enable the world tounderstand their love – or was it something hastily scrawled, just minutes
before acceleration?
The accident was not reported until the next morning. Their car had
been hidden from view under a canopy of branches bent low from thewinter ice storms. The tree that they hit was large for a birch, about two feetin diameter. Badly gashed, it did not fall. The police speculated, judging
from the damage to the car, that the girls must have been traveling very fastand died immediately on impact.
I had difficulty at first locating this “Dead Man’s Curve.” There were
two roads with the same name, more or less in the same county, and I had
driven to the wrong one. Failing to locate any part of the road that could
even remotely qualify as a “dead man’s curve,” I had given up and stopped

fall 2006

13

at a coffee shop. Rechecking my sources, I realized my error and was soonon my way to the other road. This time there was no need to search for thesite. It was impossible to miss. About a half-mile outside of town, at aright-angle bend and under a grove of birch trees, there were two white,wooden, hand-made crosses. A photograph of one of the girls was nailed
above the gash on the tree that had been hit. Someone had lettered thenames of the girls on the crosses and painted a tiny red heart on each of the
opposing arms of the cross, where they touched––almost.
I had not really planned what I would do once I located the site, butsuddenly here I was. I parked on the opposite side of the road and crossed
to the birch grove. There were few cars on this country road, and I wasalone. It was a fall day, rainy, and most of the leaves from the trees had
already fallen. As I stood there, the idea of keening came to me. I felt apain deep in my chest and a constriction in my throat. It was as if there wassomething stuck inside me that I couldn’t get out. Strangled with grief, I
was simultaneously choking from rage. And so I began. The sound camespontaneously. The constriction in my throat shaped the sound of my pain,
and perhaps this is why keening is so cathartic. It gives voice to theunspeakable. I thought again of the Church’s ban on keening, relating it to
the silence and media blackout on the motivation for these girls’ deaths, thecensorship of their final words -- words that may have been intended tochange the world, and words that easily could have done just that.
What happens when people are not allowed the full expression of
their grief ? Is it true that an emotion not fully expressed, is one that is not
fully felt? And when one does not feel one’s feelings, what happens tothem? In the case of these deaths, some of that taboo grief was transformed
into fear. Fellow lesbians in the high school were deeply traumatized by thisevent, taking a giant step back into their closets. Some of the stifled grief
was transmuted to anger directed at the dead girls, that they could not workout their problems, that they should have shown more consideration toward
their classmates than to kill themselves. Where was the anger toward thepolice who made the high-handed decision to protect the contents of thenotes, clearly in opposition to the intention of the girls who martyredthemselves in part to get their story out? Where was the anger toward achurch that condemned them to hell? Toward parents who could not accept
the sexual orientation of their own daughter? Toward the journalists who
were too cowardly to challenge the codes of small-town homophobia, whowere complicitous in covering up a story that could have galvanized the14sinister wisdom #68/69 — Death, Grief and Surviving

entire country around the issue of lesbian/gay-baiting and its horrendous
consequences? Where was the anger toward school officials who havetraditionally turned a blind eye to the sexual harassment and lesbian/gaybaiting that has made school a living hell for so many students?
There was nothing I could do for these two girls now. They were dead.
But I could do something for myself. I could keen. I could stand by theside of this road, in front of these birch trees, and I could let out the soundof my pain until I was empty of it, until I was free of it, and it would notsour in my gut as fear, or guilt, or shame, or anger against myself. I could
stand there and I could keen for all the unchaperoned spirits of lesbians
and gays who have had to leave under similar pressures, similar torments,
and with similar violence. And then I could leave that spot, the birch trees
still resonating with the sound of my bitter keening, and I could drive awaywith a renewed commitment to social change, with a strengthened courage
to stand up to oppressive institutions and individuals, with a deeper love formy own lesbianism.
References:
Making Schools Safe for Gay and Lesbian Youth: Report of the Massachusetts
Governor’s Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth, 1993.
1

Carter, Kelley, “Gay Slurs Abound,” in The Des Moines Register, March
7, 1997, p. 1.
2

A. R. D’Augelli and S. L. Hershberger, Lesbian, gay and bisexual
youth in community settings: Personal challenges and mental healthproblems, American Journal of Community Psychology 21:421, 1993
3

Report of the Secretary’s Task Force on Youth Suicide, U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services, 1989.
4

Massachusetts Youth Risk Behavior Survey (MYRBS), Massachusetts
Department of Education, 1997.
5(Statistics originally compiled by PFLAG )fall 2006

Susan Eschbach

Blessings on this day of challenges
As the fluorescent lightfrom the nurses station shines
a wedge into this room,
bless the darkness just before
this morning.
Our eastern window does not yet
wear the sun
as I pull on jeans, a sweatshirt,sneakers, comfort
for the wait.
Bless the soft feel that surrounds me.
Soon the stretcher will arrive,
your ride to surgery, butthey are late and I indulge
the blessing of our bodies
warm, stretched side by side on this hospital bed,
waiting.
Dawn peeks, we
rest longer.
Blessed rest.
Down thirteen floors into
underground rooms,
we are greeted by nurses,
blue and green scrubs,
early birds tidying theirnests, readying for their day.
Warm eyes, gestures of accommodation,
welcome, can I get you another blanket,
can I raise your head a bit.
Bless their commitment to caring,to making us safe.

15

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sinister wisdom #68/69 — Death, Grief and Surviving

Delay, another patient emergency,
delay indefinite.
May that patient be protected from fear.
Blessings of patience while we wait.
I am thankful for my strong back while I sit and stand,stand and wait.
It is a blessing to feel fit enoughfor this.
I sit with you
on your bed,
your eyes both weary and frightened.
I feel the texture of the cotton blanket.
My hands warm the curves ofyour legs
rubbing gently to warm you, to reach
into where you are sealed away
preparing yourself
And I know that together in this
we are holy.
Back to the under rooms,
nurses, now
tubes, anesthesia,
I am told to leave.
Your eyes are frightened.
We sing the Sh’ma, you say you
will chant it.
I know you can will your way
through this, as can I.
We are blessed with strong wills.
The family waiting area iswell conceived, inviting
sustaining.
Computers update families,
tell us how to pace our wait, when
to hold our breath.

fall 2006

There are separate rooms for privacy,tears.
I work a puzzle
551 pieces.
A friend comforts me, wechat, the Sopranos, George W,
new books.
To talk about my pain, myfear, I must look at the puzzle pieces
grab onto an edge
focus on color, shape, or
fly into pieces, morethan 551.
It is a blessing offered to families here, anda blessing of friends.
One doctor from the teamof many, comes to speak,describe, deliver an account.
She is competent, measured
clear, strong. I
appreciate her skill and am deeply
thankful for her good judgment.
Medical care is a mystery of many
facets, at once direct, sure,effective, yet limited, vague,
partial.
Rabbi Hoffman says Jews heal
with medicine, hope and prayer.
Bless these offerings for they are what we have.
One more waiting room.
They are prepping you, forwhat I wonder. Prepare me for you?
Prepare you for the coming
challenges?
It is close to dinner, well past it
actually. I rest with my head back against the wall,

17

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sinister wisdom #68/69 — Death, Grief and Surviving

to breathe, to sing softly
the Sh’ma.
So far I have breathed throughhours of challenge with anappreciation of the extraordinary blessingsof the ordinary.
I have not been one wrestlingwith God.
I am thankful for that on thisday of days.
And we are not done.
It is our 16th hour of this day.
The electric Shabbat candles shine
and a moment’s quiet finally settles in.
For two and a half hours
we pleaded, demanded, negotiated,
questioned a bureaucracy slow torelieve your pain.
My fury rose. Nearly blinded.
Balancing angry demands withpatient diplomacy, this conflict,like a wall, blocked my throat. I felt
like a cannon half discharged, no successful release,no tamped fuse. The medicine arrived.
I am blessed with this fury to get things done.
You worked hard to gather yourself
Breathe.
Respiration rate alarms and my touch on your arm,a reminder to, literally,
breathe.
Blood pressure dancing.
You need help to move your head on the pillow.
I count 11 tubes.

fall 2006

I, so often scornful of ourallopathic ideas, am thankful for thoseresearcher who have configured
the equations for adequate dosesof drugs.
You rest.
I breathe.
I am thrilled merely tosit here. I am my beloved’s
and my beloved
is mine.
Adonai echad.
Perhaps the day is completing.
I am blessedby this long day
where I could find hopeand prayer
and deep appreciations,let go at times of fear,
despair,
find courage in what is sacred,and find sacredness in whatjust is.

19

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sinister wisdom #68/69 — Death, Grief and Surviving

Kamila Rinaagain
i don’t want to watch you die. (again.) i don’t want to watch you die again.
you are soft and pink and dying. in my arms. you’re bleeding, but mostly inside.
like me. your face and neck a little mottled, that’s all. red spider-cracks on yourcheeks, sides of your neck; your mouth a little dirty — caked with blood likemud. you can’t breathe. your mouth tries to gasp in some air, but all it manages isan empty o like a fish... i think your air pipe’s crushed. your face chalky white,
red spiders on your face, mouth like an o, blood crusts at the corners... horror
tiptoes in. in a few moments you will be dead.
i can’t watch you die. i turn my head. if i don’t watch, it can’t happen.
you are dying while i hold you. i turn my head. i can’t meet your eyes. i betrayedyou; i didn’t protect you. i am not a good mother.
you are quietly bleeding & suffocating in my arms. you are my baby. i am just achild too, and your mother. i can’t protect you. i am nothing like a mama bear,
i’m a frozen scared girl, called dirty so often i believed it, as interchangeable men
climbed on top of me, as my father’s tongue & a cattle prod twisted, braided good& bad like bread, broke the stems off my neurons, rewired my body to havepleasure seizures during torture.
they told me they broke your neck as punishment. for me being a whore. forshaking under some man’s mouth or with a baton up my cunt. for tempting“good” men with my sinful kid body.
i understand i am a bad girl. twisted, immoral, coldhearted. yet i’m frantic with
pain, my heart so swollen & raw it’s straining out of my ribcage. a heart that got
chewed up by my father, my mother, the johns — they all took a piece as they
fingered my tiny child cunt walls, stuck penises into my unhinging jaw... a heart
seeping agony in soft slow drops.
i’m a child whore whose father impregnated her while she shook under him inpain and orgasm and tearing flesh… i am tainted, bent, rusted, worth nothing —and i have nothing, except you my baby. and i love you, with all the intensity of adesperate child lost to herself long ago, who finds her humanity in the pools of her
daughter’s eyes & refuses to let go. you are mine and i am yours and to each other
we are still-good, still-human.

fall 2006

21

i want to buy your life. i ask. (beg, plead.) they say they’ll. let me. they lie. afteri have licked and sucked and gagged and lain under and smiled and moaned andstroked and fucked enough dead-eyed bodies, they let me hold you one last time
before they burst your trachea with a violent squeeze. like a peanut shell. they tellme of the death sentence before they carry it out. so that i know it’s an
execution for my crimes. so i know it’s my fault. so i hate myself and not them.
i am watching my baby die. i am crying, crying so hard my father slaps me, wild
sobs echoing off his palm. inconsolable. i will cry every day. until myadolescent mind breaks and collapses like her trachea, and buries the picture ofher spider-shot face.

Bleeding Heart

Photo by Judith K. Witherow

it is years later. i am a broken, despairing adult, and I am excavating, tearing up
my mind, looking for the source of the rust, the oily shame. i sift out the horror:
her face, the myriad thieving johns, my father’s dick inside me, tongue on me,
hands everywhere taking taking choking (mother grandmother uncle fuck no one
was safe), the clinking of money, my flushed scarred cunt, my guilt, thepunishment, my animal grief that wants to claw the world apart...
and in the cinema of my torn mind i am watching her die again. and again. herhours-old face pinned to my retinas, stunned & gasping. and i’m crying again, myhowling penetrating the thin walls. i think, my neighbours are gonna call thecops. i think, people must die of pain like this.
they couldn’t afford to leave her alive. she was evidence of what was done to me,
she was my new mote of hope, of redemption. so dangerous. she was never meant
to survive. but i was her mother, and i was all she had, and i didn’t saveher, and i’d felt her head on my breast, her tiny fingers against mine, and i loved
her with all the passion in my scarred child body, and i didn’t save her. what i feelis not as simple as grief or guilt or helplessness, it’s a new country, a geographicalspace soaked with her absence. there is no coming back from here. we theanimals in this stark landscape are forever changed, forever chained.

22

sinister wisdom #68/69 — Death, Grief and Surviving

Riggin Waugh

No Lights, No Sirens
The paramedic says I cannot
ride with her in the back.
Regulations. I plead, offer
to sign a waiver, promise
not to tell. I want to be there
for her this last time. I holdmy mother’s hand, talk softly to her
the whole ride. Her eyes scared,
her voice silent, like never before.
I can’t remember when she got so little.
At the hospice, I string twine acrossthe room for all the get-well cards,
when getting well is no longer evena prayer. Then I wish away the pastor,
the people from church, even her girlfriends.
Later, I bring in my old German shepherd,
who my mother’s always called her only
granddaughter, to say goodbye.
But this night my mother is no longer
conscious, the dog smells, and I return
her to the car. I hold my mother’s handfor another hour after she dies.
Then I take down the string of cards,
and pack up her few belongingsin her blue cardboard suitcase,older than I am and empty
but for some loose bobby pins.
In my mother’s apartment at five a.m.,way past sleep, too early to make calls,
I give the dog a bath.

fall 2006

23

Pat Browne

Fierce Love in Times of Storm: A Love Letter for Aggie
Fierce as death is love,
Relentless as the nether world is devotion;Its flames are a blazing fire.
Deep waters cannot quench love,
Nor floods sweep it away.
The Song of Songs (8: 6-7)
The names themselves are full of music: Plaqemines, Atchafalaya, Belle
Chasse, Meraux, Calliope, Pontchartrain, Tchoupitoulas, Fountainbleu,
Carondelet, Arabi, Chalmette, Jean Lafite, Algiers, Bayou St. John, theAudubon Zoo—where “they all aks for you.” Your eyes always lit up when
you chimed all the lilting variations of the fugue of the places you loved inand around the city of New Orleans. When we flew in together for the firsttime in November 1989, you leaned into my shoulder and began to teachme the geography of this city: Lake Pontchartrain with its twenty-six milecauseway; the beautiful empty, green, green swampland threaded with longneedle pine west of the city; the looping crescent in the mighty Mississippi
that gives the city its nickname; how so much of the “West Bank” is east of
the “East Bank,” how the city was reclaimed, claimed from the swamp, how
it rests in the delta that stretches for another eighty miles before touching
the Gulf of Mexico.
That first time, and all our trips after, before going home to Algiers we
stopped at Café du Monde for beignets and café au lait. We always sat outsideunder the green striped awning across from Jackson Square where the buggies
pulled by mules in straw hats lined up to squire tourists around the French
Quarter. We breathed the humid, pungent Louisiana air. Then, never passing
up a chance to be on the water, instead of the quick route to the West Bank
over the bridge, we took the Canal Street ferry, always the ferry. From thedeck you pointed out the powerful roils as the ferry struggled against theenormous current of the river. Then we drove down General de Gaulle,
past the Mary Joseph Residence for the Elderly run by the Little Sisters of
the Poor where Mama spent her later years, turned left onto Woodland,
then right onto Finland and drove down a canopy of live oaks to a little blue
house dwarfed by an overarching tree. Home. Home to Mama and Papa

24sinister wisdom #68/69 — Death, Grief and Surviving

until he died in February 1990 and then to Mama until she became one of
the uncounted and “delayed” victims of Hurricane Katrina in October 2005.
***
I disappointed Aggie in my response to the city she so loved. Whereshe saw beauty, I saw mold andmildew eating the houses alive.
Where she rejoiced in a wild,
wonderful diversity of ethnicity
and culture, I felt a palpable
racial tension gnawing at theheart of the place. And hot. It
was so hot for this Minnesotan.
We flew in once in July of 2000
at 11:00 p.m., and it was still 101
degrees. I whined and dragged
along behind her to our rentalcar. Now February, that’s another story, February, when the azaleas bloom
in New Orleans while blizzards rage in Minnesota. I remember an early
spring afternoon lying on the grass with Aggie in City Park eating snow
cones. I loved her city that day. But I didn’t love it fiercely as she loved it
fiercely. Until Katrina. Katrina changed everything, opened my eyes to thebeauty of a city lost. I understand now, Aggie. I understand at last.
***
In the first days, as I waited anxiously for news of your family, I could
not stop watching TV. It became so clear so very quickly that the city you
loved doesn’t exist any more. New Orleans is gone. You would be profoundlysad.
The devastation for the poorest of the poor who had no way to leaveis so utter, hope so irretrievable from such despair. From the roofs of the
Fischer housing projects at the foot of the West Bank Expressway where it
curves south and west, near the General De Gaulle exit, people held up
signs, waving and begging for help. Those rescued were abandoned on thebridge without food, water, or shelter from the blazing sun. I will neverforget the image of the woman whose husband of fifty-four years diedafter two days on the bridge. After five, she was still marooned there sitting
next to his body.
Incrementally, passed on from one sibling to another in the moments
when someone’s cell phone worked, the news came that Aggie’s two brothers
and three sisters who had been living in and near New Orleans were all safe,
but scattered now to four states. Mama was evacuated by bus with the otherfall 200625

residents of her nursing home to a nursing home in Baton Rouge where noone in the family lived. Aggie’s family’s story is a microcosm of the city’s
story, of the city’s diaspora. And no, the loss of Mama is the final wave in ariver of devastation that began to flow in shortly following the hurricane
and the breach of the levees. The first euphoria of pure survival soon gave
way to the ordeal and trauma of living in the aftermath.
Accompanied by two of the Little Sisters of the Poor from Mary Joseph,
Edna finally was able to get to Mama three weeks after the hurricane. She
found her ill, dirty, and alone; and she could not track down either a nurse
or an aid willing to help her. When she finally got Mama cleaned up and fed
her and got someone to weigh her, she found that Mama had lost twentyfive pounds in three weeks. She was starving. The sisters from Mary Joseph
urged Edna to move her somewhere else. It didn’t take any urging, butfinding a good nursing home was another story. In a family conference byphone and e-mail, Aggie’s brothers and sisters decided to move Mama to anursing home in Colorado Springs near Aggie’s youngest sister, Margie.
Margie, the youngest, whom we all tease for wearing rose-colored glasses—
her rose-colored glasses that we are so grateful for because we all need themso desperately—sent everyone little e-mail updates to the whole family about
how Mama was doing: She was able to go to Mass again; she was eating alittle; she was singing with Margie in the courtyard as Margie practiced herchoir hymns for the following Sunday.
But Mama had lost too much ground in Baton Rouge. She could notrecover from the starvation she had endured there, and she began to failmore each day, until she began to slip away. John, George and his daughter
Tina, Charlie, and Paul and Grace all flew out to be with Mama and Margie.
Edna was the last to arrive and held her breath all the way longing for Mamato stay until she had a chance to say goodbye. Mama waited for her, as Aggie
had waited for her in the blizzard almost two years ago now. Mama diedearly in the morning of October 30, two months following the hurricane,
one of so many uncounted and delayed casualties of Katrina.
***
All I can believe, all any of us can hold onto, is that Mama came to bewith Papa and with you, Aggie. You died two years ago this December after
such a long, long war with breast cancer. Now, witnessing from afar thedeath of the city you so loved, I finally understand her beauty. I am so sorrythat it took me so long. Please forgive me.
I am holding close your stories: How Mama and Papa, following aperiod of terrible poverty and transience after moving the family from26

sinister wisdom #68/69 — Death, Grief and Surviving

Panama in 1967, were finally able to scrape enough together to buy the little
house on Finland on the West Bank only a block from the river. How, so
implausibly, so miraculously for you, the house came with a horse stabled
nearby. A house with a horse. How they let you keep the horse if you earned
his keep. How you brought broken-down Cezanne from the far edge ofneglect and starvation. How he saved you. How you rode him every day on
the levee and swam him in the batcher. How you cobbled together costumes
and rode him in Mardi Gras parades every year. How you lay in bed at night
and listened to the music of anchor chains playing out into the river fromthe tugs and barges waiting until dawn to come into the docks up river. In
the wake of the hurricane, in the wake of your death and Mama’s death, allthese stories are treasures now.
You were passionate. You loved life passionately. You loved life fiercely.
You loved me passionately and yes, fiercely, in a way I had never known or
imagined. I loved you deeply, but as a Minnesotan loves. You were very
patient with your Irish/Scandinavian/Ojibwe former nun. I remember you
telling me that you were sure you could wake up my passion. You did, butnever as much as you had hoped. Your cancer did the rest. When we began
our six and a half year war with your breast cancer, I became a mother lion.
My own fierce love for you woke up then. We stood shoulder to shoulder
day after day, year after year fighting for your life.
In the months since the hurricane, I have awakened almost every day
in a wash of dread. All the questions come tumbling out again: How can
we bear the loss of those we so deeply love and go on breathing? Breathingis hard work, Aggie. Some moments, in the ordinariness of eating breakfast,
taking Solstice outside, sorting laundry, breathing becomes a little
unconscious again, and just happens. Other times, like catching a glimpseof your blue canvas clog on the closet floor this morning, the next breath
catches in my throat like a fish caught and lurching on a line. And then I
hold onto the breath after that breath because for less than a breath, you arehere with me again. I can see your foot slipping into that shoe and going on
about whatever simple chore we were up to, grocery shopping maybe, ahaircut, the hardware store, the farmers’ market. All the lovely ordinary
moments that I let pass by without savoring, but savor now over and overagain. I would give every breath remaining to me to just see your foot, noteven your beloved face, just your dear foot, just your foot. That would beenough. I love you fiercely. I grieve for you fiercely.
***

fall 200627

I am ashamed to say, my dear sweet Aggie, that it also took Katrina,
and it even took Mama’s death, for me to truly understand your fierce lovefor your family, as a family. From the beginning, I always loved them as
individuals simply because you so clearly loved them. You were tenth of
thirteen—thirteen!! You rejoiced when, early in our years together, yourwhole family gathered at Chicot State Park (We all called it “Chigger” State
Park for apparent reasons.) for a family reunion. I walked around in a daze
and kept saying when we had a rare moment alone, “But there are so manyof you! I can’t even begin to keep your sisters and brothers names in mymind, let along all your in-laws, nieces and nephews. And it is impossible totalk to anyone because everyone is talking (read shouting) at once.” And,
patiently, patiently, you would say, “Honey, that doesn’t matter. We’re all
here!” At all the family gatherings since, I was befuddled, overwhelmed,
awed, and wandering on the periphery of a swirling family love fest. My
own broken, strained, tense, tenuous family prepared me for none of thisfestival of chaos. More is better.
When you died in December 2003, there was a memorial service foryou in New Orleans two days after Christmas, and everyone came home. I
was still in shock and barely registered anything. But when Mama died after
the hurricane, and the whole family gathered for her funeral in New Orleans,a ravaged family in a ravaged city, I got it at last. I longed to be with them, allof them, because I longed to be with you. I found myself loving themfiercely and being loved fiercely in return. In your absence in this time of
the loss of Mama, I became in truth her seventh daughter, as she had claimed
me for many years already. “Just call me ‘Mama.’ You’re my daughter too.”She seemed to delight in having seven of each that way. And she always
loved that I used to be a nun. It didn’t matter to her one bit that I had left
the order. Just being one for fifteen years was somehow enough for her.
And in the last years, especially after your cancer returned with a vengeance,
she would often say to me, “Now promise me you will stay with Aggie.
Don’t you ever leave her!”***After arranging for Mama’s body to come home to New Orleans forher funeral and burial next to Papa, Edna flew home with a stop-over in
Minneapolis. I met her there, and we flew the last leg into New Orleans
together. Flying in, as you did so many years ago now, she leaned into myshoulder and began to teach me the geography of the hurricane. She pointed
out the color of Lake Pontchartrain, so far from anything even remotely
resembling blue. She pointed to the now dead swampland, gray and brown

28

sinister wisdom #68/69 — Death, Grief and Surviving

instead of luxuriant green. All the long needle pines were either blown down
or drowned in polluted brackish water. They looked like Minnesota tamaracks,
gold in the fall. As we came upon the city, we started to see all the blue
roofs. A city full of blue-tarped roofs, FEMA roofs she called them. Just
before landing, we circled over the heart of the city, and the curved roof of
the Superdome stood out starkly on the skyline. How could it ever shakethe nightmare images of the days following the hurricane when the poorand lost gathered there?
In those first couple of days, before the rest of the family arrived,
Edna and I drove around the city together making preparations for Mama’s
funeral—church, funeral home, cemetery, florist, a place for a family dinneron Friday night, the enormous challenge of finding an open store to look
for a dress for her daughter Tina. I rode shotgun with Solstice by my feet,checking off our lists. The more we drove around, the more the extent of
the devastation and its impact on every detail of their lives began to sink in.
True recovery seems far, far away as the city exists day to day in survival
mode. But mourning, survival didn’t seem so foreign to us. We both missed
you so much on these forays, especially looking at Mama’s blue casket andchoosing her blue dress. And we both felt you deeply with us.
By Thursday afternoon and evening, all the family began to arrive home,most with their own families. It’s a long list: Ruth, Robert, George, Florence,
John, Mary Helen, Charlie, Paul, Eddie, Aggie, Michael, Edna, and Margie—
still probably not in perfect oldest to youngest order, but at least all accounted
for—impossible to recite at all without chanting your name too.
The logistics for housing us all wouldn’t be easy because there are no
hotel rooms available in New Orleans; all are still housing relief workers,
police, firefighters, construction/deconstruction workers. From Colorado
Springs, Edna had called the two Little Sisters of the Poor still at the Mary
Joseph Home for the Elderly. Mary Joseph was a very familiar place for me.
We had visited Mama there for years and Aggie’s memorial service was held
there a few days after Christmas in 2003. Immediately after the hurricane,
the National Guard had taken over the nursing home for their headquarters.
The two sisters were still there dismantling and salvaging what they could
for their nursing homes in other states. But because they had so loved Mama,and because they knew the family’s situation, they promised to somehow
make it possible for Mama’s family from out of town to stay there.
***
In this time of the loss of Mama, your sisters and brothers claimed me
fully as their sister. Sent by the rest, Margie came to find me in the bathroom

fall 200629

at church to come ride to the cemetery with “the girls” in the limo. When I
looked at her puzzled, she said in simple, not-to-be-argued-with explanation,“You are Aggie,” took me by the hand and led me along to join the rest of
your sisters.
Later, they all shouted out to me to come join them under the live oaktree in the front yard for a picture of the sisters. One of the brothers shouted
out, George, I think, “When did Aggie get so gray?!” And oh, how I holddear the sad privilege of standing with your sisters and brothers in yourplace. How I listen over and over again in my heart to Margie saying so
simply, “You are Aggie.” I want nothing more than to be part of this festivalof chaos, this complicated festival of love.
The weekend of Mama’s funeral your sisters and brothers gave you
back to me. I watched your sisters’ hands, your hands, the same honey skin,
the same delicate blue vein, the same way of holding a newspaper, the same
gestures while talking on the phone. I listened to the lilting rise at the endof a sentence in your brothers’ voices and heard deeper echoes of yourown. In moments when they smile or laugh, their eyes crinkle almost closed.
The familiarity took my breath away. They all gave you back to me. They
reminded me of what I have lost forever.
***
Driving home from the airport on a clear Minnesota night, I saw afalling star, the biggest and brightest ever. My heart sails in its wake, as I
always sailed so happily in yours, flying south, south into the deep bowl of
the night in the Crescent City.
When I went to sleep that night, I dreamed we launched our beloved
canoe into the headwaters of the Mississippi and began paddling to New
Orleans.
Somos el barco. Somos el mar. Yo velo en ti. Tu velas en mi.
We are the boat. We are the sea. I sail in you. You sail in me.
(from the folk song, “Somos el Barco” by Lorre Wyat)

30

sinister wisdom #68/69 — Death, Grief and Surviving

Maria Fama

Jeans Jacket
I know you are deadHanging clothes, packing clothesfolding and sorting clothes
I open the drawer
I close the drawer
in the closet out of the closet

I know you are deadyou are deadyou are deadyou are deadBut where is your jeans jacket?
the jacket I loved redolent of you, the elegant chef
the faded denim contained your world
extra-virgin olive oil soaked the blue fibers
the fabric breathed garlic cloves and Tatiana perfume
I never pictured you deadwiry, strong, and resilient
wearing the jacket till
the first deep snow
you must’ve given it away
before you died in August heatwithout a word

If I had the jacket
I’d stroke, pat and fondle each cotton strand
I’d rub it like a genie’s lamp
cuddle and place it under my pillow for dreams and poems
the jacket survives you
on some other one
far away or down the street

you are deadyou are deadfall 2006

Photo by Morgan Gwenwald

A dreamer wears it on the job
A teenager strolls the mall in it

you are deadyou are deadthe jacket’s on an artist, a housewife, a revolutionary
feeling restless in the night searchingfor art and understanding
cooking and sewing and playing the piano
I know you are deadI hang sort fold the clothes
I know you are deadand wandering still.

31

32

sinister wisdom #68/69 — Death, Grief and Surviving

Tee A. Corinne

My Beautiful Friend
On October 22, 2005, I drove north to Portland to see Beverly Brown.
We had been lovers for sixteen years. She broke up with me last December,
moved out the following March. For the first month and a half, she phonedme every evening, later twice and then once a week.
Beverly has known she has cancer for two and a half years. I thought I
was going to visit her to say goodbye. What happened was a closure and an
opening as well. We had been estranged and we were no longer.
I had not seen her in four months. Earlier in the week, I had e-mailed
her to see if it was all right for me to come, but she hadn’t responded. The
messages being sent out by the organizer of her caretaking, MB, were direand implied imminent demise. Jeanne encouraged me to just go, as did
Beverly’s brother, Ron, who suggested I arrive shortly after he would. I
knew he would help me get in if anyone should try to bar my way.
The drive takes four hours during which I considered different scenarios.
What if some woman met me at the door, arms crossed, and blocked myway. In the past, Beverly had made a list of all the people she wanted to beprotected from. Would I now be on that list?
I arrived early enough to use the bathroom at a local coffeehouse andpick up a cold Ginger Brew. At Beverly’s duplex, Ron and his wife, Sharon,came out of the front door as I approached. They told me Beverly was justthen getting dressed. I followed them back inside. K., MB’s partner, wassitting in Beverly’s reclining chair holding a drooling infant. Beverly is acleanness freak and has never been fond of babies.
Introduced myself. Thank god for a childhood growing up in the South.
Southern ladyhood protects me from so many confrontations. It has taughtme, beyond all else, to keep my mouth shut. These people have to go on
caring for Beverly. I must not alienate them from her or me.
M. came in, greeted me, and told me that Beverly was so changed that
she had been shocked when she saw her. She told me, sotto voce, that
Beverly had told her if I turned up I should be welcomed. Had she told M.
this the night before, earlier in this day? If it had been me, I would havecalled the estranged lover immediately. If M. had called me, it would havesaved me hours of anxiety.
Beverly walked in using a cane. She was much changed and quite yellow
brown but did not look nearly as bad as I had expected. Her eyes werefall 200633

bright and excitedly looking around. Her face lit up when she saw me. I
can’t remember now if I got up and gave her a hug. I think I did, but relief
was my overwhelming experience, relief that she was happy to see me andalso that she was not exactly at death’s door yet.
K. went, taking the baby with her. Beverly looked at the tissues left
behind and asked her brother to put them in the garbage, wash his hands,
and bring her a glass of water. She was so much the same at her core that I
almost laughed. Did her eyes really twinkle as she looked at me, a look that
was almost conspiratorial?
PHOTOGRAPHS
Small talk. I was bored. I told her I had brought my camera and would
like to take pictures. She said good, that she had been trying to get others totake photographs of her, but no one would. I set up my tripod and took
several close-ups of her face. Beverly asked Ron, Sharon, and M. to leaveand come back in half an hour. She had me lock the front door then started
taking off her clothes. She had lost a lot of upper body mass and the jaundiceextended to her waist. From there down she was swollen and distended
from fluids not being cleared from the body. There were feces in her ostomy
bag, but I told her not to worry about it. I could Photoshop it out later if I
needed to.
She stood, turned for me, walked across the room, turned again. I
took one hundred and fourteen pictures in less than half an hour. We finished.
I helped her dress. She sat in her chair. The night before, her mother had
called unexpectedly wanting to know if I had seen Beverly lately. When I
told her I was going up the next day, she asked me to give Beverly a hug forher. I told Beverly this. She agreed to the hug.
I knelt before her and put my arms around her. She put her cheekagainst mine. One of us said, “I love you.” The other said, “I love you.”
She said, “Sometimes I just miss you holding me.”“Ditto,” I answered.
PORTLAND ART MUSEUM
I unlocked the door. People came back in. I said I would leave, but
asked if I could return in the evening. Beverly said that Ní Aódagaín would
be there after 5 pm and I might want to visit with her. I agreed to come backbetween 5 and 6.

34

sinister wisdom #68/69 — Death, Grief and Surviving

Beverly, Five Days Before She Died

Photo by Tee A. Corinne

Then I drove to the Portland Museum of Art to see the new wing.
Beverly and I had always enjoyed going to museums together and I wanted
to be able to tell her about it. She had tried to find other museum-goingcompanions but complained about how slow they walked or the way they
stopped to read all of the wall texts.
I had about an hour and a half before the Museum closed, but I am
good at speeding through exhibits, stopping only when something reallycatches my eye. The newly acquired Clement Greenberg collection wasfall 2006

35

fabulous, made up of all those New York-based artists whom he helped tofame by writing about them. I saw a woman reach out and tug at a piece ofwood on a Louise Nevelson sculpture. No alarm went off. What is going on
here?
I went to the bookstore and found a postcard of Beverly’s favorite
Marsden Hartley painting which is in the older section of the Museum,
then I went to visit the Hartley and other beloved images including somebeautiful Japanese prints.
I ate food that I had packed for the trip: energy bar, soymilk, peanuts,
sunflower seeds. Beverly was sleeping when I returned and M. was explaining
to Ní Aódagaín what to do and when to do it. I listened. Then M. left andBeverly joined us. It was obvious that she wanted to know what was goingon and to be part of it. She put the Hartley postcard on the table near her
and looked at a book on Washington Women Artists that I had bought. It
did not hold her attention for long.
Later, she was sitting up on the side of her bed to eat and take meds. I
sat down next to her and lightly rubbed her back. Remembering what she
had said earlier, I sat near enough that our bodies could touch. She leaned
her face into my hair. “You still use the same shampoo,” she said with obvious
pleasure.
She appeared to be nodding out, so Ní Aódagaín asked her if there
was some reason that she didn’t want to lie down and go back to sleep.
“Yes,” she said. “Tee’s here.”I encouraged her to lie down and told her I would stay. She asked NíAódagaín to leave us alone. I asked Beverly what she wanted and she said,“Tell me about the Museum,” and I told her about all of the New York
School paintings, but also the large, early Joan Brown impasto and how
surprising it is to me that she has been dead for fifteen years. I described thesix- or seven-foot Leonard Baskin block print of a standing nude maleholding a bird. I’m sure he did the initial drawing with brush and ink, thencut around the interlacing marks, creating an image of beauty and delicacy
and power. I told her that I missed going to museums with her, missed
having her to talk art with. “Me, too,” she said.
“I love you,” I said.
“Me, too,” she said.
All this time I had been holding her arms lightly, touching her, keeping
contact. She drifted off to sleep and I went on sitting there, tears coming
down my face. Went out and Ní Aódagaín held me and we sat briefly outside
so I could cry, then came back in where we could hear her if she wanted
anything.

36

sinister wisdom #68/69 — Death, Grief and Surviving

LATE IN THE EVENING
She woke and came into the living room. I had been told that she
wasn’t eating, but she had an appetite and wanted ravioli. The evidence inher ostomy bag showed she had been eating something. I found potstickers,
but she wrinkled her nose. “Too much meat,” she said. I asked if she wanted
the kind of cheese ravioli that she used to keep in our ‘fridge. “Yes,” shesaid.
“We’ll get you some tomorrow.” She ate chocolate ice cream, soup,
fruit.
Kristan came over to change her ostomy bag and I thought about how
glad I am that other people are taking care of all these details. I’m glad that
Beverly gets mad at other people for making her take her medicines, andnot at me.
I thought about the person who has been going around saying Beverly
told her that she had accomplished all she wanted and that she was ready to
go. Crap. This may be true in the short term, that knowing she was going todie soon, Beverly set out to accomplish everything she could with the timeand energy she had left. But Beverly was a woman who started and ran apopular education non-profit organization, wrote books and essays. She
wanted to make a major impact on the world. And she wanted recognition.
She often talked with me about wanting to receive a MacArthur Award,
often referred to as the MacArthur Genius Award, fifty thousand dollars
for each of three years with no strings attached. The money would havebeen nice, but she wanted the acknowledgment, the validation, the peergroup affirmation as well. Part of the sadness of the current situation, forme, is that she has surrounded herself with people who don’t even knowwhat a MacArthur Award is.
I would ask if she wanted me to leave and she kept saying she wanted
me to stay. She would become agitated if she thought I was going. I left
around eleven and went to Charlotte Hutt’s sister’s home a few blocks away,
lay awake thinking and watching the patterns of branches and leaves on thetree outside the window, the moon moving across the sky. I thought about
the word reconciliation. How unexpected that we were now, so simply,
reconciled, as if the seven-month separation had been a chasm that we haveleapt across. Yesterday I was single and thinking I might soon have anotherlover. Beverly had broken up with me ten months earlier, had moved out
seven months ago. Today, again, I am fully connected, fully engaged.

fall 2006

37

SUNDAY MORNING
In the morning, I went to the grocery store and picked up cheeseravioli, cheese tortellini, and a six-pack of paper towels. Her room smelledof urine when I entered and I mentioned this. She said she was embarrassed
about it, that Ní Aódagaín would wash the sheets.
The night before I had put on gloves and washed dishes. Beverly
laughed. “You know how to do it right,” she said. I know how she likes
dishes washed because I like them done the same way, lots of suds and hot
water. I washed countertops, rinsed dirty milk and soymilk containers,
combined bags of garbage. Perhaps someone is coming on Monday to cleanand straighten. Perhaps it isn’t important. Beverly, along with always caring
about hygiene, was always incredibly messy. This house is an accurate
reflection of that, but at home she always wanted cooking and eating surfaces
to be clean.
Sometime during that second morning of my visit she was standing
near her bed looking at me. “I was going to ask you to come,” she said. We
just stood there, looking at one another. The distance between us, perhaps
six feet, seemed larger, not smaller, by her statement. Yet I was glad to knowthat my intuition had been right, that what she hadn’t been saying over thephone for two weeks was that she wanted me to come. Stubborn women,
we are, and proud, strong qualities that can also get in our way.
Beverly went to the bathroom to try to pee which was still proving
difficult for her. Ní Aódagaín and I sat in the living room where Ní Aódagaín
told me about her trip to New Orleans and how she was working out things
with her lover. After a while, Ní Aódagaín called into the bathroom to ask
Beverly if she was all right.
“Yes,” she answered, “I’m enjoying listening.”
THE BATH
Ní Aódagaín started doing laundry. Between us, we did four loads. M.
came in and Beverly announced she wanted to bathe and she wanted me tohelp her. She turned and looked at me and asked if that was all right.
“Yes.”
Those end-of-life intimacies are so dear. I remember helping my
grandmother bathe in her eighties and being surprised at how unselfconscious
she was. I felt like it was a gift that she would reveal her body to me and felt
the same way about Beverly wanting me to help with her bath. What she

38sinister wisdom #68/69 — Death, Grief and Surviving

really wanted to do was wash her genitals and legs where the urine had
dried.
I sat with her a long time as she relaxed enough to urinate. When she
was finished, she washed her hands and asked me to hand her a paper towel
from the shelf. She said, “I couldn’t get them to keep things clean enough,”meaning she had tried keeping her own cloth towels separate, but that otherpeople would use them, so she had resorted to paper towels.
“I knew what you were doing with the paper towels as soon as I saw
them,” I said.
She put her arm around me and leaned against me. “You know me,”she said. “These people,” she pressed her lips together and shrugged toward
the rest of the house, “they don’t really know me.” She looked at me andsmiled wryly. “You don’t know everything about me, but you know who I
am.”“You don’t know everything about me either,” I said. She brushed herlips across mine. It was one of two kisses she gave me, testing, teasing,territorial. Each was as soft as a bird’s wing, so swift and gentle and then it
was gone before I could even react. I remembered all the other kisses, all
the other ways she had been with me over those many years, my beautiful,smart, funny friend.
“It is so hard,” she said, “being hovered over.” She made a face. “Sohard being made into an object, a thing.” We had discussed this before, thedistaste she had for people wanting to help by fawning over her, using her
and her illness to fulfill some kind of need of their own.
I finished drying her off and helped her into her old blue robe.
RESOLUTIONS
Driving home, I thought about the people who had told me to cut her off,
cut her out of my life and move on. These include a counselor who kept
pushing me to say that Beverly was being abusive to me, that I had been in
an abusive relationship. To me, Beverly was dying. She was angry andconfused and lashing out and I was there. As Charlotte said, “Poor Baby,
she is scared to death.” I thought also of the friends who said that Beverly
had made her choice to leave me and that I should let go, too. If I had
listened to them, I would not have had this last incredible weekend with her.
She died five days later.

fall 2006

39

BEVERLY’S LEAVE TAKINGOn October 27, 2005, the Thursday after my weekend visit with Beverly,
I felt her presence as I walked my dog in the back field. Later, Jane Maracalled to tell me Beverly had died a few minutes before ten a.m. I wrote a
brief message containing Mara’s information and sent it by e-mail to friends
and acquaintances. When I came to one name that I wasn’t sure I should
send the message to, I paused wondering if it would be better for this person
to learn the news from someone else. The lights blinked, then went out andcame on again.
I remembered that Beverly and a friend had made an agreement that if
one of them died and came back, they would try to signal to the other thatthey were there by blinking the lights. “OK,” I said to her, “I won’t send thisone.”
The electricity didn’t waiver the rest of the day.
Throughout that day, however, I had the sense of Beverly being present
with me and that we were talking, although most of the time no words werebeing spoken. I had yet another chance to tell her how much I loved her.
She was a warm presence and seemed jubilant. I was arranging to have awake that evening, phoning and e-mailing our friends. In the early afternoon,
Jeanne Simington called to ask if I needed help cleaning and preparing forpeople to come over. I said, “No. Beverly is here. I’m enjoying her company.
I’ll call if she leaves.”
At ten minutes to four, I knew she had gone and called Jeanne to takeher up on her offer of help.
The following day, as I was driving through Mt. Sexton Pass, the Rogue
River watershed spread out before me, I was thinking about how I wasgoing to have to come out to yet another class about my lesbianism andabout Beverly’s death, otherwise I would not be able to teach effectively
that day. I was also thinking about how scary this was. First I felt her presence,then it was as if she slipped into my body just under the skin behind me. I
felt her stretch out her arms along my arms and wrap her fingers along withmine on the steering wheel. In my mind I heard her say, “Don’t be afraid. I
am here. I am OK.” She repeated this until I was near the foot of themountain.
I regard these visitations as gifts and am grateful for the final flutteringsof her indomitable spirit.

40

sinister wisdom #68/69 — Death, Grief and Surviving

Michelle Sewell

For Gloria
I get you back when you are broken
no more than a bag of bones.
The arrogance has vanished from your paper thin shellThat puffed up pride that convinced you
you deserved better
leaving me behind
your first self indulgent act
I get you when you can barely hold up your head
our relationship is that of patient and nursemaidYour beauty has fallen away from you
All you are left with is a weak grateful smilefrom thin cracked lips
But I take you back and treasure you
as if you were the Hope diamond.
I know everyone wonders why
Why have you come back to die with me
Was I not good enough to live with
Ours was never one of equal love
But we are making new memories
the betrayal has been excised
It no longer lives here
It no longer matters
You are sick with cancer
I am sick with you
You no longer in need of a museNo longer creating anything
except the occasional temper tantrum
Instead I am your cool water
there to put out the fire of fearthat creeps into your belly late at night
We are nearing the end
Soon I will be able to set your burdens down
And take up those that are rightfully mine.
But the choice to do it all over again
I would take you back.

fall 2006

41

Tita Caldwell

Her Face in the Mirror
My sister Eva had been suffering from increasing memory loss and dementia for several
years. Since we lived in different countries, I was not able to stay as closely in-touch as I
wished, but I tried to call her every couple of weeks.
One day I heard the now-familiar touch of panic in her voice when she came to the phone.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Oh, Tita, I feel terrible. I can’t remember anything. I don’t know what’s wrong withme,” she cried.
I wanted to reassure her “But Eva, you recognized my voice right away, and you remembered
my name.”“Not recognizing your voice would be like not recognizing my face in the mirror.” Thesewords, spoken with complete clarity, were the last she ever said to me.
I remember when I was seven, sitting cross-legged on her bed watching
her brush her long, platinum-blond hair. Eva, who was four years older
than I, and Ami, barely eleven months younger than she was, had just returned
to Guatemala after four years of boarding school in Sweden. Eva was elevenyears old, this pale and beautiful stranger, my oldest sister, with eyes thatlooked sad, even when she saw me in the mirror and smiled. I was sure shewould grow up to be a movie star, with her unblemished skin and her deep
blue eyes beneath our grandmother’s heavy black brows.
A quiet, serious girl, Eva was obviously my father’s favorite. As I looked
at my own face in the mirror, next to hers, it was easy to see why, as mine
was covered with freckles, and my teeth were crooked, showing a gap when
I smiled.
I was excited to have my sisters at home again. They had been stolen
from my life, leaving a deep emptiness, and had now been returned to me.
We were strangers, who barely spoke the same language since I rememberedlittle Swedish, and their Spanish was almost gone, but we gradually learned
to be sisters again.
As teenagers they were sent off once more to boarding school, this42

sinister wisdom #68/69 — Death, Grief and Surviving

time to the States. They were practically grown up when they finally returned
to Guatemala. Eva and I shared a room for a while. Although she nevertalked to me very much, I somehow knew that she was the one in my family
who loved me. When I graduated from high school, she and her husband
were the only members of my family in attendance, as my parents were at a
cocktail party. When I looked out at the audience, Eva’s face was the onethat mattered.
I left for college in 1949, and it was ten years before I returned to
Guatemala with my family for the Christmas holidays. Eva was a beautiful
and elegant woman, and I could tell that she didn’t know what to do about
me in my thrift shop clothes and my long, straight hair pulled back in a pony
tail. She wanted to take me shopping and to her beauty parlor. Although
uncomfortable, I gave in, as I was always hoping for her approval.
I continued to visit her every few years, and she always welcomed me
into her home, although sometimes I could see that my alternative life style
was a challenge. After my divorce I moved to Mendocino County. In 1974,
when I arrived in Guatemala, with two hippie friends with whom I planned
to travel around the country, Eva was shocked, although she remained
courteous.
In 1978, when I was living in Cabbage Lane, women’s land in Oregon,
I received a message to call my sister Eva. When I reached her she told methat our mother had suffered a stroke, and that I should come right away if
I wanted to see her before she died.
Although I hated to leave my tiny cabin in the canyon and Debra, thewoman with whom I had fallen in love, I decided to depart immediately.
“I’m really not surprised,” Eva responded when I told her about Debra,“I’m glad you told me. Just don’t say anything to Ricardo,” she begged,
referring to her husband, “he’ll never understand.”She became more open with me, and we talked for hours, revisitingand examining every detail of our lives. She told me that she had been
suffering from anxiety for a long time, and it would sometimes take herhours of preparation to feel secure enough to go out and face the city. We
had finally become good friends and confidants.
I was able to see her more frequently in the 80’s, as she visited herdaughter in Santa Monica, and began to see doctors in Los Angeles. She
was starting to lose her eyesight, and became more dependent on her
husband, who in turn seemed to become totally devoted and protective ofher. The three of us had good times together, going for walks and to ourfavorite Mexican restaurant.

fall 2006

Garden Womon

43

Sudie Rakusin

Around 1990 I got a call from a friend of theirs, saying that Ricardo
was seriously ill and they were flying him to Stanford Hospital, where hewould probably have surgery. Could I meet the plane the next day, and help
them get settled?
When I picked them up, I instantly saw how ill he was, and that Eva
was really frightened, and appeared confused. I had reserved a motel room
for them near Stanford, and after checking him in to the hospital, I took
Eva back to the motel, where I would stay with her for a couple of weeks.
Her eyesight had deteriorated a lot, and it was impossible for her to fillout forms, or to tell the denominations of U.S. currency. “Why” she exclaimed
with frustration, “If the U.S. is such a civilized country, why can’t they use
different colors to distinguish their paper money, like every body else does?”
She became confused very easily. At first I assumed it was due to the
problems with her vision, but then I began to wonder what else could be wrong.
Fortunately, I was able to take some time off work and spend most of each daywith her, taking her to visit Ricardo who had undergone by-pass surgery. I also
had to make sure she ate, as she tended to forget about it. For the first time I felt
like the big sister, with a heart full of protective love.
One day I brought her to my house: it was the first time she had ever44sinister wisdom #68/69 — Death, Grief and Surviving

been in my home. I wanted her to meet my family of friends, and she loved
their warmth and friendliness. “Now I won’t have to worry that you don’t
have a husband to take care of you as you have such good friends,” she said
when we were driving back to the motel.
After they returned to Guatemala, I ached with missing her.
The next time I saw her, Ricardo had brought her to Santa Monica for
more medical consultations. Her eyesight was very bad and she could nolonger read. “Can you imagine never reading another mystery?” she asked
me, “never being able to look at pictures of your children?”“No,” I said, “I can’t.”
She had started repeating herself, asking the same questions over andover again, especially worrying about what time it was. Ricardo would answer
her with great patience, always explaining everything that was happening.
The doctors were reluctant or unable to make a definite diagnosis, but wewere all beginning to think that maybe it was Alzheimer’s.
Whatever the cause, Eva’s ability to take care of herself was declining,and she was gradually becoming more childlike. She kept her charm andsense of humor, however, and her curiosity about what was going on aroundher.
Her husband and I, who had often argued in the past, learned to put
our political differences aside in our love for Eva, and our desire to help her
be as happy as possible throughout this often terrifying time of her life. The
three of us would sit on her big bed watching television. Ricardo and I areboth hard of hearing, so she would have to repeat the words we didn’t
understand. We, in turn, would have to describe the actions that she couldn’tsee. We laughed a lot. Those were some of the best times I ever spent withmy sister.
At the same time I grieved for what I had lost, the sister who shared
many of the same childhood memories, the same perspective on family andthe cultures we had experienced. I missed our endless conversations; I had
lost that friend. But in her place was a lovable, funny, mischievous, andsometimes confused and frightened child, whom I loved unconditionally,
yet with the pain of knowing that I would lose her also. Eva, who had
always been very reserved and standoffish, was now affectionate, letting me
hug her, and sometimes she even told me she loved me.
Her memory loss worsened. She agonized because she couldn’t
remember the names of her children, or the everyday words she needed toexpress herself. She often didn’t recognize people. “I don’t understand whythat man who comes every day is so nice to me. I think,” she confided, “thatfall 200645

he slept in my bed last night?” “That’s Ricardo” I answered, “your husband.”The next to last time I saw her, she had become silent and unresponsive.
As I sat with her, stroking her hand, and talking to her, alternating between
English and Spanish, she would look at me momentarily, as if wondering
who I was, and then her eyes would turn away. Mourning the lovable childlike
sister I had lost, I thought again of the last time we had talked, and wondered
if it had ever happened that she had looked at herself in the mirror and notrecognized her own face.
When my brother-in-law called me in June, 1995, to tell me that she
was very sick, I rushed back to Guatemala. Arriving at the Dallas airport, I
learned that I had missed my connection and would have to wait a few more
hours. I burst into tears, and found a corner near the restroom to sit andweep while rocking myself
Ricardo met my plane late in the evening, and took me directly to thehospital to see my sister, who looked so tiny, lying in a big hospital bed in acoma. I wanted to pick her up in my arms and carry her out of there, butinstead I sat and talked to her for a while in Swedish, our childhood language,
thinking maybe she could hear me. When we went back to the house I
asked Ricardo why she was in the hospital.
“Maybe the doctors can still do something in the morning”, he said. I
reminded him of the talks we had had years ago, when both he and Eva
insisted that they didn’t want to be kept alive artificially, and Eva had showedme the book “Final Exit”.
We sat in silence for a long time, and at last he said that I was right. He
then called each of her children, who were due to arrive the next day, to gettheir permission to bring her home.
It was a comfort when the kids arrived. We sat in her bedroom for twodays, talking to her as well as about her, our love spilling over her with every
word. She never regained consciousness, but we were sure she could hearus. When she died in the middle of the third night, in her own bed, we were
all there.
The next morning, men from the mortuary brought a casket which
they placed in the living room, as Guatemalan law does not require
embalming. After my nieces had bathed and dressed their mother, we placed
her in the casket, and continued to sit with her and say our goodbyes. She
was buried that afternoon, in the pouring rain.

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sinister wisdom #68/69 — Death, Grief and Surviving

Janet E. Aalfs

Swallows on the Coast
Forked tail of the blueblack swallow slips beneatha sun-splashed eave.
My father has diedsinging still, the light
sharper than before.
Dark-eyed, fearless,the sea watches. He has diedagain, each time deeper, ashes
ashes we all fall down
soft in the wind. Spraypearls through cracks
in the burren, cranesbeak petals dippedin red. No longer afraid
the light has given
up on him, he disappears,
wings folded inside
my heart, shatteredflaring into blue again.

fall 2006

47

Meredith Pond

Home
The place where our friend
who hasn’t been here for a while asks me,
How can you be here without her?
It feels so empty now.
But I just shrug and answer,
This is all I know. And besides,
I still love her, even though she’s gone.
But after a while I do leave home for Lake Michigan and then head up thecoast to the music festival near Hart, knowing that the company of 7,000
women will indeed cheer me up.
The first morning at 9 a.m., I practice the merengue and the cha-cha-cha
in salsa class, learning turns and dips with Claire and Sparkle and Anna Zee,and then eat yogurt and granola to Maria Callas arias playing from aloudspeaker suspended over my hay-bale table near the kitchen’s fire pit.
The rest of the morning I’m at a workshop meditating with a San Francisco
witch, where I meet Lena, who calls herself Swan Womon, because of thewinged tattoo on her left breast. She helps me gather delicate golden flowers
called St. John’s Wort in the field around the night stage for my work shift at
the healing center (the Womb), and then she shows me where her tent is—in the Twilight Zone—and I notice the leather straps hanging from a branchabove her two-person blue dome. I try to keep from running away as she
whispers how she wants to fuck me in the low branches of that red oakbehind her tent, or on the ground, or in the back of her truck, if it would
please me. And I forget how I manage to change the subject, but we end up
laughing, and we brew some artemesia tea for two in the stainless steel mugs
I pull out of my backpack. All dreamy, rocking in her hammock, we watch
the breeze taunt the aspens.
After a while I wander off towards the smell of pine needles and hot
popcorn, and I run into Claire again. We walk down the dusty road to theOver-40s tent and listen to stories of the old days, and how it was to bequeer back then. The woman talking is seventy-six years old. A classic butchin her day, she’s all decked out with a Bryl Cream pompadour, a pack ofLucky Strikes tucked into the sleeve of her ironed white T-shirt, and a

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sinister wisdom #68/69 — Death, Grief and Surviving

big red sedan parked on the land (so she says). Her life back then was all
fistfights over who would squire the femmes around Pittsburgh, and thestory of how she fell in love with the town’s femme fatale. In those days,
secret signals opened doors and she packed three pieces of women’s clothingon her body everywhere she went. I look at her cane and imagine her then,about 25, with the world at the tip of her tongue
Across the road at CampTrans, Leslie Feinberg is talking about gender, about
who is a real woman and who isn’t. I’m sitting between a man who used to
be a woman and a new woman with bangs and red hair just like my mother’s.
And I just can’t stop wondering why our lowest common denominator ishandbags and silk stockings no matter what we do.
Later I interview Tribe 8, a punk band playing tonight, chem-free, pierced,
and tattooed from tongue to clit, and I learn to spell “mosh pit” and wonder
if I could ever throw my body off that stage into the arms of a hundred
screaming slam dancers. Sure jump. Jump. The little silver sphere spiked
through Lynnie Flipper’s tongue shines with saliva as she chats with me
about who likes to be on top, and how her friends got off drugs, and how
she knows so many women who were raped before they were thirteen. And
I’m thinking yes, yes, she could be my daughter. Before I know it, I’m invited
to an S/M party (password: “Clean and Sober”). But I don’t go.
I stretch out on the soft grass in the meadow to watch the crescent moonscythe the treetops, as the sky disappears into a million stars.
Tonight the Perseid meteor showers are scheduled for midnight, and women
are talking about thousands of meteors shooting across the heavens. Who
makes the schedule for something like that? And maybe I fall asleep andmaybe I don’t, but all of a sudden I think of you and I feel more awake thanI’ve ever been, the blood pulsing my heart in sync with drums that neverseem to stop, a wild rhythm way back in the woods somewhere, women
dancing around a bonfire. And right then a shooting star arcs across thehorizon, blazing silver like the tail of Glinda’s wand, then splits in two anddisappears, leaving me with sudden sorrow.
How could we knowwhat was ahead for us,
what black and fickle moon
would hoist the sunrise
like an old shoe from a brackish pond
and laugh at our forever coming to an end.

fall 200649

All alone now, I go back to the Goddess Circle and untie our rings from thechain of flowers and colored threads wrapped around Her carved oak body.
Our anniversary is tonight—or it would have been—right here where wefirst made love five years ago, where I’m kneeling now, under these stars, infront of the gentle face of this Ancient One, the protector of this sacredplace. And I laugh,remembering that you had
mosquito bites on your ass fora week after that. And how werode around afterwards on the
shuttle bus to the front gate andback all night long just to keepaway from the bugs. I shakeaway the memory of your bodyas I wrap these silver rings indoeskin and sage and strandsof our hair. I make an easybundle, tie a final knot, andtuck the bundle deep in thehollow of a linden tree at theedge of the meadow where I’ll
sleep tonight in a circle ofstones, a medicine wheel, thewheel of time.
Michigan Tree

Photo by Meredith Pond

What love we have left will always be here, safe in this tree, wrapped in silver
and soft light and the memory of each other’s arms.
Sleep forever, my love,in this mother tree, this secretplace, soft with decomposing wood.
Think of me the way you knew me once,
before we began the list of what now andyou never do.
This land heals me, breathes
life back into my heart, a place
where 7,000 women call me homeevery August, and you and I entwine
forever in the hollow of this tree.
No bodies this time, only dreams,
quiet dreams of life without darkness,without each other, shooting star,shooting star.

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sinister wisdom #68/69 — Death, Grief and Surviving

The next morning I take a walk with Claire on the Whistle Trail behind theacoustic stage, and we make love on a bed of maidenhair ferns (her dental
dams, made in Australia, are tasty). But I’m not used to her body, and ourpleasures stop and start like an old record stuck between songs. Afterwards
my mouth tastes like the inside of a balloon, and that taste stays with me forthe rest of the day. Until later on I see Lena Swan painting her body inglitter and rainbows. She calls to me, come and play, but I keep walking.
Give her your restless days,
your tantrums, your demands, but
I’ll have you here, always, in these stars after midnight,
half asleep, in my dreams in the morning,at sunrise on Beltane before anyone else is awake
and no one belongs to anyone.
I remember how you slid your hand inside me, deep,
like the hollow of this tree, for a moment,
for a year, forever, and I let the stone fallfrom my heart as I watch the moon riseand let the tears come.
Swan Womon is persistent and cajoles me to her latex gloves and blackleather. We should be on a barge floating on the Nile or in a scene from the
Hunger. I watch the shadows conjured by her Coleman lamp as she fucks
me to the Red Sea and back again. Then Ireland and Yeats and Maude
Gonne, the love of his life, and I wonder if I really have gone mad. Because
this is a women’s festival, and here I am letting this woman fuck me silly
while I’m imagining a poet, a god in his own right, a lover, a worshipper ofthis one magnificent woman for all his life, and how she tortured him withpromises, and how he waited for her, waited for years, and longed for her
pilgrim soul, as he watched his own life pour out from his broken heart asshe eluded him, married someone else, traveled around the world withouthim. And how without love the heart shrivels like aging silicone, like leather
straps drying in the sun.
And later, in the middle of the night, Swan invites me to another S/M
scene, somebody tied to a tree, whipped, begging for more, and I wonder if
any torture could ever match that morning you moved your heart and yourlove to another woman’s home and you pleaded with me, Please don’t watch me
do this. Please don’t watch me leave. And for three hours I sat in some fast-foodplace downtown drinking coffee and staring out the window at a tree painted
on a building while I tried to remember to breathe.

fall 2006

After the Rain

51

Photo by Meredith Pond

Home. Where it is, where it was,where it will be. Where time passes
and I walk the dog, watch the moon,
visit friends, and read and read and read.
I follow Cassiopeia, Orion, and Scorpio as the constellations arch over theautumn sky night after night until one evening in late October, I meet awoman at a poetry reading and she kisses my hand and invites me,
invites me please,to enjoy the moonrise, all creamy and full, from her bedroom window on ablustery Hallomas eve.
And then I’m home again. The place
where a friend who hasn’t been here for a whilesays, Hey, did you move some furnitureor something? It feels so good to be here again.
And I remember that sweet kiss on my hand,that moon in the window, and I shrug and answer,
This is all I know . . .

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sinister wisdom #68/69 — Death, Grief and Surviving

Janet E. Aalfs

Gloria, I Remember
Gloria, I remember
how you loved the fallen
leaves. You looked up
into branches, shadows on your face.
Twirling a crimson leafby the stem you said
cuando vives en la frontera
people walk through you,the wind steals your voice.

How you loved the swirl
of words, spiders at workin the cornfields. Mestiza,
you sang, touching the dirt
to your forehead, your tongue,
tasting a yellow kernel and finding
it sweet, returning your footsteps,
your voice, to thisand every crossroad.

Later the strong pressof dark pulled us
through a tunnel.
Protected withinthat dream snake, mountains,oceans, stars rushed by,
web at the centerreeling us out
on story threads of light.

In memory of Gloria Anzaldúa,
1932-2004,
brilliant lesbian poet-scholar-teacher,crosser of bridges and chasms,
seeker of justice, leader in peace,
generous friend.

Fran Day’s Altar for Gloria Anzaldúa

Photo by Roxanna Fiamma

fall 2006

53

Shan Casey

nana love
you share your insanity, not so much in intimacy rather
as the slip shows from your lovers skirt.
in your butch oxford shirt and O’Keefesque jackets
maybe as your bra shows thru your male attire?
I can’t stand you, full of my youth, my arrogance,
think I’ve seen your kind before.
though, as the love leaves my life, mother, partner, friends
leaving the scene of the harms, your face becomes familiar, reassuring somehow.
your old car with a big plastic storage container floating on top
you search the roads for carrion to shovel up andtreat sacred one last time before aproper burial of your choosing
you failed at mothering your own flesh, yet you become mother/father to me.
a compliment to your partners mothering of me
loving me in your brutal truths “honey, you’re getting
fucked with your clothes on”
served with Irish oatmeal and toast
cold water in the face of my naiveté
and how you loved me when I thought no one could.
held me up and through until - weaklyI might support my own weight.
shakily taking a few toddling steps toward my new life
now you are gone, not physically.
just the insanity sneaking up and putting a bag over your head.
your search for road kill culminating in acomplete loss of life
who will find you, Nanascoop you up from the side of the roadput you to your peaceful,sacred rest?

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sinister wisdom #68/69 — Death, Grief and Surviving

Janet Mason

Somewhere Between Hell and Eternity
Five years later, tears still come to my eyes when I think about mymother’s death. I could not replace my final memories of her with a previous,
healthy image until at least a year after she had died. During this time, I
asked myself over and over why I waited until the last possible moment totell her what a good mother she was. Even though I did finally tell her, I
don’t know if she heard me. She had slipped into a coma early one morning,and my father and I took turns, at their home, sitting at her side until thenurse came.
I told my father to talk to her. I had read once that a person who is in
a coma could actually hear and understand when someone speaks. I left theroom as my father held her hand and spoke to her and when I came back hesaid she was trying to tell him that she loved him. I did see her jaw moving
back and forth, so perhaps she did hear him and was trying to answer.
When the nurse came, I asked her how long my mother would be in the
coma. As the nurse spoke, she turned to my mother, bent down, and as she
put her hands along the sides of my mother’s face, she died.
Her breathing, which had become slower and further apart, simply
stopped.
I took my mother’s death extremely hard. All the strength that I had
when I was taking care of her drained out of me. In the first months, andeven through the first year, I became ill frequently and was often so tired
that I had to take a nap in the afternoons. I dreaded talking to casualacquaintances because when they asked what was new I would have to tellthem.
When I went through my mother’s things, it was evident that she did
throw out her sketches and drawings. But in the very back of her portfolio,
hidden in a small brown envelope that I hadn’t seen before, I found acertificate that said my mother had completed the course requirements forCommercial Art in the Adult Educational Program of the Bucks County
Technical School. The certificate lists the dates she attended as 1974 to
1975. These were my hell-on-wheels high school years that blurred together
so badly that I barely remember my own life. I certainly have no memory of
my mother attending a commercial arts program. My father didn’t rememberfall 2006

55

anything about my mother taking this course either. The artwork that she
must have produced to obtain the certificate is nowhere to be found. The
absences in my mother’s life continued after her death.
Next to her bed, she left a small spiral bound notebook with a few
pages filled in. I opened this notebook, after her death, with great anticipation.
It felt as if my mother had come back to talk to me. A few pages are filled inwith her handwriting that grows shakier by the page. The last entry, written
in pencil, is entitled “A letter to my unexpected daughter-in-law, Barbara.”
In the last month of her life, my mother told me that she was writing thisletter. When I encouraged my mother to show it to her, she said, “I don’t
want it to go to her head.” Every year on my birthday and on Mother’s Day,
Barbara thanked my mother for giving birth to me. “You always make itsound like I had her just for you,” my mother would retort. In the beginningof the letter to Barbara she writes, “Many times you thanked me for giving
you Janet. Now it is my turn to thank you for lending her back to me thesepast months of my illness.”
Upstairs, in the room that was my mother’s bedroom before she became
too weak to climb the stairs, I found another notebook. It is titled A Woman’sBook, and its pages—which have a quotation from a woman writer at the
top of each page—are mostly blank. But several of them are filled with her
handwriting—the letters are strong and the ink dark, her usual handwriting
before she became ill. On the opening page, dated 1984, roughly ten years
before she died, she wrote, “I am proud of my daughter…because she isherself—honest, loving, and is kind to her parents (penciled in after this,she wrote) and other poor slobs.”
There is much that I have not had to go through in the process of mymother’s death. Since my father is still living, I have not had to sell the houseand its contents. Because my mother died when she was seventy-four, I did
not have to witness a prolonged old age for her, the possible dropping awayof her facilities, her sight, her ability to care for herself over a long periodof time, or, God forbid, the erosion of her mental capacities.
My mother’s keen mental perception was the most important thing to
her and she was lucky to have it—despite the intense physical pain she
suffered—right up until she slipped into a coma in the early morning anddied several hours later. I knew it was near the end, and I was hovering
around her the night before, fixing her blankets, reading to her, asking if
there was anything she wanted. Finally she made her last statement to me:“Janet, stop bugging me and go do your work.” Then she said “Good Night,”

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precisely and sternly, with a firm grasp on her last shred of dignity.
I am grateful that I did not have to put my mother into a long-termcare facility or nursing home. She wanted to die at home and my father andI were able to give her that last gift. Still, I wish she had been able to live into
her eighties or nineties like I had expected her to. I see middle-aged womenwith elderly, barely able to walk mothers and I envy them. I wish I had
known what my mother looked like as she grew older. Sometimes when I
see old women who slightly resemble her I search their faces for clues. A
year after my mother’s death, the hardest part was still ahead of me. To
simply do what was expected—to go on living without my mother—was no
small feat.
In the course of five years, there came a time when my mother’s deathno longer defined me. I don’t remember exactly when, maybe several years
after her death, perhaps sooner or later. When I saw people I had not seen
in years, it was not the first thing I told them about. My grief had ceased toconsume me.
When my mother was alive she was the buffer that stood between me
and eternity. I had heard stories of adult women and men who had left theirchosen adult homes to go back and take care of aging parents, and after
their parents had died they could not return to their former lives. They felt
they had lost their place in the world.
My story has a different twist. It felt impossible for me to go back to
the place I had grown up. But I had to. My father continued to live in thehouse he had shared with my mother. He was getting older, his eyesightdiminishing. Eventually, he totaled his car and gave up his license. He neededme, and I began visiting more frequently, though I still wasn’t spending as
much time there as I had during my mother’s illness.
At first I felt split. I was there but not there, dreaming about otherplaces, other lives that were not my own. I managed to keep the details of
my life intact, but on some basic level I no longer knew who I was. After a
few months this feeling passed. But still when I went back to where I camefrom I felt physically ill, and I was not proud of this fact. Cloudy days—the
sky pressing down on me like a curtain of lead—are still the worst. “I smell
the plant,” I said to my father outside the diner where we had been having
lunch. It was a cloudy humid day. The scent of the plant hung thickly in the
air. My father declared that he didn’t smell anything. “I see the plant,” I said,
pointing to a smokestack point up from the horizon behind a warehouse on
the opposite side of the highway from us.

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57

My father looked to where I pointed, but didn’t say anything.
What he does point out, repeatedly, is that the nurse wrote down mymother’s cause of death as cardiac arrest. Her heart did stop beating at theend as everyone’s does. But it wasn’t her heart that killed her; it was thecancer. The nurse was most likely following protocol in filling out the deathcertificate. I tell my father that there must be more cancer around thananyone admits. He says nothing. The wife of one of his closest friends
from the plant has died of cancer. The man who lived next door to myparents for more than thirty years died of cancer. His wife has been in andout of the hospital. All she will say is that she is being treated for “female
problems.” The wife of another co-worker of my father’s from the plantalso died from cancer. Like my mother, this woman’s cancer had spread toalmost every organ of her body.
The numbers are not high enough to make this a Love Canal. But
there are local stories about other women my mother’s age, physically fit
and active, who just like her woke up with a crushing pain and found outthat they had cancer and it had metastasized. The man my father met while
having coffee at McDonalds around the corner from his house said that his
wife died during the biopsy. “You must have the wrong person,” this man
said when the hospital called. “My wife can’t be dead. She’s never been sicka day in her life.”
Maybe this woman was a gardener, too?
Maybe not.
I don’t know if toxic chemicals in the air, soil, and water seeped into
my mother’s bones. Any more than I know if it was the food she ate, theelectric range she cooked at for thirty plus years, or the resentment she
carried all her life toward the father who physically abused and thenabandoned her. Most likely it was a combination of all of these factors.
The plant is only part of my internal landscape, the geography fromthe present that hooks into my past, leaving me feeling as if I am sufferingfrom jet lag by the time I make the forty-five minute drive back to my homein the city.
I came to the conclusion that if I didn’t make peace with where I camefrom, its ghosts would haunt me forever. Gradually, as I began to makenotes of the voices that entwined and conflicted from the past and present,
my feelings about where I grew up started to shift.
I need my father as much as he needs me, perhaps more. In theneighborhood where I grew up, where I have lost contact with everyone I
ever knew, he is my only link to the past. My father reminds me of who I58

sinister wisdom #68/69 — Death, Grief and Surviving

am. So many of my strengths have come from my mother, but they havecome from my father too—from his steadfastness, his humbleness andsimplicity, his quiet sense of humor.
Still there is this wide sad gulf between us: the absence of my mother,
his wife.
Despite making amends with my past, I am restless. I have a need foran alternative landscape inside of me. Not to replace the one I grew up in—now built up more than ever with suburban strip mall consumerism—butrather to place beside it. I have always been fascinated with Greece so I
begin to plan a trip. I intend to go alone a make a pilgrimage—just as mymother traveled to England alone after her mother’s death. The time isright. I am forty. My mother’s death, and the taking care of her, is behindme. My father, at age eighty-one, is still able to get around. He walks four
miles every day. His friends drive him places. He can survive for a monthwithout me.
It is in the planning of this trip that I begin to pick up the conversation
with my mother from where I left off. A friend tells me that in theneighborhood called the Plaka, in Athens, there are tavernas where for the
price of a meal you can break your dishes against the wall afterwards. My
mother was the one who broke dishes—and eventually me—not my father.

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59

But he finds this amusing, saying, “Think of all the money they save on
dishwashers.”
One day, visiting my father, I picked up a book of poetry I gave to mymother years ago. It is titled A Book of Women Poets from Antiquity to Now andis edited by Aliki Barnstone and Willis Barnstone. My mother read the bookso often that it split down the center. She taped the spine back together withgray electrical tape. I opened to the table of contents and saw that my motherhad checked off her favorite poets. There are pencil check marks beside thenames of all the female Greek Lyric poets. These are the poets who have so
vividly captured my imagination: Sappho from the sixth century B.C., andthe female lyric poets who write in the centuries after her, particularly Praxilla
and Korinna.
When I went through all the letters my mother had ever written me, I
found, in her handwriting, a stanza from Korinna.
I Korinna am here to sing the courageof heroes and heroines in old myths.
To Tanagra’s daughters in their white robes
I sing. And all the city is delighted
with the clean water of my plaintive voice.
In the same group of letters, I found a scrap of paper where my motherjoined my name with Korinna. Janet-Korinna.
My mother often told me that she wished she had given me two names.
Perhaps this was her way of doing it, leaving a message for me to find after
her death. In doing so, perhaps she was pointing me in the direction of myown destination.
This is where the conversation begins again.
I am now the same age as my mother when she gave birth to me.
We would have many new things to talk about.
We could begin with Sappho, who had a mother and a daughter, both
named Cleis. The three of them contained a certain universe. My motherwas the first woman in my life, and as her only daughter, I was the last
woman in her life.
The two of us encircled eternity.

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sinister wisdom #68/69 — Death, Grief and Surviving

Riggin Waugh

Janie’s Saxophone
When she died, her tenor sax became mine.
For a while, I took lessons. For a longer while,
I didn’t. Today I unfold the music stand,recalling how the metal pieces clip together.
The sun shines through my bedroom window,
as I wipe away a year’s dust from the big black case.
When I lay it across my bed, my German shepherd
awakens, but only for a moment. I open the trunk
and again I’m dazzled by this shiny brass
woodwind with mother-of-pearl keys,
lying in the box lined with fake black fur.
I slide the leather strap around my neck,the hook hangs below my breasts. A wooden reed
rests in my mouth while I tighten the screw
connecting the neck to the horn. I insert the reed
and grease the cork before attaching the mouthpiece.
I try to remember how to play a B flat.
Piano is easier. I warm up with a few scales —G major, F major, D major, nothing fancy.
My dog jumps off the bed,
heads for the living room. It has been so long,
I almost forget which fingers rest on which keys.
Almost. It’s not like riding a bike. I remember
to pull my lower lip ever so slightly

fall 2006

over my lower front teeth. I remember
not to clamp down — to relax. I remember
what “enharmonics” means. I remember
legato tonguing, but I’ve forgotten
how to do it. I remember my embouchure.
I play the only three songs I know,
and I play them slow, maladroit slow,
not sexy slow, but with no audience
I am Charlie Parker, I’m John Coltrane,
I am baaaad. I play “Misty” and think of Johnny Mathis.
I play “The Christmas Song” and think of Nat King Cole.
I play “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,”and think of Judy Garland, which makes me thinkof Janie. It’s December. Of course, I would play
Christmas songs and think of Janie.
I unhook the horn from the strap around my neck.
I remember to clean inside the sax
with a contraption Janie made with flannel,
a piece of clothesline, and a fishing weight.
I put the horn away, maybe for another year.

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sinister wisdom #68/69 — Death, Grief and Surviving

Judy Freespirit

Some Thoughts on Not Dying
In April of 2005, Judy Freespirit (a long-time lesbian-feminist, fat and disability rights
activist – see Sinister Wisdom issue #66) was close to death – at one point doctors andfriends thought she would die within twenty-four hours. Intervention by friends, change of
medication, alternative healing, and a move to a decent nursing facility changed her prognosis
from “two weeks to two months left” to “stable.” While injuries sustained in the mostcritical parts of her illness left her unable to walk, she continues to gain strength withphysical therapy, and can be transferred to her scooter for extended forays into the world.
Her “coming back to life” is a phenomenal testament to Judy’s own courage and will, butalso to the ways the medical profession over-drugs and gives up on patients that doctors
and staff deem “difficult.” The following is taken from a series of taped interviews she
did with Cathy Cade between May and December of 2005. Those interviews are in theprocess of being shaped into book-form, focusing on both Judy’s experiences and those of
the friends who came to her aid. (Elana Dykewomon)
I’m not quite ready to die now. There are things I want to do first now
that I know I’m creative and intelligent. I’m 69 and it took me all these years
to find my strengths. I also believed everything was useless, “no point trying”
and “you can’t fight city hall,” which I learned from my family of origin. It
took me many years to unlearn that attitude. It has taken over 50 years of a
combination of activism and therapy to get to here from where I started. I
started out way below level and I’ve been clawing my way up this muddy
canyon for all these years. Sometimes I think I am now at my PEAK of
CAPACITY, yet I’m so physically sick that I can’t actually do 99% of what
my mind can imagine. It’s so frustrating.
While I’m not ready to let go yet, there are days now when I feel nearly
hopeless. About six weeks ago when I was in the hospital, I was extremely ill
and the life energy was so drained and I was so drugged up with pain
medication they called “palliative care.” I felt very at peace. The doc told me
to get my affairs together since I wasn’t going to live for very long, maybe acouple of months. I have the advantage of having been so near death. Well,
I wasn’t unconscious and I didn’t see any white light or clouds or wings. Of
course, at first I felt terrified and then a huge relief not to be in pain, not tohave to worry about money or relationships, or whether I was going to die
or not. I just got so peaceful. Even though I was highly drugged, I was very

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63

rational in my thinking. I made really good decisions about what to do before
my death. While I felt very weak, I also felt very competent, capable andstrong at the same time. I thought, “Ok this is as far as I’m going to go, I’ve
come a long way from where I started. In fact, my life has been miraculous.
I’ve done what I came here to do and it’s time to go.” I don’t have any senseof what happens after you die. I’m your basic agnostic. What I don’t know,
I don’t know and I don’t try to make up something in my head.
While I was at peace, I was simultaneously sad. Then when I started
getting better, I started to feel worse and worse. The better I got, the worse
I felt. My problems came flooding back to me. I had let go of having to deal
with my taxes and of who is going to take care of my 93-year-old mother.
Now I’m back in the middle of having to do all these things, only I’m sick.
There are times when I wish I had just died. I don’t feel suicidal, butsometimes I wish I could die, which is different. Wonderful people walk
into my room almost on a daily basis, sometimes three or four at a time.
They are so loving and so good and kind that I keep wanting to live. Not
only did I realize that I’m an OK person, but I just started being able toaccept people loving me, after all those years of feeling like a piece of shit
because of messages put in my head as a child. So I want to scream at every
parent, “Stop being so over-controlling, stop being so absent. Show yourkids you love them!”– things like that and more. I’m sure nobody intended
to torture me. Everything that happened was a response to other people’s
pain from their past and back and back and back. But I want it to stop. I
keep saying I can’t die, that I have to stay around to help my grandkids, since
I’m their safe haven. I want to get better enough to really make a difference.
Rheem Convalescent Hospital is supposed to be one of the betterskilled nursing facilities (SNF) and I think it is. People working here arebasically good, but no matter how good people are, they make mistakes.
Therefore if you’re sick you better be prepared to have yourself or somebody
else looking over your shoulder because the staff can really screw things up
badly. It’s all unintentional, but almost every day when they bring my pills,
something is wrong. Something that is supposed to be there isn’t there orsomething’s there that isn’t supposed to be or the dosage is wrong. My
advice is, if you are sick don’t try to deal with an institution on your own.
One of the reasons I’m as sick as I am is that I had been given
medications for years that had negative effects. I’ve heard that a very highpercentage of people in hospitals are there because of mismanaged
medications. So I’m very scared. Even though I trust the people, as people,
I don’t trust the system or that they know enough to get it right.

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I’m always afraid that things are going to get worse. I’m here unable towalk because of things that were done to me in hospitals or on the way tothe hospital. I went to the hospital four times last year and each time I went
I came away with something I didn’t go in with. The last time I went in to
the hospital I went home with shingles, which I’d never had before. Getting
me to the hospital the third time created terrible infections in my legs because
the fireman insisted on putting a really tight seat belt around my ankles so I
wouldn’t fall off of the gurney. I kept complaining that it was painful and I
have poor circulation in my lower extremities but they kept saying, “It’s foryour own good.” I’ve spent three or four months trying to heal the damage
that was done from that one trip.
Once you’ve had these experiences you tend not to call for help when
you need it. There were MRI and CAT scan tests that I couldn’t have when
I was in the hospital because the machines they have were not built for
more than x number of pounds. It has to do with hospitals being a profitmaking industry, even when it’s a government run place. Money comes before
people. It’s a fact that I live with. I can get what I need if it is already withinsomebody’s budget or someone else’s guess about how large people can get.
I’m just coming out of a few days of severe depression. It feels very
good coming back. I cried all day long for several weeks. Everything mademe cry and I just couldn’t stop. I hardly ever cry, but this was real sobbing.
When I was married I didn’t cry for ten years. Most of the time I was crying
when I was alone and needed something really badly and I couldn’t get anurse to come.
Since I’ve been doing co-counseling I feel a little safer to cry withpeople. I’m aware that much of my sadness has to do with loss. I just seemto keep losing more and more the older and sicker I become. I have a lot tocry about these days. I don’t want to hold things in and have them come out
sometime when they don’t belong. I want to get through them and out ofthem.
When the staff is here they can’t take my weeping. They say, “Don’tcry, don’t cry, everything’s going to be all right. You want some pills?” I get
into little kidding fights with them, for example, with Maria whose heart isreally in her work. She says she agrees with me about crying being helpful,but she still has to say that it makes her feel bad. When I cry, I say, “Maria,
it’s OK for you to feel bad if that’s where you are. In fact, if it makes you
cry, that would be good too.” And then we laugh together. The tears usuallyfall 2006

65

end when a friend of mine arrives or phones.
For example, I often feel powerless when I need to use the bedpan.
Once when I had to go in the worst way, I pushed the buzzer and pushed
the buzzer and forty minutes went by. Ten minutes into that forty I started
crying and I just got louder and louder and felt worse and worse and worse.
It was a very hot afternoon, so hot I could barely stand it. I threw off all mycovers and took off my nightgown and the curtains were not closed so
people walking up and down the hall could look right in here. I was completely
nude, lying here in bed and wailing.
I was uncomfortable because I didn’t have a sheet that would stay on
my bed and the mattress is plastic and it was hot. I decided to turn on myside to get some air on my back. I was holding onto the side rail to keepfrom falling and it looked like I was in a fetal position. If they see you in a
fetal position, that’s an emergency. One of the attendants finally came in
and went, “Oh my God” and went running out of the room and came backwith two nurses. “I just need a bedpan,” I said. They were very scared andstarted putting cold compresses on me and new sheets on the bed andturned a fan on.
I was four hours too early for an anti-anxiety drug and I really needed
it bad and they couldn’t reach the doctor to get permission to give me oneright away. It’s nine o’clock that night, the phone rings and it’s my dear, oldfriend and ex-lover, Ariana. She never calls me at night. We often talk at six
in the morning. She’s one of the best therapists in the country. Most people
don’t know that because she doesn’t have a degree. She has worked with themost seriously psychotic people on skid row in Los Angeles. We talked for
15 minutes and I felt better and went to sleep. After she acknowledged that
I had a right to be upset, and listened to everything I said about my pain, I
told her, “I don’t want to kill myself, but I feel like I want to die, I feel that
bad. I don’t know what I’m going to do.” She said, “Of course you knowwhat you’re going to do, you’re going to tough it out. There’s nothing else todo.” She was right as usual. I hate it when she’s right, even if I do love her.
When they sent me here from Alta Bates Hospital, they sent me forhospice care for maybe two months due to low heart, lung and kidney
functions. The doctor here took what they said and acted as if it were true.
As time has gone by, I’ve been getting stronger and stronger. Finally, abouta month after the projected date of my demise, she said, “Boy, you sure aremaking a strong comeback. Your heart and lungs are really not all that bad.

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The kidneys are still a problem, but …” something meaning I wasn’t atdeath’s door. That was a huge bit of information, though I already knewthat I was getting better.
The staff at Alta Bates didn’t believe in me. They didn’t know that I
was a fighter. They didn’t know me at all. I was really sick. Everybody who
knows me and who was visiting me was terrified because they could see thatthe life was going out of me. I do feel very proud of what I have accomplishedin my life, given where I came from (and I don’t mean Detroit). In a small
circle, I’m respected and cared for. That’s way more than I ever expected.
I’m not done yet. There’s a whole world that’s all screwed up and I knowthat I can’t personally fix it, but I want to be one of the people who ismaking things better and more humane. I want to be one of the people who
makes history rather than just one who reads it. Compared to great stars
and heroes what I’ve done is nothing, but it’s huge to me, because it is somuch more that I ever dreamed I could accomplish. I never thought I could
publish a book, or even a story. I have over forty publications. People tellme they like my work. That’s a major contradiction to what I had believed
growing up.
A long time ago I heard that some people were buying caskets in advanceand using them for furniture, like chests. Ever since the Loma Prieta
Earthquake I’ve been ruminating on what I was going to do with my bodywhen I die, having come close to death that day being on the Bay Bridge
during that earthquake. I knew I didn’t want to be cremated because Jews
have been burned too often in my lifetime. I didn’t want to be buried because
I’m asthmatic and figured I couldn’t breathe if I were buried. I know, it’s notrational. Ask any asthmatic, I’m not alone in this. I went to the Unitarianchurch in the first place because that was a question I needed help with—what to do with my body. Last year I read about this place where they donatural burials with no chemicals and everything is done to preserve theenvironment of the space. I thought, that makes the most sense to me. It’sa grassy field with trees with a little stone that comes from the region. I’mgoing to have a stone and all it’s going to say is “Judy Freespirit.” Somestones don’t say anything, but I want to be immortal.
When it came up that I wouldn’t live long, I thought of a man at ourchurch who is a good carpenter/artist and that I would like to ask him tobuild me a casket out of plain pine, which is the Jewish tradition. Then I got
the idea of asking people in the church to paint it because plain pine is kindof boring and it would give people a chance to participate in a ritual. Somefall 2006

67of my friends have already made plans for the ritual, and one of them haseven measured me for the casket. Now that I’m thinking that I’ll live awhile,
it will be a chest where I store my blankets and sheets. It will be high enoughso that I can use it as a bench to sit on.
So from not knowing what I want to do with my body, I think I’ve
come a long way. I picked a grassy meadow at Fernwood in Mill Valley. It’s
near a grove of oak trees that attract Monarch butterflies. People coming tovisit me will have a nice view. It has to do with having power. I have spent somuch of my life feeling so powerless. When I was married, all the furniture
was picked by my husband, because he had a stronger will than I did. He
always won the arguments. This is something that I can absolutely make all
my own decisions about. It feels silly on one hand and important on theother.
As soon as I realized I wasn’t going to die––it took about three months––I got really angry. Now I had all the problems I had before plus all the ones
caused by this illness. When I’m having a bad day, like last week I had a bad
cold and a fever, I think, “Why didn’t I just die?” I didn’t really mean it, but
the thought did cross my mind. On days like today, I’m so glad I’m alive.
When everybody was sure I was dying, people put a lot of their lives
aside and spent time with me. People I hadn’t seen in years came out of thewoodwork. People across the country heard about me and wrote me letters.
I initiated contact with people with whom I had unfinished business. They
were people whom I didn’t necessarily want back in my life, but I wanted tosay good-bye or tell them something positive about their role in my life that
I had not yet previously disclosed. Now they’re back in my life and I’m alive.
I guess it could be worse. I had never anticipated that so many people would
be there for me. Some were old friends and some are fairly new friends. My
friendships have deepened tremendously. I feel more loved than I ever did
before, but I still have to work at it. Some things die hard.

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Joan Annsfire

Surrender
your gray hair, wild with neglect,your mind fraught with disorder,
hollow despair resoundedat the death of your child,
my mother.
Nembutal nights
followed alcohol-infused days
as you descended deeper
into the grief-stained well of memory.
the bones of her bodyhung suspended between us,
just above the desperate breath of evenings,
where her spirit hovered, brushed past us
in dry, sleepless rooms;
separate cells of need and longing.
you stepped upon this earth
in careful balance on a razor
self-consuming as a candle,
burned down to only anger.
regret, a hot wax coating
as you slid further,further.
the air hung thick with sadness,
your eyes, black as a river,that day you made your last surrenderand your life-force drained
like water.
sliced open and abandonedby the world that took
your daughter.

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69

Marcia PerlsteinYour Suicide, My Mop-up
February 15, 2006
Dear Colleen,
I’m beginning this on an odd date having written to you since yourdeath in 1972 only at the immediate aftermath (as self therapy/survival)
and for eleven anniversaries thereafter. So to be writing in February, insteadof August 3, somehow feels strange. However, this letter provides me with
an opportunity to re-cap and update. Choosing this format and venue enables
me to share our story. Ever the educator, I hope it will be instructive tothose considering suicide (who hopefully will reject the option) and to thesurvivors who have lost someone special to the ravages of this choice. Finally,
this letter, just as all the others, allows me to connect again with you,experience our love as well as your exit, revisit some of the wonderful
memories that we managed to pack in during our seven years; smile at all I
learned from you including Christmas, scrounging around for second handtreasures, nature, science, and San Francisco. The list could go on; this ismerely the tip of the iceberg.
Some of what I’m about to say in this letter you’ve heard before (outthere somewhere, that is) because all these letters were written after yoursuicide. I’m going to repeat myself because this letter is being offered toSinister Wisdom, in the hopes that our story might bring some measure of
comfort or understanding to survivors of their lover’s suicide. One of mycurrent sadnesses for you, for your premature departure from me and thisearth, is that you missed out on the growth of the LGBT movement. You
also missed out on technological advances that would have blown your mind,
kindling that marvelous sense of wonderment and joy that many of yourresearch findings provided you with! I remember when you were doing
your research and had to go to that room with the large computer that took
punch cards and you always needed the help of the person on duty. Onceyou put the cards in and didn’t push the next button quickly enough and themachine read “reader idle in mid-run.” You hit the machine and said, “I’mnot idle, just stupid.” You got banned from the room for a week for hittingthat machine.

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I know many readers will find ours is not a unique tale; it is yet anothercommon example of the cost of the closet. I lived with the double whammyof the pain of losing you (triggering my guilt, confusion, and self doubt) as
well as the concomitant complications of continuing to hide.
I also know that if you lived in these times, you would be one of theleaders of LGBT civil rights. Just as you were a founder of Science for the
People (whose mission was to make scientific discoveries that add to thequality of peoples’ lives and that are truly accessible to grass roots folks,etc.), ever the activist (anti-war, civil rights) you’d now be carrying the bannerfor our own civil rights. In fact, Colleen, did you see me marching in 1987
the same path in Washington as I had marched in the 60’s with Martin
Luther King for black civil rights? I wept as fellow straight travelers supported
us in the same way, literally on the same path. You would have been withme.
I have to confess that I think of you less frequently now but one of
the recurring themes seems to be all you’re missing out on: TIVO, computers, nouvelle cuisine, hybrid cars that get 61 miles to the gallon. We’re livingon a stretch of paradise now with our own dock and view of Discovery Bay
in the state of Washington. You would have loved washing the dishes here
because, in addition to getting your fingernails clean as you always used tosay, you can view the ever changing patterns of water, see an occasional
deer and many different birds, whose names you would have gotten to know.
I still say “there’s a bird!”.
Immediate Aftermath
Well Colleen, to re-cap: After you suicided my grief was prolonged,
disabling, and extremely lonely. I have since learned that it was far worse
because I preserved your insistence to remain closeted. You had good reason;
it was hard enough for you to be a woman at two prestigious universities,
teaching and having your own lab and experiments. It would have been
objectively dangerous to come out. I concurred, cooperated, kept your secret.
After your death I fiercely protected your/our secret, compounding myloneliness and puzzling my friends. Nobody quite understood why I was“taking it so hard” and for so long.
I had to fight lots of ‘shoulds’ about grief. My therapist thought I
should be angry at you. I couldn’t and can’t to this day. If I got angry; itwould be about me and your suicide was truly about you. I was deeply
disturbed at how much I had missed about the depth and breadth of your

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suffering prior to your suicide. In fact, I took down my shingle for a periodof time believing that if I hadn’t helped you, I was going to miss somethingimportant with the clients I was working with. They deserved a whole andsmart therapist. I was shattered and clearly not on top of my observational
game; I had been emotionally clueless about your pain. We were
geographically so distant; you were teaching medical students at Harvard
and running your lab (incredible honors for a twenty-six year old) and I had
my practice in Berkeley. If you’d said a word, I would have chucked it all
and been on a plane to be with you. But we had talked about how busy youwere teaching by day and in the lab every night. We concluded, mutually I
thought, that I should remain in Berkeley. How hard it must have been tohave kept quiet in our last phone conversation, hours before you ingested
your cyanide.
Another big piece of the immediate aftermath was the effect on bothyour sisters, still in high school. I stepped in for a long time as substitute big
sister. They were so creative and loving. Spending time with them helped allof us “keep your wonderful memories alive.” They didn’t have permission
to speak your name at home since your father said you’d committed a sin bysuiciding. I sat at your family’s Thanksgiving table for many years after yourdeath.
Long-Term Aftermath
1. Making Lemonade
My grief was painful and prolonged since you had died so young,leaving such a puzzle, and the giant elephant in the middle of the room of
our relationship. I went from a person who never cried (Bronx bravado
learned through roots and rearing) to someone who bawled if anyone asked“how are you?”
I eventually tried to make some lemonade out of the awful lemons you
left me. One of the things that really angered me was everyone telling methat my grief was going on too long and I “should” get over you and moveon with my life. That annoyed me for two reasons: 1) everyone’s grief isprivate and individual, and folks should not have to fight for permission togrieve as they wish; and 2) there is a prejudice in our culture that we are
more entitled to grieve deeply over a lover or primary relationship than aclose friend or roommate. Since they didn’t know we were an “item,” they
thought I was grieving too long for simply a roommate. As it happened, you72sinister wisdom #68/69 — Death, Grief and Surviving

were my primary relationship for seven wonderful years. However, even if
you hadn’t been, I feel that uncoupled yet intimate friendships deserve thesame respect as coupling.
In fact, each of these issues has led me over the years, after muchthinking and feeling, to become an “expert” and share my findings withothers. I have trained other therapists in the area of grief and suicide. You’ll
be pleased to know that I even have a suicide joke, which at first horrifies;
then goes over well in these workshops, much in the spirit of the humor weshared.
As for honoring all forms of intimacy, when I hung my shingle out
again I started seeing all manner of connections between and among people,
from polyamorous relationships to roommates, mothers and daughters, etc.
I’m working on a piece now, “Intimacy is More than Coupling,”
which
I tried out at the Women’s Building aging series last year. My central thesis isthat even coupled folks are experiencing a temporary condition. One will
pre-decease the other and those who have made intimate friendships, formed
extended family and community with others will fare better than those whohave isolated themselves inside their primary relationship.
Yes, Colleen, I just turned sixty last June; you would have in October.
I’ve gone from adolescent concerns to aging issues. Suicide is no longer thecenterpoint of my existence. By the way, though sadness has always been
my primary feeling when I think of you, one major area of resentment
towards you is that you planted in me the idea of suicide. I never considered
it an option. Since your death, whenever the going gets emotionally extremely
tough, I tend to consider suicide and then reject it. I resent that I have to go
down that path at all. It hadn’t been part of my arsenal of choices prior toyour use of it as an answer. I so wish that you could have considered otheroptions, been more open about your pain, or, as I discovered are the mostimportant things in preventing suicide, allowed the strength of ourconnection to have helped you feel less isolated, and bought some time,realizing that today’s pain can diminish and recede tomorrow or the nextday. If you exit this earth you have no opportunity to catch a better wave
when it floats in.
2. Soul Reclamation
So let me tell you more about what you’ve been observing all theseyears from your place in the universe. I had an extremely hard time withrelationships. When asked about my coming out process I have to describe

fall 200673

it as “checkered:” seven years closeted with you; several years going back tomen (since part of my stinkin’ thinkin’ after you abandoned me was that I
was being punished for being with a woman), then, beginning in my latethirties returning to women with yet another promiscuous adolescence. Someof it was fun, much was empty for me. Then, a seven year relationship witha woman eighteen years older than me who left me very abruptly. However,not much pain for me over that loss. Your premature and sudden exit trumped
anything else; no pain could match what I went through after you left. Finally,
where I am now: in an eighteen year relationship, minus six months for alesbian drama about nine years ago. We learned much from our temporary
break-up; though not perfect, we are very strong. However, when we started
out, I couldn’t let her all the way in emotionally.
I needed Richard Olney’s Self Acceptance Training for that. I quipthat I turned to an eighty five year old male shaman to learn about tender
energy. As you know, I had been in an advanced training group with him
and fifteen other peer therapists for more than twenty years (until his death).
We have continued on our own with the periodic use of master consultants.
Nyla and I went to one of his workshops in Mexico. I was still talking about
you, still regretting not being able to get closer to Nyla, which resulted inmany petty squabbles to cover the deeper emotional distance. He felt thatyou still held part of my soul. He offered me a very intense and painfulprocess, witnessed by the others (including Nyla) in our training group. He
helped me travel to the lower regions, beyond consciousness and ask you to
return the piece of my soul that you possessed.
I can just see the cynical scientist in you laughing at all this. But I canequally see the floating you, out there in a larger universe “getting” this andwhat it meant to both Nyla and me. It truly worked and I thank you for
returning that which you kept for far too long. I recognize that you couldn’t
have held my soul without my complicity. This process helped me see how
I am truly a lesbian as well. Something which you never quite allowed yourself
to experience with truth and pride. I have never been comfortable withmen, never been entirely myself, always tried too hard to please. With Nyla,
I am really me: positive, negative, complicated, strong/weak, happy, sad. I
am not afraid of losing her if I speak my truth; I can let her in all the way
without pretense or posturing. Reclaiming my soul from you to make itavailable to our relationship helped me understand once and for all my choiceof women over men.

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Full Circle: Knowing that You are Smiling Wherever You Are
So Colleen, for my sixtieth birthday, my friends helped me organizea party where I was the entertainment. For about one hundred fifty of mynearest and dearest I was Bronx Bred Baby Boomer offering the U.S. premierof my act “Bull in a Dharma Shop.” (I know you saw it but I like how it
plays on the page so I thought I’d re-cap.) Folks came from every important
thread of my life including family; extended family; friends from long termgroups including Jewish lesbian and Dick Olneyites; comrades from various
movements including Radical Elders Oral History Project, Out and Equalin the Workplace, Women’s Feminist Activities, and Berkeley politics; interns,
ex-interns, and trainees; colleagues from Berkeley Therapy Institute,
Psychotherapy Institute, Alternative Family Project, East Bay Volunteer
Therapist AIDS Project, and Berkeley Grief Support Project (the latter two
for which I was founder and first director); women from the larger lesbiancommunity in San Francisco, Berkeley, and Sequim, Washington; and othercolleagues and friends, LGBT and straight. The place was humming!
Many things about that night were extremely moving. Both your sisters
came. Gail brought her hubby and adult daughter saying she wanted herdaughter to get to know me a bit better. Our contact over the years had
waned. I had held your secret all this time, though they had figured it out
long ago. At my party their surmisals were validated. I offered them theopportunity to meet next time I visit so that I can answer any questions theymight have about you/us. As you know, Gail suffered long and hard after
your death. I found her a lesbian therapist with whom she did pretty well.
I can’t answer why I held your secret so long. The story I told myself
was that I was honoring your legacy the way you would want it honored.
However, the fallacy in that is that the world changed so much since yourdeparture from it that old choices no longer were relevant. Emotionally, I
couldn’t wrap my mind around that and couldn’t exactly envision who you
would be today. So I kept you frozen as I knew you and honored the promises
I made to you then. All of that is over and I am looking forward to talking
with your sisters if they should avail themselves of the opportunity.
Goodbye again Colleen, “rest in peace perturbed spirit.”
Oodles and Poodles and Matzo Balls of Love,
Marciafall 2006

Stacy Traiger

Thursday Night Sketches
This summer I’m learning to sketch.
A white cup, thick and heavy and empty.
A banana, soft and spotted, against a round lamp.
My third drawing was the leaf.
I stared at lines and shadows, intimate,and could not throw away the model.
It sits on my kitchen table, on the drawing,
drying and fading to a dull papery tan.
I watch it die: shrivel, flatten and pale,sides droop onto the paper, stem twists up.
The pencil-drawn leaf is unchanged, vibrant.
It mocks the dying leaf. ‘You are a living thing,and you are dying. I am an imitation of a living thing
and I cannot die. Soon you will decay, and I
will be the only representation of your life.
I will become you.’
The drawing has not become the leaf, cannot
become.
But I am changed by the act of drawing.
I notice leaves now. I look at bananas, seeflat sides and corners, stems and bruises,
the particular arc of this banana which is different
from the arcs of other bananas. Cups too. I noticecurve and heft, light reflecting off rounded sides,
the rims and handles, each distinct.
II.
We rarely meet their children,
don’t see them at work or home.
At the cancer support group,
we ask diagnosis and treatment,

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sinister wisdom #68/69 — Death, Grief and Surviving

compare side effects,
talk of tumors and wills.
We speak new priorities and old regrets,flaunt scars and wigs, make one whole bodyfrom our combined missing parts.
Most survive into remission and move on.
Some have recurrences. Some die.
We notice dying.
We hear confused phrases
and half-lost thoughts,
see drugged movements,
body no longer responsive to brain.
We long-term survivors
have seen this before, heard
tumors spreading and growing,blotting out clarity, muting mobility.
We watch for the silences.
III.
Shirley, going deaf
after a lifetime of adventures,
moved slowly, dozed in the meeting.
She knew and accepted; we wished
we’d all die old in our sleep.
Junior’s death was sudden.
Handsome and thoughtful, he looked worn,left ear burnt shut in a roofing accident,
tattoos from doing time.
In remission and remarried, he returned to roofing,
had a heart attack at work, died quickly.
The unplanned funeral was simple and quiet.
Bett was swollen and incoherent. Lung cancer
spread to her brain, pain meds loosened her
tongue.

fall 2006

We let her ramble, knowing she would die soon,
all we could do was listen.
Delores was fighting it.
Hearing her diagnosis, she cried that once,
didn’t cry again, she told us proudly.
Breast cancer spread to her lungs and liver.
She drew on her bald head, baked brownies,
refused to stay home, refused
to give in. When she died,
her lover brought us brownies, crying.
Aaron was tired
after three brain tumors.
He was young and Mormon,
talked of his wife and two sons.
Weeks later, he couldn’t walk.
Neurological damage, the doctors said.
Cane to wheelchair, clarity to confusion.
He struggled for speech. We listened,speaking quietly during the long pauses
when he fell asleep mid-sentence or mid-bite,
pizza sliding from his hand.
IV.
These quick sketches
cannot represent the dead,cannot become them.
But I am changedby the act of remembering.
I notice lives, seeing
flat hands, spotted and bruised,
light reflecting off moist eyes,
the arc of each person, distinct.
I notice my life, the lines and shadowsas I curve and pale, twisting towards death.

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Jean Sirius

How It Was
Here’s what I think: I think the reason we have hearts is so they can be broken. All thenice stuff, the limerance, the passion: it’s all just bait. I think the breaking is what teaches
us compassion, moves us along the path toward becoming fully human. A hundred years
ago in the U.S., nobody achieved adulthood without sustaining a loss—a parent or asibling, or both, or several. People knew what it was to grieve. Nowadays, what with cleanwater and advances in medicine, people get to be fifty without that experience. I think thisaccounts for the curious heartlessness of American social policy—the policymakers havemissed the crucial lessons grief offers.
I never forget that I was very lucky. I had eighteen years of something some people don’t
have for five minutes. Unlikely as it sounds, my partner’s death was the happy ending: westayed together; we worked things out; we didn’t give up. When you love somebody, you
give a hostage to fate. Sooner or later, if you keep at it, somebody’s going to die. And if
you love her, it doesn’t matter if you’ve had five weeks or fifty years, it’s always too soon.
The last words Cara said were “I love you.” The last words she heard were “I love you.”
She died with my hand on her heart, and if she’d held on another two weeks, she’d havetaken me with her.
In January of 1989, I started back to school for the first time in twenty
years. I’d dropped out of Colorado State University in favor of sex, drugs,
and rock & roll, and I was dropping back in because desktop publishing wasabout to devour my job as a typesetter. I took a math class and an art class,where I learned to do collage. Cara came down with a cold that month.
Since she’d suffered from allergies all her life, she didn’t notice that her nose
was still blocked up until March. She started looking around for an earnose-throat specialist to take a look at it.
We’d been together for ten years. We worked hard, at the beginning, tobuild a shared culture that supported us equally. We had choreography fordisagreement; we had algorithms for making decisions. We’d put in the work
because we believed it would pay off over the decades: we were going togrow old together.
It took a few months to get an appointment. The doctor said it looked
like polyps to him, and scheduled the surgery for September, when he got
back from vacation. Since Cara and I had no legal relationship, I was in nofall 2006

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position to do what I wanted to do, which was invade his personal spaceand say, “There is something growing in my wife’s face. Fix it now.” Cara wasn’t
concerned. I held my peace.
While waiting for the surgery, we filled out paperwork and got forms
notarized, so that “in the unlikely event,” I would be the person making
decisions about Cara’s healthcare, and nobody would try to keep me out ofher hospital room. One great thing about living in the San Francisco Bay
area is that every hospital knows the drill: same sex partners happen, and if
you make us unhappy, we will sue you.
The surgery took several hours longer than predicted. I knew this was
not good. When Cara was finally in the recovery room, the doctor pulled
me out of the waiting area. He said a lot of words ending in “-oma,”* andI longed for a cigarette. (I’d quit two years earlier.) I didn’t tell Cara when
she asked, still groggy from the anesthetic. She’d know soon enough, I
figured. While she slept it off, I thought, “She’s leaving me, and I didn’t evenknow she was unhappy.” I promised myself that the last thing she was going
to know in this life was that she was loved.
I recognized that the cancer was hers, however she came by it. Decisions
about how to handle it belonged entirely to her. I am a strong personality: ittakes iron discipline not to steamroller innocent bystanders, nudging reality
into shapes that work for me. The hardest thing I did for the next eight
years was to ask Cara what she wanted, and make it happen, and not offer
advice unless it was specifically requested.
In an oncologist’s waiting room, we accidentally opened the wrong
envelope, and learned what Cara’s surgeon had seen. Wherever he probed
around the tumor, he found more cancer. The only way he could have excised
it all and left a clean margin was by doing a “semi-headectomy.” We sat instunned silence, we grappled with despair, and then we reassured each otherthat doctors don’t know everything, and miracles happen. Cara then did
everything in her power to forget what she’d read.
Later, alone, I sat with the horror. Cara with half her head. Could I
bear it? Would I run away? I conducted a thought experiment: if Cara’s leg
were amputated, would I still love her? Of course I would. How about bothof them? That and an arm? Both arms. When it came right down to it, I
decided, if Cara were just a brain on a plate, I’d still be loving her, and doing
whatever I could to help her follow her path. Then I didn’t have to think
about it any more either.
The specialists recommended experimental radiation treatments; thefirst happened to fall on my fortieth birthday. Cara asked what I’d like to do

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to celebrate; I said something quiet, maybe dinner out with our friend Anne.
She got through the treatment, we had a nice dinner, and then we camehome. As we opened the front door, a dozen women yelled, “Surprise!”In the middle of all this, Cara had found time to arrange a party forme. No one has ever loved me so much. I was lucky to get through theevening without sobbing.
At treatment’s end, Cara and I chose to live as if she were cured, eventhough nobody said any such thing. She returned to the job she loved at UC
Berkeley, and I went back to school. We had five pretty good years before
the accumulation of health issues made it clear she was having a recurrence.
No particular treatment was offered this time. Hospice was recommended.
She said she wasn’t that far gone.

the anniversary pictures**

She kept working. As before, I tagged along to medical appointments,
taking notes, keeping lab results, reminding her of questions she’d had. Cara
was not interested in her prognosis. (As Warren Zevon said, unless a doctor
has a gun to your head, he has no business telling you how long you’re goingto live.) Whenever health care professionals seemed on the verge of
pronouncing one, I’d get right up in their face and make them stop.
In the summer of 1996 Cara fainted and sustained a concussion. She
went on disability. I set up a table at the foot of the bed and made collages.
It pleased Cara that something beautiful was happening amid all theunpleasantness, and it soothed my spirit to have work whose outcome I
could actually control. I made a series of cut paper collages and a series oftorn paper ones while fetching, cooking, monitoring her fluid intake, doing
whatever was needed.
We had help from our communities—Cara’s co-workers and friends,
my electronic buddies at BMUG (a computer user group), and the pack ofwild college students who’d adopted me at Mills College. They organized
themselves to support us, helping with cooking, cleaning, and giving me acouple of hours away from the house once a week.
In January of 1997, Cara had a stroke. I became her legs. We’d drape
her arm over my shoulders, put my arm around her waist, and we’d getfall 2006

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there together. A month later, I broke a finger (mercifully, on mynondominant hand). Her mother promised to fly out from New Jersey tohelp. By the time Agnes arrived, six weeks later, the finger was healed, and it
turned out she wasn’t good with crises. They had an opportunity to spend
time together, though, and I kept an eye on them both.
Cara’s family firmly believed that if you didn’t say it, it wasn’t true.
Returned to New Jersey, Agnes would call and ask how Cara was doing. I’dsay, “She’s getting weaker.” She’d say, “Well, I’ll just have to pray harder.” I’dthink, “Fine. You do that.”
As we approach death, we run out of landmarks. Sometimes we getfrightened. Cara and I had been practicing pagans for almost two decades,
but as the abyss opened at her feet, she cast about for magical solutions, andPhotos by Jean Sirius

settled on the faith of her childhood. She started watching Christian religious
programming on television. I didn’t argue with her; if she was watchingsomething I couldn’t stand, I just left the room.
We had hospice by this time, which is to say hospice sent nurses, asocial worker, and personal care assistants to our house, and there was adoctor to prescribe morphine. In the last month, the nurse tried to convince
me that Cara should be moved to a skilled nursing facility, so I could catchup on my sleep. (Cara and I shared a bed the entire time, and I was in the
habit of rising up to partial consciousness several times a night, to check if
she needed anything, or was still breathing.) In the last couple of weeks I
was experiencing short episodes of sleep deprivation psychosis, but I was
damned if I was going to let them take her away. I knew they wouldn’t bringher back. My reluctance offended the nurse; I had to explain that I didn’t
believe Cara would survive the transfer.
In my belief system, dying trumps everything. The person doing itgets to make all the decisions. Cara never believed she was going to die. She
chose denial: it was her family heritage. At the very end she imagined that if
she believed hard enough she’d get a miracle. I had to agree that there are
miracles, and if anybody deserved one, she did. She never asked me if I
thought she was dying, because she knew I’d tell her. Once, slyly, she asked

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sinister wisdom #68/69 — Death, Grief and Surviving

if I were in her situation, what would I do? I said I’d do all the things thatgive me joy as much as possible. I’d do every kindness I was capable of. I’dmake art as long as I could. I’d open up my heart, and make sure thateverybody I loved knew exactly why.
For a week I watched her as she listened to music, which she loved,and drew pictures, and talked to her friends. She dictated letters to send tofriends and family. When I caught her in the act of doing me a kindness, it
damn near killed me. I was sorry we didn’t get to talk about the dying while
it was happening, but it was her call, and I respected it.
The social worker from hospice happened to be in the house on Cara’s
last day. Even though Cara was in a coma, I’d left them alone together, incase Cara had something to say to her. Also, I didn’t like the idea of talking
over her unconscious body. (People in a coma can still hear, I think.) Lauraknew the signs and called to me, so I was there for Cara’s last breath. I put
my hand on her heart and told her I loved her, and it was okay, and she
could let go.
And then I went into shock. I was still walking around, doing what
needed to be done, but my body mercifully shielded me from the full extent
of the pain. I know this only in retrospect. At the time, I was amazed thatmy body could hold so much unhappiness, and yet there was still room forthe air to go in and out. I felt like a tiny boat on an angry sea, and the waves
threatened to swamp me, and all I could do was hang on and weep and wait
for them to subside.
Cara’s mom called to ask about her daughter’s life, for accuracy in thehometown obituary. I had to tell her that Cara had never actually finishedher master’s degree. And I asked to be identified as Cara’s partner. When it
was printed, I’d been transmogrified into a “friend.” Agnes said she had no
idea why “they” had changed it. She was old, and I didn’t argue with her. I
knew she’d done it because she was embarrassed. She was dead in two years
anyway.
Then somebody from personnel at the university called to ask for thenames and addresses of Cara’s next of kin. I said, “That would be me.” Shesaid, “No, according to statute, any unused vacation pay goes to the next ofkin, a spouse or blood relative.” I explained that Cara had clearly andunequivocally designated me as her sole beneficiary. I called the people she’dworked with and reported the incident. I mentioned it on BMUG. People
wanted to show up somewhere and demonstrate their disapproval. Eventually,
the functionary was persuaded that even though it wasn’t the letter of thelaw, the path of least resistance was to send me the damn money. This wasfall 2006

Altar for My Dead

83

Photo by Jean Sirius

An altar for my dead. In front, a scarf Cara gave me. A kukui lei she
brought back from a visit to Hawai’i. A nipple-shaped paperweight fromher desk. Two lavender crystal balls that belonged to Cynthia, who diedthis year. Some stars Cara used to wear in her lapel. A pipe bead necklace
she got at a powwow. A shell necklace from Hawai’i. Many of her earrings
are hanging from pots. At left, an Indonesian flying mermaid and a gold
ornament. In back, the box her ashes came back to me in. Three of mypurple heart-themed collages on the wall. Various goddesses. Artwork byfriends: on the left, a collage Keiko Kubo made on the Day of the Deadthe year after Cara died; middle, a collage Tee Corinne made,incorporating a photograph she took of Cara; right, another Tee
photograph, of Bev Brown (who died last October) and me. To the left ofTee’s collage, the bride figures we put on our fourteenth anniversary cake.
To the right of it, a polaroid snapshot of Cara with Isis and Hecate (ourcats, who died in 1989 and 1992). It’s leaning against a candle holder
made by my friend Florence, who died in 2005. The wooden snake
wrapped around the pot in front of the double portrait was also made by
Florence, with help from Bobbie, who also died in 2005.

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sinister wisdom #68/69 — Death, Grief and Surviving

before domestic partnerships. Maybe it’s better now. I know the call gave
me a shot of adrenaline; it may have done me good, in a perverse way.
We’d been careful to have all our legal ducks in a row, with powers of
attorney and wills and joint accounts so that when “one of us” died, thesurvivor owned everything, and all the relatives had better be nice, or theymight not get anything. I was good. I asked if there was anything the parents
might like, by way of remembrance. I put aside the things of Cara’s that had
belonged to her grandmother, and passed them back to her family.
Six months after the death, I consulted a psychic, who said she saw abook I was going to publish, which would help me reconnect me with Carain some future life. “Too tired, couldn’t possibly,” I wailed. She said,“Nevertheless.”*** She also noted that I was so utterly spent that it would
be months, and maybe years, before I could get back up to empty. This wastrue. When I had reached the bottom of my reserves, I just started digging.
The grief changed me. For a year I didn’t know exactly who I was,what I liked, what I could do. I couldn’t concentrate enough to read, and I’dread myself to sleep every night of my life since I was six. Turned out I
could cook, a little. I couldn’t sleep through the night any more. Kept rising
up to near-consciousness, noticing Cara wasn’t breathing, and waking therest of the way up. Every hour or so. I did two last collages, to finish the set
I’d been working on, and found I couldn’t bring myself to do any more.
I’m kinder now, certainly. I know down to my roots that whatever I
find to love in this world will eventually go away, and I recognize theimportance of loving it the best way I know how. I’m clearer about whatmatters and what doesn’t. And I’m fearless. I’ve survived the worst thingthat could possibly happen; life holds no terrors. I’ve traveled alone, walked
dangerous streets late at night, and always feel perfectly safe. Maybe
somebody’s looking out for me. Or maybe I’m not afraid to die. There areworse ways to be in the world, for as long as I’m in it.
______________________NOTES:* The diagnosis was adenocystic carcinoma. Cara was the wrong age, sex, andcolor to get it. I have no use for statistics.
** On the fifth anniversary of Cara’s death, I photographed her name spelledin various substances: flowers, pebbles, eucalyptus leaves, quartz crystals and riverrocks, bay leaves, oak leaves.
*** In 2001, I published Seeing Double/Rose Windows, a collection of thecollages I made while Cara was dying. It can be found online at http://
www.jeansirius.com/newbook.html.

fall 2006

Siverbear

Where Do Poems Come From
like the last leaves
that have clung through winterto float down on a chill wind,words fallon the barren page
dying embers
flickers of the once bright fire
spark to thought?
but seeds bursting from the pod
though carried by the breeze
rarely grow to rhyme.
it is not the warming fire
the whistle of the kettleor the company of friends
butthe lonely wailof a distant train
that draws the wandering line
nor does the rising
sun inspirewords of living color
but the darkest hourof night
it is the ends
that force the heart
to write.

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Carmen de Monteflores

I See Her in Her Braids
The laughter in the garden, echoed ecstasy
Not lost, but requiring, pointing to the agony
Of death and birth. (T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets)
An image of a terrace at the summerhouse. I see her in her braids withthe ribbon bows sticking out from behind her ears. She looks tall standing
in the front driveway partially in the sun. We took pictures there. She, in agreen dress with white diamond shapes; me, in a white blouse and plaid
skirt that my father brought from the U. S. I am 16. She is a year and threemonths older than I am, the sister I never had. I’m smiling at her. She smiles
also but has a more serious look.
Someone, who I had not heard from in years, leaves a message on myvoicemail: had I heard anything from her family? I call right away after I gethome from work. It is about 7:15pm. She says my cousin had died. She
committed suicide.
I light a candle. It burns for a long time. I pray for her spirit, to bereleased, to be healthy, to be together with our ancestors. I wonder about
the suffering and anguish that must have led her to take her life. I had heard
she was depressed. I didn’t give it too much thought. People go throughstuff. I keep asking myself questions: how did she do it? Did she leave anote? Did anyone know what was going on with her? Was she ill? I wonder
whether I should have visited. She invited me on several occasions to comeand stay at her house. I made excuses to myself: that I had to work, or I
didn’t have the money, or couldn’t take the time. Now I think: could I havehelped? Did she talk to anyone? Can anything explain suicide?
I pray to our Abuelita, our grandmother, to help me understand, or
accept. To help me pray. To help me love. I think of my yard. My garden. I
think of the garden of my childhood, where I played with all the cousins. I
try to remember: Did she run in the rain with us, or ride down the driveway
in roller skates? I climbed trees. She read books. She was the older one, theone who knew things, who walked me home from school when I got myfirst period and gave me instruction.
Why? I keep asking myself. What brings someone to that place of not
wanting to see the beauty of the world any more? I think about death. I
think: I may be dying. Then I think: I am dying. Life is about dying but it isfall 2006

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also about living. I remember walking to a friend’s house and how I loved
the surroundings she created. There was a morning glory on the fence, lilies
and irises bordering the entrance. Beauty is worth living for, as is the music
I hear now on the radio. My cousin had said in a brief letter many years agothat she loved flowers. I see the photo of Mami and Abuelita that sits on mydesk. I ask them to ease my cousin’s passage, to help her let go of the pain.
To bless her. She will be pure spirit now. Like them. And some day I will
also join them in that endless dimension. I let grief and joy enter my heart
together. Life and death side by side. The candle keeps burning.
I remember what is left of the fence of my childhood home. I associate
images of the house, when it was there, with my cousin. That was the lastplace where I really knew her. Our lives separated when I left home, not toolong after the photo in the green dress was taken. Her young presence floats
near me, coming in and out of my consciousness.
I hear that a person’s belief about how much time she has left in life
makes a big difference on how she feels and also on how long she will live.
I resist understanding how a person can get to the point where it is moredifficult to keep living than to die. I want to affirm life.
Clearly life must have been intolerable but, why exactly? At what point
does life become intolerable? At what point does our instinct of selfpreservation, our connections with others and our inner resources fail togive us enough meaning and reason to keep living? What is that moment
when the lifeline breaks down and we are let loose in meaninglessness? And
at what point does death become less frightening than suffering?
What do I do in the face of such unanswerable questions? I take refugein everything I have loved in my life. Again I conjure images of my childhood
home: the huge flamboyant trees, next to the house, that burst into fiery
blossoms in the summer; the ripe mangos hanging from low branches; thesmell of heat coming off the cement walks and the smell of rain coming.
In spite of whatever suffering I have had in my life, the balance has tipped
for me toward enjoyment. I was loved growing up. I had the yard and theanimals, art and books, imagination, the richness of music and the spiritualpromise of the Catholic Church. I have been very lucky. But fate had adifferent design for my cousin. She lived with a narcissistic and addicted
mother, with the threat of emotional and other kinds of abuse in her life.
There were periods when they lived with us. She lived in poverty except
for the help the family gave her mother. For a while she, her mother andbrother lived in the projects. The unit had bare, dirty, thick cement walls.
There was barren, hard-packed ground around the buildings as if the place

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had been stripped of any adornment that would soften the scarcity anddeprivation. Her father had abandoned the family. Could a possible betrayal
as an adult have recreated the pain of her father’s desertion?
She worked hard and grew up to become a well-respected professionalsurrounded by beauty, comforts and family. What was the corrosive force
that undid her? It is easy to say: depression. But that’s just a word. Somepeople live under seemingly devastating and horrifying circumstances andthey keep living. I think of Abuelita’s humor and graciousness. She had
nothing. No material possessions except a few items of clothing. But she
commanded respect and never was depressed or negative. My thoughts
about my cousin resurface every day. At what point did the first idea ofsuicide come into her awareness? Why was there such dearth of expression
in her few letters? Was she on some kind of medication? Was she afunctioning addict? Did she have a terminal illness?
Today I found out that she shot herself. Her violent ending makes me
think that she didn’t want it to fail, that she wanted to make sure it was
instant and fatal. But was it also a result of anger? Why did she have a gun?
I keep going over the fragments of information I have hoping to find clues
or reach some conclusions, but they keep being just that, fragments. The
family doesn’t say what happened.
I search deeper into myself for answers, no longer about her death but
about my disconnection from her. I am afraid of alienation, the souldevouring loneliness she must have felt. And I didn’t go visit. I finally haveto accept that I didn’t go because I was angry and I was ashamed. I was
angry that she didn’t care for my family, or me, as she had when we weregrowing up. In spite of her invitations to visit I knew that she would nothave had time for me. And I was ashamed that now I was the poor relative.
It takes courage to face any loss. I didn’t want to face that we were no longer
sisters.
It takes courage to face death. I am not sure how brave I will be when
it is my turn. But, I cried last night for all my losses. Losses of lovers, offamily, of country, language, identity, and loss of home.
Now my home is within myself. Perhaps my cousin was homeless in
her world.

fall 200689

Elliot Femynye bat Tzedek

Tisha B’Av
9 Av 5757
12 August 1997 c.e.
Before shul last night, over dinner, I spoke with Otter about Terri. I
laughed a bit about how the anniversary of this particular death fits into
Jewish liturgy – mourning a non-Jew, patriarchy-hating lesbian separatist
who took her own life. “Kaddish,” Otter said, “is for the living.”
And so I knew I would rise, speak her name and say Kaddish, knowing
it was for me, but still feeling it for her, too. I couldn’t attach to her namethe prayer/phrase “may her memory be for a blessing.” Blessing is not theright gerund. Warning, perhaps, or grieving. Or maybe other nouns: hermemory as a caution, a counsel, an omen, an alarm, a siren, a beacon, aflare, signal, torch. “Caution, warning, alarm!” her death flares, “you sit
mourning the destruction of the Temples, in a world where lesbians aredesperate enough to be destroying themselves.” In shul, which is, after all,a Reconstructionist, social-justice based group, we read, after the Eichah, apiece about how mourning the ancient loss of the Jewish homeland isn’t
enough, how we must also act for all who are homeless today. This is agood thing. We didn’t say aloud that the Israeli government is still bulldozing
Palestinian houses, that Israeli settlers live in Palestinian homes. I assume,
though, that the members here know these things, and had them in mind as
we davened and read. But who was there to mourn the destruction oflesbians, of women, of Terri Lotz? Only me, and Otter, rising to say a
prayer whose words would have appalled Terri. To say a prayer whose
words in and of themselves don’t move me: let god’s name be made greatand holy, be blessed forever and....
The saying though, the repetition, the echoes through thousands ofyears, the public time and space to remember, the marking of the anniversaryof the death as each year passes – there is no Lesbian space for this, no
Feminist place I could go to today to mourn my dead. And so I stand, andbegin: Yitgadal veyitkadash shemey raba... and the tears come and no one stares.
Tisha B’Av (the 9th day of the month of Av) is a holiday that marks the historical destructions of thetemples in Jerusalem. It is marked by a twenty-four hour fast, and the reading of solemn liturgy including
Eichah (The Book of Lamentations)
Mourner’s Kaddish – the Jewish prayer for remembrance of the dead. It isn’t about death, but is a prayer
invoking god’s greatness and power in the world, closing with an invocation for peace.

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sinister wisdom #68/69 — Death, Grief and Surviving

Loonwomon

Precious Dog Love
Bereft that is how I feelleft
bereftleft behind in the dust of life
while my doggiest best friend
becomes fairy dust
so insubstantial
so incompatible with these arms
but still want to grab on and holdso tight
hold on to fur and flesh and bone, dog body
hold on to soft squishy teddy bear now
no more warm furry face
to greet us at daybreakpaws washing facelicking, wiping and washing your face
every morning
first thing
now your face is in the windin the whispers of the trees
in the coyote foot prints
in the snow ice sparkles
in the sun
in my heart
I opened my arms to hold you
in your last moments
your head like water splashingbounced over into them
your breath came hard and fast
your chest, a bellows pumping your heart
your wind moved out
and stopped
you gasped
then again

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once more
and were gone
No more bellows
No more beating heart
No more dog spirit in the body
I lie awake at night
missing your steady breathing
on the floor beside my bed
We walked singing”Step by step the longest march can be done”
pulling your sweet dog bodyon the sled to your final resting spacein the heart of the land
I lay holding your headas the snow covered both of us
her soft flakes drifting down
as A. uncovered your grave
so loving prepared by E. two and a half years ago
when we thought your days were numbered
you outlived every expectation
you stayed beyond your body’s natural endurance
you waited until the moment
when you knew your love for us had totally been received
you filled us with your love in life
now as the grief rushes out in waves
your love rushes in
to fill up the empty spaces
your compassion has been
an ever present reminderthat we deserve better
than what we got
the first half of our life
we are now bound and determined
to live up to that truth you gave us
gift wrapped in a
furry
friendlyforgiving
golden package of precious dog love

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Girl and her Dog

Sudie Rakusin

I am learning that true grief is mingled with moments of joy inremembrance of the beloved and touches of their spirit on the heart. This
is in stark contrast to the grieving and loss process that I have been in, forthe last 15 years, over the recognition of my lost childhood and the loss of
my health to severe Multiple Chemical Sensitivities (MCS). Since 1991, mydog has been my constant companion through homelessness, the relivingof childhood trauma, and rebuilding a life within the limits of my disabilities.
Shortly after I got her I became homeless because I could not find accessible
housing with MCS. Shortly after that, while camping in a friend’s back yard,
I got back my first incest memory.
Within a couple of years of recovering memory after memory of severe
sexual abuse, I discovered that “we” have multiple personalities. Our dog
loved us through it all. She was there in ways that no human could have

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been. As we lay awake at night in our tent, shrieking in terror, she lay calmly
at our side. She could tell the difference between the fear in our flashbacks
and fear with a present time basis, in which case, she was on her feet, raising
the alert, with a tremendous deep throated barking ready to defend us against
any threat.
Having a dog gave us the courage to share the puzzle pieces of ourpast because we felt safety in her protection, a security we never had as achild. Her love helped new children emerge, each carrying a fragment of
our history, a memory of incest, ritualized torture, child pornography, or
child prostitution…there were more perpetrators than we can count, more
rapes than we will ever remember. We survived our childhood by creating
multiple selves, but we survived the recollection of the horror because of
our beloved dog. She came close to our bed for pats and comforted us as we
sobbed and screamed out our grief over our lost childhood. She calmly
gentled the little one who was afraid of dogs and learned to accept “cat girl”
who initially startled her with her yowls. She stayed out of our way when we
raged and patiently accepted us in our varied expressions of grief. One
despairing night, her presence in the back seat of the car kept us fromthrowing ourselves from a bridge.
Do I paint her as an angel? While she may be now, she wasn’t always!
There were nights she took off, roaming the forest. Three year olds walked
wailing through the darkness, shrieking “I want my doggie,” and throwing
temper tantrums in the snow when she did not hear or come. But she always
returned eventually and slowly but surely, we all learned to trust her love.
She hung on long past her physical endurance to make sure we fully received
her love for us. When we, in those last moments, asked her forgiveness for
all those screaming ranting times, she replied quite clearly in our head, “youwouldn’t have been you if you weren’t screamin’ and yellin’.”Thank you for your everlasting love and compassion, my dog…. Thankyou for saving my life!

Loss Lingers
Pain lingers on the tip of my tongue
I worry it like a small child worriesa lost toothYes, it’s still thereThat gaping hole

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Where my dog once wasToday we had the first new girlreturn since she diedIt was oh so painful
She has the composite memories ofover 100 little ones tocompare her experience toOh, how it hurt
to not have the soft touch of fur
the patient presence of brown eyes
the readiness to accept
each new small person
Into a better world than the one theyleft behind when they tucked themselvesaway neatly into a cornerof the compassionate void
So grateful we have others togreet new ones and in our solidarity
The new ones can see and feel us
close inside
It’s amazing what they notice
That they heard and took in the
Writing that we did about dog love
It gave her a reference point
Upon her arrival
the most tremendous sadness and griefretched out of us
From one who knew but never knew
the dog love that should have beenhers
Like the lingering taste of sweetness
That mocks the emptiness of a mouth
That has never enjoyed a caramel candy
But only gets what is stuck in thecrevasses of a back tooth.
Sweet Dog Buddy
January 7, 2006

fall 2006

Teya Schaffer

Rope
I read my diary while you hallucinate
on morphine and the hunger for another day:one more friend dying. In the loop of a paperclip
you discover a promise of eternity while your feet,compelled, dance the rocker forward
and back. The last threads of your fine red hair
float on the chair’s weave.
Across the bay, where the women gather
and shout when shouting’s called for,an artist declares her designs on my body;
crayon sketches of raven and flame for my chest,
ocean for my belly. She prepares line and reel,supposing what lives beneath water
can be raised in the air.
In this house, seaweed clings to our rocking.
We are the very act of going under,
lifesaving rope restored to its coil.
I lift my eyes from the pageand begin, “There’s an artist—”
You open your hands as if to release me.
The dying can never measure
our distance from shore.
for Sandy(1951-2000)

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Gigi Ross

Flung, Holding a River(for Uncle Bobby)
I dream he is lying in a box
I’m late for everything and only clocks talkNothing is as it should be
Shrill eees loud as waves
Shards of words hum tones
My curly-haired brother, eyes sewn closed,
lies in a box.
Don’t just look.
Shake him.
Tickle his feet with a feather.

At My Father’s Funeral
The last day I saw you alive. You had me
wheel you up and down the corridor,
yelled for me to put you on the elevator,
tried to wrench my arm to make me take off
your restraints. Do you want to hurt me?
Your head nodded, eyes shone.
Two hours later, I said goodbye.

fall 2006

Suzanne GaryFirst Anniversary of Her Son’s Suicide(for Noelle)
She scatters flour-fine ash
in Lake Tahoejust before it freezes
deep, achingly blue
absorbs everythingsurrounded by slopes
where she taught him to ski
giant, shimmering peaks
Such whitehurt through sunglasses
What a year
to try our love
Every day an anniversaryof something he did
She is not readyto be touched
At Ocean Beachthe last cupful of ash
washes backundissolved
Lying beside her
I wish I could be
the edge of a clear wave
snow, tears
something besides
these hands

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Chana Wilson

Devil’s Slide
My mother plummeted into dying like a
car careening off a cliff at Devil’s Slide, andplunging toward the gleaming Pacific. There
was no turning back from the descent.
We’d been to see her oncologist, whodelivered terrible news. She told my mother,“Your cancer has spread to your liver. The
chemotherapy is not proving effective. You
have perhaps a few months to live.” My motherand I left the appointment in shock. It had
only been four months since her diagnosis ofovarian cancer, followed by the relentlessinterventions of surgery and chemotherapy.
By the third day after our visit to the doctor, she’d had no bowel
movements for three days and was moaning with pain. I called the doctor’s
service. The weekend on-call doctor listened to my explanation of thesymptoms. Then he said, “She may have a blockage, which would be very
serious. I will admit her right away. Will she need an ambulance?”“I’ll bring her,” I said.
“We’re going to the hospital,” I told Gloria. She was lying reclined on
the couch. “I’ll get your shoes.”“Can’t wear them,” she gasped, short of breath. “My feet are tooswollen. Just bring my slippers.” She struggled up. She was wearing navy
sweat pants, and I noticed the elastic waistband was straining against her
bulging belly. It had grown huge in just a few days. I knew what this was,and knowing it made me want to cry. I’d finally done some reading of
medical texts and learned a new word with both Greek and Latin derivations:
ascites—fluid buildup in the abdominal cavity from liquid that seeps out of
the bloodstream when the liver isn’t functioning or from cancer.
At the hospital, mother was wheeled away on a gurney. I waited, paging
absent-mindedly through a People magazine, while they performed tests. Afterher scans, the good news was that she had no cancer growth blocking her
intestines. However, she was much too ill to return home. I followed as she
was wheeled to a room in the oncology ward. She’d just settled in bed whenfall 200699

a nurse came in and closed the curtains. “We’re going to be performing
ascitic drainage,” she informed us.
A doctor arrived with a big needle. I held my mother’s hand and turned
my head away, trying not to look, but I kept sneaking glances. She gasped
and clenched my hand while the doctor shot her with anesthetic, cut a small
incision, and inserted a thin tube into her abdomen. She was left with alarger tube coming out of her, and a drainage bag hanging from the tube.
Those first days of her hospital stay, I spent my free time with mymother, but kept meeting with my therapy clients. Even though it was clear
she was extremely ill, I was holding in mind the doctor’s three to four monthprognosis, which meant it was too soon to stop working. There weremoments when I did some of my finest, most connected work, able to beright there with my clients’ suffering. In other sessions, I felt the cold weightof the seconds ticking, the unbearable waste of time lost with my mother. I
could barely stay in the room.
One day, I stepped out of my mother’s room and went to find thenurse who’d been caring for her. She was sitting at the nurses’ station. She
looked up and smiled.
“I wanted to ask you something.” I started awkwardly. How to ask
this?
“Yes?” She looked at me encouragingly, her face soft. (I liked thisnurse, thought she was real mensch, because when my mother had said toher, “Do you know I’m gay?” as she was taking her blood pressure, she’dsimply smiled and said, “Great. Thanks for telling me.” At first I’d felt a bit
embarrassed—why did my mother need to make a point of that?—followedby discomfort that I still had so much fear of sticking out, and then anadmiring of course—a recognition that it mattered deeply to my mother tobe accepted as herself, especially her gay self. Now, at the end, she wanted
no more hiding.)“Well…well,” I struggled to find the words, “it’s just that I’ve neverseen anyone die, so I don’t have a sense of a timeline, of where my motheris in the process. I was wondering—I thought since you’re an oncology
nurse and you’ve seen so much—you might have an impression about mymother. Do you have a guess about how long she’s got?”“Hmmm,” she answered, “people can surprise you, living longer thanyou’d ever guess. So…I could be wrong…but I don’t think your mother’s
got real long. Perhaps she has a few weeks.” I managed a whispered“Thanks,” and turned to go back to Gloria’s bedside.
Once, she awoke with a start and stared at me.

100sinister wisdom #68/69 — Death, Grief and Surviving“Chana!” she called, sounding alarmed.
“Right here, Momushka.” I’d taken to calling her every endearment
and nickname I’d ever used. I reached over and took her hand.
She exhaled slowly, “Hard dream, intense,” she said. She didn’t tell me
her dream. She squeezed my hand and let go, her eyes looking off to theright, her face pondering. “Yes, that’s it, that’s what it means,” she whispered toherself.
She looked at me then with soft, big eyes, and said quietly, “I’m dying,aren’t I?”
Our eyes held. I inhaled, long and deep, and then let the air rush outof me. Another breath. “Yes,” I answered. “You are.”We sat in a timeless moment, looking at each other, suspended by thetruth.
Then, she said, “I didn’t want this; I wanted to live. I’d hoped at least
for a long remission. But here it is. ““Yes,” I concurred. We hovered in the silence of that.
Then, I cleared my throat. “There’s something I want to tell you,something I’ve been thinking about. I hope this doesn’t sound too weird.
You know, all my life, whenever I’ve wanted to freak myself out, I’d imagine
you dead, and I couldn’t see how I’d go on, how I could have a life withoutyou. But now, with Dana—even though I will miss you terribly—I can see
how I’ll go on.”“That’s marvelous, darling. Knowing you have a partner makes me sohappy.” Her eyelids drooped, and she dozed.
When my mother woke, a half-hour later, she continued as if we hadn’tpaused in our conversation. She reminded me that she had made plansseveral years before with the Neptune Society to be cremated for a prearranged price. She told me where in her desk to find the Neptune Society
paperwork and her Will. I was impressed—and grateful—that she’d had
the foresight to deal with this in advance; I couldn’t imagine myself evergetting around to such a thing.
“Now, there’s something I need you to do,” she said. “Let’s not prolong
this thing. If I start to go, I don’t want them bringing me back. I need you
to do whatever it takes—whatever paperwork—so they don’t try to jumpstartme back with those damn electric shock paddles. I absolutely don’t wantthat.”“I understand. I agree, that makes sense. I’ll take care of it,” I assured
her.

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The process of getting the Do Not Resuscitate form put in my mother’schart happened in a blur. My body marched from point A to point B, leadweights in the belly, doing what was needed on remote control. My mothermust have signed the form, and perhaps her doctor had to as well, but all I
remember is standing in front of the counter of the nurse’s station handing
them the completed piece of paper. Sure, I supported the idea of no heroic
measures for a terminal illness—in theory; I didn’t want to prolong mymother’s suffering. Underneath that belief, a part of me wailed: Stop! Don’t
take my mother! You want me to just let her go?
Friends of my mother came by throughout each day, and sometimes
while they sat with her, I’d go eat, or go to the hospital solarium, or take awalk in the neighborhood. Once, when I was off doing an errand, Gloria
called Dana at work. “Please come see me,” she said. Later, Dana told me
how she had stroked my mother’s hair, sitting close. How my mother had
said, “I know you’ll take good care of her.”
Hearing that, I wept, which I had taken to doing frequently when I was
at home.
One night, in the dark of 4 AM, the phone rang. It was a nurse callingfrom the hospital. “Your mother won’t let us do any procedures on her, noteven take her temperature. She’s gotten paranoid; she says we’re trying tokill her.”“I’ll be right there.” I’d been awake when the phone rang, sitting in a
rocking chair in the spare bedroom, rocking and crying. A nightmare had
woken me—I had them all the time now. I was too agitated to fall back tosleep, and I’d tiptoed out of bed, not wanting to wake Dana.
I found my mother with her arms gripping the bedrails, her nostrils
flared, her mouth in deep frown. It took calling her name several times forher to focus on me. “Sweetheart…Gloria…Gloria…Momushka—” herhead turned toward me then.
One hand reached for me, and I grasped it. I tried for a soothing tone.
“The nurses tell me you’re frightened that they’re trying to hurt you, but it’sokay. No one here wants to hurt you.”
She released my hand, groped for the bed control, and held the button
down while the bed whirred as she rose to sitting. Her eyes were wide withalarm and bright yellow-orange. “It’s this feeling—this feeling I can’t get overit, even if it’s not real—this horrible feeling that they’re trying to kill me.”102

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I saw the terror in her face.
“Yes, that feeling—something is trying to kill you,” I said, “but it’s not
the nurses. It’s your own body that’s trying to kill you. It’s the cancer that’sout of control.”“Oh yes, it’s my body.” Her face eased with that simple, brutal truth.
“I’m right here, I’ll stay with you,” I said.
“Yes, stay…,” she said, her voice dropping off. The next moment, she
slept.
Later that morning, breakfast arrived, and she picked at some scrambled
eggs, and nibbled on toast. I ate her leftovers. It was one of those bits oftime when she was both relaxed and lucid. Maybe this would be a good moment
to ask her, I thought. It wouldn’t be that odd, as now our conversations werelaced with non-sequitors.
“Hey Glor, do you remember that trip that Dana and I signed up forto the Big Island next spring?” I asked.
“Sure, I remember.” Her head lowered, and she looked unspeakably
sad. Then she looked up at me, her eyes brimming with tears. “Hawaii—
you and I—we never made it, did we?”“No.” An ache gripped my chest. “God,I wish we’d gotten to.” What was I thinking?
Maybe this was too weird to ask.
“I was wondering—how would you feel
if, um—only if you want, of course—would
you like me to take your ashes with me, andput them in the volcano?”
She laughed then, the only true belly laughI’d heard from her in weeks. “Wonderful, yes,that would be wonderful,” she beamed, eyesalight. “Throw me into the fire, into thevolcano. Throw me back to the Mother!”fall 2006

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Chocolate Waters

Janet Sergi Lives
She peers out my forgotten photograph,hanging along the frame like a ghost.
This woman people mistook for my sister.
There we are in Kodachrome:
Me and Janet and Lady Wolf,
the Australian sheep dog that loved her.
I loved her.
Like my sister.
I prayed for her
to live and she did.
In California she thrived
until Lady Wolf was attacked
by wild dogs and died.
Janet’s anger came back.
The tumor came back.
I last saw her a dozen years ago.
She was 33,
raising hell in the Oak Ridge Convalescent Home,
cursing, throwing lunch at the attendants,
calling in Jesus freaks to save her.
We drove around the parking lot in her wheelchair.
I was steering, crying.
She asked if I would forget her.
Tonight I phone the home.
A Mrs. Nelson answers:“Sometimes Janet wakes up,eats like a pig, curses like a sailor.”
Her father’s dead now. Her mom’s insane.
Her brothers have so little time,
but Janet hangs on like a weed,
breathing in and out on a single bedat the Oak Ridge Convalescent Homein Fruitvale, California,
calling for her sister.
*Janet Sergi, who was a founding mother of the radical women’s
newspaper, Big Mama Rag, died in 1993, a year after this was
written.

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Rachel Pray

Sestina for Two Women
Four sodden years by now have passed
immersed in treacherous pursuits of loss.
Two women thrown headfirst into the waves,
we swim now for our very lives.
A simple dream, this longing for a childhas carried us far out to sea, weighted with fear.
The Buddha spoke of facing fear,
embracing change, all torrents pass.
How could he know a woman’s need to have a child?
There is a limit we are testing to the soul’s capacity for loss.
We forget life
as grief propels us through our days, unwavering.
Let me explain how strong we are: resilient waves
of hope vanquish our fear
month after month, each time we try to create life
with donor sperm. We wait expectantly to passbeyond this place of barrenness and loss
into the fertile landscape of “with child.”My darling, we have loved each other many years. A child,
we thought, would be the union of your body and my heart, woven
intricate and dear to us as our own breath, not lostand lost again in early death. You didn’t need to speak the words we feared –your face of ashes told me hope was past as for the second time a spot of blood foretold the end of fragile life.

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I can’t remember how it was to livein blissful absence of desire for a child.
Melted down to ore, essence of longings past,
I crash my puny will into the waves
and nearly drown, afraid
to save myself by turning back to face what has been lost.
Two pregnancies miscarried, two dreams lost.
In shock, we tell ourselves the only remedy’s to live
as if the joy of birth will come as soon as we have buried fear
and grief. How close those hungry ghosts of children
creep, elusive as receding waves.
Laughing, they passjust out of reach, blithe and unaware of loss as phantom children
are, full of potential life. They do not hear us call to them or see us wave
as fearlessly they dive into the swell, not thinking of their future or our past.

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Chelsey Clammer

Silent Conversation
The first time I tried to kill myself I wanted some attention. I was anangry college student, angry with my family, my friends, the world, and mylife. I needed a change and I thought that death was the ultimate—andbest—change. The second time I really didn’t feel like being alive. I wasgoing crazy and thought that every one of my friends and family wished me
dead. What’s the point of breathing if you just have to breathe some more,knowing that nobody wants you to keep up the process of inhaling andexhaling? I just wanted to get permanently away from the depression thatsucked up all of my positive thoughts and emotions. When I ended up on
the third floor of Shoal Creek—a mental hospital in Austin—I had toconvince all of the therapists there that I didn’t try to kill myself because I
was gay. Yes, I was a young woman who was gay, and yes I felt like dying, but
the two issues were completely unrelated.
Just because I didn’t fit society’s constructed heterosexual norm didn’tmean that I felt like death was the only way to reconcile my sexual feelings.
Hell, I was proud of my sexuality and had never even considered that mylesbianism had anything to do with my depression or attempted suicides. I
just knew it didn’t, and it annoyed the hell out of me that the nurses anddoctors insisted that my chosen sexual orientation was just cause fordepression. And while I know that people have killed themselves because
they weren’t allowed to express their gender or sexuality, this, however, was
not me. I’ve been out and proud for over four years!!! I would scream at them. But
they didn’t get it. They just couldn’t understand how a suicidal lesbian could
avow that she was comfortable with her “deviant” sexuality. My depression
wrapped around my life, suffocating me, but it wasn’t my sexuality thatspawned it. I blamed my depression on the fact that I was bipolar, a genetic—
and I would say situational—“disease” that I supposedly inherited from myfather.
My father was an alcoholic, bipolar, and detached man. His oscillating
emotions resided in the more depressed and drunk periods than the highand laughing manic stages. In my young, angry mind he was the one toblame for my depression and attempted suicides. These feelings were backed
up by some indelible moments in my life where I realized that my father did
not act like the typical father that all of my friends and their nuclear families

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experienced—the father I always wished he could be. His drunken sprees
led him to watching porn in the living room when he thought I wasn’t
home. The alcohol amplified his depression, and he frequently threatened
while in his dark inebriated stages. I would walk through a fire for you, Chelsey!
He would slur to me in a drunken haze. But I don’t want to be alive. I want to die
now. I would be crying and wishing that he would just go ahead and off
himself so that I didn’t have to have this fight with him every time he drank.
Then just go ahead and kill yourself already! I would scream through my coldtears. Our lives would be much happier without you. I stormed out of his room,
afraid but also excited that he might soon be gone. He never did commit
suicide, but his depression and alcoholism never gave up the fight.
When he wasn’t drinking, he became a work and golf-aholic. Weekdays
he escaped from his family and life by working as a top manager for a foodcompany, while on weekends—when I wanted him to go to my softball
tournaments or my sister’s swim meets—he chose to play golf with hiswork buddies. Take away the drink from an alcoholic’s life and something
must replace the obsession. Golf and work quickly became my father’s drugof choice in his infrequent sober years.
In my youth I felt abandoned by my father. These feelings transformed
into hatred and anger as I grew into a teenager, and would later provide mewith a source of pain to wallow in when I felt depressed. Because my father
chose to barely ever spend time with me, I felt unloved, abandoned, andunimportant in his life. While I innately knew that my father loved me, henever showed it other than buying me expensive shit that I really didn’tneed. Occasionally he would give me a big, ensconcing hug when I felt
depressed, but those times were few, and as I grew older and more spiteful
towards the man, I rarely let him close enough to me to actually performthat kind of contact. In fact, I never really had any sort of contact with him.
When I came out to my mother she was accepting and proud of me, andwhile I knew that my father really wouldn’t care, I still wanted to avoid any
sort of conversation with him, especially about who I was dating. My mother
outed me to my father, and even when my first girlfriend lived with us, myfather and I never discussed my sexuality or relationships. We just didn’t
talk. As I entered high school he started drinking again (something he hadn’t
done in four years) and eventually lost his job because of it. Those years
were the worst for my mother and me as we both hated him but felt like we
had some duty to still be in his life. If we didn’t take care of him, who
would? But with each lie that he told us, our love staggered and it took a lotof effort for my mother to not divorce him. I still think she should have left

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him years ago, but that’s not my choice to make.
So my present-but-absent alcoholic and bipolar father gracefully gaveme his genes. It was easy to blame this man whom I never respected in thefirst place for all of my emotional problems. It’s interesting how because of
having such similar characteristics—bipolar, depression, compulsiveobsessive tendencies, opinionated—we were never able to have a civil ormeaningful conversation. The first time I was put in the mental hospital hevisited me, and I shuddered with rage as I looked at him from across thetable. He was there to tell me that although our relationship was tainted byvexation and silence, he wished I could have talked to him before I decided
to try and kill myself. He was there to let me know that he would listen to
me—no matter what I had to say. But I wasn’t listening to him. His presencepissed me off and made me even more depressed. He represented everythingthat I hated, everything that made me want to kill myself. Because of thisman, I thought, I was depressed and angry. I felt as if my life was hopelessand full of confused hate aimed towards the world, stemming from theaffect that he had on me. My father’s genetics gave me this manic-depressive
illness, and his lack of fathering made me feel rejected and striving forattention. It’s easy to blame others when you don’t want to face your own
problems.
The second time I ended up in the mental institution (only three days
after my initial release), I soon found out that my father was three floors
above me, detoxing his vodka-soaked body in rehab. He had drunk himself
to his own rock bottom. As I was struggling with my desires to live, myfather was found passed out in the middle of a grocery store parking lot at
11 o’clock one Tuesday night. This moment was symbolic for everythingthat I hated about him. When I found out that he was depressed and drinking
while I was in the hospital, I felt ashamed and outraged. Ashamed that myfather would do something that embarrassing and crazy, outraged that he
was drinking while I was going through my own problems. My suicide
attempts were a way for me to show the world how hurt and lonely I felt,
and while I didn’t want to have anything to do with my father, I did want his
love and affection—no matter how much I despised him. I was the depressedand crazy one here! How could he be so selfish at a time when I was being
crazy and needed the attention of everyone around me, regardless if I liked
them or not? I hated my father. I never trusted him. I wished him dead.
I thought the pain and anger would vanish once he permanently wentaway. Two years later, I was cursing myself while I sat at his funeral. After
wishing my father dead for over ten years, the only thing I want now is tofall 2006

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have him back. The night my father died he had been threatening suicide,again, but after an emotional “talk” (screaming, actually) with my mom, anda night’s sleep to let the vodka wear off, he woke up ready to start a new life.
A dollar and fifty cents in dimes was found counted out on his dresser,
waiting there to be picked up and traded at the local corner store for a
Sunday paper. He had a heart attack. My mother was asleep in the nextroom, comforting herself in a deep slumber, soothing the pain of theirdrawn out and emotionally abusive marriage. She awoke to an unsettlingly
quiet house, and found my father barely alive in an awkward position,
slouched against his bed and nightstand, his faithful dog curled up behind
his legs. As my mother gave him CPR, she felt the ribs crack beneath hisgraying, cold skin, and then called the paramedics. He was revived after
much effort, only to be brought to the hospital to die an hour later.
After he died, my body—my gender—felt different. I felt like I had
acquired a different gender, or that my gender had switched to a different
position. Minnie Bruce Pratt describes in S/he that, “When my father died,[my mother] took me to their room, to his closet, and asked if I wanted anyof his clothes. She expected me to want something. I chose a white cotton
dress shirt, a thin black-and-red striped tie, and his summer panama hat.
Later that year, when I did poetry readings in the South, I wore his clothes.
When women asked me what the hat meant, I said it made me feel powerful.
Was I cross-dressing as my father, for my mother? I thought I was becoming
a lesbian” (Pratt, 164). My mother also had me go through my father’s closet
and pick out any clothes that I wanted. My father was a large man. His

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XXL-size clothes would be gi-normous on my smaller body. This simple
fact corroborated my suspicions that my mother never had the intentionsof offering his clothes for me to actually wear, but that she looked at me assomeone who could take on the masculine roles that my father held. The
clothes symbolized this for her. Gender is performed in so many ways—
body language, voice fluctuation, personal characteristics—but one major
appearance of gender is through clothes. I perform my own genderlessgender through the jeans and t-shirt that I wear. My sexuality is also an
aspect of performance. When my mother suggested that I wear my father’s
clothes, I couldn’t help but question if her image of me dressed as myfather was supposed to erase some of her loneliness. Is my new role in life
to be the embodiment of my father’s memory? In the weeks after the funeral,
I did feel as if I had to become more masculine toward my mother, thus
allowing her to feel vulnerable for once. My father’s death instilled in me afeeling of big-masculine-dykeness that encouraged me to become thedependable “man of the house.” Through grief, clothing became a spaceof transformation.
Who am I without my father? I feel like a more masculine woman
without him, but also find myself crying out for the fatherly love and strengththat I have given to him after his death. Now that he is gone, I can imagine
him as the father I always wanted him to be. Through my grief I find comfort
in constructing the relationship that I always wanted. I realize, a bit too late,that while our characteristics clashed, my father was someone that I loved.
It is also through his death that my father has helped me to understand thatlove, regardless of gender or personality quirks, can withstand any amountof hatred, that love extends beyond the breaths we take.
And, ironically, I do wear his sweatshirts, although never in public.
Sometimes I feel like my father is inside of me, that his warm spirit comes
into my stomach when I am sad, or depressed and lonely. When I wear his
clothes, it lets me feel as if he’s giving me one of those big, comforting hugsthat he would occasionally engulf me in when I really needed love fromanother human being.
I have grown fonder of my father in his absence. I have conversations
with him that I always wanted to have when he was alive, but my angst
towards him and his unwillingness to confront me prohibited them backthen. We are friends now.

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Jeanne Lupton

With My Mother at The Women’s Museum
in a photo are thick woods, a clearing, an indentation in the ground in the
shape of a woman. the artist has pressed her body into the earth’s body.
burned her image deep into a streambed in Iowa, thinking Cuba, Cuba. my motherpressed herself to life. i am my mother’s image burned deep. we walk amongsmooth statues in cool marble halls. my mother is an artist too. a survival
artist. in a video, a woman’s body covered with fabric hands. one by one sheplucks the hands off her. flings them away. becoming naked. all the whilechanting get your hands off me, get your hands off me. we watch until the last
hand is flung. my mother laughing. she likes it. get your hands off me, mymother says to cancer. get your hands off me. it grasps her so tightly she canbarely breathe. my mother breathes less today than yesterday. it’s getting
harder. panic comes when she can’t catch her breath. my mother is a survival
artist. the cancer isn’t letting go. at the end we are naked. i am her
image burned deep.

My Mother Asleep
I awake in the night in my mother’s house. Down the hall she’s talking in
her sleep. I can’t hear the words but listen to their rhythm through thehumming house, the closed doors. This is not the usual groan or crying out of mymother’s cancer nights. She is safe for now, at peace. Someone is with her.
They are communing. I lie awake, listening. She murmurs, then is quiet,
listening to her dream companion. Murmuring and quiet, an hour or more. Finally
she says, “We’ll leave it at that.” My mother sleeps. Through the night I
hear her low groan, her crying out for my father, four years dead. She sleeps.
My mother is dying. In time, I’ll sit by her grave an hour or more. We’llcommune, my mother and I, safe, at peace, and leave it at that.

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Pat Gowens

Death, Disability and Gifts from the Future
After my sister, Cathy Murphy, died suddenly at
the age of fifty from her disability, I was wracked withguilt and grief. (Or are those sentiments synonymous
after death?) Guilt…. because I had failed to see how
weak she had become and how poorly she was feeling.
When she came to a protest on Martin Luther King
Junior’s Birthday, she said she was too weak to carry asmall sign, but I took no notice. When I saw her on
Easter with her face cut up from falling out of bed in
hypoglycemic shock, I talked to her about keeping
pillows on the floor. To make the guilt worse, I had
barely been talking to my sister the year prior to her
Cathy
by Elita Nieri
death. The fight she mysteriously dredged up, anddragged out, was over something I told my nephew thirty years earlier!
The grief over losing her was longer lasting than the guilt. Cathy had
been a musician before her illness made it impossible to play guitar. She had
written several tunes but had been unable to record them properly because
she had no equipment. Shortly before Cathy’s death, Mom and I chipped in
to buy her a good recorder and microphone, but she died before having thechance to use them. She and I had written a light-hearted song together,“Love Is a Risk”—I wrote the lyrics and she wrote the tune—many years
ago, but had never recorded it.
When I listened to miscellaneous tapes I found among Cathy’s
belongings, I found she had written three more tunes, but had nevermentioned them or asked for lyrics. Introducing the first song, she listed theguitar chords, and then stated, “The Name of this song is “Life Is Scum.”She proceeded to sing a beautiful, haunting, sweet ballad intoning la, la, la,la, la. A song with a wild and meandering tune was “New Song.” The thirdtune had no name at all. Only the first song included her guitar
accompaniment, which meant she had written it a long time ago while still
able to play her instruments.
In addition to writing songs, Cathy had produced a huge songbook
with all of the lyrics and chords for 134 folks songs of the US, Ireland, andMexico. She learned the lyrics (sometimes playing a record over and over),fall 2006

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typed each one on a manual typewriter, and made copies of all of the songs.
She created 15 songbooks so we could sing together at family gatherings.
She also taught herself to play each song. She learned the harmony while
the rest of the family sang the main tune.
After Cathy died I realized that as much as I loved many of the songs,
without Cathy playing and singing them, I didn’t know some well enough tosing without her! We had never recorded most of them. The only songs I
found recorded were the love songs that she sang for weddings, and one
short tape she had recorded for our ma.
Did I mention regrets? So many regrets after losing a loved one.
Somehow we seem to think we have forever to take care of business. Cathy
had always reminded us her life expectancy was only 25 years from theonset of her illness, which meant she could die by 37. Perhaps when shebeat that expectation, I somehow thought she’d live to old age.
After Cathy died, I wrote the lyrics for “Life Is Scum.” I decided towrite a ballad that would describe the life of Mary, a disabled mom whoalong with Cathy was a member of Welfare Warriors Board of Directors.
Mary also had a short life expectancy and when Cathy met her at meetings,
she would joke, “I see you’re still alive.” Cathy would love the lyrics, which
described the YWCA welfare workers’ attempts to kill Mary by forcing her
to work off her welfare benefits—forcing her to “work or die.” (Milwaukee
is the only city in the US where the cash welfare program, called W2, isprivatized. YW is one of four very cruel private welfare departments.)
While still deeply grieving the loss of my sister, I went to Illinois to
speak at a University. I had never before sung while giving a speech, but
now Cathy inspired me to sing her song, which I called “Mary’s Song or W2
Life is Scum.” I also sang part of a song she and my brother had written,“Positive Mental Attitude,” which describes the prejudice against people
with disabilities.
“You can lose an eye or ear; no one lets you shed a tear,
They tell tales and tales of quadriplegics typing with their teeth,
Or one-armed jugglers, two-toed dancers,
For every plight they’ve got an answer,
Let a smile be your umbrella when it’s raining everyday;
But they tell me I’m supposed to have that Positive Mental Attitude;
That Positive Mental Attitude will get you through the day…”
I began to include “Mary’s Song or W2 Life Is Scum” in all speeches
after that. It never fails to move an audience to absolute silence and nearly
to tears. It is a powerfully beautiful ballad.

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Six weeks after Cathy died,
I went to a retreat for activists
at Windcall in Montana. I was
still very sad. I brought along
Cathy’s tape of “New Song” andworked on the lyrics for thesong, which I named “Long
Live Mama Earth.” One day
while singing and swimming ina pond, a red bird flew aroundme cackling exactly like Cathy
cackled—and Cathy was aredhead too.
After a week we learned
that we would be dining with
Photo by Elita Nieriand entertaining our hosts the Cathy and Pat Dancing
next day. The four of us activists decided to perform poetry, music or
whatever. I never imagined I could finish the lyrics in one day, but an amazing
thing happened. I sat at a typewriter listening to Cathy’s la, la, la, la in myears and like magic the final verses materialized and were perfect. I knew
Cathy was the inspiration. During a phone call the next day my mom
reminded me that the day before was Cathy’s birthday. I had been magicallyinspired on Cathy’s birthday…yet I had never realized it because I was notkeeping track of dates while in the Montana mountains.
Despite my heartache at losing Cathy, I have been amazed at how she
gave so much to me after her death. I sing “Long Live Mama Earth” every
time I visit the lake. Folks across the US and in Ireland have heard Mary’s“Life Is Scum” story of welfare privatization and its abuse of moms throughthe beautiful ballad Cathy composed. Singing has become my way to reachfolks with sad and harsh truths. It had never occurred to me to combine
music with speaking until Cathy called to me from the future.

Mary’s Song or W2 Life Is Scum
(This is a true story)
Mary’s man left her with one tiny baby
She needed support so she didn’t say maybe
She went to the welfare the YW ran there
The Y told her she had to work, or die

fall 2006

Mary had heart disease so she couldn’t please
YW women who kept her pay
Much as she wanted to make her own way
To try to work both jobs would soon end her days, end her days
Mary decided to ask for a hearing
She thought that the Y bosses would be more caring
She went to the hearing where Kim Coleman did say“We can’t let you lay around home all day”
Mary got sicker, the docs couldn’t figure
But still doc wouldn’t defy the Y
Finally lupus was doc’s diagnosis
Still YW welfare want Mary to die, work or die
Mary’s new worker said, “We all know pain and strife
Don’t think we’re letting you just lead a lazy life
You must work everyday, for not a cent in pay
Don’t ask for help, you must do it alone”
Ann Hadley was her name; She played a dirty gameWith illegal sanctions that cut Mary’s check
When Mary stopped her with bosses and doctors
Ann took her insurance to make Mary die, work and die
Mary’s sweet baby will never know mama
Unless we the people together will stand up
To fight the rich man and professional scams
Who make money off poor folk however they can
Let us all come to fight those who make life scumWars for greed waged on mothers in needThroughout our life span we all will need a hand
The people united will take back the land, take the land~composed by Cathy Murphy; lyrics by Pat Gowens

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Chocolate Waters

Headstone for Dad
The one the military gave him sucked,
squat disagreeable hunk of rock.
He deserved betterfor all the action he saw in Japan, Korea, the Pacific,
the hash marks on his sleeves,the two purple hearts, bronze star
- a myriad of others whose names
I don’t even know.
He did get a three-gun salutefrom both the Navy and the Marines,
and a handsome flag carefully placed in my mother’s lap
by a young cadet who had more tears in hiseyes than my Mom.
Dad was a medical corpsman in WWII –117 pounds, he once carried a general
twice his sizeon his backthrough enemy fire.
So fearlessthe guys made bets about whether Waters
would return from combat each day.
My Dad was not a grandiose man,but I wanted his tombstone to be grandiose.
Ten years since his death,my sister writes a note,“We’re getting a new headstone for Dad;
Mom is paying for it.”

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117

Ruth Mountaingrove

David, My Son
When my son David died at age 25 they didn’t discover his body forsix months.
I didn’t know until the sheriff came on our land Rootworks, went up aroad no one was supposed to use and knocked on the door of an unoccupiedcabin. Caroline, Jean and I were elsewhere celebrating Candlemas.
When he couldn’t find us, we were in the cabin below, he came backdown that road destroying small evergreens, putting ruts in the road. Jean,
who was furious at the damage he was doing asked him what he wanted.
He wanted me. He wanted my son’s dentist’s name. I gave him ourformer dentist’s name, Dr. Sturm and his address, Elkins Park in Pennsylvania,
but I had no idea why he wanted it. He said it was for purposes ofidentification. He said there was a body found above the commune Mountain
Grove and they thought it might be David’s, but they weren’t sure. We hadn’t
seen anything of David since last July when he was in Grants Pass at thesame time we were. Then he was living at Mountain Grove.
Since we weren’t sure, there was a wait while I hoped it wasn’t David,
but the newspapers were sure it was. One of the communards had comeupon the body. He had been out walking in the woods, and he went screaming
down to the main house. David had hanged himself. They called the Sheriff..
I never saw his body. One of his communard lovers made a pine coffin
for him and carved a beautiful wooden marker for his grave. David was gay.
He was also schizophrenic. Four voices, rages, walking down the center ofa well traveled blacktop road with speeding cars and trucks. He wanted todie. The anguish that he experienced was too much for him to bear.
No matter how much you prepare yourself for the death you are neverready.
The memorial was held at Mountain Grove. My oldest son and mydaughter carried the coffin with other communards to the meadow All of
us stood in a large circle, with the pine box in the middle, holding handswith the communards. Of the lesbian community there was only Caroline,
my partner Jean and myself. We were the only lesbians from our local
community. This was the time of separatism in 1979. I understood, but ithurt not to have that support.
It was a cold windy day and toward the end of the celebration after all

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had spoken about David, a hawk flew down and then soared away. It felt tome as though that was David saying good-bye.
It was February. We had another issue of WomanSpirit to get out. Somegay men had traded their drafty cold house for the use of our camper andwent off to the bay area. I huddled with my grief under a quilt in the upstairs
bedroom while Caroline, Betty down from British Columbia as a volunteer,and Jean went on with the magazine. Occasionally they would consult me
about the work but mostly they left me alone.
Back home, my partner who had never known the death of one of herchildren or siblings, whose mother was still alive though she had lost her
father before I knew her, really didn’t know how to help me. I had alreadyhad both of my parents die while I was in my thirties, and my first son who
lived 3 days after delivery when I was twenty-five.
We had just moved onto our land, and my partner spent a great deal oftime out in nature getting acquainted with our land. I retreated to our loft
library to draw with a large black fiber pen in a large sketchbook my grief.
To separate into words which ran on each other, his writing so I could readit. A slow process.
Later I was able to write this poem which is really a song, a lament, alullaby. He was my artist son, my writer, my poet with little control of his
creativity.

David O DavidDavid O David
Swinging from a tree
Swinging in the summertime
Swinging merrily
Laughing and shouting
From the swing hung branch
In the sun drenched summertime O
David oh David
Swinging from a tree
Swinging in the summer breeze
Singing merrilyfall 2006

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Fly through the air
In the sun hot summer breeze O
David oh David
Swinging from a tree
Swinging in the summer light
Floating easily
Dropping down, down to the groundIn the clear cool summer night O
David Oh David
Swinging from a tree
Swinging in the winter time
From the winter tree
Hanging oh hanging
Finally freeIn the cold cold winter time O
David oh David
Swinging from a tree
Hanging in her branches
In her own mercy
Blown and turned
Turned and blown
In the cold cold winter time O
David oh David
Hanging from a tree
Your were found in wintertime
On a winter tree
The birds know your eyes
The rain weathers your skinin the cold cold winter time O

David oh David
Hanging from a tree
You were found in winter time
On a winter tree
Broken through your fear of dying
Free free freeIn the cold cold winter time O
David oh David
Hanging from a tree
Have you solved the riddle
Solved the mysteryWhy we live and why we die
In the cold cold winter time O
David oh DavidDavid oh DavidDavid oh David
Have you solved the mystery?

This was healing for me, and it has been for other people when I have sung it.

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Esther Liedolf

Dead BrotherMy brother diedand I still can’t grieve his death
the way I grieve his life.
Selfish to the core,and stilltrying to suck
my loved ones
downwith him.
My sister tried
to help him
but got sickfrom his houseladen with animal shitworn into the rugs.
Ma lost her first-born
to prescription drugs
and too much Rebel Yell.
And he took her spiritThey are making the choices
to livethat hewas too selfish to make.
Narcissistic sucker!
I started to grieve him
years ago,
when he did not carethat I was hookedon speed,but cared a lotthat I would notsell his drugs anymore.
I lost my brother soon after,
when he refused
to take meto the hospitalthe night
his friend
raped me;and would not
accept how
his betrayal
violated me more.
What happened to you
big brother?
When did your heartturn cold?
The people in your life

fall 2006

Daisy Wolf Womon

had no idea
we even existed.
Our sister
is recovering now.
She pulled
it all together
and made a lifethat earns respect
for the choices
she makes everyday
to survive.
Ma survived you too,like she has
survived everyone elsein her life.
The total matriarch,more thanforty years now.

Sudie Rakusin

But where are you
when she reallyneeds you?
Same place you’ve
always been,
only now
your body is gone too.
Dead and gone.
They’re still saving your ass,
And cleaning up
the mess of your lifethat has worn
our hearts thinby your needto take the rest of us
down with you.
But we’re not going.

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Elliot Femynye bat Tzedek

Bo Dog Teaches the Meaning of TashlichThat September
standing on the creek bank behind Estelle’s cabineach woman in turn stepped to the water
held onto her pages of earnest reflection
until the ink trailed away
and then released her secrets to the stream
as the shofar sounded, announcing
a cycle’s end and beginning
I held and then released my page
only to watch my loyal sheepdog
leap inswim out
and faithfully haul my escaping possession
back to me, announcing my carelessness
with her sharp bark
Again I tried to free my regrets
and again
but Bo dog had little toleranceof humans’ propensity
for losing track of the sheep
Years later
when she began slipping into the stream
I leapt in and hauled her backthree times
Surgeryprescriptions a ramp
uneaten food warming in the ovencredit cards at the vet ER
carrying her sixty-five and shrinking pounds
up and down the stairs
for six weeks
so she could carry out her duty and passion—
keeping watch as I slept—always was I there
beside herjust as I had been
when she first learned to swim
my hands holding her weight and my voiceurging her to swim back upstreamfall 2006

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A long night
fifteen years later I knew to stop urging
She listened as I poured out my gratitude
closed her eyesbreathed deeply
and lowered her head
into what we both knew was her last dreaming
Now the only weight for my hands to release to the water
is any fearthat one more leap
could have brought her safely to the bank.
Enough is enoughdogs know
all things living are always floating downstream
Each fearless leap to fetch them backis the very nature of desire
While the nature of life
is the inevitabilityof the current
and the nature of loveis the blessing of
keeping watch
every time they returnand keeping watch
as they swirl out of reachTashlich – a ritual that is part of Rosh Hashana (Jewish New Year). Probably adapted from European
folk customs, tashlich involves going to running water and emptying the crumbs and lint from one’s pockets asa way of letting go of the final remains of the old year. Today, most people throw bread crumbs and blow the
shofar (trumpet made from a ram’s horn).

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Stacy Traiger

Grief Monologue
wash hands, set up supplies: towel on table, new syringe, alcohol swabs,
medicine bottle from frig. carefully open syringe package and check parts.
open medicine bottle and wipe top with alcohol swab. stick needle into
rubber top of medicine bottle, draw out dosage and recap needle. expose
skin and swab target area with new swab. pick up syringe, uncap, balance
hand and insert needle at approximately 45 degree angle to skin surface.
push back of syringe to administer medicine into tissue. when syringe isempty, remove needle from body and recap. swab skin as necessary. placeused syringe and medicine bottle in red plastic hazardous waste container.
place used alcohol swabs in regular trash. fold towel and place in clean area
until next dosage is required. wash hands again. move on to next activity.
do not think. do not allow the mind to question these actions. do not cry
while administering dosage. do not think about the needle piercing one’s
skin by one’s own hand. refrain from noticing the bruises which develop inareas of repeated puncturing. do not run fingers over the toughened skin.
do not remember being filled with poison, then pumped full of prescriptions
to counteract the poisons. do not think about yet another loss, anotherbetrayal.
only remember how this medicine allows me to breathe more easily.
remember the dizziness and nausea that drag me to the floor, gasping for
air, because of the poisons. because my body is fighting the poisons andfighting the cancer and fighting to breathe. this medicine helps me breathe,
helps my body produce blood cells which bring oxygen to the brain, andgives me the strength to walk from one bleak room of the dusty apartment
to another.

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the medicine gives me the strength to survive another treatment, anotherpoisoning. but don’t think of it as poison. keep a positive attitude. do notgive up, whatever else, do not stop fighting. keep fighting for my life. relax
and breathe and fight like hell to survive. imagine the poisons as healing
white light entering my body, protecting me from the cancer, helping to
defeat the cancer. do not think of the poisons as defeating me. do not thinkof throwing up meal after meal. do not think of the permanent i.v. line, themedical hardware placed under my skin, the tube pushed into my artery. do
not notice the pulsing of the tube in my neck as the poisons, which mustnot be poisons, are pumped into my body, pumped through my heart into
every cell, causing unknown damage. do not question if i am still human, do
not even consider such thoughts.
focus on the healing light. focus on fighting, on breathing. do not feel like a
victim. do not feel like an innocent victim in a badly directed nightmare,
expecting to wake up screaming but safe. i am not safe; nobody is safe. there
is no hiding from the sickness and the sickening treatments, the pity andfear, the fear, the anger and not knowing what will happen, not knowing
how this awake nightmare will end.
don’t think about that either. stay positive, focus on healing, on fighting thedisease, on getting well again, waking to a healthy day, moving beyond cancer.
don’t dwell on the many losses, don’t let the grief pull me down. do notthink about how close i am to dying. do not question why i am surviving
when others are not. do not question why i am sick. do not blame myself
for failing to stay healthy in a health-obsessed culture.
take credit for fighting, for surviving, for doing what i need to do, but don’t
blame myself. keep a positive attitude, focus on being well again. the way toget better is to believe i am getting better, to always imagine myself getting

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better. i do not have the luxury of wallowing in depression. my body must
be strong to fight and survive, my mind and emotions must serve as soldiersin the war for my life. because i could lose.
but don’t think about that, don’t think about anything. don’t think, don’t
feel, don’t remember, don’t question. just do what i have to do. then moveon with my life. don’t remain stuck in the past. grieve if i must, for surely imust, but grieve and move on.
because there is no way to grieve such a loss. no way a human can comprehend
this disease or its treatments. no way for the mind to make sense of thechanges, of the wasted time, of the life left in ruins. no way to know why isurvived. there are no lessons that can justify the horrors. there are lessons,yes, important ones. but there is no way to regain that false sense ofimmortality, no more innocent youth to misspend, no more trust that being
good and living healthy will protect me, or anyone, from a horrible death.
no more belief that my small corner of the world is a safe place. no morebelieving that i’ve endured enough pain, that i deserve a happy life. there isgrief and anger and loss and pain and failure, existing side by side with theperfectly amazing fact that i am still alive.
so i cry when i see the winter mountains sparkle white against a clear bluesky. i cry at the mountains, cry at the warmth of the sun. watch the ocean
waves and feel my throat close in sadness, see the wildflowers blooming foranother summer and feel tears on my cheeks. crying now for each time i
didn’t cry before, and for each time i did. crying for the treatments i tried to
face bravely, for the dehumanizing tests and procedures. crying for every
day i filled that syringe, every time my hand moved forward to stick theneedle into my own flesh, piercing my skin despite the screaming in myhead. the needle waited patiently, so i saved the tears, put aside the grief. andnow i cry to the mountains, grieving my incomplete death.

fall 2006

UncumberConversation
My death and I go walking every morning.
Arm and arm we stroll behind the waving
tail of my foxy, alpha dog. I plan myfuneral and she occasionally nods agreement.
“Lesbian sisters, friends, family will gather.
I see them sitting, heads bowed. Suddenly
there is music. They rise and move toward
the door. The song is I’ve Got The WorldOn A String.”
We round a corner, new daffodils bend in thesoft air. “Is that too boastful?” I ask. My deathshrugs. “How about Forget Your Troubles
And Just Get Happy? Too jazzy? Or maybe
His Eye Is On The Sparrow? Too specific?
How about no music? Shall we have a
Quaker Meeting? It will be expected.”My death smiles and pauses to watch arobin cross the sidewalk. I understand.
There is time. Tomorrow we willconsider again.
Later, my death lies on my pillow,
nearer than my lover sleeping beside me.
Calm spreads over the bed and into every
part of the room. I feel silence throughout
the house as solid as water and as
vacant as air. “Will you be here when I
am gone?” I ask. “Will you comfort
my love?” My death shakes her head.
“That’s not possible,” she whispers.
“That is not my talent. She won’t know me.”I sigh,My death turns to look out the window.
The night is dark. There is no moon.
I am tired. I move closer to my lover,let my arm gently fall acrossher shoulder. “Tomorrow we’ll talk about
letters and where to have the reception.”

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Angela Lester

My Sense of Longing
Dedicated to
My mother Ella Louise Robards Lester
Death January, 2005 to breast cancer
My father Walter Lester, Jr.
Death November, 1979 to suicide
Peace be with them both.
I’m coming home soon, Momma and Daddy,
Make room for me.
It won’t be very long,
I’m coming home.
I need you each passing day,I think my emotions grab me each time.
Oh, I miss you much.
I’ll be there,
Don’t you worry about a thing,
Cause Angela’s coming home to you both.
Yes, I miss you much.
Momma, I’m tired,
Daddy, I’m wounded.
I’m coming home soon.
I miss you much.
I need love. The pain
That I suffer each moment,
I can’t take it no more.
I’m coming soon, Momma and Daddy.
I miss you much.

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129

Joyce Frohn

The Loss

SearchPhoto by Judith K. Witherow

We are missing one. We-the family, the circle- are broken.
Our song will be forever missing a note.
Our puzzle is missing a piece.
There is no comforting us ...
ExceptWe know what the picture on the puzzle is.
We know what the song sounds like.
And we will never forget what either one is.
Whenever we gather we will glance around for one missing face.
And feel absence and know loss.

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Hawk Madrone

Butch HugI did not know Bev very well when I learned that she had had emergency
surgery, and a diagnosis of colon cancer metastasized to her liver. The partnerof a friend in our writers’ group, she was an interesting woman to share adinner with sometimes after the group had met at their house. I knew she
was an intellectual, a rural sociologist-activist, and a master gardener. A visit
to her always lush garden, vegetables and flowers almost prehistoric in size,
was an invitation into the heart of this woman, as she modestly awed any
who would listen with her methods, her attention to detail, and the quantityof green growing things she could cram into a very small bed with no sacrifice
to quality.
In the wake of the surgery, and subsequent bouts of chemotherapy, Bev
and her partner needed help. Several of us volunteered, and I drove theweekly two and a half hour round-trip most weeks for the next two years.
At first I helped with simple bedside caretaking. As Bev slowly mended andtried to resume as much of her life as she could despite a dim prognosis, she
and I grew a friendship. I helped her with some of that gardening, as well asother tasks around their land. Sometimes I drove her to doctor appointments– or was simply good company as she drove – and accompanied her grocery
shopping, where I’d push the cart and follow Bev around the store. We
worked together, she doing all she could, which often equaled what I might
do alone on any day tending my own country home, and I had not had
major surgery. I did the things Bev was no longer able to do: push theloaded wheelbarrow, get up on the roof to spray the moss, carry the heavy
pots she planted with tulip bulbs, an annual gift for her partner.
Each visit, rain or shine, I would join her on her daily swift walk aroundtheir meadow. Bev aimed for three miles each day, running the last couple
hundred feet while I watched and waited, outdone by her decade-younger
perseverance and stamina, no matter the illness and the awkwardness of theostomy bag, which had forced her to give up daily black denims and wear
pocketless black scrubpants, the drawstring waist pulled up over the bag.
Sometimes we just sat together and talked, our conversations ranging
from the global to the immediate, hearing each other’s pains and joys. But
mostly I listened to Bev, while I massaged her feet and lower legs. She loved
those rubs, and I cherished this way I could will healing through my hands
into her body. Though we would always share a quick hug around the shoulders at the end of our visits, those massages were a gentle physical manifes-fall 2006131

tation of what Bev saw as our butch-bonding. We had more than one conversation about Lesbian identity as I accompanied her on her road of illness, life, and impending death. I would always good-naturedly insist I wasneither butch nor femme; I was a woman, a whole person.
“Well, of course, I’m a whole person, too,” she’d laugh, “but we are bothbutches!” It was important to her, I think, that butches be honored in a
Lesbian world that was more and more leaning toward lipstick andmainstream acceptability. And as country dykes, she knew me for a sister, ahard worker, a woman who, with my land partner of thirty years, keeps up
with the countless tasks of off-the-grid living, with a “we can do/learn/take on anything” attitude. So we teased each other – well, mostly Bev teasedme – as we walked and talked and toiled together.
When Bev moved away to the city, I saw her less often. Soon after she
moved, I drove my pickup loaded with some of her belongings to her smallcity duplex and spent a couple days being pals, doing errands together, walking
the city streets, trying to keep up with her determined pace. The following
month I helped with the driving when she needed to relocate her aged
mother back to California. And she twice stopped briefly at my isolated
country home when she returned to this area for medical consultations,grateful for a deep drink of womensland, of forest and open spaces.
I did not see Bev again until a weekend in late August. It was on that visit
that a major change seemed to be brewing. She already had lived a year anda half longer than the worst-case statistical probabilities. Never one tocomplain much about the physical toll the disease was taking, that weekend
I heard her groan now and again. The pain was beginning to dominate her
attention, and her spirit.
One afternoon we had gone to the market, where she picked out the few
staples she could still digest. At the end of one aisle, she slowed, said quietly,“You remember how I’ve always said how much I love life?” I nodded,
remembering keenly her positive attitude, her love of the earth’s beauty anddetermination to stay around to enjoy it. “Well, I don’t care anymore,” shesaid. And I understood the eloquence of those groans. Daily life was being
taken over by the disease, by dealing with its effects and the care it required,with little left over for brilliant conversation, her holding forth on theinternational political scene, or the state of health care for working people.
She still would tend pots of luscious displays of cosmos, daisies, and otherflowers I did not know the names of, transforming a corner of the little
backyard into a haven of color, a reminder to herself of who she was, ofthe gardener in her. But something new was happening.
“You may have been here for the shift,” she said, seated in her old family
rocking chair, having decided she was not up to our going to see a movie
after all.

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Along with Hospice care, a group of old and new friends in the city
made it possible for Bev to stay in her home as the cancer spread and herenergy waned. They visited her regularly and organized the grocery shopping,laundering, housecleaning, and handling of special needs. They were valiant,but most of them had jobs and/or families, so when it became clear by
mid-October that live-in help was needed, a few of us country dykes pitchedin.
By the time I arrived, Bev could no longer manage the care of thosepots of flowers in the backyard. They had become unruly, a confusion ofcolor and spent blossoms. And I found a greatly changed Bev as well. In thetwo months since I had last seen her, her legs and feet had swollen so badly
the skin was blistered and cracking, her abdomen bulging with the multiplying
tumors, while the rest of her body had thinned, the bones of her faceoutlined, her wrists weakened. Her hair, a long frizzy white bush before
chemotherapy, lay dry and limpy at neck-length. Walking was difficult, evenwith a cane, though she got herself from the small bedroom to the muchsmaller bathroom, varied her lying in bed with sitting in the recliner in theliving room. The pain-dulling medication had been increased, though I
learned that Bev was taking less than most people in her condition. Yes, thatsounded like Bev, refusing to be numbed by medication, wanting still tohave a say in this minute-by-minute transformation, staying as much involved
with – and in control of – her care, and her demise, as she could be.
*

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

From October 21 to October 24, 2005, I companion my friend. I am
spelled for one overnight’s solid sleep away, and am joined now and again byothers who change the ostomy bag, run errands, and inform the wide circleof Bev’s friends of her progress. As the hours pass, the shock of Bev’s
altered state becomes less raw for me, and I relax into understanding thegift of this death watch. As she always has, Bev is teaching me about what
she knows best. Now, instead of enlightening me about the best seed varieties,
or opining about some political magazine article, she leads me through thisdying.
The pain medication must be taken every four hours, and I am anxious
about waking up for the nighttime medications. I need not have worried.
Each night, at the right hour, Bev calls my name loud and clear, and I respondwith ease, wide awake, glad to be here with her. As I approach the doorway
to her bedroom, I see she is already sitting up on the rented hospital bed,feet on the floor, her body on schedule for the oxycodone and morphine,for relief.

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133

During one of these late night medication times, she has been dreaming.
She barely enunciates, her lips forming hardly any letter I can read. When it
is just the two of us in these nighttime duets of need and care, in this quiet,
this simplicity of sleeping, waking, being, it does not matter that I do notalways understand what she is saying. What is important is that I am listening,caring about every word I cannot easily, if at all, decipher. Here and there I
catch one – “dream”, “turncoat”…. Then she asks “You would not do thatwould you?”, speaking the question with a pointed-to-me clarity, her heavyeyes now open to me.
“Do what?” I ask, my words softly spoken, my voice a reflection of mycaring.
“Turn turncoat,” she says.
I calmly insist “No, I never would. I am here, loving you.”
I am convincing.
She smiles.
Her feet are too swollen for massage, so I slowly stroke her back throughthe black cotton turtleneck, lightly knead her aching shoulder, rub and rub
to give ease, to give touch, to connect her body with mine. These moments
we do not talk, this touching a completion for me. After that one nightaway, when I had come back refreshed, Bev was sitting on the recliner,
visiting with another friend who had been with her through the night. She
was clear-eyed and lively, beckoned me to come close – as I did so she lifted
her right arm, bent at the elbow, her forearm reaching toward me. It took
me a moment to understand that she wanted me to hold my forearm similarly, to lean in and place my arm against hers. When I did, she grinned andsaid “Butch hug.” This was her greeting, her welcoming me back, an affection she could enact. I rejoiced in her smile, her reaching to me, amazed at
her intact sense of humor. Though I still felt miscast, I went along with thejoviality, gladly pushed my forearm against hers, yet felt a gap that I would
rather fill with tenderness. Now, in the silence of the night, I rub her backand she welcomes my touch, this simple giving to each other: her back, myhands.
One morning we are sitting in the living room between medication
sessions, Bev taking a break from lying down. Sitting up has its discomfort
as well, but at least it is a change. “Dying is hard work,” I say carefully, “andyou are working so very hard.” I am acknowledging her, knowing her forthe valiant woman she is, for the courageous ways she has lived with disease
and pain. She nods, a rare time when she has accepted adulation from me.
Later that day, visitors arrive, too many for the small living room, too
many for Bev’s focus, so I take an amble around the block, smell roses
blooming in one well-tended yard, admire plantings all around the134sinister wisdom #68/69 — Death, Grief and Surviving

neighborhood; then I sit on the stoop and chat with others going in andout. When nearly everyone has left, I go back in to help Bev take her medicine,and find her still sitting in the recliner, her face radiant, open, happy, as
though she has been infused with love, receiving and giving.
During the night I help Bev get repositioned in the narrow bed, thenarrange the pillows just so to give ease to her back and neck. Minutes pass.
Bev breathes, eyes shut, or barely open. I sit on the upholstered desk chair,pulled up beside her. Her bone-thin face resting on the pillow is a candle,
the focus for this vigil. I watch, and wait.
“Tell the people … I am grateful,” she says clearly, “and soon … they
can get back to their work.”
I assure her I will tell them, then ask, in almost a whisper, “Is this hard
work you are doing finished?”“Soon,” she says, nodding.
There are more words, indistinct, a frown … then her eyes open toclarity, her hand rises to my face and she briefly strokes my cheek with one
bent knuckle. “You take care of yourself, “ she says.
“I will,” I tell her gently, honestly.
Sip of soymilk, water, more milk … the oxycodone pill … one-half thetask accomplished. Then rest, her head against the pillow. I wait, study her
face. I learn patience, respect the pace of the dying, honoring what’s left ofBev’s ability to be in charge, which can mean a half hour of sitting waitingfor her to get clear enough, awake enough to take the medications. Just as I
am about to lose it (it’s so late, I’m so tired…) and think to say something
mildly bossy, Bev opens her eyes, asks for the small jar of milk, then theliquid morphine. She can no longer administer these meds herself – thebottles too hard to open, the dropper needs too much dexterity. I open, fill,tell her it’s ready – she opens her mouth for a quick squirt. Then milk.
She has trouble keeping the glass steady (a canning jar, actually, herpreferred), so I keep my hands nearby, under hers, ready, but not interfering.
If there is a wobble, I can rescue both her and the bed sheet from a soaking.
So I am cradling the space beneath the half-pint jar of soymilk as she drinks,
then smiles, and says “They call this a chaser. It’s a chaser.” I think if she
could, she would be belly-laughing, as I chuckle at her ability to be jocularstill. She sips, rests the jar on her lap, sips again, rests …. Then she has hadenough and I remove the jar to the nearby little table, placing it exactly as
she instructs.
“Shall I put the bed back down now?” I ask, wanting her to be as
comfortable as possible. Her“yuh” is a short breathy assent, and I push the
button, the bed lies back, cradling Bev’s upper body with it, an electricallycontrolled laying down of her.

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Pillows to adjust, covers to straighten, place the flashlight near enoughso she can find it, or at least know that it is there; place her old black tanktop beside her head so she can lay it over her eyes as the light, insisting
through the window blind, becomes annoying. She is settled, comfortable,slipping into morphia. This session, now at about forty-five minutes, is about
to end. She will sleep, probably for at least four hours.
“I love you, Bev,” the words never more sincere.
She has heard me. She opens her eyes and this smile of hers buds in her
blue eyes, draws up the sides of her mouth, blooms on her cheeks. “I love
you, too,” she says, as she reaches her hand to my face, a soft stroke with her
fingertips on my cheek.
And sleeps.
Tenderness fills the space between and around us. Does she know it isme she is loving? I think so, but it really does not matter. There is love here,
in her, in this person caring for/tending to her.
This is my last night with Bev. Three days later, with yet other friends ather bedside, Bev’s hard work is finished.
*

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

*

When I began those last days with Bev, when I was concerned about‘doing it right,’ I thought I would not want this way of dying for myself. But
how else to do it? How to stay away from mind-numbing drugs, and also
not be engulfed by pain? How to enact my own death, bring my life to an
end and not go through this process Bev was in? How not to need women
to sit and wait, and wait ….
Bev taught me to go deeper than all that: death is a passage in all our
lives, and we sit and wait each other through it. It is a part of what we
women do. Just as we gather to celebrate a landyke’s 80th birthday, we taketurns keeping watch over Bev’s dying. This vigil asks of us to stretch ourpresumed limits, to learn yet more about patience, compassion, devotion….
This vigiling may not be fun like that birthday party, but it is important, anessential chapter in all our stories. This chapter, too, must be lived, and told.

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sinister wisdom #68/69 — Death, Grief and Surviving

Maria Fama

Why I Don’t Play Guitar Any More

My fingers freeze
there is hurt on the strings
heartache on the fretmemory unfolds one stark day
While I was strumming STREETS OF LAREDO
she was making soup in her just a week dead mother’s kitchen
ironing her freshly widowed father’s shirts
While I was practicing ROLL OVER BEETHOVEN
she was home writing a note, swallowing pills
beginning her sleep toward death
While I was noting chords laughing with my band
she was caressing a green pillow
her brain slowing her mind slipping away
While I rode the subway home tapping out rhythms
her heart stopped
While I walked in the door with my guitar
seeing her there, thinking her asleep
her spirit might’ve watched me tiptoe
trying not to make a soundputting down the guitar
taking tortellini out of the fridge for supper
wondering if I had time
to buy her favorite sugared tarallifall 2006

When I moved the guitar
I saw the note the cup
my guitar case so heavy so black
an explosion in my head my heart

the pills

the world turned upside down
I could not revive her
the music

inside my heada dirgejoking policemen gawking neighbors
her body carried out

the coroner

my guitar caseso black

the music
a dirge.

my heartso heavy

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sinister wisdom #68/69 — Death, Grief and Surviving

Susan Eschbach

Silence
There is a silence draping over us, both diffuse andopaque. At times, it is warm, comfortable. Sitting
next to you while you sleep, in the hospital, I write,
listen to my music in quiet earphones. You cannot
hear what I hear, what is moving me now.
I don’t sing as I used to, loud, unrestrained. I don’t tap
my foot. I enjoy the sounds but am also silenced.
Today, this is OK. I am OK with your need to rest, todisappear, into sleep, defending against your thirst andhunger, waiting for more tests requiring you to beparched.
But
I miss you. There are accumulating months of your naps,
the couch, the bed, the car on trips. Rest, sleep, heal,
escape pain. And so I tell you less and less about my day,my thoughts, how I feel about your illness, our history
together, our relationship; how I rage, cry, fear; how thekids are, what they did in school, at dinner, with friends, inthe yard; their homework; their ideas and what they eachsaid today; what new lessons I tried to teach the seventh
graders; gossip at work, among friends; what I may makefor dinner and what is on the shopping list; a phrase fromthe paper, a book and what that made me think of andhow it’s related to a conversation we are always having;
and what I am wondering we should do next to take careof you, and the kids, and what about me?
This silence, this amount of space between us, so
unfamiliar, something I thought I needed on
occasion, makes me
so lonely.

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139

Joan Annsfire

Midnight Sun(for Valeri)“Seeing stars during the day, sunlight at night, or
seeing red flowers in one’s dreams are allsigns that transition to the otherworld has begun.”
The Tibetan Book of the Dead
Breathe out, breathe in
you are thin and brittle as summer grass,every bruise a mapof life’s turbulent lessons.
Breathe out, breathe ineach atom of your being engaged
in this choreography of artful determination
soon you will be nothing more than clear lightdancing over a dark universe.
Breathe out, breathe intables piled with food, closets filled with clothes,
your room overflowing with friends,
the rhythmic rush of voices chanting.
Breathe out, breathe indrink from the deep cup of emptinesstake in a place without war,
sleepless nights or sadness.
Breathe out, breathe in
the Tibetans say thatwhen you see stars during the dayor sunlight at night you will be readyto meet your demons and your deities.
Breathe out, breathe in
the otherworld sings its lullaby in your ear
let death descend gently as a beam of midnight sun
and begin your journey cloakedin dreams of red flowers.

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sinister wisdom #68/69 — Death, Grief and Surviving

Lynn Brown

It All Seems Like Dying
I have spent the past three days crying and grieving at random without
holding back. Sometimes I find myself using my rational mind to alter theemotional flow. I have to remind myself to let go. I want to stop the
feelings because the loss is so acute and viscerally painful that I experiencea crazy-making sense of anxiety. I think these feelings will never change. I
imagine myself unable to function. I get scared to reach out. I am entranced
and horrified by the depth of my vulnerability and the nakedness I feel.
On a deeper level, this onslaught of feelings seems to be a cleansingthat I believe is a soul change. An opening has been created in which torelease and heal old wounds, repressed and stuffed memories of hurt, andfeelings of rejection and abandonment. This internal cleansing began one
spring with a change in my eating habits and escalated when I entered into
what I imagined was a safe and trustful relationship with another woman.
These two changes in my life created a powerful space in which to move. I
created an understanding with myself to allow an awareness of my needs.
Unfortunately, the other person abruptly chose to close down one day. I
worked on staying with all the positive changes that were part of the alchemyof the romance, but the dark side was not easily dismissed. Many buried
issues were triggered by this time of loving and, for me, violent leave-taking.
The grieving needed to be explored, but I wasn’t willing to receive its
deep and exhausting revelations until now. The physical armoring I’ve utilized
over the years to hide my various fears and desires is falling away. I findmyself assisting the loss and new awareness with as much consciousness as
I can muster. It all seems like dying to me as my heart and ego struggle withthe flow of information from my past and try to integrate and release thesefeelings into the present. My attachments to the mirrors of my love arecoming and going in painful disarray while I bear witness. Most of the time
I cannot sit still long enough to surrender to the peace of the present. I takelong walks and do yoga to remain in a strong connection with my body, but
my mind is still haggling over the mysteries of loss and confusion. I am
mourning for love, for my friends who died of accidents, drugs, AIDS orcancer. I am crying for the attention I didn’t have when I needed it in mychildhood. I am weeping for the loss of care and beauty annihilated by thethoughtless forms of greed we breed so endlessly in our America. I am

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141

Photo by Judith K. Witherowsolitary but I do not feel alone. I am a woman grieving with a desire to laybare a fresh palette where my tears will fashion a blessing for courage andstrength for love to come shining through.
The sense of loss and grieving is still fresh in my mind after ten years.
My nightmare has modified. I am less involved in new fears. Around me
there is great love and affection. Grief is supported by a budding circle offriends and a wonderful love. I find that fears of abandonment, unworthiness,and injustice still haunt my landscape and I confront them as old
acquaintances that need continued boundaries and truth. I believe there is
respite in community and an opportunity to give and receive shared healingfor our own and the world’s sorrows. We have a rich, generous, handwoven safety net of love that comes from the minds, hearts, and bodies of
the women in our lives who keep it well tended, open, and full. Grieving
turns to gratitude for the gifts we have to give each other.

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sinister wisdom #68/69 — Death, Grief and Surviving

Julie R. Enszer

Steel Shapes Our Livesfrom the car she sat in
at the stop lightto the steel girders
in the truck next to her

years earlier, when
I came out as a lesbian
mother wished on me
the familial, feminine curse:from the steel
fasteners that failed
to the wheel chairtransporting grandmother

Lupus a steel needle
pierced my arm proving
my blood is clean
my body, healthy

from stealing timeagainst disease
to history crushing us
in mother’s memory

I survived My sister’s
middle name, Diane,secured her fateshared with mother’s cousin

both crushed by steel
from childhood, mother steeledat this particular time
us for loss She admonished“You kids don’t know how lucky at this particular age
you are to have me here, healthy”
we live in an era wheresteel shapes our lives
my sister wasstolen from us
so swiftly
sitting in steel
at her funeralmother shrieked,“It should have been you, notLara, it shouldhave been you”

fall 2006

Lisa Kraft

Constant Blame
constant blame
plagues me, a high feverthat won’t go away
grasping
at tenuous flickering
moments of happinessthat sometimes comebetween the long hoursof dreadand sorrow
i will never be able to let go
to break the bondsof guilt that wrap
so tightly around me
if only you had talked to me
or called me up
just to cry, to let me say i love you
before you had taken your own
precious life
am i to constantly replay
that painful timein order to pay your penance?
to constantly hearthose words of my father…
lisa, come homeyour brother is dead.

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sinister wisdom #68/69 — Death, Grief and Surviving

Catherine Friend

Losing Ambrosia
When my partner Melissa and I started a farm, we knew almost nothing
about farm animals, so we learned quickly as we acquired fifty sheep, allama, lots of ducks and chickens, and a goat.
The goat, Ambrosia, was going to feed baby lambs. I’d read about thisgreat idea in a book, but actually making it happen was a little tricky.
However, when we ended up with three lambs whose mothers couldn’t feed
them, it was time to try.
First, I tied Ambrosia’s head and fed her grain to distract her. Then I
knelt, and using my head, pushed the 170-pound goat hard up against thewall. I made sure I was well balanced, for when the grain was gone, Ambrosia
would be also. Head firm against her flank; I scooped up the nearest twolambs--both about a day old and a little confused. Sheep udders are highand round, goat udders low and pendulous, so the lambs’ instinct to nurse
high meant they’d never find the teats without help.
I pushed and pulled two squirming lambs into position, and they‘latched’ on. The third lamb roamed underneath me, nosing its way up myribcage. Even though I wore a sweatshirt, bent over as I was, gravity turns
even the most flat-chested of women into a meal source. That third lambcame dangerously close to latching on to exactly what she was looking for,but I pushed her away just in time. As the warning goes: “We’re professionals.
Don’t try this at home.”
After the lambs nursed three times a day for three days, Ambrosia’s
milk passed all the way through their digestive systems, so both ends ofeach lamb smelled familiar (to her, not to us). The next morning I looked
out the window. There she stood, munching her cud, with three little lambs
fighting over her udder. They began following her everywhere. She nickered
if she couldn’t see them. She lay down and let them climb on her--a happy
blended family. Ambrosia performed this mothering miracle for us year
after year, teaching us, and visitors to the farm, that an animal didn’t have tolook like her in order for her to love it.
But then one frigid January afternoon Melissa stopped into the barn tocheck on things. Ambrosia was standing by the big door, seemingly fine, butwhen Melissa returned thirty minutes later, Ambrosia had begun tremblingand grinding her teeth. Melissa took her temperature. We gave her a few
medications we had on hand, but we didn’t know what was wrong with her.

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Within minutes, she dropped to her knees, trembling violently now, hervision glazed and unblinking, then fell over on her side. Melissa ran for thephone while I knelt by Ambrosia’s side, the cold weather forgotten as I
draped myself over the convulsing goat, praying that she was not in too
much pain, whatever was coursing through her body.
The vet came quickly, but before he could really get the IV going anddo much, Ambrosia stopped convulsing and died in Melissa’s arms. We
stared in shock, Melissa rocking the 150-pound goat gently. “Ambrosia,
Ambrosia, don’t go.” No response. Within thirty minutes she’d gone from ahealthy animal to a dead one.
As the vet quietly packed up his equipment, Melissa and I struggled
for control, hanging on until the vet’s taillights disappeared around the curvein the driveway. I don’t remember much of that night—we spent it crying
and wondering what we could have done differently. Had there been signsof something we’d missed? Would another drug have helped? Why had she
convulsed so violently?
The next morning Melissa did what she did best—take action. We’drecently met a woman who worked for the Minnesota Science Museum,and she’d told us the museum had an extensive collection of animal skeletonsthat scientists across the country came to study. Melissa called Jackie andasked her if the museum needed a goat skeleton.
Jackie practically yelped with excitement. Just the day before the museum
employees had been discussing an upcoming exhibit of Catalhöyük, an
excavation in Turkey, one of the first places man ceased his wandering and146sinister wisdom #68/69 — Death, Grief and Surviving

settled into a city. The Science Museum needed to entirely recreate the dig
because the Turkish officials wouldn’t let them remove anything from thecountry. The museum had almost everything it needed, except goat bones.
That very day, Jackie braved the icy roads to drive down in her SUV for
Ambrosia’s body. It took four of us, but using a plastic sled, we hoisted our
beloved goat into the back of Jackie’s car. Melissa and I were oddly
comforted—at least Ambrosia’s death could benefit someone.
Melissa’s only request of Jackie’s boss was that, after they examined
Ambrosia’s body, they would let us know if they found anything to help us
understand why she died. Two days later the call came. Ambrosia died of a
massive aneurysm in her brain. There was absolutely nothing we could havedone to save her, or the three babies she carried.
A few months later, we visited the Science Museum, and spoke with
Jackie. When I mentioned we were going to attend the laser show, she gave
us both a funny look, then took a deep breath. “You need to know, then,that in the hallway you take to the laser theater, you’ll pass a large window
into one of the science labs. In that window we have a working display
showing how insects help us clean dead flesh off the skeletons we keep
here.”
Melissa figured it out first. “Ambrosia.”
Jackie nodded.
As we entered the hallway and passed the large window into the brightly
lit lab, I focused on my shoes and did not stop until I reached the theater.
Melissa, ever the scientist, stopped. She could tell it was Ambrosia by thehooves—they had needed trimming before she’d died, and they still did. A
few signs in the window explained the process, and Melissa felt the wholeexhibit was well done—educational and interesting.
We were still heartbroken over Ambrosia, but at the same time filledwith pride that she was teaching people even in her death.
—Excerpt from Hit By a Farm: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Lovethe Barn, by Catherine Friend, published by Marlowe & Co.;www.hitbyafarm.com.

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Suzanne Gary

Beverly(for Charlotte)
I step into
the noises and smellsof the nursing homewith the nice-girl namewhere you ride the bed
like a wing toward death
Rubber-soled people
feed you, place pills
on your tongue
exercise your arms
I hold a bookin front of you
turn the pagesof the Grand Canyon
Sequoia National Park
where you drove
the new Jeep last year
Now it sits
in the driveway
and you can’t crossthe room, remember
my name. Words
have blown out the window
on a breeze
The tumor in your brain
is behind the wheel
now, chauffeuring you away
I close the book
A space enters your eyes
The skya stack of blue
bricksin your window

After a false alarm
the fire stationnext door has gone quiet
The flag in front
hangs as limp
as your handYour fingers stay curledthrough sirens and bells
engines eruptingout of their box
Your eyes stay closed
or fixed on a balloon
tied to the foot of your bed,a vase of tall
paper sunflowers
Your mind
has left, but I might find it
like a slipper
under your bed
if I sit quietlyin this room choked with grief
flowers that are not flowers
And afterwards
I will drive
the JeepYour hands will slide
into minelike gloves
steering us toward Sequoias
you have seen
since we last spoke
or a Grand Canyon
I couldn’t havefound alone

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Shirley Brozzo

One More TimeI never really knew how sick my dad was, until my mother, Sarah
Millimaki, called me from his hospital room to say he was failing. By “failing,”
I knew she meant he was dying. I was at home, having returned from thehospital myself the week before where I had given birth to my daughter, alittle blue-eyed blonde, who obviously resembled her father and not me.
My husband, Joel, was at work, so I bundled up Tiffany and drove myself
back to the hospital.
Holding Tiffany close, I ran for the elevator transporting me to thesixth floor to see my dad, Axel, and find out for myself what was going on.
I stopped short, outside the room where he lay enveloped by white sheets,
connected to a myriad of tubes and blinking machines. Mom looked up
when she heard me approach, put her finger to her lips to hush me, andmotioned for me to stay where I was. She came out.
“Oh, Annette, I am so sorry I didn’t call you when this happened. You
just came home with the baby, so I called the ambulance.”“What happened?” I asked, handing my daughter to her grandmother.
I listened anxiously as she told her story, while focusing on her first
grandchild.
“Well, you know, he just hasn’t been the same ever since he left thatmining job for Pickands-Mather. All those years of working underground
did something to him. He ached all the time from that rheumatoid arthritis.
And he was always so cold. Remember how we had to have the heat turned
up so high, I could hardly stand it?”Tiffany yawned, and we both looked at her making sure she was allright. Just as quickly, she settled back in.
I said, “Yes, I remember all that. We girls ran around the house in our
shorts in the middle of winter. I hated it when we were teenagers andwanted to have sleep-overs, but we couldn’t because he had to get up andwalk around throughout the night. Had to keep those legs moving.”“I know, honey. It’s been hard on me too, you know. Now he’s got
what they call black lung disease. It’s taking his breath. For the last monthor so I’ve had to take him outside and let him breathe fresh air. But lasttime he. . .” I watched her shake, breaking into tears. Handing over one of
Tiffany’s cloth diapers to staunch the flow, I gently extricated the baby fromher arms.

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“I couldn’t lift him. That’s when I called the ambulance. Oh, Annette,
it doesn’t look good.” My mother slumped against the wall, brushing her
gray hair behind her ears. Once again, she rubbed the new diaper acrossher face. Quietly, our family doctor, Dr. Jamison, walked up.
“What’s this? Annette, I thought I sent you home with this little bundle.”
Peeking inside her pink blankets, he said, “Well, she is looking much better
than the two of you. I think you should follow her lead and go home for anap, Sarah.”“I can’t Dr. Jamison, he’s dying. I have to be here.”“Sarah, it’s true that he isn’t going to be a healthy man again, but, he is
not dying today. I’m sure you will be taking him home by the end of theweek.” Just as he finished talking a voice on the intercom paged Dr. Jamison.
He headed down the corridor at a brisk clip for a man of his age.
True to his prediction, Dr. Jamison discharged Dad by Friday. Mom
and I had just arrived as Dr. Jamison was giving him his last instructions.
The two men, who used to be hunting buddies, eyed each other up.
“Yes, Frank,” dad said, “I’ll take these little blue pills three times a daywith my meals and the large yellow one at bed time. And no more smoking.”“Good,” said Dr. Jamison. “Then you should live to see your new
granddaughter get married.”
I watched the exchange between the two old friends and knew thatthey knew that the other was lying.
* *Tiffany and I visited often during those first few weeks after he camehome. In the beginning Dad was unsteady on his legs, so he started using
crutches to get around. The low-income apartment, with a combined livingroom with kitchenette, that they were forced to live in now was barely large
enough for two people. While trying to adjust to using his extra legs, hekept bumping into the recliner or the coffee table.
“How are you doing, Dad?”
Through clenched teeth he said, “Well, it hurts to walk, but it hurtseven more if I’m not moving some.” He took another slow turn aroundthe apartment.
Chilled by the fall air, he wore his blue, flannel bathrobe over his pajamas.
His strength was gone from his arms, so when he fastened the belt, it didn’t
stay tied and the robe flapped open, wrapping itself around one crutch or
the other.

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sinister wisdom #68/69 — Death, Grief and Surviving“Damn it!”
He hardly ever swore, so when I took a step toward him, my mothershook her head. From the look in her eyes, I figured I’d better listen thistime. Dad threw his crutches to the floor, wrestled the robe from his body,and slumped to the couch. His chest sunk and rose as he tried to get his
breath, then he wiped his forehead with the discarded robe. I watched as
mom went to his side. Even when he tried pushing her away, she sat besidehim, stroking his hand.
Later, Mom said, “My whole routine has changed. I feel like I’mwatching over you kids again. He doesn’t sleep well, so I nap when he does.
He might eat a half a bowl of chicken noodle soup.”
I knew things were not good when I overheard him say to Mom, “I
don’t trust myself to drive the Buick to the store. Get Annette to take you.”This became my new routine. Mom called and I would bring Tiffany
over. Once she was fed and had a dry bottom, I’d buckle her into her baby
seat, placing it on the floor before the TV, where the latest Lions game wasplaying. Dad always said they were fine. Even though I wasn’t there to see
it, I’m sure the two of them watched football until Tiffany fell asleep and
Dad nodded in and out. In short, they bonded.
* *Just after tax time when I was visiting, I noticed Dad walking a little
straighter and a little longer. Mom said he even ate a small bowl of oatmeal
with brown sugar and butter and that he drank two cups of tea. I had to gopick up some money to run to Walgreen’s for them.
Mom said, as she was handing me a twenty, “Your father’s run out of
those little blue pills again. Now, I’ve called up Mr. McGregor in thepharmacy and he’ll have them ready for you. I don’t know why you didn’t
marry him in the first place. He seems like such a nice man”
“Mother, do you want me to go to the drugstore or not? Stop trying to
set me up with Bill McGregor.”
When I returned with the prescription, Dad was sitting on the woodenbench in front of their brick building. Running his hand across the varnish,
now in need of a touch up, he said, “I can’t even keep up with the little stuff
any more.”“Daddy, Tiffany is walking around the furniture. It won’t be long before
she takes a few steps. She is always babbling. I can’t wait for her to say
mama.” I tried to distract him with stories about his granddaughter.

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* *
The weather was fine in June, so I put Tiffany in her St. Vinnie’s stroller
and we went to see my folks. Today was a special day; Tiffany said her first
word. It wasn’t mama. It wasn’t even dada. No, her first word was “papa.” I
didn’t have to wonder who was coaching her!
Before we left home, I called my mom to tell her that we were coming
and to be prepared for a surprise. She said Dad had wandered out to thegarage, so he would be outside to greet us. We were about a half a block
away when I saw Dad emerge, looking down the street toward us. Tiffany
was chanting, “Papa. Papa. Papa.” I was sure the whole neighborhood
could hear her by now.
“Papa. Papa. Papa.”
With a big smile on his face, my dad headed toward us. For a man witha cane, he moved at a good pace. Making it as far as the bench, he stopped
to sit down, wheezing. Once out of the stroller, Tiffany tottered to him,
trying to climb onto the bench. Smiling as she sat beside him, she patted his
hand. He patted hers back. Everything was right between them
“Watch her, Dad. She moves pretty quickly now.”“Annette, I raised four girls of my own. I know what I am doing.”* *By summer when Tiffany could walk, Dad took his cane in one handand his granddaughter’s hand in the other, and took her outside. He knewthat Mom and I were watching from the kitchen window. On rainy days shebanged on the patio door, angered that she couldn’t go outside with herpapa.
“I know, Baby. I don’t want it to rain today, either. Come on. Let’s go
see if there is some baseball on TV.” He held out his hand to her and she
followed him, reaching for his outstretched fingers.
The day after the rain was more fun for the two of them. Even in 80°
weather, Dad wore his insulated jacket, while Tiffany had on her sun suit.
About fifty yards from the house he stopped to teach her how to throwrocks into the puddles. The little gullies in the alleyway were just the rightsize to fill with small rocks that one-year-old hands could handle. From
the kitchen window I could see Tiffany stoop to gather up just the rightrock. Sometimes she dropped them and wiped her hands on her clothes.
She shared with Papa. While Dad stood back to toss his rock, Tiffany

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walked right up to the edge and dropped hers in, causing a splash.
Through the screen I heard Dad say, “Don’t get your feet wet, or Mama
will make us go in.”
“Wet,” she said.
* *In September Dad had a relapse. This time it was bleeding ulcers.
After letting Mom out of the car at the front door of the hospital, I’d drivearound back, below Dad’s window. Taking Tiffany out of her car seat, I let
her run around. Meanwhile, inside the building, Mom helped Dad over tothe window. My parents stood together for a few minutes, watching Tiffany
play and wave to them, and then they’d disappear from sight.
“It’s a real chore getting him in and out of bed, but he is so cranky if
he doesn’t see her.” Mom looked wiped out herself by the time I picked her
up again.
This was only the beginning of several hospitalizations for the man
who spent his youth mining. As Mom and I waited for Dad to come out of
his latest surgery, she confided in me.
“It is so hard to see your father like this. He used to work all day in themines, sometimes putting in double shifts. There were plenty of times he’dtake me out dancing at the bars. You know how he loved to putter in the
garage, making furniture. Now, he just wanders around. He picks up his
saw or hammer, then puts them down again. I don’t know how much longer
I can do this.” She buried her face in my shirt.
Dr. Jamison’s instructions were similar to last time. Keep using crutches,take the pills, and grow old.
Mom called me up crying, “He wants to see Tiffany.”
I could hear him in the background yelling, “I’m not taking those damnpills.”
Once there, Tiffany crawled into bed with him, where they watchedfootball together. She shared her sippy cup and fed him animal crackers.
When she thought he was cold, she covered him with her “blankie.”“Sarah!” he hollered. “When Annette takes you shopping, get this girla football. What’s that soft one called? Surf ?”“Do you mean Nerf ?”“That’s it. Nerf. Get her one of those. We have to start practicing.”“Yes, dear,” my mother said, handing him his blue pills and a glass ofwater. He took them without saying a word to her.
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“I’ll old woman you,” she said, kissing him.
* *All winter long he tossed the ball with Tiffany. By spring the snow
melted, and Tiffany was ready to play some “real” football with her papa.
“Annette, where’s her jacket? We’re gonna play football.”
I put Tiffany’s jean jacket on her, retied her tennis shoes, and sent her
toward the door.
“Football. Wif Papa.”“Ok, baby. Keep your jacket on.”“Not a baby.”“Ok, then, big girl.”
At twenty-one months, she was big enough to hold the door so her
Papa could get through it with his crutches. Out on the lawn Tiffany threw
the ball toward him. He steadied himself with his crutches and kicked theball back with his left foot. She ran to chase it and threw it back. Onceagain, he kicked it toward her. The third time she threw it far right of him.
Slowly, he moved to retrieve it.
“Papa, can’t you run on them crutches?” Tiffany asked.
Barely able to control my own laughter, I watched as my dad stopped
in his tracks, opened his mouth and laughed out loud, a long, chuckle fromdeep within his stomach. He laughed so hard, he started coughing. “Sheasked why I couldn’t run on those crutches.” Again, he burst into laughter.
Tears gathered in the corners of his eyes. “What a pistol she is.”Later that night my mother called me to come over. “Leave Tiffany
home with her dad.” Anxiously, I sped the few blocks to their house. By
then they were both outside As I flew out of the car, I watched my motherprop him up against the brick wall just outside their door. Getting closer, I
heard him coughMom asked him, “Can you make it to the bench?”
He shook his head, and then slumped against the wall, clutching hischest. Before I could get to them, he pitched forward, over her shoulder.
“Axel. Axel.”“Daddy!”Mom tried to push him off her. I grabbed at him, too, but she hollered,“Call the ambulance, Annette. Go!”I ran for the phone, knowing it was too late.

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sinister wisdom #68/69 — Death, Grief and Surviving

Kit Kennedy

The Cat Contacts My First Lover
how long is 25 years
how far is Manhattan from San Francisco
come visit
best if your kitties bring their own toys
you’ll like it here
fog doesn’t last long
maybe she won’t cry
when she folds that old black sweater
which she never wears
what’s inoperable cancer
what does dead mean

Stairway

Photo by Morgan Gwenwald

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Trena Machado

Didn’t Feel Like Myself
the minister of our church. at the door. 11:00 p.m. she took one
look at his face and knew. he said. he has been killed. i stood at her
side. hip level. looking up at the minister delivering those words.
foreign words that meant nothing. my mother cried out. into herchest. put her hand over her mouth. lifted her face up. down. up.
nowhere to look. she wanted to have him in our home. open
casket. for two days. until the funeral service was performed. and.
taken. to the cemetery. in the living room. the folding chairs were
set up in rows. i was in the hall. i had tried to help with the chairs.
make them straight. they were bulky to move. the rubber tips on
the chair legs stubbed and bumped and did not slide. the day
before the funeral service. and the day before that. i looked at him.
so still. fear down my back. the fear. making. me feel i am betraying
him. where was my father. whose lap i sat on. being afraid. a
betrayal. felt bad not wanting to look. turned away to the hall at thefoot of the marble gray casket. morning sunlight. in a broad brightswath. from the bedroom window. poured in. random. movementof dust particles. up. down. jumping. jagged. floating. drifting. i wascaught in those dust particles for minutes at a time. with him.
behind me in the casket. speechless. my throat closed. alone. in thehouse. looking at the dust particles. suspended along with them.
had never been aware of them before that. have been ever since. at
the funeral service i went into the hall. i was dressed up. nice shoes.
a nice dress. can’t remember the shoes or dress exactly. didn’t feellike myself.

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Donna Matucci

Forever Changed
Saturday August 16th 2003, I left our campsite early that morning to go
to a workshop with Rhiannon. My girlfriend was going to be at the workshop
area next to us at Kay Gardener’s memorial service. Rhiannon wanted to
end the workshop early to attend the service. She had us sing a beautiful
tribute to Kay. It stayed with me as I joined Jean and our friend Bobi at theservice. I found a scrap of paper and quickly jotted down the words, later
sticking it in my journal.
That night Toshi and Sweet Honey rocked the land in one of the mostmemorable concerts I attended. All those woman on their feet, generationsof mothers and daughters watching mother and daughter as we all sang anddanced. I could feel a connection of past and present--this theme that I had
been spiraling around in all day inspired by having seen Alex Olsen at theearlier memorial. It seemed like a confluence of the raging river we rose up
from and the righteous waterfalls that are currently splashing sense into thisworld.
I had waited on the phone line on Friday only to have a brief
conversation with my mother ending abruptly with her having to use thebathroom. She had gone into the hospital three days before I left. I had
taken her to the emergency room because of a nosebleed that wouldn’t stopfrom the Coumadin she was on. She had gotten up during the night to use
the bathroom, slipped and fractured her leg. I felt relieved when I was leavingthat she would be in rehab until I got back. I thought this would make it alittle easier on my sister whose daughter just had surgery and was diagnosed
with cancer that same week.
On Sunday we were excited to see Bobi’s girlfriend Nancy who had
been practicing for the Drumsong Orchestra all week. I ran into a friend
from Buffalo I hadn’t seen in many years at the performance. I thought it
was ironic to see her here having left my dog with her ex, Tracy, who now
lives in Michigan. After the concert Jean and I spent part of the afternoon
packing up a little and then headed to Day Stage. I was looking forward to
the candlelight ceremony that evening having left the festival before it inyears past.
We scanned the crowd and walked across the open area at the top
heading towards the trees for shade. Just as we sat down Denise approached
me. Perhaps someone else would have heard the announcement andrecognized my name. Perhaps had we not just seen each other that morningand had the conversation about Tracy taking care of Vita, she wouldn’t havemade the connection and effort to find me. She told me the facilitators hadannounced my name and that I was to call Tracy.

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Jean held me tight as we made our way toward Crafts. She tried toreassure me it was about Vita, me knowing it was my mother. Jean foundTina who works in Crafts and took us to the closest phone. I called Tracy
and she asked if I had spoken to anyone in my family. She told me to call myniece.
Maria answered the phone and asked if Jean was with me. There are
no words to describe the feeling of your body completely out of control
when the impact of the incomprehensible hits you. Jean took the phone as
I collapsed to the ground having heard the words; “Grandma passed away
yesterday morning.”
Two and a half years later I must pause as I write these words. My eyes
well up, my heartbeat quickens, and my breath is short. Emotions ran
rampant, time stood still. The one feeling I remember was panic, being fourhours away from my dog and ten hours from my home and family.
A series of events that are a blur occurred after that. Through theblessings and good graces of friends and strangers, we were taken in a van
to our camper. Jean packed us up, and Bobi and Nancy followed us. By thetime we got to Tracy’s, it was too late to continue. I woke that night inTracy’s bed and remembered. It still did not seem possible. The journeyback to Buffalo felt eternal. I was traveling back through my life that had
forever changed. When I arrived home Monday, all the relatives from outof town had arrived. All the arrangements were complete. The wake was
the next day, and the funeral the following morning.
It was hard to consider going back to Michigan the following year.
Jean had not missed a year in the past seventeen. She tried to be supportive
to whatever I needed. I think it was June when I realized I needed to returnto Michigan. I needed to heal, to mourn in my own way, to have a different
experience than the trauma that was stuck in my mind, and move on.
That summer I was looking through my journal and found the scrapof paper with the words to the song. If I had the wings of a dove, wings thatwould take me where I want to go. I would fly from the utmost way out into space. No, no,no, no, no…there is no hiding place.
On the first anniversary of my mother’s death, I had a memorial ritualfor her at the meditation circle and asked our friend Deb to sing that song.
Life is so serendipitous to consider that I was sitting at a memorial service
in this space the year before as my own mother was transitioning. Last year
at the second anniversary, I sat by myself crying at the meditation circle,
hearing the voices of the woman singing in the next area.
When I opened my eyes, I spotted a piece of smooth wood undersome leaves. I brushed away the leaves and saw the remnants of the candle
I had burned on a piece of driftwood brought from home for an altar theprevious year. I now appreciate this most sacred time to coincide with thefestival each year, and to have a place to return to remember and besurrounded by the love and support of the women there.

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Pam McAllister

Alien in the Land of the Yellow Eyes
We step bravely into the hospital room
where my sister is dying
in a landscape of soiled sheets,
bubbling tubes, and green plastic bed pans.
The four liver patients watch each other withyellow eyes, bewildered.
Jewish, Puerto Rican, Pakistani, and Anglo,
they make a nation of the sick,speaking the common language of pain,
the language of fear and fretful nights.
My sister reaches her bloated handthrough the bars of the bed
to pat the arm of the Pakistani woman
who doesn’t speak English
then turns to glare at us with a sneer,“You can’t understand,”as though we plan
to ascend into heaven when our time comes.
In the movies, the sick ones diewith dignity and violins.
When they call for the nurse, one comes running.
They die with words of forgiveness and gratitude,
not curses and accusations.
In the movies the dying never need bedpans
or social workers to translate insurance forms.
But this is real life
where visiting sisters become invading strangers,
immortals who stumble across the alien terrain
with thoughtless cliches about getting well soon.
The sick resent us.
We keep our heads down and apologize for living.

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Mary Meriam

Handheld Objects
Knife
My sister slipped and fell
Into a pit of hell
And so a sharp knife
Of pain became my life

NeedleThe doctors all agreed
That Sally’s constant needWas pharmaceutical
By syrup, pill, and needlePen
I hold my pen and write
Words to stop the night
From drowning me in black
I want my sister backBottleI’m ten years old, and she’s
Sixteen—no, Sally, please—
She swallows Bayer one
By one—the bottle’s done

Penny
Sally worshipped Denny
One day he dropped a penny
She picked it up to hold
But Denny dropped her cold

Candy
A wicked witch will trick
Her kids and make them sick
Until they’d rather die
Than eat another lie

Wand
My sister told me fronds
Of grass are fairy wands
Her dresser drawer had things
Like folded angel wings

FlowerI walk the lonely valley
Of longing for my Sally
Imprisoned for no reason
Season after season

Lock
My name is Sally Jane
They say that I’m insane
But mommy stole my mind
And locked me up insideKey
She loves the holidays
From institution daze
Eternity TV
The gatekeeper’s key

Published in Street Spirit, January 2006

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Brenwyn

Turning the Wheel
I noticed how bright blue the veins on her chest were as the daily dose of chemotherapy
trickled in tick by tick, drop by drop, spreading across her pale white skin like roadways
on a map. We didn’t talk about it.
I wrote this about my mother after finally allowing myself to feel thegrief of her loss. I had been numbing my feelings for years, trying to forgetthe chaos and violence of an alcoholic household. No one in my family
ever talked about their feelings. They yelled, threw things or did the silent
treatment. Before my mother was diagnosed with cancer, there was a blanketof resignation that had settled over her. I saw her fade from emotional andphysical abuse, apathy eating at her slowly from the inside out, first turning
into alcoholism, then a fatal disease.
Shortly after she died, I came out as a lesbian. While always having
strong attractions toward women, my declaration of sexual preference wasalso a rebellion against the patriarchy. But being raised in an alcoholic family
had taken its toll. I craved intimacy with women, yet was terribly insecure
inside of myself. I chose relationships with emotionally unavailable women
to recreate the pain of abandonment so I could continue to drink.
Despite the pain, the presence of strong women in my life helped me
see that there was another path. I read Drawing Down The Moon, by Margot
Adler, and The Spiral Dance by Starhawk. A seed was planted about earth
spirituality. Then, a lover introduced me to Elizabeth Kubler-Ross who wasleading a series of workshops around death and grieving in Virginia. I
attended a workshop and quickly realized the importance of working throughloss, anger and guilt with others. The seed began to stir. One day at a
bookstore I picked up a publication called Womanspirit, published by a groupof radical lesbians in Oregon. Oh, my Goddess...my seed sprouted wings! It
was like I had been given a compass, a map, and some comfortable walking
shoes on the road to recovery.
Still, the road contained many bumps and potholes. My brother wasparalyzed in a car accident after driving drunk. My father died of liver disease.
Soon I was the only one left to help my grandmother. She died at 104 years
old while my hand was on her heart. This time I wasn’t numb. I reached out
and gathered friends around me. I honored her passage with flowers andfall 2006

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candles on an altar
made up of her favorite
belongings.
Finally, I made it
to Oregon and foundthe community ofwomen I had readabout 20 years ago.
Death nor illness are
isolated events here. A
fabric of caring has
been woven over theyears into an extended
family that grieves - andcelebrates - together.
Beneath the fullmoon, women gather.
Pond Womon
Sudie Rakusin
It is so quiet that one
can hear the wind stir across the meadow. Candles sit in each of the four
directions. Sage is lit and passed for cleansing. Then the circle is cast.
In the East, we open our minds to the healing feathers of the Bird
Grandmothers. As they sweep out negativity, we find clarity to honor our
vision.
In the South, we offer our anger to the Fire Grandmothers. May theyspark embers of frustration and discontent into a blazing fire oftransformation. We honor our power.
In the West, we shed our tears to become the watersheds of collective
grief. KwanYin, The Goddess of Compassion and Mercy, listen to us without
judgment. We honor our sorrow.
In the North, we open our hearts to healing. Wisdom Keepers lend us
strength to face the changes ahead. We honor our bodies.
As the rattle is passed, each woman takes her turn. One is angry about
the war. Another has just lost her lover. Someone’s roof is leaking - again.
Some women sing. Others cry. A few are silent. Whoever has the rattle islistened to in caring silence. Our stories are shared while the sacred
grandmothers gather and hold council. They nod in approval as we heal our
wounds and reclaim our power, turning the wheel.

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Teresa Campbell

Coping With Loss
When I was 34 years old I was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis (MS)and had to face the future of living with a chronic incurable disease. I
wondered what quality of life I would have and how the disease would
affect my life. Would I be able to continue to swim, hike, travel, work, andtake care of myself ? Or would I end up in a wheelchair or nursing homeunable to see to my most basic needs? I had always been an independent
person and did not want my life to change, but as I continued to havesymptoms I knew the person I had been was disappearing. My physicaland/or mental functions and the ability to be independent decreased. As I
started to use one cane and then two canes to walk and experienced increased
mobility problems, I grieved for the loss of my mobility to walk
independently. At one point I felt so sad I considered suicide as a way toescape what I could not control. However, I did not commit suicide because
I found enough things to enjoy in life and felt it could always be done at alater time if needed. It relieved some stress to know I had an escape if life
became unbearable.
When I was diagnosed with MS, I was the type of person who liked towear dresses and heels, and others told me I was attractive. It was not long
before my balance problems and the spasticity in my legs forced me to wear
slacks and sturdy walking shoes. I felt my whole identity had changed, and I
grieved the loss of the person I had been. I found acceptable shoes withflat heels and pantsuits; since this was the time women were starting to wear
pants more, I soon felt back in style. I still envy attractive women who can
dress as they want, but I can live with the person I have become.
My bladder became a major problem soon after I was diagnosed with
MS. When I started losing some control over my urination sometimes I wet
my pants or urinated on the floor and felt very embarrassed. I read about
bladder problems with MS and saw a urologist who ruled out bladderinfections. I read health catalogs and found advertisements for pads for
bladder incontinency and started ordering and wearing a variety of pads. I
will never have complete control of my urinating, but I have learned to dowhat I want by wearing pads that collect the urine. I always carry extra pads
with me and change them as needed. I also catheterize my bladder 3 or 4
times a day to empty it. Since my bladder has a very small capacity, it soonfall 2006

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fills again. Taking antibiotic medication on a regular schedule has prevented
bladder infections. When I take cruises I always take extra supplies of pads.
I would not be able to buy them anywhere near the ship. Having lived with
MS for such a long time, I have learned to adjust to my bladder’s needs andfeel more comfortable in controlling the possibility of urine leakage. Since
I am a nurse, it was easier for me to learn to self catheterize my bladder. I
would love to have a normal bladder but know it will never happen. Instead
I look at the positive abilities I have, and, in some way, they compensate forthings I cannot change.
Rachel Naomi Remen, author of Kitchen Table Wisdom and a
psychiatrist at the University of San Francisco, California, wrote, “The way
we deal with loss shapes our capacity to be present to life. More than any
thing else, the way we protect ourselves from loss may be the way in which
we distance ourselves from life.”
I loved to travel and found ways to accommodate my disability.
With two canes I climbed the Acropolis in Athens, sailed a rented boat
down the Thames River in England, watched the sun set over Milford Sound,
New Zealand, and watched the Bolshoi Ballet perform Swan Lake inside
the Kremlin in Russia. When it became too difficult to travel by plane using
a wheelchair, I took cruises and explored the Caribbean, Alaska and
Mexico. Purchasing an accessible van meant I could transport my scooter
and visit places anywhere in the United States I enjoyed. One of my first
trips was to the Four Corners (New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada and Utah),and the second was to Yosemite National Park. I grieved the loss of eachmethod of travel I could no longer use, but felt there would always be a way
for me to travel; I just had to find it. Instead of distancing myself from life,
I continued to actively participate in it.
When I was no longer able to climb the stairs to my house I grieved
my loss of mobility. Then I bought a stair glide to carry me up the stairs
because I wanted to be able to get out of the house whenever I wanted.
When my immobility increased I bought an electric scooter so I
could cruise the streets and engage in “people watching,” and visit my favorite
park. I also wanted to attend social gatherings in accessible places.
I had been with my partner, Sue, for only one year when I was
diagnosed with MS, but she said she wanted to stay with me. We met when
she joined the faculty at a university where I was already teaching. We started
spending a lot of time together, and, after a few months, she moved in withme. In the beginning, I had few restrictions on what I could do, and wetraveled to distant parts of the world for our vacations. We had an active

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sex life and were very much in love. Every year brought new adventures andI felt I would always be able to do what I did.
I taught at the university for twenty-two years and chose to retire
when I felt it was too demanding of my energy, and I had other things I
wanted to do. I had a sabbatical and used sick time to have one year off
before I decided to take a disability retirement. I never regretted that decision,and although I enjoyed the years I taught, I made an easy adjustment toretirement. My life was soon full of travel, social events and writing. Oncea year, I have lunch with the faculty with whom I worked and we have an
active discussion about what we are doing. They have all retired and enjoy
life very much. They will always be my friends.
As my disability increased and I became frustrated with watching my
ability to do things change, I often lashed out at Sue with displaced anger.
She felt helpless to help me, and at times we spoke of moving apart. A
friend suggested couples counseling and we set up appointments with a
psychologist. The sessions lasted for a year, and in that time we were able todefine our stressors and modify how we reacted to them. We learned to talkmore about what was bothering us before it reached a fight level. Each of
us also had individual therapy to help each of us deal with problems related
to or not related to my disability. It was difficult for me to accept needing
psychological help, as I felt I should be able to manage on my own. I foundthat talking with a therapist relived some of the stress, and I was able tolook at a problem and how I might manage with it in a different light.
Sue also assumed more responsibility for helping me meet my needs.
At times she gave me a bath when I was unable to take a shower, and shehelped me with self-catheterization when I needed to do it and could not doit alone. As a nurse, she watched over my health needs and saw that I kept
my needed physical and dental appointments and took care of me when I
was ill. It was not easy for me the first time she had to help me with fecal or
urinary incontinence; I felt I had regressed to being an infant again. I soon
found I did not have secrets from her; she knew my weaknesses andstrengths. She was not only my partner, but at times she was my caregiver. It
was difficult for me to reveal my very personal needs but somehow I did
and we adjusted to new roles. I assumed responsibility for finding and paying
for individuals to clean the house and do the laundry while Sue did the
shopping and cooking.
At least once a week we date by going out to a movie or play and todinner because we enjoy each other and being together. We recently
celebrated our 40th anniversary so whatever we have done has enabled us

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MS

165

Photo by Sue Lenaerts

to stay together in stressful times. Our active sex life has been replaced witha more romantic intimacy. We still kiss and hold each other while thinkingof times and events we cherish.
At times I felt like I had burned out with living and was unable to give
to my partner or others because I had so many needs of my own. I was
unable to give--not because I did not care but because I had not adequately
grieved. Grieving is a form of self-care. I’ll never again be the person I wasin 1966 when I was diagnosed with MS. And I’ll never be able to do thethings that person did. I liked the person I was when I was diagnosed with

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MS, and I’ll never be able to do the things that person did. I will always
grieve that loss. My life did not end when I was diagnosed with MS. it justchanged. I needed to grieve the loss of who I was before I could accept theperson I had become. Grieving will be an ongoing process because myhealth status will continue to change. Being an optimist, I hope it will improve.
A desire to recover is a natural response to loss. Loss and grieving are
painful, and we want to be happy again. To institute the recovery process I
tried some of the following:
I read about my disease because knowledge is power. A feeling of selfknowledge gives us a sense of power over what is happening.
I found out how to best take care of my self and what recent research
had revealed. I started on a new medication to control but not cure mydisease. I joined a support group so I could talk with others who had thesame disease and discover how they were coping. Studies have demonstrated
that talking about our experiences can decrease blood pressure and increase
the immune system’s ability to fight disease.
Learning to operate a computer, I started writing stories for magazines.
In the past, I joined a gym to swim and use the equipment and started
to work out three times a week. I can no longer swim but I still use certain
machines twice a week. I feel physically good when I use various machines
and know I am keeping some muscle tone in place. Exercise releases
endorphins, a group of peptide hormones that bind to opiate receptors
that are found mainly in the brain. Endorphins reduce the sensation ofpain and increase a sense of well-being.
I can no longer work in the garden, but I can grow plants in the houseand watch new life take hold. Sue sees I have flowers in some rooms everyday. New flowers make me feel alive and happy and satisfied with life.
I like people and continue to maintain contact with friends by arranging
to get together, or by phone or by emails. I know that numerous
epidemiological studies have demonstrated that socially isolated individuals
are at greater risk for health problems.
I know grieving and coping are difficult, but I feel I can cope withwhat life throws me and be a stronger person. My life did not end when I
was diagnosed with MS; it just changed. I grieved every loss, but I continue
to focus on what I can do.

fall 2006

Carla Schick

RememberingYearslike strong summer
rainstorms and water shedding
down into near empty streets I remember
my father’s face
his hands pointing to the letters
I was beginning to read I falter
over the sounds his East European accent
the cigarette always between his fingers
I never did get angry
only the sorrow of his death
was muffled in a darkened apartment
shades drawn laughter banned
No one told me about dying
I memorized every detailpushing open the heavy metal door at the entranceof the hospital a waiting room ceilingcracked green peeling paint chips
rough edges the odorof ammonia
they made me waitdrawing pictures of moonand sun and rainbows
throughout the operation
he would not survive
When I wanted to say
good-night
no one led me to his door
“too sick” they said
“tubes running up his arm
the missing leg
recall him bouncing you
on his knee”
if you will remember anything at all

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Louise Moore

MemorySeptember 11, 2001
Will stand as their monument
They will always remember
what they were doing
how they heard
As they growthey will turn to lovers
in the dark of the night
and ask them
Where were you when…
They will refuse to date the ones
who have no memory of theday
Until they age
and there are more
and then which ones will beetchedin granite
There are still a few
with the memory of Roosevelt
or Morrow’s voicetalking about other planes
which arrived unexpectedly

What will be the reference point
Will it be a president
Another building full of bodies
not now with us
Or justa president’s brotherI have two now
the brains and bloodon the wife’s dress
and the towers
My father has more
Two with planes arriving
unexpectedly
he has stopped counting
Doesn’t have to have amonument
to remember
evil exists in this worldfall 2006

169

Peg Neff

Sheila Hein
May 2, 1950 - September 11, 2001

lesbian • photographer •gardener • workaholic • my partner
for seventeen years • the love of my life • my soul mate •my closest confidante • my best friend • my entire world •gone in a flash at the pentagon

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Nancy Taylor

The Unimaginable Gift
“Nancy?”“Hi Dad!” I replied cheerfully.
“There’s been an accident.”“What?!” I sat down and dread seeped in.
“Your mother, your mother…” my dad’s voice trailed off.
“What? What! What’s happened to mom?” I asked childishly afraid.
“She was in a car accident,” my dad’s voice broke into a thousandpieces.
“She was killed instantly. She’s dead.”“No. No! I’ll have to call you back.”
I jumped out of my chair and ran aimlessly down the hallway. My air
supply had been cut. I strained to breathe as my heart beat faster. My headspun and the words “She’s dead, She’s dead” reverberated over and overagain. The implications of these words navigated through the choppy seasof impossibility.
A woman, whose son was dying of adolescent MS, stood in the distance.
I ran to her and opened my mouth, but a hushed silence fell. “Help me,
help me,” my eyes pleaded. Anxiety and disbelief overwhelmed me. I felt
my legs tire and give way. I crumpled without grace, without dignity. In a
desperate attempt to keep from falling, I wrapped my arms around thewoman’s waist and held my head to her breast. “My mother,” I sobbed
uncontrollably. “My mother is dead.” I choked on the words as they tumbled
out of my mouth. The woman placed her arms around me and held me
close. “Shh…it’s okay,” she cooed softly. The burden of death and dying
was upon us.
On the plane the next morning, I sat with my head on my legs andburied my face in my hands. Visions of unimaginable dread and despair
filled me. The first wave of my mother’s death vacillated between dreamlike horror to irreconcilable disbelief. Tears fell uncontrollably with flash
flood fury. I looked up and stared out the window. The Southwest plains
stretched far and wide. Clouds drifted in heavenly hues of white and thesun shone brightly from its nearly upright position. I leaned back in my seatand closed my eyes. I felt the plane swerve slightly to the right. The only
sound I heard was the low hum of the engines at cruising speed. The planefall 2006171

hit a small air pocket which prompted me to open my eyes.
I watched as the sun crept slowly into the cabin from the windows on
the left. As the plane continued its change of course, the light subtly flooded
the entire cabin. I felt the sun dance lightly upon my face. Peacefulness
washed over me and I lay back in my seat and closed my eyes.
“Nancy?”“Mom?”The voice began in the center of my chest without sound. I felt thewords rise and make its way through my throat to the top of my head.
“I’m okay. I’m all right. Everything’s all right.”
The questions that plagued me throughout the night were answered. I
rested in the warm sensations that vibrated throughout my body. Cast in a
golden spell, I shifted my position so I faced the sun directly. My bodyheaved a sigh of relief.
“Nancy, everything’s all right. You have to go on with your life.” I
devoured the message hungrily and nodded in quiet acquiescence.
“I have to go now.” I drew in a deep breath. Holding to the sensation
as long as possible, I felt the light and warmth ebb from my face and thedarkness and cold return.
“Don’t go Mom. Please don’t go.” I begged.
“Go on with your life Nancy.”
I closed my eyes tightly and clenched my fists. What was once bright
now left me gloomy. I opened my eyes and looked at my partner Sam.
Beside me, she slept motionlessly. I touched her hand and she instinctively
inched closer to me. I slipped my hand into hers. I held it tightly in fear that
I would be carried away suddenly, without warning.
Over the loud speaker, the co-pilot announced, “Wanted you folks toknow that there have been some delays getting into Dallas Fort Worth today.
We’re altering our course a little, but expect to arrive at the gate on time. So
sit back and relax.” Audrey awoke and smiled. I smiled back feebly.
After a few minutes, the pilot interrupted the quietness of the cabinwith his Texan drawl, “Hello Ladies and Gentlemen. This is the Captain.
Just wanted you to know that we’ll be at the gate as scheduled. Uh, if you
look out from the left side of the plane, you’ll see the city of Altus..”
To the right was the small town of Altus, Oklahoma. I looked at its
dusty-colored structures and houses with curiosity and disbelief. To thenorth, I saw the air force base. This was the town where my father andmother met; where they fell in love, married and I was born. A sweeping
wave of loss hit me. I wept bitterly. My mother reached from the beyond

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and showed me Altus, a quiet town that bore little significance to the rest of
the world, let alone interest. In that moment Altus was everything. I staredout the window and watched it go by. I held its image in my mind long after
it passed. I leaned back in my seat and cried. I felt the voice, “Go on withyour life Nancy.”
Sitting in the funeral parlor, my brothers, their spouses, Sam, my dad
and I waited for the funeral director to arrive. The room was brightly lit anddecorated in bright pastel colors. I smelled lilies, magnolias, and hyacinth
mixed with sweet perfumes and heavy colognes. My brothers and I didn’t
speak and avoided eye contact. Sam talked to my dad who had divorced mymother long ago. Grief hung heavy in his eyes. The embattled years of
resentment and bitterness between my mother and him were momentarily
put aside.
The funeral director walked in from the hot July sun and greeted myyoungest brother, “Hello Roy.”My brother, a police officer, took the man’s hand and shook it firmly.
“Thank you for doing this Ray. We really appreciate it.”“I’m sorry I have to meet ya’all under these circumstances,” he looked
at us all. “I’ve heard so much about your family from Roy. Because Roy
and I go back a long way, I wanted to be part of this today. It’s the least I
could do.” The group nodded silently. “From the outpouring of flowers,
cards and other condolences, I must say that your mother touched a lot of
people.” He paused. “We’ve received so many flowers. We’ve been unable
to put them all in the viewing room. We’ll take the other flowers to thefuneral where we set them up if that’s all right with you?”“Yes, that’s fine,” my oldest brother, Bryan, said. My dad turned to
Ray and thanked him. “If there is anything you need, I’ll be at the front
desk. I’m so sorry about your loss. You can go in when you are ready.” Rayturned and walked down the corridor to another viewing room at the otherend of the hall. There another bereaved family sat. I watched as the fatherrose and met him. I looked at his daughter whose grief-stricken eyes weremoist and swollen. Her grief took my breath away.
We entered the doorway to the viewing room. The room was filledwith flowers of vibrant colors and varied sizes. My mother’s coffin was
silver with black streaks. Inside, it was lined with ash gray chiffon. It stoodin the middle of the room against the wall. My brothers and I split fromour group and made our way to the casket, which was mounted on a silverbier. The upper door of the coffin was opened. It was our first view of ourmother since the accident. She was dressed in the orange and gray suit she

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wore on the seminary’s inauguration day. She wore her favorite reading
glasses and her hair was styled just as it was in the picture I gave to thehairstylist. Her repose was serious and serene. Her motionless body disturbed
me as I had never known her to sit quietly for any length of time.
My brothers and I moved in unison to our places. Bryan stood at thehead of the casket, Roy directly opposite her face, Freddy at her side and I
at her waist. We were lost children seeking comfort. She lay before us. I
watched as Bryan bent down and stroked her hair. Roy touched her facelightly with his forefinger, and Freddy with one arm draped over the casket
and his head buried in his armpit, held her arm tenderly and gently. I wept
silently. I turned her hand slightly and looked at the scar on her palm. I felt
the bump with the tip of my finger. I remembered the story of how she cut
her hand on a bottle when she was a little girl. The finality of her life
violently rummaged its way through me. I held her hands and felt my palms
warm to an inexplicable energy that passed between us. Heavily, I exhaled.
Bereaving hearts sought suckling intimacy. Heart-wrenching sadness andundying love filled the room.
Weeks after the funeral, it rained. The smell of wet pavement mixed
with the grasses’ fresh scent filled the air. Outside, I walked barefoot in thefront yard and felt the mud ooze through my toes. The summer shower
provided a much needed respite from the sweltering heat. I meanderedthrough the neighborhood until I stood before old Melaney Creek. I climbed
on a large cow grate and watched the water babble playfully over the rocks
and stones of my youth. Faded memories suddenly came alive, theconvenience store, the red bricked church, and my old elementary school.
Memories of my mother flashed, slowing just enough so each image figured
clearly frame by frame. Feelings accompanied the images, the anger, thepain, the joy, the indifference. Recaptured in time, each moment neither
moved nor stood still.
Walking past our childhood house, I realized how little it was. How could
anything that small house four raucous children? I looked at the extension mydad added to the garage. I remembered my mother’s proud face and how shebeamed when she showed the room to her friends. I remembered my mother’s
love for my father. I remembered she loved to watch him play baseball. On latesummer afternoons, she drove my friends and me to the Tennessee River. We
drank Fresca and sat on a large patch of Dutch clover near first base. She
showed us how to weave the clover into necklaces, bracelets, and tiaras. Adornedin our hand-made accessories, we were queens of the diamond. It was one of
the few times I heard my mother laugh.

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Turning up the street to my mother’s house, I saw something strange
on the sidewalk. As I looked closer, I realized it was a clover necklace. I
stared at it in wonderment. I looked around, hoping to find the little girls
who left it behind. I saw no one and heard nobody. I looked up at the sunand strained to look beyond its brightness. It warmed me. My eyes began
to water and I closed my eyes, only to see the outline of the necklace against
the backdrop of my temporary blindness. I knelt and picked up the necklace.
I examined it thoroughly. Each clover stem was tied from one to the otheras we had been taught. I held the necklace to the sun and watched as its
green and milky white colors blended. I placed the necklace around myneck and walked to the elementary school’s red clay baseball field two hundred
yards away. I stood behind home plate and touched the necklace again.
“Peppermint Patty gets a necklace.” I smiled and chuckled. The voice rosethrough me, “Go on with your life…”
That night as I drifted to sleep, I felt the voice stir within me. It madeits way from my chest to the center of my forehead. It gently nudged mefrom my dream state. I opened my eyes and felt the dead calmness aroundme.
“Nancy?”“Mom!” I replied as though she lay next to me. “Are you happy?” I
asked.
“Yes.” Her presence radiated emphatically. Happiness glowed inside
me despite the darkness of my sorrow. I smiled and gazed at the stars
outside the window.
“It is more than you can imagine.” The meaning of her message floatedloftily above me. I smiled as my mind was invited to the realms of possibility.
“Go on with your life Nancy. It’s more than you can imagine.”Sensations of peacefulness settled within me. Vibrations increased inintensity and volume in passing waves.
I felt the presence withdraw slowly. Time and place melded in thesound of chirping crickets. I lay staring at the ceiling for several moments.
I reached for the necklace that still hung around my neck. I touched thewilting flowers one by one. “It’s more than you can imagine” softly resonatedwithin me. I placed my hands on the necklace and pressed it hard to mychest. I felt a warm presence lean against my back. “Yes Mom, it is morethan I can imagine,” and closed my eyes.

fall 2006

Lilith Rogers

Spring 2000

(for Martha Courtot)

Out her living room window
so much life happening.

But in here
so little is happening.

The young brown couple
across the street
sitting on their tiny porch
drinking morning coffee
reading their mailbrushing their hair
kissing and touchingrubbing
her very pregnant belly.

Martha sits
quietly dying
as I slowly, gently
massageher small swollen feet.

The garbage truck
comes and goes
the PG&E crew
puts up a new pole
the next door neighborcalls her cat.

From the little stereo
beside her big easy chair
Nina Simone
sings softly the same songs
she sang to us
fifteen years ago
as we made wild love
to one anotherall the green spring
afternoon long.

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Izabela Filipiak

A Somebody Else’s Funeral
The idea that Lili had not died and only forged the story of her own
burial in order to claim my attention, struck me as absurdly true. While deep
down I knew this wasn’t possible (she couldn’t have gotten all my schoolmates
involved in the scheme), it made me furious at her dying (or her pretending
to be dead). It was then Halszka who ably oversaw the arrangements andapproached my estranged friend’s last rites as a family matter. In the end we
packed up the wreaths into the car trunk and spent the night at my parents’house. Mom didn’t look sick yet and was just a bit crazier than usual, but themildew that filmed mirrors and bed linens had a dulling effect, so we justsaid goodbye in the morning and drove down the wide road that promised
to take us to the windswept beaches of Hel peninsula in less than one hour(according to the road signs). The air was cool, sharp April air, but theformal suits that we put on for the occasion restrained us, and we duly
turned into a side street that took us to the church.
There, before it, in a drafty courtyard laid out of singed brick, myhigh-school pals, faded seaside belles hang on, overshadowed by the church’s
impressive structure and outnumbered by the swarms of old ladies who
blocked the entrance to the chapel with their black-clad bodies. At last thepath to the coffin cleared, and we all entered in single file. Some other time
I’ll tell you more about it, but that is how it ended: Halszka kind of had topush me outside, back onto that airy pseudo-gothic court, where I got scared,
because Lili couldn’t possibly stage that, she’d never let herself be seen so
exposed, dull, and vulnerable, so it was real.
There was no point to protest, we were already drawn into the routine;
as soon as the crowds of rosary ladies and sparse tired-eyed men in raincoatsrushed into the main church, we followed them to witness (with a mixtureof relief and regret) the coffin, already locked and relocated. Elegant andalien, it held center stage, evenly positioned between the oak pews in frontof the altar. The mass began with a flow of air to the pipes. A priest stood
before the crucifix – a dazzling white against the reddish-brown of thebrick walls, intoning an improvised prayer or speech – or both; the priest’s
voice wasn’t soothing, it was grave and forceful. He reminded me of abookkeeper expecting the world (so why not the underworld) to turn moreor less according to the books, and I found it consoling. A togetherness inlife and death was within arm’s reach, crossing myself felt good, just as didfall 2006177

kneeling and standing, until the priest’s words “Lord’s servant Alina enteredinto a union with Christ” shocked me back into a stubborn apart mode. It
was as if we had been unknowingly transported to somebody else’s funeral.
Bemused, I just settled for watching Mrs. Zahl as she sat across fromus, her unruffled dignity wrapped in a wool coat with a remarkable grayhaired man next to her who looked nothing like a stinking drunk Lili had
maintained her stepfather was. Nor was she Mrs. Zahl any longer; only her
unmarried daughter’s last name hinted at a foreign lineage. She would be
still called Gertruda; the given name sounded German all right, but notoutlandish to our Slavic ears, only familiar; it brought in tow home andorder, embroidery and Kinder, Kirche, Kuche. But the daughter’s was a stage
name, appropriate for a silent movie star, a Greta Garbo cabaret
impersonator, a warrior princess, or a problem youth’s therapist who wouldn’t
bear her own children nor be dragged into the church alive. This was, I
reasoned, why Mrs. Zahl went for Alina instead. Perhaps she regretted not
calling her daughter Alina in the first place. Maybe she hoped God in His
eternal mercy would prompt resurrection: the coffin would open and herdaughter, called upon, would step out and be Alina for good.
Watching my former high-school pals return to their pews didn’t
suppress my resentment. And what did I expect, a boycott of a holycommunion in response to the strange banning of a name? With their eyescast down they kneeled, as if prepared to end their earthy travails in the
church aisle. The coffin’s journey didn’t end, it was lifted once again andcarried to the cemetery. When we parked our compact green car, which
went by the pet name of Frog, by the wire-mesh fence, the cortege wasalready there, as if transported by means of holy power. I’m going to skip
all that now, on some other occasion I’ll tell you about it, crowds and more
speeches and a mound of flowers, meanwhile please find comfort in watchingRoma, the way I did then, our maverick schoolmate, balancing on the edgeof somebody else’s tomb, as she hugged her grown-up daughter who
winsomely maintained an equilibrium right before her. It made me think
about the high-school days when Roma had been frequenting night-clubs
and screwing wealthy Arab tourists, which put her in the top bracket of theearning scale in our seaside town. Roma wouldn’t have even considered me
then, but she trusted Lili, and I yearned to get closer to that girl who wasfamiliar with many mysteries. In the second year of high-school, with theaid of a sailing songbook I made my way into Lili’s house, while Roma
dropped out of school and from my view.
But this time Roma approached me herself, she wanted a ride to thewake, and she felt like talking. Why not let her settle in the back seat with a178

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young man sporting a sizable gold chain round his neck whom we thought
to be her daughter’s boyfriend, but he was Roma’s. Daughter was studying
law, Roma explained proudly, and there was a baby girl, too. Roma’s motherlived with them and helped a bit with the infant. So it was possible, evenviable, four generations of women crammed into one enchanted maidenland flat, with men hovering around like drones, with their own living room
windows facing Lili’s kitchen; neighbors dressed in stylish short sheepskincoats, ash-blond, tall and hardboiled. It turned out Roma was surely the lastperson to see Lili alive (that is, the last one among us), but I mustn’t talk about
it now, I have to hurry up and get us to the wake.
The wake we attended was not the one announced by the priest, but amodest reception one of our ex-schoolmates Aldona booked in therestaurant of the hotel Anthracite (a name that recalled its yore as a former
miners’ resort by the marina). Past the drafty hotel’s entrance we were ushered
into a winding dining room that smelled, somewhat appropriately, of damp
curtains.
At a long and graceless dinner table my former classmates kept
exchanging their comments at a racing speed.
“Do you know these dunderheads are vision impaired?” Beata, theclass wisecracker was apparently ruffled. “Did you see the tombstone, Iska?”
The diminutive made me flinch slightly. I had accustomed myself tobeing a proud bearer of a name given to baby girls by parents who wanted
to upgrade themselves, or mothers who wished for their daughter to have amind of her own. It worked. There was a high percentage of Izabelas amongaccomplished women of my generation, to list an art critic, a TV host and afirst minister. My partner, on her end, called me Flea.
“Was there a tombstone?” Ola who had once sat next to Beata in thesecond row and turned pious with age, had trouble catching up.
“Someone’s done a rush job, really.”“I’ve found it very tasteful.” Our mistress of ceremony, Aldona, aformer anorexic, a class Cinderella turned grande dame, pronounced ajudgment.
“Tasteful?”“Black marble won’t ever get out-of-season.”“Lili often wore black.” Kalinska, who was the first one to get pregnant
and also to divorce, looked about ready to duck under the table. My dazed
mind registered an alert: had Lili been sleeping with her? A divorcee in needof consolation: a happy chance unlikely to be skipped.
“And the shape – angular, simple but gracious. With silver lettering.”“Mrs. Zahl’s got good taste.” Julita, willowy and stylishly ugly, thefall 2006

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smartest one in our class, had turned generous with age.
“But what age was Lili now?” Beata wouldn’t relinquish her point.
“Was she 41?”
“What month was she born?”
That one was to me.
“In June.”“So she wasn’t 41 yet! She was 40.”
“I can follow that kind of reasoning,” I threw in, “like, oh my God, 40
years old, too young to die, but 41’s ready to bite the dust.”“But what did she die of ?”“Mrs. Zahl has been very unclear in this respect,” Julita spoke up. “Shemakes it sound like it was heart failure.”
At this point some of my former colleagues expressed surprise Lilihad a weak heart, while others made an ad hoc list of various illnesses Lilihad presumably suffered from. There were plenty.
“Every time I’m being asked about my age I say I’m thirty nine,” Beata
pitched in casually, while my inner radar scanned her: never married, a closefriend. Had Lili bewitched her, too? “I think my scale won’t go beyond that
number.”“Did you see Mrs. Zahl?”“I was afraid to speak to her.”“I kissed her. I mean, at the condolences. She just stared at me and I
didn’t know what to do. It was frightening.”“You didn’t.”“I don’t remember Mrs. Zahl ever being so religious when we were all
still in school.”“Oh my God, where did she pull these old ladies from!”“After she married Lili’s stepfather, that changed, don’t ask me why. Asa rosary circle director she’s well respected, isn’t she.”“She’s been overheard saying that Lili had been abandoned by her
friends in hard times, which was the immediate cause of her death.”“We are the bad guys!”“That’s a little unjust, but you can’t blame her back, she’s lost a daughter.”“What were the hard times about? Does anyone have an idea?”“Nah, the usual.”“She did actually hold a job, no?”“Sure, she did,” Beata confirmed soberly. “Lili was all into it, especiallydyslectic kids, took all kinds of workshops and trainings, but you realizethat in our wonderful country she got paid shit. So Mrs. Zahl was always
there bringing packed lunches.”

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sinister wisdom #68/69 — Death, Grief and Surviving“It’s good she didn’t mind.”“No, I mean, soup, mashed potatoes and such, so what, if Lili kept
borrowing money left and right.”“Do you remember our class reunion? Lili told me later she had
regretted not coming. She said she had no money.”“That’s kind of dumb,” Beata deadpanned. “She could have said that
beforehand.”“When was the last time you spoke to Lili?” Julita wanted to set itstraight.
“In the early spring of 1998,” I reluctantly admitted. Some weeks after
a so-called coming-out feature appeared in Cosmo with one unfortunate
remark Lili wouldn’t forgive me, or would she? Halszka had been holding
my hand for a while now, and my suave friends didn’t bat an eyelash.
“Five years ago! When did you last speak to Lili, Beata?”“In the summer.”“So no one spoke to her recently? How about you, Kalinska?”
The divorcee shook her head no. I glanced at Roma who sat at the far
end of the table and didn’t seem to hear.
“Could any of you tell me what was the deal with that name? Everytime the priest said: ‘Let’s pray for our sister Alina,’ I was getting chills,“
crowed a tall, blond, baby-faced beauty whose name actually was Alina.
“That was creepy. I’ve never heard Lili wanting to be called anything
but her own name,” confirmed Beata. “She was very fastidious about that.
No derivatives and certainly no Alinas. So the tombstone presents a formerly
unknown to me Lili Alina. Have you ever seen her ID?” She addressed me
as a fellow expert. ”Did she have a second name there?”“No, she was just Lili Zahl.”“So I’d say, too.”“They must have gone for her baptismal name,” Julita yawned. “Shewas baptized, no?”The mushroom soup arrived, most welcome and hot.
“I’m kind of surprised that Mrs. Zahl dressed Lili in a suit. But I liked
it,” Ola admitted.
“It wasn’t a man’s suit, it’s just the way she dressed.”“In my opinion Lili looked very nice,” Aldona took little sips of her
soup. “A little pale, short hair but nicely combed and a little lipstick didn’t
hurt…”“Lili never used lipstick,” Beata objected.
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“It wasn’t bad, it had a little golden gloss,” Alina sided with the host.
“If lipstick had to be there, it should be of a darker shade,” Beata dug
in her heels.
“You are right,” Julita nodded expertly. “Her lips had a natural dark
shade which used to go along with the framing of her eyes.”“I think she looked horrible,” I dared to interject.
“What do you mean by that?”“That garish lipstick but also her hands.”“Hands usually look horrible.” Aldona argued with competence.
Halszka glanced at me. “I don’t want to be brutal, but she spent fourdays in the freezer.”“Did anyone actually talk to Mrs. Zahl?”“She was scary,” Beata admitted. “I’ll talk to her when she gets over it,
if she ever will.”“And the brass orchestra, what did you think of that?”“Have you ever heard Lili saying that she wanted a Gypsy band at her
burial?”The women stared at me, puzzled. I blinked.
“Beata, you must have heard of it, didn’t you?” My voice had a strange
edge to it. “No,” she said flatly.
“You never heard her saying this?”“She’d never discussed the particulars of her burial with me.”
“It was all very casual, she didn’t present me with her will, either.”“And what have I been trying to tell you, Isabelle? Lili wouldn’t let
people come too close to her.”“How so?”“She kept separate drawers.”
Whatever she’d been keeping in them, the part of my past stored in
one of those drawers was gone.
“She used to say it every now and then, so I thought it was kind of acommon knowledge… So, I guess, it wasn’t.”“She’d let each of us know as much as she wanted us to know.”“She kept you in these drawers, too,” Alina laughed. “I mean some ofyou.”
We were finished with our quiche and beets.
“I wish I could talk with Lili about that burial of hers,” I sighed. “We
could meet and compare our viewpoints.”

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Janell Moon

Two Worlds
You never got to meet my friends,
even though I promised.
You would have loved the two women loving
each other behind the veils of Pakistan,
their children napping nearby. How can we knowwhat will explode, when death is curving
its way toward us? In my new world,
you have not died and we are running
across a long wide beach, your leopard strides
leading us. I want my body back.
I want you to stay here. But you push
me to my world on the edgeof the continent, and I smell
the salt sea air humans have smelled
for thousand of years where old birds trill their songs.
The air, oh, the air, knows where it belongs.

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Linda Zeiser

Tanka
Even this ocean
even this refracted lightcalls me home again!
Beyond Time’s vast distortion
opaque memories linger.
(for my mother on the day of her death: June 21st , 2005)
One long magnolia
clinging to the tree of life
in such a fierce storm.
pink and white desperate buds
so adorn my anguished heart!

Stars, stars, endless stars
in the middle of my heart
middle of my life.
All worlds collide with fury
when gates of wonder open

Inconsistencies...
even in this light, a few,
studying her eyes.
A frail reminder of love
as a snowflake falls to earth.

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Rebecca Frye

Body Loss
You were not supposed towant itanyway. The doctors,
your friends your family
look at you like a puzzle
born without a pieceand nod politely, wide eyed with a smilethat says, “not for you.”
Still, when you are awoman who loves another woman
your body does notstoplooking every monthfor the trumpeting of life of theannouncement of possibility. Your bodyswells and shifts and releases
preparing for the arrival of eternity.
Yes - her body is also able
but you want it. Your body.
Your skin your muscles your bones.
Yes - even the 3am feedings
the PTA meetings. Yes - But, more.
Your body wants to beremembered by someone or maybe itself to split its soul into the Earth into the daughter
who will hold a hand or the son who will smile
And you try and you wait andyou stand on your head and you lift your hips
and finally in desperation you even lift your lips
in prayer. But, it does not come.
And it will never come.
Not for the form of your love.
But for your body your skin your bones
turning towards blasphemous betrayal.
How do you grieve when nothing has been lost.
When the loss is vapor only a dream offall 2006

Bodyworks 2what might have been but refused
to find its way.
It is your own.
This new you born to a world that only
remains.

Saskia Scherffer

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Marjory Nelson

Jean
My friend Jean Livingston was an extremely independent, private
woman who, in December of 1995, developed a disease, Guillian Barre,that left her almost completely paralyzed. For months she lay in a coma. But
then the disease retreated enough so that she regained her mind, her ability
to breathe on her own and to speak—with difficulty. Although she could
lift her arms, they trembled so violently, she couldn’t control them. She
couldn’t scratch her own nose.
When she fell ill, her close friend, Tiana, called everyone she could
think of to spread the word that Jean needed our help. Those who responded
created a core group that researched her illness, discussed all decisions, metwith doctors, challenged them, pleaded, fought for quality care and were
there for Jean as much as possible. Over the year and half of her illness,while the composition of the group changed, it was always clear that Jeanwas in charge of her own care.
When Tiana called me, I hadn’t seen Jean for years. We’d met down at
the Women’s Centers on Brady Street, when we were both on the new staff
of Options for Women over Forty. After I left the staff, our friendship
continued: we hung out, went to bars, talked about politics, history, god.
And then in the mid 80’s, we lost touch with each other. As I consideredjoining the group, I was concerned--not about being with illness and perhaps,
death, but the idea of caring for anyone so completely dependent brought
up fears from my years of conditioning as a woman--a wife and mother-that my needs came after everyone else’s. Would I give up my life for hers?
Once by her side, would I be able to walk away? Some friends had alreadytold me that because they couldn’t do this, couldn’t say “no,” they couldn’t
participate.
There were a few family members and very close friends who chose to
be at the center of her care. This was incredibly taxing for them. They werepart of the group and felt supported by it, too. We all did. We kept a spiralnotebook in her room where we entered our visits and all the information
we had gathered about her disease, her needs, her doctors, her progress andher pain. It was an important means of our communication.
There was so much about the disease—which primarily strikes
children—that we didn’t know; nor did the doctors. Every decision wasfall 2006

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difficult. We held meetings as needed in Jean’s room. We had parties, too.
We helped her celebrate her 60th birthday with food, flowers, balloons andplenty of laughter. Jean’s degree of dependency thrust all of us into a much
more intimate relationship with her.
At first I felt awkward and clumsy in her case making, sometimes I
dripped food on her chest or down her chin, but I got better at it. We all did.
During long evenings that I spent alone with her, we began to push back theboundaries that separated us. She wanted so much to live. She talked about
her experience in the Air Force, in the Reserves, and in the Civil Rights
movement in Montgomery, Alabama, where she met Dr. Martin LutherKing, Jr. All her life she pushed herself to learn, to understand. Often the
only African American woman in a sea of white faces, she tolerated ourracism, gently chiding us when we could listen.
Jean’s physical condition deteriorated. She often gagged. The doctors
found a tumor at the base of her skull that was inoperable and would killher. She and I talked more and more about her dying and what that meant
to her. Over and over, she said that she wanted to have a good death. For
Jean, that meant to die peacefully without a struggle.
She who had always protected her independence and privacy, gaveherself to the process. Her trust of us was profound. Of course she mademany compromises, she had to. She would have preferred to die at home,
but realized it couldn’t work, she needed more care than we could provide,or she could afford. Her final move into the Coming Home Hospice in theCastro district in San Francisco was very difficult, partly because of a young
white aide who wouldn’t take direction from this old black woman. But thataide was soon replaced. We were watching.
In order for me to talk with her at this level, I had to let down barriers
around my own heart. Although Jean and I had shared many aspects of ourlives, we’d never expressed that caring. Back in the late 70’s and early 80’s
when we were seeing each other, we were concerned with proving ourstrength and independence. In those days, we believed we had to look very
sure of ourselves to make the kind of changes we envisioned. There was noroom for doubt or despair, grief, or sadness.
In those last days with her, as I faced my own barriers, and let themdown, Jean met me there in the darkness. She told me she was glad I was her
friend, words I cherish. It was an opening of our hearts together, for all of
us. Although we had practical matters to deal with, essentially, it came down
to this, this opening, this intimacy, learning to feed her so she wouldn’t
choke, to hold a cup just so, to scratch her head, massage her hands, or188

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simply hold them when they would shake. It’s the kind of intimacy one haswith a child or a lover, but not necessarily with a friend.
We became a circle around her, a web that held her, helping her to live
and finally, helping her to die. As she lay in the center of her white bed, herbittersweet chocolate face thin against the pillow, her black hair tightly braided
against her head, we gathered around her like hovering shadows. We becamea new and different kind of family: Black, Latina, white. We became what
our earlier vision had dared to dream.
We who had met in a garage off an alley and called it a Women’s Centers;
and then dared to buy a building of our own, we who learned to makedecisions by consensus, who learned that our timid voices had to do withhow we had been treated; we who practiced karate, who declared that god
was a woman; we who examined our own vaginas, cut our long hair, threw
away our bras and dresses, exploding ideas of who we were expected to bewe were not barbies; we who declared we were just as good as or better thanmen, we who dared to love other women; we who declared that old women
had great value in a society that treated them as hags and throwaways, we
who took over the streets and dared to dream a revolution, and madeourselves homeless in order to create a new kind of home where little girls
could sleep in peace, undisturbed by hungry fathers; we named theunthinkable, and said there is another way, a better way.
We gathered around Jean and held a meeting, because that was what
we knew how to do. We took turns speaking, careful that one person didn’t
dominate the conversation, for we were meticulous about equality. In our
talking, we explored, we wondered, we questioned, because that was what
we knew how to do. We gave each other hugs, we sat in silence together. We
kissed her face, we stroked her hands and forehead, we sat with her in the
encroaching night. We named the darkness, but we couldn’t shout it away,or liberate the day without the night. We couldn’t stop the night.
Jean was proud of us. She told her doctors that she had a committee tohelp her, that she was not alone.
I took Jean a meditation from Stephen Levine which starts: “May I
rest in my heart.” When I said that first line to Jean, I was thinking about herheart, and said, “May you rest in your heart. “ When she repeated it, shegave it back to me: “May you rest in your heart.” So then I had to say, “MayI rest in my heart” so that she would say the same. This is how we said it
together.

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May you rest in your heart,
May I rest in my heart.
May you be free from suffering,
May I be free from suffering
May you be healed
May I be healed,
May you rest in peace,
May I rest in peace.
We’d say the lines together several times, elaborating on each phrase:“May your heart bloom like a flower,” “May my heart bloom like a flower.”
She had me write it in her notebook so others could say it with her, too.
Jean’s acceptance of her helplessness was awesome. She had a great
capacity for friendship. She was still making new friends the last week ofher life. After a few months at the Coming Home Hospice, she said, “this isa good place to die.” Her acceptance of her dying, even though there was somuch more living she wanted, was a triumph. From what was the mosthelpless place, she created a life for herself of dignity, a life that drew inaround her a circle of people who loved her and were thankful for theopportunity to be with her.
I went to see her the morning after she died. Others of our group were
there: a palpable strength that had sustained us all. She looked peaceful, herlong struggle ended. Tiana, who’d been with her, said she drew her last
breath while she was asleep. I sat by Jean, and thanked her spirit for letting
me be part of her life, and of her dying, for helping me to be more alive tomyself, to my own heart. She had a good death.
A few weeks later, we carried out Jean’s wish that we have a great party
at her apartment to celebrate her life, and to choose a memento from among
her things. Members of her medical team were there, all of us a group that
had surrounded Jean, and been changed by our experience with her.
Jean, you have bloomed in our hearts. Rest now in the Big Heart of the
Universe.
May, 1998

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Barbara Taylor

So Long Old MateNo more sweet smelling country lanes
with insects blissed on honeysuckle.
Adieu those treacherous rocky paths
leading to misty mountain tops. And valeto invigorating freedom runs o’er broad
silver stretches of sparkling fresh sands,
arriving at horizons and sunsets
no more, and gone forever.
Yet, this empty silence is broken by thesounds of your bark, the jingle jangle ofyour chain and your tag; that clump, then thump
as you hit the floor, and those relentless
scratchings at my front door — it is still open
I await. Such folly this, for I buried you
shortly after you died, in the crumbling redsoil of our Mountain Top, and there, alone
I cried and cried and cried.
Today, I have planted eucalyptus trees,in sadness, alone with my naked despair.
Your smell and your glistening red hairis still here, but alas, without you, there’s
no love, no cheer. Over fourteen years we’dshared this life, through many adventures,
tribulations and strife, and at the endof each day, you were always there,
to offer your warmth and trust for my care.
Oh, a dog is woman’s best friend, they say,
you can get another any old day,but there will never be one like my old
faithful friend, so to you my dear “Macha”,
sincerest thoughts and love to you I send.
So long old mate.

fall 2006

Judith Rechter

Fall Out of Bed
We left St. Johns and Sunrise Care.
I felt my mother sighing in transit
cold body drained under a sheet.
I wait for the doctor to sign the certificate
dementia and heart failure.
Mom hated flying never traveled alone
refused to eat or drink. The doctor saysa system slows quite peaceful
as you slip into unconsciousness.
I question the doctor’s opinion
but we share a love of flight.
The doctor recently visited his homelandand I have returned from London.
We don’t say she died from broken ribs
and fractured pelvis. We sleep lightand no one tosses us out of bed one night.

Two Daughters
You have just lost your father and my mother is gone two weeks
Do you think it’s a preordained tryst both were so difficult and lively
They put up such a struggle in heaven or meeting in hell who can tell
We were joined once by our bones and flesh it’s true that they might join too
Or look at us and cluck at the queers we’ve become what fun
Wherever they are, we’re ornery and strange they had to be different
Such idiosyncratic blessing from daughters who are not indifferent

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Gabriella West

Gorse Lodge, Greystones
It was the summer of 2002, and my plan was to return to Ireland formy sister’s wedding. I had originally left Ireland for California at the age oftwenty-one. I was going back at thirty-five as an overweight, stressed-out
legal word processor who identified as a lesbian but who had not been in a
relationship for four years. I hadn’t seen my mother for five years, and theguilt was beginning to weigh on me.
Every homecoming was always hard for me. The very idea of homeitself had disappeared a few years before, because my mother had been
forced to leave the spacious house in the country that she’d shared with mystepfather, a wealthy lawyer. She had moved to Greystones, a small coastal
town south of Dublin, where she lived in an old, mildewed brick housecalled Gorse Lodge located off the street at the end of a long lane. It was
as quiet, as remote, as she could make it, and she practiced homeopathy
there, living mostly by herself with her three feisty Jack Russells (father,mother and son), but sometimes enlivened or tormented by the presenceof my adolescent half-brother.
My mother’s long, stormy marriage to my stepfather had ended when
he revealed that he had been having an affair with a young female colleague
in his law office in Dublin, and insisted that she should be the one to moveout after several years of marital limbo. She had never really recoveredfrom this final betrayal. I’d thought when her marriage ended that we might
finally have a better relationship, something I’d always yearned for. Yet visits
home to see her often embittered me. However, when I’d published a lesbianthemed novel the year before, she’d been genuinely delighted, and I’d been
touched by her response.
I was met at the airport terminal in Ireland by my soon-to-be brotherin law Neil and my brother Rowan, whom I had not seen since he was
sixteen. They were as quiet and subdued as I, and as I sunk back into thefront seat of the car speeding south, I asked casually how my mother was.
She’d mentioned something about being quite sick in her last email to me.
She’d always been obsessed with her health, popping vitamins and eating a
strangely Spartan diet of fruits, vegetables, oatmeal and seaweed, punctuatedby binges of ice cream and chocolate. What did “quite sick” mean anyway?
There was a silence in the car, and Neil finally spoke. “She’s not very
well at all,” he said, his eyes on the road ahead.

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Neil dropped me off at the end of the long lane leading to Gorse
Lodge. The door opened and then it was just my mother and me. We
regarded each other for an uncertain moment. It was strange for me because
I hadn’t seen her in five years. She was much thinner, her hair long, andthere was something ghost-like about her, ethereal.
We greeted each other awkwardly, and she said, “You’d better come in;I have something to tell you.” I followed her in, sat down at the living-roomtable, and was almost immediately presented with the news that she’d hadbreast cancer for years and in the past few weeks it had metastasized to herliver. “I started feeling really sick, and could feel a point pressing on mystomach,” my mother said, choosing her words carefully, “and I called thedoctor in. He told me it was almost certainly a liver tumor. He said I should
just take care of myself and go to the wedding.” She finished in an almost
upbeat fashion, the wedding being perhaps the last reminder of her life as anormal person.
I sat shell-shocked, silent. “Did you know?” my mother asked, as if myknowing this secret would have been the most shocking thing of all to her.
“No,” I said numbly, shaking my head. And then, “but why didn’t you
tell me?”
It was her turn to be quiet and then she said something like, “You wereso far away. I didn’t want to burden you.”
My mother said that she’d known she had a lump for ten years. She’ddecided to treat it by herself, homeopathically, and not have it removed.
She didn’t want my stepfather to know, especially as the prolonged traumaof his affair emerged soon after and took all of her attention. She had
never trusted Western medicine. She thought she could treat it successfully.
Only my sister, brother, and my mother’s best friend, an older woman, knew
the truth.
And now I knew. Here I was, sitting beside my mother, a dying woman
at the age of fifty-seven. Her mother had died after many years of chronic
illness at sixty-one. Now it looked like my mother would join the ranks of
the women of her family who had died prematurely, starting with my greatgrandmother Ruth, who’d died of scarlet fever in the early 1920s, leaving
behind my hapless grandmother, her four-year-old child. Ruth’s picturehung framed on the wall, I noticed, as I looked around my mom’s house forthe first time in years. This bespectacled but pretty-looking young woman
with a strong face could have been my mother, could have been me.
What was going to happen? For my mother, it was business as usual,for a while, for as long as she could endure it. The first day, I crashed, which

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was the usual pattern for me coming off a transatlantic flight. The next day,we went grocery shopping. She walked slowly, with great effort, but I could
not bear to think about how difficult it was for her. I could not foretell how
long my mother had left. Some horribly insistent inner voice told me that it
was days rather than months, even though my mom’s words were stoic anddefiant.
We drove to have lunch with my sister on that rare sunny day, and mymother oscillated between moments of cheerfulness and moments of evident
exhaustion. I took a photo of her and my sister sitting at an outdoors
restaurant in almost identical black tank tops, a shrub flowering behindthem against a fence. Their skin is pale, but when I got the photo back I
was shocked to see how worn and sunken my mother’s face looked. Still, it’s
one of my favorite pictures of her because she’s smiling and her face looks
gentle. It’s also the last picture ever taken of her.
We even walked on the beach that day, her last time out with the dogs.
That evening, we watched a movie from the fifties; film being one of the
loves we had always shared. It was “Hiroshima Mon Amour.” Now I see
that my mother loved the film because of the narrator’s sense of exile, apersecuted outcast from her French village because she slept with a Germansoldier. My mother had not been back to visit her family in the U.S. fortwenty-five years.
That evening or perhaps the next, I experienced for the first time in
my adult life a sense of things falling apart. I looked over at my mother andit hit me that she was going to die soon. I stopped speaking, curled up in achair at the other end of the room. When my mother asked me to come sit
beside her on the couch, I did so, but began sobbing uncontrollably. I felt
the boards of the room move under my feet. It was a sense of fragmentation,of the world literally falling apart, because the central person in my life waspoised to leave it.
“I can’t help you feel better,” my mother said sadly. “I can’t even help
myself.” She expected this outburst, of course, because I’d always been thesensitive “feeling” one in a family where feeling was mocked, was taboo.
Anger was OK, sadness very much a threat to the status quo. But mymother walked towards me that night and hugged me for a long time.
Holding her, I tried to say silently that I would be strong for her, and would
try to help her. I wanted to say “I love you,” but the words wouldn’t come.
As I walked towards my bedroom, I looked back and she was looking at me.
I guessed the words were stuck in her throat too.
Guilt. Sadness. Anger. In the next few days, it was clear that mymother was not going to make it to the wedding. She “forgot” herfall 2006

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appointment to get
her hair done. She
took to her bed the
day after she drove
me to meet mysister. She stopped
being able to climb
the stairs. Herbody
wasweakening. It was
frightening how
quickly she slid
downhill. It ought
to have been very
frightening, but
nobodywasacknowledging
what was going on.
PortalPhoto by Morgan Gwenwald
My sister didn’t
want to know; she just wanted her day to be perfect and she had vowed thatneither of her parents was going to ruin it.
I lived in limbo, going into town on the train to be snubbed by mysister and doing a reading at her “rehearsal ceremony,” then going to a playwith an acquaintance of mine, an older woman who told me firmly andgently how little time my mother had left, how there was nothing that anyone
could do for her now. I cried most of the way home in the empty train,
drying my tears to walk into my mother’s bedroom and tell her that I had anice evening and ask her if there was anything she wanted.
I could almost see the sands of time running out, yet did “normal”
things to appease my mother, like packing some books and collectibles fromchildhood into boxes to be shipped back to America while she lay in bed
watching me. They were the last things of mine that my mother had kept
since I left home, and she had done it carefully, stowing them in a closet inher bedroom. It was all too obviously grinding to a halt, my childhood, myadolescence, my tenuous and difficult relationship with my mother, all myanger, all the bitterness at being emotionally abandoned by her that I’d felt
for so long. It had to be jettisoned now because there was so little time left.
Now there was just us, in present time, with the unspoken knowledge
that her time was nearly up. I could see that her mind was fighting to stay
lucid, to stay here, while her body was giving up, being pulled towards

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deterioration and death. Surrounded by homeopathic remedies in glass
bottles, she drank filtered water, but stopped being able to eat after a few
days. Her urine was a dark orange. She made little sounds all the time, andI did not want to think how much pain there was behind those sounds. Her
whole life, which had been about struggle, was focused on this one last
struggle.
My sister’s wedding was barely a blip in this slow parade towards death.
A few days later my sister cancelled her honeymoon and came to look after
my mother. I had asked her to consider it, and to my astonishment, she
responded. My mother mostly just wanted to keep people away. She refused
to see her own sister, visiting from America for the wedding. She got angry
with me when I protested this. “It doesn’t help me to see people,” she said.
Implicit in her words were, “it only helps them.”
It took a week for her to die. My sister was trying to get her back to
bed when she slumped and turned gray. I held her too as she died, tellingher, “It’s OK, we love you,” while my sister said, “breathe.”I hope she died knowing that she was loved. My stepfather arrived,
stunned, and kissed her gently on the cheek. When my sister and I sat downwith him, we were curiously calm. He did not show any obvious emotion
besides shock. We too were dry-eyed. We discussed arrangements. Thatnight the undertakers came to take her away and they brought her back in acoffin the same night. I was collected enough to ask them not to put makeup
on her. My sister insisted that she should be laid out in the parlor, where mymother and I had watched movies only days before. It was peculiarly eerie
for me to sleep in the same house where my mother lay in her coffin.
Lyrics, the male Jack Russell whom she had loved and complained
about for years, was a changed animal. He lay beside me the next night as I
tried to sleep, wretched and alone. He was limp, despondent. I was actuallyafraid he was going to die too, of grief. I was more overwhelmed thangrief-stricken, I thought. I did not understand what grief was supposed tofeel like. I did not know that these feelings of uncertainty, fragmentation,of my life barreling out of control as I watched, stunned, were all a kind ofgrief. Grief to me was wailing and rending of garments. But as Lyrics lay
beside me, I understood that his defeated, deflated air was an expression oftrue grief. I felt like a toy that had been wound up too many times. I wasworn out, moving very slowly, yet filled with anxiety and unable to rest. A
few people said they were worried about me. People who knew her said I
looked like my mother. I had never heard this before.

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I returned to San Francisco to a mass layoff at my company. I was oneof the ones let go, just a month or so later. A full-time temp job distracted
me for a time. When I talked about my mother’s death, it seemed as if it
had happened a long time ago, even though it had only been a few months.
I kept dreaming about her, though, and feeling her presence in my day-today life. Once I sensed her coming towards me in the Trader Joe’s parking
lot. It made me smile and shiver. Another time I sensed her putting herarms on my shoulders as I sat at my desk. In my dreams, I kept apologizing
to her for the fact that she was going to die. These recurring dreams did notcease until one night I said to her “I’m sorry you’re dying,” and she replied,“I’m sorry you’re suffering.”
Sudden thoughts of her sad last days often brought tears to my eyes in
the midst of what should have been festive events. But I understood that itwas not a failing in me that I was affected this way, painful as it was. It
would have been a failing to be unaffected, surely. Meanwhile, my sister had
gotten pregnant around the time I got laid off and gave birth to a blonde
baby girl. Gorse Lodge was repainted and sold by auction.
Life went on. More than a year after her death, I scattered some of her
ashes off a pier in Santa Barbara, surrounded by her father and sisters. The
ashes fairly leapt out of the jar into the sea, and I sensed she wanted to bereleased. I felt that her questing spirit was finally free. If mine still felt
leaden, burdened, then that was the way it was going to have to be. I had
not been a happy person before my mother died, but I had been a child inmany ways. Now I was becoming a grown-up. It was bearable to be older,I thought, as long as you had a source of love in your life. A year after mymom’s death, I met a woman on a group hike to a long-extinct volcano in
the Oakland hills. Her mother had died when she was twenty-five, and thatbonded us. Somehow life drew us together despite our many differences.
It is difficult to grow and evolve when you don’t allow love to fully
enter your life. I am breaking that pattern now, but for a long time I had togrieve alone. My love for my mother is much more forgiving; I feelcompassion for her mistakes rather than resentment at her failures. I don’t
want to repeat them, yet know that my destiny, even perhaps my final illness,
is linked with hers. The loss of my mother, the heaviest blow in my life, hasalso freed me to be my own parent. I feel more peaceful since her death,knowing that this is a relative thing, yet hard-won and very real. Surroundedin my apartment by many of her things, I feel more peaceful than she ever
could.

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sinister wisdom #68/69 — Death, Grief and Surviving

Vicki Currier

In a Deeper Sense
I’m not good at comforting people especially when someone dies. Prior to this experience I
didn’t know what to say or what to do around those experiencing loss.
Someone I loved with all my heart was murdered.
I learned that healing or dealing with grief doesn’t come from what’s said or by whatsomeone does for you. It comes by your own understanding of why you loved that person in
the first place. It comes when you conclude that it’s going to be okay. Only when you passon those life lessons you learned together can the healing begin. This is my lesson in losing
someone.
Her name was Lisa—that’s what her friends called her. She was ten
years older than I and a waitress at Denny’s for years. We were best friends.
Our kids played together, attended school together, and on more occasions
than I like to count, ate together when money was tight.
We lived about half a block apart, but you’d never know it. Our husbands
broke and fixed our cars together. They drank and battered us together. We
were one of those tight-knit-all-around-abusive-lower-class families.
No matter what came our way, Lisa and I were always there for eachother. In the evenings during the hot summer rains, we would play in thedownpour in our little summer dresses, hair and clothes plastered to oursoaked bodies. We’d dance and hug in the dark, never speaking of what wason our minds or in our hearts.
There were mornings when I would wake up and sneak out of bed,out of the house and down to Lisa’s. I would go into her room and climb in
bed, and we’d just hold each other. She was my rock and I, hers. She held all
my pain and fears because she couldn’t hold her own, and vice versa. We
escaped our abusive situations together. Lisa went to her mom’s, and I went
to the streets. We never lost contact, and at one point, I moved in with Lisa
and her family.
We were never intimate. It wasn’t that type of relationship, but it went
beyond friendship. If you have ever been that close to someone, you knowwhat I’m talking about. Would our relationship have deepened had thecircumstances been different? I’d like to think so, but now I’ll never know.
I committed a number of crimes, and now I’m doing twenty years flat
at Mabel Bassett Correctional Center in McLoud, Oklahoma. While I wasfall 2006

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awaiting sentencing
in county jail, I got aphone call from
Lisa’s mom. Lisa wasbeaten to death in a
drug related attack on
August 16th.
Lisa is survived
by her mother,
Jeanne, who now
calls me her daughter,and by two sons,Nigel and Levon.
Nigel, 20, and Levon,
18, call me their
godmother. I feellike I’ve taken her
place on earth, and I
don’t want it. I’drather take her placein the hereafter. Lisa
was the good, kindand caring one of us.
She didn’t deserve this. She should be here with her mother and sons.
I haven’t been free since before her death so sometimes it’s hard tobelieve she won’t be home when I get there. I don’t know how to help
anyone deal with the loss of a loved one. But how I deal is to keep her alivein my mind. I write to her once a year on her birthday. I also help her sons.
My sons and I love and remember her with each breath we take.
Lisa taught me it’s okay to be me. I have a “wife” now. I’ve known her
since sixth grade. We’ve been together going on seven years. Lisa taught me
about true love and about caring for and helping other people. She alsotaught me it’s okay to lose as long as you don’t stay down.
Some of the lessons we learned together were hard lessons about abuse,
drugs and crime. We both paid a dear price for those lessons: she with herlife and I with my freedom. But, in a deeper sense she saved me.

200sinister wisdom #68/69 — Death, Grief and Surviving

Riggin Waugh

Funeral Arrangements
Nearly five years before she died,my mother left specific instructions.
Kalas Funeral Home. I have talked with Mr. Kalas.
Viewing 7 to 8:30 PM — followed by half-hour service.
Dr. Harrell doing service — short not flowery.
We try to follow her wishes, but a half-hour service
in a funeral parlor will not do. She’d been modest —about this at least — her expectations restrained.
Both viewings, and the funeral held the next day,are packed. She’d be pleased. Her old pastor,
Dr. Harrell, who knew her well and liked her,
performs the service in her church. The pallbearers
are men from the congregation. All the men
in my family are either too old or too dead.
I would like Doris Lehosky to sing
“What A Friend We Have in Jesus” — Dad’s favorite“Whispering Hope” — Mother’s favorite“My God and I” — my favorite
Fortunately, Mrs. Lehosky is not taking her family
to the beach until the following week.
The decision whether casket is open or closed
rests solely with my three daughters. If closed,
then use my dress I wore to Nora’s wedding.
Take bra, underpants, pantyhose, slip, and dress —no jewelry, no shoes. The next day — gravesideservice in Princess Anne. If open casket, use long
sleeve, high neck dress — one with small design.
Her logic was simple. The cancer had inflated
her right arm to twice the size of her left.
She didn’t want it to show — didn’t know
death would shrink it to normal size.

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Quotes of cost from Mr. Kalas (April 30, 1986)
I looked at caskets — all Batesville $895
S-826-A — Vintage Bronze
S-817-B — Monogard Mandarin Bronze Roseland
S-895-B — Alameda Rose
Pick the one you like best. If one daughter wants casket
closed and others want it open, then leave it closed.
I feel the trauma to that one would be too great.
We leave it open — a barbaric custom perhaps,
but that’s the way it’s done in our family.
A closed casket makes death easier to deny.
An open casket makes goodbye more tangible.
Because of Jeff’s work, he will know
gratuity for Doris singing and Dr. Harrell.
I feel Jeff can conduct graveside service
since he will attend anyhow.
Yes, it was safe to assume her son-in-law,a minister, would be there. At the graveside,
three hours away, my sister’s husband reads
from a half-page mimeographed sheet,never once mentioning my mother’s name.
After that three minutes, Uncle Hollis,
already starting to show signs of Alzheimer’s,
asks quite clearly, “Is that all?”I am thinking the exact same thing.
At this time I still do not know if I will be buriedin Presbyterian Cemetery or Beechwood.
Mr. Hinman was to check beyond Granddad.
If three sites, Lucy, me, and Bill. If only two,then Bill and I will be buried at Beechwood.
I have four graves there — Lot 132-C 133.
Deed in safe deposit box.
My mother is buried in the Presbyterian cemeteryin Princess Anne, in between my father andthe grave waiting for Grandma Lucy.
She left nothing to chance.

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sinister wisdom #68/69 — Death, Grief and Surviving

Jessica W. Giles

Ode to Sarah
It’s a simple story, actually. Lots of people might be inclined to make it
more complicated than it is, but to me, there’s only three things you reallyneed to know. One, we loved each other and never stopped. Two, we hurteach other for sport and neither of us knew why. And three, Sarah is deadand that’s no one’s fault but his.
Like I said, that’s my telling of it. But ask your Aunt Leila the nexttime you see her. She might have a different take on it.
It was sunset and Sarah and I came down the path like music, laughing
and running and dancing circles through the air. It was a beach walk, I’msure you’ve seen ones like it before, maybe in Capitola or somewhere. A
trail, a wooden staircase down the bluff to the sand. Where the blue waterspans out huge in front of you and where the air smells like salt and sage.
Sarah’s hair was flowing behind her and that almost cut the edge off thehaunting feeling I had deep inside of me that something wasn’t quite right.
But that’s the observer me talking, watching hours months years later, froma distance, where I can see better.
She’s out ahead of me and I am hypnotized, lulled, by this long flowing
skirt clinging to her legs and grazing her calves. Her feet are bare and sandy,
and my shell anklet hangs low around her right ankle. She is the goddess.
She turns back to smile at me, sweet and wicked, daring me, and her eyes
shine in the light. Her blonde hair is tangled from the sea water, her lips stillpink and full from having kissed me just minutes ago, under the redwood
trees. This is a picture frozen in time. A picture of a majestic girl, strong
and graceful and alive. My body was electric with desire, and the irony ofthis is not lost on me.
And then the picture churns and closes in on itself and I am in a
dreamlike, underwatery trance where my body cannot run. Rustling on myleft. A flash of faded denim and the sound of a deep breath out, like awhistling wind through a valley. The steely barrel of a gun peering out oftall grasses. And it is at once so loud the entire world goes quiet. These
images, freeze-framed and silented. I scream, falling into blood as footsteps
go laughing into the night. And this is the part I don’t really like to talkabout, because I don’t much feel like thinking about her lying on the groundlike that, in a stained heap of broken dreams. See, she was my girl and shefall 2006203

Photo by Morgan Gwenwald

made the world warm and blue and breezy and magical. And there’s very
little in the way of breeze or magic since she’s gone.
I cried for months. I cried and cried until there were no tears left. And
then I cried some more. And I screamed and I shook and I vomited and I
stared at my empty pale face in the mirror. It’s searing really, the beauty ofher life and death. God, the beautiful romantic moment that was her deathis fucking unbearable. I’ve always wanted to tell you, but these are things
I’m not sure you could bear. Things I wasn’t sure I wanted you to bear.
Because I’ve always tried to protect you, shield you from the storm. And
that’s a battle long fought. A price seldom paid except when I am alone andI imagine that I hear you upstairs calling mama mama mama and I think for a
moment you are three again, with your hair in a tangle atop your head andyour thumb in your mouth and your cheek wet with tears.
Sarah and I used to lay on her bed and stare up at the ceiling. I’ve
spent no small amount of time trying to figure out exactly what we were
doing there on her bed together, day after day, not touching, in the hotsummer of my nineteenth year. What was I doing there, breathing in silencenext to her brown skin? On those days, heaven and hell were close neighbors.

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That was in the beginning, before her fiery diamond and soft pillow kisses,
before her breath on my neck and in my hair, before we lay down in theleaves to the smell of wild strawberries.
And oh god, there are songs that bring me back to her, where I feel her
in my heart and lungs, where she’s with me again, like a whirling dervish,
spinning and twirling, hair flying and catching the light. And none so muchas that one she used to whisper to me as she took me into her dancing
arms… in the darkness at the end sister I’ll kiss your golden hair, I’ll hold the gate andwatch you dance into the crystal air, and I’ll just disappear, and I’ll just disappear…
But she never did disappear, not really. She’s in here, with me. And
she’s in the air out there. I breathe her wherever I go. We all breathe her in,
every day, and you do too, even though you never even knew who she was.
And if you walk that path down to the beach when the sun is low, and if you
look so carefully, you can still see her there, a faint stain of red, raped every
day by the stepping feet of surfers carrying their boards to the continent’sedge. And can’t you almost hear their careless banter; dude, sweet, check outthat left…
But you know, that bothers me more than it probably would botherher. No worries, she would say. Because that’s the kind of girl she was.
Sometimes I imagine she’d even like it, that she’d appreciate these boys
carrying some part of her down to the water, so she could surf too. Yeah,
that would be Sarah, catching waves even in death.
And not a day goes by that I don’t wish I could kiss her, run my hands
through her golden hair, kiss the sunshine off her warm bare shoulder.
And all of my life I blow in the wind that her laugh left behind.

fall 2006

Teya Schaffer

NettleNow she has days narrow and delicate
as a nettle slid inside skin.
If we could write meaning into words:
exhausted.
Her heart drops a bucket
to pull up blood from her feet.
Her arms ache with effort,
the pulse hard driven.
She reaches for the help
we offer animals
bringing their deaths
to the vet. Her friends
have pills,a prior experience,a dictionary of pharmaceuticals,a bitter ignorance tasting,the text suggests,
like drugs in water.
They prepare tea.
Yellow grains float
out of suspension,
gather like sugarat the cup’s bottom
and must be retrieved.
They spoon liquid
into her mouth,
carry bitterness
in chocolate pudding.
More? she asks.
More, they answer.
Two spoons. She turns,
baby bird, towards each.
A night of waitingand ever after
the days widening.

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sinister wisdom #68/69 — Death, Grief and Surviving

Cynthia Rich

Coda
Barbara Macdonald and I lived and worked together for twenty-six years until her deathon June 16, 2000 at the age of eighty-six. These four journal entries, written in the
period after her death, are excerpts from Mindfall, my record of our last years together.
Those years still startle me—that they happened, and that they were such a gift. In
1995, we had traveled to the U.N. Mid-Decade Conference on Women in Beijing and on
to Tokyo to celebrate the Japanese translation of Look Me in the Eye—Barbara gave
lectures, readings, press interviews and addressed the largest society on aging in Japan. A
few months after our return—and after years of combating the assumption of mental
instability in old women—she began to show signs of Alzheimer’s. Her struggle, ofcourse, had been with the arrogance of that assumption, never with the possibility thatdementia could happen.
Our relationship had connected us in three powerful ways. We had worked to deconstruct“old woman” and to combat an ageism which we saw with special sharpness because of
the twenty-year difference in our ages—the excitement of that political life ended, ofcourse, with Alzheimer’s. Our lovemaking also ended in those last years, though thesensuality persisted, like an invisible membrane still connecting us.
But also, in trailers and studio apartments, we had shared a sweet domestic life. On
August 5, 1997, I wrote, Barbara was always—not just the cream in my coffee as thesong has it, but my cream and my coffee. Now there is no more coffee, but she is still mycream.
So for many reasons—including my experience with my own dyslexias, which baffled me
for many years before I learned about ADD but were to give me a way to relate to
Barbara’s altered consciousness—this was a rich and valuable time for both of us.
(I will be pleased to send a free copy of the unpublished m.s. of Mindfall to anyone who
contacts me at .)July 1, 2000
On Tuesday I brought Barbara’s ashes home from the cremation service.
Janice came with me. She’d done this before and expected it might be truly
hard. It wasn’t, really. Maybe I walled off feeling because it was so unreal:fall 2006

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taking the elevator in a high-rise to an antiseptic little office space with one
window and a large woman behind a desk who was politely “sorry for myloss.”
What I wasn’t prepared for was the box. Not the box itself, which was
nicely simple and black, but the weight of it. I thought I remembered hearingthat ashes were terribly light, and that’s what I was braced for, like cleaning
the fireplace in the desert. When she handed me the box I was shocked byits heaviness, like stone. It seems crazy now, but I was sure they had weighted
the box to give it substance, and I was furious. “It’s so heavy,” I said, and shejust looked at me with large, steady eyes and said, “It’s the ashes.”
I didn’t believe her and left with the box, horrified. “It’s like lipstick,” Isaid to the elevator, meaning it was as if she’d been embalmed with makeup and permed hair.
In the car I railed to Janice, who looked puzzled and said, “You know,
ashes are really very heavy.”
So instead of grief, what rolled over me was a huge relief, calming me.
It wasn’t fakery—it really was Barbara; she had that much substance, thatmuch reality. I felt restored, on center again.
Back home, I put the box of her ashes behind a cupboard door. I don’t
think about them, or plan to or need to, until the fall when I will go with
Janice and Mannie to the desert to scatter them. But then I suddenly
remembered that twenty-five years ago, in “Do You Remember Me?”,
Barbara anticipated her death:
The strangeness of that idea comes to me at the most unexpected moments
and always with surprise and shock; some times, I am immobilized by it.
Standing before the mirror in the morning, I feel that my scalp is tight. I see
that the skin hangs from my hips, and below my stomach a new horizontal
crease is forming over which the skin will hang like the hem of a skirt turned
under. A hem not to be “let down,” as once my skirts were, because I was“shooting up,” but a widening hem to “take up” on an old garment that has
been stretched. Then I see that my body is being drawn into the earth—muscle, tendon, tissue, and skin is being drawn down by the earth’s pull backto the loam. She is pulling me back to herself; she is taking back what is hers.
Cynthia loves bulbs. She digs around in the earth every fall, looking for therich loamy mold of decayed leaves and vegetation, and sometimes as she takesa sack of bone meal and works it into the damp earth, I think, “Why notmine? Why not?”208

sinister wisdom #68/69 — Death, Grief and Surviving

I wrote a formal letter to Joe and Jay to ask them if, in October, I mightplant three iris bulbs in the back yard and use some of her ashes for bonemeal. I told them I very much wanted to respond to her wish, to completethat circle from our first home together in Cambridge to our last home. But
not unless they felt fully comfortable. Today, each stopped by to say, withcaring and courtesy, yes, of course.
In October, I’ll know what I feel about Barbara’s ashes. Until then,those feelings are on the shelf, with the simple black box.
July 13, 2000
Every now and then I take out a memory of Barbara and polish it
gently, a fine coin. Once when we were new lovers, I went into the Cambridge
post office while she waited for me, in the car I thought. But when I cameout, started towards her down the street, she was standing in front of thehood of her car, one leg bent and her foot on the bumper, so smart andjaunty and smiling with so steady a pleasure as I walked towards her, and I
thought, I want to remember this always.
Or, these last years, we’d drive off just for a few hours, maybe to La
Jolla for black bean tostadas at Don Carlos’ Taco Shop. There’d be a momenton the 5 freeway, someplace past the Old Town exit, when she would take
into her cells that we were going a little further than our usual rounds, moving
out in the world, and her eyes would widen and her face begin to glow withthe pleasure and freedom of it. I’d glow, too, with her pleasure at this simple
gift.
I want to keep the memories lively and shining, but experts say themore often you remember an event the more distorted it becomes. I can tellit’s true. So it’s like some Greek myth, where your long lost lover is following
you out of Hades, but the gods tell you, that if you look back to be sure
she’s there, she will disappear. What’s a lover to do? I approach my mostprecious memories fearfully, as if I might chase them away.
July 15, 2000
When I was going to the Center to be with Barbara, and guessed she
was dying, I bought a one-time camera to take her picture. Partly I felt
ghoulish—what right had I to invade her privacy when she couldn’t say
no—and partly I still do, as I write this. And still I did it because I was not
sure it was an invasion, and I was sure how powerfully I wanted to. In those
weeks her spirit was so present, without word or expression, a sort offall 2006

209

luminous essence that filled the room. It wasn’t only me —Barb Potts justtold me that Nancy told her the same thing after she came to visit. I wanted
to catch and hold that mystery because I thought later I might belittle it tomyself. I took three pictures then put the camera away. I knew she was inthere and when I went to Kathy’s birthday party, I finished the roll withpictures of laughing guests.
Sitting in the RiteAid parking lot in Hillcrest with the package of photos
in my hand, I’m caught between eagerness and dread. will she really be
there? What will it mean if she is? I tear open the flap, let the happy faces
spill onto my lap, and grab the three I’m waiting for.
She’s there. They are bad pictures, grainy, pale. But she’s there—the
spirit of that room, that time, that last time lingering on the edge. The spirit
I’ve been drinking in these past days, re-reading her work, watching thevideos of her talks. A spirit I begin to take in now from a larger view.
And I lose it. It’s so large I can’t contain it. At first its huge power iscentered in the pictures. In my grief so vast it’s close to. horror, I realize that
this is what I might have felt about Barbara’s ashes.
I had watched Barbara’s spirit leave her body with the kind of finality
you can’t argue with, and so I knew in a deep way it wasn’t there among her
ashes.
But the pictures! They are filled with, her, her spirit floods out fromthem, and it is immense.
So immense that I can see no way to live with them. I can guess that
this is ,how I might have felt about her ashes—How can I keep them in thehouse, this huge presence? But how can I let them stay anywhere else?
The dilemma seems to me unbearable, insoluble.
I come home, bearing the charged envelope. I don’t see how I can stayhere with the pictures, and I have nowhere to go. It’s Saturday evening andeverybody is living their life, except maybe Barb or Nants and they are—each—grieving their breakup and don’t need to receive this mammoth grief.
Besides, during Barbara’s illness, after the death, I never felt this urgency to
be with someone, and I’m afraid that urgency would go into my voice, leaving
whichever friend I called on no choice. Even the day of Barbara’s death,when I called Janice, I didn’t have that edge; I was at peace, and I could havebeen alone. This golden evening, my need is immense, I’m drowning. I
struggle against it, promise myself it will go away, that if I meet it alone, I’ll
be stronger for it, but I don’t believe it. I give in. Janice’s voice is ready andunalarmed by my need, though I keep my own smooth and open all kindsof escape hatches for her.

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I drive wildly sobbing to Pacific Beach with the packet of pictures on
the dashboard. She’s waiting at the window and when she gets in the car, I
pour my grief onto her lap.
We drive a few blocks down to the beach where we sit, and I wail anddon’t care which of the young men and women in their shorts and halters
may hear me. I tell Janice what I realized on the way to her house—what I
am grieving for today.
I know I have always appreciated Barbara, seen and valued who she
was, and as I’ve joked, even after twenty-six years of living packed together
in a trailer or one-room apartments, still am a wide-eyed groupie. I told herso, in every kind of way, so I’ve no regrets for that.
Still, these last days of surveying her work of twenty-five years, watching
and hearing her speak on the videos, have been the time for taking in at
another level her whole life, her whole stance—a wider and deeper viewthan I’d ever been able to take.
At the same moment, I can see it’s not Barbara only. I realize that thismust be true of everyone, that nobody can take in the fullness of anotherhuman being while she is still living. They are unfinished, in process, they
may still disappoint or surprise—it would be senseless or crazy-making to
try to sum up anyone every month or year or decade. And we are in process,too, unfinished in relation to them. So it doesn’t matter how deeply we’vevalued, admired, appreciated. We can’t fully appreciate until after death shuts
the door on the new, the changeful. It’s only then we can fully take measure.
My grieving, as I spill it out to Janice, is: I can now see Barbara whole—
whole as someone who has been present for less than a third of her lifespancan see. I take her in as if for the first time because with deeper knowledge.
So while I know it’s false, my feeling is, I never appreciated her.
And with that new appreciation, another grief: I can’t let her know
how much I value her now.
The platitude goes: “We must tell people how much we love and value
them while they’re still here to hear us.” Well, sure, of course, but in thelarger sense it’s a crock. We can’t know it, much less tell them, while they’re
still here to hear us.
October 17, 2000
It’s October, planting time. Yesterday, I went to Anderson’s Nurseryand found three Dutch Iris Blue Ribbon bulbs, in a shade of blue that
Barbara wore a lot. I got a cheap bulb planter and three little white markers.
This morning an early fog is creeping up the street, and I’m feelingfall 2006

211

apprehensive. Maybe I won’t do it right, whatever that means—plant thebulbs in the right way, feel the right way, do loving honor to Barbara. I’meven more glad I’m doing this alone, except maybe for Barbara, so I canfumble my way. Joe is in Paris and Jay is teaching school; I have the whole
day to fumble if I need it.
It’s a quarter century since I planted a bulb and my dyslexic insecurities
thrive on that. I can’t believe it myself, but I call Walter Anderson and actually
ask them if it matters what the weather’s like on the day you plant. One of
the hallmarks of these insecurities is I have no idea of what’s important. I
put on an old oxford shirt of Barbara’s, turn up Bach’s Double Concerto on
the CD player, and place the black box of her ashes in front of it on the
kitchen table. I take the bulbs, the planter, a kitchen knife to loosen earth,and a copy of Look Me in the Eye to the back of the garden.
First I sit and read the passage. It clears my spirit, helps me feel how
much she wants me to do this. I sit down beside the flower bed and start towork in the earth, loosening weeds, preparing the space. When I press theplanter in with the force of my arm, I’m still worrying if it’s exactly the rightdepth, if I should loosen more earth below the bulb, if I should moisten thehole before I plant. Once on A Street, Barbara was ill and asked me to plant
some seeds in her garden, and I found myself sobbing above the damp
earth, the flood of my own doubts pouring out of my eyes. Today I sweep
it all away, reminding myself that nature has done this for eons without somuch anxiety, freeing myself to think of Barbara instead of myself.
And I do, and it starts another kind of sobbing, not of fear andfrustration but of loss. She has left me, and she was a central meaning of
my life. Somehow I will restructure my life without that meaning, or with itin another form, but this morning I know the size of the hole.
So when I go to bring out the box, I’m still weeping. Sitting on the
ground, I open it with my knife and then the plastic bag. Barbara was right.
This means more than scattering. As I bring up ash in my fingers and work
it into the earth, the connections flow. I still know, as I did in June, that she
doesn’t reside in the ash, but I’m connected to the earthiness that was always
part of her spirit, and her wish to have that affirmed here, this way.
When I come back into the house, I see on my hand the light chalky
dust. It’s not the first time I’ve had her body on my fingers, lodged under
my nails, and it feels sweet and right as those times.
Like those times, I’ve given her a gift and given myself one at the same
time.

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sinister wisdom #68/69 — Death, Grief and Surviving

Sandy Tate

Grief
Shards of glass slice through my soulConfusion, numbness, and of course,
Depression
My agony is a daily visitor
Can’t skirt around grief
Have to go through it
The experts say
Yellow fog clouds my vision
But not my last horrible memories
My best friend, my confidante,
My bedrock
So comfortable to be withMy two grandmothers, Sarah and Lillian
My mother, Ruth
And now Henrietta, sister of Ruth
Last of the women who loved me unconditionally
Sometimes, I can’t remember where I’ve been
No, I’m not demented
Just out of my mind with terror
Why, I wonder, does terror have to join sadness
As if one could not exist without the otherI knew I loved her, needed her
But to miss her like this?
I mean, if I’m so numb
How come I cry at the thought of her
How many times driving down Highway 12
Do I have to sternly pull myself together
My vision blurred with tears

fall 2006

Can’t get the sight of her dead out of my mind
Shall I tell you how she looked?
Shall I describe her pain?
It haunts me still‘If I had a gun, I’d shoot myself,’ she said
Shall I describe my guilt?
Can’t seem to beat myself up enough
Never spoke my feelings
Never told her how I’d miss her
How could I when I’d break down?
My frantic hope she’d live
While I watched in terror during nine days on Morphine
The milestones tick by
The first New Year, my birthday
Concerts, plays, planetarium, travel
Without her
It’s not that I mind going alone
It’s just that I want her next to me
She was brilliant, sarcastic, witty, brave,
Forgiving, angry, compassionate
A righteous feminist
And so much more
Her DNA a part of me
Friends ask, ‘How’re you doin?’
I say ‘Fine’
But I lie
I am bereft
Dedicated with love to my aunt, Henrietta Quattrocchi

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214

sinister wisdom #68/69 — Death, Grief and Surviving

Jane MaraIn the Vestibule(Written after being with a friend when she died)Through one door
Mystery
Unfathomed
Reaches
Peace
PerhapsTunnelWhite light
Harps and Angels
Bardo
Home.
Through the next
Personality
Heavy
with
Longing
with
Delusion
Dislike
BaggageAccumulates
I achefor
Freedomfor
Simplicity
of
Mind
for
Clarity
of
Space
for
EmptinesSociety beckons
Identities
WantedCostumesofPreferences
Glitter
InviteSeductive
withPromises
Satisfaction!
Happiness!
DubiousI
Hesitate
Lingering
Lingering

Activities
Called for
Eating
Shopping
Time
Narrows
Space
Thickens
ClutterGrows

fall 2006

Here
In the Vestibule
MemoryCarpeted
Beverly’s home
Beverly’s face
Focus
Pristine
Nothing
Peripheral
LightnessofAir
Presenceof
Being
BeingsInvisible
Silence
Grace
Space
Full
of
Emptiness
Heart
Full
of
Peace
Here
I
Am
Light
ThoughI’m
Clothed
In a
Body
Bev
Only
Light
Gone

Into
MysteryHere
In the Vestibule
I
LoiterLonely
Left
Out
of
Both
Worldsby
My ownDesignand
Not yet
My
Time.

Magic
Enfolds
Me
Too
PrecioustoVacateHow long
Can
I
Stay
Here
In the Vestibule
BetweenLife
andDeath?

215

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sinister wisdom #68/69 — Death, Grief and Surviving

Judith K. Witherow

Cardboard Coffin
There isn’t a day the memory of someone I loved and lost doesn’t claw
at my being in an unguarded moment. Sometimes I find myself laughing
softly about past events shared. More often, the pain is so raw, its physicalintensity causes me to stifle sounds that only an animal would recognize.
On December 2, 2004, my younger sister, Josie, died suddenly at theage of fifty-six. Doctors were rarely a choice. With Josie they weren’t used
except for the birth of a baby. She didn’t have insurance, and according to
the state, she was too “rich” to qualify for Medicaid.
Josie’s death certificate reads like a shopping list of curable diseases.
Curable, if money is available for the medical establishment to provide
continuing treatment. This represents an insurmountable obstacle for many.
The night Josie was found unconscious, an ambulance was phoned totransport her to the closest hospital. It was a small hospital unequipped todeal with someone in cardiac arrest. The hospital personnel spent the nightcalling larger hospitals to have her admitted to their ICU. Each said they had
no space, and to call another hospital. It’s amazing how fast intensive careunits fill to capacity when they learn the patient is without insurance andhas life threatening illnesses.
My sister had one of the most tragic lives I could ever write about. To
know that she died like she lived is more then I care to put on paper, but
two incidents come to mind.
As an older sibling I looked out for her from the time she was born.
The sister who now sits and relives childhood incidents from theAppalachians. One day we were sitting on the rough-cut steps leading upstairs.
Josie was six years old, and I was ten. For some reason she asked what I
would buy when we were grown and rich. Being anything but gut-sucking
poor never occurred to me. I couldn’t answer the question, but the memoryof the smile on her childish round face still haunts me.
She said, “I do! I’m going to buy all the cans of chicken noodle soup in
the world and eat every bite!” With a hug around my neck she followed it
with, “And, I’m going to share it all with you.”
Years later we bought a house that had electricity and running water.
One winter night Josie woke me to go downstairs with her. I was fourteen
and she was ten years old. She wanted me to sit on the steps and share a canof cold spinach. I whispered I wasn’t hungry and gave her the greens.
It borders on unbearable that later in life when there was enough food,she became too sick to eat. I pray the Spirits have her plate heaped high, andfall 2006

217

there’s a kind smile on their faces when they remember Josie walking thatdirt road with legs bowed because of rickets.
Seated between my oldest sister and brother at the funeral home, I saw
our beat-down life flash before my eyes. I’m now the one inventing how
much kinder Josie’s death will be than her life was.
I tried to look at Josie’s precious face while blocking the view of the
cardboard coffin that held her until the cremation took place. Why didn’t
we think to drape that brown box with a blanket? Why wasn’t there insurancemoney for the burial she deserved? Why did those of us who could sparesome money have trouble coming up with enough for the price of hercremation and the use of a room to lay her out so we could see her one last
time? (It didn’t take long for the funeral director to see that pushing anything
expensive on us would be a waste of time and commission.)
No one spoke because words couldn’t push past the lumps stuck in
our throats. So many words needed to be said, but no one was brave enoughto try emitting a sound that would break the barrier holding back a massive
wail of sorrow.
None of that proper stuff we see so often at funerals on television
where everyone quietly accepts the death of a loved one. Proper! Proper?
What in the hell is proper about the loss of someone you loved more thanlife? When material possessions were never a part of your life— flesh iswhat holds everything together.
I looked around to see if we’d sufficiently “imitated” other funerals.
There was enough money scraped together to buy a book for visitors tosign, and the memorial cards almost made it until the end of the first showing.
Thank you notes would have to be bought at the store. At this point mymemory went blank, and I was drawn back to what brought us to this dreaded
place.
Family members, without number, made sure everyone had “decent”
clothes to wear to show how we respected the recent loss of a loved one.
(We’ve learned that going through each other’s closets is a major part of thedeath ritual.)
When I knelt beside Sis one last time I took care not to damage the
cardboard container holding her beautiful being. What irony. When she wasborn she either slept in a small box or a dresser drawer. Fifty six years of
non-stop work should have earned her a better send off.
As I kissed Josie goodbye I didn’t give thought to the tears silently
falling on her and that disposable coffin.
Stifled sobs. Cardboard coffins. Poverty never allows you to forgetthat anything more might be considered as passing for something you weren’t
meant to be—even in death.

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sinister wisdom #68/69 — Death, Grief and Surviving

Laura O’Brady

Time

Time trickles,
CrawlsYou don’t need a drink
You don’t need to pee
It’s not time for your pills
You don’t need anything any more
Not from me
Not hereNot anywhere
And all the time
All the time I used
In caring for you
Listening to your breathing
For your callSits, congealed, in the silenceUseless
Needed for nothing at allfall 2006

219

P. E. MacDavid

To JaneRight in the middle of life
When everything was just fineA life was cut too shortWithout a strong sign
Everything that could’ve been-wasn’t
Everything should have been better
The whole thing should’ve been versed out
As well as a well-scripted letter
The life left behind dangling in air
Grasped for a life when you weren’t there
Traveling to a place that life takes us now
Trying to hold onto how we really care
We search for peace
We search for love
Our memory of you
Included in our dreams
It’ll keep us goingIn our hearts
In our minds
We love you

In memory of Jane. She died in her sleep at home. It will never be the same. She is missedby her family and friends. And me!

220sinister wisdom #68/69 — Death, Grief and Surviving

Lynn Martin

Letting Go
Psychologists, New Agers, Twelve Steppers and people you meet on the street
all say it; letting go is the fist step toward healing. Autumn lets go into
winter, adolescence into maturity, sorrow into joy. Hospice helps theterminally ill to let go of life and enter the sleep from which no one
awakens. We are continually letting go of dreams, illusions, toys andunlived stories; the worn out, no longer possible, no longer working.
But what if you are always seeing the first two-wheeler bike you ever had
leaning against the supermarket wall? Or what if your best friend has justdied and you see her strolling the Common, her shadow touching thebandstand as she walks by? Or waving at you as she hurries through the doorsof the library? What if the person you loved once decides, for whateverreasons, to disappear from your life and her voice rides each wrinkle of thedying light? What if an endless procession of those who have died of AIDS
appear in your dreams nightly?
It isn’t as if I haven’t tried. I have written good-by a hundred times. I
have joined others in rituals and memorial services. I’ve cried endlesstears. I’m grown up enough to know losing a bike and your youthful self is
not the same as losing a friend.
It is easy to imagine letting go of a red balloon. As easy as opening yourhand to the sky a blue heartbeat away. It is easy to imagine a leaf
kidnapped by the river and tumbling its way to the sea. But I can’t seem tolet go of love. Memory insists. Mary Oliver says,
To live in this world
you must do three things:
to love what is mortal,
to hold it,against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.

fall 2006

Gooseflesh

Sudie Rakusin

This is such wise, beautiful advice. Let go and love again is what it says
to me. I long to do so. If only someone would tell me how. It’s hard tolet go of how grown up and proud I was as I raced through the streets on my
big bike. It’s difficult not to recall my friend arriving rain spattered
and laughing to insist on a wet walk. Or my lover taking my hand andinsisting this love was real. Or a certain young man saying, “They will finda cure and I will be its first miracle.” He died five months later. If I
knew how to stop those soft, caressing voices, letting go would be a cinch.
_

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sinister wisdom #68/69 — Death, Grief and Surviving

Maura Ryan

Searching for Dyke in My Family History:
The Process of Creating Survival
for My Lesbian Memory
I keep a wallet-sized black and white photo on my desk. The back of
it says, in swirled handwriting, July 1947, Hudson Falls, NY. My father,almost two years old, wears a baby’s jumpsuit and sandals and looks intently
at his lap where his baby fat hands pet a content grown cat. There is someone
sitting next to him, someone no one has ever mentioned in my presence.
She looks at the camera and smiles, her head tossed back slightly. She leansbehind my father, one arm is covered by him – they were sitting that close
together.
I found this treasure while looking through my grandmother’s old
pictures after she passed away five Augusts ago. My parents and I wanted togive her the gift of dying comfortably at home, but after caring for her inour home for years, she died during one of her many trips to the hospital. I
held her hand, at three o’clock in the morning, when she let go of her last
breath. I kept her rosaries and the gold cross that rested on her coffin during
her service.
The photos weren’t in an organized album; they were piled on top ofeach other and kept in an old tea chest. Most of them had to be pulled
apart from the stickiness of years in an attic. I noticed everyone in her old
photographs – if I hadn’t met them I knew stories about them. I would say
to myself, oh, look how young Aunt Kathleen looks or that must be Uncle Sean
because he’s standing in front of that old grocery store where he worked. The picture I
would take home with me and place on my desk, though, was different. In
it, my two-year old father shared the frame with a butch woman.
I knew her instantly. She wears all men’s clothing: dark trousers and abeige short-sleeved shirt with a ribbed neck lining. She wears no bra andher breasts fall naturally toward (without touching) her navel. Her hair isarmy-base short on the sides with a romantic lift on top. She is smiling a
confident dyke smile. She is the kind of woman I love.
This was 1947 in Hudson Falls, NY. I know from my dyke history
books that although some lesbians were identifying as butch during thistime, most of them had to keep shoulder length hair (that they would wearin ponytails at the bar) to keep jobs. There was a three pieces of women’sfall 2006223

clothing rule – if you didn’t make the cut you could be arrested for crossdressing – but just try arguing with a cop who’s already beating you up thatyou actually have three of the required pieces. How did she get away withhaving such short hair? How was she wearing all men’s clothing? How is it
possible that such an intimate part of my dyke history was captured in aphotograph with my father?
I took the photograph out to him where he was working in the garage.
Dad, who is this? He wiped the sweat off of his forehead with the back of his
arm and squinted at the picture, It’s me. I shook my head. No, who is this? Helooked more closely, took it out of my hand to hold it at a far-sighted man’s
arm’s stretch, Oh, he said, that’s Mary’s friend. He handed the photographback to me and went back to his work.
My great Aunt Mary - she was my grandfather’s sister. I keep two ofher photographs with me. In one of them, she stands outside in the snow
with my grandmother: they are both wearing fur coats; a couple inches of
black stockings with seamed backs are visible between their coats and blackhigh heels. Their hair is curled and styled perfectly; their lips are tiny redhearts. Mary has the same look she always gave the camera – distrustful,challenging, confident. In the picture you can read the intimacy of theirrelationship in the way they stand – it looks like they dressed together, took
the time to match each other. I can imagine them dabbing on each other’s
lipstick and borrowing each other’s rouge. They look like family, like sisters
who are in on a secret.
In the other photograph Mary is holding me. I am three years old andsitting on her lap smiling. Her hands hold me gently around the waist andher lips are resting on the crown of my head – she is giving me a kiss. She
has aged. The color photograph tells me something I couldn’t see in theblack and white photos of her youth: she had red hair. I don’t remember
meeting her, but this is my proof that we shared a physical space, that wetouched.
She never married: a spinster, if you listen to my family tell it. WhenI was young my mother would threaten me with her fate: whenever I thought
I was better than boys I would hear, you’ll end up like your Aunt Mary if you’re
not careful. My grandmother never verbally colluded in this lie. She knew
Mary too well. Her silence, though, let me believe that being manless was
something that happened to a woman, not something she chose.
When I was really young and obsessed with the idea of marriage I
would ask why she never married and I would get the same response every
time, she was just too set in her ways.

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sinister wisdom #68/69 — Death, Grief and Surviving

Set in her ways is the way my family talks about lesbianism. My Aunt
Teresa is also set in her ways. All my life when I’ve said something flippant,crass, or clever my parents have looked at each other and said just like Teresa.
When Teresa visits and her comments falls on the outlandish they look at
each other and say, just like Mary. Since I’ve moved in with a butch woman
and started my graduate studies my parents have started to tell people that
I’m set in my ways. We’re different than the rest of the women in ourfamily. We’re set in our ways, we can’t be molded. We refuse.
I’ve always had my suspicions about my Aunt Mary – it’s probably rarethat a spinster is actually a single heterosexual woman. Still, it wasn’t until
this photo of the woman my father calls her friend that her dyke status was
confirmed for me.
Mary was a femme. She wore her hair just so. There are photos of her
in trousers when all the other women are wearing house dresses. She knew
how to wear a dress. She had intense longing eyes. More than fifty years
later than when this picture was taken I live as a femme dyke who chooses
to partner with butch women. It troubles me that my proof of her
unwavering lesbian desire is in a photograph of her partner. Butchness isvisible lesbianism - the rest can be shoved under the family tapestry ofeuphemisms.
My grandmother was the first member of my family I came out to. I
was probably sixteen. She was eighty-one and so far into senility that I
knew if she told my parents I could blame her ramblings on the dementia
of an old woman. We were sitting at our kitchen table together, I had justpoured her a cup of her morning coffee, and I managed, Grandma, I’m alesbian. She nodded and said that’s nice. I asked, do you know what that means?
She blew on her hot coffee, why, one who lesbians, I would say. She smiled in a
way that told me she knew what I meant and winked. She never mentioned
it to my parents.
I remember my grandmother’s stories well. Her mother died when
she was eleven, leaving her to practically raise her sisters; she hated herfather (but never told me why) and barred him from her home as an adultwoman. She grew up on a farm where she and her sisters would sneak intoa nearby barn and steal pickles that they would save to eat with chocolate
cake. My grandfather was her only love; I reminded her of him so much.
She had five miscarriages before having my father. As a small child I would
sit in the kitchen (where I would later tell her I was a lesbian) and eat afternoon
cookies while she told me her stories. In her final weeks of life my parents
and I were on a near constant watch of her. During my watch I would feed

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225

her yogurt or applesauce (it was all she could eat) or I would brush her hairand tell her that she was such a knockout we would have to beat the boys
away with a stick. Mostly, I would sit at the edge of her bed and hold her
hand while she retold me her stories. I would trace her blue veins with myfingertip over hands that were aged, but like mine. A couple of nights
before she died I asked her if she knew that I loved her; she nodded. I
kissed her forehead, you have my heart, honey, I told her. She still does and I
still have her stories.
No one gave me Mary’s stories and no one told me when Mary died. I
want with her what I have with my grandmother: her legacy of stories, to be
the one who looked after her before she died, to tell her that she’s in myheart. Without her stories all I’m left with is the reassurance that a femme
knew what it was to be dyke in my Irish Catholic family and a picture of abutch (I like to believe) she spent a life with.
I wonder how long they were together. My father didn’t guess that the
butch was Mary’s partner just because she was a butch – he thought andnodded as if he remembered – that’s Mary’s friend. I believe that he reallyremembers her. That he was thinking, but didn’t say, that’s Mary’s friend, theone I remember – sometimes when the family would let her come around we would playgames together, she would tie my laces when they came undone or let me win sometimes
when we played hoops. Sometimes I would catch them in the kitchen when everyone else
was outside for a barbeque holding hands and twirling around like they were on a dance
floor. They loved each other. She loved Mary. They were happy together. They spentyears together.
I keep the photograph of Mary’s butch on my desk because her defiant
female masculinity in the 1940’s makes me feel brave, because she reminds
me that we have to work to record our dyke lives so that nobody can be left
wondering about how we really lived them, and because she is my familial
link to dyke history. She is the intricate piece that bridges the gap between
my biological family and my chosen family of queer people. Keeping her
picture close to me is my way of welcoming her to my family. Having her
picture as proof means that the official story of what passed between her
and Mary is no longer just friendship.

226

sinister wisdom #68/69 — Death, Grief and Surviving

Lynn Strongin

Do We Have Enough Heat
Do we have enough heatfrom the furnace of the belly
this giant
our house?
The sky is white as whipcord
as ropeand candles
the missing pieceis you.
who lit my cigarettes, who poured our coffee
who bolted away, highstrung horsew h o w h i s p e red like Russian syllables
albino mouse.

Half-a-Century Old
Half-a-Century old
this wheelchair I tip,
narrow, a child’s
the manufacturer long folded,
parts no longer available:
I look at itparked by my bed in an emergency

fall 2006

227

when an air tire blows:
silver wheels rolled me thru college,
X-frame bent on one night-flighttossed in the hatch
for transcontinental(there’s the rip in the fabric from rough handling).
California
Berkeley streets
always I stopped byrocks or steps
Kingdom come,wheels rolled me thru oiled golden Sun
high desert
over snow& crackling ice in the Watermelon Mountains
spill of the Rockies, Sandias.
Took me late one night away from my country thru immigration
those evenings of tonic& ginLime coldwater railroad flat where I came for love, one dozen
hothouse roses in my handme the girl with coke-bottle green eyes
up to my 61st wintera lintel I could not cross & fit in Old Rickety, so still & rusted
It won’t foldthe cross-bar bolt is locked & flaking:
My throat—I cannot clear my throat
to sing
one morning after a bleak sleep of nightmare & tears.

228

sinister wisdom #68/69 — Death, Grief and Surviving

Alice Mohor

losingfine I respondto greetings asked
but now is unlike
all times passed
challenged before
by time or healthwork or leisurelack of wealthyears of long days
now gone too fast
problems to comeexceed all past
we are here
because of you
from now to when
be with us tooplease do not leave
before you go
hard time be quick
good time be slow

pause
I had thoughtof losing someone
suddenly
I had never thoughtof losing someone
slowlycould my lovebe enoughto comfort
could my lovebe enoughto soothe
could my faith
be enoughto endurefall 2006

Barbara Taylor

Moving On
She never left me, nor departed, whendark skies dimmed our intimate encounters.
Body, hands, lips her touches, so gentle
like these golden memories of today:
unyielding, forever held closely to
my weakened broken heart, love enwrappedin union, civil and civilized, till deaths we both do part.
Decades on I feel she’s here. Emotions
stir on hearing our music once again.
I imagine that wicked smile. Profound,her placement was, a deep impact upon my life.
But now it’s truer that I say I wantto take another lover, feel only
the friction of soft breasts, make love on lush
green lawns of clover. I want to say, “Now
the time is here! Time for a brand new dayof switching off, then turning on
to recklessly start over, to free myself
from uninvited lonelinessor restless somber silence.

229

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sinister wisdom #68/69 — Death, Grief and Surviving

Rachel Pray

Approaching Sestina
What is it, then, Father
that brings us to this place of loss
after years of trying to be close?
I know grief has penetrated deep
As smoldering fire draws
oxygen to feed its weakened heat, we watch
old embers flicker then ignite, closeand bright enough to burn, ash deepened
to flame. Why do we dance, Father
around the fact that she is lost?
Fifteen years and mention of her name still draws
blood from your face. You pale as I watch.
My mother died too soon, too young to bear the loss.
She wasn’t given time to mend things, pull us close,
prepare us all for what you could not be, a father
left alone. Desperate to forget, to draw
the bedroom blinds, you buried her silk nightgowns deepin Salvation Army bags, kept only her watches.
As if she had never drawn
you to her tenderly in the deepening
hush of night. You have nothing of her, Father
save those still, broken watches.
Worn beyond repair, marking time in closequarters, twenty-five years together, lost.

fall 2006

231

My hair is red, my skin is fair; I have my father’sfaithfulness, my mother’s rage at what was lost.
Do I remind you of her when I’m close,
inspire memories etched deeply
in the features of my face — how can you watch?
Her eyes, her breasts, her teeth, drawn
from carbon, marrow, bone to mock you, Father
with all you’ve tried to close
your mind and heart against. How deeply
you were loved, how terrified to watch
the woman you had sworn never to lose
sicken, weaken, fall away from you, drawn
away as you watched, into the depths,
death’s close embrace, your wife and lover lost.
Drawn to that dark place, you and I cast one shadow, Father.

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Books Reviewed
by Lilith Rogers
MIDWIFING DEATH: RETURNING TO THE ARMS OF THE
ANCIENT MOTHER
by Leslene della-Madre illustrated by Monica Sjoo
266pp 2003
Plainview Press, P.O. Box 42255, Austin, Texas 78704
Plainviewpress.net 512-441-2452
Grief is a part of spirit/earth-flesh mind/body wholeness. To feel it
deeply and openly, as many people do in various cultures, for example, by
the cutting of hair, wailing and not washing for long periods of time following
the death of a loved one, is to be fully present with the wholeness/holinessof life and mystery beyond our control and understanding. The patriarchal
mind does not understand such abandon. It would rather have grief behidden and controlled.
In the prehistoric times of women-centered cultures, women were thepriestesses to the dying. I also feel from the way in which many tribal people
collectively deal with life passages, women probably grieved together andshared the grief of their losses in these ancient times. (pp. 232-233)
In MIDWIFING DEATH, Leslene della-Madre reaches deeply into
many areas of death and life that most of us in modern American culture
have never traveled. For this reason alone, it is an important book for us toread. But it is also important for many other reasons—as an historical
understanding of what the ancient Goddess cultures knew of death andwhat follows after, as a guide to how we can better attend to our friends andloved ones as they are dying, and as a way to prepare for our own inevitable
deaths. As della-Madre says in her Invocation, “As I have worked with deathand dying for several years now, I have become increasingly aware of asearching need in the human psyche to find solace and peace in the dying
process—not just a wanting to be at home surrounded with loved ones,
which can be truly wonderful, but a need that calls out to open to love andto shed fear in the face of death itself.” (p. 13) She then proceeds to tell us
how to create a “beauty field” for a dying loved one, how to help the person
get past her fear and how to get past our own. This book is a weaving of
herstory, meditations on life and death, anecdotes from della- Madre’s life
and travels—both physical and spiritual, taped conversations with spiritualteachers and writers like Vicki Noble on the subject of death, and tales offall 2006

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the deaths of people whom she has
midwived, including her own father andmother. It is also a strong indictment of thepatriarchy and its emphasis on the father
god, its glorification of violence, power over,materialism, fear and distrust. She advocatesa return to the study of and the ways of
our ancient mothers. della- Madre quotes
from anthropologist Marija Gimbutas who
did ground breaking work—literally andfiguratively—on our ancestors from the
Neolithic world. For 20,000 years, theseancestors believed in a nurturing Goddess
rather than a wrathful God. They lived inharmony with their natural surroundings
and with one another. And they viewed death as natural occurrence that
returned them to the arms of the Great Mother.
This does not mean that the ancient ones did not grieve for their dear
departed. della-Madre has included in her book images of grieving womenfrom those thousands of years ago. Just as death is a natural part of life, so
is grief. But, as quoted in the beginning, there are ways to express grief thatallow it to be a healing experience and ways to suppress it that only further
its pain. Throughout this remarkable text, there are the beautiful, powerfulimages of the Swedish artist and radical anarcho/eco-feminist Monica Sjoo.
Sjoo was the co-author with Barbara Mor of the influential work THE
GREAT COSMIC MOTHER: REDISCOVERING THE RELIGION OF
THE EARTH (1987). Sjoo also speaks in the preface of this book of thedisastrous consequences we all suffer from the rule of the patriarchy. And
she speaks movingly of the tragic deaths of her two sons and what she haslearned from those deaths. Sadly, Sjoo herself died in August of 2005 justas this book was finally completed.I highly recommend MIDWIFING
DEATH. Just as women are reclaiming the birth experience as a naturalpart of life that can and should, whenever possible, be performed in ourhomes with our loved ones present, so, too, we are reclaiming the deathexperience. As della-Madre says, “Freedom awaits us in life and in deathwhen we finally shed the outworn conditions of our self-inflicted sufferingof the last 5,000 years and embrace the truth of our ancestors known formuch longer.” (p.158)
For orders, contact the author directly at info@midwifingdeath.com.

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Bodyworks 1

Saskia Scheffer“I struggle to talk from the wound’s gash, make sense of thedeaths and destruction, and pull the pieces of my life back
together. I yearn to pass on to the next generation the spiritual
activism I’ve inherited from my cultures.”
Gloria E. Anzaldúa, Let us be the healing of the woundfall 2006

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Contributors’ Notes
Janet E. Aalfs, poet laureate of Northampton, MA (2003-2005), director
and head instructor (1982-present) of Valley Women’s Martial Arts Institutefor Healing and Violence Prevention Strategies, and a founding member ofLesbian writing groups that met for over 20 years, has had her work publishedin a variety of journals and anthologies. Her most recent books of poems
are Reach (Perugia Press, 1999) and Red (self-published chapbook, Thousand
Hands Press, 2001).
Joan Annsfire: The first poem I read in public was at my mother’s
funeral when I was twenty-two. Since then I’ve written quite a bit about
death and the grieving process. I find the fact that this life is finite to beboth compelling and a great motivator to just get on with it, whatever it
happens to be. I’ve been writing seriously since my bout with cancer fifteen
years ago and my poetry, memoir pieces and essays have appeared in various
literary journals and anthologies.
Brenwyn founded Harvest, A Neopagan Journal, in Boston in the early
80s. She worked extensively on the Kwan Yin Book of Changes by Diane Stein.
Her writing has been published in WeMoon, EarthWalk, Maize, The Rook, The
Anchorage Times, and the Taos News. Currently she lives in southern Oregon
where she writes and teaches kids.
Lynn Brown has always been a poet and lover of language, the creationof gardens, vision and touch with the intention towards friendship andhealing.
Pat Browne grew up in Minnesota and attended graduate school at the
University of Wisconsin—Madison. For 15 years, she was a member of
the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondolet. She left the community in 1987
and shortly thereafter met Aggie, her soul mate, the love of life, her true
north, her only star. Both Aggie and Pat worked for the United States
Department of Agriculture in Washington, DC where they founded thefirst organization for gay and Lesbian federal employees. Aggie and Pat
began their war with Aggie’s breast cancer in 1997. They celebrated theircivil union in November 2001 in Vermont in the midst of Aggie’s
chemotherapy following her first recurrence. On August 11, 2003, just fourmonths before Aggie’s death, they traveled to Canada to be married. In236

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their own truth, they had already been married for 15 years, but still loved
hearing those words spoken for them. Pat now lives in northern Minnesota
with her service dog, Solstice, and with Aggie’s spirit and love.
Shirley Brozzo is a member of the Keweenaw Bay Tribe of Chippewa
Indians in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. In May she will graduate with an
MFA in English Writing from Northern Michigan University. She is currently
employed as the Assistant Director of Diversity Student Services and is an
adjunct instructor with the center for Native American Studies, both at
NMU. Shirley has three adult children, Jamie, Brandi and Steven. She andpartner Liz have been together for 18 years.
Tita Caldwell is a 74 year old Lesbian living in Oakland, California. A
longtime activist, she has recently started writing and is a new member of
OLOC (Old Lesbians Organizing for Change).
Teresa Campbell is Professor Emeritus at San Francisco State University.
She has had 40 short stories published in a variety of magazines oranthologies. She is the author of the book, Life is an Adventure, which canbe ordered at any bookstore or Amazon, com. She has lived with her partner,
Sue, for 40 years.
Shan Casey is an all-around rabble rouser, mother, daughter, partner,
writer, activist, mid-west born femme dyke, currently living in Brooklyn,
New York.
Chelsey Clammer received her BA in English and Feminist Studies
from Southwestern University in Georgetown, TX. Currently, she is working
at Book Woman, the only feminist bookstore in Texas, and is writing her
first Lesbian novel. In her spare time she is applying to various graduate
programs in Women’s Studies.
Tee A. Corinne’s artwork has been identified with Sinister Wisdom since
her cover and poster for issue #3 in 1977. She is the author of one novel,
three collections of short stories, and several poetry chapbooks. Her mostrecent book of art, Intimacies: Photos by Tee A. Corinne, published by Last
Gasp of San Francisco, was a Lambda Literary Award finalist.
Editors’ Note: Shortly after submitting her work for this issue, Tee A. Corinne

fall 2006237

was diagnosed with a rare form of bile duct cancer. As we go to press, Tee is working
from her home on multiple projects as her time and energy permit. She is attended by her
friend, Jean Sirius (another contributor to this issue), and many friends and volunteers
from her southern Oregon community. Updates on Tee are posted at http://jeansirius.com/TeeACorinne/tee_update.html.
Tee’s papers are housed in its Special Collections at the University of Oregon
Library. Send your memories of Tee and the descriptions of the impact her work has hadon your life to: Linda J. Long, Manuscripts Librarian, Department of Special Collections
and University Archives, University of Oregon Library System, 1229 University ofOregon, Eugene, OR 94703-1299.
Vicki Currier (Iggy) shares her story about the loss of her best friend
from the Mabel Bassett Correctional Center in McLoud, Oklahoma.
Fran Day is an activist, educator, writer, reader, editor, vegetarian, andfriend. She was born in 1942 in Nebraska and grew up rural working class;her maternal ancestors were from Ireland, Scotland and England (paternal
ancestry unknown). She has been active in numerous social change
movements and was part of the following collectives in Denver, Colorado
during the 70’s: Big Mama Rag Newsjournal, Woman to Woman Bookcenter,and Women Against Violence Against Women (WAVAW). She helped
organize the first Take Back the Night March in Denver. She has helped
plan and organize many additional gatherings, forums, readings, and events.
She currently lives in northern California where she teaches part time at
Sonoma State University; she enjoys connecting with Lesbians around theworld through her work editing Sinister Wisdom Journal. She is passionate
about Lesbian culture, community and friendship.
Carmen de Monteflores: I am Puerto Rican, a Lesbian, a writer andpsychotherapist. I am also a mother and grandmother. Spirituality is central
in my life and is intimately connected with my love of nature and with myfaith in the healing power of creativity.
Julie R. Enszer is a writer and Lesbian activist living in Maryland. She
has previously been published in Iris: A Journal About Women, Room of One’s
Own, Long Shot, the Web Del Sol Review, Poetica and the Jewish Women’s Literary
Annual. In addition to writing poetry, she is writing a novel. You can readmore of her work at www.JulieREnszer.com.

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Susan Eschbach: I am a fifty year old White Jewish dyke with twochildren. Their other mother and my partner of 16 years died in 2001 of avery invasive cancer. These poems are from a collection I wrote during thatextraordinary time. I live in Ithaca, NY with my kids, teach middle school
children, and have a sweet precious new partner. After the horror I was
blessed.
Roxanna Fiamma: I was born in Denver, Colorado in 1943; Italian
American (Olive Race), grew up working class. I came out as a Lesbian in
the late 60s and as a Separatist in the mid 70’s. I taught Physical Educationin Denver until I retired in 1993. I live in northern California where I enjoy
life with my Dear Companion Dog, Phaedra and Land-Mate, Fran.
Maria Fama is the author of three books of poetry. Her work appears
in numerous publications and has been anthologized. In 1998, she was named
a finalist in the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Awards. Fama has read her poetry inmany cities across the country, read one of her stories on National PublicRadio, co-founded a video production company, and recorded her poetry
for CD compilations of music and poetry. Maria Fama did her undergraduate
and graduate work in History at Temple University. She lives and works in
Philadelphia. Fama’s poems were recently awarded the 2002 Aniello Lauri
Award in Creative Writing.
Izabela Filipiak is a playwright, a poet, and a historian. Her books include
Absolute Amnesia, Madame Intuita, and, most recently, Realms of Otherness, the760 pages long presentation of Maria Komornicka (pronounce Ko-morneetz-ka), a tragic and transgender author of Warsaw-based 19th century
modernism. Filipiak holds a doctorate from the Polish Academy of Sciencesin Warsaw and is an affiliated scholar at the Beatrice M. Bain Research Groupat UC Berkeley. She is one of the first public figures in Eastern Europe whochallenged the ramifications of her culture by her public coming out. For
the past 15 years she has been a role model for the growing LGBT movement
and more than one generation of creative women in Poland. She is presently
working on a memoir.
Judy Freespirit is now living in Oakland California with the round-theclock assistance of Shinay, her lovely caregiver from Mongolia. She plans tospend the rest of her life doing exactly what she damned well pleases. Her
memoir I Nearly Died Laughing written with Cathy Cade and Elana
Dykewomon will hopefully be out sometime in 2006.

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Catherine Friend farms in Minnesota with her partner of twenty-two
years. The author of five children’s books, with a sixth forthcoming in 2007,
Catherine would rather write than wrangle sheep, but is proud she can doboth. She has a B.A. in Economics and Spanish, and a M.S. in Economics,
neither of which she has used for years. She has held an impressive array of
odd jobs, such as packing cheese and sausage gift boxes, weeding on anorganic vegetable farm, and working an assembly line packing boxes ofChristmas decorations. For many years she taught writing for the Instituteof Children’s Literature. She works as a freelance editor, gives writing
workshops, volunteers on the local library board, does chores on the farm,and wears an Elvis watch.
Joyce Frohn has been previously published in Tales of the Unanticipated,
Writer’s Digest and about fifty small press magazines.
Rebecca Frye lives in rural north Georgia with her partner and stepdaughter. She currently works in Human Resources and will begin graduate
school in the fall at the University of Georgia to pursue a career in clinicalSocial Work.
Carolyn Gage is a Lesbian-feminist playwright. She is the author offive books and more than fifty plays, most of them with Lesbian themes.
Her play Ugly Ducklings deals with Lesbian child suicide, and is the subjectof a national documentary released in 2006. Her catalog and more
information about her work are online at www.carolyngage.com
Suzanne Gary: Born in the Midwest, reborn in San Francisco during
the 70’s where I came out with much love and support. Recipient of three
Hopwood Awards for Poetry from the University of Michigan. My work
has appeared in the Berkeley Poetry Review, Sapphire and Plexus. A second
chapbook, entitled Blood in the Water, will be out soon.
Jessica W. Giles is an Assistant Professor of Psychology and Human
Development at Vanderbilt University. Her scholarly research focuses on
the development of social cognition, and she is particularly interested in
gender development, violence prevention, and children’s involvement in thelegal system. Her creative writing deals with themes of femininity, violation,
resilience, emotion, and the sexual body.

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Pat Gowens is the editor of Mother Warriors Voice, a 20 year old, activist,
mothers-in-poverty international newsjournal. As a Lesbian motherist, she
makes sure that each issue of the Voice includes at least 3 pages of LGBT
news and stories, especially struggles for social change. Subscribe for $5$25 (sliding fee). Send to Mother Warriors Voice, 2711 W. Michigan, Milwaukee,
WI 53208; 414-342-0220. Or go to welfarewarriors.org and pay via PayPal.
Morgan Gwenwald has been documenting the women’s/LGBT
community for most of her life, compiling thousands of images of events,
actions and people along with a pioneering portfolio of Lesbian erotic
imagery. Since leaving New York City and moving upstate she has returned
to her exploration of fine art photography, finding joy in those deep andcomplex creative experiences.
Kit Kennedy: My work appears/or will appear in Animus, Bayou,
BombayGin, Buckle &, Clara Venus, The Comstock Review, Defect Cult, fulva
flava, HALJ, I’M HOME: What’s It’s Like to Love a Woman (anthology), The
Harvard Gay & Lesbian Review, Pearl, Phoebe, Rogue Scholars (online), Runes,
Sinister Wisdom (#59/60), and Van Gogh’s Ear. I live in San Francisco.
Lisa Kraft is a 38 year old Jewish Lesbian who still doesn’t know what
she wants to be when she grows up! She dabbles in poetry and writing,painting, and art, and is working hard to find herself. She lives in Oaklandwith her 2 dogs and 3 cats.
Esther Morris Leidolf is an intersex educator/activist with a backgroundin public health data management. Her work has appeared in Sojouner, The
New Internationalist (UK), Our Bodies OurSelves (new edition for a new era)and various intersex publications. She lives in Jamaica Plain with her partner
and their 16 year old son. Her writing can be found at http://
BanterAndMuse.homestead.com and www.mrkh.org. Contact info isbanterNmuse@juno.com.
Sue Lenaerts, a computer professional and photographer, draws on
her earlier experiences producing feminist publications and books to coedit this issue of Sinister Wisdom. An anti-war organizer in the 1960’s, shehelped found the DC Rape Crisis Center in 1972 and the Feminist Alliance
Against Rape in 1974. She was the first out Lesbian to serve on the Prince
George’s County, Maryland, Human Relations Commission. She designs

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and maintains websites, including www.sinisterwisdom.org andwww.welfarewarriors.org.
Angela D. Lester is a 33 year old Lesbian poet currently incarcerated inIndiana. To correspond in friendship, write Angela Lester, 811 West 50 North,
Rockville, IN 47872.
Loonwomon writes in the many voices (and names) of her multiple
selves. Her political writing appears regularly in Rain and Thunder: A Radical
Feminist Journal of Discussion and Activism. Earlier work has been published in
For Crying Out Loud, The Cutting Edge, The Goddess Calendar, Hikane, and Maize.
She began writing in the early 90’s to speak out against and heal from thedevastating effects of surviving a childhood of severe sexual abuse andtorture. She has worked hard to crate a safe life for herself completely separate
from her white middle class family and their involvement with the KKK,
other white supremacist groups, and the multi-million dollar sex industry
that abused her. With the love of her dog and many supportive Lesbians
and her connection with the spirit of the Lesbian land where she lives, she
has moved from basic survival and near constant terror and grief to a life
full of poetry, song, nature, and gardening which she can embrace and live.
Her “Radical Words” can be found at: http://loonwomon.livejournal.com
Jeanne Lupton hosts Synergy Women’s Open Mic in Alameda andleads women’s writing groups in the East Bay. She writes poetry and memoir.
jeany98@aol.com
P. E. MacDavid: I have been writing poetry since the early 80’s. Most
are Lesbian love poems and emotionally driven from falling in love. I haverecently been disabled by an autoimmune disease. This has given me theavenue to pursue my passion for writing.
Trena Machado: I was born in West Virginia and have lived most of
my life in California. The California state of mind is a constant source ofsatisfaction within my bones. I have written all my life and have one book inprint, Out Of Nothing. Four years ago, I started RAW ArT PRESS(www.rawartpress.com) with the goal of providing an affordable path for
the women in my community to be published. I am now working on
publishing What I Want From You: Voices Of East Bay Lesbian Poets, incollaboration with Linda Zeiser, which will be out in 2006.

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Hawk Madrone has been living on remote womensland in southern
Oregon for thirty years, where there are gardens, music, spiritual ritual. Withher animal companions always nearby, she is a woodworker, gardener,
photographer, baker, woodswoman, writer, who, at 67, purposes to do Tai
Chi as a way of life. In addition to her chapbook, Creation Story, her poetry
and prose have been published in Womanspirit; Common Lives/Lesbian Lives;
Natural Bridge; We’Moon:Gaia Rhythms for Women; Manzanita Quarterly; Lesbian
Review of Books; Maize; Harrington Lesbian Fiction Quarterly, and in theanthologies Our Lives: Lesbian Personal Writing; The Poetry of Sex; The Wild
Good; An Intricate Weave; Gardening at a Deeper Level; Small-Town Gay. Her
memoir of life at Fly Away Home, Weeding at Dawn: A Lesbian Country Life,
was published by The Haworth Press in 2000.
Jane Mara is a psychotherapist, writer and mediator laboriously making
her way back into the everyday world after six years of relatively cloisteredspiritual practice. Moving as if through molasses, she finds being with andwriting about dying and death oddly comforting.
Lynn Martin: Poetry published in: Calliope, River City Review, South Florida
Review, The Garden State, Green Mountains Review, Sinister Wisdom, 5 a.m.,Connecticut Review, Earth’s Daughters, Ancient Mariners, Out in the Mountains,
Bloodstone, Sweet Annie Press, The Centennial Review, Friend’s Journal. Anthology:“Heartbeat of New England, James Fowler, editor, 2000 Anthology” ‘Mylover is a woman,” Ballantine Books, Leslea Newman, editor, 1996. Nonfiction published in: Mystery Review, Canada, “Martha Grimes’ Children”,
Spring 2000. 2004—Commentary, NPR in Amherst, MA; Lynn recently
returned from a residency at the Vermont Studio in Johnson Vermont. She
was honored in Washington, D.C. for work in the AIDS epidemic by anational organization called Experience Works, Prime Time Awards.
Janet Mason’s literary commentary is featured regularly on This Way
Out, an international Queer radio syndicate aired on more than 400 radio
stations in the U.S. and also in Australia, New Zealand, and throughout
Europe. She is also a contributor to the Gay and Lesbian Review (from Harvard).
Her poetry and prose has been published in more than 60 anthologies andjournals, including the Exquisite Corpse, the Brooklyn Review, The Advocate, theHarrington Lesbian Fiction Quarterly, and in many previous issues of Sinister
Wisdom. She is the author of three chapbooks of poetry, two from Insightfall 2006

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To Riot Press. She teaches creative writing at Temple University and herbreasts are on a poster. Her piece in Sinister Wisdom #68 — Death, Griefand Surviving is an excerpt from her manuscript Tea Leaves: a memoir of
mothers and daughters. She invites you to visit www.amusejanetmason.com.
Donna Matucci: I have a master’s degree in Education and have beenteaching for 21 years. I teach special education at the elementary level. I am
also a yoga practitioner for 14 years and will be completing yoga teacher
training this summer. I hope to write children’s books in the future. My
writing to this point has been for myself.
Pam McAllister: A life-long reader and writer of poetry, I have studied
with poet Joan Larkin (Housework, A Long Sound, and Cold River). My poems
have been published in Sinister Wisdom, Out of Line,-and Radical America. I
have also had poems accepted for publication in The Penwood Review and in
the anthology Becoming Fire, published by the Andover Newton Theological
School. I have participated, as both author and audience-member, in many
poetry readings. Most of my energy as a published author has gone intowriting nonfiction. I edited the anthology Reweaving the Web of Life: Feminism
and Nonviolence (New Society Publishers, 1982) and Spirit and This River of
Courage. My most recent book, about working against the death penalty, is
Death Defying (Continuum, ’03).
Mary Meriam is a Lesbian poet-activist with an MFA in poetry from
Columbia University. Her poems and essays have been published in So To
Speak, Bay Windows, Queer Ramblings, Wicked Alice, Lodestar Quarterly, Sinister
Wisdom, Street Spirit, and Harrington Lesbian Literary Quarterly. Her chapbook
of sonnets (The Countess of Flatbroke, Modern Metrics, 2006) features a coverdrawing by Sudie Rakusin and an afterword by Lillian Faderman. Find Maryon the Web with her friends at Woman-Stirred http://womanstirred.blogspot.com.
Alice Mohor: I live in a college town in the south. I work out withsmall weights and like to read, watch TV, play croquet, two-step dance, andgo to the movies. My favorite place to be is the beach. I teach elementary
physical education and use poetry that I write to help my students learn,
understand, and enjoy movement.

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Janell Moon: I am a San Francisco bay area poet with four publishedpoetry volumes including The Mouth of Home from Arctos Press. I also havefour spiritual nonfiction books including The Wise Earth Speaks to Your Spirit
from RedWheel/Weiser/Conari.
Louise Moore has been publishing her writing on an ongoing basis forover twenty years. Her writing hats have included art critic, technical writer,
poet and storyteller. Her most recently published poetry appeared in
Cityworks, and annual published by San Diego City College.
Ruth Mountaingrove takes her chosen name from a commune she
lived in 1971 - 72 with her partner Jean Mountaingrove before they were
evicted by a cabal because they were not only feminist but Lesbian. Ruth, at
83, is a poet and a songwriter, a mother and a grandmother. Being a Pisces
she naturally lives next to the Pacific Ocean.
Peggy Neff was the first Lesbian or gay partner to receive an award
from the federal September 11th Victim Compensation Fund. A
photographer and massage therapist, Peg has recently sold the home sheshared with Sheila and moved to Delaware.
Marjory Nelson is a seventy-seven year old radical Lesbian feminist
who lives in a growing community of old dykes in senior housing. She’s
active in OLOC (Old Lesbians Organizing for Change), the History
Committee of the Woman’s Building, and trying to save our Bill of Rights.
Elita Nieri returned home to Lima Peru after living in the US for nearly
30 years. She has magical hands and creates beautiful works of art in avariety of mediums. In her latest creations she turns oranges into exquisite
boxes by cutting an orange in half, turning the orange peels inside out,
drying them on two slightly different-size forms, sanding them and painting
designs or scenes on them.
Laura O’Brady I am a 64 year old disabled Lesbian landyke, trying tosurvive alone after breast Cancer took my partner of 19 years. I write, edit,
garden, feed birds, take care of my land. And grieve.
Marcia Perlstein, Marriage Family Therapist, has been a practicing
therapist, trainer of pre-licensed interns and veteran therapists in Berkeley

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and San Francisco since 1967; currently in Sequim, Washington. In 1974
she edited Flowers Can Even Bloom in Schools which will be re-issued in the
coming year with a violence/ bullying prevention and attention chapter andshe’ll resume consulting in public schools. She is prepared to offer her fiveto ten minute stand-up comedy routine as an opening act to progressive
LGBT and other coalition causes. scraggse@earthlinknet
Meredith Pond shares a home in Takoma Park, MD with another writer
included in this publication, a dog, and an attack cat. Now 58, she wrote her
first poem, “Leaves,” which she sold to her relatives for .25 cents a copy
when she was eight years old. Her current project is a memoir about growing
up in Rhode Island. You can contact her at pondmeredith@aol.com.
Rachel Pray is a writer, naturalist and equine specialist with an M.A. in
English (Creative Writing) from San Francisco State University. Her poetry
and photographs have appeared in various literary journals and magazines,
including The Advocate, Liberty Hill Review, California Quarterly, Mudfish NYC,
The Larcom Review: A Journal of the Arts and Literature of New England, and a
recent anthology, Kiss Me Goodnight: Stories and Poems by Women Who Were
Girls When Their Mothers Died. She was a Finalist in the 2001 National Writer’sUnion Poetry Competition, which was judged by Adrienne Rich. Rachel
lives in Los Angeles with her partner/spouse of fifteen years, Laura
Weinstock, and their daughter, Talya.
Sudie Rakusin is an artist whose love and concern for the Earth andHer creatures influence all of her choices and permeate her work. Sudie’s
art has been widely reproduced in newspapers, magazines, and calendars
and can be found in such books as The Once and Future Goddess by Elinor
Gadon, Seasons of the Witch by Patricia Monaghan, and Wickedary, Outercourse,
Quintessence and Amazon Grace by Mary Daly. Sudie lives outside Hillsborough,North Carolina, on the edge of a meadow with her Great Danes, surroundedby her gardens and the forest. To view more of Sudie’s work, visit her website,www.sudierakusin.com.
Judith Rechter: Originally from St. Louis, MO, but now a native
Californian having lived there much longer. I am bi-city, living between
Berkeley and Santa Monica. I have taught English and Comparative Literaturein MO and CA. I worked in an Arts Program as Writer in Residence inSeattle. I’m now retired. My poetry is published in numerous places. This246

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year I have four poems that will be published in a bay area anthology
published by Trena Machado and Linda Zeister.
Cynthia Rich (b. 1933) is co-author, with Barbara Macdonald, of Look
Me in the Eye: Old Women, Aging and Ageism (Spinsters, 1983, 1991, 2001) andauthor of Desert Years: Undreaming the American Dream (Spinsters, 1989). She
lives in San Diego where she is co-founder of The Old Women’s Project—www.oldwomensproject.org.
Kamila Rina is a passionate disabled poor Jewish low-femme dyke,
poet, and a survivor of child prostitution & pornography. She was born &grew up some in Eastern Europe, but currently lives in Canada with her
precious voice-recognition-enabled computer. She loves books, trees, andchocolate.
Lilith Rogers is a long time writer, gardener and lover of women. You
can order her beautiful CD Rom book Persimmons and Other Lesbian Erotica
by emailing her at Lilithrogers1@Juno.com. She is currently performing
her one woman show “Rachel Carson: Her Life and Work” to great acclaim.
You can email her about that, or call her at 707-523-9907.
Gigi Ross: I see my poetry as part of what seems to be my larger
calling—giving people opportunities to go deeper, getting in touch when
they are at their most authentic. To that end, my recent published poetryhas been in a newsletter devoted to contemplative spirituality and in a bookon group spiritual direction. My own poetic process mirrors myunderstanding of prayer: listening deeply to the true voice inside and thenshaping the poem by letting it be what it wants to be.
Maura Ryan is a feminist femme dyke and scholar of gender andsexualities. She is currently a graduate student in the Department of
Sociology at the University of Florida and studies GLBT social movements
and Lesbian mothers.
Teya Schaffer: My work has appeared in anthologies and journals forover twenty years, most recently in Margie, Bridges, and Coming Out ofCancer. Her book A Ritual of Drowning: Poems of Love and Mourning won the
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teaching grammar is a natural pleasure for someone who loves playing withwords.
Saskia Scheffer: I am Dutch by origin and have been living in New
York since 1981. Mostly I am a self taught photographer, with the help andguidance of a few great teachers and many influences. The 2 images
reproduced in this issue are the result of the desire to photograph what I
felt during a time of deep grief and sadness. They are part of a series called
Bodyworks, in which I used my body to convey an emotion. I could barely
think about my grief, even less talk about it but I very much needed a way toexpress my sadness. The visualization of feelings I could not verbalize was
empowering and healing. It provided an unexpected source of power andstrength.
Carla Schick: I have been previously published in Sinister Wisdom. I
have also been published in the Peralta Press Journal (2000 and 2001), Word isBond, and will be published in the journal Defect Cult. I won an honorable
mention in the 2003 Barbara Mandigo Peace Poetry Prize.
Michelle Sewell is an award winning screenwriter and poet. When
the Jamaican born artist-activist is not behind the mic, she is behind thescenes organizing and collaborating with other poets and performers. Her
work can be found in the Campaign to End AIDS anthology, Port of Harlem(May – July 2004), iRoster.com, and on seeingblack.com. Michelle’s new
anthology, Growing Up Girl: Voices from Marginalized Spaces, was released April
2006. Visit her website: www.thepoetryfix.org
Silverbear (Rand Hall): I have been a part of the Womonwrites family
since 1979. I loved and cared for my partner, Nancy Valmus for 10 years
until her death in 1996. This poem, written in 1995 is the last thing I put topaper until this year. Writing, always a way to deal with the challenges oflife, had become just too painful. Recently I was told that I am still “looking
for another Nancy but won’t find her, she was one of a kind.” I live inFlorida near the Gulf with my kitty, Valentine, but head for the mountains
as often as I can. With the love and guidance of my Native American“grandmothers” I may be on the right path once again. Mitakuye Oyasin(We are all related)248

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Jean Sirius is from Kansas, but likes her home in Oakland better. She is
the author of three books of poetry, including Lesbian Love Poems; a book ofcollage; and three books of photographs. She is white, middle aged, andopinionated. Her website is http://jeansirius.com.
Lynn Strongin b. NYC (1939) grew up during the war years both in the
deep South and in the Northeast. Polio at age 12 left her confined to awheelchair. Soon after, she began to write. Will have 12 books by mid-2006,
work in over thirty anthologies, fifty-five journals. Work recently nominatedfor a Pushcart Prize. Her anthology The Sorrow Psalms: A Book of TwentiethCentury Elegy will be published in June 2006 by the University of Iowa Press.
Sandy Tate opened the first feminist gift store in the country in Los
Angeles in 1975. Member of OLOC, (Old Lesbians Organizing for Change),born 1935, Jewish, working class.
Barbara Taylor: “Each day demands that I write and my fingers touchand feel the earth.” Barbara writes prose and poetry, and is a regular at Live
Poets’ Poetry Slam evenings. The natural environment, politics, peace andwomen are the main themes. Her poems have been in print, on local,
community, national, internet radio and various literary e-zines includingFlashquake, Triplopia, Thylazine, Sinister Wisdom and forthcoming in Harrington
Lesbian Literary Quarterly. Barbara writes from the sub-tropical Rainbow
Region of New South Wales, Australia, where inspiration, peace and freedom
to create, comes from the serenity and beauty of this special area. Samplesof her diverse poetry with audio are at: batsword.tripod.com.
Nancy Taylor: I currently live in Oakland California where I teachEnglish as a Second Language. I have lived in the Middle East, traveledthroughout Europe, and served in the United States Army. I live with mypartner of four years (Stephanie) and our two Maltese dogs, Popi and Cali.
I love reading and writing and walking with my dogs in the Oakland hills.
Stacy Traiger has been in remission from Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma
for seven years. Her writing has appeared in Dykes, Disability & Stuff andSonoma County Women’s Voices. She lives in Alaska with her partner and theirdog.

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Elliott Femynye bat Tzedek: I’m a Jewish dyke writer living in
Philadelphia. I’ve had several pieces in Sinister Wisdom in the past, as well as
poems, essays, and reviews in off our backs, Sojourner, Lesbian Review of Books,
Lesbian Ethics, and other Lesbian and feminist journals and newspapers. I
have pieces forthcoming in The Harrington Lesbian Fiction Quarterly and Poetica,
and work published recently in the online journal Awakened Woman.
Uncumber (Lucinda Sangree) I was born in Arkansas and lived in theSouth until I entered Graduate school at the University of Chicago. In 1957
I moved to upstate NY and have been here, except for two brief periods inAfrica 54-56 and again 63-65. I began writing fiction, memoir, and poetry
after coming out as a Lesbian first to myself and then to friends and family.
Women’s Writing Workshops with Irene Zahava in NY and the Feminist
Women’s Writing Workshop (FW3) based in NY have inspired and helped
me in the past few years. I met my partner 23 years ago. We are both retired.
We have a garden and grow a lot of garlic; we like it, but the deer do not.
Chocolate Waters: During the “second wave of feminism,” Chocolate
Waters was one of the first openly Lesbian poets to be published. A pioneer
in women’s publishing and in the art of performance poetry, she has toured
throughout the United States, but makes her home in Manhattan. Her threecollections: To the man reporter from the Denver Post, Take Me Like A Photographand Charting New Waters were produced by Eggplant Press during 1975-80
and are considered classics of the early women’s movement. HerCD, ‘Chocolate Waters Uncensored,’ which spans three decades ofgroundbreaking work, was released by Eggplant Productions in 2001 andmay be obtained at www.chocolatewaters.com .
Riggin Waugh lives in Takoma Park, Maryland. She has edited two
anthologies: Dykes With Baggage: The Lighter Side of Lesbians in Therapy(Alyson Books, 2000), and Ex-Lover Weird Shit: A Collection of Short Fiction,
Poetry, and Cartoons by Lesbians and Gay Men (Two Out Of Three Sisters
Press, 1994). She has a master of fine arts degree from American University.
Gabriella West: I live in San Francisco and have been published in several
anthologies, including Best Women’s Erotica 2004; Zaftig; Well Rounded Erotica; Hot
Ticket: Lesbians, Sex and Travel and Early Embraces. My first novel Time of Gracewas published in 2002. I’m currently reviewing non-fiction for Publishers Weekly.

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Chana Wilson is a psychotherapist and writer who lives in Oakland.
She is published in the journal The Sun, and several anthologies, including
The Next Step: Out From Under, Mentsh: On Being Jewish and Queer, and I’m
Home: What It is Like to Love a Woman. She is currently completing a booklength memoir about her relationship with her Lesbian mother.
Judith K. Witherow, an American Indian, writes about life experienceswith disability, sexual orientation, race, class and gender. Her work appears
in numerous anthologies, magazines, women’s studies textbooks andLesbian/feminist publications. Judith is on the Board of Directors of Sinister
Wisdom. Her book of poetry All Things Wild was reviewed in Lambda Book
Report. Judith won the first annual Audre Lorde Memorial Prose Contest for
Non-fiction. She was the first female umpire in her county.
www.jkwitherow.com
Linda Zeiser is a poet with a penchant for Asian verse...a teacher, alover, an amazon, a fierce warrior and a Lesbian who unites this East Bay
sisterhood with her Works in Progress venue at Montclair (monthly) and
her landmark Lesbian poetry anthology What I Want From You: Voices Of
East Bay Lesbian Poets, in tandem with publisher Trena Machado of RAW
ArT Press. Linda’s primary purpose in this lifetime is to deepen and enflame”
her sisterhood of fellow Lesbian poets “with a sense of wonder at all they
possess!

Judith’s Dia de los Muertos altar

Photo by Sue Lenaerts

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Sinister Wisdom
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