Getting comfortable with death

I have suddenly realized that I have been enveloped by the idea of death these days. Not in the literal sense but in the literary one. It is part of my research for my dissertation to immerse myself in the literature that examines grief, loss, and commemoration of a loved one after he or she dies. So for more than a year, I have been reading books, journal articles, and any other resource I can find that ties in to this topic of grief as I question how our ability to communicate has led us to share our sad moments in life.

It really only hit me today that I am dwelling in a dark place. Also, that I will be doing so for a prolonged time. I wonder, Do I have enough liquor to sustain me in this trial?

I jest, of course, because I really don’t find alcohol to be a useful medication for me in dealing with difficult things. But if I don’t find the humor in this activity to some small degree, I could get very depressed.

It occurs to me that this is an important strand to pull at, as I dwell in the Village of Rhetoric, located somewhere in the southern region on the map of my Journey to Dissertation.

I have so much I want to tell you. I hesitate, because I think some of you may simply not want to hear it. I also hesitate because others may think it is just plain weird that I would have so much to say about death and the sad losses we human beings bear when a loved one in our life dies.

What’s happening here is interesting. My concern about sharing this topic seems to be unnecessary. That’s because I notice that other people are opening up their feelings publicly -- and not just to intimate friends, mind you -- in a way that suggests we all need and want to talk about this sort of thing.

What do I mean?

The most obvious example has repeatedly popped up on my Facebook page. As I check in periodicallly to see what my Facebook friends are up to, I notice something. Every so often, someone will post a very simple, usually very short, note to mention someone who has died whose death is affecting them in some way.

These mentions are random and usually out of the blue. What I mean is, they usually pop up in an isolated fashion: not as a follow-up post to a prior note about this particular person, but as a distinct, standalone comment. It can be something like, “[Name] is saying goodbye to a wonderful young man who was taken away from us too soon...”

The post then includes a followup sentence asking others to send prayers to his family. In this case, there were at least nine responses to this post on the day that I viewed it.

Perhaps it is because in this social network setting it is easier to express oneself candidly, because any response or reaction will be indirectly conveyed. The original poster can put out the message and not even bother looking back later to see if anyone has responded to this show of emotion. Of course, I’m betting they always do. Most folks on Facebook are there for the engagement, the back and forth discussions if you can call them that.

It’s a way of reaching out, in other words. When you have something difficult to deal with, it is reassuring to deal with it knowing that other people understand, empathize, sympathize or just care enough about you to offer a kind word.

Sometimes, the public expression of sadness over a death morphs into something extraordinary. Another example: the death of a popular professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst recently generated an outpouring of grief responses to a Facebook page created almost immediately after the news of his passing.

On September 17, a friend mentioned the page to me, knowing of my doctoral topic and quest to understand the human need to share our grief. George N. Parks had died the night before at the age of 57. He was a music professor and nationally recognized band leader at UMass, and clearly was beloved by the college community and beyond.

The UMass web site notes that Parks led the Minutemen Marching Band to national prominence during his 33-year career. Under Parks’ leadership, the school band received the Louis C. Sudler Trophy from the John Philip Sousa Foundation in 1998. It is apparently the biggest honor a marching band can get in the U.S. And no doubt, George Parks was much more than that, based on the kind of loving comments posted to his memorial wall on Facebook.

When my friend first told me about the tremendous public response to Parks’ death that had exploded on Facebook, there were about 3,000 fans connected to him and a “wall” of heartfelt messages and memories that went on and on. This was in the span of perhaps 24 hours.

Today, a week and a half later, there are more than 11,000 Facebook fans of the man. Clearly, he touched many lives. The fact that so many would take the time to click on to a social networking site to leave a virtual message to the world is nothing short of remarkable.

This is something worth thinking about. While I have been reading about the way early human beings initially kept “death” to themselves -- a private matter that was confined to in-home wakes where only family members were allowed to share in the grief experience -- I am fascinated by the very ease of our sensibilities in accepting public exposure of our losses. Have we gotten comfortable with death or is it that we have begun to recognize the human need for understanding and compassion, that can only take place through sharing of these painful experiences?

To Maintain Focus, Keep Eye on Prize

OK, I’ll admit it. I am tired. I have been going like hell the past several weeks, juggling work-home-family-school, flying off to West Palm Beach on assignment, sleeping an average of 3.6 hours per night for several nights in a row, yaddah-yaddah-yaddah. Boo hoo, poor me.

Get over it.

I’m not doing anything that any number of other people aren’t doing. I may even be a slacker compared to what some folks are juggling, what with their child-rearing activities and all that. We all lead ridiculously busy lives. I just happen to be trying to squeeze in a research project as well. No big whup.

So where the hell am I with it? Grinding the gears, baby. Yup. Two days of my five-day respite from work (I would use a little known term called “vacation” to identify it, but judging from the way some of my colleagues continue to reach out to me via Blackberry with work requests, clearly I am using an outdated definition of the word. Doesn’t anyone out there respect the phrase, “I am on vacation” even if it means I have not left the country, the state, or even my home, to do this so-called vacationing?)

Have we Americans gone mad, relinquishing our ability or even our inclination to relax? Has the world’s exacerbated economic funk driven us to such a state that we cannot risk taking a handful of days off to find that pleasant life balance that we need, for fear that we might be discovered to be replaceable in our jobs? News flash: No one is irreplaceable in the work place. Move on. Live your life on your terms.

It has taken me well into this second day of my week off -- a week, I dare say, that I had planned to fully dedicate to my research -- to start to feel human. The need for sleep and for a slower pace were apparent by Sunday night. I needed Nyquil to stave off impending flu-like symptoms. Yesterday, I needed a nap by 3 in the afternoon. It’s times like these that you have to listen to that inner voice that’s saying, Something’s got to give, child.

If there is one thing I have learned over the years, it is to listen to that voice. The body knows when it needs a rest, and if you don’t succumb, it will shut you down anyway. You may as well surrender willingly.

So as I sit here noticing that the calendar now shows just three precious business days left in my week off, I am slightly panicked. The good thing is, I am feeling fairly healthy and sufficiently energetic to pick up the ball and start plowing up the middle like Brandon Jacobs. (Look, if I could think of a better runningback on a team other than my embarrassing N.Y. Giants, I would have used it. It just so happens, Jacobs made the news highlights this week so he was fresh in my brain. Besides, it’s a metaphor, for crying out loud. Work with me. Or I’ll throw my helmet at you.)

Reality check: I have just three days this week to get on my horse and get my dissertation proposal in order. That’s because this dissertation process has many hurdles: committees that must approve your topic, deadlines for presentations, and so on. There are many things that slow down the work, even when the student is doing her damndest to speed it along.

Here’s where the panic is coming from: Last week, the new semester started. As a doctoral candidate, I have four opportunities per semester to trek up to Newport and meet with my colleagues in the program. This is an opportunity to air out my topic, ask for suggestions, be inspired by others, etc. Last semester, I missed all four meetings due to work obligations that had me away on business or preparing to do so. The missed meetings set me back considerably for finishing my presentation and obtaining formal approval to move forward.

I am determined not to let the job get in the way again -- even though I am aware that it is my employer who is paying my tuition. I’m sure my employer would like to be finished paying that bill at some point as well, so he would not argue with my desire to achieve that work-life balance that we hear about, if it means I will graduate before I reach retirement age.

I made a point to get up to campus early to meet with my dissertation mentor, Professor One. I had emailed him a copy of my proposal in its revamped form, and was feeling really good about it. I practically stayed up all night the night before, editing it, revising it, rereading it, making sure I had addressed previous concerns from Prof’s Two and Three, while staying on course with Prof. One’s initial comments.

So when I sat down in One’s office, I didn’t expect to hear that I had much more work to do. It wasn’t all bad, though. He recognized the shift I had made in my approach: I am looking at the evolution of the grief memoir, and how technology has affected that evolution. He rattled off a number of literary sources to check out; more reading!

No problem. Love to read. Love to learn. Got it. What else?

Add in a couple of other chapter topics: The history of grief -- right, I do need to look at that; also the history of privacy. The way we have grown to share our grief publicly, it does raise the question, why. Why are we opening up these difficult, painful moments to the world?

Indeed, why. It is the “why” part of the process that I need to explore with reckless abandon. My journalism background has taught me to tie up my stories in a neat little package of “beginning, middle, and end.” Academic writing demands that I dwell in the Village of Rhetoric while I pursue this research. If I am doing it right, I won’t be able to give away the ending too soon, because I will still be figuring out what the ending is.

Aha! So that’s how you do it! Another pot of coffee, please. I need to stay on this for a while longer.

Through us, they live on

I cannot explain it but every time I see the news footage of the South Tower crumbling on 9/11, I always think, “That’s when it happened.”

That’s when the world lost Tommy Foley.

I know that thousands of other innocent people lost their lives that day in tragedies connected to the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. But of the nearly 3,000 people that died that day, the only one I knew was Tommy Foley.

He was a 32-year-old firefighter from West Nyack, New York, assigned to Rescue 3 in the Bronx. His firehouse was one of the first to respond to the Twin Towers on the morning of September 11, 2001; at least, that’s what I recall being told then.

I met Tommy in 2000 when I was freelancing for People magazine, and was assigned the enviable task of interviewing him as one of People’s Top Bachelors of the year. It was the debut of the magazine’s annual bachelor issue, and Tommy Foley was the only non-celebrity of six faces to make the cover. We’re talking big-time celebs like George Clooney and Derek Jeter, whose photos were lined up on the July 10, 2000 issue, among whom Tommy Foley was the only “average Joe.”

I can tell you, Tommy was no average Joe, though he would debate you no end to say he was. I have no doubt that he was one of the FDNY’s bravest, based on what I learned about him both from interviewing him and from having the unpleasant job of interviewing those who loved him, in the days and weeks after he died.

Tommy had been a decorated member of the FDNY for 11 years, following in the family footsteps that led him into a career that he shared with his brother and brother-in-law. Somewhere along the way, he made a dramatic rescue on the job and caught the attention of the news media, which led to exciting opportunities. His good looks and amiable personality landed him bit parts in The Sopranos and Third Watch, and he dabbled in acting and modeling because those opportunities came calling. But he loved his fulltime job and firefighting was his first love.

Tommy knew the importance of family and he played as hard as he worked. He rode a Harley, played football on the FDNY team, and excelled in rodeo bull riding, to name a few of his passions. One part country boy, one part city boy, that was Tommy. He told me once that he loved the fact that he felt equally comfortable in his cowboy hat and jeans as he did dressed up in a tux for a night out in the city. He was right too. He pulled off both, seamlessly.

As we mark another September 11th in our lives, I am compelled to share Tommy Foley with you. Not because I knew him well or even for a long time. I probably had less than a handful of conversations with him over a period of a year, keeping tabs on his career or interviewing him for the magazine. I didn’t need more than that. Tommy Foley invited you into his life. Without intending to, he made an impression.

As an individual, he was genuine; generous with his time and sincere in his wish to be a good person and to have a good life, enjoying his family, friends, and the activities that made him happy. There wasn’t anything that Tommy wouldn’t do to help someone in need. His actions on 9/11 certainly are evidence of that.

There is something about the anniversary of a death that engages our memory. Almost like a switch has been turned on, the mind automatically pushes play, and we revisit, review, relive, and remember the moments of that fateful day in our lives: the day our lives changed.

When a tragic event takes place and affects a great number of people simultaneously, the grief response is as wide as it is deep. It is collective. For Americans, 9/11 triggered a collective grief that seared the psyche of our country and left a giant scar. Because we suffered through this tragedy together, we have a shared pain. So what do we do with it?

As the world recalls the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center that jolted our collective consciousness nine years ago, some of us will publicly memorialize a loved one or will simply acknowledge the tragedy with compassion. Through social networking sites, online memorials, or roadside shrines, we will see the individual responses to this collective grief. What surprises me is how seamlessly this personal messaging converges onto the public landscape.

I have been doing this in referencing my sister, Joyce, in prior blogs and I’ve done it again here in memorializing a remarkable young man that I had the privilege of meeting several years ago. Like my sister, Tommy Foley was one of those uncommon gems you happen upon in life. Individuals of that caliber, you cannot leave in the past. You must bring them with you into your present, into your future.

Why do we do it? Why do we choose to open up our pain to the outside world? I’m working on the long and detailed response to that in my Journey to Dissertation. I’ll be sharing my observations and discoveries here, so if you’re walking with me, you’ll learn as we go.

But I’ll offer the short answer for now because the question requires one. We do it because we all know what it’s like to lose someone. We share our grief because in keeping our loved ones a part of the conversation, we keep them present, we honor their lives, and we continue the relationship with them in a new way.

When you love someone that much, you don’t leave them behind.

For those who never had the chance to know Tommy Foley, consider yourself introduced. Today, in a small way, you know him. And today, because of that, he lives on.

"You Just Keep Thinkin,' Butch"

There is an early scene in the 1969 film, “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” where Butch is challenged to a knife fight by Hole in the Wall Gang member Harvey Logan, who has convinced the underlings in the gang to follow his leadership. As Butch prepares to take on the sizably larger Harvey, he goes over to his sidekick, the Sundance Kid, looking for support as Butch acknowledges that he may be outmatched.

Butch Cassidy: [low voice, to Sundance] Listen, I don't mean to be a sore loser, but when it's done, if I'm dead, kill him.

Sundance Kid: [low voice to Butch] Love to.

It is s subtle exchange that is humorous to the audience, but it conveys a much stronger theme. Loyalty. Friendship. The kind of “I’ve got your back” relationship that needs no words. This is probaby what made “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” one of my sister Joyce’s and my favorite movies. It portrays the kind of relationship Joyce and I had.

So when my husband went down to the local Blockbuster to select a movie to watch with our kids over the weekend, I was pleasantly surprised that he chose a film that has special meaning for me. I wasn’t sure the kids would embrace an old movie that doesn’t have the kind of bawdy humor or wild special effects of today’s cinema. But that didn’t matter. The strong story and entertaining dialogue between the characters have stood the test of time, so why not expose the kids to a great film classic?

What I didn’t realize is that my own re-viewing of the film would open my eyes to the details that took root in me and instilled that “good feeling” that, today, some 30-plus years since I first saw the film, can reignite some of my sisterly memories.

Of course, since I am walking the dissertation path, I see how this is related to my journey. I am exploring the grief memoir as a method of sharing memories of a lost loved one, and exploring how we use different communication vehicles (technologies) to do this. I also am investigating the source of the sharing: our memories, or, to peel back the onion a bit more, our memory: the technology through which the traces embedded in our minds are stored and categorized, ready to be called up in the way we search for a book in the public library’s electronic card catalogue.

I’ve said it before: it’s all connected. That’s how life works, even though we may not consciously realize it much of the time. Let me explain how this random family movie night opened the door to memory for me.

The film stars Paul Newman and Robert Redford as Butch and Sundance, respectively. It is set in the 1890s out west, where they are outlaws who make their living robbing banks and the Union Pacific railroad, until they finally push their luck just a little too far. They draw the ire of the railroad owner, who hires a posse of professional trackers from across the country to hunt down Butch and Sundance and kill them.

Of course, none of those details bear any resemblance to my sister and me or our growing up years. The closest thing to outlaw behavior for us was spraypainting our names on rocks or metal guard rails around town. (So if innocent vandalism counts, then perhaps the outlaw gig was indeed one of our things.)

The similarities I connected with were subtle. For much of the film, Butch and Sundance are riding horses - skillfully so, I’ll add. Riding hard over rough terrain, down steep hills where a horse can fight for its footing - that resonated with me, big time. Horseback riding was our favorite activity, and Joyce and I rode as often as we could. We were fortunate in this hobby: we grew up next door to cousins who owned horses, and who shared them with us without hesitation. We could hike up through the woods next door and saddle up, barely having to ask permission.

Then we would ride for hours. We would canter through wooded paths, gallop across fields, jump over rocks and ditches, and fight to slow a hard trot when we made that turn for home and the horses, Dandy and Supreme (or Premie, as we called him), knew their exercise was ending for the day.

It was bliss. Joyce had loved horses since she was a very young girl and she taught me everything she knew. She taught me how to ride. While I wasn’t as fearless around the horses as Joyce was, I became more comfortable and soon acquired my own solid skills in the western riding style. We loved it.

In researching the details of “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” I learned that it was filmed in several locations, but the places that stood out for me are two that Joyce and I had on our list of “places to visit on our cross country trip.” This was the trip we would take “one day,” when we both graduated college but before we settled in to the routine and responsibilities of adult careers and lives.

When we talked about Colorado and Utah, it was with a wholesome childhood perspective. We loved the outdoors and appreciated the beauty of nature, and these two states out west, particularly Colorado, were the epitome of nature’s beauty for us. We had to see it for ourselves. As it turned out, it is a trip that we never got to take.

Beyond the scenery and the horses, the film spoke to me the loudest in the close friendship that jumps off the screen in Newman and Redford’s portrayals of Butch and Sundance. With every humorous jab on screen, I was reminded of the playful manner in which Joyce and I would kid each other. Our camaraderie and loyalty was unwavering, built over the years through the experience of being outnumbered in a family of five brothers. We had each other’s back. We could joke around with each other because we knew, at the heart of our sisterly friendship, was a deep and abiding love.

I was Butch to Joyce’s Sundance. I was the idea generator and Joyce was my true-blue, encouraging sidekick. So perhaps the film has an old message, made fresh for me in my dissertation journey. Joyce continues to inspire me, and perhaps even guide me, since through watching this old favorite movie, I have discovered something about the way memory works.

It is always there to draw from, even if we are not sure we will be able to recover it, at will. Sometimes, a memory is served up when we least expect it. That’s the beauty of memory. It is ours forever.

I can still hear Joyce citing the repetitive line from the movie, just the way she did when we would be conjuring up our plans back in the day.

You just keep thinkin', Butch. That's what you're good at.