I Bought Fionn a Nerf Gun

Dear Mike,

I never thought I'd do it but I bought Fionn a Nerf gun.  I have been 100% anti-gun since you died.  I don't know what I was before but I was totally ANTI-gun after.  When we were going through the process of checking this school out for Fionn, attending Free School 101, applying, interviewing, attending experience days and then deciding to give it a shot I was aware I was going to have to step out of my comfort zone if he was going to attend the school that seemed to be the best fit for him.  I learned that in the current culture of the school a popular game was zombies and the kids used toy guns with no ammunition.  They had rules about playing with guns...you can only point at someone if it's okay with them and there was no use of ammunition ie. suction darts, or other foam bullet type things.  I actually thought the rules were reasonable.  I also recognized that my extreme sensitivity to guns was because of my personal experience, not Fionn's or probably anyone else's at the school.  I didn't think it was fair for him to miss out on a potential wonderful, perfect for him opportunity because I was hypersensitive.  So, I decided to be okay with him playing guns at school according to the rules and maintaining out rules at home.  At home there is no pointing guns (or gun like gestures or things) at people.

But just the other day I saw we may have to enter a new level.  Fionn has adjusted well at school and while it has taken some time, probably do to his infrequent attendance, he has made some real connections at school and has a few friends.  He was invited to a birthday party.  It's a Nerf Gun War theme...bring your own Nerf guns and ammunition.  Playing with Nerf guns and no ammunition is one of his favorite things to do at school with friends.  I wanted him to be able to attend and participate with the others.  I want him to feel like he belongs.  So I bought him a Nerf suction dart gun and he'll have one to use at the party.

Afterwards, I still couldn't believe I did it.  ME...buy him a toy gun.  I'm okay with it though.  I recently told him how you died.  I didn't go into much detail but he knew you were shot with a gun.  He was sad for me...that my brother had died.  I left it at that.  But, I think it's important too for anyone playing with toy guns to know that real guns DO kill people.

I am still anti-gun.  No one will will ever convince me that it's a good idea to carry a gun or keep a gun at home.  I will never be comfortable around guns.  I will never cross the line into supporting guns for sport for my family.  But, I can support my kids playing toy guns with friends within the parameters we've agreed on.  And most of all, I can support their having and experiencing wonderful opportunities in this world despite my hyper-sensitivity.  So, while I realize some may feel guns for sport or protection might be a wonderful experience, I also know it might not be too and that's a risk I'm not willing to take.

Love,

Gabby

Even More Pictures of You

Oh my gosh, Mike!!!  I found tons of pictures.  And best of all I found the picture of you fixing the Christmas village piece.  It's the one that I have always felt encompassed the overwhelming quality of you.  Like, if you had to choose one description of you, it would sum it up...likes to tinker, take things apart, and fix things or create them into new things.

But it's funny how our mind holds some things to such high esteem and in reality at any given moment something else says so much more to us at the time.  I also found a picture of you doing a wheelie.  I don't remember the picture but, man, it's awesome.   It totally makes me think of the similarities you and Fionn hold.  So today that one is my favorite.  There is one too of you from the last Christmas we shared together.  If I could put that smile into the Christmas village picture I would.  And you were smiling over razors!  

There's a picture of you, Matt and Grandma on your trip back east.  You all look so poised.  And there's another one of the popular golf bag and clubs Christmas present but this one has Grandad too and your expression is priceless.

I also found the pictures of the funeral, a concept that will never settle well with me.  You should have seen our faces.  So strong or maybe even frozen so as not to shatter, yet so, so deeply sad.  I can remember when mine shattered.  I had wanted them to play Tears in Heaven  during the funeral and they told me there wasn't enough time to with all the other specific requests.  I was really disappointed.  And then, out of the blue, there it was playing, but I hadn't expected it, and I just cried.  I couldn't hold it in anymore.  I'm crying now too.  I heard that song on the radio on Friday when leaving the parking lot at Fionn's school.  I was crying and thinking to myself, that if you ever really love a song and you want to keep loving it, then don't play it at a funeral.  You'll always be reminded of being there and feeling the way you did.

Is that what I've been doing all these years, trying not to shatter?  But every so often a few pieces start to fall and I'm left scrambling to pick them up and glue them back on before more and more and more fall off.  By now I think the adhesive is old and it just isn't going to hold up.  The door to my creative soul has opened and its coming out.  

So without further ado here's the pics I told you about, sans the funeral ones.

Anyway,  I did some sketches I'll tell you more about another time.  I also found the books that hold the primary sketches that started all this thirteen or fourteen years ago.  

Love,

Gabby

VULNERABLE

Dear Mike,

I'm feeling too vulnerable.  I'm not sure that I can share all I wanted to with the world.  I hope you can understand.  I think in this case and several others a picture is worth a thousand words.  So I need some time to create what I have to say.

Love,

Gabby

My Broken Heart

Dear Mike,

I was at church recently and was introduced, through the sermon, to Parker Palmer.  It talked of this concept he coined, the broken open heart.  This time that I went it was like the sermon was made for me personally.  Here's Parker's explanation of the broken-open heart.

"There is no way to be human without having one’s heart broken. But there are at least two ways for the heart to break— using “heart” in its root meaning, not merely the seat of the emotions but the core of our sense of self.

The heart can be broken into a thousand shards, sharp-edged fragments that sometimes become shrapnel aimed at the source of our pain. Everyday, untold numbers of people try without success to “pick up the pieces,” some of them taking grim satisfaction in the way the heart’s explosion has injured their enemies. Here the broken heart is an unresolved wound that we carry with us for a long time, sometimes tucking it away and feeding it as a hidden wound, sometimes trying to “resolve it” by inflicting the same wound on others.

But there is another way to visualize what a broken heart might mean. Imagine that small, clenched fist of a heart “broken open” into largeness of life, into greater capacity to hold one’s own and the world’s pain and joy. This, too, happens everyday. We know that heartbreak can become a source of  compassion and grace because we have seen it happen with our own eyes as people enlarge their capacity for empathy and their ability to attend to the suffering of others."

I wondered how is it possible to transform my heart, the one on the floor in a thousand shards.  So I may have picked up a few pieces over the last couple of years, but I can't do that my whole life.  I have felt a tremendous healing but I know there is still significant wounds.  I have just started on the road of thinking I have to open my eyes and heart and face it.  Then I read this.

"First, in a culture where the answer  to the question “How are you? ” is supposed  to be “Just fine” even when we are not , we must  learn to acknowledge and name our suffering honestly and openly to ourselves and to others. This is called “becoming vulnerable”—a hard thing to do in a culture that does not respect the shadow, where even among friends we are at constant risk of someone trying to “fix us up,” an act that drives the suffering soul back into hiding no matter how well - intended . We need to find a trustworthy friend or two who knows what it means simply to receive and bear witness to our pain. As we cultivate such relationships, we will find ourselves rewarded with a comforting,  “Welcome to the human race.”  

Second, once we have named and claimed our suffering, we must move directly to the heart of it, allowing ourselves to feel the painfully, rather than doing what our culture teaches numbing it with anesthetics, fleeing from it with distractions, or fighting it off by blaming and attacking the external source.  The only way to transform suffering into something life-giving is to enter into it so deeply that we learn what it has to teach us and come out on the other side.  Third, if we are to learn from our suffering, we must cre-ate a micro-climate of quietude around ourselves, allowing the turmoil to settle and an inner quietude to emerge,  so “that of God within us” can help us find our way through. Nurtured by silence, we can stop taking our leads from the voices of ego and world and start listening instead to the still, small voice of all that is Holy.

None of  this can be done on the cheap.  It requires what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called “costly grace.”  But if we are willing to pay the cost, that grace will be given and we will purchase the pearl of great price — a chance to participate in God’s continuing creation of  the beloved community."

While I think about transforming MY broken heart into the broken-open heart I can see that mine might take  on another aspect too.  I have to do something with all the mental imagery it carries with it.  My heart and soul can carry only so much at a time.  But, as I experience the release I feel when I write you a letter, or Fionn a letter, or work on the art gallery in my head, I can feel the clarity of mind they provide.  I long for an even greater clarity.  Or is it clarity?  Maybe simplicity is it.  The film playing in my head, or the picture I look at trying to figure out how to convey the image through my lens, or the strobe of an image waiting to be unleashed.  It would be nice to be alone in my brain with nothing fluttering about for a while.

Love,

Gabby

P.S. Ivan is working on some awesome photography right now.  You'd love it.  

Pictures of You

Dear Mike,

Aunt Martha visited a couple of months ago.  She brought some great pictures.  There is an awesome one of you skateboarding which for me is heartwarming to see.  I guess it's because it's you in your element but before I can remember some of the more difficult times together.  I also love how mom is looking at you in the first picture.

Mom and you

Christmas

Same Christmas

I love how excited you look.

At Grandma and Grandad's, August 1980.

Matt and Mike licking the batter, August 1980.

Reading.

Red hat Christmas, 1982

Mike and Matt playing roller hockey.

Mike, Christmas 1984.

Mike, Matt & Andy, Christmas 1984.

Squished family photo,1985.

Skateboarding, 1988.

I tried to put them in chronological order.  It's a little hard in the middle.  Just looking at these makes me smile.

Love,
Gabby

My Great Sadness

Dear Mike,

I really miss you.  I so often struggle this time of year and frankly it's unfair since your birthday is what starts the fall for me and then the remaining three months are a whirlwind of birthdays, feast days, Saints days we celebrate, the anniversary of your dying and the holidays.  Did you realize that we start with your birthday September 28, our feast day September 29, Kerrigan's birthday October 15, Halloween, The Day of the Dead November 1, and All Saints Day November 2, Corrianna's birthday November 4, Fionn's birthday November 9, Sabrina's birthday November 17, the anniversary of your death is also November 17, Dad's birthday November 28, Thanksgiving, Andy and Drew's feast day is in November I think, St. Nicholas Day December 6, St. Lucy's Day December 13, Andy's birthday December 23, and Christmas December 25?  This is in conjunction with normal life.  It's all important to me.  I appreciate all of it.  I want to share the traditions with my family and with my nieces and nephews.  And I didn't include the holiday baking, crafting, and sewing that my soul enjoys.

BUT, inevitably the great sadness, my great sadness, appears.  And while I don't succumb to it in the way I did before I had kids, I struggle to be present and to have the drive to accomplish and celebrate what I hope to.  I feel badly for my heart not being in it.  I hate just trying to pull off the kids birthdays rather than bathe in the joy that they bring.  I regret that sharing traditions and the joy of this season with my children is a struggle for me to provide even a half-hearted experience.  Kids FEEL that.  They will carry that with them.

I miss you.  I miss you every year, countless times a year, but this year I miss you more.  It's not the same pain as other years.  I miss our family too.  I anticipated Dad, Matt and his family and Mom coming out to visit this Christmas and in February but life happens and trips have been cancelled or postponed.  I totally get it but it's still sad for me.  It's the first time I can remember being truly homesick except there's no home where I'm from.  It's the first year I'm irritated Mom's in Ireland and not closer by.  I'm not mad at anyone.  I just miss my peeps.

When grandma or granddad died, I forget which one, mom asked if we wanted some of the ashes from the cremation.  I thought that was so weird at the time.  Now I get it.  It sucks to live so far away from your grave.  It would have been nice to save some to spread somewhere close by so I could visit you.  I came across your shirt I stole while redoing the closet.  It's the one of the skull with the patriotic top hat, I think.  It's incredibly worn out.  I used to sleep in it.  It has so many holes I had to safety pin it to the hanger.  I should burn it, carefully, and save the ashes and spread them at a river here.  Then I could visit you.  Maybe Kerrigan can help me with it.

Love,

Gabby

P.S. I didn't realize it was the sadness I felt until I discovered the tears chomping at the bit to get through the door, the door of my heart.

I Can Cope, Could You?

Dear Mike,


I often find myself looking back at some of my really tough times in life, struggling to cope.  I didn't even realize I didn't have the skills to cope.  Or, they weren't honed enough for me to reach into my tool bag and grab a tool for the difficult thing I was faced with.  I had a few brief periods where I drank too much.  I just didn't want to feel. Later in life I started cutting.  That was by far the most shameful thing I have done.  While I'm not ashamed of it now...it has taken some time to feel strong enough to be honest about that time in my life.  I just consider that I was really sick.  Struggling so much I could not get out of the very deep dark hole I had fallen in.  It was a release of the self hate building pressure until I felt I would explode. And then I'd cut myself with a No. 11 Exacto blade. Usually at least twice.  I have thirty or forty scars from it all on my forearm.  I don't care that people can see it now.  If someone were to ask me about it I'd first think that was a really bold question, but I'd be honest.  What is there really to be ashamed of.  It's the same as any other harmful coping mechanism, just not as popular and it leaves a permanent reminder of that time in your life.  When I was hospitalized after the first miserable attempt at cutting myself I learned a lot.  I learned it was like anxiety and that when I feel that restlessness inside I should do something with my hands.  I learned you should never reread your journals.  You re-experience all those horrible feelings you may have released and you experience those feelings all over again.  I learned to say what I was needing when my needs from someone were not being fulfilled.

When Fionn was around 2.5 years old his usual meltdowns had gotten especially horrible.  These were not the typical terrible twos tantrums you hear about.  They were increasingly louder and becoming more violent in nature.  I began to feel fear from them sometimes.  After discussing what was going on with someone knowledgeable, whom I respected and trusted, it had never occurred to me I hadn't taught him how to express his feelings, given him words for his feelings, showed him other safer actions he could do to express how he was feeling.  I hadn't given him skills to cope.  It was the second blind spot I realized I had in parenting.  The first really being rather insignificant in comparison.  I was embarrassed and felt so badly that I had partly created what was happening.  We worked for a solid year before really seeing the fruits of our labor of giving him these skills, words and tools to use.  I see now we still have to really keep an eye out and help him to reach into his tool bag and choose a tool to cope with whatever he is faced with at the time.  Sometimes it's dark in that bag and there's no light nearby.

I wonder...could you cope?  What were your tools?  I can think of obvious unhealthy tools you had.  Drugs, alcohol, maybe even some adrenalin rushes from extreme risk taking.  As I think more I would say art and even poetry.  Dad has one of your journals and you have this poem or rap that you wrote about the cops.  Then I wonder how much art is an expression of one's self vs. one's feelings.

I don't bring up this topic to blame anyone at all.  It's just that now that I'm a parent and have been I can see that despite the very best of intentions we all have blind spots or at least I do and I wonder if you LEARNED healthy, effective ways to cope or you happened upon them.  I can imagine how much of what you went through would have been so much more difficult to handle with a missing tool bag.

Love,

Gabby

P.S.  I've taken a somewhat conscious break from this blog.  While I feel it is a good thing for me,  I struggle to find the balance of having the emotional space I need to dig around in this part of me and to be present for my children.  But I was reminded that this great sadness keeps showing up and it may be valuable to listen to it.  I do truly believe that but it's really very scary for me to do.  I don't exactly have a good track record.