9/11: A Personal Grief

I first posted this back in 2015. It seems to be as valid now as then, although I have made significant progress in my recovery from PTSD since then. 9/11, while still powerful, is no longer the single defining tragedy of our time. The COVID-19 pandemic and the criminally negligent US reaction are. My heart goes out to all those who lost loved ones in NYC, and more recently in hospitals, hospices, and alone at home. May these words lighten your grief.

At this time of year, I often feel out of step with the rest of the country. Like just about everyone else I know who's old enough to remember the events of 9/11, I have a vivid memory of how I learned about them. I was driving my younger daughter to high school and we were listening to the news on the car radio. We heard the announcer cry, "The second Tower is down!" and the rest of the story tumbled out. The way the events unfolded reminded me poignantly of John F. Kennedy's assassination. I was in high school in 1963, just about the same age my daughter was on 9/11. Listening to the news broadcast with her, I experienced a parallel of my own youthful experience. Once again, the world became to be a dangerous and unpredictable place, but for me it was not the first time. I too responded with a feeling that the world has changed forever, but I also had the memory of having walked through this before -- and not just the Presidential assassination.

For me, Septembers will never be solely about 9/11. In this month in 1986, my mother was raped and beaten to death by a neighbor kid on drugs. It was a spectacularly brutal, headline-banner crime, but only part of a larger tragedy, for his own family had suffered the murder of his older brother by a serial killer some years before. My body knows when the anniversary is approaching, even when my thoughts are distracted. The shift in the quality of the light at summer's end reaches deep into my nervous system. The scar tissue on my heart aches. The ghosts of things that once held the power to drive me crazy stir in the darkness. My sleep becomes fragile, even though I no longer have nightmares. It's a hard time, an intensely personal time.

One thing I have learned over the years is that grief isn't fungible; you can't compare or exchange one person's experience with another's or say, This one's pain is two-thirds the intensity of that one's. Grief is grief; loss is loss. There's no benefit to anyone in comparisons. And no one else can do the hard emotional work of healing for us.

Around me and in the media, I see public displays of remembrance and more often than not, I feel reluctant to share mine. For one thing, I've lived with my story for over three decades and I've had extensive trauma therapy, but the person I tell it to is hearing it for the first time. "My god," they say, "how did you live through that?" At most times of the year, it's a gift to be able to sit with them, give them time to catch up, and to share a little of what I've learned about healing. But not this season. I need to have a time just for my own grief, a time that is just for my mother.

[personal] My Mother Was Murdered, and That's Why I Oppose the Death Penalty

The Department of Justice recently announced its intention to resume executions. I am appalled by this decision, and this is why:

In 1986, my 70-year-old mother was asleep in her own bed when a teenage neighbor broke into her home, raped her, and then beat her to near death and left her face down in a partially filled bathtub. It was a spectacularly brutal, banner headline crime, called by the District Attorney one of the most heinous in the history of the county.

Even in light of what happened, I am opposed to capital punishment, and I'd like to tell you why. I want to emphasize that I do not speak for anyone else. We all have different experiences, different histories, different internal and external resources. If there is one thing I'd like you to take away from my story, it is that not all the families of murder victims want the perpetrators to be executed.

I believe that capital punishment harms the survivors by interfering with the natural recovery process. In other words, when we focus on revenge instead of healing, we never heal.

A number of years ago, when I was being interviewed about my mother's death, the interviewer said to me, “You seem like such a sweet person. Most of us just aren't that spiritual.” What she meant was, “How could you not want revenge?” What I thought was, You have no idea how angry I was and how much I wanted to hurt the man who did this.

The rage I felt and that I've heard expressed by other murder survivors is so overwhelming, it's hard to find words to describe it. You feel as if your skin is going to crack open and out will pour enough molten hatred to incinerate the entire world. For years after my mother's murder, I obsessed over exactly how I would kill the perpetrator with my bare hands and how much I wanted him to suffer for every moment of terror and pain he'd caused her. The images were so vivid, I couldn't tell if I was awake or dreaming.

Adrenaline-fueled anger enables us to get through those early days and weeks. It sharpens our senses and focuses our thoughts. Our hearts pump faster. Biologically, we are primed to do whatever is necessary to meet the threat. We don't feel our own injuries, either of body or of mind or spirit. All our resources are devoted to our immediate survival. In some circumstances, this lasts only a short period of time. I know people who have lost loved ones to murder, but in that same incident, the murderer was also killed. At the other extreme are instances where the perpetrator is never discovered and the survivors must cope with the nightmare of walking down the street, suspecting every passer-by or wondering if the murderer has taken another life. I know people in that situation, too.

Anger and the craving for revenge are normal reactions when someone you love has been viciously attacked, their dignity as well as their lives stripped from them.  At the same time, these feelings fuel the illusion that retribution erases pain, and popular media constantly reinforce this illusion.

Paris, Grief, and Healing

Lots of folks have posted on the recent terrorist attack in Paris. I don't have much to add, but I do feel moved to re-post some thoughts from years ago, about 9/11 and the anniversary of my mother's murder, also in September. A few of the references are dated, but the process of coming to terms with trauma remains valid for me.








What has changed for me this year is that I have begun to work for the abolition of the death penalty. Speaking only for myself, I see strong parallels between a murder victim family seeking this form of revenge and the vilification of the Muslim community concurrent with the invasion of Iraq. Of course, justice is desirable. Criminal acts call for appropriate consequences. I would never say that it’s okay for my mother’s killer to walk the streets or that those responsible for the 9/11 attacks should not be prosecuted according to law. Setting aside the politics of that invasion and the problems with the application of capital punishment, however, my concern is with whether retaliative actions help or hinder the recovery of the survivors.

My own experience is that revenge does not. I want to emphasize that I do not speak for anyone else. We all have different experiences. For me, focusing on wishing harm to the one who had harmed my mother might well have kept me locked — incarcerated — in a state of bitterness and hatred. While I was in no way to blame for what happened, I still bear the responsibility for what I do with it. It’s like the adult child of an alcoholic getting herself into therapy instead of whining helplessly, attributing all her problems to her upbringing.

I have to ask myself, What do I need? What do I want? One of my inspirations was a woman of astonishing kindness and grace, whose daughter and son-in-law were murdered and whose bodies she discovered. She told me that she faced a choice of whether or not to let herself be driven crazy by what she experienced. I think we all have that choice — to succumb to the darkness of our anguish and righteous fury, or to walk through it, to move beyond it.

I remember the scene in The Princess Bride where Inigo Montoya finally tracks down Count Rugen, who begs for his life and offers anything. Inigo says, “I want my father back!” (and then kills him). I want my mother back, too. All those who lost loved ones and colleagues want them back. We know that’s impossible, but what is possible is to get our own lives back. Our own selves. Our best selves.

My experience of healing is that I get myself back when I focus on re-engaging with life, on fully experiencing my feelings, on understanding what I have lost and what can never be replaced, but what can be restored. The more I stop looking to an external event (the execution of the murderer) to somehow make me feel better or “achieve closure,” and instead focus on taking care of my insides — my heart, my spirit, my body — the better I fare.

So I’ve been talking about my own healing process and what I’ve learned. I’ve been meeting with other family members and with people who’ve been sentenced to death and then exonerated. I’ve been looking for ways to build bridges, to nourish tolerance and reconciliation, to create understanding. I make an ongoing conscious decision to not harbor hatred in my heart, but to fill it instead with what I want in my life.

Love. Compassion. Gratitude. Joy. Wonder. Peace.

I can think of no more fitting memorial for my mother . . . or for those who died on 9/11.

Peter Jackson’s Middle Earth – Unexpected Gifts

It has often seemed to me that fans of J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings (and The Hobbit) fall into two categories: those who adore Peter Jackson’s films and those who despise them. I fall into the former category and my husband into the latter. From our conversations, I have concluded that in most cases, it is impossible to change the other person’s mind (not to mention disrespectful to try). This is hardly a problem of cosmic importance, unless one person attempts to drag the other to all six extended cut versions of the movies or prevents the other person from enjoying them. Both sides put forth arguments and reasons, and they are entitled to them. I think just about everything that can be said has already been expounded upon.

I am firmly in the love-them camp. All the objections folks have are absolutely right, and have no relevance to my experience of the movies. The uncritical, immersive, “take me away” quality of my enjoyment of the films has definitely piqued my curiosity. What happens when I spend hours in Jackson’s Middle Earth?

In general, I am far less critical of visual media than of text. Because my own art form is prose, I have developed a keen internal editor and critic that may be regaled to the back seat but never entirely departs. I have no such filters for films or paintings. Only a horrifically bad film can destroy my suspension of disbelief, but horrifically bad films are enjoyable for quite different reasons than good ones.

I devoured Tolkien’s novels as a young adult, although I never wanted to run away to Middle Earth then. I found some aspects of the books frustrating: the “travelogue” passages were often tedious, I had no idea what Tom Bombadil was doing in the story, and I had trouble forming clear images of many of the places, for example Helm’s Deep. Nonetheless, I joined the ranks of fans wearing buttons that said “Frodo Lives!” and “Beware the Balrog.” I stood in line to see the films by Ralph Bakshi and Rankin-Bass (The Hobbit and The Return of the King), all of which I found unsatisfying. The hobbits and dwarves in the animated versions were silly, in bad need of haircuts, and the Bakshi film was just plain weird. The orcs looked like sabertoothed Sand People (from Star Wars), the Balrog was a costume from a bad opera, Boromir looked ridiculous in a Viking helmet, and none of the character moved in a natural way. Et cetera.

I had no idea who Peter Jackson was, but special effects had come a long way since the 1970s. Needless to say, I had excitement but not high hopes. I came prepared to see a live action version of the previous attempts. Five minutes into The Fellowship of the Ring, I was in love. The Jackson films “clicked” for me and brought the stories alive in ways that previous versions, even the original text, fell short.

This is not to say that everyone must feel the same way. Different media and different interpretations work for different people. I’m delighted that some folks prefer Tolkien’s text or even the animated versions. I am also delighted that this one form of presentation worked so well for me. When I go back and re-read the books, I can now immerse myself in the rich and varied landscapes of Middle Earth, and see and hear the characters.

After the extended editions of all three Ring movies came out on DVD (and I had watched all the commentaries and appendices), I set them aside. Every few years, however, I would watch them (3 movies over 2 days, usually, and when my husband – who is in the “doesn’t work for me” camp – was out of town). Either by happenstance or internal prompting, my schedule synchronized with the parole hearings of the man who raped and murdered my mother. That is, I’d gear up for the hearing, get re-traumatized no matter what precautions I took, come home and fall apart, and slowly put myself back together again. Some quality of the Jackson films spoke to me and offered itself as a healing tool.

Memoir, Cancer, And Tent Camping: My Friend Connie

When a friend or family member is diagnosed with cancer, the effects ripple through the community. If we and our friend are relatively young, we may feel shock but also a sense of insulation. We have not yet begun to consider our own mortality, or the likelihood of losing our peers to accident or one disease or another. It hasn’t happened to us yet and the odds are still in our favor, particularly if we don’t smoke or drive drunk, we exercise and eat many leafy green vegetables. As the years and the decades go by, most of us will see an increase in morbidity if not mortality in our friends. They – and we – may develop osteoarthritis or Type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, all those common ailments of aging.  Some of us will get cancer.

When my best friend Bonnie was diagnosed with ovarian cancer about 5 years ago, she was the closest friend I had who had cancer. Since then, other friends have been diagnosed and some have died; Bonnie died in October (peacefully, at home). One of the things Bonnie did way back when was find support groups for women with cancer. Maybe it’s a holdover from the consciousness-raising groups of the 1970s, but it’s practically a reflex: whatever is going on in your life, you grab a bunch of women to talk it through. Do men do this, too? If so, it’s a secret from me.

It turned out that a cluster of women who were at college with us at the same time and who still lived in the area wandered through these groups at one time or another, or were otherwise associated with this community. Some have also died, some aren’t doing too well the last I heard, and some are thriving. One of these is my friend Constance Emerson Crooker.

Connie and I weren’t close in college, but it was a small school and everybody pretty much knew one another in passing. She wasn’t an avid folk dancer or a Biology major like me, but she and Bonnie stayed in touch so I’d hear about her from time to time. Connie was one of those who stepped up to the plate in Bonnie’s final weeks, and I was not only grateful for the extra and very competent pair of hands but for the chance to get to know her better.

Healing Stories From The Heart

I know this journey well, for it was one of the lifelines that carried me back from my personal

abyss, which I’ve written about before and will do so again. I have heard a dozen variations of what brought writers to their knees and how they found the words to spin despair into hope. Although particular circumstances differ, as does the degree of incapacity, we have enough in common to recognize our kinship. We are those for whom the stories-of-the-heart have been a beacon, a sustenance, and a means of growing even stronger as we heal.

Sometimes, the very act of writing – no matter what the subject matter – helps us to focus. There’s nothing like a thorny plot twist or a challenging bit of dialog to distract us from other problems. Joseph Conrad said, “It’s work that saves us,” and this is as true for writing as for any other endeavor. Stories, unlike so much of real life, must have structure and meaning.

Some stories, on the other hand, do more than provide a framework for intellectual problem-solving. Whether they are characters, situations, or entire worlds we know and love, or whether they arise during our time of crisis, they speak to us – they call to us. They give us a voice. Perhaps a new voice, perhaps one we have lost or that life has battered out of us. Or maybe it is simply that when we are pushed to the wall, emotionally or physically, we need to connect with what gives us joy. Wellsprings of secret delight and unabashedly un-guilty pleasures. And healing.

The Season Political

Whether I agree with them or not, it seems that many other folks are holding forth in much more articulate and media-savvy, not to mention louder, ways than I. While I occasionally pass on links to suchlike, I don't generally jump into the fray.

But this is an election year.

I'm not going to hold forth on candidates or political parties. Most of you either agree with me or there's nothing I can say to change your mind and certainly not worth damaging a valuable relationship by screaming at each other.

But this is an election year.

And there's an issue on the California ballot that I do feel strongly about. It's Measure 34, the SAFE California Act, that replaces the death penalty with life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. I can give you all the calculations about how many tens of millions of dollars it's going to save and the risks of executing innocent people and the percentages of violent crimes that go unsolved because the funds go to a system that even its advocates admit is broken beyond repair. You can look them up for yourself. For me, such arguments are best left to activists.

I'm not an activist. I'm the family member of a murder victim, the very person who might be expected to support capital punishment.

Writing, Healing, Telling the Truth

I frequently recommend Louise DeSalvo's wonderful book, Writing as a Way of Healing: How Telling Our Stories Transforms Our Lives (Beacon Press, 2000). Now, there are a lot of books about journaling as either therapy or spiritual development, or just plain self expression. This books tackles a much tougher issue: how writing can help us heal from major trauma, from unendurable abuse. Not just any free form writing, but a very specific way of honoring and integrating what happened and how we felt. Benefits are supported by research -- not only psychological but physical as well.

If this sounds all very well, consider this paragraph, which really went zing for me: DeSalvo writes about all the things she did not know, growing up, about what it means to be a writer:

I didn't know that if you want to write, you must follow your desire to write. And that your writing will help you unravel the knots in your heart. ... I didn't know that if you want to write and don't, because you don't feel worthy enough or able enough, not writing will eventually begin to erase who you are.

Erase who you are. Yes, it will, it can and it does. I sat there, in that shiver that says This Is The Absolute Truth.

I am not sure I am called to write in the particular way DeSalvo describes, but this I know. Unless I write the stories that are in my heart and unless I write them true, then I will slowly lose myself.

Murder, the Death Penalty, and Cancer, a personal perspective

Twenty-five years ago, my mother was raped and beaten to death by a teenaged neighbor on drugs. My mother was 70 years old and had been his friend since the time he was a small child. For a long time, I didn't talk much about it except in private situations. This was not to keep it a secret, but to compartmentalize my life so I could function. At first, it was too difficult and then, as the years passed, I refused to let this single incident be the defining experience of my life. Recently, however, I have felt inspired to use my own experience of survival and healing to speak out against the death penalty. I don't write this to convince you one way or another on that particular issue, but to try to illuminate how the two issues are related for me.

My mother's murder was a spectacularly brutal, headline-banner crime, but it was only part of a larger tragedy, for the perpetrator's family had suffered the murder of his older brother some years before. I knew this, but for a long time it didn't matter. My own pain and rage took center stage. But with time and much hard work in recovery, I came to the place of being able to listen to the stories of other people.

We all lose people we love. Tolstoy wrote that happy families are all alike, but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. I would interpret that to mean that each loss, each set of relationships and circumstances is unique, but there are things we share.

What might it be like if one family member were murdered -- and another family member had killed someone? What does it feel like to watch the weeks and days pass while the execution of someone you dearly love draws ever nearer? How can we wrap our minds around loving someone and accepting that they have caused such anguish to another family? I've had a chance to talk with people in all these circumstances. It's been a humbling experience.

Death Penalty Statement - October 13, 2011

A number of people have asked about the statement I made in opposition to the death penalty, before the Santa Clara County Human Relations Commission. Much of it was taken from "September Grieving," which appeared both in my LiveJournal and on the Book View Cafe blog. Because the different social media sites reach different audiences, I'm posting this statement here, behind the cut.

September Grieving, part three

For those of you who are following this essay here, rather than on the Book View Cafe blog (or my LiveJournal), here's the third and final part.

What has changed for me this year is that I have begun to work for the abolition of the death penalty. Speaking only for myself, I see strong parallels between a murder victim family seeking this form of revenge and the vilification of the Muslim community concurrent with the invasion of Iraq. Of course, justice is desirable. Criminal acts call for appropriate consequences. I would never say that it’s okay for my mother’s killer to walk the streets or that those responsible for the 9/11 attacks should not be prosecuted according to law. Setting aside the politics of that invasion and the problems with the application of capital punishment, however, my concern is with whether retaliative actions help or hinder the recovery of the survivors.

My own experience is that revenge does not. I want to emphasize that I do not speak for anyone else. We all have different experiences. For me, focusing on wishing harm to the one who had harmed my mother might well have kept me locked — incarcerated — in a state of bitterness and hatred. While I was in no way to blame for what happened, I still bear the responsibility for what I do with it. It’s like the adult child of an alcoholic getting herself into therapy instead of whining helplessly, attributing all her problems to her upbringing.

I have to ask myself, What do I need? What do I want? One of my inspirations was a woman of astonishing kindness and grace, whose daughter and son-in-law were murdered and whose bodies she discovered. She told me that she faced a choice of whether or not to let herself be driven crazy by what she experienced. I think we all have that choice — to succumb to the darkness of our anguish and righteous fury, or to walk through it, to move beyond it.

I remember the scene in The Princess Bride where Inigo Montoya finally tracks down Count Rugen, who begs for his life and offers anything. Inigo says, “I want my father back!” (and then kills him). I want my mother back, too. All those who lost loved ones and colleagues want them back. We know that’s impossible, but what is possible is to get our own lives back. Our own selves. Our best selves.

My experience of healing is that I get myself back when I focus on re-engaging with life, on fully experiencing my feelings, on understanding what I have lost and what can never be replaced, but what can be restored. The more I stop looking to an external event (the execution of the murderer) to somehow make me feel better or “achieve closure,” and instead focus on taking care of my insides — my heart, my spirit, my body — the better I fare.

So I’ve been talking about my own healing process and what I’ve learned. I’ve been meeting with other family members and with people who’ve been sentenced to death and then exonerated. I’ve been looking for ways to build bridges, to nourish tolerance and reconciliation, to create understanding. I make an ongoing conscious decision to not harbor hatred in my heart, but to fill it instead with what I want in my life.

Love. Compassion. Gratitude. Joy. Wonder. Peace.

I can think of no more fitting memorial for my mother . . . or for those who died on 9/11.

A Personal Essay: September Grieving, part one

This is the first part of a post I wrote about my experience of a private grief in the midst of national remembrance. I'll put up a second installment tomorrow. The entire essay will appear Tuesday in the Book View Cafe blog.

At this time of year, I often feel out of step with the rest of the country, at least as portrayed by the media and demonstrated by election results. This year is different.

Like just about everyone else I know who's old enough to remember the events of 9/11, I have a vivid memory of how I learned about them. I was driving my younger daughter to high school and we were listening to the news on the car radio. We heard the announcer cry, "The second Tower is down!" and the rest of the story tumbled out. The way the events unfolded reminded me poignantly of John F. Kennedy's assassination. I was in high school in 1963, just about the same age my daughter was on September 11. Listening to the news broadcast with her, I experienced a parallel of my own youthful experience. Once again, the world became to be a dangerous and unpredictable place, but for me it was not the first time. I too responded with a feeling that the world has changed forever, but I also had the memory of having walked through this before -- and not just the Presidential assassination.

For me, Septembers will never be solely about 9/11. Twenty-five years ago this month, my mother was raped and beaten to death by a neighbor kid on drugs. It was a spectacularly brutal, headline-banner crime, but only part of a larger tragedy, for his own family had suffered the murder of his older brother by a serial killer some years before. My body knows when the anniversary is approaching, even when my thoughts are distracted. The shift in the quality of the light at summer's end reaches deep into my nervous system. The scar tissue on my heart aches. The ghosts of things that once held the power to drive me crazy stir in the darkness. My sleep becomes fragile, even though I no longer have nightmares. It's a hard time, an intensely personal time.

One thing I have learned over the years is that grief isn't fungible; you can't compare or exchange one person's experience with another's or say, This one's pain is two-thirds the intensity of that one's. Grief is grief; loss is loss. There's no benefit to anyone in comparisons. And no one else can do the hard emotional work of healing for us.

Telling the Truth

Elsewhere I've written about how my experience as a family member of a murder victim has led me to public advocacy to abolish the death penalty. This isn't a discussion of the pros and cons of the death penalty; it's about story-telling. In general, I use this blog for writerly professional stuff and put more personal issues into my LiveJournal. But I think the process by which we learn to tell the truth in our personal lives is related to the process of excavating the truth in our fiction.

I'm not a political activist. In fact, I've often described myself as allergic to it. I certainly have opinions, but the prospect of placing myself in a confrontational, adversarial position (with those nutsos who don't agree with me, right?) has been overwhelmingly intimidating. It took me a long time to find a way that was at all emotionally possible for me to state my case.

That way, it turns out, was to tell my story.

More Thoughts on Writing and Healing

Some years back, my sister gave me a copy of Louise DeSalvo’s Writing as a Way of Healing (Beacon Press, 1999). It sat on my shelf as I debated whether its contents would be grim or admonishing. I was wrong on both counts. Although my fiction writing is just that--fiction, as in “I made it all up, I truly did”--the book presented me with two invaluable gifts.

The first is that when we tell the truth, we improve not only our emotional but our physical health, and there’s research to prove it. DeSalvo writes specifically about autobiographical narratives of trauma or other difficult situations. I think the same holds true in a broader sense for all writing. It does not matter that my character is not me or these things never happened in my own life. I can still tell the truth, the truth of my heart, the truth of my spirit. When I do that, something unfolds within me and is given space to breathe, to stretch, to grow into a different shape.

Healing as We Write

As a follow-up to yesterday's blogpost, I've been thinking about how we heal through our writing. What is it about story-telling that knits up bleeding wounds and helps us to find a new balance in our lives?