It has been more than a week since I returned from my all too quick trip for the burial of my uncle in New York, and the subsequent visit with my newly widowed aunt. It was a whirlwind of travel, emotions, conversations, and hastily eaten "food" as I covered more territory in less than 48 hours than I have ever done in my life. I set up a "base camp," a hotel room in Massachusetts, on Tuesday night around 9:00pm and was back in my hometown by 2:45pm on Thursday afternoon. In that period of time I drove for more than 15 hours, buried my uncle, visited with my aunt for 4 hours, slept, exercised, shopped, bathed, ate, and prayed. I'm certain I did much more, but my memory of the events has become a bit blurry.
It was a long and hard trip despite its brevity. In all of it I tried to remain present to my own grief, my own connection to G-d, and my purpose in being wherever I was at the time. I attempted to see the darkness of the loss as a shadow under the illuminations of the love that remained. I contemplated my parents who are now entering their 70's and who are increasingly aware of their own mortality. I contemplated my own mortality as well, and the many times I had suffered so greatly under the weight of the beast of my mental illness that I had believed suicide to be my only answer. That perspective, that insight, that vulnerability within myself allowed me to see how far I had come and how much I had to live for. Honestly, it showed me how much I wanted to live, and I was surprised at the revelation. For most of my life I have wanted to die. But now, I want to live. The transformations within myself didn't end there.
Another change came as I discerned my purpose and role within my aunt's life at that moment. I initially thought that I would have little to no role, as we have often been at odds over many, many things. But this was not the case. No, she needed me. She needed my presence. And so, I was present. I was a presence for my aunt, who was able to let out her true emotions with the only relative on my uncle's side of the family who attended.
I must note that her brother did come up with his wife, however during the luncheon at the nursing home after the burial, he spoke mostly of himself, boasted of things, and complained about his daughter. Despite sitting directly next to his sister, he appeared completely oblivious to the fact that she had just lost her husband/partner of 52 years. I was less than impressed, and I learned why this was the first time I'd ever met the man, my aunt had been sparing me and herself the embarrassment.
Largely though I was there, and that was my purpose, and for once, I allowed myself to be that. The words I have always tried to fill the silences with no longer poured from my lips. My need to control the emotions, the surroundings, myself, was not there. My needs were not what were important at all in that moment, and for once I was able to see and honor that.
So this is what I did instead, I sat silently in her tiny nursing home room. I sat silently as she talked. I sat silently as she nodded off. I held her with muted, nearly silent words of love as her whole body shook with the grief of her loss. I was silent as she wept in a way that she had never before allowed herself to emotionally be with me. I was for a brief time, the strength and the courage that she needed. And it required me to be silently present.
As most of my friends and family will attest I am at heart a "talker" and I like to talk. I like, no, I love to give talks, lectures, performances in front of any size audience I can get. I tap into the funnier side of myself, the less Aspie me, who is appreciated and lauded for whatever I have made people fill. Having grown up in chaos and pain I became a comedian to deal with it, which is common for many of us. I regularly believe myself to be doing stand-up comedy wherever I am, and I am on pins and needles waiting for the next laugh. It has an almost addictive quality to it as I absorb the positive reinforcement of people's responses, since this was often the only way I could get positive reinforcement in my family.
An irony to this is one of the conversations my aunt and I had during our visit. As a small child, and honestly as an adult, I have never really liked talking on the phone. Perhaps it is the Aspie part of me that doesn't like the phone because I can't rely on what little body language I can pick up on. It's true that I misinterpret a lot of what is communicated when speaking face to face with someone, but somehow the phone is even worse for me, and I dread answering it. So, the irony is that my aunt was the only person I would talk to on the phone when I was little. I would sit at the top of our basement stairs where our rotary phone was mounted on an adjoining kitchen wall and talk to my aunt. Our conversations were limited when I was 3 and 4, but she had an ability to get me to talk even when I was scared to death of it. How you might ask? She would do hand rhymes with me. Yep, hand rhymes. Like, "Here's the church, here's the steeple, open the doors, where are the people?" and others. Hard to even imagine isn't it? A 40+ year old woman with no children of her own would talk on the phone all the way from her Manhattan condo on the Upper East Side with a little 4 year old who was too shy to talk by repeating hand rhymes while I giggled and joined in. That takes a level of patience and dedication that I believe is unmatched in most areas of any of our lives.
So, I sat there reminiscing with my aunt when we were not crying, or waiting, or being, and we talked about the past and how much she and Unc had influenced my life. She spoke of her heartbreak and of how she now looked back and wondered what it would have been like to have had a family of her own. I had never once heard her speak of such a thing in my life. And I realized that deep down that the need to leave a legacy of some sort is truly in all of us.
And it was this legacy issue that could have torn our relationship apart right then and there had I not been able to be silent within myself in the hours and days to come. It began when I had spoken about how my younger son looks more like me and my older son looks more like his mother with one of the nurses who saw their picture. My aunt decided to address this issue with me long after the nurse had left. She spoke about how it bothered her that I had done that. She went on to say that she knew that all the transitions and changes I had made were important, and that I had needed to do them. She validated my life choices, yet she was troubled by my comments about my sons. She wished that I could just say they were my sons and leave it at that. That I didn't need to say anything else. That they were my sons, period. And in response I had a momentary physical response of anger, fear, and disappointment. My stomach churned and I felt as though I had just been sucker-punched. I took a deep breath and I tried to explain my feelings on the matter, though neither one of us was particularly convinced, and we moved on to other topics.
I left her room an hour or so later, feeling as though I had just been through something amazing and horrible all at the same time. I thought about her deep need for me to pray with her at the burial. I thought about her sobs. I felt the pain of losing my uncle and the sadness that wrapped around my shoulders like a well worn sweater. I was shaken and I was tired. I was hungry. I was lonely. Looking back I suspect that my aunt and I were feeling the exact same things at those exact same moments. I drove back to the cemetery, said a final goodbye to my uncle, and drove back to my hotel my mind running through the hours I'd just lived through.
I tried to make peace with my aunt's comment, but it stayed with me, this one negative concern, just stung. I was taken off guard and I ended up calling my wife later that night to ask if my youngest son really did look like me, which by the way he does, even though genetically there is no reason for him to. She affirmed my belief and reassured me that the comment was a generational issue for a woman who was nearly 80. Still, I couldn't get past the nagging feeling that there was more to it than that. Perhaps my aunt's own personal, emotional, or theological beliefs were excluding me somehow and I didn't want to feel rejected by family one more time. I wasn't sure how to handle my feelings and when I returned to the hotel that night I worked out for over an hour in the gym. I sweated off the frustration and anger, but the words still persisted in my mind.
I returned to my room and I began repeating a mantra I had heard from a drag queen named Jinkx Monsoon on RuPaul's Drag Race, Season 5, "water off a duck's back...water off a duck's back..." a phrase that she repeats every time she is about to be critiqued. It is a phrase that means that you should let other people's negative comments about you not affect you. It is obviously something that easier said than done, however, as I repeated it the dialogue in my mind changed. The dialogue actually shut off. Realizing that I had to let the words roll off of me rather than absorb into me made me feel even calmer. I felt the presence of G-d with me and within me as I drew deeper into the silence. Eventually, I was able to be completely silent and process the words so that I understood what she meant rather than what I heard.
And I realized that she was right. I realized that I needed to stop trying to justify that my sons are really mine. I needed to accept that they are my boys regardless of biology or anything else. They are my sons, period.
It was in the silence within myself that I could finally hear what another person was saying and I thanked G-d for the gift of what my aunt had given me, a way to communicate when I was scared to death of it. Just as I had been silent as a child on the phone and listened to her love, I was able to finally hear her love as an adult. I was present to her, I was present to her love, and I was at last present to myself.
So, my purpose on that trip, was the lesson I've been needing to learn for a very long time, one that was offered so long ago, and not long ago at all, by my aunt. That it's ok to be silent, it's ok to let the other person talk, it's ok to be scared, and it's ok to just be present to the moment. More than 35 years have passed since those phone calls, and less than 2 weeks have passed since I sat in that room, and both have come together to help me be the man I am called into being here and now. Those are gifts that no money can ever purchase and that can never be taken from you once you've received them. So, I will continue to listen for the silences in my life, and seek to be present and a presence when and where I am needed.
Thank you for being present on my journey.
Be well, love your neighbor as you love yourself, and remember to actually love yourself.
-Ari
