Losses
Loss abounds in human life, indeed in all life....molecules lost, transformed, reborn into new
shapes and manifestations - and so it is in the mortal cycle...
the essence left, sometimes the hope, the recollections shifting, transforming
into thoughts more precious still and memories as emotionally powerful. The
levels of loss and their impact upon us are unlimited I think, from minor
annoyances to losses saddening in their impact to losses which are searing and seemingly
unsurmountable.....of these latter, I have only suffered
4-5, as ranked and rated by their lasting impact upon my mind and heart.
The first loss that I can remember was when I was five and living in
Germany....and my best friend in all the world was a plastic doll that
Santa Claus had given me two years before....her name now forgotten, but the
feel of her within my childish arms remembered, as are the countless hours of
pretend tea parties and shared baths, imaginary feedings and whispered confidences.
And walking together - she and I - one late morning, through the open field
which bounded our apartment housing, marvelling at the seeming millions of
ladybugs infesting the chamomile and clovers, oblivious to how close I was
coming to the enclave wire fencing, she was taken from me....a group of
local German children having found the camouflaged tunnel that some of us had dug
as a short cut to the neighborhood candy store, and finding it, crawling
through and into the compound. Childish voice had no strength to carry my calls
for help across that seemingly endless field, and childish threats no strength
to hold against children 5 or 7 years older than I...and the doll ripped from
my arms, and tossed about me in a cruel game of "keep-away", until one young
man tired of the game and grabbing the soiled and smudged plastic arm and flung
the doll, cartwheeling through the air and over the fence, into the local
town's property. Racing for the tunnel, I was barred from using it, from following, trapped
beneath the dirt by bully's feet standing at the exit point...weeping in the dark
for the first loss of love that I had known. Heart-wrenched, heading homeward
more by sense and feel than by sight, to await my mother's return from a women's
club and my father's from the jump zone...our German maid Lotte dabbing at
my tear-streaked grimy face with a dampened kitchen towel and muttering German
imprecations under her breath, helpless to do much more than watch my
tears and commiserate with me over my loss. We never found the doll, and I think I lost some
tiny vestige of childhood innocence.
My second loss occured much later in life, with the death of Sean Michael
Patrick O'Connor Fehelley. Mike was a tall, lanky Irish (no doubt of that,
with such a moniker) redhead one year behind me at Broad Run High
School.....trainer for my gymnastics team, trainer for both the JV and varsity football teams,
fellow classmate in art and art history classes (the only really GOOD sketch I've ever done was of
Mike), a tremendously good and loyal friend, and
unfortunately a victim of leukemia, diagnosed when he was 12, four years earlier.
By strength and sheer stubborness, an unwillingness to give in, Mike had
survived the disease and had gone through three diagnosed remissions, only to
have the disease recur. When I met him during my senior year in high school,
Mike was in the midst of a remission, red hair flamboyantly awry atop his
freckled body and a smile brighter than the Virginia sun. We became fast friends and
were usually found together - sometimes to the chagrin of his girlfriends who
I'm sure cringed as Mike escorted them to the car for their Friday night date,
only to see me sitting in the front seat with them. His leukemia never seemed an
issue ... known, but not acknowledged...existing, but not given credence.
Mike fought to be accepted for what he was, what he wanted to do (and DID).
Eight months after my graduation from high school, during Mike's senior year and
my first year of working in the "real" world, the leukemia reemerged. Tired at
first, Mike rapidly lost a tremendous amount of body weight, from a frame
that had not too much to spare. This time the leukemia did not respond to the
bombardment of chemotheraphy and radiation....Mike was reduced to wearing a
wig (he insisted it HAD to be redhaired, and that it HAD to be a woman's wig
recut and styled for him....the hair was finer, better quality and was longer
than those available for men...or at least, so he said) and to using crutches to
support his weakened body. Although having missed tremendous amounts of
class time due to the disease, he was allowed to graduate with his classmates,
and was carried down the auditorium's aisles in a 'chair' made by the arms of
honor athletes while I watched from front row. Three days later he was
hospitalized. Driving back and
forth between Northern Virginia, my community college, my job and Bethesda proved
too tasking, especially since Mike insisted I HAD to be there or he would not
eat. I reduced my work hours to part time, and took to travelling to Bethesda
every day at lunchtime, and spent my afternoons and evenings at his bedside. I
remember being taken completely aback the day I arrived to find Mike's
head swathed in gauzed and cottoned bandages....asking a corpsman, to be told
that Mike was hemorraghing. Running to the medical library and looking up such
things, I was horrified to find it a common manifestation of severe
leukemic cases, the bleeding from eyes, nostrils, ears. Stunned and returning to Mike's bedside I
wept inside knowing I was losing
him...but smiled for his sake, knowing his gauzed eyes were unable to see me but also knowing
that HE sensed somehow what I was doing. And I will never forget the last few days of life with
Mike....taking a
complete leave of absence from my job to sit with him and hold his hand, to
read him books and tease him with how pretty the Navy nurses were...coaxing
him to somehow eat just a "little something"...relaying all the gossip and well
wishes, and simply telling him that I was there...spending 18-20 hours a
day at his bedside, at his beck and call, then driving the 45 minutes home to
shower, change, somehow sneak an hour's sleep or two, then racing back to be with
him. And somehow still holding onto the hope that he would beat it yet
again...that we could somehow overcome the disease just one more time...that is, until the final
Thursday when he sent everyone but me away and told me he was
tired....tired of hurting, tired of fighting, tired of being tied to the
bed by IVs and treatments and his own body's refusal to work...that it was time
and he just wanted to go...just wanted to slip away....and, tears streaming down
my face (and even now, at this retelling), all I could do was hold his hand
and tell him it was okay...while screaming inside that it wasn't, that he had
to stay, that he HAD to fight, and not leave me, not leave us....and swearing
to him, as he asked of me, promising that I would be there when 'it' happened.
Staying through the day and into the night, Mike and I recounting funny
stories of the gymnastics team (the time my leotard gave me a wedgie in the middle
of competition and I could not, due to protocols and regulations, lower my
hands to tug it back over bared cheeks, and mortified having to complete the
routine) and how he always had wished he had the nerve to ask me out......to be told
by the charge nurse at 10 pm that his vitals were somewhat improved, and urged
by his mother and the medical staff to go home and get some sleep, that they
would call me should conditions change...and kissing his cheek, and squeezing his
hand and promising him he would have a chance to ask me out on a date some
time, leaving him to fall exhausted into my bed, 39 hours after last seeing
it. To be awakened three hours later by the shrilling telephone, Bethesda staff
calling me back, that Mike was failing...arriving
at Bethesda Naval Hospital at 4:27 am on a Friday morning, to see the
partitioning sheet pulled all the way 'round Michael's bed, and his mother
sitting in the hall, held in the arms of the Catholic priest...4:27 am, 18
minutes after Michael died....and knowing I had failed to keep my promise
to the first best friend I had ever had. I sometimes feel him with me still, his voice whispered
into an ear, thinking if I turn quickly enough I'll see his smile and his joy of life sparkling in his
Irish eyes.
Perhaps the biggest loss within the boundaries of my immature life was the death of
Nana...my father's mother, the woman from whom I learned so much, both practical and
mystical,
grounding me and giving me the stars. A tiny woman of 4'10" with waist
length black hair, looking like a gypsy with her braids bound up and covered by a
bandana, and holding - in my childish eyes - all the wisdom of the
universe. Patient and loving to a callous husband, cherishing and nurturing all living things, firm
in her resolve and calm in her place, and fiery to defend the
helpless....an idol of heroic proportions to me, even as a child, and into
whose lap I loved to climb, or comb out her hair, or simply lean against
the back of her chair at tableside and watch her shell peas or peel shrimp for
Sunday gumbo. Mostly tolerant, telling me when I was teenager that she thought
marijuana should be legalized, that SOME rock music wasn't so bad (she
liked, I remember, The Who and Kansas, mostly because of their orchestral
accompaniments)...and that if Poppa ever passed she would never marry
again, but probably live with a companion. Her death came suddenly, six weeks after Poppa's --
a
heart attack as she was parking her 1967 Chrysler at the local A&P
supermarket, having enough presence of mind to somehow get the parking brake on before
collapsing. My biggest failure occurred the week before her death:
Supposed to spend the weekend at the Coast with her, I instead went to
Pensacola with sorority sisters for a weekend party and beaching....not
even calling Nana to tell her of the change 'til my return early (just in time
for class) Monday morning. Thinking, as most youth does, that there was time
and time enough for all such things...what was a weekend? Within four days she
was gone, and my irresponsibility lays with me still....if I had
just gone as planned, just hugged her one more time and told her that I loved
her....it would not have changed the outcome, I know...but she would
have been reminded of all she meant to me, and maybe carried it with her....and not felt so alone.
I miss her still...and feel her around me yet again.
Worst of all the losses, though -- the most difficult to write and think about -- has been the loss of
romantic, empassioned love, of dreams of partnership, companionship and bonding. Still stunned
at the intensity of the anguish, still shocked at the brutality of the heartwrack...slowly working
through it all, aware of all the tiny myriad realities, but mourning still the loss. And crying still,
knowing that it must be so. This adult loss, made possible and held tight by choice and mature
will, is grievous, shadowing a heart left wanting, needing such.
It's amazing to think that emotional devastation is still possible after 40
years......each episode layered on top of those that came before, and yet
so freshly new...each heartbreak treading over already travelled paths but
still breaking fresh, new ground.
More amazing yet are the smiles that each brings to me, memories alight and limned with a
melancholy sweetness; the knowledge that to lose, one had to have.....
DHP
11-11-96
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