childhood, parents

those of you who know me probably know that i'm a survivor of an abusive father and mother. it often makes people blanch when they hear me talk about it, which i find odd. abuse is a weird little secret in our society; we all agree that it's a bad thing, but we don't often want to hear about it. there is a societal instinct to deify our parents, and speaking out against them really makes people uncomfortable.

but fuck that. not being comfortable talking about it creates a culture of shame around abuse, and asking the victims of abusive parents not to talk about it sends the message that the victim is somehow to blame, or in the least that the victim should deal with the problem on their own and can't expect support or assistance in extricating themselves or dealing with the issues once they have gotten out.

so, as a child, we were raised in a highly charismatic christian home, which is odd for catholics. my dad is this weird brand of freakish, speaking in-tongues, wanna-be-snake-handling catholics. he made me go to a few services with him, which i hated. scary shit. my mother, the consummate irish catholic, was the ultimate keeper of the peace in an abusive family. there was a lot of emphasis in our family catechism about turning the other cheek (a staple in a family trying socialize the children to hide abuse).

so, the cycle of abuse in our family went something like this: 1) dad would come home, ready for some bullying. the family would tense, waiting for the explosion. 2) the family would tiptoe around dad, trying to minimize any opportunity for him to find fault and let his fists fly. 3) dad would inevitably find some napkin out of place or some banana peel not neatly folded before it was placed in the trash, and he would let loose, sometimes on me, sometimes on my brother, occasionally on one of my sisters, and once on my mother. 4) the "offending" recipient of dad's beating would be banished to his or her room to consider what she or he had done. 5) after a safe cooling off period mom would come to the room to tell the child how they were to blame, and how he or she should remember not to make dad angry. 6) the banished child would return to the family, humiliated, and be expected to pretend that nothing had happened while dad reigned smugly over all of us.

lather, rinse, repeat. daily. for nearly fifteen years.

as i got older and became more socratic in my thinking, i began to question my culpability in this little ritual. i was no longer willing to be blamed for the fact that the transmission on the car was broken, as i didn't know what a transmission was, nor had i done anything to the car that could have conceivably damaged the transmission. i was unconvinced that it was my fault that there were dirty dishes in the sink, because in a family of seven there is likely *always* to be a dirty dish in the sink; preventing that state would be someone's full-time job. my mother's stump speech changed to accommodate. instead of telling me why it was my fault that dad had beat me, she began her "turn the other cheek" campaign. which worked, for a time.

i was twelve years-old when the loss of my childhood occurred. dad had beaten the not out of me for something inane, i don't remember what. mom came to my room and pitched the turn the other cheek speech. and she left. and i sat and thought about it. and something broke. i *couldn't* turn the other cheek. because if i did, he was just going to hit me on that cheek. the problem was not that i was an ungrateful, unforgiving son. the problem was that he was an abusive old man who had no intention of changing. and i couldn't conceive of a god who would want me to get kicked around by my father and not to protect myself, however a twelve year-old can protect himself from a grown man. and i knew that if i was going to survive this, and to protect my siblings, that i had to grow up and get hard. right then and there. so i did. at age twelve.

my father was a dodgy fuck, and he remains so. there was sexual abuse in the family, too, and i'm not comfortable sharing details about that. i live with the guilt of not reporting it every day of my life. my dad would probably still be in jail if i had. my mother remains his eager defender, asserting his infallibility (and her own, which is really more the point) at every juncture. and so we live, estranged. a boy who became a man too early, who is completely unable and unwilling to understand his parents because they can't apologize. and parents who are unable to understand or admit wrongdoing enough to apologize. loss of childhood. loss of parents.

daily dharma: Our minds are used to thinking, but when we want to become calm and peaceful that is exactly what we have to stop doing. It is easier said than done, because the mind will continue to do what it is used to doing. There is another reason why it finds it difficult to refrain from its habits: thinking is the only ego support we have while we are meditating, and particularly when we keep noble silence. "I think, therefore I am." Western philosophy accepts that as an absolute. Actually it is a relative truth, which all of us experience. When we are thinking, we know that we are here; when there is no chattering in the mind, we believe we lose control... Our first difficulty is that although we would like to become peaceful and calm and have no thoughts, our mind does not want to obey... So instead of trying over and over again to become calm we can use whatever arises to gain some insight. A little bit of insight brings a little bit of calm, and a little bit of calm brings a little bit of insight.

tramp

i think my earliest memory of really personal loss came when i was about seven years old. we were living in the old house on ohio street where my parents still live. wait, hold up. there's some back story.

my first memories in life are of a small trailer home where my sister, my brother, my mom, my dad and i lived. it was in a trailer park on the air base -- we lived on cherry street. they are not all good memories; my father was an abusive man and life wasn't easy. we were five people trying to make ends meet on an enlisted man's salary. my mother didn't work outside of the home. times were very tough, and even as a young kid i knew this.

but the memories weren't all bad either. i remember eating beef stew in our little dining nook. i remember my brother (who we then called pj) turning one year old. i remember playing "bum bum, here we come" with my parents out in our little yard. and i remember getting tramp on my fourth birthday.

tramp was my dog, for sure. i think he was a shepard mix, but who can tell, really? i had no idea, i'm sure he just came from the pound. but i loved the shit out of that dog. and i think he loved me. we grew up together, a little, although he outpaced me; he was my jacky paper, i guess.

when i was five we moved out of the trailer home and into our home on ohio street. it was a dump, but my parents have really worked on it over the years and built it into a nice home. they did a lot with very little; looking back on it i have no idea how they managed it all. one of the best parts of the new house was the big back yard (it had maybe 1/8 of an acre of land, b but at the time it seemed positively immense) where tramp and i could run around.

when i was six we adopted a stray and named him spot. tramp and spot were quite a pair -- we loved playing with those dogs. spot was much smaller, a short-haired, pissy little dog. and he turned out to be a bad influence.

about four or five months after we adopted spot, the dogs started jumping the fence to our backyard. it wasn't something that tramp had ever done before, and frankly i have no idea how spot managed it. but off they went, tearing through the neighborhood. at first it seemed cute. and then the local dog warden caught them and brought them back to us. he told us that if the dogs bit anyone, we would be fined by the city and we would be personally liable. mom and dad wanted to give up on the dogs right then and there. i begged for one more chance on their behalf.

in the end, they didn't learn their lesson and the guys from the pound came to take them away. the dogs knew something was up -- they crawled up under the house in the crawl space and wouldn't come out. i was sitting in the bathtub, crying, when my mom came upstairs and told me that i had to come down and call my dogs out so they could take them away. i remember calling them and calling them, but they wouldn't come. i tried whistling through my tears, but i was seven and couldn't really whistle. the guys from the pound were laughing at me behind my back, but i barely cared.

finally, the dogs came out. and they leashed them, muzzled them, and took them to the pound. where they were incinerated, i'm sure.

i still miss my dogs. especially tramp.

daily dharma: You might think that if you let go of your ego world, you might become passive and defenseless like some kind of crash dummy, and people will take advantage of you. Or that you might wander around aimlessly in the street without an agenda. If this were the case, as one contemporary Buddhist master pointed out, it would be necessary to have enlightenment wards in hospitals to take care of bruised or socially inoperative buddhas. But this is not the case. Rather than being inmate types, people who have become enlightened to any degree are builders of hospitals for other people. Their intelligence and compassion are relatively unobstructed, and they tend to become quite active and effective citizens. -- Samuel Berkholz, Entering the Stream

grandpa newton

at some point i have to stop intellectualizing this process and actually start talking about loss in my life...

the first time i became aware of loss was when i was three, i suppose. my grandpa newton (my mom's dad) had died, and we drove to kentucky for the funeral. my grandma ruby (she was my step-grandma, but i didn't understand such things, as i had never known my blood grandmother) was there. i remember pulling up to her in our station wagon with the wood paneling on the side, and my mom hugging her through the car window. it was raining, i remember, and i couldn't tell what on her face was rain and what was tears. she had on one of those translucent rain hats that grandmas always wear when it's raining to protect their hair. she was wearing a berber coat, or at least i think she was.

the kids didn't stay for the funeral, i'm sure of that, but where we went i can't remember. and what remains of the rest of the day is lost in a mess of memories that might have been from that actual day or might have been from any other of a number of indistinguishable visits to my parents' families in kentucky.

i don't really remember my grandfather newton. i think my mom once told me that i had met him a few times. when i see photos i can conjure up a vague image of a skinny man, tall-ish and handsome-ish (but that could just be from the vantage of a small, faggy boy who is both terrified of and sexually obsessed with all adult men), with skin not unlike beef jerky and a kind voice. the thin, sweet smell of pipe tobacco hangs in that pseudo-memory.

i have always been jealous of people who know and love their grandparents. i never knew mine. a loss of a different kind, i suppose -- loss of something one never had?

daily dharma: Right livelihood has ceased to be a purely personal matter. It is our collective karma. Suppose I am a schoolteacher and I believe that nurturing love and understanding in children is a beautiful occupation. I would object if someone were to ask me to stop teaching and become, for example, a butcher. But when I meditate on the interrelatedness of all things, I can see that the butcher is not the only person responsible for killing animals. He does his work for all of us who eat meat. We are co-responsible for his act of killing. We may think the butcher's livelihood is wrong and ours is right, but if we didn't eat meat, he wouldn't have to kill, or he would kill less. Right livelihood is a collective matter. The livelihood of each person affects us all, and vice versa. The butcher's children may benefit from my teaching, while my children, because they eat meat, share some responsibility for the butcher's livelihood.

apple cores

thanks to anonymous for the interesting discussion about the teacher and the apple core. this introduces another kind of loss into the discussion, which i might classify as loss based on expectation. students in a class expect a very specific something from a professor -- it is probably merely face-time during the agreed upon lecture time. maybe it's also a certain kind of behavior. students also don't expect faculty to lie to them -- to say they'll return and then not to do so. from this persepctive, i think, loss is based on unrealized (or perhaps more appropriately) broken expectation.

i think some buddhists might say that these expectations are our desires. we expect not to be caught up in traffic, and when we are it leads to a loss of control. our desire for control when we are controlless makes us angry, makes us generate karma. we expect that if we are paying someone to perform a service (somewhat in the vain of the professor walking from the classroom) that that service will be delivered in a way that is commensurate with our expectations. when it is not, we perceive an injustice. our desire for justice makes us angry, makes us generate karma. we expect good things to happen to us, that we will be surrounded by loved ones. our desire to recapture good times when they are gone makes us angry, makes us generate karma.

and yet, we mourn these umet expectations, always, daily. our logical mind tells us that getting angry while driving accomplishes nothing, that service providers are fallible human beings, that good times can't last. and yet we cling to the expectations.

in my hospice training last wednesday i talked a little bit about my last patient in north carolina. he died days before we moved away. i was so caught up in the move that i never really allowed myself to mourn that loss. while common decency and hippa standards compel me not to say too much, i can say that he was an astonishing human being and one that i was blessed to know. and he's gone. i was the last friend he ever saw. that's an honor that i feel immensely unworthy of, but it is so precious to me that i can hardly bear up under the weight of it.

digging deep. ouch.

daily dharma: Speech is a powerful force. But how much attention do we pay to our speech?...Do we actually bring some wisdom and sensitivity to our speaking? What is behind our speech, what motivates it? Does something really have to be said? When I was first getting into the practice of thinking and learning about speech, I conducted an experiment. For several months I decided not to speak about any third person; I would not speak to somebody about somebody else. No gossip. Ninety percent of my speech was eliminated. Before I did that, I had no idea that I had spent so much time and energy engaged in that kind of talking. It is not that my speech had been particularly malicious, but for the most part it had been useless. I found it tremendously interesting to watch the impact this experiment had on my mind. As I stopped speaking in this way, I found that one way or another a lot of my speech had been a judgment about somebody else. By stopping such speech for a while, my mind became less judgmental, not only of others, but also of myself, and it was a great relief.

loss and desire

thanks to anonymous for her/his comment. i quote:

it seems to me that the point is not to avoid suffering by avoiding the desire which is its source, but rather to allow oneself to feel the suffering, to embrace it and recognize that suffering is part of being alive.

this is something i constantly struggle with in my buddhism. in general, the point isn't, i don't think, to avoid desire; it's to release it. everything is emptiness, but not necessarily empty.

it always reminds me of the robert frost poem "nothing gold can stay":

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

a little cheesy, but i think the buddha higgypiggy would say, "yes, of course. so hold onto nothing. enjoy what you have while you have it, but it WILL end. embrace the emptiness of all things around you and know that they will be gone. and that you will one day be gone."

easier said than done. and maybe, per anonymous, not even desirable.

daily dharma: "Again, monks, a monk abides contemplating mind-objects as mind-objects in respect of the Four Noble Truths. How does he do so? Here, a monk knows as it really is: 'This is suffering'; he knows as it really is: 'This is the origin of suffering'; he knows as it really is: 'This is the cessation of suffering'; he knows as it really is: 'This is the way of practice leading to the cessation of suffering.' 18. "And what, monks, is the Noble Truth of Suffering? Birth is suffering, aging is suffering, death is suffering, sorrow, lamentation, pain, sadness and distress are suffering. Being attached to the unloved is suffering, being separated from the loved is suffering, not getting what one wants is suffering. In short, the five aggregates of grasping... are suffering."
Mahasatipatthana Sutta
translated by Maurice Walshe

park that car, drop that phone, sleep on the floor, dream about me

when i last blogged i talked a little bit about the relationship between loss and mourning. i think that's what the dictionary definition is missing; loss requires mourning.

for me, loss is somewhat difficult to imagine. real loss is something i've never experienced. i have felt loss, but i've never been close to anyone who has died, for instance. i've never been in a position where i've lost all (or even any significant) wordly possessions that are meaningful to me. i've not yet really even lost my innocence, although i came close. i'm still young enough that i don't feel a loss of youth. but i can imagine things that would create in me a deep sense of loss. i fear these things intensely, but know that they are innevitable. everything is emptiness.

tautoligically, one has to desire a thing to feel it's loss. the noble truths of the buddha teach us that existence is suffering (dukkha), and that desire (tanha) is the root of all suffering. so, then, is the point to cease to desire? and does cessation of desire mean disconnect from other people and from things?

daily dharma: "And how, monks, does a monk abide contemplating the body as body? Here a monk, having gone into the forest, or to the root of a tree, or to an empty place, sits down cross-legged, holding his body erect, having established mindfulness before him. Mindfully he breathes in, mindfully he breathes out. Breathing in a long breath, he knows that he breathes in a long breath, and breathing out a long breath, he knows that he breathes out a long breath. Breathing in a short breath, he knows that he breathes out a short breath. He trains himself, thinking: 'I will breath in, conscious of the whole body.' He trains himself, thinking: 'I will breathe in, calming the whole bodily process.' He trains himself, thinking: 'I will breath out, calming the whole bodily process.' ...And he abides independent, not clinging to anything in the world. And that, monks, is how a monk abides contemplating body as body."

friday morning, coming down

hello,

thanks to all for their wonderful postings from yesterday. it seems to me, from what i've read so far, that it might behoove me to spend this first week on the blog just exploring the question "what is loss?" as usual, i find the dictionary of little help. yesterday's definition is so frustratingly oversimplified that it doesn't really get at the essence of the definition. destruction and ruin. defintion 2a says on m-w.com says, "the act of losing a possession". this definition seems to contradict the sentiment expressed by an anonymous poster from yesterday:

I try not to mourn too much the loss of things.

can loss exist without mourning? my husband chiztiz and i got into a debate last night, and we framed the same issue a little bit differently; we were asking what is the relationship between the word "lost" and "loss". to me, a thing might be lost, and never truly be a loss. such things might include a house, a realtionship, one's youth. if one doesn't mourn, is it actually loss? or is merely the reality of a thing that is gone that was present before loss?

i have my feelings, but am interested in yours. thoughts?

daily dharma: With persistent practice, consciousness may eventually be perceived or felt as an entity of mere luminosity and knowing, to which anything is capable of appearing and which, when appropriate conditions arise, can be generated in the image of whatsoever object. As long as the mind does not encounter the external circumstance of conceptuality, it will abide empty without anything appearing in it, like clear water. Its very entity is that of mere experience. Let the mind flow of its own accord without conceptual overlay. Let the mind rest in its natural state, and observe it. In the beginning, when you are not used to this practice, it is quite difficult, but in time the mind appears like clear water. The Dalai Lama, The Dalai Lama: A Policy of Kindness, ediited by Sidney Pibrn

Hello, and welcome

hi there. my name is higgypiggy and this is my blog about loss.

why would i create a blog about loss? well, the catalyst for this blog is that i'm in a volunteer training program for a hopsice group (it doesn't really matter too much which one) and we've been asked to create a project about loss in our lives as part of our training. i have eight weeks in which to create this project.

i'll try to post each day, and i'll try to come up with something original to say on the subject. it's going to be pretty free-form -- sort of an experiment. so, let's see how it goes.

for today's post, i want to just talk about loss in general. m-w.com has several definitions of loss -- i'll probably use several of these over the coming weeks. for today i'll take a look at the first:

1 : DESTRUCTION, RUIN

this is interesting -- i wouldn't have guessed that those would be the primary definitions, although they capture the essence of what i think about loss, i guess. destruction. ruin. like the folks in florida (four hurricanes this season) who are experiencing loss in their homes, their lives, their loved ones.

in my own life, i feel as if i've never really experienced loss. hmmm...not true. there is the loss of my relationship with my mother. that's a horrible loss. and one i'll talk about tomorrow.

daily dharma: I gave up my house and set out into homelessness. I gave up my child, my cattle, and all that I loved. I gave up desire and hate. My ignorance was thrown out. I pulled out craving along with its root. Now I am quenched and still. Sangha, in Susan Murcott's The First Buddhist Women.