Related in grief

In just ten days my son Paul would have been forty-one years old. Since the Newtown CT massacre I've thought of him more and more. I've been through thirteen Decembers since his death. This one is the hardest.

So I thought I'd share a poem I wrote about our last time together. Though my experience is totally different from the bereaved in Newtown, we are related by our grief of the loss of a child. No parent is ever prepared for that.

The Last Night

How could I have known

it would be the last night? A night

like all the others:

the low creaking groan

of the garage door,

tires screeching to maneuver

into the narrow place,

the roar of the engine before silence.

Then slamming the door,

my son, sweeps down the long hall,

calling out hello in his deep friendly voice.

I startle as I hear his heavy strides

pass my door,

I call out to him.

Returning, he enters my room –

standing, staring, looking more calm

than I’ve ever seen him.

His blue eyes like sapphires

fringed with thick dark lashes

never leave mine while we speak.

My lips kiss his cheek

cool as alabaster.

I marvel at his smile – lips

barely turned up not showing his teeth.

He looks like the angel

he will soon become.

He has already found peace.

Only I don’t know it yet.

Quinn's Cookie Exchange

To celebrate the soon to be released Chaste by my friend, author and poet Angela Felsted, I’m participating in Quinn’s Cookie Exchange, named after the main character in the book, a teenage boy who knows how to cook.

Even though Hanukkah is over for this year, I think you’ll find this recipe delicious any time. All the grease spots on my original recipe card attest to that.

Hanukkah Cookie Pinwheels

(Draidle or spinning top cookies)

Bake at 350 deg for 15 minutes

Makes about 5 dozen

Pastry:

1 cup (2 sticks) butter

1 8-oz pack cream cheese

¼ cup dairy sour cream

2-1/4 cups sifted all-purpose flour

½ teas salt

Filling:

2 cups finely ground walnuts

½ cup sugar

1 teas ground cinnamon

1 egg

1 teas grated orange rind

1. Prepare pastry: Beat butter and cream cheese in large bowl with electric mixer until creamy. Beat in sour cream. Stir in flour and salt until a firm dough forms, adding more flour if necessary. Form into a ball, wrap. Chill overnight.
2. Prepare filling: Combine nuts, sugar, cinnamon, egg and orange rind in a small bowl.
3. Divide pastry in half. Roll out half on floured surface to make an 8-inch square about ¼ inch thick. Spread half of the filling evenly on pastry. Roll up, jelly-roll style. Wrap in foil, chill for a least 1 hour. Repeat with other half of pastry and filling.
4. Light grease two cookie sheets. Cut the rolls into ¼-inch thick slices. Place ½ inch apart on cookie sheets. Reshape into rounds, if necessary.
5. Bake in a moderate oven for 15 minutes or until firm and golden brown. Cool on wire racks.

Brief Synopsis of Chaste

When he steps into his physics class on the first day of senior year, Quinn Walker is too exhausted from staying up all night with his three-month-old nephew to deal with moral dilemmas. As a devout Mormon who has vowed to wait until marriage for sex, the last thing he needs is a very hot and very sexy Katarina Jackson as his physics partner. Regrettably, he has no choice.

Kat feels invisible in her mansion of a home six months after losing her older brother in a fatal car crash and will do anything to get her parents’ attention. Since her pastor father has no love for Quinn’s “fake” religion and her ex-boyfriend refuses to leave her alone, she makes an impulsive bet with her friends to seduce her holier-than-thou lab partner by Christmas.

Take a look at the great trailer and go Amazon or Barnes&Noble to buy this book.

And don't forget to try the cookie recipe. 

Thoughts about the horrific Sandy Hook massacre

Four days ago a 20-year old man took his mother’s assault weapons, killed her, and then went to a local school and killed twenty children, ages 6 and 7, and six adults before he killed himself.

So much has come up for me since then – besides the tears. The senselessness of it, the grief of parents losing a child, the struggle of young children to get their arms around such a profound loss. Our whole country and probably the world are in mourning now, and we are all at a loss about what we can do. Right now all I can do is think and cry about it.

However, as I watched Bob Schieffer’s morning talk show yesterday while I was working out, two things came up for me – aside from the enormity of the numbers of guns bought and sold in our country and the senseless numbers of gun murders – over 32,000 a year. It is totally clear that we have the right to bear arms. There is no way we’ll be able to remove guns from our country. That said, can’t there be a better way to control them. The people on Schieffer’s show said it is harder to get a driver’s license than it is to buy a gun. Of course in the case of this shooter, he didn’t buy a gun. He used his mother’s.

They also brought up the success of Mothers Against Drunk Drivers – started by a mother of a victim of drunk driving in 1980. MADD changed the whole paradigm of drinking and driving.

Well, couldn’t we come up with an organization called something like Mothers for Gun Better Control and go on a campaign to better check out the people who buy guns? I keep hearing about the need for the mental health professionals to get involved in identifying violent mentally ill people. Then perhaps we could institute laws that would preclude those identified from buying guns. Of course that brings up all kinds of right of privacy issues. Believe me, I have no idea how any of this could or would work.

Also, the idea of lumping the words mentally ill and violent together ruffles my feathers. I know they are in movies and television. However, in my experience with my son who was mentally ill, that was not the case. He was always a gentle and caring person. The only violence he did was to himself when he took his life as a result of his bipolar disorder. And his weapon of choice was not a gun. And as hard as it to say, I am thankful for that. So I would hope we don’t think that all mentally ill people are violent. Otherwise, how would we ever be able to erase the stigma?

I know we are a long way from coming up with an action plan. Now we are grieving and mourning with the parents, siblings, and other family and friends of those who died so horrifically. I know from the experience of losing my son how difficult a time this is for all of them. Yet, I’ll never know the extent of their grief. How can they ever understand why this could happen to them, to their family, to their school, to their community? It is unfathomable.

I also relate to the possible posttraumatic stress that the surviving children might feel as a result of losing their siblings and school friends. When I was nine my favorite uncle was killed in a plane crash. I had just seen him the day before. I couldn’t understand it. I couldn’t believe it. I kept thinking he’d come back. And I didn’t stop thinking those thoughts for years. What does a six, seven, or nine, ten year old know about the finality of death? That is also unfathomable.

In the meantime, my thoughts, my heart, my tears are with all those who suffered this horrific loss in Newtown CT.