GRIEVER's DOSSIER // "a warm flashlight in a dark room"

One of the main tenants of GRIEVER’S BALL is that some grieving people long to talk about their grief and those they’re grieving, while other grieving people long to hear from others about how they’re moving through this experience. And isn’t that a lot like life: Some want to share, some want to be shared with. GRIEVER’S DOSSIER is offered as a source of expression and understanding; comfort and light.

I’m my own first subject here; this initial iteration of the interview series features me, Laura, answering what will be the standardized questions for all grievers going forward. Each of our Q + As will start with a brief intro, so: I’m a former culture journalist and content strategist currently offering 1:1 creative coaching + consulting from my home just outside of Seattle, WA. With personal and professional backgrounds in fashion, music, food, and fiction now meeting up and co-mingling with focused intent within grief and end of life care, I fill my time writing and recording songs with husband, exploring my own weird brand of upcycled streetwear, and concepting and producing digital and IRL experiences that encourage expression, connection, and community.

WHO ARE YOU GRIEVING?
My dad Paul, who was called Butch, died a few days after Trump was announced the winner of the 2016 election. Like many things, his death happened gradually and then all of the sudden. He was dying for years really, of a mixed bag of broken internal systems and the drug dependencies and complications that are all too often the demise of veterans caught in the VA hospital structure of our country. 

Me and Butch circa the late ‘70s; the marine biologist and the tiny Pisces

WHAT’S ONE OF YOUR FAVORITE MEMORIES OF BUTCH?
Well, of course it’s impossible to pick one, but something from my childhood comes flooding back when I sit with this question. Me, at about 12 or 13, running through tears from my mom’s car, straight through the house and into the garage where I (somehow) knew my dad was working. I was sobbing dramatically as I threw myself into his body and let him hold me. “Honey, honey, what’s wrong?” he asked. “Can’t you tell?” I wailed, looking up at him. “Look at this terrible haircut.” I’m laughing just thinking of it now, and thinking of all the times he retold this story to others. He couldn’t get through it without cracking up but there was such a tenderness there, too. I mean, we had a lot of good times together—many of them unconventional, and many of them in un-funny places like the hospital, but this particular instance just holds all the strange ways we depended on each other, and knew each other, and could laugh in spite of ourselves.

WHAT IS YOUR CURRENT STATE OF MIND IN TERMS OF YOUR GRIEF?
For the longest time I had a very, very uncomfortable (tortured, maybe) relationship with my dad’s death. I had these wild fears that he was hexing me, or that he wanted me to repeat his mistakes. But last summer, after a really intense wave of illnesses that included a false cancer pre-diagnosis (my dad and I have a similar medical history, so almost any illness is a trigger for me and my memories of him), I sought out an akashic records reader and asked if he could tell me whether my dad was angry with me. After some time, he looked at me very plainly and said, “Your dad isn’t thinking about you at all right now” and went on to talk about him slowly drifting solo down a long, limitless waterway. My dad was a marine biologist, a sailor, a Sagittarius; an explorer. Understanding him alone, unencumbered has given me so much peace. I feel like we’re as close now as we’ve ever been—even though, or maybe precisely because, his spirit has apparently cut itself loose to roam and to be.

DOES DEATH HAVE A GIFT? DOES GRIEF? WHEN THINKING ABOUT BUTCH’S DEATH AND THE EXPERIENCE OF YOUR GRIEF, WHAT DO YOU KNOW, SEE, FEEL, OR EXPERIENCE NOW THAT YOU DIDN’T OR COULDN’T BEFORE?
I guess I’d say death and grief have given me the gift of knowing what death and grief are. The gift of seeing them clearly. The gift of no longer looking away—from my own experience, or from others’ experiences of this part of life. Grief and death have opened in me a kind of compassionate curiosity; like one hand is holding another’s hand, and one hand is shining a gentle, warm flashlight in a dark room. I think that thinking about and “feeling about” death—as well as sharing our grief and keeping those who have died “alive” in our communities—that’s how we live more richly. It seems so simple and I keep grasping for something else to make it more unique or my own, but it isn't unique and it isn’t my own. It’s universal. 

WHAT DO YOU THINK BUTCH WOULD HAVE SAID WAS HIS LEGACY? WHAT WOULD HE HAVE SAID ABOUT LEGACY + ACHIEVEMENTS IN GENERAL, AND THE NOTION OF MEASURING ONE’S LIFE THAT WAY?
After he died, I found a note in my dad’s workshop that he had written himself; like an affirmation, or an attempt to convince himself. It said, “I can yet make a positive contribution to science” in really labored, difficult handwriting. He had some research he wanted to publish about hermit crabs but he was never able to finish it, and it feels to me that in his last six months or so he fomented lot of anger and frustration around that unfinished business. Discovering that note really fucked me up, and, for a time, propelled me to fixate on how I might not make a positive contribution to the world. But now I choose to fix myself on the fact that love and laughter and togetherness and connection … those are the contributions that really matter. The rest is just our egos. I actually think Butch knew that, too, but somehow it got lost.

Film photo from a series my husband took about three years before Butch died.

WHAT IS OR WAS DIFFICULT ABOUT BUTCH’S FUNERAL OR MEMORIAL?
That I knew what he wanted, which was nothing: a pine box, a cremation, no funeral—though he did allow for an Irish wake … though none of us had a direct experience of what that would really look like. I knew what he wanted, and I was basically on my own in executing it and paying for it. I wish that I had felt more agency in creating more of a service for him, and I wish I had had more help and support from my brother or from my dad’s wife and their two sons. I don’t really have any warm memories of that time at all, and that’s been hard for me.

WHAT IS OR WAS BEAUTIFUL OR RESONATE ABOUT BUTCH’S FUNERAL OR MEMORIAL?
I became a new version of myself through that process, even though it was so alienating and limiting. I was, by far, old enough to understand myself as a full-grown adult at that time, but in carrying that responsibility I became something more, something like an elder. The visual I get there is that losing a parent bumps you up a notch on the family tree. So does acting as your dad’s medical proxy and making the decision (according to his earlier wishes), to stop certain treatments and forego others. I started to see myself not just as my father’s daughter, but as a person my family and community could count on. Someone who could do difficult things; maybe the most difficult things.

WHAT IS SOMETHING YOU WISH SOMEONE WOULD HAVE SAID OR DONE OR SEEN OR RECOGNIZED ABOUT YOUR GRIEF?
I wish our workplaces were better about making room for us to show up as the humans we are in all kinds of instances, but particularly with grief and death. It’s a lot to ask of capitalism, and I’d rather just burn down capitalism all together instead of trying to repair this one thing about it, but … yeah, I guess I think it starts with us having room to be imperfect and unhappy and real in general when it comes to the workplace; it starts with us breaking down the politesse that so often passes for interaction. It starts with more basic empathy, openness, and understanding in general.

I didn’t feel like I really belonged in the work world I was a part of at the time of Butch’s death, and after my corporate handbook-mandated one week off, it didn’t get any better. I remember breaking down and sobbing in a conference room after a meeting (after everyone else had left) for no particular reason. It was probably just that I felt so alone.

WHAT IS SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL THAT SOMEONE SAID OR DID OR SAW OR RECOGNIZED ABOUT YOUR GRIEF?
I remember so clearly my husband offering that I should go as slow as I could—that I should stay inside the grief as long as I wanted or needed. He didn’t say those exact words, but he did say that he thought it was going to be a very sacred time for me. He used the word “sacred,” which isn’t something he does often. It immediately felt true to me, and I was instantly grateful that he pointed it out. It kept me from feeling the need to “get better” at least at home and more than that, it opened my eyes in a new way. There really was something sacred happening, and because of his words I was more able to see that and stay with it.  

WHAT DO YOU NOW SAY OR NOT SAY OR DO OR NOT DO WHEN YOU KNOW THAT SOMEONE IS EXPERIENCING GRIEF AND DEATH?
My goal is to be vulnerable, open, present. I don’t try to have any answers and I don’t pretend to have the perfect thing to say. I’m really clear on that, and I persist honestly despite it. I try to reflect back what I’m seeing and sensing; often people in grief just want to be seen and heard. But I know that grief can be a lot like shock, too, so when it feels right I might also ask the person some good, wide, generous questions in order to help them find a place to anchor to and begin to feel and put words together. People usually like being prompted to talk about themselves—and/or the person who has died, and we can trust them to tell us if they don’t. The old way was to assume that they won’t want to talk about anything at all, but hopefully we know better now.

Butch with Amber, and his weird leather sectional couch that was always un-sectioned and set up in the oddest way.

WERE THERE ANY BOOKS, MOVIES, MUSIC, OR ART THAT HELPED YOU DURING YOUR MOST ACUTE TIMES OF GRIEF?
Re-reading Joan Didion’s memoirs of loss. Re-connecting with Louise Bourgeois, Laurie Anderson, Yoko Ono, and Clarissa Pinkola Estes. My grief has been super important in terms of my connections with female artists and thinkers. But just as important was, eventually, rewatching a bunch of dumb ‘80s comedies. My dad was a total goof—an original class clown/dad jokes type. Laughing along with old favorites like Young Frankenstein was a way of teaching my body to experience pleasure and feel light again, and doing that “with” my dad there, too.

But really, music was huge. We were a singalong family—acoustic guitars and old songbooks around the campfire, but also just on regular weeknights in lieu of watching tv. I took all his old sheet music and songbooks after he died and revisiting all that—John Denver, Simon and Garfunkel, traditional folk stuff—and just singing loudly in the car alone … it had a real cathartic quality. It helped me externalize what was in my body.

Writing and making art/media helped too. Right around the time Butch went into the hospital I was commissioned to make a projection that would be shown at night inside an empty storefront while passersby happened upon it from the outside. I ended up calling it What Feels Most True, and using a bunch of my dad’s old Kodachrome slides and scans—but also pics I had from Fashion Week and road trips and whatever else. It was a little like Butch and I collaborated, and I think I worked a lot out in those hours of iMovie.

Collaged image with a still from “What Feels Most True”

IS THERE A LYRIC OR A MOTTO OR A QUOTE THAT’S BEEN WITH YOU DURING YOUR GRIEF?
Before things got really bad, my dad would sign off from his emails with this kind of imploring plea. He would say something like, “hey—Laurie, hey … how can you make someone’s day a little better today?” (He mostly called me Laurie.) It sounds kind of corny in this context and maybe it is, but it was so sweet and so well-intentioned. It’s been with me a lot lately. Sometimes I say it to myself in the mirror while I’m brushing my teeth.

WHAT’S YOUR MOST PRESENT NEED, DESIRE, OR HOPE RIGHT NOW, WITH RESPECT TO YOUR GRIEF?
That I can be someone who helps others talk about their grief, and the fact of death (theirs and other’s). Maybe not everyone needs to talk about their grief—there are other valid forms of expression for sure—but I’m a talker and a listener, and as in physics with the principle of like seeks like, I hope I can connect with others and create a kind of community. And I hope that eventually that community of people sharing their grief permeates the larger culture such that in the future, people experiencing grief will have a far easier time expressing what they want to express, healing how they want to heal, growing how they want to grow.

Butch at the VA Hospital, Spring 2010 wearing an M.E. Escher tee that I now own, which is worth like $250 on Depop.

DO YOU HAVE A GRIEVER’S “P.S.”?
Yeah, there’s this really magical thing that happened in the hospital room right after my dad died. There had been a strange lo-fi satellite radio kind of deal in there—very crude, with this big dial that you turned between just a few stations. There was a country station, and a classical station, and something called “Classic Diner” that played these perfect AM radio hits and golden oldies. Whenever I was there with him, I turned it on, but for whatever reason his wife didn’t really like having it on so she usually turned it off when I wasn’t there.

Right before he died, I had been gone and she was in there with a friend of theirs, so the music was off. But then I showed up, unknowingly, right after his last breath and we were all standing there kind of stunned and turned inside out when the music snapped on, crystal clear and on full volume. It was Jim Croce’s “Time in a Bottle” which was a song he loved; a song he would have hand-selected for that moment. Or I guess, maybe he did hand select it. There’s really no other way to explain it.