REPOST: My First Church Friend

Today is the first anniversary of my friend’s death. I posted this last year the week after her funeral:

Last Wednesday was a beautiful day. There was a bright blue sky with just enough fluffy white clouds, the sun shining like spring and very warm for January. I walked into the church and for that one second, it was a typical Wednesday Mass at Nine AM.

Except it wasn’t.

The usher said, ‘good morning,’ and handed me the program: Celebration of Christian Burial. I’d been to many of these in the last year or so from attending the regular morning masses, but this one was different. On this one, I saw my friend’s name and with a long breath I took one step from the hum of the gathering space into the solemnity of the church itself and stopped short.

There, in Shirley’s seat was her red scarf and red wool hat. I’d seen her wear it at least a dozen times in the time I’ve known her and it took a moment to realize that it wasn’t her sitting in her usual seat. Someone had set up the display on a table and with the scarf and hat they included a rose and a rosary and adjacent to it was a floor candle just in front of ‘her’ pew.

I was quickly admonished for not doing so immediately, but I was expected to sit in my usual seat, which happened to be directly behind hers. The last thing I wanted was the first thing I felt at the start of my church visits: people watching me. I wasn’t family, but at the daily 9am Mass, Shirley and I always sat together and walked out together with two other women and I uncomfortably felt as though we were being watched.

‘My’ seat had been there since Easter 2012 when I began to attend the daily Mass. I either sat immediately behind Shirley or two seats behind her, depending on who got there first. Eventually, the other two ladies who alternated with me for that seat joined me in the one pew.

It was kind of funny. No one in the Mass really knew me, but they all knew that I was part of this foursome, an odd group if ever there was one.

I picked my seat originally because of Shirley.

The first time I entered the church, I did it almost the same way I did last Wednesday: haltingly, unsure, would anyone look at me? Gee, I hoped not. But after so many steps, there is that point of no going back, even for the anxious.

I walked in on that first spring morning, and tried to look around without looking around, and immediately took notice of Shirley’s jacket. It was a black jacket and so the muted multi-colored embroidery of leaves and flowers and stems stood out against the dark wooden pew. She was wearing a pale straw cap, not quite a pill box but not quite a cabby’s cap either. I would find that she always wore a hat, and when she didn’t, she felt that she should have been. If not a hat, then a scarf for over her head. The blue paisley one went with her pale blue raincoat. She was always put together and I envied her scarves and necklaces, gifts from her daughter.

But more than that, she was lovely. Warm and welcoming and really joyful with so much faith that it seemed easy to share and as much faith that I gained on my own, I accepted the faith offered to me by my friends, Lorraine, Arlene and especially Shirley, my first church friend.

I sat behind her that first time, and said nothing.

When she stood, I stood.

When she bowed her head, I bowed my head.

When the priest said, “Peace be with you,” and she reached her hand out to me, I clasped her hand and repeated the words rotely. Her hands were warm and it was that touch, the memory of that light handshake in the morning that got me through the rest of the day.

Every morning she would already be there. I began to recognize her car, parked in the same space in front of the church. I’d walk in, expecting to see her, and was never disappointed. I’d walk slowly down the center aisle, hoping no one would notice me, and slide in behind her, slowly moving more and more to the left so that when she turned her head she might see me.

I watched her lips move quietly, near silent as her fingers worked one bead and then the next as she said the rosary. When she finished, she dropped them gently into a little change purse-shaped pouch, snapped it closed and slipped it into her handbag, almost immediately taking out her glasses to read the Missalette, which would come later in the Mass.

After a time, when she turned to put the rosary away, she would look at me and smile, and say ‘good morning’ to me. I would respond in kind. I never said good morning before that, but church brought out the good morning in me, and each Mass was a good morning. It kept me going when I needed to keep going.

I began to ask Shirley questions about things around the church. Why were some lights in the large cross certain colors while others were not? Why is that cloth red today when it was green yesterday? I don’t remember most of the questions; there were several, and Shirley always answered them. We chatted every day. We walked out together, often all the way to her car and I’d wait until her door was closed and the engine started.

She talked about her family often – her daughter in California, her son in Florida. My family is from Long Island, and she mentioned that her brother also lived there, not far from where I had grown up. I found out that her other daughter was murdered – a victim of domestic violence. When she told me about her, I told her about my friend Brittany who had just been murdered in 2011. The first anniversary was coming up, and was actually part of the reasons I had begun visiting the church in the first place.

She was always happy to see me, and when I missed a day, she hugged me and told me that she missed seeing me. She made a point of turning around, smiling and saying hello. More often than anything else, we talked about the weather and Father Jerry’s humor in the morning, the four of us often laughing quietly and quite possibly rolling our eyes at times.

I’ve always sat behind her. How will I know where to sit now?

Depression =/= Unhappy

(Note: I write about depression on a fairly regular basis. I don’t know how long I’ll continue to talk about Robin Williams. I am profoundly saddened by his death, and I may find that I’m repeating myself. I was shocked, and I am still in shock. It is a very sad day for many people, but my thoughts and prayers are with his family. I can remember the shock of my mother’s death, and while it wasn’t a suicide, it was sudden and unexpected. I hope that they can heal and move forward.)

I recently posted about the passing of James Garner. He truly was one of my longtime heroes from my childhood. Of course, he was in his 80s and I’d been expecting to hear about his passing, and was pre-sad in the waiting.

My sister does this thing on Facebook. She posts when celebrities die. It’s kind of an informational thing, but she is always the first, and it’s always a huge shock to family and friends when she misses one. Yesterday, I got a text message from her telling me that Robin Williams had died.

I gasped and stared at the phone. I had been midsentence talking to my husband and he asked what and I couldn’t speak. My eyes welled up and I put up my hand to kind of say wait a minute, I can’t say the words. I couldn’t say the words. They got caught in my throat and part of me thought that if I didn’t say it out loud, it wouldn’t be true.

Robin Williams died.

His eyes reflected my own shock. We put the television on and saw the headlines, possibly suicide. This was beyond belief. I knew that Robin had more than his share of problems over the years: drug addiction, his struggle with sobriety, heart surgery, even depression, and he’d come through it all.

His kind of genius was either snuffed out at twenty-something or he was safe from the demons.

Whenever his name was mentioned on television or in the news, it would never cross my mind that he might have died.

Robin Williams was supposed to live forever. Forever.

How is it possible that his energy, his vibrancy, his manic hilarity is silenced? How does the world keep turning when Robin Williams isn’t in it any longer?

In the past eleven hours or so, I’ve read of many fans’ shock and disbelief, some knowing that in the heart of many a comedian lives the darkness of depression, but many others asking how someone so funny could be depressed enough to kill himself. He had a great life: marriage, three great kids, a career, a ridiculously funny sense of humor, a humanitarian, money and he was well loved, not only by his fans, but by his fellow actors and his family. How can someone so happy be so sad on the inside?

I posted a statement in response to this and said, “It is so important to keep repeating: DEPRESSION HAS NOTHING, NOTHING, NOTHING TO DO WITH HAPPINESS.”

I was asked about this earlier this morning, and I do understand that people who are not exposed to depression might not understand the severity and the forms it comes in. I didn’t understand how depression worked just a couple of years ago, and unless people know someone with depression, most people misunderstand how serious it is.

I describe it as an iceberg. The part that you can see from the outside is so much smaller than the actual problem. So much of what is there is lurking below the surface, waiting to pull you under when you least expect it.

There are three types of depression (that I’m aware of). The mood descriptor is the most confusing because it uses the word ‘depression’ and we talk about being so depressed, and so when we are talking about the clinical, chemical imbalance, physical manifestations of the mental illness, it is often confounded with the much less serious depression or down mood.

When you are down and your mood is depressed, this is a normal emotion and feeling and we all get that every now and then. Sometimes there are reasons for the down mood, and sometimes it’s a lightweight apathy or boredom in a moment, and it always passes. One of the reasons that the miscues come from is that we should really use a different word when describing the depressed mood rather than depression the mental illness.

This comes and goes and everyone gets in this kind of mood now and again. It comes, it goes away, and that’s all normal.

The second form is situational depression. This might need medication temporarily or it might need close observance. It definitely should be seen by a doctor to make sure that it is situational. This type crops up when something big hits you unexpectantly: someone dies, you can’t afford to fix your car and can’t figure out how to get to work, you get seriously ill, a friendship ends – the kinds of things that pop up and are more than just a minor sadness that will pass. It is serious, but it’s not clinical. There is a reason for it and everyone’s reaction to the same stimulus will be different. This strikes me as an emotional response but more than a simple moodiness.

Clinical depression (and I don’t know that this is what Robin Williams had, but clearly he had something), (and this is what I’ve been diagnosed with) is that feeling of nothing. Mood swings, bursts of inappropriate emotion in both happy and sad directions, lethargic, nothing feels right, everything feels empty. For me, I just stopped. Everything. I couldn’t get out of bed, I couldn’t cook, I didn’t want to do anything, and it was well beyond just being lazy, and ever worse was that I didn’t care that I felt this way. It didn’t matter; nothing mattered and I was okay with that.

My husband would ask if I wanted to use the computer and I’d shrug. I’d sit in the dark, not doing or looking at anything; not sleeping. I thought about the logistics of driving my car over a bridge, and how reasonable it sounded. My best friend would get on the phone with me and ask if I was drunk – I was so out of it – brain fog: I couldn’t remember things; I didn’t know if I’d eaten or when I’d showered last. I forgot appointments and my children’s assignments. It’s serious, and in retrospect, I’ve always had some form of depression with varying degrees of severity. I didn’t realize it until I was suicidal, and it has nothing to do with cheering up or having a good job or being happy.

It’s also scary because you’re alone and at the point you don’t care about being alone, it’s already almost too late.

I also liken my recovery to being an alcoholic. There is always the chance that it will come back or rather it is never gone. I need to be vigilant and aware of how I’m feeling and if I’m in a normal mood or if I’m coming on a more depressive one (like I’ve been feeling recently).

I’m on medication, I’m in therapy, I have coping mechanisms and friends who understand and support me when I’m having a bad time of it, but I can also feel it most of the time and I’m in a constant state of checks and balances to make sure that my meds are working. When it’s really bad, I go back to my lists, listing every infinitesimal detail of my day, including eat breakfast and take a shower.

I hope this isn’t too much of an info dump. These are questions a lot of people have about depression and its misrepresentation in layperson circles, including my family that just don’t get it (and that’s not their fault), so I go to people who do understand; people who can support what I need when I need it.

Writing this makes me feel a bit better. It’s good to be able to change the idea that someone who commits suicide is weak when really it’s that they can’t control the avalanche when it’s coming down on them and burying them alive.

Death’s Door

I’m not a huge fan of death; never have been. Whenever I think of death, I think of my uncle Nathan. His was an open casket, and the only memories I have of him were of cigar smoke and that moment of seeing him in the coffin. I cringed at every funeral after that as a child and well into my adulthood.

I would say that while this is a memory from me as a young child, the two that stand out more abruptly are of both of my grandfathers. They both died when I was five or near about. My first grandfather, my dad’s father was from Canada, and I remember his family there more than I remember him.

The most enduring memory I have is standing in the hospital parking lot looking up to the roof where my grandfather stood. He was wearing a grey bathrobe and I think my grandmother stood next to him. He waved to me and possibly my brother, and we waved back. Well, I waved back because my brother would only have been one or so. I think my father stood with us in the parking lot.

This was 1970 or 1971 and children weren’t allowed in the hospital. It’s kind of like that now, but when my dad was in the hospital, we used to sneak my son in to see him and the nurses would ignore him just so long as he could get past the security guard.

We never would have thought to sneak in back then.

I remember this grandfather from photographs that blend into memory. There is me in a stroller wearing bunny ears, holding a Kodak film box, the recognizable yellow box of the Eastman Company. We are on a street in the Bronx outside of an apartment building. I don’t think this is their apartment building, but nearby there is an asphalt park surrounded by a chain link fence where the older boys played basketball and the girls jumped double-dutch. It was a noisy street with cars driving by, their engines noisy and their horns loud, interspersed with the bouncing of the basketball off the backboard and the handball off of the wall that divided the spaces.

My other grandfather, my Mother’s father died either later that year or early the next year. It was within months of each other. In fact, my grandfathers died within a year and my grandmothers did the same although they waited for many years after that. My parents also died within eighteen months of each other.

The only memory I have of this grandfather was his balding head, sitting with his back to the doorway at the kitchen table eating his dinner when he’d come home late from work. I’m not sure what we would have been doing there so late, but it is the one picture of him in my mind that is consistent.

My mother says that it isn’t true, but I have vivid memories of his death. He had a heart attack in the house, and I remember him lying on the carpet and the paramedics coming in with the stretcher from the ambulance. I would swear that I was there, and my mother would swear I was not, so I don’t know if this is an actual memory that she’s always tried to protect me from or if it is one of those planted memories from other people’s overheard conversations.

He did have a heart attack and died in the house and there are other details that it would seem strange for others to talk about around me, but I don’t know.

These are the three that still stand out to me as an adult, and form my ever fearful phobia of death and dying, although I have mellowed out in the abstract of faith and adulthood. I still occasionally have a recurrence of a childhood dream that I’ve often had of nothingness. If you can’t imagine it, it can’t be explained, but it is the abyss of nothing and it is palpable. It is the dark staring back at you and as much as I try to be calm and rational, the noiseless void can be too much to bear. All I can do is wait for it to pass, and it usually does.

My First Church Friend