YWBB

Rare Sunday Update


Don’t get used to this. I don’t normally have time for a movie review, much less an update on my life, but I’ve been at the computer most of the weekend working on the PowerPoint portion of my upcoming workshop and conducting the great Twitter experiment, and I needed a break.

I haven’t used a PowerPoint in a million years. I loathe them truthfully because I’ve seldom met anyone who can give decent powerpoint. Most presenters end up writing their whole spiel on the slides and then read them at you. PowerPoints should contain only the main ideas that you then riff off of, but I think most people are just too petrified, or uninspired, to work that hard. Consequently, I am trying to make my PowerPoint visually interesting and devoid of too much in the way of complete sentences, and I guarantee there will be no handouts that say the exact same thing my PowerPoint shows.

On Saturday I took BabyD to her children’s grief group gathering. The counselor who directs the parents’ portion was ill, so we parents holed up in the kitchen and had quite a good conversation. The interesting thing about it, for me, was that we were all survivors of people who had terminal diagnoses from the outset and long care-taking stints – though I think mine was the longest by a couple of years. Because of this, the subject of “pre-grieving” or anticipatory grief came up. On the widow board I was lashed with the “you can’t grieve a person before they’ve died” noodle quite a bit. I will concede that the physical loss is something you can’t really know until it happens, but the letting go of dreams and a future that will never be is a very real thing. And I know because I spent nearly three years doing it before I was widowed. It’s not like I had other things to do. I had months worth of hours to resign myself and decide what I wanted my future to look like because I was going to have one regardless of my personal preferences. My very personal opinion is that people who live in the “might have been” are the ones who are really denying grief.

This topic naturally spun off onto the criticisms and condemnations we all got in one form or another for our relief at being able to finally have a life that was focused on ourselves rather than the sick person and for acting “too quickly” to move on.

I find that even three years on from Will’s death I am intolerant of anyone who suggests that I moved on quickly because I a) didn’t love my late husband, b) that our love wasn’t true or I would have rended my clothing more, or c) that I simply am an avoider and someday I will collapse in a heap of undealt with grief. Seriously. I got this a lot. It was nice to talk with people who understood where I was coming from and didn’t think any of those things. I wish the counselor would let us have free form conversations like this. I might bring this up next time.

Why bring this up? Grief and grieving are on my mind. I was on the board while I was sick. Rob found a flaming thread and showed it to me. I followed it a bit simply because I was mentioned in the post – although not by name thank goodness. I have apparently morphed into some pseudo-cautionary tale and that posters there need to be aware of posters – like me – who might have “alterior” motives. I was the “example” of someone with “alterior” motives. How did the poster put it? Oh yes – like the one who was writing a book and using real board handles and posts to write a book. Thankfully this poster didn’t know me from my time there and there were no links. And apparently thinks I was a fiction writer trolling for material because my own life is brimming with it.

I sorta chuckled because the poster who was actually being targeted and then driven away by the flaming was very likely a real widow – who though a bit clueless – wasn’t harming anyone the way some of those that viciously attacked her have inflicted harm, but it’s not like there haven’t been posers there. And, as usual, none of the “vintage” members who carry real weight in the community there tried to step in and help her. People only think of themselves when the torches and pitch forks come out on the widow board.

I remember a poser from my early days there. At least I am pretty sure he was. He did nothing but ask questions – mostly about dating – and then eventually staged his own death by having a “relative” post about it. Anyway, that’s my take on it. Others will insist he was totally upfront and legit. It’s interesting to me because I tend to take most everyone I meet on the Internet at face value and assume they are real unless they really stink of weird, not overly credible behavior.

When I was on the baby boards back in the day of trying to get pregnant, the other women there would joke about whether one of us was really a 60 year old man with a pregnant woman fetish sitting in his underwear and exchanging posts with the rest of us. I guess that isn’t really a joke. It could happen, but I doubt it happens as much as we are warned about.

Anyway, I felt sorry for that poor widow who was flamed. Anyone there could be a faker. Anyone. And the ones who are really faking will never be found out and run off. They will be welcomed and fawned over by the same people who claim to be able to spot phonies. I mean really – they think I was “faking it” now thanks to the dust up last November.

The Twitter experiment continues where I am sure everyone I am following is a real person and those who follow me are real as well despite not asking anyone for their credentials. I am following 18 people including Demi Moore who really tweets herself and seems a sweet person. Most of the others I follow are friends or writer/agents and creative types. I am following a radical analyst who has a show on BBC and used to work for Al Jazeera English. He is scary but very informative. If half of what he is predicting for the economy comes true we are in for so much hurt. He is following me as well, which is interesting. But I will have more to say when the experiment ends and I decide the fate of Twitter in my life.

See ya all on Monday.

Friday Update on The YWBB Mess – UPDATED


So it will be no surprise to my dear readers (as opposed to the gawkers from the YWBB) that my blog was transformed into a circus sideshow in the latter half of the week. I protested but to no avail. Read Full Article

The Way I Am is the Belated Song Lyric Thursday


The fall of 2005 found me anxiously awaiting the release of Eminem’s greatest hits CD titled Curtain Call. An odd thing, I suppose, for a forty-something high school remedial English teacher to be coveting. I didn’t really know any of his work beyond the pop-y stuff on MTV. But I sensed an anger roiling beneath his surface which matched my own and being someone who finds music therapeutic I knew instinctively this collection was something I needed.

I’d spent the summer on a hamster wheel of grad school and care taking. By September I was dealing with a new assignment in a new school with children who ranged from merely disenfranchised to criminally inclined, and the nursing home was calling me daily about one new crisis after another. I was pushing for hospice. Death shadowed Will’s eyes. I could see the little that was left of him fading and fighting for release at the same time. He was running fevers the doctor on staff was dismissing as a late summer cold. The enamel had been eaten off his teeth by the Mountain Dew his mother insisted on giving him despite the fact that no one was brushing his teeth in the evenings after she’d leave for the night. Just weeks earlier I had had my second only outburst of temper when I discovered what remained of his front teeth, painful looking and flaking. I don’t know if he could discern the information coming in at that point due to the damage to his nerve endings and the dura matter covering his brain. Maybe he didn’t realize and maybe it was a constant barrage of misery. I’ll never know.

I was tired. I was alone. And I was angry because I was powerless. Impotence does not bring out the best side of my personality.

The song The Way I Am summed up in a sense my frustration about the way the world seemed to be forcing its ideals and expectations of who I was on me without my consent. It said what I couldn’t find words to say for myself.