Rational rationale

I have thought about guns a great deal since my father committed suicide by handgun when I was in ninth grade.

I say that not to elicit sympathy, but as a starting point for this essay. A little background: my parents were divorced when I was an infant; I had little contact with my father before he died; and my mother provided such a rich community of elders that his absence seemed incidental. Nonetheless, his death has affected me in ways I am still discovering.

All of this is by way of explaining the very personal relationship I have with gun control efforts, especially those around handguns. Not long before my father died, the "Brady Bill" brought national attention to gun control efforts. I supported the movement then; my conviction was deepened by my father's death and has been cemented over time.

That said, as distasteful as I find them, I am not against gun ownership. My husband has rifles and uses them. My son has practiced marksmanship with his Scout pack. A number of my friends enjoy a day at the shooting range. I respect that. I have even surprised people in the past -- those who have heard (or read) me rant about gun control -- with my ardent support of hunters, albeit from the perspective that they play a vital role in wildlife management.

I am aware that the basic regulations for which I advocate would not have saved my father's life. He owned his weapons legally and had a permit. I know also that his suicide was really a symptom of a lifetime of alcohol abuse. If he was truly intent on ending his life, he would have found a way.

The thing is, with suicide by gun there is very little margin of error. There are plenty of statistics (yes, yes, I know -- lies, damn lies, and statistics) tallying gun deaths. What many people don't realize is that two-thirds of those are suicides. Having a gun vastly increases the odds of someone attempting and succeeding in trying to kill themselves. Especially, unfortunately, people under the age of 18. It is so easy. 

As for other deaths? Looser laws in any one state vastly increases the homocide rate there as well. Locations with regulations around gun storage (locked up and unloaded) see far fewer accidental fatalities. I'm not going to turn this into a numbers game -- there are plenty of much better researched and dedicated pages for that. What I am going to say, after nearly 30 years of thinking about it, is that I truly believe that most of these deaths -- suicide, homocide, accidental -- were preventable with simple, common sense measures. I don't intend to strip guns away from people. I do believe that we can ask them to be responsible -- much as I am required to prove a certain level of responsibility before owning or operating a vehicle. Growing up in my little valley, getting a hunting license and going on your first hunt was a rite of passage. I remember all the kids excitedly talking about signing up for the hunter safety courses their parents required before going into the woods. That step was part and parcel of growing up and being a "good" -- as in moral and ethical -- hunter. I don't know why that has changed.

I have heard at length (from my husband, among others) the argument that people rely too much on the government to keep them safe, and that it's a "nanny state". You know what? We as a nation have proven that necessary. After struggling to keep eight-year olds calm and quiet through lockdown drills, after mourning too many mass shootings, after seeing pictures of men and women carrying firearms through Target, I don't trust my fellow citizens to act in our collective best interest. The roughly 32,000 gun deaths last year are my measure of why I believe the following basics should be implemented:

• Require all gun owners to take a use and safety course. I'd encourage them to go further and go through some simulation training. This would be for everyone's safety. I have been in enough mildly emergency situations that I don't trust people to behave well under stress, let alone a situation where gunfire might be needed. I really, really, really don't want an untrained, panicking person trying to use a gun.
• Require background checks for ALL sales. Period.
• Restrict large capacity ammunition clips.
• Restrict multi-weapon sales, especially through unlicensed dealers. This is where many of the weapons used unlawfully come from.

I'm sure there are more, but I didn't start this post with the intent to list out my solutions. As I said, there are better and more passionate sites for that. All I wanted to do was tie the political back to the personal. So many folks cry out for RKBA (the Right to Keep and Bear Arms). I think, sometimes, they forget the people behind the calls for regulation.

I was not close to my father. I may never have been, even if he had lived. Nonetheless, his death affected me profoundly. Most immediately came the knowledge that I was "half an orphan". My mother's mortality was highlighted by my father's death, deepening a sense of the fragility of family which had been instilled three years prior with the death of my maternal grandmother.

The longer-lasting, more complicated impact came from my imagination. Here's what I think I know: as a result of his alcoholic behavior, his third wife left him. She found him when she returned to the house sometime during the week. 

From there my vivid imagination takes over, filling in the gaps. I can see him angrily drinking while watching the Broncos lose. I smell the oil as he breaks down the gun, wiping it clean, reassembling. Repeating, maybe, as he drinks more. Easing toward tears, frustration melting into an overwhelming sense of failure. Walking to his bedroom. Lying down on the pastel bedspread. The shot, and a fan of chunky blood on the wall. 

I have carried those images in my head for more than twenty years now. I have no idea if they are even vaguely accurate. I don't care to find out.

All I want, really, is that no one else have to live with their version of this sorrow.

Scenes from a Funeral

chapel ceiling

The chapel is familiar. I sit alone in a too-small pew and try to remember who we buried last. There have been so many.

Behind me someone gossips about the sale price of a neighbor's house, setting off excited chatter about the real estate market. Elsewhere a cluster of strangers commiserate about how the weather has thrown off their landscaping schedule. 

This death is once removed: the father of a friend. My relief is distasteful to me. Still I clutch a tissue, prepared for the echoes of past grief--or premonitions of future sorrow--to rise up and claim me. 

The injustice of time gnaws at me. They say it marches on. The vocabulary is wrong. There must be a word that combines colossal and indifferent and relentless instead. When engulfed in sorrow I long for a button with which to pause everything so I can, for just one moment, bypass the mundane and instead contemplate the profound. Washing laundry, mowing the lawn, taking a shit all seem obscene in the face of loss. The inescapable obligation of little tasks unfairly diminishes personal grief. There should be an isolation chamber into which the bereaved can retreat and ponder mortality and love and friendship and the meaning of life and death without penalty. Instead we are forced to carry on.

The rabbi stands and gently begins the ceremony. The gardeners and homeowners behind me shuffle to sit with their partners. Speeches are made. Songs rise gloriously to the rafters. My tears ebb and flow in tides of sympathy. I time my nose-blowing for the in-between moments, preferring to break the peace rather than interrupt the farewells. I inadvertantly make a sound like a trumpet and bring a moment of levity. The laughter forgives me any embarrassment.

The final prayer is spoken. The sound of voices intoning the kaddish in unison resonates through my center. There is no comfort for me in the words; they are in Hebrew. I am both together with and apart from my fellow mourners. 

The widow is conscripted into the task of hostess: greeting each well-wisher, thanking the rabbi, figuring out what to do with the flowers. I make a note to arrange my funeral now to spare my loved ones. Then I change my mind. Perhaps busyness interrupts the grief, making it more bearable. The practicalities seen brutal, though. Walk-throughs, selecting music, paying for services are salt in the wound. She tells me tearfully "I didn't want to do this" and I understand she is referring to saying goodbye, but I wonder if she also means the administrivia of funeral arrangements. I shake her hand helpessly and step away.

I find my friend and we hug and wipe our tears and comment on the weather. Words are froth, conveying nothing. I stand close, knowing presence counts, wondering if I am being presumptuous. I have stood in the void into which she has been thrust. I can do nothing but be present. Time will march on, indifferent and colossal and relentless. This scene will play out again. We will become practiced in supportive hugs and small words. Laundry will be washed and lawns mowed. I can do nothing. I can be present. Time will march on.

What Can I Do?

The search was particularly tragic. A boy, maybe ten years old, had run down the trail ahead of his family as they descended from a mountain picnic. His tracks ended near a bend in what should have been a stream, but that day -- of all days -- it was a furious creek, powerful with fresh snow melt between its confined banks. We knew he was gone, as did all the other Search And Rescue teams. Still, we had to try. It was the only comfort we could offer his stricken family.

I was seventeen, living in a boarding school. We were required to do some sort of community service; I joined SAR. Our dormitory doors had red crosses taped to them signifying where to knock when a call came at three or four a.m. to mobilize. I kept a gear bag ready by the door; I think we all did. Within fifteen minutes we'd be shuffling, yawning, around a basement classroom lit by humming flourescent lights, waiting for assignments. In teams we'd dole out gear -- tents, stoves, food, first aid kits, rope, maps, walkie-talkies -- then slump down on our packs and each other, waiting for details. Sometimes we just loaded into vans and rode through the dawn to the search site.

NMSAR was a tight-knit, well-organized program. I'm sure it has changed significantly with the advent of GPS and cell phones. Twenty years ago, though, teams arrived at a command center, received instructions, and set out to search. New Mexico is high desert, stark and grand and empty, and when hunters or hikers or cheerful little boys went missing it took hundreds of people to cover the grid, seeking traces. We called out as we hiked, always hoping for a cry back. We marched six feet apart in straight lines, eyes to the ground for tracks or torn clothing, or, worst, a body. Teams from our school never found anyone. We'd gripe about how we youngsters always were sent to the least likely area, but felt a current of disappointed relief upon hearing the announcement that the search had been called.

They found the boy's body a few weeks and twenty miles later, caught in reeds at a slow part of the river.

I don't remember how often we were called out. Every few weeks, maybe. Between times we practiced. We climbed peaks wheeling specialized mountain stretchers up the trail. We learned our knots so we could belay down cliffs to damaged people in deep ravines. We hiked at two a.m. on trails barely lit by headlamps. We crossed deserts in the high sun, moving steadily at four miles an hour with fifty pounds of gear on our backs. We held practice searches and rescued terribly "injured" schoolmates from hidden locations. And we learned how to fix them. Wilderness first aid is special -- injuries are often drastic and resources scarce. Compound fractures with bones protruding. Impalements which puncture lungs. Burns and hypothermia and deyhydration. Our instructors covered everything. Small cuts and scrapes became inconsequential when we learned how to treat someone who had been hit by lightning then carry that person fifteen miles in the dark down a steep trail through rain and snow to a place of relative safety for evacuation.

I was only involved in an actual rescue once. Ironically, it was our wilderness instructor. He  fell while crossing a fence during a winter practice search. I happened to be team lead that day, so I ran first aid while coordinating the evacuation back to school (all of three or four miles). We already had a sled. I bound and braced his twisted knee (eventually they found a torn ACL) and treated him for shock. We packed him in sleeping bags and skied him down to medical care, then returned to complete our expedition. Later he told me I'd done well. That praise still is a medallion I carry near my heart.

I loved Search And Rescue. The surety of purpose. The knowledge that I was strong and capable. The sense that I could help. So often during crises people feel helpless. We stare at the news wondering how we can make things better, to fix what's wrong. I felt that way watching the stories from Boston this week. I've been meditating on that question: what can I do to help? I try to spread love and understand and tolerance. But those are such ephemeral things, unmeasurable in their effect. I give blood, although honestly not as often as I probably could. That effort can be measured, pint by pint. What else, though? What could I do in the case of a disaster? 

Then, I remembered. I have training. Not the wilderness first aid from those years ago. Yes, that's important and the lessons run deep. What I mean, though, is that today I am fully certified by the American Red Cross in First Aid, CPR, and the use of an AED. It sounds silly, I suppose. I got certified in part for my everyday life when I see children in the nurse's office at school. Applying a bandaid to a pinched finger is tiny (except, of course, to the wounded child) compared to applying a tourniquet to a severed leg. Still, if some horrific something happened, I have enough knowledge, enough practice, enough confidence, that I like to think I would be one of those running toward, not away. I could be one of Mr. Rogers' famouse helpers.

You could too.

http://www.redcross.org/take-a-class

To Sleep, Perchance to Dream

Slept enough last night to dream, but wasn't rested when I woke. Sad scary thoughts are passing through my head at night.

I dreamt of climbing mountains with friends. The rocks were steep and the views spectacular, but I was uncomfortable and felt like I was going to fall. Suddenly I looked down into a crevasse and there was a woman there, obviously in distress. She was bleeding. I tried to tell everyone she must have fallen, she was bleeding from internal injuries. I watched the pool of blood grow and we looked down on her and could do nothing, we couldn't reach her. A man came up and told us there was a knife accident, that he had stabbed her in the stomach. We sat at the edge, looking down 100 feet and she lay there and bled and died, and I couldn't do anything.

I dreamt a friend called, a dear friend. He was crying and his voice was all wrong. He said he was glad I was there for the interview, because it was really upsetting him and he'd broken the door and hurt the gerbils. But I wasn't there, and I couldn't help from so far away. I couldn't do anything.

The worst of these nightmares was many years ago. I was held in a concrete basement, eyes propped open, bound to a chair. For hours I was held and forced to watch a film reel of the horrific murder of dozens of people, one after another, and I knew that it was my fault, I had caused it, I had done nothing and they were dead and it was all mine. That was more than 20 years ago and it is still vivid enough to bring tears to my eyes.

I saw a therapist after that one. She excused my poor psyche and told me these dreams were about my sense of responsibility. I don't remember anything else she told me about them. All I know is sometimes I wake up feeling like I have failed someone, that I could have, should have done better. And I carry that feeling with me through my days and nights, even when I don't have those dreams.

Thoughts of Mortality and Farewell

Having just returned from a follow-up (and blessedly clean) mammogram, I am pensive this morning with thoughts of mortality and farewell. Three women in my family died last year. The turning of the calendar allows me to distance myself from that fact, as if the new year is distinct and free of the losses of the summer and fall. My sadness, however, stretches across the months and I find it difficult to approach my memories for fear they will overwhelm me.

Perhaps now, finally, I can write out the shards of goodbyes that have been sticking in my heart.

Jan died first. It wasn't unexpected -- she had been anticipating it for a long time, and from a distance her absence wasn't so noticeable.

Will and I visited Jan twice in her grotto in Connecticut. She was invariably cheerful and did her best to host us, although our little family unit is tremendously independent. The noise and suddenness of our young children alarmed her; at the same time it recalled for her the times she was called upon to help her oldest sister with childcare. She took such great pride in helping raise her nieces and nephews, and in all the descendants! Our cards and photos were arranged with care along the shelves of her tiny house, layered in front of one another so they became three-dimensional records of our aging. During our visits I didn't listen enough. I was distracted by the green of the trees and Jan's nervousness regarding my flighty children, so I have scant knowledge of the facts of her life. Instead I have impressions of determination and endless curiosity, of a liberated woman long before that was fashionable, of a life filled with celebrations in New York City, and peaceful times in Connecticut. And I have memories of her with each of my children: tentatively holding Violet, the first in the extended family to do so, and barely having time to embrace Sam, who was vibrating with excitement to go run around and explore that fantastical place. I am grateful for those memories, and saddened by the photos I never bothered to send because I was "too busy", although I know she would have been delighted.

Barb went next. I could say it was complications from a stroke, but really she was tired and the kind of lonely that comes from witnessing too many loved ones pass away.

I knew Barb only as a Grand Dame, rising from the death of two of her sisters to steer our large family in the stewardship of the Bane cabin. Family lore speaks of her mother holding court each Sunday with supper for four daughters, their assorted spouses, and eventually their children. I love the photos of Manna with her family arrayed around her in their Sunday best, cousins becoming nearly as close as siblings. That role fell to Barb late in life, long after the cousins and then second cousins had built separate traditions. Her presence still bound us, if only out of respect. Barb and I both had left Colorado - she to California, I for the East coast - so our relationship was truncated by geography. Yet she remembered my birthday each year with a card, and -- after we each returned to Denver -- with a brief phone call. Only now that I have a perpetually full calendar and often miss dates important to others do I appreciate the thoughtfulness of such gestures.

Finally bright Robin flew away too soon. What started as a surprising shortness of breath revealed itself as lung cancer that gave her a terribly short time to say goodbye.

Robin was on the other side of the family, far away, and I saw her only a few times. My strongest memory of her was a visit when I was tiny -- six, perhaps? My mother was forced by circumstance into a man's world, owning her own printing business and struggling alone to raise a child, which left little room for fashion and frills. Robin visited us, bringing her delightful California style, tall and lean and blond and girly in ways I'd never seen before, and she shared that with me, taking my little hands and painting my nails. I don't think I'd ever felt so glamorous. I doubt I even breathed for her whole visit, I was so awed.

Each of these remarkable women gave me, us, a final gift with their deaths -- they died the way they wanted to. Jan stayed in her home, conceding the need for assistance at the end, but never allowing the help to make her truly dependent. Barb chose her own way, seeing the consequences of failing health and instead setting a date, saying goodbye, and letting go when and how she wanted. And Robin celebrated to the end, adventuring and throwing parties and smiling that marvelous California smile.

I feel unworthy of my grief. To be honest I didn't know any of them particularly well, so my tears are more for myself than for them or the people most affected by their loss. Nonetheless, I want them back. Even knowing that I probably wouldn't pay any more attention to them resurrected than I did before, I feel that I am no longer whole without each one. My family, my life, is diminished without them.