grief

A Weak Man

R. Horton

I don’t think he was a weak man, really. I mean, yeah, he was sensitive sometimes, but he was also into extreme sports: motocross, skateboarding, anything with wheels, you know. Maybe he was a little depressed from time to time, but that’s pretty normal, isn’t it? I think it was a little harsh of her to say he was wallowing in it. I personally, would never say depression was a “luxury,” but I guess that’s just how she saw things. Like everybody else, she had her own ideas. Maybe that’s a woman’s prerogative.

But I still thought she crossed a line sometimes. I’m just saying it seemed pretty mean to me, and you’re entitled to your own opinion, but I thought it was cruel to say she was disgusted when he broke down. I mean, they were children for God’s sake. He comforted the mother, he comforted the father, and he did his best to look after the family. He gave the eulogy—imagine giving a eulogy for children!—and everyone said it was really nice and how he was a good writer and everything, and that takes a toll, doesn’t it, and maybe everyone should get a moment to sort of lose it?

But I guess some people don’t think so. Some people think it’s different for men. This therapist told me it’s harder for men to access their tears, right? They grieve differently. I guess in order to not disgust anyone, they grieve differently. They grieve alone. And that’s what he did. He just cried his eyes out with no arms around his shoulders. No one handed him a tissue. He cried in the car in the driveway late at night. He cried in the shower. He would drive to the middle of nowhere and cry through the blackest nights. No one saw him access his tears. The counsellor never saw him access his tears and went on believing that men can’t access their feelings.

So again, I wouldn’t call that weakness, but I guess a lot of people do. And I guess he sort of believed it, too, and he changed little by little. He just got used to being alone, you know. He enjoyed the outdoors and spent many hours camping. Everyone was excited when he finally showed an interest in something. They were happy when he started talking about hunting and bought a gun.

How to Become Homeless

R. Horton2 Comments

People use the phrase “homeless people” as if it refers to a type of person instead of a type of circumstance. People without access to shelter are sometimes born into a homeless situation, but they are not “born that way” in the same way that tall people are born with genes for height.

If you spend any time at all talking to people without homes, you will quickly realize you are much closer to being homeless than you are likely to want to admit. I honestly believe this is why so many people avoid those conversations at all costs.

I suppose we are most affected by stories that relate closely to our own lives. At least, I know that is true for me, so I will never forget meeting a homeless man who taught at the same college as I. He was highly educated and had been living quite comfortably until a medical emergency left him in a coma for some time. He wasn’t expected to live, much less come out of the coma and leave the hospital, but sometimes medical miracles do happen.

When this man got out of the hospital, he found that his sister and nephews, thinking he was dying, had emptied all the money from all his accounts and gone on a cross-country spending spree. The money could not be retrieved, and prosecuting the thieves would mean sending his own family to jail. As he told me he couldn’t bring himself to file charges, tears rolled down his cheeks. He was still teaching classes while trying to hide the fact that he was homeless from his students and employer.

I spoke to hundreds of people who were in crisis, and I would say that the most common causes of their homelessness were medical emergencies that resulted in job and/or income loss, failed businesses or theft of businesses funds by unscrupulous business partners, failed romantic relationships, mental illness, grief, domestic abuse, and, yes, addiction. This last one (addiction) should simply fall under illness, but I recognize that many people believe that addiction is a personal choice, and this belief enables them to blame homelessness on the victims of depression, grief, or other factors that lead to addiction. No one chooses to become an addict and lose everything.

Another category deserves a separate post, really, and that is young people who are thrown out of their family homes for being different, usually for being LGBT+. These young people are extremely vulnerable to exploitation and abuse, including murder.

I suppose some people are wealthy enough to be insulated from the risk of homelessness, but many people I spoke to had lost all the things you have and take for granted. They had homes, cars, businesses, and all that goes with those things, including pride, self-worth, dignity and comfort. Many of the people I met were able to maintain their feelings of pride, dignity, and self-worth despite seemingly every part of their families, their society, and their government trying to take those away from them. I was and remain in awe of the people who have managed to fight their way back from the brink without being destroyed by their situation.

Many aren’t able to overcome the odds, and each death is a failure of society to look out for every member. Immanuel Kant famously said that if we will heartlessness to those who are victims of misfortune, we are willing indifference to our own suffering when our time comes. No one gets out of this world alive, so your time is coming. Have you acted in ways that make you worthy of compassion and respect?

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Poem: Fair Wind and Following Seas

R. Horton

For Doug and Cindy

Your mother only knew the comfort
Of gentle beaches with waves that caressed
And never battered holiday bathers.
She only knew the pacific beaches of
The Great Lakes and idyllic Asian islands.

She had never experienced the brutality
Of the Texas Gulf Coast, and she would
Have assumed “riptide” to be a video game
Or pop song, not a lethal feature of
A holiday destination.

And what better way to spend Mother’s Day
Than with your children at the beach?
It’s the stuff of Norman Rockwell cards
And saccharine American traditions.

And you both swam like stars.
You loved the diving board, and
You never left the deep end. You
Were invincible. I remember your
Laughter as you always escaped
In a game of water tag.

It’s easy to nod off at the beach, or
Just break concentration for a
Moment as the breeze kisses your cheek.
In an instant, you may
Realize you no longer hear the
Joyous cacophony of childhood laughter.

In an instant, your sister is gone
Under the punishing waves and against
The unforgiving grain of packed sand.
I don’t know, but I think you tried to
Find her, giving your last
Conscious moments to her aid.

Somehow, your body stayed with us,
On machines, for three more days.
I can’t describe the unreality of those
Days, but it finally ended to the chords
Of “Born in the USA,” which your patriot
Father asked the radio station to play
Over the air as your body
Was finally permitted to lay at rest.

Through the tears, I still chuckled at the
Irony, as you were born in Japan, and
Your father had never listened to
The lyrics of that song.

R Horton

scenic view of ocean during sunset
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No One Will Be There But Jesus (#poem)

R. Horton
statue of jesus
Photo by Juhasz Imre on Pexels.com

As friends solemnly told him to call
On them if ever he needed anything,
Only his pastor was candid enough
To tell him Jesus alone would stay.

And so it was as it had always been,
Walking alone on the beach, in town,
Along the highway, and in the upstairs
Hallway with no memory of being carried.

He supposed Jesus was a faithful companion,
But a bit quiet, and not much help when
A flat needs fixing. He’s someone you can
Always talk to, but feedback is lacking.

And why should Jesus be different from the
Others? Why would the Son of God care
That he was lonely? Why would he look
For Divinity in the deep pools of loss?

Randall Horton

On an Emergent Awareness of Impending Death (#fiction #prose #essay)

R. Horton

20190408203713_IMG_7553.JPGV

Sometimes life just smacks you in the face. You’re just minding your own business and out of nowhere comes a big punch to the gut, or, yeah, a slap to the face or whatever. This mostly happens when you’re young. By the time you reach a certain age, if you are so lucky to live that long, you’ll be punch drunk enough, trust me.

Anyway, that’s why she couldn’t believe her rabbit was dying. No, she wasn’t pregnant or anything—her pet rabbit was riddled with tumors and needed to be put down. She’d never lost anyone that close before, and the tears came in waves. She was inconsolable, as you are when you lose something precious.

So she called her mother for comfort, which is a pretty reasonable thing to do, even for someone who is technically grown up and fully adult. Relying on mothers for comfort is a habit many of us never break until fate forces our hand on the matter. She called her mother and told her the devastating news, but her mother wasn’t really as sympathetic as she had expected, so she was a little crestfallen for a minute.

Her mother listened for a minute or two to the tears and lamentations before saying, “You go on like this for your rabbit when you know I have cancer, too?”

It was true that her mother had cancer and she definitely knew about it, but she was still naïve enough to believe doctors could save lives. She had heard of people surviving cancer, so she assumed her mother would be one of those, not one of the unlucky people you hear about in other families. We’re always pretty sure the worst things won’t happen to us, aren’t we?

She would be sadder and wiser soon enough, and maybe the rabbit served as a kind of omen or preparation for what was to come. Maybe it would help her get through the days, months, and years ahead. When you look back on things, it’s hard to say what helped or didn’t as you can’t imagine how bad things might have been otherwise. Trauma and grief can be pretty all consuming, you know, and your imagination for other possible worlds disappears.

You’re just sort of stuck, boxed in, and frozen.

Anyway, that’s how it all started. Tests, promising results, surgeries, promising outcomes, more tests, different doctors, different hospitals, different promises, and different prognoses were all to follow. Sure, the best of us indulge in magical thinking or just wishful thinking, anything to not indulge in despair, even when despair is rationally the correct choice. You pretend that rabbit cancer is categorically different from human cancer. You pretend doctors are magicians. You just get on with it.

Or sometimes you don’t. You decompensate. You look for comfort in anonymous sex, “mood altering” substances, or purely defiant denial. And you’re done for. Death keeps coming, and you find out you’re strong enough to face it down. I know, some people aren’t strong enough to face it down, but anyone reading this has been strong enough so far, so you’ve been strong for a long time.

Keep it up.

The Peace of Stoicism (#poem)

R. Horton
adult alone anxious black and white
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The Stoics all counsel the same.
Contemplate life and accept
Death without too much disruption.

They counsel the same when
You are overwrought, but
Flood you with a tsunami of tears
When their turn comes.

Seneca condemned his own sobs;
Confucius angrily defended his,
And I have forgiven them both.
Their failure is my comfort as my own
Tears pour over your last letter.

A New Riddle of Induction (#poem)

R. Horton

Screenshot 2019-06-02 at 08.26.47We have such unfounded confidence that
The future will be like the past that
We are constantly disappointed in the
Present. The future betrays us daily.

So I can’t be blamed for thinking you’d
Be here still—as you always were.
Thousands of observations told me
You were a survivor and, besides,

You promised you’d never leave.
My imagination has expanded
Regarding the regularity of nature,
But I still look for you in the

Morning Light.

In Defense of Vile Rottenflush (#poem)

R. Horton

Screenshot 2019-05-24 at 12.51.15The venerable X. J. Kennedy used a poem about “vile rottenflush”
to illustrate bad poetry in his seminal textbook,
Introduction to Poetry.

The poem, he explains, was submitted to the equally venerable
Paris Review, but he does not credit (blame?) the author.
The poem about vile rottenflush, he clarifies, is too personal
and subjective to speak to anyone other than the person who wrote it.
He says, “the author has vented personal frustrations upon words,
instead of kicking stray dogs.”

Who am I to question the wisdom of someone
as accomplished as X. J. Kennedy?
I only know that I remember the phrase “vile rottenflush”
four decades after first hearing it. Also, I think the author of “vile rottenflush”
had witnessed a death of someone much loved, and anyone who has watched
the most cherished people in their lives die might understand the poem, after all.

I think this because the poem also mentions “corpseblood” and “ghastly stench.”
No one forgets the smell of a soul leaving the body.
And no one forgets what they see when life is flushed away.
Perhaps “rottenflush” was a novel way of avoiding the now
clichéd references to “putrefying flesh.”
Perhaps it is a way of reminding the readers
That our blood will cease to flow, pulse, and pump,
Only to be left to pool, drip, and stink.

The author of “vile rottenflush” might be accused of being too direct,
But not too personal. Which of us will not overwhelm
Post mortem viewers and handlers with our own
Ghastly stench, reducing them to cries or horror
As they see their fate clearly in our eyes?

Frequent Death and Daily Disquiet (#poem)

R. Horton
woman lying down
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So many people died that year that I developed
A permanent anxiety about companion mortality.
Guns, cancer, fire, and water all took people from me.

After an absence of a few months, a friend once
Called just to say, “You thought I was dead,
Didn’t you?” My curse amused him immensely.

Once, as my infant son lay resting peacefully, I went
Over to check his breathing. His older brother
Reassured, “It’s okay, Daddy, he’s not dead.”

And you apologise for keeping me awake with
Your fitful sleep, but every cough, sigh, snore, or
Fart only reminds me you are with me awhile longer.

Ever since the change from that time of life,
You have thrown the covers off your body as
If they were on fire, inviting damp coolness

On your skin. As the sweat evaporates and
You slip into a sounder sleep, I touch your
Cool and immobile body with trepidation

Nightly. I don’t want to wake you and disrupt
Your peace, so I lie awake, fretting and alone, to
Ponder this nightly act of solicitous love.

 

A Pattern of Substance Misuse in Rural Texas (#poem)

R. Horton
woman holding a blunt
Photo by Alexander Krivitskiy on Pexels.com

You were always object lesson,
Never role model, and I only knew
I should never be like you.
Your death was early and tragic,
As expected, your last conscious
Moments spent reaching for the door
Of a home engulfed in flame.

Through tear-filled eyes,
Those who had nothing but
Criticism for you when alive
Expressed their own shock and
Grief with a final tinge of judgment.
“If it had anything to do with drugs,
I don’t even want to know,” they sobbed.

At that moment, I think I understood
Both false feeling and blaming the
Victim. No mention of your trauma,
Your alcoholic father, your abuse, or
Your desperate struggle for
Acceptance. For the first time,

I loved you.