Fall Like a Stone

Eurasian Skylark (alauda arvensis)

“Rising in arcs ever higher until almost out of sight, the songster flutters and sings continuously for three or four minutes, then folds his wings and falls like a stone toward the center of his territory.” National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Birds  

Pre-contemplation means knowing something and then immediately forgetting. You don’t know what you already knew. I am good at that. “I’m tired all the time,” I told my husband. “When I wake up, I’m already tired.”

“You think your life depends on protecting your family lies,” Matthew said. “The lies that everything was good. That’s pretty exhausting.” When I finally escaped my family territory to Matthew’s Brooklyn for a winter, it was as if I’d abandoned ship.

When we returned to the Northwest in May, I wanted to savor dusk settling over the bay, horizon and sky forming soft grey lines against the turquoise shoreline. Instead, while the sky still held light, I crawled into bed. Then, wide awake, I tossed and turned. My failures marched like soldiers. When I finally did sleep, I awoke with a jerk, flooded with nightmares. In the daylight, I told myself I could handle anything. I survived the sexual and physical abuse of my childhood. I survived my first husband’s illness and death. As best I could, I raised my angry child.

Eventually I slept for an hour, then woke clutching Matthew. Another day I couldn’t face. I clung to him even as I was convinced he would be better off without me. On some level, negativity thrilled me, because by then, it was all I knew. It etched my brain like tracks.

Matthew’s phone rang, and he rolled over. I could hear my sister’s loud voice. “It’s something about an email Paula sent to everyone,” Matthew said. “An accident.” Then he groaned. “Don’t read it,” he said.

Copying everyone in her address book, the message read, “Heather left me to care for our parents alone.”

“Delete,” Matthew said. When Tim was ill and dying, he sent similar messages to my clients, my doctor, my boss, and to anyone else he could think of. “You’re lucky,” Matthew said.

“This is luck?”

“Now it’s not a mystery, why people look at you funny. Now you know what Paula’s telling everyone.” He wrapped his arms around me.

“I helped my parents for years. She just showed up a few months ago after she lost her job.”

“She’s hurting. This is how she grieves.”

“She’s high. That’s how she grieves.”

I distracted myself with long walks in the forests that surround my cabin. My limbs were too heavy to drag around, and yet I wanted to walk all day and night. How does a spiritual person get through a day? I had no idea how to protect myself from my family’s fury.

I scheduled a hike with Jabe Ferguson. The thought of Jabe’s cheerful stories about music and birds provided a goal. Because the sun was out, I woke at dawn to eagles, kingfishers, and the great blue heron. The waves pounded against the cliffs. To urge myself toward conversation, I downed two espressos.

Then Jabe canceled, and I was crushed and aimless.

“I want you to be happy,” I told Matthew. “I have to let go of thinking I can lure you to stay.”

“You can’t think your way through this.”

“I keep having gruesome nightmares. My father or sisters are sawing off my arms and legs or shooting me in the face.”

“Sounds pretty real to me.”

I tethered myself to another tiny goal. My neighbors asked me to water their gardens while they were in Boston. I loved the familiarity of tending someone else’s property, as I’d cared for my parents’ while they wandered the world. With my collie and retriever, I cut through the forest on ancient trails I’d grown up maintaining. When I reached Pete and Deb’s angular house perched on the west-facing cliff, I drenched pots of marjoram, fuchsia, hydrangea, fig, and blueberry until leaks surged like snakes from the pots. The dogs and I descended the rocky cliff. A breeze blew up. With their chattering cries, five eagles lumbered off the Douglas fir. In dense grey clouds along the horizon, a tiny rip appeared, as if someone had taken a zipper and pulled it across the bruise-colored sky.

Jabe Ferguson hikes the same way I do, striding for hours without tiring. When we rescheduled our hike, I asked him about Paula’s email. “Best keep your distance,” he said. Hand over hand, knowing I’d be right behind him, he pulled himself up the cliff. Sure footed, the dogs scampered up their own paths. “Your vision is skewed.”  Jabe reached a narrow ledge, walked along the trail a few hundred feet, and then turned, blocking my path. “I don’t usually give advice,” he said.

“So what is it?”

“You need help.”

“I’m talking with you.”

“Professional help,” Jabe said. “You can’t fix family on your own.” I can’t afford therapy, I told him. My father died while Matthew and I were in Brooklyn, and I researched therapists within walking distance. My Brooklyn friends referenced their therapists as often as their Ivy League credentials. I figured maybe the search alone would heal me. In our rural village, we had no therapists or any other kind of medical care. If you had a head injury, you’d be helicoptered to Seattle. If your heart failed, as my father’s had, you’d be hauled by medics to a hospital two hours away. Few locals had college degrees, and it was best not to mention that either. Those who knew called me “professor.” It was not a compliment.

But as stray comments can, Jabe’s suggestion opened my eyes. On my way home, I stopped by the post office and glanced at the community bulletin board. “Need help dealing with alcoholic or mentally ill family members?” a poster read. The therapist had half a dozen degrees, including from Yale and Cornell. And now she offered a support group, free, in the county chemical dependency unit. Better yet, when I called, she picked up the phone herself. I felt as if I might pass out or throw up. “What makes you call?” Michaela asked in a deep smoky voice.

“My father died a month ago, and my mother’s in hospice.” I felt flooded with shame. I was unfit for human contact, and now this stranger would discover my secrets and reject me too.  “When she said nothing, I asked, “Is this confidential?”

“If I ran into you at the farm stand,” Michaela said, “I wouldn’t acknowledge I know you.” The group was for those with family members who were dually-diagnosed and met every Monday from three to six. I thought she said “do or die,” and that summed up how I felt. But I was disappointed. I didn’t like groups. They reminded me of my family. Already, I wanted Michaela to myself. Also, in our small community, I might know someone there, or they’d know my parents or siblings.

“Try a session. If it’s not for you, you don’t have to come back.”

I hadn’t unpacked after our return from Brooklyn, and as if thrusting my hands into thick mud, I picked my way through my suitcase. I found a packet of squash seeds. Would someone who was going to kill herself grow squash? I kept the seeds but put most everything else into plastic bags to donate to Habitat for Humanity. When Deb and Pete stopped by to thank me for watering, I asked if they could drop off the donations. “You’re giving stuff away?” Deb asked. One of her friends had killed herself the previous year, and Deb said she too gave everything away.

“I don’t like clutter.” I touched Deb’s arm. “I’m okay. I liked watering your garden. And I’ll do it again.” Matthew joined us on the deck, and the four of us watched a storm blow down the bay. The sun reflected strips of pink and turquoise, the sea smooth and unbroken beneath the elegant deep green of hemlock and fir. Then a breeze blew up and reflected shadows, water and sky forming pure vertical lines. The temperature dropped, and the breeze churned tiny ripples into white caps. The fir tips whirled. And then the storm was upon us. We stood still, reverently, until soaked to the skin.

That evening, Matthew and I visited my mother in hospice. For once, she seemed to recognize me. She leaned into Matthew’s arms and gazed into my eyes as I sang every song she’d ever taught me. Then I held Matthew’s hand and wept beside my frail dying mother. The hospice nurse said I needed to tell my mother it was okay to go, but I told her that would be a lie. “Please stay,” I whispered. “Please stay.” Matthew looked at me, and I wondered if he thought I meant him. “I’ll drive,” I told him as we left, but when I steered onto the rural road, I swerved, and the car scraped the railing that separated us from a three-hundred-foot cliff. My hands traced an Ouija board, and in a heartbeat, the answer had shifted from yes to no. Fear and sorrow were parasites in my flesh.

When I awoke Monday morning, the sky was gold, a fistful of kinglets, bushtits, and nuthatches released into the burnt sky, the bay still as glass. I yanked weeds after soaking the soil to loosen the roots of Ranunculus rapens, creeping buttercup. “No way I go to this stupid group,” I told Matthew. “It’s an hour’s drive, and I can’t be trusted behind the wheel.”

“I think you need to go,” Matthew said.

I arrived early. Twenty minutes leered like a chasm. I couldn’t face strangers. I backed out of the parking lot and drove to a gas station. Always good to top off. For the first time in my life, the nozzle fell from my hand and gasoline sprayed across the car, the pavement, and me. It seemed clear that I would rather self-immolate than reveal myself. But I wasn’t going to back down now. In the gas station restroom, I soaped myself down as best I could, then returned to the plywood building where the group convened.

In a corner room overlooking a stream, a dozen men and women and two teenagers pulled chairs from a stack and placed them in a circle. There were two couples, one in their seventies, the other early thirties. “Michaela doesn’t let us sit together,” the younger man said. “Then we’d try to speak for each other,” he added, glancing at his wife.

“Same with us,” a solemn-faced woman said, nodding at the two children. As everyone chatted, I imitated the kids and watched mallards that clustered along the creek. I was grateful nobody tried to include me in their conversations. A beautiful woman with silver hair rushed into the room, and all chatter ceased. She settled into a cushioned chair that had been left empty at one side of the circle.

Without looking at me, she said, “We have someone new. Who’d like to explain our format and guidelines?” The younger of the two children explained that the group formed to support family members of people being treated for chemical dependency and mental health issues. “When my dad went into rehab, none of us knew what to do with ourselves,” the girl said. “We didn’t have Daddy to fix anymore.” Her self-possession stunned me. “We were getting together on our own, and then someone asked Michaela if she’d facilitate a group.”

“Rules?” Michaela asked.

“There really aren’t any.” The girl shrugged. “Talk about your own feelings. Don’t give other people advice.”

Michaela glanced at me. “Would you like to introduce yourself?” With every intention of offering a glib story about how I landed, reeking, in that room, I opened my mouth. To my horror, I started to sob.

“I don’t know what I did wrong,” I said. “I thought my siblings and I would be closer, that with Dad dead and Mom dying, we’d all comfort each other.”

“When a parent dies, sometimes other family members attempt to take that person’s place,” Michaela said. I wasn’t sure if she meant my siblings or me. “This isn’t a matter of blame,” she added. “Just a gentle thought you can try on.” I was fairly certain Michaela and the rest of them were insane. I felt as if I was dying, and even the youngest spoke in these calm clear voices in a language I couldn’t comprehend.

“Now I’m afraid my sister will die too. And my daughter. Everyone’s so angry.”

“How old’s your daughter?” This came from a clear-eyed young woman directly across from me, long blonde hair tied back in a red bandanna.

“Twenty-two.”

“I’m Teresa,” the woman said. “I’m twenty-two.” She looked at me for a moment. “Your daughter is an adult.” I wasn’t quite sure what Theresa was getting at. My siblings were adults, and so was my child. But it fell on me to hold them up. They had no one else. I felt, still, the umbilicus binding me to my daughter, and an equal cord to my siblings. To sever that would be death, for me and for them. I felt no such connection with Matthew. We shared no blood. Nor did we share my daughter. Matthew claimed to want to be a father figure for her, but they seemed more like toddlers competing for my attention.

“Let me explain my own experience.” Theresa smiled at me from across the circle. “My husband was the sweetest person in the world. We were best friends. But when he was using drugs, he was mean. While he was in jail, I started having a life of my own. I figured he was safe.” Somehow, though, her husband’s liver failed. “He asked if he was dying,” Theresa said. “I told him yes. He was so scared.”

I could not believe this young woman was speaking so freely about her husband’s recent death. Or how the people in the room sat so quietly present with her, as they had a few minutes earlier with me. As the hours continued, others spoke of children or siblings or lovers, and how their own families had blown apart.

When Michaela announced that time was almost up, I was stunned again. I hadn’t thought I could endure three hours, yet the time had passed so quickly. Michaela suggested that just as addicts crave substances, addiction to alcoholic family members is more powerful than heroin. “And just as addicts practice abstinence from the substances, those in toxic relationships might also need to step back,” she said.  “Not a wall. Perhaps a cushion. Something soft, but with distance.” She glanced at Theresa.

“Even if the person we love dies,” Theresa said. “I couldn’t save him.”

“Given the intensity of what we’re sharing,” Michaela said, “I like to end with a silly question. If you wish, just say whatever comes to mind.” She looked around the circle at each of us, pulling us in. “We’re talking about frightening issues. It’s good to return to the world laughing.” She nodded at the child who started us out. “You have a question for us to end with, Tara?”

“What stuffed animal would you like to hold right now?” Tara said. As each person spoke, everyone laughed, and for a moment, my own pain vanished. Michaela hurried out, and everyone else stacked chairs and tidied the room. Some chatted in small groups. I hurried to my car and checked my phone. “Your mother seems agitated,” the text read. “Maybe you can visit?”

When I pushed open the sliding glass door of the hospice, my mother was pacing up and down the stairs. She seemed lost. I took her hand and walked her outside, pointed to the sky, and guided her through the gardens. Back inside, I fed her butterscotch pudding, her mouth forming a tiny circle as I gently approached with each soft taste.

“You’re my sweet baby,” I said. I led her to the bathroom, settled her onto the seat, and turned away to offer privacy. I helped wash her hands and brush her teeth, and then helped her to her tiny room where I dressed her in her nightgown, the back slashed open to make it easier to pull on and off. I settled her into bed, stroked her bony arms, and sang until her breathing calmed. She tugged at my hands and arms, arranging them so they wrapped around her. I held her like that, still singing, until she fell asleep.

________

Kirie Pedersen’s writing appears in numerous journals and includes nominations for the Pushcart Prize, Best American Essays, and other awards. “Getting a Life-Coming of Age with Killers” was selected as notable by Hilton Als and Robert Atwan for Best American Essays 2018.