Death = Silence
    Yet another circumstance I'm having trouble assimilating is the silence in our home. For years, many, regardless of what other sounds reverberated through out home, the one sound that constantly accompanied me was the sound of my mother's breathing. Although having the monitor through the last months of her life amplified that sound, I was acutely and always aware of it from the time my mother's breathing became audible. Often my brain pushed it to the background, like white noise; until the rhythm or quality changed, then my focus was pulled back to it. Many familiar sounds continue to ricochet throughout our house: the humming of fans, various other machines, a very high pitched whine from a cheap "green" bulb, the cats kibitzing, neighborhood sounds filtering through the walls. The one sound that was ubiquitous among all sounds was my mother's breathing. I am most aware of its absence when I walk in the front door after having been gone for even moments; the moments, for instance, when I take the garbage cans to the curb. While my mother lived, every time I entered the house I autonomically tuned into the sound of her breathing. It is a continual, low level shock to be greeted by that silence.
    The silence isn't unsettling, but it's still hard for me to incorporate. So hard that it occurred to me, yesterday, that one of the reasons I am, once again (the last period being when my mother was in the hospital, the intermediary care home and the rehab center for one and a half months), hooked on all manner of Law & Order shows is that listening to them masks the silence of her death. Could be, too, that the black-and-white structure of the shows (which is sometimes less, rather than more, apparent in this crime drama franchise) is comforting for me since I've been plunged into a nebulous life, of which I'm still trying to make sense, since my mother died. As well, I wasn't often able to convince her to watch these shows, so they remain a me-only interest. I think the importance of this is indicated by the fact that I am tending not, at the moment, to watch shows or movies that were favorites of my mother's; which, unfortunately, excludes some of my favorite holiday movies, this year, and, as well, "favorite comfort food" viewings of Sex and the City.
    Two days ago I remembered that when I was a child and first presented with the question, "If you had to chose to give up your sight or your hearing, which one would you keep?", I chose my hearing. To this day I would not change my choice. As a child I was so involved with sound, notably but not exclusively as music and rhythm, I figured I could more easily live without sight than sound. I remembered this choice because, adrift in the Inevitable Silence of my mother's death, it occurred to me that, of all the attributes of Death (universal), the most conspicuous is Silence. Even Transformation and Inertia don't surpass Silence in its suggestiveness of Death; primarily, I think, because both Transformation and Inertia can be seen as attributes of the living, as well as the dead. One way or another, though, often at levels to which we are not privy or which are easy for us to ignore, sound always accompanies life. Always. We've even discovered that it accompanies the lives of what we consider inanimate objects. At some level there is the sound of some sort of process that keeps the unit individualized. When the unit dies, that sound is silenced. Other sounds connected to the elements of the unit may continue as the unit disintegrates and incorporates into other units but the the eccentric sound of the life of the dead unit ceases. Silence could be said to be an appropriate, complete definition of Death.
    It is hard, confronting the absence of my mother's unique sound.
    Lately I've been looking for books about contemplating death and grieving. I have my eye on one in particular that I've ordered through our local library and sounds like it will be right up my alley: Nothing to Be Frightened of by Julian Barnes. It's a relatively new book, though. Our local library has it cataloged as being available for check-out on January 9th. I've put it on hold for myself. It looks as though I'm the first to place a hold on it, so I should be able to read it, soon. I will, of course, report on the book here, once I've read it. In the interim, I spent some hours at the library yesterday going through its entire collection of books under headings such as "Grief", "Bereavement" and "Condolence", hoping to find something interesting to read. Oddly, turns out I'm familiar with most of the books and/or what they have to say. I'm not looking for advice on how to grieve; I trust my process and am confidently letting it determine its own parameters. One of the aspects of my process, though, is contemplation of and meditation on death. That's what I'm looking for in reading material. I considered rereading The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying (not the same as The Tibetan Book of the Dead), of which I have a copy, as it is about living while contemplating death, but I'm not looking for something that is written from a particular spiritual perspective, either; I'm looking for Mongrel Death, the death with which we are all familiar. As I was scanning through all the books on a couple of library shelves, as well as write-ups on those listed in the catalog as residing in the system of interlinked local libraries but not on the shelves of the particular library I visited yesterday, I ran across a singular book written for pros in the death game. I didn't write down the title or the author (sorry about that, it was in the Dewey Decimal 155 section, if that helps you), although I'm not sure it would qualify as a book I'd recommend to people who were experiencing the grief associated with the death of someone in their lives. The book was written to advise those in the business of working with people who were left in the wake of what I'd call extraordinary deaths. The case histories covered were, for instance:

• A woman who lost, in one fell swoop, several members of her immediate and extended family including spouse, children and a parent;
• A 10 year old boy who lost his best-friend-from-birth when the the two were playing at one boy's home, the two found a gun belonging to the resident boy's father and, while playing with the gun, the visiting boy accidentally shot and killed himself;
• An adult woman who had endured, for decades, a contentious relationship with a sister, she always being considered the "good" (responsible) sister, the other always being considered the "bad" (irresponsible) sister, and the "bad" sister suddenly committed suicide;
• A woman who first loses her son unexpectedly to death then, three months later, unexpectedly loses her husband to death.

    The common aspect of discussion among all these cases (and the others) was the need to break through the silence that descends upon a community when the members find themselves having to confront the survivors of such deaths. In each case, the survivors became circumstantial pariahs because no one knew exactly how to approach them, support them and were afraid of making making the situation worse by their approaches. In two of the cases, the case of the accidental shooting death of the 10 year old boy and the suicide of the "bad" sister, members of the community found themselves prodded to take sides regarding the causes of the deaths, which increased the isolation and silence surrounding the survivor.
    It's funny because the one thing I haven't experienced is community silence regarding the death of my mother. I am no longer (thankfully) predisposed to abruptly announcing my mother's death at inopportune times but not a day goes by but what someone within my community (which includes family, friends and acquaintances, both business and personal) isn't in touch with me, talking about my mother and her life, checking on how I'm doing, comparing notes with me on how they've survived similar deaths, etc. Even when the primary reason for contact has nothing to do with my mother's death, it is mentioned, not necessarily by me, and briefly discussed from some angle. I have to say, in this I am lucky: My mother died a "common" death, one that many before me have survived, one that many after me will survive. It was an "expected" death; while the timing was a little surprising, the surprise was that it fell only slightly, but not much, short of what my mother and everyone who knew her were expecting; it occurred at the end of a properly and surprisingly long life that was celebrated within the family and among friends and acquaintances before as well as after her death; it was, relatively (not withstanding my mother's discomfort for a few days prior to her death), as deaths go, an "easy", "quick" death; it was not accompanied by miscellaneous fears that it happened out of sync with how it "should" have happened; it was easy to interpret it as having happened felicitously out of my mother's life. This is probably why my mother's death is so easily discussed within my community.
    No matter my difficulty in dealing the the Ultimate Silence in this home that continues to remind me of my mother's death (I'm assuming that, finally, it will fall into place, as has the image of my dead mother, among all the aspects of my mother's life and will be contemplated in sync with and in proper proportion to these), I cannot imagine the factors of tragedy and suffocation experienced not only through Death Silence but the silence of one's community in regard to an extraordinary death. I expect, now, when I consciously think of my mother's death, I will be reminded of those locked in what seems like the impermeable, double silence of unexpected, tragic deaths. I'm hoping that, as I continue through life, I am able to sensitize myself to those who live within this double silence and, somehow, in some way, penetrate the layers in which they are encased with a little life-affirming sound, encourage some life-continuing sound from them, even if that sound is, initially, the cacophony of unexpressed, disorienting grief.
    The only way, I think, to live with Inevitable Silence is to always be alert to listen, to hear, and, to "sound". No matter what kind, "Make...a noise..." and revel in it.
- posted by Gail Rae @ 11:53   email  this post