Full Circle 014: “I wear black on the outside...

Because black is how I feel on the inside”

This season of The Gilded Age has been more than just passing time during the Sunday night scaries. (FYI I have watched this show from the jump and am a fan, however, loving the Gilded Age means hating the Gilded Age.) Lately, the plot lines are more than plodding and the characters are more than wooden dolls dressed in some of the gaudiest costumes I’ve ever seen on a costume drama.

For instance, Ada, played by Cynthia Nixon, began the series as an old maid living with her widowed sister only to find last season late in life love with a man who’s only fault was that he did not disclose he was dying. Yet – in the very Julian Fellowsian way - his death came with a fortunately well-timed inheritance. This season, richer and seeing her general fortunes reversed, Ada is also heartbroken with grief. The depiction of which feels far more true to life than many of the love storylines, meaning it is not linear. No, Ada’s grief is erratic, grasping constantly for a new purpose she dips her toe into championing various Suffrage causes, quick to feel hurt and betrayal, and recently she even consulted a psychic. Above all, she is driven, almost mad in her pursuit, to honor her husband’s legacy, to put her inheritance into good use. Throughout the season, she wears a mourning dress, black and simple, traditionally worn for one full year. In this time period grief was still costumed. A mourning dress was more than just a performance of reverence for loved ones passed, it marked to the outside world the grievers with their grief – a tender state of affairs to be taken into account. In return, reverence is given to the griever: no one questions Ada’s validity as a bereft widow, even though her happy marriage lasted only a few months.

The tradition of wearing black has been all but dropped in our modern secular society except for the period on or near a funeral. By dissolving the visual markers keeping that time, our conception of grief as nonlinear has dissolved with it. We are expected to take a week or two off from work, and then, well, get on with it. Otherwise, at risk of what exactly? That if we do not rid ourselves of grief quickly we might become a pariah, a subject of pity to be shunned? But there is a wealth of bright wisdom to be acquired from grief – if you move on too quickly the wisdom will dull, though the wound will fester on. In other words, if you do not move through it, you will miss the whole point. Where grief is concerned, it is remarkable to think that we might learn something from the Victorians about not stuffing down our emotions. That perhaps, while mourning, we should feel free to let our hair down behind a black veil and be gloriously goth about it every once and while .

Fun fact, my husband and my first dance as husband and wife was to The Smith’s ‘Unloveable’

In writing this newsletter about caregiving - and subtextually about grief – I have had many doubts about how much and how often I share, because – let's be honest – it can be a total bum out. Who wants to read that? But there is value and a life-affirming aspect to airing grievance. And self-servingly, it means I have less to pretend about as I get on with it. For that, my grief has not slowed me down to a standstill. In fact, like Ada I’ve been flinging myself into projects trying desperately to renew my purpose outside of my grief, and to honor my mom Kathy who we lost last year. And bi-weekly, I bring my grief out into the light here, humble at its gleaming altar precisely because I know mine is no bigger than anyone else’s. Grief is an almost universal experience - at some point in a lifetime it will get you too. Same with caretaking, though I’d argue it is more so unilaterally the experience of women. So why hide our lights under a bushel?

For some, the traditional mourning color is white - the inverse of dark sadness, a bright embrace of life. Outside my window as I write this piece, a vigil is being kept - blue and white candles arranged in the letters R-O-C. Two nights ago, Roc’s loved ones congregated outside the apartment building across the street. Children played, old folks caught up, some small groups would spontaneously embrace in a group hug. I know from the placard placed behind the candle vigil that Roc was a woman about my age, holding a margarita glass outstretched in toast, breaking the 4th wall. The mourners wore white shirts, and after sharing stories for an hour or more, they released blue and white balloons, watching them float above their building and then up and up. I stopped my cooking and watched with Hilary. The vigil has continued, day and night, with some of Roc’s friends periodically congregating and visiting near her stoop - I know, and the entire block knows, that these visits are in Roc’s honor, because the mourners arrive wearing their white shirts. Last night was night two, and I imagine it will continue through the weekend.

When we lost Kathy, the route we took for her memorial was ‘celebration of life.’ We had a potluck dinner for about 70, and the party continued until around midnight, ending in a spontaneous dance party. My mom, like Roc perhaps, loved and was loved by her neighbors, she lived for good food and a good party.

On June 17, one month ago, we marked one year since our mom Kathy’s passing. The shock may have worn off, but the pain of her loss has not. It colors everything around me if not black, then a little bit gray. At the best of times in my grief, I will be time traveling with her to moments in our lives together, in touch with her, in touch with my feelings about her, in touch with her legacy and how I might honor it in my daily life. At other times, I am haunted by visions from her last days. There is a wisdom I heard once from a hospice nurse when my husband lost his mother that we must release the images of our loved ones at the end of their life, and try to remember them before illness. Though, for me with my mom, this is difficult for another fact that I was nine years old when she first got sick. The memories of her before illness are distant, and there is an experience entirely my own outside of her long suffered health problems. In no small way, I have either been monitoring her health and showing up for, or avoiding, a certain amount of constant care she needed over the last thirty years of my life. How do you put that commitment down so suddenly? You just do.

A void is left. But commitments do live on.

This anniversary also marks one year of shared responsibility, between my sister and I, for Hilary’s in-home care. We can no longer kid ourselves with fantasies that our lives will return to the way they were, we are confronted with finding some kind of normalcy in it. So, I made a few small steps towards acceptance which have caused a major shift in me. I have pledged to be more self-guided, do less flinging of myself into situations where I am needed, and instead to shift my focus onto what I might need. Therefore I am allowing myself more time for rest – picking and choosing where my energy will be spent.

For this most recent hand off of Hilary, we got creative at my sister’s suggestion. Rather than losing two full days to the solo roundtrip journey, instead we met halfway, making the roundtrip in one. Between our two houses, that halfway point is Philadelphia. In our mother’s everlasting example, we used the occasion of a three hour layover to go on a food frenzy. We stopped at three places for different local South Side delicacies. For the record, that’s not just a bang-bang, that’s a bang-bang-bang.

Take the gun, hide the cannoli evidence.

Shielded from the hot sun by the awning of Pat’s Famous Steaks, my sister and I sat sweating in head to toe black. Because A. we are New Yorkers, and because 2, as Morrissey once said, “I wear black on the outside, because black is how I feel on the inside.” We took our cheesesteaks to go. Maybe next time, we’ll consult a psychic.