A long winter's nap is not easy to come by. We all sometimes yearn for a good long afternoon snooze. Until it occurs, it is a romantic fantasy of carefree time during which you can hit the pillow and just be.
The reality is that a deep afternoon nap these days is usually an emotional necessity, an event from which I wake confused, initially about self then about day and time. It eventually sorts itself out.
This thing has gone in phases. I've been home in our town for a week or so, now, and I find myself in Elisabeth Kubler-Ross' stage of anger. Although I had an academic understanding of the dying process because of college courses, the sum total was "DABADD"; or denial, anger, bargaining, acceptance, depression, death.
Researchers since have been careful to point out that the stages do not go in lock-step fashion; any one of them can rear their head at any time.
And anger does rear its head, let me tell you. Woe is you if you are in front of me at the grocery store and it is going slower than I can stand. I entertain forebrain fantasies of kicking, hitting or punching. Terrific takedowns, maniacal maneuvers that were I to execute them, would land me in the police station and eventually as star of one of Elizabeth Dinan's cop shop stories.
It also crops up less expectedly, out of a dead sleep for example. Have you ever woken suddenly in a rage? It's not pretty.
With the several people who have exited my life to this point, I have yet to experience the kind of anger I have been feeling of late.
For mothers and fathers and elders in general, surely you become angry at their plight, and yours. But there is a reasonable progression about such things; older people die. They even die younger than what is sometimes reasonable. But there is still a progression that is coherent: someone older dies, someone younger grieves.
Thanatos is a figure in Greek mythology, often referred to but rarely appearing in person. Thanatos is the personification of death and mortality. Marya introduced me to the concept. She also introduced me to Hunter S. Thompson and Bob Dylan.
Marya was (and remains) always c'est la vie. This has been more popularly expressed on bumper stickers in the past few years as "s**t happens". She recognizes things (and people) for what they are, always has. She has seen my family through two important deaths; that of my stepfather and that of my mother.
In 1998, before Sept. 27 turned at midnight into Sept. 28, Marya brought a spaghetti dinner up the highway. We all converged in the dining room; Tommy's daughters, our family, all together. None of us realized our hunger during the death vigil, and we shuffled downstairs to eat together at the dining room table, courtesy of Marya. My stepfather, musician Tommy Gallant, died that night.
Fast forward eight years later, to September 2006. My mother died after 12 long days with pneumonia (a strong heart they said). Marya arrived on the 11th night of our vigil. She laughed in her inimitable Marya way to note something like, "your mother will probably die tonight because I'm here." I did not disagree. As it happened, she did die that night.
Myra (my nickname for her) arrived without spaghetti, but with her new young Labrador puppy, Phoebe in tow. Phoebe is now a 95-pound monster (a good bad dog), but that night she entered into the room where my mother was, became very calm and paid her quiet respects by climbing halfway on the bed and quietly looking at my mom for about a minute. It was a gentle act completely out of expected puppy character.
I only know how to make good spaghetti sauce because Marya taught me. Marya is Italian and Polish hybrid whose own mother's cooking made you groan. Cacciatore, Golabkis, greens with a sublime dressing of just oil, vinegar and pepper, in just the right amounts. We recently had Sunday dinner up in Greenfield where Marya's brother and partner live. Joey cooked the sauce and, unexpectedly, it was just like Marya's. And both, of course, are just like their mom's sauce. Phyllis has been gone since Christmas Day 2005.
On Christmas Day this year, my brother and I tried to resurrect my mom's pot roast. By the time we realized we should ask for her recipe, it was too late. We experimented, a little bit of this, a little bit of that. We agreed over plates of the stuff, along with brown potatoes and carrots, that we hit the 75 percent mark.
I tried again on New Year's Day, and in tweaking this and that hit the 95 percent mark. Yum. It was like a bowl of mama. A sure recipe to help anger wither.
Doesn't need much more 'splainin than that.
'Splainin welcome. Trying not to smoke. Write me at suzanne.danforth@gmail.com.
