Living in Shame

This week I don’t feel happy, funny, or clever. I walk around in a diffident dimness. I notice it especially in social settings. I smile and engage in conversation but I’d rather be in a dark cave or at the very least, my dark bedroom with the covers pulled up around my head. I’d rather not face anyone, especially myself. This may very well be my darkest and most personal post. I don't talk about this subject because it's dreadful. I hope at the very least not to embarrass myself but only to lift the shades on shame. I hope that by so doing shame may slither away, taking its gloom with it.

Once again I find myself facing loss. I have two sisters but for the last three and half years I’ve only associated with one. S is my older sister by ten years. When I was 10 years old she was 20. Some weekends she’d come home from college to visit. She was the life of the party, full of fun and nice. In fact, she was so nice I took a preference to her over my own mother. Mom would get jealous because on Sunday nights, the nights S went back to her dorm, I was inconsolable. Mom's hugs lended no comfort. S and I used to watch The Sound of Music. When she’d leave for school or later when she went on her mission to Korea, I couldn’t bear to watch that movie without her. She was my Fraulein Maria. I felt as much grief at having her leave as the Von Trapp children felt when Maria went back to the convent. When she was gone it felt like the life and fun had been vacuumed away from our home. During her absence, my only comfort was found in forlornly frequenting her basement bedroom with the green carpet and white four poster bed. The room was always cold but her warmth was there in her inanimate books, porcelain dolls, posters, and closet of clothes.

Much tragedy came to S after she married. Of her four children, three were born with terminal illness. Two daughters had cystic fibrosis and her baby boy was diagnosed with a rare immune system disorder when he was three. One of the girls with cystic fibrosis unexpectedly died of a freak case of Spinal Meningitis when she was four. S was understandably traumatized by the death and held immeasurable worry for the future of her other children. This load seems unfairly cruel for anyone to bear. It is even more brutal for S because she loves deeper than anyone I know. Her children are woven into her heart and it is broken with loss and worry. However, she’s a strong woman. She somehow moves ahead and unselfishly cares for her children and secretly cries with worry in her solitary closet. She composes beautiful, healing piano music and lends herself and her sweet compassion to groups or individuals who have experienced the loss of a child.

After the death of her daughter, S and I became much closer. We talked every day. Though I’d never experienced the same losses, I cried with her. I wished there could be a way that I could trade my life for the life of her daughter. I wished that her little girl could come back and put the pieces of her mother back together. S once said that if any of her other children died, she wouldn’t be able to deal and would just lock herself in her bedroom and slip notes under the door when communication was required. I imagined if anything bad ever happened, I would be the one to sit by that door as long as needed until she opened it. I’d wait to offer whatever she needed no matter how uncomfortable or unhappy the circumstances.

One day three and a half years ago I was visiting her house in Washington. On the last day of my visit S and I had an argument that was terrible to her and fairly inconsequential to me. It was the only argument we have ever had. That was the last time we spoke or saw each other. We wrote e-mails for a time but they were frustrating to both of us. Her way of experiencing life is so different from mine. When she already carries so much worry and burden, it is easier for her to just not talk with me than to be upset because I don’t understand. I truly want to understand but I am paralyzed by the fear that I will lose her and I have lost her. This fear and sickening grief sits on me like a heavy black cloak. I can’t shed this weight enough to be altruistic and understanding and to let S have the distant relationship with me she desires. I want to for her sake but I feel so much pain. For example, she likes to send gifts for the kids’ birthdays even though she doesn’t know them. A couple of weeks ago Nicky got a gift in the mail. She asked me who S was. I got down a picture and began showing her when suddenly I felt like I wasn’t real, I was in a bad dream and I wanted to start screaming and not stop. Instead of frightening my family with inconsolable screams, I wrote S an unhelpful e-mail and furthered the distance between us. Now we are at no correspondence.

It is a conundrum. To say anything unkind about S would be wrong. I know neither of us is perfect but I’d like to be generous with my compassion. I feel too humbled by her circumstances to pass judgment. This simply leaves me ashamed of myself. I feel like any kindness I give anyone else is a fraud because I couldn’t give S the kindness and understanding she needed. Is there forgiveness and healing for one who truly doesn’t understand another’s position? I long to understand and at the same time I feel angry for being left. I had dreams for how things would be. I can’t settle down to listen to her because our relationship is in an unstable and unsettling flux. How does one adjust to broken dreams? I suppose everyone has to in one way or another. What a long and unhappy post. Sorry to anyone who dragged their reading eyes to the end. Somehow it is helpful to me to shine a light on this dark shame. It is not happy to feel so much shame but I am unsure as to how it can be healed. I feel so ugly inside that I haven't been eating right, exercising, or dressing nice. Why try to make myself look better than I am? It’s like S died but worse because she is alive and not talking to me because of something I didn’t do right. In addition, I have to feel that I have done things to cause her additional pain when all I ever wanted to do was to ease the pain of one who experienced crippling loss. A dreadful conundrum indeed! Every once in awhile, I notice the Sound of Music sitting somewhere waiting to be watched. I know Nicky would enjoy a viewing. But my eyes tear up when I see Julie Andrews as Maria on the cover with her arms stretched out wide.