Looking Down

The dead are always looking down on us, they say,

while we are putting on our shoes or making a sandwich,

they are looking down through the glass-bottom boats of heaven

as they row themselves slowly through eternity.

One month ago, I received a letter from my father that included the images in this post, "prints of snapshots taken over 50 years ago," he wrote in an enclosed note; snapshots that had been sent to him by the daughter of George Nick.  "Many years ago George gave you kids each a plush toy," my father revealed. "George was the best man at our wedding."  My father may have sent the same set of prints to my other sisters, but I received them as though he had reached out especially to me.  He had not heard from me for awhile.  He missed me.  He didn't want to lose me like he lost his daughter, Karen, nine years earlier on March 14, to complications from multiple sclerosis.

Pictured in the snapshots here are my oldest sister, me and Karen. I look at them and realize how little I know of Karen.  How seldom I saw her or touched her.  How much I think and dream about her, but never see her entire face. How afraid I was of her when I was growing up. 

Back then, she was the fiercest enforcer of my mother's code.  At the dining room table -- the scene of many confrontations between my mother and me and the place where I often conceded defeat in silent shame -- Karen served as both jailhouse informant and unwitting collaborator.  "Today in school, one of my friends saw Flannista with Gail. Flann's not allowed to spend time with Gail, right mom?" she would announce in front of all of us.  Or leaving the table, Karen would hiss, "How many more times do we have to hear you want to be dead?"  Then precisely parroting my mother, she would add, "Just look at yourself. You ought to be ashamed."  Though I tried to stay clear of her, Karen always had her eyes on me.

After I was asked to leave my mother's home in 1972, I saw Karen perhaps once or twice over 28 years.  We did not call each other or exchange letters.  Our relationship passed from view.

Then on Monday, October 23, 1989, I received an anonymous package in the mail.  Inside was a hand mirror.  Scrawled on the face in pink-red fingernail polish was this message:  "When was the last time you took a good hard LONG LOOK at yourself?  Shame, shame, shame on YOU!"  I immediately suspected that Karen had sent the mirror, as I recognized the condemnatory tone.  My suspicions were soon confirmed by my youngest sister who had also received an anonymous package containing a mirror scrawled with the same message.  "Is Karen my wounded child in action?" I wrote in my diary that night.

I did not see Karen again until Good Friday, April 21, 2000.  She was confined to a hospital bed in her husband's study. My diary entry that day began with:

Karen is beautiful.  She's really beautiful.  "You're so beautiful" were the first words I said to her after so long.  The second words were, "You don't bite your fingernails anymore." But of course, she can't, even if she wanted to.

Over the next 11 months, I would visit Karen when I could, determined to know and to touch the sister who for so long had watched me, but had never really seen me. 

Now that Karen has -- in Charlissta's words -- "moved through the veil," does she see me in a new way?  Does she see the top of my head as I write?  Does she see these words?  These snapshots?  Will we ever see each other again?  Or has she eternally passed from view?  I do not know.  Still, in my heart's eye, I often see her racing past me, then looking back and grinning in impish approval.  She's really beautiful.

 
They watch the tops of our heads moving below on earth,

and when we lie down in a field or on a couch,

drugged perhaps by the hum of a warm afternoon,

they think we are looking back at them,

which makes them lift their oars and fall silent

and wait, like parents, for us to close our eyes.

-- "The Dead" by Billy Collins

Comments

[Jerseysista]

Flann, the love in this is that, although Karen did not see you, you have really seen her. There is room in this for her to be whoever she was. Beautifully, beautifully written.

[Flannista]

Thank you, Jersey.

[Matissta]

Flann, I'm touched by your forgiveness of Karen's behavior. I'm especially moved by your determination to put that aside, and start from the beginning.

It was brave to take that step and to write this piece.

[babysis]

I love the photos and I love the power of this post and all it represents. I'll read it several times throughout the day. I love you, Flann.

[half-a-sista]

Flann, it's a beautifully written piece.

[Flannista]

Thank you, beloveds.

I've been hiding out in my other small writing room, a bit timid about checking comments as this piece was not easy to write, particularly because I wanted to honor the truth -- all of it -- which included seeing Karen for all that she was. There is this "rule" or "interior voice" (I don't know what to call it) that the most gracious way to honor the dead is to remember their goodness. Their gifts. How they made the world a better place. You know the cliches. It's hard not to glom onto them when you feel sad and awful that a blood sister died such a mean and hideous death.

I spent a little time journaling about the process I took to write this piece. Would any of you find that interesting?

[Carolyn]

When I finished reading this piece, I cleared my throat and leaned way back in this old creak of a chair. This is such powerful writing -- it sits on my chest and will stay with me all day. I read it slowly, lingering on each word and image, and I know that I'll read it again and again.

For whatever reason, the membrane dividing you and Karen has grown thinner and some small light is illuminating the shadows of that terrible, ailing relationship. Bravery does not come cheap. That you choose to allow it, that you indeed coax the light through, is the very brave action of someone determined to heal through perhaps horrific process.

[half-a-sista]

Another part of honoring the dead involves telling about their humanity...their badness, their goodness, the whole picture. Too often the dead become saints further confusing those of us who know the evil that lurks in the hearts of the people who should have loved and protected us.

I can't explain how uplifting and, at the same time, how humiliating it was to hear people talk of my mother as a saint, an understanding woman who never judged them or their failures. I didn't know that woman in my own life.

But, all the way through the funeral process I just smiled and nodded my head. They didn't want to know my story because no one talks bad about saints.

[Flannista]

The original title of this post was "The Veil." When I first read (last week) what Charlissta had written (included in the last paragraph of this post) on March 14 in the diary she gifts me with every Christmas, I became curious about it. What is it?

I recalled hearing Cynthia Bourgeault, author of Centering Prayer, lecture on "Ultimate and Absolute Reallity." Much of it was a bit over my head, but she divided "reality" into "The Sensible Realms" (the physical universe); the "Mundus Imaginalis" or "Imaginal Worlds"; (the angelic realms or the active imagination) and "Realm of First Manifestations" (the Formless, the realm of Pure Meaning).

Don't get caught up in the weird lingo. The point I'm trying to make is that I distinctly remember that Bourgeault made, what was for me, a very compelling case for the paper-thin veil between the Sensible Realms and the Imaginal Worlds. That it was easier than we realize to move between the two -- from both directions.

When I saw "veil" in Charlissta's diary note, I felt a presence. Something or someone clothed in spiritual form.

Karen was present.

[Flannista]

Carolyn posted while I was writing my 10:04 comment.

Karen is present, again.

Thank you.

[Flannista]

half-a-sista and everyone else: please use this sacred space today and tomorrow -- the actual anniversary of Karen's death -- to honor the dead or the dying in your life by sharing whatever truth you want.

We are here. Present. Listening. Seeing.

[Carolyn]

I want you to know that this is most likely the most powerful piece of writing that I've ever read of yours. The fact that it is so measured, so unaccusing in its tone makes it profoundly touching to me. You present the beastliness of your sister's behavior in such a gentle light. It's as if you are placing an infant before us, with great care and lingering sadness.

[Flannista]

I am, in return, profoundly touched to read your comment, Carolyn. Thank you for taking a moment to post again. As in your earlier comment, you capture precisely why this piece was not easy to write. I had to let go of so much. Just let it go and wait.

The image of me placing Karen as in infant before all of you is affirming and heartbreaking all at once. I don't think the image will ever leave me, and I am deeply grateful for the gift of it. This may not be what you meant, Carolyn, but what I hear you saying is that perhaps I am -- in some small, inexplicable way -- the loving mother Karen always needed and longed for.

[frida]

Thank you, Flannista. Your words and the pictures of the three little girls astonish me...the sorrow and the forgiveness.

[Flannista]

frida -- I am honored that you commented. Thank you very much.

[barista]

Oh my, what beauty and love and sadness. Thank you for sharing this, Flann. It is a testimony to how you have moved and are moving through such dark and dismal days to some other realm of being in this life. For Karen, I trust that she is at last at peace . . . looking down in just that kind of way that Billy Collins writes of.

Blessings . . .

[Flannista]

An invitation and/or perhaps odd request . . . bear with me:

As a way to remember Karen and take advantage of the small light shining through the paper-thin membrane separating her from the rest of us -- I'd like her to know something about my chosen family.

What would you like to say to Karen?

[Flannista]

barista -- how much I miss you, oh friend who endured with such patience and grace my more dark and dismal days. That you see that I am moving through them carries deep weight for me. Like a sacred blessing.

Thank you.

[Flannista]

KAREN:

I can tell you aren't angry anymore. How'd that happen?

[Flannista]

KAREN:

Is Isaac sleeping on your lap?

[Jerseysista]

KAREN:

Can we be children again?

[Flannista]

KAREN:

Forgive all of the members of your immediate family who were not with you when your tortured body and trembling spirit escaped this terrible world.

Forgive me.

[Jerseysista]

KAREN:

You reside in the Mundus Imaginalis and we in the Sensible Realms. Does the pure meaning of forgiveness seep through to your realm as it does into ours? Do you find yourself forgiven? Are you grateful? Are you humbled?

[Flannista]

KAREN:

Is pink still your favorite color?

[Flannista]

Jersey -- what do you remember about Karen?