That Which is You

One day when when Adri was about four years old and we were riding bikes after dinner on a pleasant summer evening we came upon a dead bird in the alley near a cow pasture.

“What happened, daddy?” she asked with her big eyes.

“Well, maybe it got sick or maybe it got hit by a car. I don’t really know,” I replied, treading carefully.

“But what about its mommy and daddy? Will they wonder where it is, why it didn’t come home?”

I didn’t really know how to answer. They were animals, but animals have emotions, no? This is just how life works? This is what will happen to every living being? She continued, saving my silence:

“Will the bird be in heaven now?”

Another tough one for me. I tried to not influence her thoughts, beliefs, and philosophies, but also tried to always answer her truthfully. I didn’t want to say, “there’s no afterlife,” I didn’t want to needlessly pull that carpet out from under her. Let her have that comfort, let her decide for herself one day.

“Well, many people believe that even animals go to heaven, that all living things that meant something to someone or something else will be there,” I offered.

“But will the mommy and daddy remember this little bird so much later when they’re in heaven, too?”

Good question, Adri, and one that I wrestled with when I was younger, and one that many, even those who whole-heartedly accept and believe in the concept of an afterlife in general and heaven in particular may wonder about.

When we are all reunited in heaven, how will everyone recognize each other? If your grandparent saw you for the last time when you were just two months old, how will they know it’s you? What age are you in heaven, at what stage of development are you manifested? How can all your friends and family, each of who must also be on a different continuum of development, know who each other are? How does the grandparent recognize the baby they knew? If the grandparent is in a form that their grandparent can recognize, how does the grandchild recognize their grandparent, also last seen when they were just two months old?

If you don’t get to be you in heaven in order to be known by everyone who knew you along your lifetime, what is the point? 

Will that bird know its nest?

During her young life Adri and I talked about all this in more depth, but that evening during our bike ride we left it at that and eventually continued our ride. But we never forgot that bird.

Eventually, we were able to come up with an explanation, a possibility that allowed for the existence of heaven and an afterlife where everyone could know and recognize everyone and still be themselves.

Where birds could find their nests.

We each have an idea who we are. We walk around in bodies that are constantly changing, but inside we remain the same. We may gain or lose weight, our hair may thin or change color, wrinkles may arise, scars may form, or muscles lose tone, but inside, who we are to ourselves remains the same.

There’s a continuity to who we are to ourselves, trapped in this body that survives the ravishes of time, a sort of homunculus that’s just along for the ride in an exterior shell that is constantly changing outward form. 

Almost always when I look in the mirror or see a current photograph of myself I’m taken aback for a second: “Who is that person?” I wonder reflexively, because the image I see does not match the image I have of myself from my interior vantagepoint. 

This of course becomes more pronounced the older one gets. Your body ages, but “you” do not. 

I finally realized that if there is a heaven or afterlife of that sort, that is how we will know each other. Whatever is inside of you that you consider “you,” the “you” that is betrayed and apparently contradicted by the exterior version that confronts you unforgivingly in the mirror as you age… that is what people will see and know and recognize. 

The unchanging you that you’ve been your whole life is finally seen by everyone in that same manner, and thus of course they know who you are. This consistent persona, this immortal being, is the same for your grandfather as well as and your grandchild. Or your third-grade teacher. Or your pet cat from when you were eight. Or your college roommate.

Or the bird. 

Or your 36-year-old daughter who never saw you become an old man.

The Brick Wall Gambit

I love British black-and-white movies from the early-to-mid 1960s, especially those of the thriller, suspense, scifi or horror genre. One of my favorites growing up was the original “Village of the Damned” from 1960, based on Joh Wyndham’s novel “The Midwich Cuckoos” from 1957.

The film takes place in a British village where after an odd event all the females of child-bearing age inexplicably become pregnant. The children subsequently born all seem to be connected in a sort of hive-like group cohesiveness, as well as resembling each other physically. They are cold and emotionless but mentally advanced. 

Oh, and they can read minds and control the actions of the villagers, making them do things against their will. 

The villagers surmise that these children are the product of a world-wide extraterrestrial alien invasion plan, and it’s decided that the children must be stopped in order to save humanity. The children of course learn the plans against them and thwart all attempts until finally the father of one of the children, (The Leader, actually) played deliciously by George Sanders, comes up with a plan to stop them. 

He will join the children when they’re all gathered together and bring a briefcase with him that contains a bomb, and sacrifice himself in order to stave off at least this alien sleeper cell. 

In order to do so, however, he will have to close off his mind to the children. He will sit there with them as the bomb timer counts down to zero while trying desperately to not think about the bomb with them in the room. He thinks instead of a brick wall, a metaphor in his mind’s eye that hopefully will serve as a literal wall blocking off his thoughts so the children won’t figure out what’s happening and stop it.

He succeeds for a time, but it’s extremely hard. With each passing moment while he talks aimlessly, we see that brick wall being dismantled brick by brick, the children sensing something is not right but not knowing exactly what. 

Then finally, at the last second, the children break down his mental brick wall and figure out what’s happening. In unison they all immediately stare at the briefcase just as it explodes, presumedly ending their threat.

I loved everything about this movie as a child, but I especially focused in on the “I’m going to try to think about nothing and see how long I can do that” aspect. It’s a next to impossible task, of course:

“Whatever you do don’t think about a purple elephant taking a bath.” 

Etc. 

I’d practice all the time and wonder if I’d be able to stave off the intrusive mindreading probes of an alien race of children.

Now, over fifty years later, this is my life. The only way I can make it through the day without breaking down hourly, or losing it totally, is to force myself not to think about what happened to Adrianna. 

To not let myself think about the phone conversation with Stephen when he said, “Adri passed this morning. I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry” on repeat over and over again.

To not let myself think about what the boys were feeling and thinking that day, the days and weeks immediately after, or what they still may be going through.

To not think about what Adri thought and felt as she was dying that morning, if there was any comfort or solace or peace or pain or fear.

To not think about my little girl over the years, all her trials and challenges, all her joys and accomplishments.

To not think about what could have been done or what should have been done or what might have been done.

To not think about the boys without a mother.

I try really hard, but it’s like trying not to think about a purple elephant taking a bath. And eventually the brick wall crumbles.

The Death of a Family Narrative

When I was a kid, I loved looking at old family pictures: the great grandparents that were still alive, those that had passed, various generations of immigrants depicted on old cabinet cards or tintypes from the turn of the last century. I’d ask my older relatives for their personal history, what their childhoods were like, and I’d ask them about my grandparents’ and parents’ childhoods as well.

Slowly a family narrative would be created, memories and reminiscences of days long past that were often filled in, expanded upon and supported by faded sepia-toned photographs including faint hand-written script on their backs with decades-old dates or a long-forgotten addresses.

Some of these photographs would be in frames on the wall, some loose in a shoe box, some pasted into photo albums composed of broken spines and brittle pages, some with mounting corners still attached, but most without.
 

There would be other ephemera as well: old letters, birth announcements, citizenship papers, crucifixes from first communions or other keepsake mementos such as old coins or watches received for various milestones.
 

Each had a story to tell, and I was eager to hear them all.

My daughter Adrianna was of a similar bent, interested and enthralled by family history, the decades-long narrative that shows how we all got to where we were at that present. She’d also ask questions and listen intently, the newest link in that familial saga, the most recent Guardian of Our Story, the Keeper of the Lore who would make sure that it didn’t disappear like dust in the wind, or tears in the rain.

But now I look at all that I’ve saved and wonder what the point was:
 

All the papers, all the letters from my grandfather when he was overseas in WWII. 

The letters from my great grandparents and grandparents to me that I’ve kept in binders.
 

The personal narratives that I recorded of my great-grandparents on a tape recorder in the late Seventies and since transferred to CD and now mp3s and YouTube videos. 

The oral history that I asked my grandfather to commit to writing and printed for him and our family. 

My great-grandmother’s family recipes that I had printed in book form.

The transcription of the house diary of our summer cottage.

And of course all the photos, videos, and keepsakes that I’ve amassed myself from my parents, my grandparents, my great grandparents. And my daughter.

An entire wall in the upstairs hallway has family photos from floor to ceiling that I walk by every night on the way to bed. Everyone that was special to me, most of whom are now gone. 

And I wonder what will happen to them now without Adri to take ownership of them along with the stories that accompany them. 

Even if I eventually I once again regain the relationship I want with my grandsons, they will be much further removed from this family narrative. It will all mean less to them, if it ever means anything at all. 

Adri would have been the conduit in the narrative chain. She’d have told them the stories and created the interest, the sense of kinship, the feeling of shared history, in much the same way my parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents did for me.

So I now am confronted with a lifetime of personal historical preservation efforts and materials that will end with me.

I helped my mom downsize this summer in order to move from a 3-bedroom 1800 square foot house to a 600 square foot apartment at a 55+ complex, and this required culling a bunch of historical family ephemera. There is simply no room for much of what she’d accumulated, but I tried to take what I could and make room for as much as possible.

One of the items she had in the discard pile was my grandfather’s framed diploma received for his doctorate degree from Columbia University in the 1950s. Of course this was an important thing that had been kept for the past 70-odd years, but there is a limit, there is finite space and a seemingly infinite supply of photos and keepsakes.
 

We had to let much of it go, but in the end, even though our house is becoming filled with such things, I rescued it from the discard pile and it sits on my ever-increasingly cluttered desktop, because I just couldn't bear to have his achievement forgotten or discarded.

It is of course just a temporary reprieve, because when I’m gone and someone has to go through all that I’ve accumulated, who would keep this, this memory from several generations before they were born, memorializing the achievement of someone they’ve never met?

Adri would have gladly taken it, but now, or rather in the near future…?

It will become dust in the wind, or tears in the rain.

The Up Series Final Entry

In 1964 a British documentary was released called Seven Up! which followed a group of seven-year-olds from different social strata and backgrounds in Britain at that time. Fourteen children were selected, found by Michael Apted, whose initial role was just that, research assistant.

He was asked to find children in the extremes of the different social classes in the 1960s. There are boys from a pre-preparatory school from wealthy families, three girls from a primary school in the working-class area of East London, a couple of boys from an orphanage, a boy from a rural area of Yorkshire, a couple of boys from a middle-class area near Liverpool, and a few others spanning the gamut of class in England.

The producers intended it to be a one-off, a “glimpse” into the possible Britain in the future Year 2000. They wanted to see how ingrained these social classes really were, if the first seven years of one’s life shape and define that person’s character, values, and habits.

Their stated theme and repeated motif being the perhaps overly fatalistic and deterministic

“Give me a child until he is seven and I will show you the man”

Seven years later they decided to do a follow-up, with Apted as the director. 7 Plus Seven checked in with the children to see what they were up to now, and its success led to the ambitious goal of revisiting them every seven years: 21 Up followed, then 28 Up, 35 Up, 42 Up, 49 Up, 56 Up, 63 Up, and just recently the final chapter, 70 Up.

Since it was not originally intended to be a series, none of the children were signed to long-term contracts and it was often a challenge to get all of them to keep participating. Some refused to participate after the first few, some were absent for a couple of entries and then returned, and of course some passed away, including Michael Apted himself between 63 and 70.

Of course there are some issues with all of this. Apted isn’t a disassociated biographer, he inserts himself, and some of the participants claim that he molded the story arc he wanted via selective edits and focuses. To his credit, however, Apted acknowledges this both on and off camera. There are segments in the film where some of the participants take him to task about this, and these interactions are included in the films.

Revisiting them all every seven years was always a treat. It was so interesting watching them grow up and take their place in the world, but of course there was often heartache and a sense of melancholy at broken dreams or just witnessing the relentless march of time. Not all ended up where they hoped they would, but surprisingly many did. Some of the rich boys in pre-prep talk about their intended life arc, including which primary, secondary, and universities they would attend along with their proposed areas of study, and all tracked almost exactly.

But we also have to see the development of mental illness, or the breakup of relationships, and of course death. And with each passing entry the jump cuts showing them age in blocks of seven years gets more and more jarring.

This is life captured 24 frames a second once every seven years over lifetimes. Fleeting, exhilarating, yet heartbreaking at the same time.

When I’d watch these films every seven years, I’d imagine what Adrianna’s life would look like presented in this manner, two-hour slices presented once every seven years. As it turns out, her last would have been 35 Up, and really, each of the seven-year points would have been an interesting representation of where she was in her life.

At seven, still my little girl, full of hope and wonder, everything ahead of her with no boundaries or limits.

At fourteen, the beginnings of the metamorphosis into adulthood, with all the rebellion and battles for independence and autonomy that that age usually brings.

At twenty-one, her struggles to decide what to do with the rest of her life, how to proceed.

At twenty-eight, being a new mother with two toddlers as her charge, her raison d’être, her everything.

At thirty-five, her continuing struggle with self-esteem, sense of worth, and mental health.

Such condensation isn’t really fair, of course. So much of life is and was lived between each of those seven years, and of course the same can be said for the participants of the Up series. And, especially in my daughter’s case, the sense of melancholy is amplified and pushed more into focus.

Such hopes, such dreams, and then a life that comes and goes in an instant.

It’s no wonder, then, that watching the intro to 70 Up last night I was overcome, yet again, with the loss of Adrianna.

I saw parts of Adri in many of the participants: Neil’s mental health issues, Bruce’s sense of social justice, Suzy’s sense of alienation, the working-class girls’ sense of adventure, and Nick’s intellectual curiosity, to name just a few.

This will be the final entry in the Up series. Several participants have passed away as has director Michael Apted. They are all seventy now. They have lived their lives, for better or worse, and the whole world watched as they did so, for better or worse.

Still, the series has come to an end, and the symbolism isn’t lost on me. Unfortunately.

I am and continue to be devastated that Adri didn’t get to live her whole expected life, for better or worse, with me by her side, for better or worse.

September 11th

Adrianna was in 8th grade twenty-five years ago, the morning of September 11, 2001. She told me that another teacher opened the classroom door, crying, and went to talk to her teacher, who then also started crying. She and her classmates didn't know what was going on, of course. 

She said the two teachers kept it together as best as they could so as not to freak out the class, but told them that something was happening and explained what had happened so far (the second plane at this point.)

I can't imagine how that affected ones so young and vulnerable, the veneer of safety and security ripped away like a bandage exposing an open wound, awakening and exposing a precarious reality subjected to the whims of a few dangerous individuals. 

Things were never the same for any of us, but for the children just coming of age, I'm sure it was several-fold worse.

My generation practiced duck and cover drills in elementary school, but we never really knew exactly why, and we certainly never saw our teachers crying in the hallway after an attack on our country and our innocence 

Just Breathe

This song. 

When Pearl Jam released this song in 2009, I had begun to see breaks in fissures in Adrianna's life. This song seemed to manifest itself as my own personal lament, a glimpse into a future brought on by my overly-fatalistic view of life, chance, and destiny.

And now, of course, it's a song that just destroys me. So do I avoid it? Of course not. It's a beautiful song that reminds me of a beautiful yet ephemeral life, and I will not look away no matter how much it hurts.

Quantum Immortality

I’ll let you all in on a little secret: I’m having a hard time getting over the loss of Adrianna. No! It’s true. I hide it well, so this probably comes as a shock to most of you. 

“Wow, he acts totally at peace and has clearly moved on,” you counter, but hear me out: I struggle. 

(See, there are many forms of denial. 😉)

Anyway, I’m constantly in search of coping mechanisms and strategies to make myself feel better, to ease those vestiges of pain that I obviously conceal so well. Writing, video games, little arts and crafts projects for the boys, getting deep into my lifelong study of prestidigitation, music, obtaining and wearing rings or a bracelet connected to her, posting a pic of her each day, performing reembrace ceremonies, et al. 

Then there are the more specific mental gymnastics that I often employ which work at first but then gradually lose their effectiveness. These include but are not limited to focusing on the good her organ donation did and continues to do, or letting myself at least contemplate that none of this real (either a long nightmare from which I’ll soon awake or that we’re all part of some virtual reality,) or flirting with the idea that there is an afterlife, or embracing the fact that every life is too short and that at least she for the most part lived it to the fullest, or seeing that her essence lives on in her boys, along with a slew of other thought patterns that have at least temporarily provided some much-needed balm to my bruised soul.

But eventually, like any other drug, I become immune to its effects, inured to its calming results, a victim of pseudo-sensory adaptation. 

And then the search begins again for a new soothing mechanism.

Recently, I’ve hit upon something new: Quantum immortality.

Now, I’ve sort of talked about this before at least sideways in something I wrote a year or so ago about imagining that in a different life Adri was on her patio drinking coffee in the morning, living her best life with family, fulfilling job, and dog. I tried to make it clear then that I meant this literally; it wasn’t simply some wistful contemplation, I really believe there is such a happy reality, one of several in the multiverse, but that I (and by extension you as well, dear reader) am trapped in a different one, in a universe that no longer includes Adrianna as a sentient consciousness. 

However, while I knew of the theory of multiverses from a quantum physics, I didn’t think deeply of the implications for human consciousness or that it actually had a defined term, the aforementioned quantum immortality.

Basically, the multiverse exists because each time we make a choice or a seemingly random event occurs, our universe bifurcates into two: one where, for example, we decided to go to an Italian restaurant last night, and one where instead we went to an Indian restaurant.

Both exist, or rather both come into existence once the decision is made, once the event happens. In this one, the cat in the box is alive. In that other one… well, it’s better not to ask.

So quantum immortality says that in the universe we find ourselves in right now, we’ve survived many possible deaths. Every time there was an event that might have ended your life, reality branched off in a different direction. In one reality, the one where you survive, your consciousness continues. In the other, the one where you died, there is of course no more consciousness. 

Your consciousness, the “you,” lives on and keeps going forward in those branches where you survive. The near-fatal car crash, the brush with some illness, the hard tumble you took down the stairs… you, the person here in this universe, survived them all.

But in the other branches your friends and family see a much worse result. To those stuck in those realities/universes it appears that you are gone, your consciousness and life ended and are gone for good.

But your consciousness of course did not end, it just migrated to a different universe, the one where (at least to this point) you are a survivor.

You can’t die; you just shift multiverses and carry on. Your consciousness across the multiverse is immortal.

This makes sense to me on a at least a metaphysical level, and if we ignore the possible arguments against the multiverse which involve problems concerning the conservation of matter and entropy, I can also embrace it “scientifically.”  

For now, I’ll think of Adrianna, or at least her consciousness, still alive and part of the world. And sure, it’s not optimal that this isn’t also my world, but I have to take what little victories over pain that I can get.

Perhaps we really are immortal.

 

Karen Carpenter

 

When Adri turned 33 and had outlived Karen Carpenter, I felt a sense of relief. It's easy to think of eating disorders as a teenage disease, one that you grow out of in time, but I knew differently. This awareness came via my exposure and knowledge learned in my psych degree, yes, but also because of Karen Carpenter.

"She was 32 years old? Really? That seems old to still be battling an ED," etc. etc.

But with the birth of her kids and making it past what I hoped was an upper-limit age marker I had some optimism, and indeed things seemed better in the early part of the decade preceding her passing.

She looked healthier, her pregnancies were non-eventful. She glowed and gained the appropriate amount of weight. When I hugged her, it didn’t feel as if she would break into a million pieces. But the destructive thoughts were always still just under the surface, and food insecurity resulting from her economic situation never helped.

The beginning of the pandemic actually helped her in this regard. The increase in SNAP benefits as well as the stimulus checks received took away much of that food insecurity. Instead of having to make a meager amount of groceries stretch among a family of four and doing without herself, she was able to have a normal amount of food on hand. And what’s more, the extra money meant she could afford to buy healthier stuff such as more fresh produce.

It was at once heartening to me to see this, but also heartbreaking, because the implication seemed to be that perhaps it was all a function of food insecurity and not an ED, which somehow made it worse.

However, the increased funding of SNAP as well as the cash payments to millions during the pandemic came to an end; there was not enough political will to keep it up. The clash of political ideologies and their opposing priorities have real-world effects: tax cuts, wall building, and aircraft carriers became more important than raising millions of kids and their families out of poverty.

Once that Grand Experiment ended, I noticed a change in Adri physically: she was getting thinner, her hair lost its luster, her teeth worse. She suggested by omission and context that not only was there just less food again but that her ED behavior had returned. I started sending a box of food every other week that was fruit and veggie forward, with foods that would help her such as avocados. Her granny sent her nutrition drinks as well that I would stress needed to be a meal supplement and not a meal replacement. She would take prenatal vitamins. But still.

Of course there were other contributing factors, a congenital heart issue unrelated to behavior, alcohol issues, and various challenges (some self-inflicted, some not) that didn’t help.

In the end, Karen Carpenter made it 32 years, but died of heart failure brought upon by her eating disorder, and there should have been no reason for me to hang onto that age number like it was some magic goal line, that once crossed and surpassed I could worry a bit less.

This is not a disease that you simply grow out of.

Here’s a text from Adri sent in 2019 that illustrates much of this:

12/19/2019 8:31:15 PM

And I always wanted be counselor or psychologist. Always. So I’m doing that. I’ll get a grant and financial aid, and I can only get so much, so I don’t want to waste it.

Also, I’m old.

And I am worn out.

I can’t believe what all I have done to myself. It makes me so sad that I didn’t see that I was gorgeous, but I didn’t think I was pretty.

And I couldn’t see it, and I turned myself into the person I saw, and now I am ugly.

And worn out.

And makes me sad. Like so, so sad.

So I really, really want to try and help people before it’s too late. Suck it up show them before and after picture and tell them the truth so that my mistakes weren’t for nothing.

Maybe they were to save a life

Anyway, here are The Carpenters playing one of my favorite songs from their oeuvre, featuring Karen herself on the drum kit.

Bath Time

Post-bath, 1988

She always loved baths. The last years of her life that would be her one time to be alone and decompress, soaking in the tub listening to music as she got a brief respite from meal prep and the boys' homework and cleaning and laundry and paying bills and planning the monthly budget and the general state of the world.

For an all-too brief half an hour or so she’d let go off all that. The boys might occasionally interrupt her temporary sanctuary, asking her to settle some brotherly dispute or for help with finding a toy. They’d ask her how much longer she’d be in there and if she could make them a snack when she got out. But she’d let the warm water wash all that away, and she’d have herself to herself if only for a moment. 

When she was done, she’d jump right back in to mother mode, her batteries charged a bit with the aura of contentment and peace surrounding and protecting her for the rest of the evening.

Not too different from mothers all over since the dawn of time, of course, but I’m thankful that she could at times enjoy life and feel alive in a good way. 

Becoming an Old Man

Things are not changing. Every morning I wake hope hoping for a millisecond that this was just a bad dream. Maybe the only way forward is to become complacent and just forget, but I don't want that, either. 

One of the first things I said to Cindy that morning was, "I don't want to become an old man without her," which I still think is an odd thought to arise then, and pretty selfish as well.

Of course I had other thoughts before that and a million since, but I still think about that and why that notion came to the forefront so quickly.

The instant I knew she was gone I instantly saw the rest of my life spread out in front of me, a sort of reverse "life-flashing-before-one's-eyes" moment, that trope you often hear when someone escapes a near-death accident. 

It’s hard to even talk about, because I’m always afraid that it might come across as being dismissive of the people that are still in my life, but that is not the case, of course. 

It’s not that the life that lies ahead of me is now meaningless and empty, but it is less full. I’ll never be lonely and don’t fear loneliness, but I will be lonelier. I’m lucky to have the love of Cindy and family and friends and to love them all as well, but yet, still, a part of my heart has been ablated with the loss of Adrianna.

I hope those important to me understand all of that.

And yet, fourteen and a half months later, I still don’t want to become an old man without her.