I have a new post at Blog critics on how I learned that New York really isn’t the center of the world. Really, it took me all this time to figure that one out.
I still can’t watch TV or talk about this. Would have made a horrible reporter which is why I’m not one.
My post that was put on blogcritic.org last week is still getting comments. Will never happen again so I should savor it. Did learn that I have an ego that needs to be stroked. Not true. I knew it. Just didn’t know how much it needed to be stroked.
Forgot to cache it when it was number one; story of my life. Probably had my fifteen minutes ten or a hundred times over but didn’t know, didn’t take advantage of it, and/or it was during a horrible time. I got 305 comments on one post and don’t even care. That’s sad. Another weekend and I would have felt as if I had done something wonderful. Not me; not really but it would have been a nice ego stroke. I coulda been a contender….
What happened this week was unbelievable and a zillion times worse than 9/11. This is a truly depressing and self pitying post. Don’t read anymore unless you want to feel highly superior to me (and I don’t mean that sarcastically) or even more depressed.
I’m so confused. The same people who told me not to mourn my mother, who fell and died a month after 9/11, because she was an old lady and there were so many young people to mourn for; are now crying for all the old people trapped in New Orleans. I am too.
But everytime something like this happens; it brings unresolved issues to the forefront. There werent’ support groups for people who suffered losses that weren’t directly 9/11 related. Though I know my mom lost her will to live and let herself fall because it was too much for her.
I am a licensed Social Worker; I offered to begin support groups for people who lost relatives around that time but not on 9/11 or directly because of it. I’m good at support groups; but I couldn’t find one organization that was willing to take it on. Why? All the grants were 9/11 money.
All the paperwork and everything that’s death related. You don’t get breaks just because it happened then and your mail isn’t being delivered–anthrax. You don’t get breaks because your mother died. You get “she didn’t die on 9/11.” Get to the back of the line and resubmit your paperwork; we’re tired of death so we lost it.
I’m sick of this subject. I’m sick of writing about it; sick of thinking about it. But everytime a tragedy happens it brings it back home
My 9/11 experience wasn’t the same as most people’s. My 9/11 experience was nasty and turned me into a bitter person for awhile. The families all had help; the families didn’t have to pay estate taxes. Though we would have been exempt, from federal taxes, now–not enough money–we weren’t then.
The threshold was $675,000 which yes is more than 99% of the people left in New Orleans have, but… The city, state and federal taxes took a very hefty chunk of our money. We were glad to pay it. Thought it was the patriotic thing to do. Hah.
Everybody who died in New York City on 9/11 through the end of 2001 should have been exempt from estate taxes.
The 9/11 families made money; they deserved every penny of it. Sometimes I feel like I have to add that sentence and might not believe it as much as I believe that, say, the troops in Iraq are innocent people who are serving under a very warped administration. Believe that with all my heart.
I’m sick of hearing about 9/11 families to be honest. Nobody told them not to mourn. I’m not unfeeling. But for months I would dream about people jumping, and would subsitute my mom’s face. You have no idea how hard it was to go to sleep knowing that I would dream that. While my mental state wasn’t at its finest; it wasn’t as bad as I thought. Took me a long time and many horrible experiences to find that out.
My upstairs neighbor is the building lush. He had been kicked off The Boat Basin where he usually lived a month after 9/11 for falling on deck, and not being able to get into his boat without help. He was deemed a security risk.
I didn’t know this. When I was up late (every night at first) I would hear him falling at least four or five times a night; when I was asleep I would incorporate his falls into my dreams. Took me a year or more to realize that. He spends a lot of time puking, and I hear it because sound travels through bathroom pipes. His falls weren’t muted; they were loud hard falls that scared me. They probably would have injured a person in a less pickled state. He probably has concussions and doesn’t know the difference between that and a hangover.
Please I speak from personal experience: when people are in mourning be respectful; no matter how unnecessary you believe the mourning is. Give them time. They might not fully feel it in the first month, six months or six years. They might act odd and self-centered even if they’ve never been that way before. Don’t think that they have a role to fill–the adjusted friend or family member; let them be unhinged. Encourage it. Don’t give people time limits; try not to judge or to relate your experiences.
Yes you have a right to remain sane. Tell your friend or family member that you’re willing to be there for him/her but will need breaks. Just hearing that you’re there for them can make a big big difference.
Don’t tell people not to mourn somebody because “She had a great life; she was old.” She fell and lived for fifteen minutes–her companion button captured her last words. She said she couldn’t get up and didn’t want to die.
How was I supposed to react to that? With gleeful joy that I would be inheriting some money? Somehow that felt meaningless. I would have rather that she lived to spend all her money.
A month after 9/11 people in Manhattan were still crying for it. But God forbid that I should have cried for my mother.
I am in deep mourning today for New Orleans; I am in deep mourning for my life that ended as I used to know it four years ago.
I am in mourning for the innocent person that I once was. I thought that people were allowed to grieve and be a bit irrational at times.
Mourning knows no time limits or boundaries. I know the five steps as postulated by Elizabeth Kubler Ross well. When I was in my 20’s, my dad wanted me to take a course with him given by her. I didn’t think that was a good father/daughter course; I wanted to take courses where I could meet people . Okay boys. While my father would have encouraged that, well because he would have encouraged it, I would have spent my time dying from shame.
Later I would have found it very funny, but I was 25, and my dad spent a lot of time embarassing me. Later I found out that he did most of these things specifically to embarass me. I am my parents daughter and do find that funny.
The five steps are a good guideline but they don’t always follow in order. And just when you think you’re all over it, there’s another terrorist attack, or a natural disaster.
I don’t like mourning. It doesn’t become me. I like to laugh not cry. Crying gives me a migraine; laughing makes me feel good. Which one would you choose?
You know what I really hate? Friends who call up crying because they know you will listen and love them. Then they “forget” about your tentative plans and make plans with the socalled friends who would cut them off in a second if they dared cry or show any emotion but a smile.
Really really hate that. Like being single; I’m not great as half of a couple and I know that. I am a good friend; a very good friend, and need friends for all ocassions but they are a few who fill the coveted best friend positions. And when you fill that position, yes you can make tentative plans and then change them. But not on a weekend like this one
I am listening to Warren Zevon’s “The Wind,’ written, and performed after he had been diagnosed with lung cancer. He will be dead two years on 9/8. “The Wind” has helped me more than anything or anybody. Not going to analyze why! At least not now.
Read my new post at Blog Critics. I explore my feelings about 9/11 and Katrina in a different way. Hey at least I admit that I love to explore my feelings in blog print
And please send a thought to or say a prayer for JC of Further Ironies. One son in Iraq; and one son in Boguluisa LA–they’re cut off and she heard that they began shooting. I can’t imagine what or how she is feeling. I feel so arrogant for writing this post and so humbled by her.
And what am I doing complaining at a time like this? I have a house–well 600 square feet, food, money and more resources than most people, friends and family, though I may complain, they love me, they really love me. I have always been too independent, people say. If I were a resident in a nursing home, I would be marked as a “passive observer.” Though I might do more than other residents and have more friends, I would have picked the friends on my own and refused to go to most unit activities. If I did that I would be called an active observer.
Because I think too much about getting old or dependent, I want this system of grading nursing home residents changed. Nursing homes should be run with the needs of the residents not the staff in mind. Because the non profits are so short staffed most can’t be. How did I get onto this? Classic me
Most important of all I have 305 comments in one post, and was back up to the number one post for awhile today. Took the page offline and saved it; it’s never going to happen again, and it could have gotten so many more comments if only this…Actually I’m feeling pretty good right now. I have added to this many times today.
I want life to go back to November 2000; I want Al Gore to have won the presidency. Baring that I want everybody out of the White House, New Orleans to rise again, and a clean Democrat sweep in 2006–and I was never a partisan person. After Viet Nam I became single issue oriented and apolitical until the truly uneeded and stupid impeachment of the best president in my lifetime. I was going to close with a lyric from:
‘Walking to New Orleans.” but I just said it, and will end with:
“Don’t mess with my Bill.” It’s not really relevant anymore but it feels good to say, and we once had a president who kept this country so great…
JC is going to do a special guest post on BIO tomorrow. I will link it to Courting
I know what you mean about other people wanting to tell you what is worth mourning over and what’s not. When my dog died (about 6 years ago), I was so upset. I had him since I was 11, so obviously was very attached to him. He was 15 and had gotten so old that he was having trouble seeing, hearing and even walking. I agonized over putting him to sleep for over a week. I finally decided to do it…and the strangest thing happened, he died on my lap while in the car on the way to the animal shelter. Then of course I felt guilty because I felt like my delay possibly caused him more pain than was necessary. Someone told me though that I couldn’t think that way, that everything happens for a reason. The one thing another person told me that comforted me the most, but most people would think was weird was that “he waited until you were ready to let go”. Sounds hokey, but that made me feel so much better. My mother died when I was 4 and all my grandparents before I was old enough to remember them. I never really had to deal with a major loss before, so losing the dog hit me hard.
I’m a bit off track, that wasn’t the point of this story. The point was, I love my Dad to death but he’s never been much of an animal friend. He doesn’t dislike them, but he’s old school. He feels that dogs and cats should be outdoor pets or used for some work purpose and he makes fun of people who, as he says, “treat their pets like humans”. My Dad has always been so good to me, but during this whole time he was totally insensitive and I’ll never quite forget that. The one time when we put the dog out to go do his business, we found him down over the hill laying in a hole and my brother had to go get him, because he couldn’t crawl back up. My Dad started telling me about a dog he had when he was a kid and how it “dug itself a hole and laid down to die” and that was probably what MY dog was doing. He constantly would make jokes about it or just insensitive comments. The day I took him to be put to sleep I was carrying him to my brother’s car and he made some comment to me and I just screamed at him “SHUT UP!” Then he snapped back at me, “Oh stop being such a baby, it’s a damn dog”. I will never forget that. And it’s not that I felt that he was a jerk for not having the ability to care for an animal like that. He was entitled to his opinion. What made me so angry was that I’m his daughter. He should care about my feelings. If I’m hurting, he should be sympathetic. And if he couldn’t find it in himself to sympathize, he should’ve just kept his mouth shut.
Sorry for the length, but once I start going sometimes I can’t stop!
Grief works differently for different folks. Outlets of all sorts are necessary – but mainly, shoulders to lean on and arms for hugging are best medicine from my experience. Trouble is, the spirit within and of america has been slashed by the W, Rove and Co. Katrina is just salt water or gasoline, if you prefer, on the wounds.
Hard to grieve for folks who got so much warning. Someone told me recently that I hadn’t taken time to ‘grieve’ appropriately about several things. My thoughts: grief is a process, not a marinade.
Relegated to dial-up in a town of 620 souls. It’s so nice and peaceful. We went into Frascati before we left the city by the bay for good. All the best to you.
Beck eye i loved your story; Windspike great as always; Mac the people who were left in New Orleans were the poorest, the sickest–can’t go on. Also the media gives so many false warnings, how can you believe them?
I agree with the general tenor of these comments: it’s nobody’s business how much time one needs to grieve over this or that, and as long as one is not obnoxious or destructive, no one should interfere.