permission to fall apart

One short story I can read over and over (with all the cuss words edited out in my personal copy...because that's just me) is George Saunders' Sea Oak. It's essentially about male strippers, teenage moms who watch TV all day, deep poverty, and one always-cheerful-yet-perpetually-down-on-her-luck Aunt Bernie-- who comes back from the dead as a decaying, mean corpse. Put that all together and you wouldn't expect to come away feeling deeply moved, but Saunders is a genius. You finish reading and say, "oh...yes."

Because the bigger story is about what it means to fall apart. In this case, Aunt Bernie--who stays forever optimistic despite everything going wrong in her life--dies before anything ever gets better. And then she comes back from the dead...and she gets to just 'lose it', give in to her bitterness, the irony of life's unfairness...finally.

And I so. get. that.

I have gotten up when it felt like my insides were falling apart. When I was so filled with grief and pain and hurt and loneliness and fear and anxiety and anger and doubt and heartbreak that it nearly consumed me. When I could not separate myself from the weight pressing down on me. I was weight. Heavy, heavy weight. I still got up. I still put a smile on my face. I still took care of my kids, my house, my friendships, my work, my school, my job. I laughed.

It seemed the best thing to do. The hopeful thing. The healthy thing.  The "me" thing. What God would want me to do. And I still believe that. But I understand now...why my Mom would come home from work some days, exhausted, and just throw herself back on her bed and cry and cry and cry. Big, loud, no-bottom-to-the-well kind of sobs. She was one of the strongest, happiest people I knew...but she understood about falling apart. She understood that one can only be strong for so long before they just have to crumble a little.

She did the single parent thing that I'm doing for 17 years.

Seventeen.

I like to think she was happy when she died--although the whole body being ravaged by cancer thing at the end of her life totally sucked. She had been happily remarried for 8 years. She was surrounded by adoring children and grandchildren and friends. She crafted and baked and gardened. She went on all kinds of adventures, saw much of the world. She captained her own boat around North America at age 60, for crying out loud! And she never went a day without writing to someone in the family--one of us kids, or letters that were all pictures she'd drawn to my boys before they could read. All of her elderly aunts got letters, too. She just loved....everyone.

I wonder if her last, mostly happy, safe years made up for all those years of struggling on her own in quiet solitude? The hours and hours of labor and worry she bore alone.  I regret now, walking wide circles around her when she did fall apart, having no idea how to comfort her. Just thinking, "meh--she'll be fine tomorrow." And she always was. But still....I wish I would have tried, even in my childlike way. I know now what a blessing any attempts at sympathy or comfort are.

I wonder, too, how much longer my sustained strength and optimism can hold out? Sometimes I feel as though I lost myself, found myself, and lost myself again. I'm just tired. In so many ways. I'm tired of never being right for anyone. I'm tired because I sleep too little. I'm even just a little tired...of myself (I mean, seriously, have you HEARD how much I prattle on around here? :) ) I want to fall apart for awhile. I just fear that if I do, I won't be able to put myself back together again. So, I keep pretending that I can do this...and, for the most part, with God's help, it turns out I can.

Sea Oak ends with our protagonist (the male stripper) thinking about his Aunt Bernie who has disintegrated into a pile of parts and died again. He's saving up for a headstone for her: "What do you write on something like that? LIFE PASSED HER BY? DIED DISAPPOINTED? CAME BACK TO LIFE BUT FELL APART? All true, but too sad, and no way I'm writing any of those. BERNIE KOWALSKI, it's going to say: BELOVED AUNT. Sometimes she comes to me in dreams. She never looks good. Sometimes she's wearing a dirty smock. Once she had on handcuffs. Once she was naked and dirty and this mean cat was clawing its way up her front. But every time it's the same thing. 'Some people get everything and I got nothing,' she says. 'Why? Why did that happen?' Every time I say I don't know. And I don't."

And neither do I.


So, instead of falling apart, I'm going to go to California tomorrow. And though I'll see old friends, including Haute Cakes, I'm going for no one else but me this time. I'll be spending my birthday there...healing in my own way. I'm going to go eat a frozen banana and stroll around Balboa Island. I'm going to go walk the back bay and watch the dredge boat work. I'm going to peruse furniture stores full of stuff that costs more than my house. I'm going to watch the sun go down over the ocean. I'm going to dig around in the sand just to see what I can find. I'll do a lot of thinking. And if I still feel like I need to have one of those no-bottom-of-the-well sobs myself....well, so be it. Just like my Mom, I trust I'll be fine in the morning.