56) Making Up Stories

There’s something I've done before, pretty sure other people have too. I call it adopting a memory. One example: when I was a young teenager spending a summer in London I got a job working in a clothing boutique in Edgware Road. While writing my memoir, I often went into a meditative place and imagined myself in the place and action that I was writing about. The portal to my younger past self was surprisingly easy to access, like switching channels. I could see and feel it, sort of like being a a virtual reality participant in a visual clip of a scene featuring me. It made for better writing but it’s also disconcerting how intact and find-able all our experiences are; whether they are mundane or traumatic, if one is receptive to revisiting them.

Now it happens almost automatically; as soon as I wrote that, I was there, 15 years old. I felt very independent and proud to have landed this job. Even though it wasn’t my first, it was in London, and I had to get up, take the tube to work each day with thousands of real adult commuters, so it was different.

One day on my commute, the train couldn’t come into the station and word spread that a jumper had disrupted services. Nowadays this is a sadly common occurrence for train travelers in London, but back then I’d never heard of such a thing. It made me late for work, and while waiting I began obsessing on what had happened. Fortunately, I didn’t envision any graphic bodily destruction, but rather the idea of noticing a person—in my version, a nondescript man in a cheap suit—and then perhaps from the corner of my eye seeing him step off the platform as one of the non-stop fast trains sped through.

In time, that imagined scenario began to morph into a memory attached to the morning. I related the event to friends back in Texas as though it had happened the way I imagined it and with each telling, it became more of a “reality.” At some self aware point of becoming the most true and honest person I could be, it occurred to me that this event, while it did happen, didn’t happen in my presence. Knowing I was capable of creating a false narrative, even in the most benign and harmless fashion, gave me a forever perspective. If I can do it, anyone else can and will, and about any number of things.

Another way to have an adopted memory is to be told something happened. After my mom and dad split up, they never spoke. For visits, she’d send me running out to the curb where he waited in the car, he’d return me and wait while I made my way to the door. She told me once that she opened the door after he’d brought me back and I was standing there with a bunch of giant sunflowers—she assumed he’d stopped at a field and cut them for me. She said my face was right in the middle of all the flowers, like I was a flower too.

Because I have no memories of having a dad when I was little, I made her recantation into one. I wrote my own little movie of my dad and me stopping by the side of the road, him pulling out a pocket knife and cutting a bunch of big sunflowers. I remembered, as though it was real, carefully going up the sidewalk and seeing, from my POV, my mom’s delight and surprise when she opened the door.

The truth is I don’t remember this happening at all. But for many years it was nice to have a memory where there was a big void.

Related somewhat. In February I bought some seeds from Marks & Spencer, forgot about them, re-found in April and pushed them into the soil of a little pot. They sprouted about 3 / 4 inches and at the end of May, a bunch of new planters appeared on the rooftop terrace where I live. I asked our resident gardener if I could put my seedlings in one. It’s been amazing to see how fast those little seedlings grow into tall, thick leafy stalks. Since mid-July, I’ve been in LA helping my friend who is sick, but my neighbor sent me this photo yesterday of the first fully bloomed sunflower. And there’s about ten more stalks to welcome me with their big happy flower faces when I get back.

I need some happy flower face action. My time in LA has been a heartbreaking, soul-crushing roller coaster of care giving and patient advocacy. It’s been a balancing act: disengaging when the heaviness feels too much, rolling into sleepless nights of worry and stress, giving in to waves of sadness and sobbing, intuitively sensing what will best serve my beloved friend in his most vulnerable state. Fighting for his life when he is hopeless. I feel like everything I’ve learned and experienced in life has brought me to a place where I can do this. Being sober, being a mother, having done it before, having grieved and survived, and surrendered. Even my non-practice of spiritual-lite philosophical study has given me enough strength and guidance to go, day after day, night after night, into the suffering of someone I care deeply for.

I’m not a Buddhist or an anything by a long shot, more of a cherry picker from different faiths and teachings when I need it, but I turned to Buddhism for perspective on suffering and compassion. I can’t give credit, forgot to note the source, but there was quite a bit of regarding confidence and capability—the ability to hold the distress of others in such a way as to be effective in our efforts to help. It’s presented as having a “sense of confidence so that you can respond wisely and skillfully to the situation.” And when all seems hopeless, to summon up the courage and heartful-ness to do our best to make it seem otherwise.

In this regard, I’m nailing it, up and down. But the layers and shifts and twists from despair to hope, fear to relief, emotional lifting, mental pushing and physical pulling, all of it multiple times around the clock…it’s a lot.

I’ve joined online support groups of other same afflicted patients and their caregivers and want to stress that this is a game changer. I discovered the wealth of info people going through the same thing can offer back in 2007 when I was figuring out how to save my mom’s life. The support group I found back then led me to every route I took to get her to the surgeon who removed 85% of a grapefruit-sized tumor that had been slowly growing in her head for nearly 20 years.

The antidote to this sadness has been getting to see Audrey and her dad in between my time of care giving and advocacy. She’s been here all summer for classes and internships.

Please send my beloved friend healing thoughts or prayers or energy or whatever you think works. Send him peace, comfort, and light.

So, lately, since the last dispatch, life has been smaller and laser-focused. It’s hard to write when consumed with one thing. Aligned with the theme of making up stories, I’m going to share some titles and descriptions of shortish stories I’ve either written as drafts, or am in process of writing. Check it out and let me know in the comments which story sounds most like the one you’d want to read. The one with most interest will get my full attention on finishing and I’ll publish here.

Ha, that’s the plan anyway. Play along!

1.     ENDS MEET  an unloved boy grows up, joins the Army, and discovers why he is unloved.

2.     LIFEBOAT  a woman decides to take daughter and leave her cheating husband until a chance encounter with a woman born in a prison changes everything

3.     NAIL DUO  an art patron socialite meets an artist who becomes a catalyst for changing her life

4.     BIRDLESS  a woman realizes the pandemic has ended her long distance relationship (flash fiction)

5.     TEAM SPIRIT  a daughter’s world crumbles when her single mother breaks up with the boyfriend the girl became attached to

6.     UNCANNY DEATH VALLEY  a man in the future replicates the woman he loves when she dies   

7.     EVERGREEN a man falls out of love with his wife but feels stuck because she has a brain tumor 

8.     ZIGGY AND MARILYN a do-gooder loses her generous spirit after losing her legs and finds redemption in an unlikely friend  

9.     DRUMSTICKS a young girl finds the reasons behind her eating disorder while mourning the death of her brother volunteering in Central America in the 80’s.

10. MASCOT a woman who helped an independent coffee shop succeed is asked to stay away when her behavior changes and customers start complaining.

It’s been super cool to see new subscribers signing up or following. Thanks for being here and giving me a little of your precious time and attention. Very grateful not be writing into a void. The dream is connecting with readers and you’re making it happen. xK