Author Archives: Robin Botie

Sick and Tired of Gray

Robin Botie of Ithaca, New York, photoshops a depressing drippy gray scene of her daughter who died, as part of her coping strategy for dealing with seasonal affective disorder.It’s barely even November. And already I’m sick and tired of gray. But the days keep getting shorter, darker, colder, and grayer. Endless gray. Overburdening gray that brings everyone dropping to their knees, howling for light. And here in Central New York, we have six more months of grim gray ahead of us. This makes me want to hole up at home in front of the TV, bingeing on Netflix and spaghetti.

All this gray is dull, boring, dingy. Maybe even dirty. It is lifeless, or life without color. But then, gray is the color of everything when you are grieving.

It’s the color of concrete. Of old hair. Storm clouds. Ash. Lead. Gunmetal. Neither black nor white, gray is a neutral non-color that is deathly quiet. And depressing. It’s got nothing to do with the rest of the world where friends text you jolly pictures of themselves guzzling bubbly pink margaritas with their golden super-stuffed tacos and garishly decorated cupcakes, oblivious to the frigging cold and wet and gray.

Gray is the color our brains turn when dead.

Is anyone else suffering from seasonal affective disorder?

This is what I’ve tried that helped: Running outside with upturned face whenever the sun cracks through the clouds. Spending my waking hours next to a light-therapy lamp. Escaping to sunny islands in the Caribbean. Escaping to the movies or into a captivating novel. Taking up a new hobby or project, like hiking, preferably outside, although tramping through Walmart works too. Hugging a puppy or a baby. Hugging the one you love. Hanging out with people who make you laugh. Exercising, so your brain pumps out more pleasure-producing endorphins. Falling in love (it was a long time ago but it worked).

It’s a dismal gray autumn in Upstate New York, and I’m using every ounce of my creativity to try to change my perspective. I will find a way to make gray beautiful. I’m going to love it. If, years ago I learned to love my life even though my daughter—the light of my life—died, then I can learn to love gray.

 

Got any advice? What helps you the most in coping with seasonal affective disorder?

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Categorizing Friends

Robin Botie of Ithaca, New York, photoshops an image of all types of friends for categorizing friends.“How many children do you have?” The question used to put me in a quandary.
“One living and one dead,” I’d reply, needing to account for both kids. Needing to hang on to what I love, and peg it in place. I think that was how my categorizing started. Now I categorize everything, including friends. Online friends and offline friends. And offline friends are further classified into my Regular Friends and the new Blue Friends.

There is nothing really regular about my Regular Friends. Many knew me in my old life, knew my daughter. When she died, they showed up to support me and they continue to do so. These Regular Friends keep me grounded, anchored in the real ongoing world with news about their kids’ graduations and weddings, their grandchildren. These are mostly people I chose long ago. We are connected by history. I love them, love that they stuck by me. But. They don’t really get me. They don’t understand my fascination with afterlife, or what drives me to endlessly photo-shop my daughter’s face. Forgetting that I’d give my eyeteeth to have one more hour with my girl, they sometimes complain about their children, about petty things a daughter did, or a son did not do. I call them ‘regular’ because these friends are happily not initiated into the realm of child-loss. I’m grateful they don’t know this pain.

Then there are my newest friends. Bereaved mothers and fathers. I call them Blue Friends as they aren’t at their happiest, and I may never know them at their happiest. Many of these people are folks I would never have met if not for our shared grief experience. Now I am drawn to them. I see beauty and a particular grace about them. They are like cousins. We are fragile and broken in the same ways. These friends get who I am. Now. They understand the crazy things I do—we do—to keep connected to our children who died. They will plant candles on a cake and sing Happy Birthday to my dead daughter with me. When I desperately need to talk about my girl, my Blue Friends listen without feeling uncomfortable. There is something very special about the way we can laugh together despite our crushed hearts.

In an unpredictable world, where a child you love can disappear forever, I need friends of both types: those who know, and those who are blessedly ignorant of how everything changes and everything hurts when you lose a child. I’m grateful for all my friends. Having them has made everything almost manageable. Stepping cleanly from one set of friends to the other, sometimes several times in one day, I always felt like I was on solid ground. But that changed last week when one of my Regular Friends had her world pulled out from under her— her child died—and suddenly, even assigning categories can’t stop the conundrum of change as a Regular Friend turns Blue.

 

Best friends, foodie friends, crazy friends, needy friends…. Is it okay to categorize your friends?

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Cemeteries Used to be Creepy Places

Robin Botie of Ithaca, New York, photoshops a scene at Greensprings Natural Cemetery in Newfield, New York of a naural burial.“Bunny, bunny, bunny, bunny, bunny … ” we kids used to chant as we rode past the endless gravestones of the huge cemeteries of Queens and Brooklyn. We held our breaths hoping to convince the angel of death, who hung out in such places, that we were too young to die. Such places. Creepy. Wretched-scary landscapes of stones crammed close, with carved-out names of ghosts spooking you from every direction. As soon as I learned about cremation, I knew I’d rather be burned off the planet than be stuck in such a place for eternity.

Over years of travels to island countries and other continents, I peeked through fences at more inviting burial grounds. Always from a distance. Then, last week, I followed my friend’s body to Greensprings Natural Cemetery in Newfield, New York. In lush rolling hills bordered by forests, the place looked more like a nature preserve than a cemetery. There were no gravestones. No concrete mausoleums. No strange men in black penguin suits. The staff was indistinguishable from the mourners. I expected my dead friend to be hidden away in the depths of a coffin. But there was no coffin. Instead, her un-embalmed body had been neatly wrapped, swaddled in white cloth and tied like a big fancy bar of soap. Like an ancient Egyptian mummy. It was very obviously my friend inside. Her size and shape, and something about her character, were discernible through the shroud. She was gently carried from hearse to cart, and we all walked with her through moist green grass to a small clearing in a meadow.

A hole had been dug and was lined with boughs of pine. Family and friends gathered close under the tent to read poems and share memories. Then, together, mourners and staff lowered the fresh wood board holding the body, onto the bed of pine branches. People placed chocolates and cookies over my friend. And flowers cut from her garden. We took turns shoveling some of the soil over her. Here, she would complete the cycle of life, helping to give back to and restore the land.

It was okay that it was raining. It felt peaceful. Safe. If my voice choked or cracked it wouldn’t matter. So, moved by the simple beauty of the moment, I sang. My friend had wanted to hear me play Taps on the bugle, but she’d died before I could learn the notes. Instead, I sang the words to Taps.

And though I’m not one to visit cemeteries or gravesites, I’m planning to come back to this beautiful spot in the hills at Greensprings. For my first performance, when I can play Taps for my friend. And maybe, even, for the last stop in my journey here on earth.

 

What are your plans for after you die? Might you consider an ecologically sound burial?

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Losing a Friend

Robin Botie of Ithaca, New York, photographed her friend Annette months before she died.Over the past few years I was called to my friend Annette’s deathbed a couple of different times. The hospital is just a short drive from my house, so I kept her company during many emergency room visits. If she got admitted for an extended stay, I’d merrily come and go twice daily, delighted to have her in my neighborhood. When we spoke about dying, she joked. She twisted her oxygen tube into a noose around her neck. Then she shaped it into an angel’s halo and held it over her head. She got me laughing ‘til I was short of breath myself. My friend for over thirty years. She made me feel adventurous and indestructible, like we could go on forever outwitting the angel of death.

And we did. For a while, she always bounced back. As per her request, I’d fetch steamed lobsters and double-chocolate-chip muffins from Wegmans, to celebrate the victory.

Not this time.

Annette died. And, since I wasn’t with her, since I didn’t get to see her ever-lively self in a lifeless state, I’m left trying to convince myself she’s no longer just across town or only a phone call away. She’s gone, I have to keep reminding myself. No more wild road trips wondering if the oxygen tank would last. No more silly antics during the most solemn moments. No more photo-shoots where she’d literally bend over backwards to give me a great shot. I’m just beginning to realize all the ways I will miss her.

Grief is grief. The pain and suffering when a loved one dies cannot be measured or scored. That’s what I tell people who try to compare one person’s loss to another’s. When a friend dies, you cannot simply assume their pain is less than that of someone losing a spouse of sixty years, or losing three children rather than one, losing a beloved parent, or a long-awaited infant who dies at birth…. Someone’s misery is always perceived to be greater or less than someone else’s. Having experienced losses of a parent, a child, and friends, I believe each is painful in its own way. Each loss is different. Un-comparable. For me, now, in considering my losses without weighing one against another, I would say:

When you lose a child it’s like losing a limb or a vital organ. But when you lose a good friend, you lose some deep-rooted, invisible, remarkable, un-nameable thing that allowed your spirit to soar.

 

Who was the friend whose death broke your heart? How do you honor the memory of a good friend?

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Come Back to What You Love

Robin Botie of Ithaca, New York, photoshops a picture of her daughter Marika Warden on Bells Beach in Australia.Keep coming back to what you love. A friend told me that. Years ago. I don’t remember the exact circumstances under which she said this. But, thankfully, these words echo in my mind whenever I find myself antsy, anxious. Immobilized.

A photograph of my daughter Marika on Bells Beach in Australia is what I come back to. The original photo was taken by her friend Carla when, during a brief time of remission, for two weeks Marika escaped cancer, chemo, her doctors, and me. Marika was planning to go back to Australia to become a nurse. This was one of her happiest times.

Last week, when CNN News announced another Consequential Week, one with much at stake for our country and the world, I turned off the TV. I dragged and dropped the tiny digital photo into Photoshop for the umpteenth time. Then, for most of the weekend, I expanded and embellished it, and lovingly rendered it into a comforting appliqued-quilt type of design. With all the ups and downs of the world , it helps to know what you love and what you need to balance your life. Sometimes you need to revisit and rework every little detail of the past. Sometimes you need to look back in order to move forward.

 

What do you go back to when facing your own weighty moments?

REPLY TO ROBIN

Phoning the Bereaved

Robin Botie of Ithaca, New York, photoshops a scene of grief support, how to comfort someone who is mourning.A stranger’s voice says hello. I gulp, hug the phone closer, and manage to squeak out, “Hi, this is Robin, a Hospicare bereavement-call volunteer. Is this an okay-time to talk?” The stranger usually softens at this. Either from warm memories of how Hospicare treated their family during dark times, or maybe they sense my anxiety and want to help me out. For me, talking to strangers is scary enough face to face. But phoning some unknown person, to see how they’re doing after the love of their life has died—that takes all my courage. The first phone call to a newly assigned person, I always dread that my mourner will sob uncontrollably and hate me because I made him remember his beloved is dead. As a bereaved mother, I know this isn’t likely. Still, that first call is scary. I never know what I’ll get.

Sometimes on the initial calls, I find people who are terribly lonely and grateful to have someone, even a stranger, to talk to. Not much of a conversationalist myself, if they babble on about their loss, I’m content to sit and listen as they reminisce or cry.

Other times, though, I find someone who is even more shy and reserved on the phone than I am. I frantically fish around for good questions not answerable with a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ It is almost painful trying to engage some people. “May I call you again in three months?” I ask at the end of the call, wondering if they will take the opportunity to opt out.

Once, on a first call, a person told me, “Oh, I’m so over that. My life is much better now that he’s dead.”

It’s all okay. Better to phone than not phone. Because in the weeks and months following the death of a loved one, after the funeral, after family and friends have returned to their normal lives and deliveries of flowers and dinners have stopped, that is when a phone call (or regularly occurring calls) to the bereaved may be most welcome and needed. When I find the one whose friends and relatives have gotten tired of hearing her stories about her deceased loved one, and she’s bursting with the need to talk, it is worth all the worry and discomfort. “I miss my Joe,” she wails. And since she’s in howling-mode anyway, I ask, “What do you miss most about him? What was the best thing about Joe?” Or, “How did you two meet?” Or, “How did he change your world?” And if the person on the other end of the line is not gushing over with endless tales of her beloved one, I might ask, “What can you do to honor his memory?”

And finally, “What are you doing to take care of yourself?” That’s my favorite question because it gets back to the bereaved person and the self-care he or she deserves as they face the reality of life without their loved one.

 

What do you say to support the bereaved? What is the most difficult phone conversation to have with anyone?

REPLY TO ROBIN