May 23, 2013

No Jobs Are Menial: America Get to Work Already

November 30, 2011 By Leave a Comment

 

Occupy this and protest that, but get to work already.

Now, are you going to scream at me or read this article?

It’s true, many people are unemployed, can’t get employed, and are suffering. Their children are suffering. Their animals.

Many people want to work. They find what they can and are proud to have a job, whatever it is.

I salute those people.

Many others are chronic complainers. They have no work ethic and don’t want one. They want to work, but stop when they make a buck or two. They live off unemployment because they can. They retire donkey years earlier than anyone else because they have a government pension (or worse, are proud that they are ‘double-dippers’).

You, fellow Americans, need to get back to work. Now.

I know very well about working, about wanting to work, about not being able to. I’ve been handicapped for 22 years. I couldn’t work for more than 15 of them, because of illness and physical limitations. So I worked on what I could: I polished my writing, I worked to get healthy, I created a healthy balanced life with animals, I lived community with my family and friends. I took care of my aging, ill parents.

I worked at health.

I wanted to go to a regular job and couldn’t. I also knew that no employer would have someone who’s handicapped like I am, because chronic illness is unpredictable.

So I created my own company. I quietly nurtured a loyal client base, helping people develop and publish their books. I taught writing. As I developed my intuitive abilities, I launched an intuitive consulting business. Now that’s what I do: I write true stories and I help people learn to tap their intuition. My partner is a crystal. His name is Fallon.

I’m working as best as I can.

I don’t quit. I won’t. I can’t. Why?

Because good work is part of life. It creates and nurtures life. It balances us.

The problem is, we Americans have forgotten what that means.

So I was intrigued by an article at msnbc.com contributed by Elizabeth Dwoskin at Bloomberg Businessweek. Crops are rotting in the fields, essential services are not getting done, because Americans call it ‘menial labor.’ They won’t work in the fields. They won’t clean homes and businesses. Well, look beyond your noses at this quote from Dwoskin’s article:

‘Massey says Americans didn’t turn away from the work merely because it was hard or because of the pay but because they had come to think of it as beneath them. “It doesn’t have anything to do with the job itself,” he says. In other countries, citizens refuse to take jobs that Americans compete for. In Europe, Massey says, “auto manufacturing is an immigrant job category. Whereas in the States, it’s a native category.”‘

Americans want to be managers. To them that means they tell other people what to do. They are inspired by personal coaches (I’ve not quite figured out what they are, but they are busy) who write golden futures for them that somehow lead them to classify work. No one wants to do the basics.

Well, I see it differently.

I grew up in a small Oregon town where the kids got up at the crack of dawn in the summer, climbed on buses, and went to pick crops so farmers could get that food to the cannery or grocer. Today, crops rot in the fields because no one will pick them.

Yes, my parents wouldn’t let us pick crops. Instead, my dad put me to work in his pharmacy/gift shop in the seventh grade. My dad had a habit of choosing shy, industrious teens to work in his store. He helped them become hardworking, honest citizens with a strong work ethic and the know-how to follow through.

I have an MBA from the University of Michigan, one of the top business schools in the country, but what I learned about good solid work came from my dad.

We need more dads like that right now. We need more people who are willing to work, and work hard, and do good work.

I’ve met some of them. Two of them clean my house for me, necessary because my body isn’t strong enough to do it myself. These two women are excellent examples of work ethic: they come in, they clean expertly, and they take pride in their work. They are also hilarious: they keep wanting to do more, because my standard of housekeeping isn’t up to theirs. Not once have they ever said anything I asked them to do was menial. They chose a business. They do a fabulous job. I admire them.

I do not get computers. I was simply too sick in the early years and now too busy to go back and figure them out. I have had a hard time finding people to work for me, to do computer work. One small business offered a simple website in two weeks, and three months later still had done nothing. Another badmouthed me to my face, not to mention other people, and refused to follow directions while complaining about ‘menial work.’ Fortunately, I now have a terrific website guy who keeps things running, never complains about his work, and is deservedly swamped. I continue to seek an able, supportive, genial assistant: asking around, I find many other people experiencing the same problem I have—people won’t work amd simply don’t know how to.

I have had other people ask to work for me, and when I call back to book their services, turns out they’ve just made a few bucks and they “don’t do that work.”

Menial labor again.

Well I talk with things. With homes, businesses, animals, chairs, cars, weather systems, whatever. I see the world from what I call an earth paradigm. I know we’re all in it together. All of us, no matter what it looks like. All life believes that. Except some humans.

I know that no work is menial. That word has no real meaning. Unless you’re mistakenly arrogant.

I have never in my life looked down on any work as beneath me. As not important or crucial for society. I am in awe of construction workers, and grocers, and farmers, and sometimes even physicists (for making livings making things up, and with math no less!).

I am grateful for the good honest work that so many people do.

And I am telling you, and everyone out there, that we don’t build an economy with people who won’t work. Who look down on doing whatever honest work there is to keep going. Who choose honest work and do it well.

Just quit complaining. Be glad you have a healthy body that can work. You can make any work mean something. And you can put food on America’s tables by picking those crops, keeping things clean, building things that work, and taking pride in making a contribution.

Because if you won’t, other people will. They aren’t Americans now. But they will be. Because they live what Americans should be living: productive lives.

They do the work. All work matters.

So?

© 2011 Robyn M Fritz. Photo of bald eagle in flight, (c) Danny L. McMillin

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Thanksgiving: What We Should Really Be Grateful For

November 21, 2011 By Leave a Comment

I was thinking, what should I be grateful for this Thanksgiving? Then I saw this silly article, again, and I knew.

I’m grateful for common sense and for refusing fear.

This article, written by Joan Raymond and updated 1-25-11 at Pet Health on msnbc.com, suggests sleeping with our animals can give us diseases. Okay, it’s a good article. We have to take health seriously, including our multi-species family’s health. And we have to report on it responsibly, as Joan Raymond does. The article is not silly in the reporting but in the culture it reveals.

Reporters can’t comment on the facts or sense of their articles. That’s why they report: they give the facts and let us figure it out. We need straight objective reporting.

Those of us who comment on the straight objective reporting write about what it means to us. For me, it’s how can we re-connect people and the planet, from people to animals and the land and waters around us.

So, Raymond writes about the things that can get us if we sleep with or kiss our animals. Things like plague (from fleas), meningitis, round worms, and other horrific or just annoying things. Okay, first, really? Our animals should be healthy, just like us! They shouldn’t have these problems, so fix them already!

Here’s the problem with this reporting: it’s all filler material. No common sense. Just fear. You wade all the way through this article and find out that what they’re trying to scare us about never really happens.

People get hurt and killed in cars every day. You can sprain your ankle getting out of bed. You can choke on a cherry.

So do you avoid cars, getting up, or eating cherries?

No. You get smart. You say, no, I’m not going to be afraid of that. But I am going to be careful and pay attention.

So here’s what I’m paying attention to at Thanksgiving. Here’s what I’m grateful for:

  •  I live in a country where we can disagree and still be safe, even though there are plenty of people who would like to change that.
  • A dear friend sent me a link to an inflammatory documentary on purebred dogs, thinking that my dogs being purebreds was the reason they had some health issues. She cared. It made me think about our assumptions, which I will address in future articles. Mainly: shelters and rescue organizations make a lot of money creating fear and prejudice, when they should be encouraging people to find their heart’s match in a dog or cat. Think, people, think! Talk to each other. Love. Be lucky that your friends care enough about you and your family to say something.
  • People who were users and not friends have left my life, providing openings for wonderful new adventures, wiser choices, and real friendships. Awesome!
  • Wonderful stores like East West Bookshop in Seattle and Vashon Intuitive Arts on Vashon Island have made me and my crystal partner, Fallon, welcome. We’ve met many wonderful people. And other venues are welcoming us.
  • My jade tree, Raymond, was dying, but community came together and saved him. A 200-pound houseplant given to me by my father is going into his fifth decade. Yes!
  • My great-grandparents had the vision to settle in North Dakota and pass a piece of it on to their descendants.
  • Finally, at long last, some smart medical practitioners have figured it out!
  • I’m grateful that my writing has touched lives, and that my book, Bridging Species: Thoughts and Tales About Our Lives with Dogs, was recognized with the prestigious Merial Human-Animal Bond Award.
  • My multi-species family is proof that the human-animal bond is alive and well and sleeping cozily together at night, 10 years now and counting!

This Thanksgiving we are grateful that we are all here, together, so we can write and talk about what makes sense, what doesn’t, and how we can create love from fear, starting with sleeping sensibly with our animals.

We celebrate Thanksgiving at our house: yes, that means the animals get to eat, too (and no, not stupidly).

We celebrate something everyday at our house, even if it’s just the joy of greeting each other in the morning and at night: in bed.

We celebrate birthdays. We celebrate the day each animal joined the family. We celebrate season changes, holidays, mistakes, triumphs, a good meal, a bad meal being over with, gas in the car, sun and rain, cozy flannel sheets on a winter’s night, friendship and family.

And we celebrate reporters who remind us that they’re sometimes stuck with silly assignments, and can still keep a straight face.

We celebrate Thanksgiving. We invite the whole world to celebrate with us.

© 2011 Robyn M Fritz

 

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(Not) Meowing for Mizuna: Exploring Greens with Dogs (and a Cat)

November 18, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Cooking is a skill I apparently lost with menopause—and only miss when I’m hungry.

I used to be a great cook. When I say this to friends they always pause, clearly deciding between laughing at what they presumed to be a joke or at what I’d cook, which wouldn’t be. It doesn’t stop me from offering to cook for them. I watch their eyes widen in surprise, and I’m thoroughly delighted when they say something like they just want to spend time with me.

And show up with Thai food. This is called ‘everybody scores.’

I do cook. Just ask my dogs, Murphy and Alki. They think I’m a great cook and take food cues from me: as a team we have wide-ranging tastes and low standards. If it comes out of the fridge if must be good, or else why would it be in there? The cookie jar is a given. We’ll eat our veggies, but never stop hoping for brownies. Or anything with peanut butter.

That’s how I know the dogs and I are related.

Grace the Cat, I’m not so sure about. She’s so smug about being right about everything that she takes convincing. Plus she’s fastidious and skeptical. As it turns out, these are all qualities that I need to rely on, since my cooking skills headed south with my boobs.

I learned this accidentally at the weekly Farmers’ Market in West Seattle. Almost every week I load up on great foods, all the vegetables and fruits you could want, and then some. Problem is, I’ve discovered things I didn’t know existed, and most often can’t figure out how to cook. The farmers are kind and patient, but it’s clear they think I’m an idiot and are just too polite to say so.

Take, for example, pea shoots. I love pea shoots. I have no idea what they are, except pea shoots, but we love them at our house, all of us, even the cat. We’re even doing a video starring pea shoots. Now, the dogs always come running when I come through the door with food, but if I say, “Pea shoots!” then Grace the Cat leaps up from her normal out cold snooze and races to hold down the kitchen counter while supervising grocery unloading.

You hold up a pea shoot and she perks up, meowing. No obstacle is too great as she promptly hunts it down: grocery bags, stuff on the counter, nothing stops her. If I offer pea shoots to the dogs (who are politely waiting on the floor only because they can’t reach the counter), Grace the Cat backflips onto the floor and bulldozes right through them. You’d think that for her, a pea shoot is, well, the fashionable cat’s mouse.

So you can imagine my surprise the day I decided to cook that week’s bounty of pea shoots.

I yanked them out of the fridge with a dramatic flourish and waved them at Grace the Cat. “Pea shoots for dinner,” I announced, grinning at her.

She stared right through them at me. Unrelenting disapproval. Stern outright disbelief.

“What’s your problem?” I asked. “You love pea shoots!”

She didn’t move. Just glared. I stuck them under her nose. She continued to glare at me as she strategically moved her head back.

I looked at the pea shoots. “Well, they do look different this week.” Yes, kind of like an entire species different, but I wasn’t going to say that.

Grace the Cat looked at me like I was an idiot. She is no fool. She knows when something is a pea shoot. And when it is not. Still they had to be eaten.

I tried the dogs next. They examined the suspect pea shoots with long, strained faces and then looked at me like I’d done something embarrassing and disappointing to their tummies.

“Lot you know,” I sniffed. “I admit they look a little weird.” I hesitated, but I’m thrifty and I’d bought them so I’d eat them.

Unless I could pawn them off on the cat. I waved them at her again. Nope.

I cooked those suckers for two dinners. Both were miserable: the suspect pea shoots were lank, bitter, limp, and tough, like spinach gone off the deep end. I sighed and ate it. Both nights the dogs and cat completely avoided me. I thought about how they just didn’t like pea shoots anymore, and about how right they were. They’d known something about that batch that I didn’t.

That weekend at the Farmers’ Market I stopped at my favorite greens vendor. Spring, you know, time for good things.

I stared down at duplicates of the pea shoots I’d suffered through. “What is that stuff?” I asked. “I thought it was pea shoots.”

“Mizuna,” she said, patiently. I think she flinches when she see me coming, but she’s always nice, and I always buy. Not sure what, apparently.

“Mi what ah?” I asked.

“Mizuna. It’s a green.”

“Well, I know that,” I said. It was green. Now, how to ‘fess up with the least embarrassment. “Should you cook it?” I asked innocently.

Shocked, she said in a strained voice, “Oh, don’t do that. Cooking makes it limp. And bitter.”

I giggled. For once the bad food wasn’t my cooking. It was mi what ah. I knew I shouldn’t have cooked it, but I’m not much of a predator, and I just didn’t know if it would fight back harder if I tried to eat it raw.

 “I noticed that,” I said. “I sort of accidentally cooked it.”

She was shocked, like nobody could be that dumb. She was also disappointed in me. Like Grace the Cat in her stoic cat way.

 “Oh, you shouldn’t do that,” the farmer said.

Good words to hear before I’d suffered through two miserable dinners.

Thing is, I wouldn’t have had to hear them if I’d just paid attention to my kids. The dogs, that goofy cat, they knew.

So now I’m a reformed shopper at the West Seattle Farmers’ Market. The vendors tend to explain things to me as they’re putting them in my bag: this is pea shoots, this is spinach, whatever. People in line shake their heads and sigh. But at least I get home safely. With food we kind of know how to eat.

Food that gets vetted by Grace the Cat.

Which is why I’m sticking to things the cat likes. Pea sprouts (certified by the farmer). Meat. Blueberry muffins. Cheese doodles. Salad. Corn bread, even though mine is more skanky than home on the range.

Because I guess I hit menopause and I’m not so home on the range. But there’s this cool grass I grow on the deck for the kids. They love it, so it must be good. Don’t have to cook it. Cool.

© 2011 Robyn M Fritz

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The Not So Crazy Things We Do for Our Animals

November 7, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Here I’d been thinking I was just a bit off. And, as usual, not regretting it a bit.

When I think about being a bit off, I understand that I’m more off than normal. At least that’s what some people tell me, because I’m making a living in partnership with a crystal ball (literally). I did, however, think that I might just be the only person out there who bought a home, and a car, for my animal family.

Thanks to Yvonne DiVita over at BlogPaws I discovered a funky website called Daily Infographic. Where I discovered, in ”20 Facts about Pet Ownership,” that I am in the minority but not all alone out there, doing whatever makes sense for my multi-species family.

See Item 7: “16% of dog owners and 14% of cat owners say they bought a home or a car with a pet in mind.” That includes me.

Even back when I didn’t have an animal family.

Back in 1998 I decided I wanted a dog again in my life, after grieving for my beloved English Cocker, Maggie, for 12 years. My landlord wouldn’t allow pets, so I bought a condo. A few months later an irrepressible, goofy Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, Murphy Brown, came home to live with me.

Thirteen years later we’re both still here, aging together. We’ve been joined by another Cavalier, my goofy boy, Alki, and Grace the Cat.

The  condo wasn’t the only thing I bought. By the time Grace the Cat came along 8 years ago it was clear we had car issues. The fancy Audi I’d bought to drive long distances to visit my nephews was impractical. I needed a family car: something easy to get into and out of with two dogs and a cat in tow.

The Audi went and a Toyota Matrix came. It’s a whole lot easier to get around in. Especially with the animals in tow.

And the condo? I love our condo. My multi-species family loves it. I planned for it to be a place where kids and dogs could come and go while enjoying the beach in our salty, sandy Seattle beach neighborhood. It worked really well for that. What I didn’t count on was the most obvious of all—my animals would age.

The human-animal bond is a strange and wonderful thing. Trying to live a thoughtful life is tough enough alone. Adding animals to the mix can be devastating. I wouldn’t trade it for a life without them, but I can’t sugarcoat it.

That’s where we’ve become our own strange statistic. Not surprising, really, considering the things we’ve shared, from past lives to a cherry addiction.

And a new, tough thing. Murphy and I share a gruesome arthritis: our futures our written in our spines.

It means we need a home where we don’t have stairs. I can do them okay for now, but it’s hard to carry things. Like groceries and handicapped dogs. As I watch Murphy gamely do the stairs, and Alki begin to hurt as well, I see time running out.

It means we’ll have to leave the home I bought for us to live in.

I love our home. My work means that I talk with all life. Our home, Frank, is a real living being, an active presence in our lives and our work. But we’ll have to leave him behind.

People say: “Really? You’d give up your home for a 13-year-old dog?”

To which I say, “Well, wouldn’t you?”

© 2011 Robyn M Fritz

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My Mom Wore Tweety Socks: Why I Care

November 4, 2011 By Leave a Comment

My mom wore Tweety socks. She thought they were hilarious. She’d sit in her chair and raise her feet in the air, wiggling them at the world. Giggling.

Made me laugh, too.

Annoyed my brother. In fact, he was offended and objected to her wearing Tweety socks. They weren’t age appropriate.

Really? What is age appropriate? Braids? Beards? Hats in church? Cleavage? Shorts?

What’s traditional?

I asked my brother why he was so irate about the socks. Mom was a grandmother, too old for Tweety socks.

My mom was 68.

She had a collection of strange socks. She also had red hair (acquired when she was six months pregnant with me and bored) and expensive tastes, running to Ferragamo shoes, fast cars, and … Tweety socks.

When she died, at 68, I wanted certain things to remember her by, that had sentimental value, that made me smile. I took her socks. Even though I’ve since cleaned out many of the things I got from her, I kept her Tweety socks.

I found them in my drawer last week. They made me smile.

Truth is, my mom and I didn’t always get along. It wasn’t just the normal mother-daughter thing.

It was cultural.

My mom was adamant that women were inferior to men. She’d shake her finger in my face and yell it at me. Her insistence that neither of us were as good as a man because we were women still shocks me.

It wasn’t intellect. Or job. Or honesty or responsibility or respectability. It was being female. God and society told her so. That made it true.

I rebelled against that from Day 1. They slapped me in uniforms in Catholic school, and I stuck gaudy jewelry on them and hiked the skirts up. They insisted on hats in church and I wore a used handkerchief. I was a brat when I wasn’t giving in. I rebelled.

And I’m still rebelling. But that’s a topic for another day, the one that goes on about things like young women who claim they’re not feminists and take their husbands’ name when they get married. Excuse me: call yourselves whatever you want, except by your husbands’ name: culturally, intellectually, emotionally, that means you accept that you are inferior. So do men, other women, and society. Our children.

Until that changes, nothing changes, and society, and culture, remain stifled. If you act inferior, you will be. Just like my mother said.

But back to the Tweety socks.

One day years ago I was walking through Nordstrom’s when I spotted a sweatshirt sequined with a winning poker hand. Not only was my mom a poker player (a regular winner at the local tavern), but she loved those sequined sweatshirts. I always thought they were gaudy, but she liked them, and that’s still how I remember her, wearing those gaudy sweatshirts. That day at Nordstrom’s I bought the sequined horror. The excited clerk giftwrapped it and prepared it for shipping while I tucked in a note that said, “I love you, mom.”

Mom was shocked when she got it. I guess she thought I was prepping her for something horrible, like a disease or a new husband. I’m not one for giving spontaneous presents, and especially not expensive ones. But every once in awhile you get to tell your mom that you love her as weirdly as you can. That was all.

I saw her wear it once. For me. She was clearly uncomfortable. I had to chuckle at that: I never liked the clothes she bought me, either. She’d buy things that were way not me and pink: the only pink in my house is a laundry accident (well, okay, I have two cross-dressing flamingos).

My mom was smart enough to buy things just to annoy me, but only one thing ever did (for long): her hatred of equality.

I don’t live in an unequal world, because inequality isn’t the way it really is. I know. I talk with things: with animals, with our businesses and homes, with land and weather systems. I talk with them as equals, and they talk back as equals. There are masculine and feminine presences, and none of them are worth more than the others.

Think about that. A world where everything is alive and we are all equal. Think of what we could create! Think of what our children could be.

Last week when I found mom’s Tweety socks again, I thought about her, how the socks outraged my brother, and made me and our mom laugh.

I thought about her beliefs.

And her attitude.

My mother was a product of her times. She did what they told her, believed what they insisted, never achieved what she could have, not just in a career but in her life. She was always sad.

She also sold the house out from under my dad one day when he was working.

She played poker at night at a local tavern.

And she wore whatever she wanted. Right down to her Tweety socks.

Honestly, my mom was a rebel, in her own way. Not brave enough to stand up for the big things, but aware of the differences. I like to think her ugly duckling daughter’s rebellious spirit rubbed off on her.

Or I inherited hers, and am just running with it.

I wonder if rebelling is what mom was doing with the Tweety socks. Why she refused to get rid of them. I wonder if that’s part of the reason why I kept them.

Protest with humor.

Nevertheless, no one ever saw her Tweety socks except the family. They were covered up in public.

Her socks were in the closet.

No one, and nothing, should be. Not even our Tweety socks.

That’s why I kept them. That’s why I care.

Here’s to mom. And equality.

© 2011 Robyn M Fritz

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The Alchemy of Grief: 50 Years Later

November 1, 2011 By Leave a Comment

 

Copyright (c) 2011 by Danny L. McMillin

In Memoriam: Randall Ray Fritz, July 26, 1947 – November 1, 1961.

Years ago, I couldn’t imagine that today would ever occur.

Today, it’s been 50 years. What to make of them?

In October 1961 my grandparents came out from Montana to visit. My oldest brother, Randy, was sick, in and out of the hospital, and in those days, it was a long drive to Salem from our small Oregon home town. So far, in fact, that in September Randy moved to Salem to live with our grandparents during the week, so he could attend Catholic high school.

Just like that, Randy got sick.

I remember the last time I saw him. He was in the hospital, pale and thin beneath the covers. Alert.

I was just a kid. Naïve. Trusting. Sheltered. Optimistic. Like all kids and many adults I was uncomfortable visiting the hospital. And I didn’t know why Randy was there and couldn’t come home.

All I knew was that I had always adored my older brother, which is not the same thing as always liking him. But the sun rose and set on Randy. Even when we talked about death in school—because Catholics, at least, only talk about dying, from getting ready to die to actually doing it—I used to think that everyone could die, even my parents.

But not Randy. No, Randy would never die.

All those years ago, I didn’t know what it meant to be intuitive. I just remember what hit me in those last few moments, before we left that day. The last day I saw my brother alive.

Surrounded by family, Randy looked over at me, held out his hand, and as I reached out and held his, our eyes met. In that moment, I knew.

Randy was dying. And he knew it. In that shared moment he said goodbye.

I was too stunned to do anything but stare at him in shock.

I don’t remember when that last day was. Sometime in late October the doctors told my parents that Randy had leukemia and would die in six weeks to six months. He was gone in less than a week.

Sometime in those last days the doctors also asked my parents to allow them to use Randy as a guinea pig. Literally. They need drug trials on a promising drug that wouldn’t help Randy, but might help others in the future.

My dad was a pharmacist. He knew from drugs. My parents agreed.

That last morning my Grandma Fritz sobbed at the kitchen table while my younger brother and I played. When asked, over and over, why she was crying, she simply said she felt sorry for Randy. It didn’t make any sense to me. Nothing did.

I had no context. Why would it make sense?

Later, we were called in from playing. I was taking off my shoes when my mom walked over to me and blurted it out.

“Your brother went to heaven an hour ago.”

I stared at her in confused, stunned silence until it sunk in. I burst into tears. In some ways I have not stopped crying all these years later.

My brother’s death destroyed my family. There’s no other way to put it. My parents … when I think of them I think of impossible grief. Of two people who’d survived a world war, created a good business in a small rural community, raised their kids to be honest citizens, anticipated a future bright with promise, and lost their oldest child in a matter of days to a disease they’d never really heard of.

On November 1, 1961.

My parents never recovered. Sure, they laughed again, they raised us, they staggered on. To a degree. With pain like that you have two choices: to grieve and move on, or to block yourself emotionally. I’m not sure which is the easiest, but they chose to be blocked. Because of that, two little kids didn’t just lose a brother that day.

I think now everyone must have known that Randy was dying except the children. Everyone had time to prepare, except for my younger brother and me. I think even Randy had time to prepare. They never told him he was dying. But I know he knew. I knew that day. 

The community rallied around us. Food arrived. Friends and family and strangers flocked to the funeral home. To the funeral. There were so many flowers that the smell overwhelmed me, and, after being forced to touch Randy’s cold, stiff hand as we stared at him in his coffin, the flowers choked me and I turned and raced away as fast as I could, with my uncle running behind me trying to help. He did. But I re-live that nightmare every time I walk into a florist shop. I can’t stand the smell of carnations.

So here’s another story. For several years the community had been raising money to buy land to build a Catholic high school. That school was dedicated two years later, in 1963. My brother and I graduated from it, as did my nephews.

In their shock and grief my parents sought comfort. They decided to scrimp and save and donate $5,000 to the building fund for the school chapel, built in Randy’s memory. It was still there several years ago, at my nephews’ graduation. Once I learned the truth of that chapel, I never cared about it again. My parents had given the money they thought they would spend on Randy’s college education to build that chapel—to somehow make his death mean something, to ease their sorrow, I don’t know. Some people respected them for it. Others decided that if we had that kind of money to give away, then we didn’t need their business.

I know this sounds bitter. Really, it’s ironic. It’s all part of community, isn’t it? The not so nice part that you can sometimes understand because community isn’t perfect. It’s a whole lot of work. Even when it doesn’t work.

I didn’t get to say goodbye to my brother. I carried that pain and grief for years, the fear, that many kids have, that petty jealousies somehow cause our stricken sibling to die. That took years to get over. It makes me really useful to kids who are dealing with that now, because I know exactly what they’re feeling, even if they won’t say it. But I can tell them. And their parents. I can tell them to talk to each other. To hold on.

But for me, truly, it took a dog, and a dog’s well-lived life, to let the grief go. It took creating a family of my own, and seeing family beyond humans, to heal that grief.

It took expanding community to include all life, and working to build it. It took the ongoing work of creating a community with all life—that’s what I do, however I can, in fits and starts.

And healing took a goddess, but that’s another story.

Here’s the thing about grief.

Grief teaches us about all things. From grief we learn hatred. I learned to hate god. On the day we buried Randy I decided that a god who would allow my brother to die was not a god I could respect, or love, or acknowledge. Despite years of being a devout Catholic, and finally being brave enough to leave, I’ve held on to that. Call me stubborn. And consistent. And … whatever works for you.

Grief teaches us fear. If we can lose someone we love, then why risk it? Close the door and hide.

Grief teaches us compassion. Again, you can choose to block life, like my parents did, or you can choose to move on, which is what I did, eventually. Compassion helps our hearts to cry while allowing others to cry with us. Compassion gives us the freedom to reach beyond the hurt to build community. Like my parents did with that chapel.

Grief teaches us love. If I had not been hardened by grief I would not have melted with love. If I had not defied my old community, the one of faith and religion and limitations and petty jealousies and extraordinary generosity and everyday comradeship, I would not have my new community. It means everything to me.

Without grief I would not now be a citizen of the world. I would not now be an intuitive who can talk with all beings, from animals to businesses to homes, to the land and waters and weather around us. I would not now be able to offer compassion to all life.

I would not now have the crystal Fallon as my partner.

There were many things I had to re-learn in the lives that led us back to each other: Fallon, the citrine Lemurian quartz who was rejected around the world, and the lonely lost girl whose invincible adored brother died.

I had to learn the alchemy of grief.

Alchemy is magic. Transformation. The changing of one thing to another.

Given a chance, grief becomes love.

That’s what I finally learned today. The day I realized that it’s been 50 years since my brother died.

Today I learned the alchemy of grief.

So here, 50 years later, I can finally say the tears have stopped. I have moved on. It’s done now. It has been. It’s just time to say it.

Yes, today I finally get to say goodbye to my brother.

Randy, thank you for taking a drug that couldn’t save you, but is now saving so many lives. Thank you for making methotrexate possible. They use it for rheumatoid arthritis now, and at one time it helped our dad as it is now helping a dear friend; it also helped a college student I knew years ago recover from the leukemia that killed you.

Randy, thank you for being my brother.

Randy, thank you for whatever it was we learned together.

Randy, thank you for saying goodbye to me.

Goodbye, Randy.

© 2011 Robyn M Fritz

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