Transcript: Episode 284
284: The Cemetery
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[Short piano piece is played, lasting about 20 seconds]
Hello. This podcast episode carries an additional trigger warning as it was recorded in a cemetery and talks about the death of our parents and generational trauma, including mentions and references to child abuse and rape. As always, please care for yourself during and after listening to this podcast. Thank you.
[Short pause]
Today, it was time to leave the cabin. I'm excited to see Nathan and the children but also dread going home. Not because I don't want to be with them. But because I'm being honest about the level of stress that I'm walking back into. And because I know it will be a disaster when I get there. Which is why it's usually easier, actually, to just keep them with me than to go away and try to put things back together again. Which made me think about what we're learning in therapy and those ISSTD classes. And about roles we play. And maybe it's true that for too long I've just been trying to fix everybody else or take care of them or keep them happy. It's called ‘appeasing’ my therapist says. People pleasing. Feeling loved by feeling safe. Which isn't really love and it makes me question everything. And I feel that pole to withdraw and to hide from everyone and everything. But then I know that’s flight. Those are my big two, she says, in therapy: flighting and fawning. But if I want to stay, and if I want to set healthy boundaries instead, then I have to fight… myself, really. And I don't know if there's any fight left in me.
Last year has been hard. And it has done something to me. Taken something from me. The kind of taking that you don't get back. Like after someone dies. And I feel like we've come to a place where our head is above water now. And we're making good friends. And we have good support, and a good therapist again. But I'm not the same. And I don't think we ever will be. And maybe that's okay. Better even. But also, there's grief there too. And maybe a layer of triggers. Where things have been taken from me again. Something stolen from me, again. Against my wishes. Without my consent. Without even talking to me first. And with secrets I can never tell anyone. But I'm full. And the secrets are starting to spill over.
The book is out in the world. And people are reading it. I don't even remember what's in it. But I remember it's out there. And there are days when that feels like a burden lifted from my shoulders.
As if it's a way to make meaning out of all that's happened. And there are other days where it's just terrifying.
But today is the day to go home.
And so I packed up the car with the cooler that had the food that we ate. And I got our suitcases back in the car. And we got checked out without having to have contact with anyone. So we made it okay the whole week safely. Even though we can't go somewhere on a real vacation. And even though we had a lot of work to do this week, and we got kind of fuzzy as everyone wanted time while we were free. So there were paints everywhere, art projects everywhere, toys everywhere. But I feel better. And it was good. And so I'm glad we came.
But now that we're cleaned up and packed up, loaded up and checked out. We've driven down the road from the cabin about 20 minutes to a tiny rural town where our family cemetery is. It's the town of my mother's family, specifically, where there used to be all dairy farms in these Ozark hills in southern Missouri. And the birds are still loud here even though the trees are dying. And flowers still adorn the graves even though many are falling or already lay in the grass.
My ancestors are here back to the early 1800s. A few before then; the late 1700s where now I understand old stories of marrying natives meant they stole them. And no wonder the women in my family had things to be angry about. The same as my mother had things to be angry about. I don't mean that what happened to me was okay. But there's a context to what I went through, to what she went through, to what her mother went through, to what her mother's mothers went through.
When I come here, part of me is scared seeing people's names on the tombstones with their military titles and their Masonic Lodge symbols. And the echoes that I hear of the shouting that they did, the spewing forth of ugliness that they did, the touching that they did. But also, my heart breaks. Because what men could these men have been if they had been cared for well? And what stories would the women have told if someone would have listened to them?
My great grandmother was known for just sitting in her bed and saying mean things. And never leaving her room. But now I know about trauma, and shutting down, and dissociation, and depression. And I know she had plenty of things to be depressed about. And a lot of trauma to be responding to.
When she was younger, she beat my grandmother. Because that's how she had been treated. So my grandmother tried not to beat my mother. But the depression carried on and the mean words carried on. And so there were times—seasons—where my mother tried not to beat us and tried not to say mean things. But no one had loved her. And she didn't know how. And when my father raped her, or us, [15 second silence] then she wasn't well. And everything she had held in for generations before her came out. The mean things, the anger, the beatings. She was sometimes psychotic, they told us, my mother, that she didn't know what she was doing. I honestly don't know if she was actually psychotic or if she was dissociating. There were some messed up things that she did. But in those moments she really thought she was helping. Other times she was just trying to survive herself.
And I feel the anger welled up inside me to. At her. At my defending her. And I don't mean to. None of it's an excuse. Even when we understand the reason, it's never okay to hurt a child. But with my therapist, on my phone, and here in the daylight when they are all in their graves, sleeping, not to wake up again. Then there are things that I can see clearly and hold different pieces of at the same time. If my mother were just the person, a random person who found my book, she would like the writing of it. She would appreciate the skill of the writing. I got that from her. Sometimes unpleasantly so. With grammar pounded into a deaf child that couldn't speak any of the languages she was supposed to.
But if she knew I told secrets, and if she read it as my mother, I would be in trouble. I would be punished. She would be angry. But do you know what I've learned? I've learned she wouldn't be angry at me. Because what the last therapist said was true: That they're not my secrets. And some of them weren't hers either. And I think the trouble I would be in, and then the anger she would shout out and break against me. What I understand now for the first time is that it would be her own shame. And not really about me at all. Except that I was standing in the way.
But if I could stand here on this gravel path that winds through a field marked by stones. And flowers on one side of each tombstone where the wife lays as if even the florist knows what the men here done. If I could stand here, in this place, under this tree, and in the sun at the grave of my mother and tell her, “I wrote a book. And I said all the things. And I have a therapist. And I'm going to start talking to her and feel all the things.” I would tell her, “I was a child, not betraying you. I was the one who was betrayed. You were betrayed. Your mother was betrayed. Her mother was betrayed. And her mother was stolen from her people. And now I walk around, not belonging anywhere. And this is why.” And I will take off my shoes. And I will take off my socks and make it holy ground. This indigenous land. And I will walk amongst the flowers and the stones.
And I will tell the women, these mothers of mine that I have spoken. That I have said all the things. That I've told our story. And that hell is over. And that we have all been set free.
I know it's not so simple. And I know it's not so easy. And I know I still have a long way to go. But this feels like something. This feels like progress. This feels like healing. When I drive away from here today to return to my family. I will be human and I will make mistakes. But I will keep trying. And I will stay. And my mistakes will be mine. Not the shadows of the past. And not the secrets from generations ago.
I've not been here in a year because of the pandemic. And I had to dig out leaves from my mother's headstone which isn’t even a real one, because we couldn't afford one and her family wouldn't help. So this cemetery, because it's a family one, let us bury her ashes here in the grave of her parents. She had been cremated because of the accident. And I dug the hole with my own hands, and poured her there out of me into the earth, and covered her up, and pounded rocks in place like we did at my father's grave. He is not here. He's in a different place. I have no memory of him ever being here. And I think of my mother here without him. And it's sad to me. Not because they're not together, but because I wonder if she thought he was her ticket out. But there wasn't therapy then. Not like there is now. And people didn't know what we do now. And I wonder how long he behaved before she realized he had married a monster. And I wonder, or if he to, like the men here, would have been sweet little boys grown up into good and kind men, if someone would have cared for him. He is buried in another cemetery maybe 30 minutes from where we live. So maybe it's time to go visit there too. And tell him about the book. He's not speaking to me anyway.
I don't know how to heal that. Don't know how to undo the pieces we get wrong. Or how to untangle the messes of our own trauma responses. But I do know that something has changed. And we will never be the same. And so I dug at her marker pulling leaves out of the hole and pulling out grass from around the cement until you can see the colored glass sparkling on the circle. From the homemade marker that I made from clay and broken China. It seemed fitting the broken China of our relationship with her, but also maybe offered peace and hope for healing as we turned it into something beautiful. Or maybe that's just a little girl's imagination. Thinking that one day she would be enough. Or one day she would have something to offer or one day she would be chosen. Or one day she would be noticed, or seen, or loved without also being hurt. Or maybe hurt is just part what happens until we're the ones who make it stop.
Or maybe that's still only fawning, fawning for generations. Flighting from the trauma of it. Or maybe it's making peace inside of me. And starting to feel and notice and think about and consider and even talk to parts of me that I've never wanted to see. It feels symbolic. The birds singing in the trees that are already dead but still standing. That that's what marks the entrance to the cemetery of my family. A dead tree still trying to stand. And me like a bird saying, “No, you're dead.”
But I'm going to sing anyway. And maybe I'm not doing it for them. Maybe I'm doing it for me. For the sun, for the flowers, for our children. Or maybe it's for all of us. The way the birds, and the sun, and the flowers make a creepy place beautiful. And a dead place full of life.
[Break]
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