My name is Jennifer Forbes and I’m 53 mother of 5. I’m a transplanted New Yorker currently living in Virginia with Bill my husband of 31 years, we are empty-nesters. I'm committed to the community in which I live and am an avid volunteer. My two favorite and longest commitments were when the kids were young and I volunteered in their schools and then later working with The Daughters of Charity, an Order of Vincentian Sisters serving the poor in our community from our Parish Church Outreach Office. Now I am currently caring for my elderly mother.
DW: Who were the people that died?
JF: Our youngest daughter Gretchen and our youngest son Eric were the ones who died.
DW: How old were you at the time?
JF: I was 47 when they died.
DW: How old were they?
JF: Gretchen was 30 and Eric was 23. Their deaths were sudden and the result of an accident.
DW: Had you experienced any other deaths in your personal life before they died?
JF: Yes I've experienced many deaths of loved ones starting at the age of 6. This included my grandparents, three aunts, two uncles and my father, various friends and neighbors; not to mention many pets.
DW: Were people supportive of your grief or did they shy away when you were grieving?
JF: We received tremendous support and understanding, most especially in the early days and months when we were particularly numb and suffering from shock. Family (with one exception) and friends were very sensitive to our needs. But I have to say it continues even to this day. It is so meaningful when people remember the children by sharing stories or photos they might have recently recollected or found.
DW: Is there anything you wish you'd done differently with them?
JF: No
DW: Were they buried or cremated?
JF: They were both cremated.
DW: Did you learn anything about the grieving process that you'd like to share?
JF: The first time I saw my regular doctor after the kids died he cried and I remember being so touched by his emotion. I had lost many close relatives but this grief was so heavy and I believe he could see that. Then he immediately tried to medicate me and I remember being annoyed, I wanted to feel everything I was feeling I felt like it was my only connection to the kids.
Speaking for myself, I believe that grief is a natural process best felt and experienced drug and alcohol free. So I declined his medication and found a good therapist instead. In our first meeting I learned why the professionals call grief work. And for me the deaths of my children was a constant whirlwind of emotion going from one stage to the other and back again, frequently getting stuck- first in anger then in depression then finally acceptance after a long 4 plus years.
And for our family; the death of Gretchen and Eric was a life changing event but it was not a people changing event. What I’ve learned is that despite moments of intense closeness and family peace due to shock and grief; in the end we’re all the same people. This tragedy didn’t change any of us to any great degree; there were no light bulb moments! People only change if they want to and like grief that takes work. We all still disagree like we used to, the kids still complain mostly about each other, and still to this day nobody ever takes responsibility for stinking up the room. Now sadly there’s just two less people in it. But we're all OK because not only did we survive but there's still love there.
DW: Were any songs played at the memorial that were important to your children?
JF: At the funeral we chose Catholic hymns such as You are Mine, Be Not Afraid and Here I am Lord.
Okay, readers, I've added two buttons at the bottom of the post and I would be most grateful if you clicked on one of them if you don't comment. It's a way of acknowledging the person who is sharing their experience on my blog. Thank you!
RIP David Rakoff
This was a weird day today. Let me explain. When I started graduate school, I wrote three book reports and now two out of the three writers are dead. The writers are David Foster Wallace and David Rakoff. David Foster Wallace's death played an instrumental, although very accidental, part in the choosing of my thesis topic. My mentor, Diana was supposed to call me, but her call was delayed because she was on the phone with a friend who had just broken the news that DFW had killed himself. I kept calling her number and a funeral home kept answering. When Diana and I finally connected, we talked about death, specifically people who work with death. A thesis was born. And also a blog.
David Rakoff was the other writer. I picked up his book "Fraud" at the used bookstore in Towson because the cover blurb was from David Sedaris, my favorite writer of all time. I wasn't impressed initially and I wrote a fairly scathing review. But, I have since read his other books and I thoroughly enjoyed "Half Empty," his last work. He was 47.
Here's a wee excerpt from what I wrote about "Fraud." And yes, I know I'm mean and probably not anywhere near as good of a writer as Rakoff.
Possibly the best essay in this collection is the last one, “I Used to Bank Here, but That Was Long, Long, Ago.” If I were Rakoff’s editor, I would have placed this diamond first before the shined up turds that would follow it. He succeeds with this essay because it is about a journey he takes within himself. Most of the other essays are fish out of water tales about him doing something wacky like looking for the Loch Ness monster or attending a Steven Seagall Buddhist retreat. I GET how uncomfortable he feels because he’s a Jewish Canadian living in New York. I just don’t need to read essay after essay of it. Anyway, this essay is about his battle with cancer at the age of 23, which he downplays with the opening line, “Hodgkin’s disease, the illness that sent me packing from Tokyo a at the age of twenty-two, is a form of lymphatic cancer, common among young men in their twenties. Hodgkin’s is also highly curable, in fact, that I like to refer to it as the dilettante cancer.” (And yes, I had to look up dilettante.)
Rakoff is real in this essay. Although I’ve never experienced a life threatening disease other than motherhood, I could still relate. The best passage is about the radiation machine. “The machine is bulbous, huge and dull hospital green. A death ray straight out of the fifties sci fi. I lie down and look up. Above my head, directly at eye level, someone has drawn a hastily rendered happy face in red marker. Underneath that is written the message “Give us a Smile!” As with Rita Hayworth’s picture that graced the side of the atom bomb they dropped on Bikini atoll, there’s something so pathetic, so vastly outmatched, about this little happy face: a garnish on annihilation. Still I never fail to smile.” In this passage we see that he’s a complicit, good patient like most of us, and garnish on annihilation is brilliant. The rest of the essay is interspersed with trying to find his frozen sperm and the fact that his memory has faltered. The second to last paragraph spoke volumes to me and actually made me teary eyed. “What remains of your past if you didn’t allow yourself to feel it when it happened? If you don’t have your experiences in the moment, if you gloss them over with jokes or zoom past them, you end up with curiously dispassionate memories.” Amen.
David Rakoff was the other writer. I picked up his book "Fraud" at the used bookstore in Towson because the cover blurb was from David Sedaris, my favorite writer of all time. I wasn't impressed initially and I wrote a fairly scathing review. But, I have since read his other books and I thoroughly enjoyed "Half Empty," his last work. He was 47.
Here's a wee excerpt from what I wrote about "Fraud." And yes, I know I'm mean and probably not anywhere near as good of a writer as Rakoff.
Possibly the best essay in this collection is the last one, “I Used to Bank Here, but That Was Long, Long, Ago.” If I were Rakoff’s editor, I would have placed this diamond first before the shined up turds that would follow it. He succeeds with this essay because it is about a journey he takes within himself. Most of the other essays are fish out of water tales about him doing something wacky like looking for the Loch Ness monster or attending a Steven Seagall Buddhist retreat. I GET how uncomfortable he feels because he’s a Jewish Canadian living in New York. I just don’t need to read essay after essay of it. Anyway, this essay is about his battle with cancer at the age of 23, which he downplays with the opening line, “Hodgkin’s disease, the illness that sent me packing from Tokyo a at the age of twenty-two, is a form of lymphatic cancer, common among young men in their twenties. Hodgkin’s is also highly curable, in fact, that I like to refer to it as the dilettante cancer.” (And yes, I had to look up dilettante.)
Rakoff is real in this essay. Although I’ve never experienced a life threatening disease other than motherhood, I could still relate. The best passage is about the radiation machine. “The machine is bulbous, huge and dull hospital green. A death ray straight out of the fifties sci fi. I lie down and look up. Above my head, directly at eye level, someone has drawn a hastily rendered happy face in red marker. Underneath that is written the message “Give us a Smile!” As with Rita Hayworth’s picture that graced the side of the atom bomb they dropped on Bikini atoll, there’s something so pathetic, so vastly outmatched, about this little happy face: a garnish on annihilation. Still I never fail to smile.” In this passage we see that he’s a complicit, good patient like most of us, and garnish on annihilation is brilliant. The rest of the essay is interspersed with trying to find his frozen sperm and the fact that his memory has faltered. The second to last paragraph spoke volumes to me and actually made me teary eyed. “What remains of your past if you didn’t allow yourself to feel it when it happened? If you don’t have your experiences in the moment, if you gloss them over with jokes or zoom past them, you end up with curiously dispassionate memories.” Amen.
It's Just Wednesday
I have nothing. Nada. No professionals. No writers. I don't even have anything clever to say. I'm tapped. I hate to say this, but I think I've lost my will to blog. I know people read this blog as I see the little traffic ticker go up by about 100 points on days that I do post something and by about 50 on days that I don't, but I realize that the nature of this blog makes it kind of weird to be a devoted follower/commenter. It's about death. It's one of those blogs that you might like to read every once in awhile, but not every day. And because it's about death (mostly personal stories of death), people feel somewhat weird about commenting, just like they do in real life. What am I supposed to say? I'm sorry? She had a nice long life? The sun will come out tomorrow? Thanks for sharing your incredibly sad story and making me cry?
I feel extreme guilt when someone shares their personal story and no one says anything. Don't worry, I'm not naming names or trying to shame anyone to play nice in the tit for tat world of the blogosphere. I know death is weird and it makes us uncomfortable and we want to pretend it won't really happen to anyone we like, love or God forbid, happen to ourselves. I get that. Maybe I just need a button that says, "I read your post." Or "Curious Anonymous Person Was Here." or maybe "I got it." I don't know. What to do, what to do?
I'll tell you what I did do today. I dropped out of my tribe on Triberr and all it took was a post by a fellow tribe mate to instigate that action. I was beginning to feel like a bot. It's not like the posts of my fellow tribe mates weren't worthy of tweeting, it's just that I rarely had the time to read them all so I just shared them. I have lots of followers on Twitter and I'm hoping that some of them are curious about the news I share about death or death with dignity or the death penalty. They probably thought it was weird that I was posting random tweets that had absolutely nothing to do with death. That's another thing I don't know-- I have a love/hate relationship with social media. Especially after this past week. One word--Chicken. Don't worry, I'm not going to go there.
So, it's Wednesday. On my agenda today is a blood donation. If I could procure an interview with one of the people at the clinic, maybe I will. They don't witness death as phlebotomists, but the whole point of blood donation is to save others from dying. So, I guess if I can't get one, I'll interview myself.
DW: Why do you donate blood?
DW: Because it's easy and they appreciate it and they always give me cookies and juice. Plus, I get to see my cholesterol level. For the record, I've got really low cholesterol despite my love of bacon.
DW: That's very nice of you.
DW: Thanks.
Okay, so happy hump day. Go do something nice and don't tell anyone you did it like I just did.
I feel extreme guilt when someone shares their personal story and no one says anything. Don't worry, I'm not naming names or trying to shame anyone to play nice in the tit for tat world of the blogosphere. I know death is weird and it makes us uncomfortable and we want to pretend it won't really happen to anyone we like, love or God forbid, happen to ourselves. I get that. Maybe I just need a button that says, "I read your post." Or "Curious Anonymous Person Was Here." or maybe "I got it." I don't know. What to do, what to do?
I'll tell you what I did do today. I dropped out of my tribe on Triberr and all it took was a post by a fellow tribe mate to instigate that action. I was beginning to feel like a bot. It's not like the posts of my fellow tribe mates weren't worthy of tweeting, it's just that I rarely had the time to read them all so I just shared them. I have lots of followers on Twitter and I'm hoping that some of them are curious about the news I share about death or death with dignity or the death penalty. They probably thought it was weird that I was posting random tweets that had absolutely nothing to do with death. That's another thing I don't know-- I have a love/hate relationship with social media. Especially after this past week. One word--Chicken. Don't worry, I'm not going to go there.
So, it's Wednesday. On my agenda today is a blood donation. If I could procure an interview with one of the people at the clinic, maybe I will. They don't witness death as phlebotomists, but the whole point of blood donation is to save others from dying. So, I guess if I can't get one, I'll interview myself.
DW: Why do you donate blood?
DW: Because it's easy and they appreciate it and they always give me cookies and juice. Plus, I get to see my cholesterol level. For the record, I've got really low cholesterol despite my love of bacon.
DW: That's very nice of you.
DW: Thanks.
Okay, so happy hump day. Go do something nice and don't tell anyone you did it like I just did.
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