LOVEYOUGOODBYEMAYBE POSTED BY RMATNEY

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RMATNEY

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NOVEMBER 26, 2013

LOVEYOUGOODBYEMAYBE

In early summer, friend and mentor Steven Tomlinson met me for coffee to visit about my melanoma diagnosis and treatment. He’d graciously volunteered at Beth Burns’ request to write and perform a monologue for one of the Matney vs Cancer benefit events she coordinated, and our get-together was a part of his research.

If you know Steven or his writing, you know he has a knack for getting to the heart of the matter, and before long we were talking about painful challenges and highest goals for working through the process of melanoma treatment. We talked about the challenge of answering the question “How are you?,” about my desire to interact with people in such a way that if it is the last time there will be no regrets, and my desire to learn a lesson from my dog, whom as a pup had become very ill but survived, in part due to her unflagging spirits in the face of the pain, discomfort, and isolation in a quarantine ward.

He would also talk to Liz and others in preparation. Below is the piece he performed in spoken-word fashion. (I’d give much for a video of that performance.) When he was done, he quietly handed me the printed paper he’d read from, with his markings and notes. I keep that paper near to hand at nearly all times.

Steven – I am most grateful to you for this gift you gave me and every one who was there that night, and for the gift of your friendship. [wags tail]

Viola (for Matney)

©2013 Steven Tomlinson

People ask, “How are you?” and I wonder:
What do you want to know? What can you handle?
What’s honest? What’s safe? What’s kind?

Ask Viola, and she says: YOU, HERE, NOW, LOVE, LICK, LICK, LOVE.
Of course, she oversimplifies. [She’s a dog.]
When I came home from the hospital, I thought I’d feel less helplessly dependent if I found something that depended on me. Isn’t that why people get dogs?

Viola says YES AND… YOU. HERE. NOW. LOVE. LICK. YOU. LOVE.
She knows no boundaries, no decorum, only joy effervescent, slathering sloppy kisses on my face, my sutures.

I ask: Viola, where does this come from?
Whence this mysterious annoyance of unconditionality?

And she cocks her head and reflects me in her eyes and wags her tail as if that were the answer.

And goddammit if she didn’t get parvo.

I find her curled up on the kitchen floor, fur matted with bloody diarrhea.
OUCH. HURTS. OUCH. YOU. LOVE. HURTS.

And I say: Shit, Viola. You can’t leave me. Goddammit, I don’t need this.

And in the waiting room, the vet strokes her tenderly and says,
“We have to put her in quarantine now.”
“What does that mean?”
“Sir, only one puppy in ten gets out. Even if we stop the virus, there’s the confinement. Dogs get lonely. They lose heart.”
“What can I do?”
“You can tell her you love her. You can tell her goodbye.”

I’d be more optimistic if I weren’t so good at math. If I were better at lying, I wouldn’t need to be such a good actor.

Viola, I love you, you know that.
LOVE. OUCH. LOVE YOU.
Remember that. I’m right here.
YOU. HERE. LOVE.
And it’s not like there’s much left to say to someone who’s been licking you all over for weeks. And she says something hard to understand: LOVEYOUGOODBYEMAYBE — and flashes me in her eyes and wags her tail. LOVEYOUGOODBYEMAYBE.

No. No, you’re strong. You’re special. You can’t go — remember I’m here.

LOVEYOUGOODBYEMAYBE.

And I’m crying, as if more of my neediness does any good.

And Viola says: NOW. YOU. HERE. LOVEYOUGOODBYEMAYBE. TIME? [NO.] NOW. YOU. HERE.

She knows Heidegger. She’s practiced.

I cover her face with kisses and give her to the vet and drive home trying to fathom a dog’s memory, the mercy of the eternal present. With any luck, she’s already forgotten.

But I will spend the rest of my life unpacking that gift.
And for the next two days, sharp bursts like arrows shoot upwards from my heart.

And the vet calls. “You need to come down here.”
“Is she…?”
“She’s OK. She’s going to be OK. We’ve never seen anything like it.”

And at his office, I find Viola, whole and stupidly happy, squirming in her bed, licking my tears.

“We’ve never seen anything like it. Her tail never stopped wagging.”

I say: You did it, Viola. You made it. Thank you. Thank you.
And she says: YOU. HERE. NOW. GO? [NO.] YOU. HERE. LICK. LICK. LOVE.

You can’t know how much love there is in the world until you need it all.
I just want things to get back to normal. But what is normal after you know.

So Viola and I lie on the couch, and I scratch her ears and say: I love you.
And she says: LOVEYOUGOODBYEMAYBE.
And I say: No. No goodbye. Just love.
And she cocks her head and wags her tail patiently as if to say: It is one word for us, these thoughts, together, always. You make two words? Weird. Funny.

So that’s how I am.
See yourself in my eyes.
If I had a tail, I would wag it.

https://rmatney.wordpress.com/2013/11/26/loveyougoodbyemaybe/

Everything Doesn't Happen For A Reason by Tim Lawrence

OCTOBER 20, 2015

I emerge from this conversation dumbfounded. I've seen this a million times before, but it still gets me every time. 

I’m listening to a man tell a story. A woman he knows was in a devastating car accident; her life shattered in an instant. She now lives in a state of near-permanent pain; a paraplegic; many of her hopes stolen.

He tells of how she had been a mess before the accident, but that the tragedy had engendered positive changes in her life. That she was, as a result of this devastation, living a wonderful life.

And then he utters the words. The words that are responsible for nothing less than emotional, spiritual and psychological violence:

Everything happens for a reason. That this was something that had to happen in order for her to grow.

That's the kind of bullshit that destroys lives. And it is categorically untrue. 

It is amazing to me that so many of these myths persist—and that is why I share actionable tools and strategies to work with your pain in my free newsletter. These myths are nothing more than platitudes cloaked as sophistication, and they preclude us from doing the one and only thing we must do when our lives are turned upside down: grieve.

You know exactly what I'm talking about. You've heard these countless times. You've probably even uttered them a few times yourself. And every single one of them needs to be annihilated.

Let me be crystal clear: if you've faced a tragedy and someone tells you in any way, shape or form that your tragedy was meant to be, that it happened for a reason, that it will make you a better person, or that taking responsibility for it will fix it, you have every right to remove them from your life.

Grief is brutally painful. Grief does not only occur when someone dies. When relationships fall apart, you grieve. When opportunities are shattered, you grieve. When dreams die, you grieve. When illnesses wreck you, you grieve.

So I’m going to repeat a few words I’ve uttered countless times; words so powerful and honest they tear at the hubris of every jackass who participates in the debasing of the grieving:

Some things in life cannot be fixed. They can only be carried. 

These words come from my dear friend Megan Devine, one of the only writers in the field of loss and trauma I endorse. These words are so poignant because they aim right at the pathetic platitudes our culture has come to embody on a increasingly hopeless level. Losing a child cannot be fixed. Being diagnosed with a debilitating illness cannot be fixed. Facing the betrayal of your closest confidante cannot be fixed. 

They can only be carried.

I hate to break it to you, but although devastation can lead to growth, it often doesn't. The reality is that it often destroys lives. And the real calamity is that this happens precisely because we've replaced grieving with advice. With platitudes. With our absence.  

I now live an extraordinary life. I've been deeply blessed by the opportunities I've had and the radically unconventional life I've built for myself. Yet even with that said, I'm hardly being facetious when I say that loss has not in and of itself made me a better person. In fact, in many ways it's hardened me.

While so much loss has made me acutely aware and empathetic of the pains of others, it has made me more insular and predisposed to hide. I have a more cynical view of human nature, and a greater impatience with those who are unfamiliar with what loss does to people.

Above all, I've been left with a pervasive survivor’s guilt that has haunted me all my life. This guilt is really the genesis of my hiding, self-sabotage and brokenness.

In short, my pain has never been eradicated, I've just learned to channel it into my work with others. I consider it a great privilege to work with others in pain, but to say that my losses somehow had to happen in order for my gifts to grow would be to trample on the memories of all those I lost too young; all those who suffered needlessly, and all those who faced the same trials I did early in life, but who did not make it. 

I'm simply not going to do that. I'm not going to construct some delusional narrative fallacy for myself so that I can feel better about being alive. I'm not going to assume that God ordained me for life instead of all the others so that I could do what I do now. And I'm certainly not going to pretend that I've made it through simply because I was strong enough; that I became "successful" because I "took responsibility."

There’s a lot of “take responsibility” platitudes in the personal development space, and they are largely nonsense. People tell others to take responsibility when they don’t want to understand.

Because understanding is harder than posturing. Telling someone to “take responsibility” for their loss is a form of benevolent masturbation. It’s the inverse of inspirational porn: it’s sanctimonious porn.

Personal responsibility implies that there’s something to take responsibility for. You don’t take responsibility for being raped or losing your child. You take responsibility for how you choose to live in the wake of the horrors that confront you, but you don't choose whether you grieve. We're not that smart or powerful. When hell visits us, we don't get to escape grieving.

This is why all the platitudes and fixes and posturing are so dangerous: in unleashing them upon those we claim to love, we deny them the right to grieve.

In so doing, we deny them the right to be human. We steal a bit of their freedom precisely when they're standing at the intersection of their greatest fragility and despair.

No one—and I mean no one—has that authority. Though we claim it all the time.

The irony is that the only thing that even can be "responsible" amidst loss is grieving. 

So if anyone tells you some form of get over it, move on, or rise above, you can let them go.

If anyone avoids you amidst loss, or pretends like it didn’t happen, or disappears from your life, you can let them go.

If anyone tells you that all is not lost, that it happened for a reason, that you’ll become better as a result of your grief, you can let them go.

Let me reiterate: all of those platitudes are bullshit. 

You are not responsible to those who try to shove them down your throat. You can let them go. 

I’m not saying you should. That is up to you, and only up to you. It isn't an easy decision to make and should be made carefully. But I want you to understand that you can.

I've grieved many times in my life. I've been overwhelmed with shame and self-hatred so strong it’s nearly killed me.

The ones who helped—the only ones who helped—were those who were there. And said nothing. 

In that nothingness, they did everything.

I am here—I have lived—because they chose to love me. They loved me in their silence, in their willingness to suffer with me, alongside me, and through me. They loved me in their desire to be as uncomfortable, as destroyed, as I was, if only for a week, an hour, even just a few minutes.

Most people have no idea how utterly powerful this is.

Are there ways to find "healing" amidst devastation? Yes. Can one be "transformed" by the hell life thrusts upon them? Absolutely. But it does not happen if one is not permitted to grieve. Because grief itself is not an obstacle.

The obstacles come later. The choices as to how to live; how to carry what we have lost; how to weave a new mosaic for ourselves? Those come in the wake of grief. It cannot be any other way. 

Grief is woven into the fabric of the human experience. If it is not permitted to occur, its absence pillages everything that remains: the fragile, vulnerable shell you might become in the face of catastrophe.

Yet our culture has treated grief as a problem to be solved, an illness to be healed, or both. In the process, we've done everything we can to avoid, ignore, or transform grief. As a result, when you're faced with tragedy you usually find that you're no longer surrounded by people, you're surrounded by platitudes. 

What to Offer Instead

When a person is devastated by grief, the last thing they need is advice. Their world has been shattered. This means that the act of inviting someone—anyone—into their world is an act of great risk. To try and fix or rationalize or wash away their pain only deepens their terror.

Instead, the most powerful thing you can do is acknowledge. Literally say the words: 

I acknowledge your pain. I am here with you.

Note that I said with you, not for you. For implies that you're going to do something. That is not for you to enact. But to stand with your loved one, to suffer with them, to listen to them, to do everything but something is incredibly powerful.

There is no greater act than acknowledgment. And acknowledgment requires no training, no special skills, no expertise. It only requires the willingness to be present with a wounded soul, and to stay present, as long as is necessary.

Be there. Only be there. Do not leave when you feel uncomfortable or when you feel like you're not doing anything. In fact, it is when you feel uncomfortable and like you're not doing anything that you must stay.

Because it is in those places—in the shadows of horror we rarely allow ourselves to enter—where the beginnings of healing are found. This healing is found when we have others who are willing to enter that space alongside us. Every grieving person on earth needs these people.

Thus I beg you, I plead with you, to be one of these people.

You are more needed than you will ever know. 

And when you find yourself in need of those people, find them. I guarantee they are there. 

Everyone else can go. 

20 Surprisingly Profound Quotes From Fantasy & SciFi by Bobby Popovic Content Writer

1. "Never forget what you are, for surely the world will not. Make it your strength. Then it can never be your weakness. Armour yourself in it, and it will never be used to hurt you." - Tyrion Lannister, A Game of Thrones

2. "It is often said that before you die your life passes before your eyes. This is in fact true. It's called living." - Terry Pratchett

3. “It is the obvious which is so difficult to see most of the time. People say 'It's as plain as the nose on your face.' But how much of the nose on your face can you see, unless someone holds a mirror up to you?” ― Isaac Asimov, I, Robot

4. I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain. - Frank Herbert, Dune

5. "A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one." - George R. R. Martin, A Storm of Swords (Jojen Reed)

6. “It's the questions we can't answer that teach us the most. They teach us how to think. If you give a man an answer, all he gains is a little fact. But give him a question and he'll look for his own answers.” - Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man's Fear

7. “If you hide your ignorance, no one will hit you and you'll never learn.” - Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

8. “Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.” ― Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky

9. “The purpose of a storyteller is not to tell you how to think, but to give you questions to think upon.” ― Brandon Sanderson, The Way of Kings

10. “We die a little every day and by degrees we’re reborn into different men, older men in the same clothes, with the same scars.” ― Mark Lawrence, King of Thorns

11. “Children are dying… That's a succinct summary of humankind, I'd say. Who needs tomes and volumes of history? Children are dying. The injustices of the world hide in those three words.” - Steven Erikson, Deadhouse Gates

12. "It is our choices that show who we truly are, far more than our abilities." - J.K Rowling, spoken by Dumbledore of Harry Potter

13. “I wish...I wish I were dead...”

“And what use would that be to anyone?” ― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

14. "Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own." - Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

15. “We love what we love. Reason does not enter into it. In many ways, unwise love is the truest love. Anyone can love a thing because. That's as easy as putting a penny in your pocket. But to love something despite. To know the flaws and love them too. That is rare and pure and perfect.” - Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man's Fear

16. “The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.” ― Terry Pratchett, Diggers

17. “In my life I have found two things of priceless worth - learning and loving. Nothing else - not fame, not power, not achievement for its own sake - can possible have the same lasting value. For when your life is over, if you can say 'I have learned' and 'I have loved,' you will also be able to say 'I have been happy.” - Arthur C. Clarke, Rama II

18. “For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much—the wheel, New York, wars and so on—whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man—for precisely the same reasons.” - Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy

19. “They won't listen. Do you know why? Because they have certain fixed notions about the past. Any change would be blasphemy in their eyes, even if it were the truth. They don't want the truth; they want their traditions.” ― Isaac Asimov, Pebble in the Sky

20. “It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end… because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing… this shadow. Even darkness must pass.” - J. R. R. Tolkien, Lord of the Rings