Gwen and Richard and Euripedes

Euripedes once said "Waste not fresh tears over old griefs." As I look at the face of Richard Martin, the eight-year-old destroyed by cold-blooded merciless killers in the Boston Marathon Bombing I am struck by this phrase. His crooked teeth and big eyes could have been my own not that long ago. Well a little longer than I want to admit. This child should not have died. It is inconceivable that such a thing is possible. But here we are spilling fresh tears over an old grief. The grief of losing one so innocent. From the twenty children murdered in their classroom in Newtown to Hadiya Pendelton murdered in a park in Chicago to Richard Martin murdered watching a race in Boston. Seeing the bright innocence of Richard trapped in that picture before his death I realized that my mother's dementia has erased more than he will ever know. If we let it time will take away all that is precious and wondrous from us. Rob us of our loved ones and our memories. Richard and my mother twin-helix representing two points on the frightening and often indiscriminate spectrum of life. Destroying and consuming. Eradicating and permeating all parts of our lives. Making us wonder if we will continually spill fresh tears or will they ever dry up.

I remember the first time I typed the word Alzheimer's into Google. My hands were shaking as I looked into that menacing rectangle below those improbably happy letters. Bold primary colors incongruous with the ominous information I was searching. Google auto-finished the word after I had typed the letter "z" and it gave me options as if it knew I couldn't or wouldn't bring myself to type in the rest of the phrase; symptoms. I clicked on the link 10 Early Signs & Symptoms of Alzheimer's and realized with upending terror many of them had already been exhibited by my mother. I had a similar feeling looking at Richard's picture. The bright smile. The bold colors of the paper he was holding. The wobbly script that only a child could make look elegant. He could not be dead. Why has this happened? Neither my mother nor Richard deserved this fate. He was seraphic. Innocent. New. With out the pall and stink we find ourselves enveloped in as we age. She a strong, tough hard-working lady that tried--and probably not always succeeded--in living the best, christian life she could. Neither deserved the evil that has been visited upon them. Once I touched that enter key on my computer I was propelled into the first stages of grief. Grief is hard as I'm sure Richard's family is finding out funnelling their pain through Elsabeth Kübler-Ross's 5-Stages of grief from her seminal 1969 book “On Death and Dying.” But unlike the psycho-sexual razzle-dazzle of these stages as they were portrayed in the glitzy movie All That Jazz, the Martin's grief as well as mine is real. Ben Vereen would not slink by in his sequin blazer singing Bye Bye Life. Death is rarely that glamours. And grief is a tangible thing that doesn't need your approval to hurt you.

After the denial of it all I went through the next stage: anger. There were swings from cold icy hatred to white hot acrimony. I was angry at God for what he had done to my mother. I was angry at my mother for having this disease. A disease that would force me to give up my life to take care of her. I was angry at my brother because of his long incarceration preempted him from helping me--she was always there to bail him out after all. I was the good son. I was the one always there to help pay bills and bury the dead. I had put in my dues. I was angry at myself for being angry at her. Grief makes you a mess. A hot fucking mess. A blubbering, stuttering, angry, depressed mess. I just kept saying "Why her? Why me?"

Ironically the answer I needed came from my mother herself. In a long ago time when she had coherence. I was working at the International House of Pancakes as a dishwasher. It was my very first job. I came home angry because I had been written up for using the telephone in the manager's office. This was in the century before mobile phone use became ubiquitous. My mother thought I was being ridiculous. So I brought out my trump card and told her that other members of the staff had used the phone without repercussion.

"So," she said."SO?!" I sneered incredulously.
"So? What are the rules? Were you allowed to used the phone or not?"
"No. The rule is that we can't use the phone in the office. We can only use the pay phones in the lobby and only on our break."
"So why did you use the phone if you knew it was against the rules?"
"Everybody else did it," I said as I rolled my eyes. Obviously she's just not getting.
"Just because they used the phone and got away with it what made you think you could use it?"
"I don't know," I scrambled for words "but that's not fair. If they can do it why can't I do it?"
"Who told you life was fair?" she said with her elder black woman schooling her son voice.

It was a hard lesson but one I needed to learn. One that applied to my grief over my mother's disease. One I started to apply to the every day life I led. One I applied when I saw the picture of Richard Martin. I could not waste fresh tears over this old grief. Once I realized life wasn't fair and that people will die and people will get disease it freed me. Liberated me to take in the scope of life. All of it.

This brought me to the final stage, acceptance. And even that I think is incremental. You can not isolate yourself. You have to take it in. Take in all of it. Even the parts that hurt. Even the parts that are bad. Even the parts that you don't like. Because without those parts the parts that feel good won't feel as good. People always say to me that I should remember my mother as she was. Vibrant, aware and unbreakable. But to me that would be an injustice. That would be a lie. This slow, frail, doddering old woman is who my mother is now. This is what she has become and to deny that would mean that I am not loving all of her. So I am going to remember Richard Martin. Remember him as the shiny little boy with the big eyes and crooked teeth. But I am also going to remember him in his death. Rent and destroyed. Because life isn't fair but that doesn't mean it can't be wonderful. It doesn't mean that I can't laugh a little when my mother picks up the TV remote and thinks its the cordless phone. Or feel joy when I wake up in the morning to her playing those same six songs in the same order on the piano. Or be amazed when she can play any other song upon request. It doesn't mean that when I look at that sign Richard was holding that read "No more hurting people. Peace" I can not be empowered and embolden by its legacy and its pledge. To not hurt people. To not waste fresh tears over old griefs.