On The Woman-Who-Rhymes-With-Witch and Learning How To Move On

Shit happens in threes.  Everyone knows this.  Our run with bad luck started back in December.  We received a call.  The police arrested one of the two who robbed our home two years ago.  If we were still pressing charges we would need to fly home for the trial and testify.  Or, we could drop the charges and she would go free.  We called and said, "We need time," and "We'll get back to you."  They said, "Fine."  Fine.  We would deal with this later.

Then David flew home to a house with burst pipes and water damage.  Floorboards warped, walls and ceilings damaged, the place was a mess.  Because two is a stupid number there was more.  We received another letter from the government agency that starts with an I and ends in a S.  Shit happens in threes.  Indeed.

This was a bit much.  Where do we start?  How do we move through these events?  Why was this happening to us?  We're good people.  We don't deserve this string of back-to-back life-glitches.  What did we do to deserve this?

Frantic transpacific calls ensued.  We split the work.  I would handle the robbery case.  David would handle the water damage.  We told our accountant to fix the other problem.  In the mean time we complained about these undeserving injustices and railed against the conspiring entities who tried to bring us down.  This served to raise our blood pressure and little else.  Wallowing felt good but only briefly.  We soon found this negativity got in our way of moving forward and making plans.  That said, I found denying my anger at this woman-who-rhymes-with-witch did me little good.  David found living without water utterly horrid.  Neither of us were happy.

Happiness.  This was the answer to a question posed to me by my brother years ago.
"What do you want out of life, sis?"
"Happiness," I said.
He paused.  "That is so Princess Diana."
I took this to mean my answer was not one I would be wise to repeat elsewhere.
Years later I reminded him of this conversation which, of course, he did not remember.
"Sorry about that," he said.  "Yeah.  We all want to be happy.  There's nothing wrong with that."

How do we define happiness?  What makes us happy?  The simple answer is, "The opposite of what makes us sad."  The past month aside, for the past 30+ months I have been surrounded by people who experienced a deep and profound sadness.  Whoever said "time heals all wounds" should have added "and for collective pain, this doesn't apply."  Three years is evidently not long enough for pain to disappear.

How we process pain differs for us all.  I need laughter.  With very little in my professional life, I rely on those around me:  my husband, our son, my sister, my boarding school buddies.  I watch the New Zealand All Blacks do the Haka because while it's not funny, it makes me smile.

Learning to move on is a skill few of us learn and develop thus making our difficult times seem longer, deeper, and more intense.  I am in no position to tell those who have experienced loss to move on.  I do encourage the grieving to laugh.  Often is good.  Once a day is a must.  For your dose for today, read these answers given by a child whom I would be proud to call my own.

As I lash out in my imaginary conversations with the thief who is the woman-who-rhymes-with-witch, I feel my heart pound as I say things to her privately I will never have the chance to say out loud.  I feel very little relief. 

Shit happens in threes so we are clear for the rest of 2014.  We're certain we are correct in our assumption.  This is most excellent news.  It's not three weeks into the year and we're good to go.  This makes us happy.  We will get through this string of bad luck.

In the mean time, we will laugh and will encourage others to do the same.  Pain is not funny.  Deep pain takes longer to move through.  That said, there's plenty of humor in life and some of it is simply too good not to share.

In the spirit of locating our own personal funny bones I share Jonathan's art and poem.  Good boy.

When Someone Dies

David Remnick of The New Yorker says of the sudden death of James Gandolfini:  "In the dozens of hours he had on the screen, he made Tony Soprano--lovable, repulsive, cunning, ignorant, brutal--more ruthlessly alive than any character we've ever encountered in television."  Except for the major crush I developed on the character he's most famous for, I don't know James Gandolfini.  With that said, I have a feeling he'd like to be remembered for creating a character that was known as "ruthlessly alive."

This post is less about James Gandolfini than it is about death.  Unexpected and sudden death.  Just so we're clear, I don't spend a lot of time thinking about the day I will die.  Nor do I contemplate how, when, if I'll die alone or with someone else, whether it will be quiet or tragic.  I have at one point or another wondered all this, but in the space I allot to what goes on in my mind, my personal death does not take up much space.

Except that it does.  Sometimes.  I contemplate this when people around me die.  My uncle's death ten years ago rocked our family in ways we've still not recovered from.  My brother's death when I was very young has left a hole in my immediate family that cannot be plugged.  Even with the deaths of those I don't know, the finality of their newly created absence makes me wonder what people will say about me when I've moved on--because at one time or another we think about the day we leave earth.  We talk about those who have left us.  We talk about them as we mourn, reliving the marks they've left on those left behind.

When the choice to end our lives is of our own making, remembrance is messy.  Our sadness is mixed with anger, confusion, and often guilt.  Suicide in Japan is a social phenomenon where statistics show approximately 30,000 people terminate their lives and have been for the past fifteen years.  Except for a report stating the numbers dipped below 30,000 for the first time last year, these numbers remain steady.  What's going on in Japan?

It gets worse.  Research shows those who are successful in ending their lives (if suicide can actually be called a "success") are 10% of those who try.  Do the math.  This means there are 300,000 people in Japan who choose this way to die.  Should we be glad only 10% are "successful"?  What, if anything is done for the 270,000 who failed?

I bring this topic up not to suggest I have answers or that there exist simple solutions.  "It's complicated" are two words often used to describe that which we cannot control.  Without helpful input to offer I'm in no position to say, "That's not good enough," but I will.  

Perhaps one way to address the problem of suicide in Japan is to focus on two aspects of Japanese culture often used to modify behavior:  shame, and meiwaku.  A powerful force of social order, shame is an often-used tool to instill right from wrong.  Do not bring shame upon your family, school, organization, or company.  What if we said about those who were close to the one who took their life, that they failed in some way?  Perhaps the stigma of failure maybe isn't enough. What if we add shame to the emotions felt to those left behind?  If we knew those left to pick up our body felt shame because of our decision, would that change anything?

The same concept applies to meiwaku.  The catch-all word for gross inconvenience we cause others, by taking our own life surely we cause meiwaku do we not?  In centuries past perhaps suicide was noble, the ultimate in taking responsibility.  What if we made sure children growing up thought of suicide as a cop out?  That there was nothing heroic about falling on one's own sword?

It's not that easy, I know.  Change is never simple.  So I'll end with this thought:  I wish the collective Japan could recognize how big of a deal it was for Tony Soprano to get counseling.  Fictional character aside, the decision to put front-and-center the life of a troubled and truly human mob boss who chose to get help, that this was a cultural phenomenon on American television warrants another look.

 

 

 

 

Life and Death at 17

I've often said here in Tohoku, the difference between who's a "local" and who's from "away" is pretty drastic.  Introductions are peppered with "I'm so-and-so's child" and "my dad owns the such-and-such store."  This places people.  Pecking order, family feuds, whether or not business transactions will take place, if friendships will be established, these are all set by these pronouncements of placement.  Exempt from this, I tell people I am from the outer most layer of the onion.

The onion is comprised first of family, then local block, neighborhood, city, locality, prefecture, region, country, and the rest of the world.  I'm from the "outer, outer, outer, outer, outer" layer.  The number of "outer"s I say out loud isn't the point.  It's more about the fact I'm from "way, way, way out there."

I long ago learned how much of an advantage this is.  Locals don't complain as it is, much less to their neighbors.  "We're all in the same boat," I've been told, over and over.  Everyone here is a victim of disaster in one way or another.  I'm not.  That I represent the furthest place out people can imagine means I'm safe to complain to.  That I can't possibly relate makes it easy to identify me as someone who can listen.  Most of all, that I'm anything but a "local" means it's okay to say to me what can't be said to family and friends.

There's another sort of "outsider."  There are several locals who have been anointed with this sacred bond of trust.  The unwritten credo of not complaining to anyone "from here" is broken, and blatantly at that with these few.  Takayuki Niinuma is one of the chosen.

His job description on Facebook is "Mayor of the Night in Ofunato."  If you knew him you'd see how perfect this was.  He drives a flashy car with tinted windows.  He swaggers just a bit.  He projects "bad." For those who can't see through to his inner core, he's feared.  Shunned.  He has a past worthy of this reputation.  A trouble-maker in town since he was a kid, his language is coarse.  He doesn't mince words.  People walk the other way when they see him coming.  This makes him, for some, the perfect confidant.

Those who are truly at the bottom, who don't know how to keep going, who've lost the will to go on, who have such tragic stories they can't possibly be real--these people find Taka.  The stories people tell him are nightmarish.  This is one such story.

The sports center in Rikuzentakata with its large gymnasium was a designated evacuation spot.  In the case a tsunami hit the city, residents were to come here.  Hundreds of people gathered here a year ago on March 11th to wait out the tsunami warning.  No one, no one ever expected the wave to be high enough to flood the gym.

"When the tsunami came, it blew in the front door, water poured in from the second story windows, and next thing they knew everyone who wasn't already dead fought their way up to these beams," Taka tells me.

"This 17-year old girl and her friends, they were all hanging on to these beams on the ceiling.  Below them is this whirlpool of water with crap in it.  They know if they let go they're dead."  I think back to what I saw in the gym when I visited last time, and I start to shake.

"Then the wall blew out."  The pressure from the water and the wave continuing to crash in did indeed blow out a wall.  "This meant the water that was holding them up, they're hanging onto the beams, right?  This water got sucked out through the hole in the wall with real force.  People couldn't hang on.  Some got swept out along with the pull of the water flowing out, and others clung on for dear life.  This girl clung.  This girl saw this.  She saw all this.  There's more.  Those who are hanging on just with their hands, they're hanging onto these beams by their hands, right?  They're wet.  They're freezing.  Some couldn't hang on anymore.  They started to drop.  One by one.  They fell down onto the floor of the gym where all this debris was.  Her best friend from childhood fell, too.  She heard the thuds.  She heard them scream.  She watched her friend lay on the floor, twitching, bleeding out.  Her friend finally died.  This girl saw all that."

The reason the girl telling the story survived is another unbelievable tale.  While others hung onto the beams with only their hands, she clung on with her hands and feet, her back to the floor.  After seeing and hearing everyone else around her fall to their deaths, she made her way down a beam, slithering essentially, moving inch by inch until she reached the end.  What the photo doesn't show is that the end of the beam hits a wall, and there's still a three-meter jump to the floor from there.  I follow each beam with my eyes, wondering in silent awe how this was possible.  Could I do this?  To save my own life, could I, would I do this?  Or, would I give up?  Would I let myself die?

At seventeen, I had boyfriends, snuck out of the dorm at night evading the headmaster that lived next door, riding around on motorcycles avoiding the eyes of any teacher that might be out for a nightly stroll.  I played, shopped, sometimes studied, and enjoyed being a teenager.  I've wondered over and over what I would be like today if I went through what this girl experienced--at seventeen.

The gym still looks like this, today, 16 months after the tsunami.  I'm not allowed into the gym but ignore the "Do Not Enter" signs.  These images need recording.  These stories need repeating.  Unimaginable pain and horror experienced by this 17-year old girl brings me to my knees.

That she sought out Taka to tell her story is a testament to his stature.  The trust she placed in him to unburden herself, to sob, to say she will never ever go back to Rikuzentakata is all a gift he has, "bad" as he may be.  In telling me these stories he's unburdening himself as well.  By writing this, I'm letting my grief out, too.  Here in Tohoku we support each other as the rings of friendship expand overlapping from person to person.  This is a key reason I'm here.  For this, I'll stay.