Post Election Blues?

I don’t know much about (capital G) Grief. That is to say that my knowledge about the process of grieving comes from little nuggets I was able to pick up along the way, and now our family experience with it. And what I can say so far about it from this perspective is that it is one unpredictable process. It seems to have some things in common with onions (aside from making you cry), in that it is made up of layers.

At least that’s what the past few days have impressed upon me. Maybe it was the passage of time, maybe it was natural consequences of having spent two consecutive weekends thinking and feeling intensely about Nora (the IPPC retreat, then some time set aside for Janelle and I to prepare a presentation for our congregation).

On election night, Janelle and I had been anxiously checking the CNN website (we have no T.V.) for results, but needed to head to bed before anything was decided. Kali had demonstrated some pretty clear anxiety during the evening herself, getting kind of hysterical about things, and even trembling at one point. We decided it might be a good night to honor a request to join us in our bed for the night, finding ourselves concerned and perplexed. We did our best to reassure her that we were there for her, even letting her know (again) that she could always tell us whatever she was thinking, even if it scared her. We promised that we wouldn’t get angry with her for thinking things, no matter what they were. After stories were read and Janelle had more or less drifted off, Kali got into some kind of mental space where she was letting down her usual veil of privacy…by asking questions and casually conversing, she allowed me to know some of the things that were on her mind. It became clear to me that she is working very hard to make sense of her world, with two stand-out priorities: understanding politics and understanding what happened with Nora.

It was actually kind of cute to field her probing questions about the candidates: “If Barack Obama and John McCain both wanted to buy the same stuffed animal, what would Barack Obama do and what would John McCain do?” Essentially, all of her political questions centered around this theme, with variations including them wanting the same cantaloupe or other treasured object (say, a JOB for example). This seemed to be a rather straightforward case of the child absorbing and taking quite seriously the adults’ anxieties, and trying to make sense of them. I tried not to bias her TOO much with my answers, and also tried to make sure she knew that both of them would probably do a very nice job of sharing their stuffed animals or cantaloupe in person…it’s their larger-scale ideas that set them apart from each other. I have purposely refrained from including our particular political preference in this paragraph, since that would distract from the precious innocent struggle to comprehend that I wished to share with you. Maybe I’ll deliver those goods at the end of the entry if I still have the energy at that time.

In a different part of that long and rambling conversation, it became apparent to me that it has crossed Kali’s mind that Nora would be a candidate for becoming a ghost, if such a thing were possible. I think it was some kind of conversation about people scaring each other, and she mentioned that, if Nora became a ghost, then she would maybe do such and such a thing. That got my attention! How can a parents’ heart not just ache with longing for different circumstances when their child says such a thing? Remaining calm, I tried to continue engaging the conversation to her satisfaction, and then put the question to her as to whether she thinks about Nora becoming a ghost sometimes. Yes. Does it seem like that would be scary? Yes. Do you think that Halloween helped you think about that? Yes. Do you think that’s something that really happens? [Something like] Not really, but it seems scary to think about, because ghosts seem to scare people a lot. We then talked a little about how Nora was our sister and daughter and loved us, and we loved her, and even if it were possible for people to become ghosts, don’t you think she would want to do good things for us, making us feel good and helping us rather than scaring us? By that time she had either lost concentration on the topic or something, because I remember feeling that I hadn’t exactly convinced her. Probably she just wanted to get back to politics.

In the intervening time the election has been settled, so that anxiety has been laid down. Now, it seems, Kali and her dad can focus on trying to come to terms with the loss of Nora in this particular layer of the grief onion. I won’t speak for Janelle, since we’ve had such little time to speak recently that that would be a more fruitless task than it usually is for anybody to speak for anyone else. I’ll share a snapshot from our afternoon: we were playing Boggle (Kali’s way), and what follows is the list of words we spelled together with the boggle dice.

Nora
Rhea
Dust
Lose
Water

Hmm. Kali chose the first two and last one without input from me. Rhea was the other name we were considering for Nora, and has connotations of water flow. The second and third were the product of Kali choosing a letter she wanted to start the word with, while I supplied some possibilities for four-letter words beginning with that letter, with her making the final choice. I cannot possibly be expected to interpret these kinds of events, but they come up once in a while.

Sometimes Kali’s mind and memory startle me. The past two days, Kali has, each day, gotten a kick out of playing with our rather unconventional “old kitchen” patterned tile floor as a “magic concrete”, a magic carpet substitute (welcome to Kali’s fun and quirky humor). What set me back on my heels was when she was joined by an imaginary friend named “Nina”. Nina is the name of the deceased child of one of the other couples participating in the IPPC retreat. Kali must have gathered enough basic information about Nina from one or more sparse conversations she may have overheard since we’ve returned home to have incorporated her into her own process, whatever that may be. I wonder who Nina is in her mind. Whoever she is for Kali, some form of her memory has been with us for a portion of two different days, and is welcome here.

A quick disclaimer: I am not intending to spook anyone out, and do not believe that supernatural occurrences are accompanying our grief process. What I believe is that grief and crisis access portions of our minds that are usually not experienced so directly for most people. What emerges can surprise and unsettle us, for better or worse. I have found this layer of the onion to be somewhat disorienting. Yesterday when Janelle got home from work, she found me in a state of deep sadness (also having forgotten to put the lasagna in the oven, which I was going to do just as soon as I got off the phone with her 15 minutes prior). I felt in the grip of a mood that caught me by surprise and with my defenses in shambles. This is not all bad, but I do prefer to do my grieving on my own terms, which for me means lots of time working alone, interspersed with written reflections and supportive conversations. I haven’t had much of the alone work component recently, and I suppose yesterday afternoon’s state of mind was a notification of sorts that if I don’t allow the grieving process the space it needs, the natural consequence will be that it will have to find expression when and where it can, whether that is convenient or not. Of course, that particular mood may have had something to do with Kali and me listening to Full Table’s version of O Magnum Mysterium and Ubi Caritas while I brushed her bath-wet hair in the waning light and thought about the turns life has given her. Also, there is the election stress let-down.

Ah, yes, politics. Most of you may assume we favored the Obama ticket. That’s true, and something of an understatement. I actually felt strongly enough about it to spend Nora’s birthday canvassing in McGaheysville, with political volunteerism being completely new and uncomfortable to me. Why do we favor him so much? We think he’s vastly intelligent, calm and competent in crisis, honest, a critical thinker, warm and disarming to friend and foe, pragmatic, self-possessed, sincere, fair-minded, and justice-oriented in both domestic and foreign affairs. This was the first election I can think of that didn’t feel like an “evil of two lessers”. I actually wanted this guy to be in charge. Now having handed him the reins, we shall see what comes of it. He faces a huge challenge. Some points that are important to me now:

-it was an electoral landslide, but 52 to 47 is not exactly a popular mandate. I hope he can follow through on his promise to be everyone’s president, and listen especially to those with whom he disagrees (I am hopeful). If he can, we just might get somewhere.

-I agree with the author of “Obama’s Challenge,” an economist who appeared on NPR’s Fresh Air today: tackling the economy is first priority, and will require some very nimble thinking on everyone’s part, with Obama filling the role of Educator in Chief, much like Franklin Roosevelt in his time. Also, we’ll need to be prepared for some pretty counter-intuitive spending by the government to get things going. Of course the health care system is in crisis, so the spending plan may need to include some temporary measures such as (my idea) cash infusions into community hospital ER budgets to accommodate the hordes of uninsured who will be turning to the ER in increasing numbers. But tackling health care right away would be a huge stretch with the economy the way it is.

-the pressure will be on to live up to the American habit of international posturing. Can he stick to his principles and give the diplomatic and humanitarian route the full support it has never really gotten? Will the natural rewards of that approach bear fruit in time to validate the method in the mind of the voting public?

-perhaps my biggest concern can be summed up in five words: Power corrupts. What’s your plan?

Enough of that. My heart goes out to the vast numbers of people who are experiencing extreme psychic pain at the results of this election, and I feel anger about that suffering, because I feel the worst of it is being experienced by ordinary people as sincere as me, who have been receptive to the message of fear promulgated by many church and political leaders in the run-up to the election. Now that the unthinkable has happened to their beloved country, they may feel very, very lost. This was graphically illustrated for me by an encounter with a dear woman on the day I was canvassing. Her fear was palpable.

I have less sympathy for those who angrily chide the multitudes. Okay, so that sentence was just a set-up for sharing a quote from the [always Evangelically Correct] Kee’s Amoco sign as seen on Wednesday afternoon:

“That was not Biblical voting.”

Attempting to formulate a response to that sign quote leaves me feeling personally reduced, so I’ll let it stand and go to bed.