LOST OUT HERE IN THE STARS is a reflective autobiographical piece about Loss...it is a Heavy One, indeed...so read it or no...it has its place in this life of mine...I've been writing a few lately about the 'harder' bits of my life...in the main - most of you know - I've had a Great and Often Happy Life! Still, of course, some times...there is Sorrow....

LOST OUT HERE IN THE STARS


I was only sharing this story with one other person. He was the only one. This is about the worst in me and the most painful parts of my life. It's not for anyone to read. It's for madmen only...so, read on, if you wish to...these are mine....

Loss is probably the scariest word after Death. Death being huge Loss, so Loss, all the same...
I keep thinking about Loss in my life, since I'm going through another one much of the time...because I'm not very dramatic about the pain of Loss, and don't appear to be mourning, I notice that some people respond to me as if I was a bit of a cold fish about grieving Loss. my inner experience is not like that at all...

I lost my Grandpa Amann when I was just a kid. My sister Pat and I couldn't go up to see him...they didn't let kids into dying people's rooms back in that day...So, we walked around the hospital holding hands and sobbing and singing this song we made up: "Our Grandpa was a Mighty Tree. All men must die. But why must he?" We were so sad.

The next deaths, of my Gramma Amann, my Uncle Henry, my Aunt Peggy...they started to add-up into my teens...then there were a couple of deaths of young folks too, fellow students I knew....one was my friend Charlotte's guy. a popular, good-hearted, lively, athletic boy...he died of knee cancer....
there were losses that weren't deaths too...leaving states to move to other states...losing friends made....all of these loses were sad and weeping was going on, as sincerely as a young person can cry and then I'd think, "Be strong, Kathy. You have to be strong. Mom and Dad expect you to be their good one. the strong one."....I thought this was what grief and loss were all about...how is a young person to know?

I was walking on a beach in Evanston, Illinois when I was in Nursing School. It was evening...It had been more than a few years since my Gramma had died...suddenly, for no reason I can imagine...I began to cry about her death...about the loss of her in my life...I cried and cried and then I sobbed...I couldn't stop....all the losses were piling in on me, one after another. I was finally starting to get it...what Loss really is....I began to think of all the young men I had thought I had casually 'broken-up' with, in my young dating past as well...the sobbing renewed...one stood out in particular...

He had been my First Real Love...every memory of him was completely intact....every kiss. every hug. every 'making-out' time. all the fun times. the jokes and the laughter. the canoe on the river. the anniversary with the candles on the glove compartment door. the prom. the operetta. the summer musical. the singing. the banjo. the Community Center and Pheasant Run performances. the soft summer nights. the sound of his laugh. his arms. his intensity. his sorrows. the joy we gave each other. the pain I gave him in the end. the reasons I left.
Just as suddenly as the tears had come for my Gramma, the tears came for him. I sobbed all the way from the beach back to the dorm. not caring who saw. I cried for innocence lost.

What I experienced most was the Empty Places where those two people had been. my Gramma was dead. my First Love was married. they were gone for me. I could not see them again. The Weight of the Empty Places was intense and terrible. I knew I had to shelve this Intensity somewhere...and so, deep, deep, deep within me these two Great Losses went. Never to be forgotten, ever. But, never to be touched, if at all possible. The Pain of them was Too Great to touch....

Each time, for the next decades, that I lost a relationship, any relationship even a friendship at work, through a move to some other location... a once happy lover-situation gone flat and unhappy... in the 'end', three serious and good Marriages gone...through the years: three major 'Boyfriend' Relationships, gone...through years of struggle without resolution...any friendship where we had grown apart over time and growth as people...I mourned. I mourned Alone....

a Brief Reflections about Alex...I was married to Alex for three months: A German Musician on visas here for work on and off through the years...arranger for a few famous Folk Performers...younger than I ...I had known him since Nursing School...he died in a motor-cycle accident in Big Sur along the coast. His parents came and took his body home. That's all I want to say about that. There was Much Love and Understanding between us. My children barely knew him. No one else knew him hardly at all. Over before it all actually began. And...closed into a capsule inside of me forever. silent as its own tomb. part of the Silences in me...as we call carry our Silences....

It was important to me to be strong, to be very strong. First, to hold the world together for my kids, then to hold it together for myself. My life was filled with hard work and responsibility. I was determined to do two actions about life: not to let grief and loss tear me down...and, to try to live a fulfilling, happy life in spite of loss...but, a Life Alone. Standing Brave. Alone...not lonely...I've always had plenty of people about...but, Alone.

Anyway, I didn't want to hold on to grief..to let sorrow take any energy away from my daily life, from my daily love, from my daily bread. No changes in me, at work would be seen. No sorrow would distract from my kid's lives. No loss would deter me from meeting my own goals and being 'positive' about every day of my life...I simply would not be vulnerable to loss....

I wish I could say this approach was a really fine way to deal with life. It works, alright, but I wound up feeling Very alone about my life. If I don't share grief with someone, people don't lend me a helping hand. They figure I am strong. That I don't need to depend on them. That I don't need them to cope...I even took all, and I mean All, of the blame for any relationship loss. I protected the people I left, especially, or those who were too hurt to stay around me any more... I have always made it clear that nothing was their fault...which really wasn't that fair to them... they wouldn't grow as people, if I took all the blame for their actions and reactions...but, that's what I did...that's what I'm doing right now, to this very day.

With Death, I really cut off. I cry for a little. then I shut the place down where those people lived and loved with me. I call them the "Empty Places"... Those loses: Grandparents. Alex. my Parents. Pops. the good Friends. All dead and gone. I see them in the back of my mind every single day...people think I am really good at listening and being there for them for months, years, whatever it takes, for them to work through their griefs about death. they don't realize that I am there for them, because I am Never, Never far away from my own Dead Ones. I spend much psychological time avoiding the huge holes left in my life, like avoiding land mines in a war zone... I just don't show it on the outside... ever again...

I never feel that I have permission to break stride. I feel that I have to be the woman who can make it through anything, anything that life throws at her....

There have been other losses that I have played-down in public, and sustained as heavy blows inside: mainly physical ones...only one person in my life knows that I survived thyroid cancer...I suck up around the back pain that has been always there to some degree or another since I was twelve years old...I once shocked a good friend by telling her that I had no idea what one comfortable day would feel like, as I had never had one, because of my back. I just don't talk about it...
I have a heart that has electrical problems. It may make it another twenty years. It may not. It sustained some death-defying months only a few years ago. Only a wonderful cardiac catheterization procedure, called an Ablation, saved me from dying...I have actually "almost died" from two anaphylactic allergic reactions in my life...once I almost drowned...Physical Losses. They take the stuffing out of me. they take Sex away from me. Sex being a goodly part about who I am. So I lose Sex during times of pain as well. and this last husband had to cope with that too, which wasn't fair to him...for which he was lost to me as well....

Then there's money losses...the losses of homes and material things...these have been so common in my life, that I have become relatively unattached to the material world...I have walked away, so many times, from all of my material "assets" in order to gain my own soul back. and once, to gain the full custody of my children. I have not regretted these losses at all. Still, they have left me relying entirely on my own self and upon my own work for all of my everyday needs. I have no debt, but I have few belongings of anything but sentimental worth, as I head into the last quarter of my lifetime...

Something happened in just these last few years...
For the first time in my life, I saw very little hope. The year had been full of heavy responsibilities and losses...nine deaths...a major move that led to severe back pain for seven months...care taking for a few months, during the pain, of my spouse...working at my teaching job full time while in pain...I was completely exhausted. My spouse was exhausted too, especially as his youngest daughter almost died of a massive strep infection during this same period. There was no relief in sight....I was beginning to give up...all I saw ahead was caring for my husband as he aged, until he would die. Or, of having pain for years and years, and maybe even burdening him more, or others... Then I would be too old to have anything left in life myself. And, too depleted, physically...

I decided to try to change, somehow...to approach life without this constant preoccupation with all the loses I had sustained over my whole adult life...I had to feel hope again....

Hope came in a way that I least expected. My First Love came back into my life again. He became more than a renewal of a sustaining friendship. He became the Hope at the bottom of Pandora's box. That is its own beautiful story. Still, it is a story of loss in itself...
Because I have become close to this man again, my husband divorced from me...Once again, I lost family, his family...some of our mutual friends, who polarized one way or the other...money...(It's so telling that money loss, especially for women, is so connected to losses of people through deaths, divorce...)...Once again, I faced loss...only, this time, I do not feel as alone...

This time, I am trying, every day, to confide more in my adult children...to talk with them as honestly as I can, about the losses I am sustaining, and about my relationship with this man who is my lifeline at this time. They are all welcoming to me, and listen, and love me so much. It's interesting though. They still expect me to be "fine", to be "strong". they are so used to my being capable and strong, that they cannot relate to any signs of weakness from me at all...that's what my years of standing alone in severe storms taught them: that Mom can take anything, and not buckle under....
I find myself letting my good friends know...and they too -unremarkable enough!- expect me to come through all of this "fine". What they cannot imagine, and I cannot tell them...

Is that I am finally relying on someone. I am finally depending on somebody. I am finally accepting the protection of a man. My First Love. I have given my need for emotional support to him. He has accepted the burden of me. In exchange, all I have to offer him is my love. my respect. my sustenance. my deep gratitude. my understanding and acceptance of him as he is, which is easy for me to do, with him... my my very self as a person.
Ironically...he was two thousand miles away and he was married to a good woman. he too may also be lost to me some day. He doesn't believe so, but I am less trusting than he... After many, many years of deprivation in his own life, he still has the courage to believe in a good future for the two of us... I believe we will always be close in our hearts. I simply do not trust fate. It will take a long time for me to really trust that we will have a future in the same place on the earth, in the same lifetime...I admire him so for wanting to be with me, after all I have told him about myself. I will have to wait and see. I have left this part of our path to him. I can't even imagine any more how something this good could happen for me. that I could finish the last decades of my life without being still all Alone inside. Loss has followed that closely on my every footstep....

Still, I am going forward as happily and confidently as I possibly can. This man has shown me his deep understanding and acceptance of me as I really am, without my having to be the one who feels I sustain the whole show by myself. Without me hiding so much of who I am... He's made me feel that I don't have to hide my vulnerabilities any more. I would give my life for him, for having made me feel that safe, that understood, that free to be my own self completely, without censure, without criticism.

You know, my second husband and my present husband have been very kind. They took care of me and I took care of them, for many years. It may have been my fault that I didn't share everything about who I am and what my true nature is and was...I will never know. I feared the loss that their criticism and censorship took in our every-day lives, without adding the pain I expected to feel if they rejected me more than that. I may have been wrong, though, about those perceptions...I'll never know, now....

I have felt, my whole adult life, alone inside...lost out here on this planet under the stars. In spite of so much good love and so many good times in my life...in spite of my many, many flaws and mistakes in relationships...

I swear to the stars above. I have never hurt another on purpose. I am so sad that my nature has seemed been so wrong, so unsettling, to some of those I have loved. They have discounted so many years of happiness and care from me...Tho it's only been a few of the many people I love and have loved in life, they have been key people, who were with me for a long time. In return for my rejection of them, after years of trying to compromise about differences and unmet needs, They have struck out at me hard. I have taken the responsibility and the blame. over and over and over.This is my greatest loss of all. the loss of respect from them for all I had been to them and for them. The years I had been so good with them and for them. Because I left them. this has been my greatest sorrow.

Loss is inevitable. It is so final. we are all so vulnerable to loss. For me, it has been worse than Death. I have faced Death before. It's not so bad...

But, to be lost out here in the stars...
lost out here in the stars....

that is the worst that life can bring...

and here I am...again

Bowed often...but never Broken...

Too Strong with Love -
Too Full of Love -

To ever be Broken...