on god and friendship and risk - a really long post
i finally did it. i called jene, my college roommate, kindred spirit, soul sister, fellow talker. i haven't talked to her since hans died. she lives in the west now, with her husband and two kids. she is a writer and editor and actor. she is a huge proponent of the bradley method and breastfed her son until he was 22 months and i think even then only stopped because i harassed her about it so much. she is the one person i have always been able to talk about anything with, and she has been for 18 years, since our freshman year of college (how old do i feel right now? pretty damn old). we have always been all about the talk.
there were protocols for when i gave birth, who we would call (my mom, justin's mom), who they would call, and so forth. we arranged that my mom would call jene when i went to the hospital. a few hours after i delivered my son, i asked my mom to make that call, and she went out into the hall and did it. when she returned, she looked a little dazed; the only thing jene had said was, "oh, crap."
between her two living children, jene had a miscarriage, right after 9/11. the last guy she dated before her husband died in one of the towers, and it shook her up badly; she blamed her miscarriage on that shock. jene didn't call after i got home, didn't write, and i thought my stillbirth must have brought up bad memories of her miscarriage - that's why i didn't hear from her. i didn't feel like talking on the phone in those early days, but i wanted to talk to her, so i sent her a long e-mail, telling her how sorry i was that this must have brought up those old memories, and telling her the whole story of what had happened, the story i was dying to tell her.
she sent back a one-sentence reply, that she was sorry, that it wasn't the miscarriage - she never thought about it -but that she just didn't know what to say.
i was so hurt. and so angry. the one person i expected, needed to talk about it with didn't know what to say??? i understood that what had happened was so horrible that there was no way to wrap your mind about it and nothing really could be said, and i was able to cut pretty much everyone some slack about it. but not her. she was the one person that had to be able to say something about it. but no. silence.
god, have i missed her. i talked to my mom about it last week. it occurred to me around then that, if a number of other people, for reasons i still don't entirely understand, felt palpable relief at news of the tadpole, and that relief opened up the floodgates of talk about hans, then maybe it would be true for jene. and she is worth the risk. i've been looking for the right time to call her the last few days, sometime when i'd have a couple of free hours, and she would, too, because we never talk less than two hours at a time.
then, at the same time, this whole god-thing has been brewing in me. i've come to the point that it's easier to believe that there is no god than to believe there is a god cold enough to stand by and allow my son to die. what an utterly worthless god. and yet i am so angry at the hole made by that loss of faith. that loss is almost is bad as the loss of hans; the pain is almost as sharp.
and in the midst of that pain, there was anna's post, a really beautiful, honest post (one she should re-post, frankly) about her struggle with her faith and making sense of it in light of her miscarriage and their mistreatment by other christians, among other things, and it hit right to the core of my misery. and then today, while i was feeling the loss of faith so strongly, and worrying that i had offeneded anna, i read an article on salon, the transcript of a speech bill moyers gave at union theological seminary recently (worth watching a 60 second commercial to get to it, by the way, if you're not a subscriber to salon already), and it stirred up so many other god-thoughts (at the moment, it's not up on salon, but i did find a transcript here on wesley clark's pac's website). as i walked out of my office tonight, i was thinking, what i would really like about now (besides a chipotle burrito) is a religious professional to fight with, someone who could get it together to either satisfactorily prove me wrong - or prove me right and let me live in peace.
when i got in the car, i didn't start it. instead, i called justin and told him about my frustration. he said, "you know who you should call? jene." and he was right. before hans died, she was the person i would have worked this out with. religion was one of her three majors, and she's thinking about going back to school by way of a theological seminary now. towards the end of my pregnancy, we were having an ongoing discussion about the religion in which we were raised (our fathers happened to both be ministers in the same evangelical denomination) and what we've left behind and what she is exploring (open theism).
i knew justin was right. i had to call her. i put the windows down in the car and dialed her number. she answered; her 2 1/2 year old son was hollering in the background, but she assured me it was a good time to talk. i immediately told her i was pregnant, and she started to cry. she apologized for not having called or written; she had just never known what to say. i told her how angry i had been, how much i had struggled with allowing her the same silence i had allowed everyone else, how much i had missed talking to her. she kept saying, "this is it. this is the last time. it stops here." when she stopped crying a little, she told me that she had been certain in the immediate aftermath of hans's death, when she didn't immediately respond, that i must hate her, and after that she had been afraid to contact me. but she's always had that fear, of saying or doing something to make her dearest friends hate her, and she did it with her husband, too, and at that moment she had just realized how ludicrous it was. of course, by this point i was crying, too.
then she told me that the other reason she had been hesitant to contact me was that she was pregnant, too - 20 weeks now. and then the talk flowed, like always. we talked pregnancies and miscarriages and scares and autopsies and midwives and umbilical cords and breastfeeding and allergies and being so emotional that we cry at the drop of the hat - or at the sound of a friend's voice on the telephone. it was so, so good. i finally felt the relief that everyone else has been feeling at the news of the tadpole, i suppose.
and then i told her about what had been going on with me, god-wise, and how justin reminded me she was the person i should call. we talked about her spiritual journey, and her study of open theism (which i don't entirely get but am working on), and she asked me to read a book with her, "letters from a skeptic", by gregory boyd. he is a christian minister and an open theist, and his father was an atheist, which caused a lifelong rift between them; but shortly before his father died, the author felt the need to try to have a conversation with him, and wrote him a letter and asked him to write back about what bothered him about christianity. the resulting correspondence between them makes up the book, and i'm going to get it and we're going to read it a chapter at a time and then discuss it. i admitted to jene that i'm skeptical that this book will provide me with any answers that will satisfy me, but i was willing to do it because it was something to do about my turmoil, an actual objective i could pursue, something that, if it didn't help, would at least prove my current state correct. progress.
after an hour and 20 minutes (really, just a quickie for us), i had to go pick up justin, and i've promised him to not talk on the phone while i drive (in return for him wearing his seatbelt), but we swore our love and made plans to talk again soon, and i told her i was glad i took the risk and called her. it was totally worth it.
justin and i had veggie burritos and lemonade at chipotle, and then when we got home, i had an e-mail from wonderful, sweet anna, and i think we're going to be okay. there won't be any girl-fights out in the parking lot after school, i'm happy to report. we actually have more in common than i knew.
so i go to bed tonight with a full, full stomach, but a significantly lighter heart. not a settled heart yet, but one that is definitely lighter.
sweet dreams.
there were protocols for when i gave birth, who we would call (my mom, justin's mom), who they would call, and so forth. we arranged that my mom would call jene when i went to the hospital. a few hours after i delivered my son, i asked my mom to make that call, and she went out into the hall and did it. when she returned, she looked a little dazed; the only thing jene had said was, "oh, crap."
between her two living children, jene had a miscarriage, right after 9/11. the last guy she dated before her husband died in one of the towers, and it shook her up badly; she blamed her miscarriage on that shock. jene didn't call after i got home, didn't write, and i thought my stillbirth must have brought up bad memories of her miscarriage - that's why i didn't hear from her. i didn't feel like talking on the phone in those early days, but i wanted to talk to her, so i sent her a long e-mail, telling her how sorry i was that this must have brought up those old memories, and telling her the whole story of what had happened, the story i was dying to tell her.
she sent back a one-sentence reply, that she was sorry, that it wasn't the miscarriage - she never thought about it -but that she just didn't know what to say.
i was so hurt. and so angry. the one person i expected, needed to talk about it with didn't know what to say??? i understood that what had happened was so horrible that there was no way to wrap your mind about it and nothing really could be said, and i was able to cut pretty much everyone some slack about it. but not her. she was the one person that had to be able to say something about it. but no. silence.
god, have i missed her. i talked to my mom about it last week. it occurred to me around then that, if a number of other people, for reasons i still don't entirely understand, felt palpable relief at news of the tadpole, and that relief opened up the floodgates of talk about hans, then maybe it would be true for jene. and she is worth the risk. i've been looking for the right time to call her the last few days, sometime when i'd have a couple of free hours, and she would, too, because we never talk less than two hours at a time.
then, at the same time, this whole god-thing has been brewing in me. i've come to the point that it's easier to believe that there is no god than to believe there is a god cold enough to stand by and allow my son to die. what an utterly worthless god. and yet i am so angry at the hole made by that loss of faith. that loss is almost is bad as the loss of hans; the pain is almost as sharp.
and in the midst of that pain, there was anna's post, a really beautiful, honest post (one she should re-post, frankly) about her struggle with her faith and making sense of it in light of her miscarriage and their mistreatment by other christians, among other things, and it hit right to the core of my misery. and then today, while i was feeling the loss of faith so strongly, and worrying that i had offeneded anna, i read an article on salon, the transcript of a speech bill moyers gave at union theological seminary recently (worth watching a 60 second commercial to get to it, by the way, if you're not a subscriber to salon already), and it stirred up so many other god-thoughts (at the moment, it's not up on salon, but i did find a transcript here on wesley clark's pac's website). as i walked out of my office tonight, i was thinking, what i would really like about now (besides a chipotle burrito) is a religious professional to fight with, someone who could get it together to either satisfactorily prove me wrong - or prove me right and let me live in peace.
when i got in the car, i didn't start it. instead, i called justin and told him about my frustration. he said, "you know who you should call? jene." and he was right. before hans died, she was the person i would have worked this out with. religion was one of her three majors, and she's thinking about going back to school by way of a theological seminary now. towards the end of my pregnancy, we were having an ongoing discussion about the religion in which we were raised (our fathers happened to both be ministers in the same evangelical denomination) and what we've left behind and what she is exploring (open theism).
i knew justin was right. i had to call her. i put the windows down in the car and dialed her number. she answered; her 2 1/2 year old son was hollering in the background, but she assured me it was a good time to talk. i immediately told her i was pregnant, and she started to cry. she apologized for not having called or written; she had just never known what to say. i told her how angry i had been, how much i had struggled with allowing her the same silence i had allowed everyone else, how much i had missed talking to her. she kept saying, "this is it. this is the last time. it stops here." when she stopped crying a little, she told me that she had been certain in the immediate aftermath of hans's death, when she didn't immediately respond, that i must hate her, and after that she had been afraid to contact me. but she's always had that fear, of saying or doing something to make her dearest friends hate her, and she did it with her husband, too, and at that moment she had just realized how ludicrous it was. of course, by this point i was crying, too.
then she told me that the other reason she had been hesitant to contact me was that she was pregnant, too - 20 weeks now. and then the talk flowed, like always. we talked pregnancies and miscarriages and scares and autopsies and midwives and umbilical cords and breastfeeding and allergies and being so emotional that we cry at the drop of the hat - or at the sound of a friend's voice on the telephone. it was so, so good. i finally felt the relief that everyone else has been feeling at the news of the tadpole, i suppose.
and then i told her about what had been going on with me, god-wise, and how justin reminded me she was the person i should call. we talked about her spiritual journey, and her study of open theism (which i don't entirely get but am working on), and she asked me to read a book with her, "letters from a skeptic", by gregory boyd. he is a christian minister and an open theist, and his father was an atheist, which caused a lifelong rift between them; but shortly before his father died, the author felt the need to try to have a conversation with him, and wrote him a letter and asked him to write back about what bothered him about christianity. the resulting correspondence between them makes up the book, and i'm going to get it and we're going to read it a chapter at a time and then discuss it. i admitted to jene that i'm skeptical that this book will provide me with any answers that will satisfy me, but i was willing to do it because it was something to do about my turmoil, an actual objective i could pursue, something that, if it didn't help, would at least prove my current state correct. progress.
after an hour and 20 minutes (really, just a quickie for us), i had to go pick up justin, and i've promised him to not talk on the phone while i drive (in return for him wearing his seatbelt), but we swore our love and made plans to talk again soon, and i told her i was glad i took the risk and called her. it was totally worth it.
justin and i had veggie burritos and lemonade at chipotle, and then when we got home, i had an e-mail from wonderful, sweet anna, and i think we're going to be okay. there won't be any girl-fights out in the parking lot after school, i'm happy to report. we actually have more in common than i knew.
so i go to bed tonight with a full, full stomach, but a significantly lighter heart. not a settled heart yet, but one that is definitely lighter.
sweet dreams.
posted by laura at 12:00 AM
6 Comments:
I am thrilled that you and Jene have found each other again, and are going through your pregnancies together! What a relief - you seem to be picking up as though nothing happened.
My friend MarciNYC have known each other since my freshman year of college - 1989. After 9/11, I didn't call her for nearly a year because I didn't know what to say. I even remember that night getting through to her number, and her husband screaming in anger about who had done that, and I was trying to be logical, giving the terrorists the benefit of the doubt! See, I couldn't believe it was terrorists, that maybe it was a rumor and that the whole thing was a terrible accident... which was just more offensive to someone who had seen the whole thing happen before his eyes.
Anyway, we talk a lot now, but for a year AFTER that I apologized a lot, and she said she understood. But how could I talk about my stupid little dramas when THAT had happened right in front of them? I argued. But it was okay, she said.
Fast-forward to 2005. One miscarriage, then another. A few weeks after my second, she tells me that she hasn't been calling for the same reason - she doesn't know what to say. But I tell her that it's okay, that I'm doing fine, that I understand, that we don't need to talk about it if she doesn't want to.
True friendship can withstand the 'slings and arrows' of such misunderstandings - and they ARE misunderstandings, because that means that at least one person fails to understand. And that's not a personality flaw, it's simply a lack of comprehension due to a lack of experience (I didn't breathe in the ashes of the dead, Marci didn't have two miscarriages in rapid succession).
Last night I dreamed about MM, my former friend who gave me such a hard time with my first miscarriage. Yesterday was her oldest son's birthday and so I guess she was on my mind. In my dream, I was asking her about how her life has been over the past six months, and she was very argumentative. I woke up and knew that I missed the good times, but could never go back there. It wasn't a misunderstanding on my part, just on hers. And it was unapologetic and fatal. And I'm glad I woke up, in more ways than one.
May all your friendships be true ones, and long live you and Jene.
It is wonderful when we can reconnect with friends we thought we may have lost for good. Really happy to hear you have found her again and that it was such a good experience.
Faith *sigh* if you find it... let me know because what shred there was left has long vacated the premesis.
Glad you and Anna connected. Sometimes it is through simple misunderstandings that friends are made.
I am so glad you found a way to make some peace (even if only for a moment). I hope you are well rested today and still a little lighter of heart. Hugs, M
I think this is very brave. I am really impressed (and a little jealous) of how you seem to give people the benefit of the doubt. I say...nobody would talk about the dead baby so how dare they talk about he living one...but you say...people were uncomfortable and wanted to be happy for us and now they can be. I suppose it's a glass half empty/half full thing. I think your world has to be a little bit nicer place than mine.
That took a lot of guts to pick up the phone and try to rekindle your friendship with Jene and I'm so glad that it turned out to be worth the risk. Relationships like that are so special and it's heartbreaking when they unravel for one reason or another. Tragedy can be a real test of friendships. I had a few fall by the way side after we lost the baby, but fortunately they weren't close ones.
WRR spiritual faith, I never had much to lose, but I think I gained some faith in humanity during this whole horrible process. Most people are a lot kinder and stronger than we think and are just waiting for an opportunity to show that.
It took a lot of courage to call Jene. And I'm so pleased it was worth that risk. I don't know if I could have done it but I guess I will always remember that you did it and if I need to, maybe I will now:)
And do keep us updated about what you figure out God-wise. I never had much to lose there but I would like to know if there are logical answers that rise above the pack mentality and scare tactics.
May your heart remain lighter for as long as possible:)
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