vol. 5 issue 14
vol. 5 AOS 12
Greetings,
Recently, I watched unseen as a man lifted the lid of a Dumpster in the back alley of an apartment complex. The scene was unfolding across the street from where I sat upon the roof-top deck of a local gathering place.
So often, the rooftop, with its sweeping views of the surrounding mountains, is empty, much to my dismay, but also delight.
It was late, even though it was light, but the days in Montana during the summer are long.
I was there to cry.
Mid-sob, I saw him. I became fixated: youngish – early to mid-30s, gym-toned physique, designer jeans, backpack slung over one shoulder, a go-cup with a straw in the other hand. This guy had it going on. He set the cup down on the street, placed both hands on the rim of the enormous bin and peered in.
An actual Dumpster diver, I thought, welcoming the distraction.
He hoisted himself up and in.
Clothes started flying out of the bin: sweatpants, work shirts, t-shirts, bras, raggedy sneakers, and finally, out flew a complete fire fighter’s suit, with reflector tape.
The man hoisted himself back out and began sorting. One pile for No, another for Yes. His scavenging complete, the man tossed his rejects back into the bin, the others he sushi-rolled into his backpack until it bulged. The fire fighter’s suit wouldn’t fit, so he gathered it up in his free arm, grabbed his drink, and sauntered, head high, toward the river.
Would he sell his finds, or distribute them as gifts, I wondered. Those fire fighter togs, though. Those would have some value in these parts.
He’d left the lid of the Dumpster open, I noted. I stared at it, recalling how it used to embarrass my now ex-husband that I also could be so eager to dive into other’s trash in search of hand-me-downs that, with a little love and attention, I believed I could turn into treasure.
The darkness at last had closed in. I was no longer crying. I left.
I thought of this incident the a few days later while making a cherry pie. The cherries here are abundant, dark, juicy, and sweet. I love them.
Because most of my five-plus decades’ worth of belongings are still in storage back in Tennessee, I do not have on hand my favorite cherry pitter, a twelve-dollar thing of beauty I bought online the summer my erstwhile daughter-in-law took me cherry picking in upstate New York. I’d arrived back home to Washington so laden with cherries, I had to bake several pies and clafoutis, and still there were bowls enough for snacking.
So, I bought a pitter from the only place around that seems to keep them in stock. Strange that, considering the abundance of cherries in this town.
Also, annoying because where I bought it is more of a boutique than a gadget shop, meaning the pitter’s high cost was directly proportional to its unnecessary complexity.
Even after watching several videos online to educate myself on how to use the over-priced contraption, I gave up and decided to pit the nearly two pounds of cherries by hand with a paring knife. I put on lunch-lady gloves to avoid developing a satanic-looking cherry juice stain on my hands.
As I pitted, I thought about my troubles.
Very soon, it will be the one-year anniversary of the death of the person who loved and knew me best in my life. We’d been a couple for nearly a decade until he decided I’d be better off without him. He listed the reasons why: so many things I had to prove, so much life to live, too much energy for his aging self, nearly two decades older than myself. He’d only get in my way. Not so, I said. Yes, he said.
A few years later, alone in the death throes of illness, in need of a ride to the hospital, my former lover asked me to help him. I was married by then. My husband objected: you’re my wife, he’d said. I was scared. I hung back, told my former partner to call his daughters. I thought it was best for everyone.
My best friend and former lover died on my wedding anniversary.
By then, my husband had confessed that despite the vigorous effort he’d put into pursuing me, he’d stopped loving me nearly as soon as we had married. He had no explanation nearly as soon as we’d started our life together, he grew so bored, he couldn’t even be bothered to touch me. I’d cried myself to sleep so many nights.
All that freedom I’d been given by a man whose vision for me was so large he’d thought it best if he got himself out of the way, and I’d surrendered it to a man who treated me as an acquisition.
How could I have been so stupid? In the end, I never really got to say goodbye. I let him down. I feel so ashamed. Will I ever forgive myself?
The divorce was settled; I was to receive alimony. But after five perfidious years, there was financial fall out yet to address, and I was strapped. Plus, my credit was now crap.
I moved in with my parents. They aren’t people who see the world the way I do. I tried on occasion to offer my perspective, but ultimately, I repelled discussion because it was fruitless. Besides, I had so little energy.
I don’t care, I said.
“You don’t care!” It was yelled at me by one. “Selfishness! It’s what’s wrong with this country,” Concluded the disgusted other. It escalated. I fled.
Ultimately, at the invitation from long-lost kin, I arrived in Montana at midnight. I was unemployed, had $29.14 in my wallet, a headache, and a hopeful heart.
I immediately applied what skills I had to earn money and started my life over.
As the bowl of cherries grew fuller, my neck and the back of my head began to feel tight, as though they were shrink wrapped. I wanted to rub away the discomfort, but I didn’t want to remove the stained gloves. I kept pitting.
I thought about my week. A colleague had stunned me by shouting at me, and not for the first time. The outburst was in response to my request for “this” and not “all these other things” I’d been given instead. Those things, I noted, I had never asked for and didn’t need in order for the job to get done. But there were so many things I didn’t appreciate! My asking for what I’d actually needed, I was told, was insulting. You are so mean, she’d said. And selfish!
I wondered as I pitted, Am I selfish? I’d explained my request was a matter of professionalism. And I thought I had been neutral about it. Maybe I should have been more exercised. Maybe an emotional conflagration was the other party’s desired outcome.
It’s just that don’t have it in me. And I don’t want to find it in me, either. Anyway, allowing me to have what I asked for wouldn’t have cost anything except pride, I suppose. It would have made my job easier, too.
Is that selfish?
Another string of discordant moments replayed themselves in my mind’s eye. My Caucasian kin had informed me that on account of my being white and privileged, I’ll never understand what it’s like to be discounted. I was dispatched to consider my white, selfish entitlement.
Soon, I received from her an actual list of all the ways I had proven an untrustworthy disappointment since my arrival.
I considered the list. I considered explaining the context in which all my co-called crimes had occurred, how I disagreed with the assessment. How I was doing all that I could to survive, to earn my keep, to be self-supporting as quickly as possible. Why not take the full measure, which included my being loving, if not perfect?
I considered pointing out all the ways in which I had tried to follow the rules, to show my gratitude, to respond to the constant demands for attention, how I had demonstrated in the most loving ways I knew how, to find ways to serve and to please. There were many.
In the end, I replied only that it made me sad to have proven such a disappointment.
There was more. It was now apparent, I was told, that the reason I had been invited here was to help my host recognize and heal all the unprocessed shit from a recent failed relationship.
I don’t embrace the colonial thinking behind the statement, “White lives matter, too.” But I do like to think I matter, and that my pain might have some meaning. Had I known I would be objectified as White Privileged Therapy Barbie, I might have thought twice before travelling all this way. Maybe not. It’s hard to know, as this kind of thing, well — stupid. It’s been a pattern in my life.
I felt set up, and powerless. I decided it was pointless to invite a quarrel. My pain doesn’t have to matter to everyone.
Since arriving in Montana, I have met many people, but I really have only made one friend. Not a pal, but someone who is simpatico in a way that supports what has been askew within me. She is a widow. She had invited me to come see her garden, and in particular, her stupendously enormous lilac entwined with a just as enormous barberry.
I was staggered by the size of what ordinarily are mere shrubs, but were here as big as trees, and by how their deep red and green foliage had woven the two plant beings together.
They were a living riff on the Greek myth of Baucis and Philemon, the tale of the elderly couple who, because they were the only ones in Phrygia to welcome the gods Zeus and Hermes when they arrived disguised as peasants, were gifted eternal togetherness as an oak and a linden, forever entwined after death to stand together as guardians of the temple.
My friend also had a beautiful sculpture in her garden, marked as a memorial to her late husband.
When I saw it, I began to cry.
Dismayed, the woman listened to my story. She shared her own. I felt seen. She agreed with me I had been stupid. Having my stupidity verified was a relief. It was cleansing, even.
The pitting over, the pie in the oven, I considered the useless cherry pitter contraption. I cleaned it, dried it, and replaced it to its box. Then I put it in the trash. I wondered if the Dumpster diver or someone like him would find it and think it was a neat little treasure.
I rubbed my neck and head. The pain was now awful. It might immobilize me if I didn’t get help, I figured. I found the number for a sports massage therapist. I called her. She had time to see me.
As she practiced some kind of lug nut screw-in maneuver into my trapezoids, it hurt like hell, but I said nothing, didn’t flinch, breathed through it. This seemed to worry her. How could I tolerate so much pain?
It does hurt, I said.
Yes, but you aren’t complaining, she said. She wondered how I could suffer it.
Practice, I said.
When I got home, loose and feeling more open, I had a slice of pie along with some cardamom ice cream. It was so good, I nearly cried. I do that when food presents me with the perfect harmony of color, taste, texture, and craft; I cry real tears. I even did so on my honeymoon with the man I would soon apparently bore to such a level of distraction, he could only be brought into focus by hours of sitting alone on the couch scribbling through multiple pages of sudoku, while I worked what some days were three jobs, plus taking care of him and the dog.
Like I said, stupid.
On that trip, we had gone to dinner in a restaurant in a Brazilian rainforest. In my first ever bite of moqueca, a fish stew finished with a slick of palm oil, I tasted the thoughtfully balanced fresh/salty/sweet/warm/smoothness and burst into tears.
The host was so concerned, he summoned the chef who cautiously approached our table. I hugged him and told him I’d never had such a beautiful fish stew. Thank you, thank you, I said. The chef was relieved. He hugged me back.
While finishing my slice of pie, I considered: So many cherries. Why couldn’t I find a decent cherry pitter? Maybe it was me. Maybe this one worked just fine. Maybe I am too stupid. I was certainly absent-minded. I had even made a stupid accounting error on the job. I immediately corrected it, but I felt ridiculous and ashamed.
I placed my dishes in the sink and retrieved the cherry pitter from the garbage. With a black ink Sharpie, I wrote in neat block letters across the box:
“If I knew how this thing worked, I would have kept it. If you take it, you’re on your own.”
Then I replaced it to the trash, tied up the bag, carried it outside to the bin, and wheeled it to the curb.
It is now a month or so later. The anniversary of my losses has arrived. I had put this piece aside because it felt too vulnerable. And anyway, my concentration was starting to fray. Maybe none of this made any sense.
Then I remembered that resisting pain dulls the faculties. I suddenly felt not only dull, but so alone. I called my wise friend with the lover-like trees. We set a date to meet.
When the time came, circumstances rendered me without reliable transportation. From the back seat of my ride share, I called ahead to my friend to explain that I would be arriving earlier than planned. It discombobulated her. She told me so.
I felt badly about this. I had hoped to be considerate by not being late but had instead created the opposite effect. We discussed it, it was a clean exchange. I had missed the mark, but she didn’t punish me. How novel. The matter was dropped as we moved on to the rest of the evening.
I shared a bit about my consternations. I suppose I don’t really care, I said.
You mean you’re hurt, she said.
Startled by the frank truth, I agreed.
She continued: You care very much, but the people you’ve cared for don’t see it, or won’t let you know they do. That hurts. You’d rather say you don’t feel it, she said.
Perhaps because there is nothing this woman needs nor wants from me, she sees me clearest of all, I realize now, as I reconstruct the moment.
But there is more to it than hurt.
I’ve spent much of this year without an actual home, even if I have not had to sleep “rough”. I have been alone, virtually penniless, terrified, and most of all, heartbroken, literally thousands of miles from the region I have always called home. I have used the community food bank, the laundry mat, ridden a bike I bought at the pawn shop to get myself to jobs when my other transportation arrangements failed. I’ve been scammed twice, and more than once have worried for my physical safety.
I have hiked the mountainsides flanking the town, and floated the river, all the while howling, crying, and remonstrating with the gods over the love, not the things, that I have lost, sometimes until my voice was hoarse.
Every morning, I say aloud to myself that I will get through the day. Every night I remind myself aloud that I did indeed succeed at making it through another day and so I deserve to rest. And it will all be alright. And it has been.
There have been many, many people who have helped me, and who have not asked nor taken anything in return. They have reminded me of how to be present for others in ways that are not transactional, like emotional rescuing ultimately is, but simply to be honest and kind.
I think about my old life. I don’t long for it, but I am informed by it. I remember how I was there in the background as a psychiatry journal editor when it was decided to make grief a clinical diagnosis, treatable with medication.
I never was easy with that. To pathologize the hole that grief eats in our hearts is to say there is only one true way to grieve. But that hole is personal, it is not standard.
My loved one dead and gone, my marriage turned to dust, the luxuries stripped away, the promises broken, and the bitter regret I feel over my self-abandonment: this is the shape of the hole that could only be filled by me carefully and intently pouring myself into it, doing whatever I must, and with dignity.
On this anniversary of all that I have lost, I feel that the heat and pressure of survival has alloyed with my grief, and tempered into a steel hardened within me. The hole is filling; I have discovered I will not break.
As for the hurt, people can and will surprise you. It reinforces what I always seem to return to: nasty is not our human set point, love is. And it is to that set point we will eventually orient, if not in this life, then another.
Since I began this piece over a month ago, my ex-husband has initiated conversations where he has said and admitted things that in my experience are only possible after sincere introspection. He is sorry. He knows what he did. Will I return to him? No. Can we reconcile? Of course. Is any of this really his fault? Yes, for certain. But I was the one who was stupid. To not forgive him is to imprison myself. I have enough regrets already.
I end where I began: the Dumpster.
It occurs to me that Dumpster diving is not that different from people-pleasing. You rummage around in someone else’s junk, expecting that there is at least one thing worth the effort, something you might want, or best of all, something you actually need.
But even if you think you can love your nifty little find to luster, the fact remains, it’s in the trash because someone else didn’t want to own it.
If they don’t care about it, should you?
I had gone to the roof that night to grieve but ended up distracted by a man pawing through others’ refuse. I found I couldn’t actively grieve and focus on the preoccupations of someone else oblivious to my pain.
That night I let myself be distracted. Tonight, on the anniversary commemorating all that I have lost, I choose to grieve, which is to say, I am choosing at last to care very much about me.
Rest in peace, Peter.
Below, the eulogy I delivered for Peter C. Campbell, at his memorial in Philadelphia, PA. October 15, 2022.
Think what you will about the afterlife, but since his passing, Peter has wanted to connect with me as he did in life: in ways he might be of service. Who doesn’t want a good guardian angel?
So, recently, I called upon him.
I am awful with GPS. I hate being told what to do. But I am also awful at figuring out directions on my own.
In this instance, I was lost, nearly late, and in need of a good parking space. I remembered Peter’s George Costanza-like obsession with finding the perfect spot, which I needed because this was a very important appointment I was about to screw up if I didn’t get there on time, so I entreated Peter to help.
In my head, I heard, take two rights, and there you go. And indeed, I did so, and just in front of the building was a spot. I pulled in, paid the meter through the app, which I actually had on my phone already, thanked Peter, and dashed to my appointment, just in time. An hour later, I returned to find a ticket flapping on my windshield.
I said out loud, “What the hell?”
“Just wait. Read the ticket,” was the reply I got in my head.
It was a $40 fine for nonpayment of the meter. So, I took a screenshot of my receipt, noted the address of the traffic court, and off I went there in a state of high dudgeon.
A lovely, happy, smiling civil servant sorted me out and told me I had probably made the guy parked in front of me very happy because I had paid for his spot by entering the wrong meter number into my phone app. She gladly voided my ticket, and bid me a good day.
“Never let an opportunity to thank a civil servant go to waste,” I heard Peter say in my head, laughing as he did so.
He was right of course, about the goodness of a system designed around service, and he always assumed the service one would receive from happy bureaucrats would be good until proven otherwise. As an American raised by strivers, this had not been taught to me as a set point.
This ethos of trusting bureaucrats or anyone in a service profession until they gave you a reason not to, formed the backbone of so many of our discussions and even arguments. They often began while discussing the news of the day, which he loved to do, then they jumped the tracks to political philosophy, and ultimately ended up being about one’s perceived station in life.
One reason Peter trusted bureaucrats, was that he saw them as hard workers who could have done other things with their lives, but chose to serve instead, and all without the expectation of praise. The American obsession with status did not appeal to him. Our energy and innovation did. Peter was allergic to ponce.
In this, as in so many ways, Peter was classically Scottish.
Whereas he had a reflexive high regard for civil servants, as a proud Celt, he always looked askance at the English, especially if they were from London and its environs, as he found that was where in the UK there was a preponderance of ponce. That is, unless they were passing a soccer ball down the pitch during an EPL match, or cheering for such activity. Then every Englishman was a Brit, and all Brits could surely unite around a good derby or a match against Barcelona.
That being said, Peter wasn’t anti-English so much as he was pro-underdog, and in Britain, the Scots have tended to be the underdogs to the English.
And yet, one of Peter’s most admirable qualities was that he did not have a chip on his shoulder. He did not think he was owed anything. He had nothing to prove, he just reveled in watching people surprise themselves, in meeting the demands of a challenging situation.
He would be your greatest and most patient ally in times of duress if your approach was earnest and humble. Unexpected triumph over adversity fascinated him. He also excelled at it, even if he would never admit it, even to himself.
This fascination with overcoming obstacles certainly informed his startling ability to watch with rapt attention, every single sports contest ever broadcast. BMX racing, X games, skiing, soccer –aka fitbah, NFL football, baseball, swimming, the Tour de France, golf, track and field, shinty, lacrosse, curling, archery, poker…it did not matter. He wasn’t watching it because he had nothing else to do, he was watching it because to him, this was just about the best thing he could be doing.
He didn’t just watch sports, he keenly analyzed every match he ever saw. For him it was like literary criticism: where was the meaning in the poetry of the motion, and how was it structured?
It satisfied his love of a good story, and especially an epic quest. With sports, he could always find a compelling plotline, a hero, and an adversary. The activity itself wasn’t the point; whether a person had the necessary grit and faith in his or her abilities to meet the challenge, was.
For Peter, the greatest achievement in life wasn’t to achieve, in the sense of reaching above one’s status. It was to punch above one’s weight.
This ethos also informed his interest in military history, and in particular the American Civil War, the American Indian Wars, and of course, Scottish battles with the English.
Two of my most treasured memories of travelling with Peter are the times we went to Gettysburg and to the Alamo. We did not rush our way through the history of each battle, but patiently took in every detail. Whether or not the causes of the battles were just or right was not the point. For Peter, it was about the passion and the consequences associated with one’s sworn duty to serve.
After we’d read every word — and I mean every word — of the historical displays, we traced the footsteps of the soldiers and the martyrs. We walked Pickett’s Charge. We hiked through Devil’s Den. We covered every inch of The Alamo.
Peter was by no means religious. He had no time or interest in religion. But to suffer because someone needed you to? To forego oneself in service to another, even if it hurt, even if it might kill you? This, he understood. He had only to believe in you. Then he was your soldier, no matter the odds.
The greatest compliment he said I ever paid him was when, after a day spent moving a bunch of my belongings from one place to another, with his help, I lovingly called him “reliable”. That I had understood that about him gratified him deeply, he’d said.
Of course, there were times in his life when duty was simply duty. Not everything was a cause. But when it did rise to that level, Peter didn’t make it into a crusade, but an act of devotion. To be able to serve, and to serve according to where you were most needed and according to how you were best suited was to act with honor, in his mind.
To be prepared for the test, because you could be damned sure the test would come, that was the way to peace for Peter.
Indeed, what king or general has ever conquered and calmed the land without troops prepared in their hearts and minds to execute any order?
To know one’s place and to accept it was never an act of “settling” in Peter’s mind. It was not being mediocre. It was the opposite: for Peter, it was the way to love.
The last time I saw Peter was after he’d concluded that my life in Washington was about to get rather exciting, which I suppose it did -- too much so for the likes of him, a man who fretted that he with only half a neck due to his first bout with cancer, and a tendency to sneeze when he ate, showering himself with bits of his meal, would mean he would be seen as a freak by others in my milieu. I thought he was being ridiculous, but he was adamant.
Which is to say that Peter did not always get it right, but getting it right was not the point; acting in accordance with the ideal he’d decided as truth, and serving that ideal with love, was.
In this way, he was the most stubborn – and successful – person I have ever known.
Our parting, for him, was an act of service, even if it was an act of grit that left him sorely tested, which I know it did, because in time he told me it had. I know it also broke my heart to be so loved.
But he left me with such a treasure: no one has ever loved me more honestly or with more dedication than Peter loved me. He always knew his place. It is, was, and always will be, right here, in my heart. Thank you for being my reliable man, Peter. I miss you, and I love you.
Peace and thank you for caring.
Whitney
Oh, McBike. I just wanna give you a hug. Always love and peace to you.
Thank you for sharing this, dear Whitney, and how wise. We can all help you hold your grief and your love when you allow us the opportunity, as you have here. xo