Flowing with the Go (7 page)

Learning to communicate after a loss is like that strange place. So unknown, so full of caution and heightened senses. Everything spoken, or not, has that annoying vocal tilt at the end, the invisible question mark. “Don't hesitate to call?” “Lemme know if you need anything?” “I feel sad?” “I'm doing okay?” “I don't need anything?” “She's in a better place?” “She wouldn't want you to feel that way?” It's true that most people don't know what to say. But now I do. I've been on the receiving end more than anyone should ever have to endure. Plenty of people would have been better off not saying anything to me. At some point, I learned to just nod, realizing that at times, it was more about them feeling better.

And communicating within your own family is the most difficult. That is the darkest-of-dark strange places. You don't fear bumping into the elephant in the room. You fear that it takes up all the space and breathes all the oxygen and will squish you against the wall when you acknowledge it. And you know you need to talk about it, but you can't. In one way, it feels like not talking out of respect for the “everyone grieves differently” adage. And in another way, it feels like not talking because you don't know how. I'm from a family of talkers. I grew up with each of us talking about our day at the dinner table and the freedom to ask questions of the speaker. We asked “why,” “how,” and “what happened next?” Maybe I married a quiet guy to get away from all that inquisition. Chuck operates under the mindset of “if they want to tell me, they will.” He is not nosy or pushy; he is pensive and reflective—always. I am pensive and reflective only after I have reached peak emotional output. He says I talk enough for the both of us, so he just listens. When he does talk, his words are thoughtful and intelligent. They always mean something.

After Carly died, it was hard to talk. There might be a thousand reasons why that could have applied at any given time. I didn't talk at first because I was almost always crying. I think that is why no one else talked, because if I wasn't crying, they feared that what they were going to say would trigger another shower of tears. We didn't talk because we were all in pain. When you are hurting badly, you go into personal survival mode, not caretaker mode. I remember talking to Kathleen about this in one of our earlier sessions. When I really thought about it, not talking in our house—although I understood why we weren't—made me lonely. But as soon as Kathleen offered up, “Why don't you coach Chuck and the boys on how to—,” I cut her off. “No. Look, I can barely take care of myself right now. I do not have the emotional energy to teach someone else how to talk to me.” I felt like saying, “They should all just get up and go to counseling too.”

And maybe they should have gone to counseling. I wasn't going to force it on anyone. Chuck and the boys did go see Kathleen once with me. The boys, who were thirteen and ten at the time, said very little. I remember Eason putting his head way down inside his hoodie and pulling the strings so we couldn't see him. Carson lay across my lap and just shrugged his shoulders whenever Kathleen asked him a question. I did learn a lot about how Chuck was feeling, though. Somehow it was easier for him to talk to a third person in front of me than it was to talk to me in front of me. I get that. What most people don't know is that Chuck's mom had died the day before Carly had. Any grieving to take place for Mary, Gramma May-May, got put on hold.

Chuck's mom had a stroke that left her debilitated and in the hospital for a couple of weeks. Things were touch-and-go and not looking good when Carly and I left for North Carolina. The kids knew that Gramma was in the hospital, but I'm not sure they comprehended that she might not ever come back out of it. Mary was the absolute salt-of-the-earth person. From the day I met her, I never heard her utter a negative word about anyone. She was the Gramma who would let you eat Cheetos and drink soda at ten a.m. in her recliner and who would play endless rounds of Clue and Uno.

Carly was old enough to know that Mary's condition was grave and constantly asked for updates. Chuck called me around east coast dinnertime to tell me that his mom had passed away. We were eating what would be our last team dinner. The look on my face must have told Carly something was up, and she asked about Gramma. I froze up. I didn't know what to tell her. I didn't know if we should fly back home or play the tournament. If we stayed, would she be able to play if she was upset about Mary? So I just said, “She is hanging in there,” figuring I would let it all gel and deal with it the next day.

Later that night, which would be early in the morning the next day, Chuck and I lost our daughter too. I believe as strongly as I have ever believed anything that Mary died right before Carly so that she could be there waiting for her when she arrived. She would be there so that Carly wouldn't be scared. She would be there to hold her, welcome her, and tell her everything was going to be okay. And that comforts me. It comforts me, although I want to be the one to hold her and tell her everything is going to be okay. And that thought puts me in the strange, dark place again . . . my arms extended with longing, reaching for one more hug that I can't find.

Did we all eventually learn to communicate better? I think we learned to communicate in a way that worked for us. When we weren't communicating at first as a family, I found other people to communicate with—friends mostly; sometimes people who attached themselves to me, then left; but no group meetings, which never appealed to me. Perhaps I spent too much time with them talking, crying, and sharing stories about Carly. It was a while before I learned that this was distancing me from my family. I think I sought out these people out because they were emotionally available and felt safe. They were hurting too, but in my mind, could never hurt with the same deep pain I was—the pain that comes with losing someone you have watched grow up, shared a home with, and experienced the gamut of emotions with, in the way only a parent or sibling can. My older brother said, “I can't believe it. This is what happens to other people, something you read about in the paper.” I guess I am “other people” now. My younger brother couldn't be near me at Carly's memorial. It was just too hard for him to see me. He didn't know what to say. He himself was devastated and trying to learn to communicate. He was in survival mode. No excuses, no blame, no what-if, no if-only, no going back.

I have learned from Chuck to be more pensive and reflective. I can understand that I did—we all did—what we had to do to navigate a dark and scary place. And in the end we found each other, and we found a way out.

16
Takedowns, Breakdowns

I
look back on my journey, and I wonder if part of the reason I stuck with Jiu-Jitsu was because it allowed me to feel again. Before I started training, I did all kinds of things to numb myself from the emotional pain. Today I can tell you that numbing the pain only makes it worse when you finally feel it. Before Jiu-Jitsu, I did my share of not-so-positive things, trying to feel good again, to feel anything again, to see if there was part of me left somewhere. With Jiu-Jitsu, I found myself not only feeling again, but feeling plenty.

Much of that feeling came from the pain of takedowns class. I started going to this particular class because I didn't know anything about it (curiosity can kill a cat here), and that particular night was one I had free. How bad could it be? I hated takedowns class pretty much right from the first clinch and head drag. Okay, hate is a strong word: I had great dislike for takedowns class. But I still went. It was at this class that I broke three toes (my own), got the wind knocked out of me several times, and once was covered with so many bruises my massage therapist stopped counting and called Child Protective Services. (Just kidding!) Once a guy with a Judo background threw me down seven (7!) times in a row, each time right after I got up from the last time. Not a lot of people did the takedowns class, and I could see why.

I did takedowns class for about one and a half years . . . until they started a Women's BJJ and Self-Defense class the same night, and I had to stick up for the other ovaries in the gym. I know that I know a lot of takedowns—more than several of the guys at the gym, but I don't execute them very well in competition. That is a different matter all together.

I can now admit that one of the initial reasons I stuck with takedowns was for the pain, as sick as that sounds. Physical pain is nothing compared to emotional pain. If I was aching, then I was alive, right? I would be so sore I couldn't roll over in bed, so sore the bottoms of my feet would hurt. Places I didn't know could hurt would hurt. But I would just sort of smile as I limped and groaned along my merry way. In class, people are throwing you to the mat every which way from Sunday, and even though they taught me how to fall, I resembled Humpty Dumpty in falling ability. And I still went back. I didn't realize it then, but I had turned a corner and faced my fears by taking on the challenge of that class. Maybe it was because it gave me a sense of accomplishment to go—even though I never really wanted to be there—to tell myself, “You did it again. You got through.” That class scared me. My husband would be shaking his head every time I left the house or showed him a new injury. Somehow he must have known that I thought I needed this. It's that warrior-wife thing again.

17
The Choke

B
efore I started training at Jiu-Jitsu, my idea of choking was something you did on a hotdog, requiring the Heimlich maneuver. In Jiu-Jitsu, choking your opponent is one way to get him to submit. There are all kinds of chokes: baseball choke, collar choke, Ezekial choke, Darce choke, paper cutter choke; chokes using the lapel of the gi; chokes that use the gi skirt; and who knows, probably the belt too. There are blood chokes that make you pass out because they press on the carotid arteries, soft-tissue chokes, and airway chokes. Sometimes you don't feel like you are being choked; it just hurts, so you tap.

One of my vivid memories of choking took place early in my training. During one of the sparring sessions, I was partnered with T, a nice guy often referred to as “The Energizer Bunny” because he had the frightening ability to go at a wicked speed for a very long time. I don't remember the speed as much as I remember him trying to choke me from behind for a very long time. I do remember trying to fend him off and hang on until the timer went off . . . probably two minutes, but it felt like twenty. When the timer beeped, he let go, said “Good job,” and moved on to find another victim. I, on the other hand, had been shaking so badly I went into the lobby to compose myself.

At some point, Coach came out and sat beside me. “Are you okay?”

In between breaths of hyperventilation, I replied, “He . . . was . . .trying to . . . choke . . . . me really . . . hard.” I'm sure that Coach was half-laughing, but I wouldn't look him in the eye to find out. “Well,” he continued, “now when you compete, you will know how it really feels, and you'll be ready. You are feeling all that adrenaline and the adrenaline dump.”

I didn't know what an adrenaline dump was, but I barely heard anything after he said, “Now when you compete . . .”

What?
I was thinking,
Are you nuts? I'm not even sure I think this
is fun.
All that came out my mouth, however, was: “Yeah, sure.”

I learned later that an adrenaline dump is the aftereffect of a big adrenaline rush. The adrenaline rushes in to prep you for “fight or flight.” Afterward, if you haven't learned to control the rush, you will feel an overwhelming fatigue as the adrenaline leaves the bloodstream. It felt more like posttraumatic stress disorder to me.

Besides being choked literally, a person can choke figuratively. In athletics, this can be described as a loss of confidence, an inability to move, an increase in anxiety, loss of emotional control, and waves of doubt. Interestingly, I was suffering all of those symptoms as I learned to cope with grief. I had lost my focus. I engaged in negative self-talk that led to surges of anxiety. My anxiety made it difficult to breathe fluidly or be calm, left me nervous, weak, and shaky. In sports, choking is fairly unpredictable, which makes it so scary. If you've choked once, you are never sure when you will choke again.

My form of choking—choking on life—was rather predictable, but it was still very scary because I couldn't control it. Would I ever be able to put myself on the line—or on the mat? When you choke, it's embarrassing. You feel guilty, that you have let everyone down. I can see now how I let these feelings (the fear of choking on my grief) rob me of my motivation to move forward in my life.

Grief chokes you just like I was being choked on the mat by my training partner. Over time, I have learned to apply the survival tactics from the mat to my life. You have to hang on as long as you can because in life you do not know when the timer will go off. Be present. Embrace the rush of adrenaline and control it. Think about what is happening now, not about what might happen later or what just happened. Manage your energy so you can maintain it at a constant level. Control your breathing by slowing it down. You have to relax and reduce muscle tension, allowing your ribs to expand and let the air in. Lastly, turn up the volume on positive self-talk.

Employing all of these strategies takes practice. I have learned to be gentler with myself when I deviate from positive practice. And I have learned some defenses when the choke comes on hard. Grief is a battle. Fight to win—don't fight not to lose.

18
Stay Connected
to the Earth