Hi Emmett, I am going to match your long post but while I apologize for any harm I do. I think that is why we can’t write to you, what if we make it worse? I have a correction first and unsolicited endless commentary you might ignore because it probably won't help and it is not as good writing as Mike or you would like. I think no one really writes you back because we know we can't fix this. And no one wants to talk to everyone they don't know in public like this but whatever, for Mike, here I go. I was one of so many (apparently thousands of people!) who knew you gave your Dad more than enough while he was alive. There was no need for any saved-up chunks you were supposed to give him later. I honestly feel your Dad is really upset no one had more clearly clarified this for you. Your Dad absolutely had what he needed from you; so much so, it overflowed. It was in his twinkling eyes, mischievous grin. He would grab me and give me the biggest bear hugs whenever he was with you, just to give some of the love you two had away. He could not contain it. He was all light with you. I know I am supposed to send comfort but I also know I can't. I also suspect you are on to something that nothing will ever be the same, even if you are on the same streets. It is the unknown and it is scary, the uncanniness of being in the same place but in an entirely different reality without Mike. We all saw and we all know how close you both were, more like real twins, every time I saw you together, it was striking. Mike was only older in appearance but not in boyish exuberance. So now I have more to say specifically about the possum. My boyfriend died in 1994, July 24, about 5 pm. I wasn't there but when his friend came to tell me I slapped him across the face for thinking that a joke like that would be funny and chased him screaming out of the house. That is denial and to this day, I think about the trauma in my shock I created for that poor friend. Our brains want to help us, but I am not sure they always do. By the way, to even write or say my "boyfriend died" doesn't fit, maybe like "Dad died” perhaps in your case-- so trite, so incomplete, the relationship not properly conveyed nor described for its gravity. My boyfriend Jack’s heart just stopped. No reason, no overdose, no explanation. No cause of death on the death certificate. He was only 26. It made no sense. I just sat in the backyard of my apartment for days waiting for him to come back or to just die myself. Just sat there. My mom had to come and take care of my son. Maybe I wrote all of this to you before but the point is, I was half-dead like the possum. I was entirely dead in my soul and mind but with a breathing body, I no longer wanted to have. I can't give words to it. But that was me on the road, then; so maybe you are the possum, it is not outside of you but in you. At some point, I am not sure when, I had to acknowledge there will be two of me, the one before July 24 and the one that didn’t die after July 24. Two different people in the same body. One is eventually ultimately more grateful than the other for what I do have and the people left. You have Hussein, you have your friends and family. They will need you. But I couldn't see that part when I was in it, as you can’t likely from time to time when we are being a more than half-dead possum. Maybe I would have stayed that way forever if it wasn't for Jack's intervention. I think his spirit must have caught sight of me and been ashamed. He came to me in a dream-- maybe a month after he died. I was so happy to see him but he was furious. He was sitting in my living room so I ran to him, overjoyed-- but he just sprang up and yelled at me, pointing his finger: “THIS IS NOT ABOUT YOU!” and before I could even hold him, he stormed out, angrier than he had ever been in life, slamming the door so loud it woke me up from the dream. I could not believe I had seen him, so real, so alive but then he yelled at me! How could his spirit not even care what pain I was in or how I needed to still be dead ---with him, but he cared less. I suppose because he wanted me to go on living and caring for what he cared about and carry what I had of him on. Maybe your Dad sent you that possum? Do you think he might be telling you to accept he is really physically gone, but you aren’t? If you can carry the soul of a possum, you know your Dad is in there, too, right? No lights go out. Bodies die but the possum is not leaving, either, you still feel it. In Lakota way (Jack was adopted by a Lakota elder, but this is all being translated through my poor memory so forgive me for offending or getting the actual workings all wrong) you cut your hair, you get rid of everything that was theirs, you have a “give way” of all of it, or burn it and you make prayer ties to grieve. You just sit and mourn and you don’t have to do anything for a whole year except be sad. You are not expected to be who you were and you don’t have any physical tangible pieces of the person left. And there is one thing you can’t do. You can’t show the person’s spirit that died that you need them, or let them hear you calling because then their spirit ---it might get stuck in between the dead world and the living world, maybe also like your possum. Maybe they can’t make it to heaven to be with creation. Maybe it is this process, of mourning and forgetting as type of letting go that taught me in tiny steps how to go on living. I remember one day realizing that my whole life, I had looked out the car window and see the clear-cuts go by and be so sad. I never saw the trees that were left standing. But I did after I lost Jack. All the colors changed into neon green, so many different shades of green in the trees. Eventually, his death gave me a different me but with perhaps a clearer vision and sight of the whole. I try to be him who I loved so much and do the things he would have done and treasure the people he would have loved if he had been here but that might not be where you can be yet. Just know I am here even though you can't see me and I read your Dad’s light in you. Do you want to fold peace cranes with me for him? I would love to just sit and fold with you. Folding origami is a bit like the tobacco prayer ties I had to make for Jack, meditative and honest. Love, Linda.Richards@oregonstate.edu
Hi Emmett, I am going to match your long post but while I apologize for any harm I do. I think that is why we can’t write to you, what if we make it worse? I have a correction first and unsolicited endless commentary you might ignore because it probably won't help and it is not as good writing as Mike or you would like. I think no one really writes you back because we know we can't fix this. And no one wants to talk to everyone they don't know in public like this but whatever, for Mike, here I go. I was one of so many (apparently thousands of people!) who knew you gave your Dad more than enough while he was alive. There was no need for any saved-up chunks you were supposed to give him later. I honestly feel your Dad is really upset no one had more clearly clarified this for you. Your Dad absolutely had what he needed from you; so much so, it overflowed. It was in his twinkling eyes, mischievous grin. He would grab me and give me the biggest bear hugs whenever he was with you, just to give some of the love you two had away. He could not contain it. He was all light with you. I know I am supposed to send comfort but I also know I can't. I also suspect you are on to something that nothing will ever be the same, even if you are on the same streets. It is the unknown and it is scary, the uncanniness of being in the same place but in an entirely different reality without Mike. We all saw and we all know how close you both were, more like real twins, every time I saw you together, it was striking. Mike was only older in appearance but not in boyish exuberance. So now I have more to say specifically about the possum. My boyfriend died in 1994, July 24, about 5 pm. I wasn't there but when his friend came to tell me I slapped him across the face for thinking that a joke like that would be funny and chased him screaming out of the house. That is denial and to this day, I think about the trauma in my shock I created for that poor friend. Our brains want to help us, but I am not sure they always do. By the way, to even write or say my "boyfriend died" doesn't fit, maybe like "Dad died” perhaps in your case-- so trite, so incomplete, the relationship not properly conveyed nor described for its gravity. My boyfriend Jack’s heart just stopped. No reason, no overdose, no explanation. No cause of death on the death certificate. He was only 26. It made no sense. I just sat in the backyard of my apartment for days waiting for him to come back or to just die myself. Just sat there. My mom had to come and take care of my son. Maybe I wrote all of this to you before but the point is, I was half-dead like the possum. I was entirely dead in my soul and mind but with a breathing body, I no longer wanted to have. I can't give words to it. But that was me on the road, then; so maybe you are the possum, it is not outside of you but in you. At some point, I am not sure when, I had to acknowledge there will be two of me, the one before July 24 and the one that didn’t die after July 24. Two different people in the same body. One is eventually ultimately more grateful than the other for what I do have and the people left. You have Hussein, you have your friends and family. They will need you. But I couldn't see that part when I was in it, as you can’t likely from time to time when we are being a more than half-dead possum. Maybe I would have stayed that way forever if it wasn't for Jack's intervention. I think his spirit must have caught sight of me and been ashamed. He came to me in a dream-- maybe a month after he died. I was so happy to see him but he was furious. He was sitting in my living room so I ran to him, overjoyed-- but he just sprang up and yelled at me, pointing his finger: “THIS IS NOT ABOUT YOU!” and before I could even hold him, he stormed out, angrier than he had ever been in life, slamming the door so loud it woke me up from the dream. I could not believe I had seen him, so real, so alive but then he yelled at me! How could his spirit not even care what pain I was in or how I needed to still be dead ---with him, but he cared less. I suppose because he wanted me to go on living and caring for what he cared about and carry what I had of him on. Maybe your Dad sent you that possum? Do you think he might be telling you to accept he is really physically gone, but you aren’t? If you can carry the soul of a possum, you know your Dad is in there, too, right? No lights go out. Bodies die but the possum is not leaving, either, you still feel it. In Lakota way (Jack was adopted by a Lakota elder, but this is all being translated through my poor memory so forgive me for offending or getting the actual workings all wrong) you cut your hair, you get rid of everything that was theirs, you have a “give way” of all of it, or burn it and you make prayer ties to grieve. You just sit and mourn and you don’t have to do anything for a whole year except be sad. You are not expected to be who you were and you don’t have any physical tangible pieces of the person left. And there is one thing you can’t do. You can’t show the person’s spirit that died that you need them, or let them hear you calling because then their spirit ---it might get stuck in between the dead world and the living world, maybe also like your possum. Maybe they can’t make it to heaven to be with creation. Maybe it is this process, of mourning and forgetting as type of letting go that taught me in tiny steps how to go on living. I remember one day realizing that my whole life, I had looked out the car window and see the clear-cuts go by and be so sad. I never saw the trees that were left standing. But I did after I lost Jack. All the colors changed into neon green, so many different shades of green in the trees. Eventually, his death gave me a different me but with perhaps a clearer vision and sight of the whole. I try to be him who I loved so much and do the things he would have done and treasure the people he would have loved if he had been here but that might not be where you can be yet. Just know I am here even though you can't see me and I read your Dad’s light in you. Do you want to fold peace cranes with me for him? I would love to just sit and fold with you. Folding origami is a bit like the tobacco prayer ties I had to make for Jack, meditative and honest. Love, Linda.Richards@oregonstate.edu
Sending you love, Emmett. ♥️