Day: March 29, 2018

Farmaz is eight years old, he is from Afghanistan, and is a student in the RISSE after school program in Albany, N.Y. His father was killed in Afghanistan under circumstances I have decided not to talk about here. He was a supporter of the United States. and paid for it with his life.

He has been in this country a little under one year. He lives with his mother and sister in a small apartment in Albany. They do not own a car.

His family is on our Grocery Project list, we are bringing them food in two weeks. Farmaz’s mother works in two minimum wage jobs, she is working as hard s she can to keep up. She did not imagine being a single mother in a foreign land.

A few months ago, my friend Ali asked Farmaz what he wanted for his eighth birthday. Ali and I have an arrangement, if he sees a refugee child in need, he lets me know, and if we can help them, we do.

The boy, intensely shy – he rarely speaks – eventually blurted out that he only wanted one thing for his birthday: a digital camera, one that can be plugged into a school computer, like he had seen once before. He knew, he said, that this was not possible.

Ali remembered this.

Last week, while we were talking on the phone, I told Ali I was going to buy three new beginnier digital cameras for RISSE, they were highly regarded and inexpensive and had hundreds of five-star reviews on Amazon and elsewhere.  Many of the RISSE children, love to take photos, they borrow their teacher’s cameras. They were, according to the reviews and media stories, the perfect camera for an eight year-old. There was even a camouflage style model.

I ordered it for Farmaz. I bought this and the two other cameras with money donated by the Army Of Good.

I can imagine the children’s photos all over the wall, and all over RISSE’s Facebook Page. Perhaps we can have a photo show that is all theirs.

I bought three different models, one for each of the three classes that run in the after school every afternoon.

Today, I went to Albany to meet with Farmaz, and to bring him his camera.  He was so shy, he couldn’t look at me at first. Ali leaned over and whispered in his ear: “do you remember what you told me  you wanted for a birthday present?”

Farmaz’s eyes widened, and he looked at me, then the bag I was holding in disbelief. He nodded yes. Well, there it is, in the bag.

Farmaz took the camera out of the bag – I had loaded up the batteries, inserted the digital memory card – and handed it to  him. The power was on, the camera  was ready.

He turned it to me, ran his fingers over the back in the way children do with cell phones and games, pointed the camera at me and took a photo of me.

We were instantly surrounded by a dozen children who appeared out of nowhere, all of whom begged me for a camera. We talked to each one and explained there would soon be one in each class that they could borrow, and perhaps one day, we could get more. But right now, we couldn’t buy one for every child at RiSSE. But every child would have access to one. The teachers told me that only a few of the children actually liked to take pictures.

The other kids drifted off to eat.

An almost unnoticeable smile came over  his face, and he could not put the camera down, not even to eat his dinner, which had been prepared for him and the other children.

He tried to thank me but could not speak, and when I finally left to go home, he was still sitting on a cafeteria chair, staring at the camera, touching the buttons. I didn’t know what he was thinking, but he had a look of wonder.

I brought a different model to Jim, one of the technologically advanced teachers, and said I would be bringing two more, one for each classroom. I’ll do that next week.

I think this was a high point in my work with the refugees, I just wanted to cry with joy at the chance to hand this sweet and shy boy something he wanted so badly. I was told he loves taking pictures, and has taken some very good ones with borrowed cameras.

I asked if I could see them when I visit his home to bring some groceries.

He nodded, and Ali said Farmaz hopes to be a photographer.

That would be an amazing thing.

—

If you wish to support our work with the refugee children, you can send a donation to me at P.O.Box 205, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816, or via Paypal, [email protected].

Farmaz is a refugee, someone many people are saying doesn’t belong in America. He is not threat to us, he is already a passionate creative from a heroic and patriotic family. I hope to stay in touch with him and assist him in any way that is appropriate. I want to start by getting him some good shoes.

I believe that grief does not change me, it reveals me, it tells me and others who I am and who I wish to be.

Over time, I think the most valuable lessons I’ve learned and written about relate to grief. Grief is a universal experience, if you have people you love and animals you love, you will experience grief and struggle to understand it, and how to deal with it.

I am getting older, I have grieved for people, grieved for dogs.

It is the one place we have all gone and will go. There is no left or right in grief, despite the news, we are all human.

Grieving for animals is so pervasive I wrote a book about it, I called it “Going Home: Finding Peace When Pets Die.” I get messages about that book almost every day. I imagine every single person reading this has experienced grieving in one form or another.

So it is important for me to share what I know and have learned, and am learning. Grief is a gift in some ways, it is a great teacher.

Grieving is a personal and very individual experience, I believe, there is no one way to do it, no right or wrong way, only the way in which we experience it. I never think my experience is relevant to everyone else’s, but we all learn from one another, we take what we need and leave the rest behind.

An online friend, a wise therapist who blesses me occasionally with her messages, wrote me today, and she said she was guessing that there was something about losing Gus that has been hard for me “to metabolize” as easily as other experiences of loss of dogs.”

As always, Ann is perceptive.

Gus was different. First, because he was so young and full of life, even as he was starving and suffering.

Secondly, because a small dog replicates the experience of having a baby in some ways, it brings out the nurture.

And then, this: my first wife and I lost two babies, Gus’s death re-awakened some of my enormous feelings of grief and loss over them, feelings that are submerged far down in my sub-conscious.

The body never forgets, and it certainly never forgets trauma.

Beyond that, there is a special attachment formed to people and animals in our care, especially when they get sick. The very act of caring for them is a profoundly important emotional experience. I sometimes think we love the things most that need us the most.

I have learned that grief has is own mind, and will take its own time. Some people grieve outwardly, some grieve inwardly. On social media, I often see people turning to their friends when they have experienced a loss. This seems to bring them comfort and loss.

I see others who can’t seem to let go of their grieving, posting remembrances and about their losses, sometimes for years. I do not keep track of the anniversaries of loss in my life, I can’t think of a simpler way to keep from healing. And why, I wonder, should anyone care about the death years ago of one of my dogs, when they have their own to mourn?

I think social media can be enabling sometimes, prolonging people’s grief with reflexive sympathy and the sharing of their own losses. At some point – it is different for all of us – we just have to move on with our lives. If we can’t, we may need help.

My model of grieving came from the Quakers. I converted to Quakerism when I was a teenager. I had grown up in a Jewish family, and grieving for that faith, as for many ethic and religious groups, was a major and prolonged and ritualistic and very big deal, it went on for days, even weeks. We were encouraged to weep and grief openly and deeply, and to eat and drink and even wail.

I remember thinking that this was not how I wish people would remember me, not what I wanted my loved ones to endure. I have often told Maria that if I die first, my wish is for her to drink a bottle of wine and dance in the woods and think of every silly and ridiculous thing I have ever done.

That process did not work for me, it was the opposite of grieving and healing for me.

I took to the Quakers idea of death and loss right away: Family and friends gather to celebrate, not mourn, the end of a life.

We laughed, told stories, shared memories, cried if we needed to. But mostly, we expressed a gratitude and celebration for the people we knew. We left the memorial services smiling and I felt our healing was almost instantly underway. You either celebrate what you have, or grieve what it lost. That is the choice for me.

I learned more about this idea of grieving in my hospice therapy work, where I saw death close-up and regularly.

Death, i came to see, is sad, but not only sad. It can also be profound and beautiful, as much a part of life as a Spring flower.

When a dog like Gus dies, even with the special issues his death raised up for me, I take care to be  grateful for the experience of knowing  him, loving him, caring for him, even killing him.I laugh about him and his antics. I think about another dog.

I am sorry he is gone, but I will never be sad about Gus. We laughed at each other all  the time, we each thought the other quite ridiculous.

I am grateful for the laughter he brought me, and grateful that I was able to take such good care of him, and love him patiently and well.

There are no victims in this story, not him, not me, not event he nasty people who sometimes message me. Every life is a full life, not matter how short. I don’t measure grief in human time, but in spiritual teaching.

Gus lived a full life. He was nothing but a gift to me. I am sorry he died, I am grateful he lived.

I grieve mostly through writing, that is where I understand what I am feeling, where I can let go.

Freud wrote that mourning is how we process and take in the loss of a person, an animal, an experience, and make it a part of ourselves, a way to remember, a way to hang on.

Healing begins when we can let go, move forward,  turn to a person or friend or lover who is alive, undertake a new experience, get a new dog. My dogs are never quite gone, they live forever in my heard and soul.

It is a curious thing, but when you lose a dog or tell people with dogs that you have lost a dog, they almost invariably – and immediately – tell you the story of a dog they lost, a dog they mourn, a dog they miss. This always makes me somewhat uncomfortable, as it does not permit me to express my grief and loss, or to be heard. It seems narcissistic to me. It stops my own expression of feelings.

In the hardware store the other day, a woman came up to me and said she was sorry about Gus she read about it on Facebook, she was so sorry. I started to tell her about his disease, but she interrupted me and told me in the greatest detail how her Golden Retriever died of cancer several years ago, and she missed him every single day. I wanted to spray her with can of Windex to shut he up.

I wanted to say “but my dog died yesterday, and I don’t wish to hear about your dead dog who died three years ago now. What is wrong with you?”

But I didn’t. I just turned and walked out the door. She was still talking.

I try not to do that to others. Listening is perhaps the greatest gift one can give to a friend in grief.

My job is not to make it better, I can’t make it better. My job is not to take in the grief of others. It is theirs. My job is to help another person feel better by letting them tell their story and express their feelings. To make sure they feel seen and heard.

I don’t need to try to top their grief, it isn’t a contest. Grief is painful for all of us, and we will all feel it. No one has easy grief.

I do not believe that animals and humans are the same, I remember to keep perspective. In a world where children starve to death every day, my grief is not nearly the worst thing on the planet. There are far worse things than the death of a dog.

When people tell me they lost a dog, I listen, and say I am sorry. They don’t need to hear about my dog then, or perhaps ever. For me, grieving is ultimately personal. I am happy to share the process in the hope it might be helpful, but I know my own healing and recovery occurs out of sight, and ultimately in private. Grieving is one of those things I must do myself, no one can do it for me.

My friend Ann reminded me that mourning is hard work, and it can be destructive if not taken seriously.  “…While writing a blog is certainly a form of expression, it’s not a benign environment with others that share your life, I so appreciate your openness and I see it as courageous but it ain’t easy.”

No, it is not easy, but then, nothing that is truly valuable in life is easy, not love, not work, not family, not learning how to grieve, something we would all do well to learn how to do.

Don’t grieve, cautioned Rumi, “anything you lose comes around in another form.”

Once or twice a week, I drive into Albany to see the refugee and immigrant kids and parents, visit the teachers, take photos of the transformation of the RISSE after school classrooms, sit down with Ali, plan outings and activities. Today, some special things are on the agenda.

An eight-year-old boy from Afghanistan who lost his father there and now lives in America with his mother and sister has wanted a digital camera for a long time, it is the only birthday present he wished for. I’m bringing him a well-made V Tech beginner’s digital camera, I think it will be perfect for him.

And I’m getting three more, one for each of the classrooms at RISSE. I’ll give them to the teachers, so they and their students can record the wonderful work they are doing with your gifts from the RISSE Amazon Wish List.

Then Ali and I will sit down and talk about the outings we would like to plan for next week, when the RISSE school is closed for Easter. Ali is untiring, he wants them to have activities constantly, even when school is out. I completely support that idea, it is paying off in many ways.

We’re talking to a trampoline playland, and a skating rink about the cost of using their facilities, and we have already arranged some time in the Sportsplex indoor soccer stadium.

We’re planning a birthday party for one of the soccer team players, he scored six goals in the team’s whopping 15-0 victory Sunday in their indoor soccer tournament. This should fill up their week.

Next Friday, April 6, the RISSE kids are coming to the Mansion in Cambridge, to help prepare and serve food for the residents. There will be a special program where the kids and the residents exchange the stories of their lives. The boys are mostly very shy, and I have promised to stand alongside each of them as they get up and talk. That will be a special day.

And I’ll be taking photos of the gifts and lamps and chairs and trash cans and games and puzzles pouring into the school from the Wish List. Everyone at the school is grateful for your gifts, and eager to show you how they are being used. Today’s list is special, some food containers to keep lunches cold and safe, and some coloring books that are much loved and quite inexpensive.

You can help this kids for as little as $4.

The food containers are $69 for several. These trips are so important to me, they help me define my life.

I call Brooklyn Hip-Town, mostly because everyone in it – or at least in some parts of it – are skinny and hip. Even the crowd at a pretzel stand outside of the Brooklyn Museum, where Maria and I went on Sunday, are hip, including my wife, who managed to stand out in her artistic way even among the hip people in the hip line.

The good news is that I found my fantasy car, the bad news is that I can’t have it, it is not for sale. That might also be good news, as Maria has pointed out several times, emphatically.

I take my car to Rushinki Automotive in town for service and maintenance. That’s where I first saw this Scout, which is  used mostly to plow snow and has a nice flashing yellow light on the top, just like the big men in trucks have when they plow in storms.

This car has character and grit, I’d love to ride around in it. I’ve approached the garage owners several times asking about it, but I get nothing back but blank stares. They love the Scout, it is not for sale. I drive by it several times a day, I can just see myself in it. I think it is a work of art.

It’s a good thing it isn’t for sale, because I probably couldn’t afford it. And I surely don’t need it.

I can’t have the car, but I can fantasize about it. I love the tall cabin and square shape.

New cars might be efficient, but they tend to have little character or individuality. This one is quite distinctive and drips with character.

A man can dream.