Growing Kids Brains in Trauma Soil

So we lived on an experimental ag station and there were all these crazy stories about the poison they dumped out into the soil up there-- whole outbuildings that the older workers were like, uhhhhh, I wouldn't walk over there. And definitely don't let your kids go over there. And maybe don't eat the fruit from the trees that grow there. But, you do you.

It stressed me out. But it was practically free housing on Kauai, on a 100 acre farm where I could see 20 waterfalls on the face of Waialeale every morning from my (crumbling) front steps. So that's where we lived. And if that contributed to my two Kauai-born kids' later freaky auto-immune disorders... well, fuck. I don't know. 

So now we no longer live on an experimental farm where we know the terrifying history of pesticide and herbicide-- we live in a suburban subdivision where who knows what the soil has been through? hah hah oh dear.

ANYWAY SO

We also live in grief-land. And even though this grief is acquiring a patina (8 years ya'll. 8 years since Matt's death. I just can't believe it.) it's still our zip-code.

Especially for kids. Their brains are changing as they grow, and so they have to continually look around with their newly remade brains and go, wait, WHERE do we live?

Last night was heavy.

Liko and I were reading George O'Connor's rad graphic novels about Greek Myths. There's a brief mention of Tantalus, and a picture of Tantalus standing thigh-high in dark water, reaching for grapes, but they retreat out of reach. Then there's a panel where he tries to scoop up water to drink, and it recedes. Liko slapped her hand over it.

"You don't like that guy?" 

"No, I feel bad for him!" 

I thought this was kind of funny.  "Dude, he just chopped up his son and made him into to soup!"  I figured he freakin deserves every moment of torment he gets. 

Liko protested, sensitive soul. "But, look at his face-- whenever I see that long hair and beard and that sad lip, I just start to cry! That little lip sticking out! I hate seeing sad beardy guys!!" Her eyes welled up just saying it.

"Ohhh," I said. "I wonder.... hm." 

When Matt died, Liko was only 6 months old. She has no memories of him. But for months after he died, she would crawl to the beardiest guy in the room, and snuggle up with him with a puzzled look on her face. On a roadtrip once, she curled up with her uncle Sam and spent many long minutes patting his jacket, looking up into his face for a long time, then patting his jacket again.

It was gutting. Baby grief. She knew something was missing, that someone was gone. 

Carefully, I said, "Maybe, there's a little part of you that remembers your daddy. He had long hair and a beard like that. And when you were a baby, you missed him."

"I did??" 

"Yeah. You were so little but you really loved him, and he loved you. The last night we saw him, he held you the whole time." We were at my dad's place up Provo canyon, and had friends over for music and a potluck. Matt was quiet, and held the baby for hours as she slept on his shoulder.

She began to cry.

I scooped her over onto my chair, into my lap. She's 8-- she's lanky. All elbows and ankles and bony shoulderblades. That morning she did elaborate hair chalk hairstyle in rainbow colors and tried out Maile's blue metallic lipstick. She's big. She's not a baby. But I can still hold onto her. 

"I have a picture of him holding you that night, do you want to see?"

She cried and said, yes, she did. I grabbed her Liko & Daddy photo album. I made one for each kid: all of the pictures of them with their dad. (All of them. Every single finite one, all in one album each. I hate it here.) 

She's seen the album before, poked through it a little, but it never really held her interest. Last night, she turned each page with reverence. She was weeping. 

There's her tiny face, there's her daddy napping with her on the couch. There's him holding her so she can touch her touch into the mirror-smooth waters of Anini beach.

"He loved you so much. Look, he's carrying you in the backpack and carrying the cat on the front. Look, he's smiling at you. Look, he's making bunny ears behind your little head."

That got a damp belly laugh.

We looked through every page. There's just not that many pictures. 6 months.

Less than there should be. 

Just a month after she was born, Matt's mental health took a nose-dive. The pictures I took of them together were talismans against the worst parts of him.

"Look," the pictures said then. "This is how I see you. This is who you are. Laughing with the baby chortling, sniffing her sweet-smelling baby head, making your body a safe cradle for her as you nap together on the couch."

    

Liko wept and began asking questions. 

"How old was I? How old were you? How old were Makani and Maile?" 6 months, 36, 9 and 6. (A numerological treat.)

"Who cried the most when you knew he died?" We all took turns crying the most. 

"Where did he die? What did he look like when he died?" The police told me that he was in the hallway but I let my brain forget the details.

"How did he do the suicide?" I don't want to tell you specific details because I don't want you to have a scary image in your mind. (I have no confidence in this answer. Is it scarier to know or not know the specifics? At the children's grief group in Utah, they have the kids tell the story of their person's suicide every month, so that it loses its power. But I just don't wanna.)

"How did the alcohol make him do the suicide?" The doctor said he pickled his brain with alcohol. So when his mental illness told him he should make himself die, his alcohol brain couldn't stop him.

"Why did he drink it then?" I don't know, at first because he thought it was fun and cool, and then so he would feel relaxed from his anxiety, and then he was addicted.

"But why??"

And more, and more. Flipping through the pictures. 

She cried and cried. It was the first time that she realized, with her new smart 8 year old discernment, what it meant that she once had a daddy, and that he died, and that he killed himself.

    

I held her and said over and over, "It's so sad. It's so sad, huh. He loved you. You loved him. It's so, so sad."

    

Again, I don't know if that's the right thing to say. Should I have said, "yes, but look, you're fine, shake it off and become the person he would have wanted you to be!!" like a character in a C-drama? Maybe. Maybe I'm wallowing and allowing my kids to wallow. Maybe we all just need to move on and stop talking about it.

But I don't know. These kids brains are still changing. They will keep coming up with new questions to ask. As they become new people, they will have to learn what their dad's suicide means to them, again.

It's so sad. It's so sad, huh.