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Sadness

This is not the story of the day Jamie was sad.  I have promised Jamie that I will not tell that story publicly, and I will keep my promise.  This is another story, about the day Jamie asked about how to handle sadness.

It was almost a year ago, April 22, 2005.  Nick’s nineteenth birthday—his first birthday away from home.  Janet, Jamie and I went shopping that evening for groceries and things, and we were very anxious to get home by seven because Nick would be calling on his birthday.  So we bundled up our loaves of bread and our seafood salad and our cereal and our trash bags, and we collected all the ingredients for Nick’s finals-week cookies—the Toll House chips and the sugar, the milk and the cookie mix—but we didn’t make it.  Nick’s call came while we were still in the supermarket, and Janet picked it up on her cell.

Nick sounded weary but happy.  The first year of the architecture program was grueling, but tremendously stimulating.  He spoke to Jamie with fondness and enthusiasm and love.  He said he couldn’t wait to finish his freshman year and come home.  He couldn’t believe he was turning nineteen.  Neither could we.  After all, we’d turned nineteen just the other day. . . .

When we got home and unloaded the groceries, it quickly became clear that Jamie was disappointed.  No, he was well beyond disappointed.  He was crushed.  He sat in the back room, cross-legged, with his head in his hands, and only after a few minutes of my worried prodding did it become clear that he’d believed that Nick was coming home for his birthday.  In fact, he thought Nick would be home to greet us when we got back from the store.

“Oh, sweetie,” I said.  “And that’s why you were so excited about making him cookies?”

“Yeah,” Jamie replied, barely audible.  “Nick could come home right now.”

“Well, no, he can’t come home right now,” I said, putting my arm around his shoulders.  “But he’ll be home in just two weeks, and you can see him then.”

“Nick could come home right now,” Jamie insisted.  And I began to realize the depth of his sadness, a sadness that must have resonated for months, all the way back to the previous August when Nick first left for college and our house emptied out—because when Nick left, we lost not only Nick and a couple dozen soda cans strewn about various rooms in various states of partial emptiness, but also all of Nick’s friends, who had congregated in those rooms all summer long and turned our house into Teen Lounge.  The contrast between the House With Nick, in which it was not always clear to us how many teens would be in the house when we woke up, and the House Without Nick, in which there would only be one child in the morning and one child at night, was very stark, and very obvious to Jamie in those suddenly lonely weeks of late August and early September.  Now, in late April of 2005, it seemed as if that loneliness had become unbearable.

Sometimes I measure Jamie’s maturity by gauging how he handles disappointment. Actually, that’s one of the ways I’d measure anyone’s maturity.  For example: a couple of years ago, I took him to swim at a local gym, only to find that the pool was closed for cleaning.  Jamie simply did not understand this.  It was Saturday, the pool should be open.  The pool is always open on Saturday.  Maybe the pool is open!  Let’s try and see!  I let Jamie pull at the locker room door for a few minutes, and I even gave him help when he asked for it, but in the end, I had to say, “Really, Jamie, the pool is closed.  Let’s do something else today.” He did not welcome the suggestion, and it took him hours to snap out of his funk.  By contrast, a year later, when we arrived at the same gym only to find that it was closing early, Jamie turned to me and said, “Oh well!  Let’s go to the Y.” I praised him effusively for this, and, of course, I took him to the Y.  (I should add that I myself eventually got tired of this gym’s bizarrely limited hours, and gave up our membership.  I don’t have unlimited patience for this kind of thing either.)

By the time he turned 13, then, Jamie had acquired words for complex emotional states like “disappointed” and “frustrated”—the latter, I think, involving a bit more agon than the former.  But Jamie’s complex emotional state on Nick’s birthday went well beyond either.

I reassured Jamie, again, that Nick would be coming home very soon and that Nick would take him out to dinner with all his friends.  “I know,” Jamie said.  “But I’m still sad.” I nodded.  “I understand, Jamie.  I’m sad too.”

And then Jamie said something stunning.  Dejectedly, he mumbled, “How can I stop being sad?”

“Ah!” I replied.  “That’s a very good question.  Well, usually, people are sad for a while, and then gradually, the sadness goes away, little by little.”

This didn’t float Jamie’s boat at all.  He waited a few seconds, then said, “But I’m still sad.” I was reminded of the time when he was 11 and had a sudden fever; a few minutes after Janet gave him his Tylenol and antibiotics, he stomped up the stairs, complaining that he was still sick.  Over the next two years, especially after his brush with pneumonia, he came to understand that illness doesn’t fade just like that.  Now he’d have to learn the same thing about sadness.

So I decided that this might be a good time to pass along something I’ve learned about grief.  Namely, that it washes over you and sweeps everything before it, and there’s no resisting it.  Eventually it recedes, just like elation or anxiety or anger.  But it recedes at its own pace.  Buddhists taught me this, those dang Buddhists with their “this is arising and is known” subjectlessness, and I thought it might be a good idea to pass the lesson along to my youngest child.

“OK, Jamie,” I said.  “I’ll tell you about how sadness comes and goes.  Are you ready?” He sat up and gave me his full attention.  “You know how you like to play in the waves at the beach?” Jamie brightened.  “Mm!” he mmed.  “And you know how a wave comes and knocks you down and it’s so much fun, and the wave tumbles you up the sand, and then you get up and play in another wave?” By this point Jamie was rubbing his hands together with glee.  “Well, sadness and happiness are like that.  They’re like waves that come and knock you down and tumble you around, and then you get up and they’re all gone.”

Jamie froze.  Up to the point at which I’d described playing in the waves, he was thrilled, because playing in the waves is one of his favorite things about being alive.  But then I’d taken this weird philosophical “sadness and happiness are like that” turn, and he didn’t know what to think about it.  Jamie puzzled for a moment, and then said, darkly, “there will be more waves.”

Shit, I thought. It didn’t take very long for him to figure that out, now, did it. Here I was trying to tell him that sadness, like all things, will pass; but he’d gone right past that lesson to the obvious corollary, namely, after this sadness passes there will be more sadness yet to come. 

“Well, yeah, sweetie,” I said, trying to rally, “but some of those waves will be happy waves, when you. . . .”

“How about no waves,” Jamie countered in a growl, waving his arm dismissively and going back to his slumped, head-in-hands posture. 

“You don’t want to talk about waves any more?”

“No.” And with that, he turned on the TV and sent me away.

And that’s the end of my little story, folks.  How I Failed to Console Jamie, and in the Process, Ruined a Perfectly Good Memory of Playing in the Waves.  You know, if I had simply reminded him how much he loves playing in the waves, that alone could have been the damn wave, or at least a temporary counter to his Nick sadness.  But no, I had to go and suggest to him, sharp tack that he is, that once this wave of sorrow had passed there would be endless others out to the horizon as far as we can see. 

But that’s not the point of the story.  The point of the story is that when I left for North Carolina twelve days ago, I told Jamie that he would be the man of the house while I was gone, and he was très cool with that.  As he and Janet dropped me off at the airport, he took his headphones off and chirped merrily from the back seat, “Goodbye Michael!  I will miss you!” I talk to him and Janet every night, of course, but you know, I miss them, and sometimes I am sad.  Nick got back from college last night, too, so the house will filling up again with waves of teenagers.  Fortunately, I take a break from my break this week, flying back up to State College for two days on Tuesday night and returning Thursday night.  So I’ll see them all before I know it.  In the meantime, though, I’m still sad.  It comes and goes, you know, just like . . . oh, never mind what it’s like.

Posted by on 03/13 at 10:04 AM

  1. Now, *this* post deserves a nomination for something.  Lovely.

    Posted by Sarahlynn  on  03/13  at  12:47 PM

  2. Good thing I’m starting up a monthly Koufax 2006 post for all the great stuff that comes along during the year.

    I’d do it now if I could see my laptop keyboard through my tears.

    Posted by MB  on  03/13  at  01:56 PM

  3. Ah yes . . .  they keep on coming.

    As a fellow parent, I keenly feel the sting of those parental mistakes.  We do our best and still the waves keep on coming.

    And neither does the love stop, and that’s the most important, and that’s felt.

    Now I just want to put my arm around you and say, You’ll see your family soon.  As if, duh, you didn’t know that, but I don’t know what else to say!

    Posted by john  on  03/13  at  02:10 PM

  4. "there will be more waves”

    That Jamie is a smart kid. I was well into my 20s before I figured that one out.

    Posted by George  on  03/13  at  02:27 PM

  5. My son Gee was only seven when his big sister went away to college.  He was very sad and he was angry also, he couldn’t understand why she had voluntarily left home.

    It took him years to accept her absence, by the time she came back home he had already started to become a cool teenager, he had learned not to wear his heart on his sleeve.

    Today his big sister is the one who has the sadness regarding missing his boyhood in it’s last days. Now Gee is in college and it is very quiet here at home.  Sigh.

    Posted by Leesee  on  03/13  at  02:36 PM

  6. I was well into my 20s before I figured that one out.

    You got me beat by about a decade, George.  I was well into my 30s.

    Posted by Michael  on  03/13  at  02:51 PM

  7. But simply trying to distract Jamie from his grief would have been a disservice to him. What you said to him will not fade. He will connect the dots one day, in the most unlikely of situations, when you least expect it. Understanding likes to flirt with us, the taunting jade.

    Posted by Maenad  on  03/13  at  03:06 PM

  8. There is something else hidden in this that strikes me in that “but-of-course” way.  All the studies and research on teen coolness show that teens, and young adults (Nick must be getting close to 20 by now), tend to congregate at the homes of the parents who are the most “cool” or “hip.” Therefore, for the Berube house to be so blessed by the presence, and migratory return, of this flock evidences just how wonderful and magical the environment must be for Jamie.  So very lucky and blessed all of you are.

    Posted by  on  03/13  at  03:08 PM

  9. This post + “Patience” = I de-lurk. My sister has followed a pretty similar trajectory to Jamie’s, I think. She’s “developmentally delayed,” but if you try to tell that to the extended family, the schools, and the church who are all in love with her, they won’t have time for you.

    Like Jamie, an important development for Katie has been realizing what she can do and have and what she can’t. I’ve played Nick to Katie’s Jamie since I left home myself at eighteen. Now with a wife whom Katie loves and a 14-month-old whom she worships, I hear the disappointed realization in Katie’s voice when I give a vague answer to the question, “when are you coming home?” Our pending move to Utah from PA won’t make it easier at all, since Katie’s in NC.

    But, Katie’s now excited at the prospect of getting on a plane on which they serve you “food” in order to come see us. (I don’t have the heart to tell her...) And she’s now determined to learn how to ski in preparation for her visit out to see us. SO, if you have any past or future posts on “Skiing,” I’d be interested!

    Thanks to Jamie and you for your eloquence and your elegance on this.

    Posted by  on  03/13  at  03:18 PM

  10. Thanks in return, jay, and my best wishes to Katie.  I’ve got nothing on skiing, but I could pass along a tip or two on transcontinental flights and airline “food.” Thanks for delurking, too.

    Maenad, I hope you’re right.  If Jamie’s past behavior is any guide, you certainly are right.  Recently we gave Jamie yet another word to describe his behavior:  thoughtful.  I won’t go into the details, but he’d clearly been thinking about something for a couple of days, and thinking about it hard and well.

    Spyder, that research actually shows that teens tend to congregate at the homes of the parents who are the most “cool” or “hip” or “distracted.” Just saying.

    Posted by  on  03/13  at  04:51 PM

  11. I was regretting that word “mistake” in my comment even before I read Maenad’s comment.

    What she said.

    Posted by john  on  03/13  at  05:09 PM

  12. I was well into my 20s before I figured that one out.

    You got me beat by about a decade, George.  I was well into my 30s.

    What are you guys talking about?

    Posted by Chris "46" Clarke  on  03/13  at  05:18 PM

  13. Really nice.

    Some sadness it seems to me is more like a riptide. You get carried out to where it’s all waves and no shore.

    Posted by Timothy Burke  on  03/13  at  05:44 PM

  14. The unseasonably warm weather here in Virginia, and your trip to Carolina, and that strange part of growing up that makes us sad to see in others, our older siblings especially, what we so eagerly anticipate in our own lives, makes me think of this Wallace Stevens poem:

    “In the Carolinas”

    The lilacs wither in the Carolinas
    Already the butterflies flutter above the cabins.
    Already the new-born children interpret love
    In the voices of the mothers.

    Timeless mother,
    How is it that your aspic nipples
    For once vent honey?

    The pine-tree sweetens my body
    The white iris beautifies me.

    Posted by  on  03/13  at  06:24 PM

  15. I know from experience. I used to be surprised when my sister Maria (ds) would make such connections, or when she showed extraordinary wit in conversations, but it was really I who was “handicapped.” I saw her through only one lense and put limits on her, when she abolished them with a sentence or two - or more accurately, she showed me that there were never any restrictions at all. I’ve learned so much from her in that way and I know that you ( or anyone who interacts with someone who is “different” ) get the same delightful realizations from Jamie.

    It’s great that you challenge him - it is one of the greatest gifts to give a child, along with the comfort that he/she is goddamned perfect the way they are. To accept one’s self and yet strive for greater achievement go hand in hand.

    Posted by Maenad  on  03/13  at  07:32 PM

  16. You brought tears to my eyes with this one, Michael.

    It reminded me of the conversation I had with my son Alex when he was 6, was back in Brazil with his mom, and we were reduced to spending 4 months a year together. My first book, on mourning, had come out and he was all proud because his daddy had published a book. He asked what the book was about and I started explaining to him what mourning was. Three or four sentences into the explanation he cuts me off and said: ‘that’s easy. That’s what I feel every time you go back to the States.’

    That day I understood Argentine writer Ricardo Piglia’s line about how all literary criticism is autobiographical. We think we’re writing about the books we’ve read, when in fact we’re writing about our own lives.

    Have a great reunion with them in State College.

    Posted by Idelber  on  03/13  at  07:35 PM

  17. This is great stuff MB. I like especially the twist at the end where you reveal that you’ve been using--I mean that only in a rhetorical sense--your son to tell the story of your own loneliness and grief. I hope you publish a collection of this not actually ephemera some day.

    Posted by  on  03/13  at  08:28 PM

  18. You’re absolutely something else, Dr. B....from someplace else…

    I wish you’d go back to being just Michael Bérubé.  It better becomes you.

    Posted by  on  03/13  at  09:32 PM

  19. I’m astonished by the beauty and poignance of this post, which resonates with all of the universal truths Faulkner called for in his Nobel speech. 

    It led me to Emerson, who wrote, in “Experience”: 

    “I take this evanescence and lubricity of all objects, which lets them slip through our fingers then when we clutch hardest, to be the most unhandsome part of our condition. Nature does not like to be observed, and likes that we should be her fools and playmates. We may have the sphere for our cricket-ball, but not a berry for our philosophy. Direct strokes she never gave us power to make; all our blows glance, all our hits are accidents.”

    I hope that Jamie learns to ride the waves even as they crash over him.  And for you, I wish nothing but accidental hits and joyful reunions.

    Posted by Matt  on  03/13  at  09:47 PM

  20. How many of us have wished for “no waves,” at least on occasion?  I hope it’s OK to “borrow” your wave analogy with my four year old, who daily is overcome with his emotions.

    Posted by  on  03/13  at  09:53 PM

  21. Michael,

    Can I just say wow.

    I was thinking about the last time I went to play volleyball (my addiction) at a gym that was usually open every Friday and it was closed so they could refinish the floor. I’m still not over it. And it was 5 years ago.

    Since I’m 42 maybe it will come anyday now. I’m hoping.

    Jay, best of luck in Utah. I lived there for 12 years. Loved the place, but the people, not so much. The skiing is the best. And suprisingly, really good food.

    Posted by  on  03/13  at  09:54 PM

  22. Again, Michael, with these eloquent essays!!  I can barely type through the tears.  Especially since my husband just left on a business trip, and both little ones (6 and 3) are so sad.  *This* is another one of the obvious reasons why you should get a Koufax.  I just know I’ll be using your words of wisdom in a few years; I can’t think of any other blogs that are so rich and well-written.

    I’m with Mirabelle on the blog name—you are Michael Berube (sorry, I don’t know how to do accents), and that’s all we need.

    Posted by  on  03/13  at  10:53 PM

  23. I’ve just recently found myself lying face down, covered in seaweed, dazed and bruised pretty good by an unexpected sadness-carying wave.  I’ve come across this post quite by accident, and although I confess I’m not quite sure what my reaction to it means, your post has cheered me up quite a bit.  The chuckles I got from your telling of Jamie’s sharp perception and your surprise and horror at it has been the first time mirth has sneaked into my laughter since Friday; thank you both very much.

    Posted by Jonathan Dursi  on  03/13  at  10:54 PM

  24. ...and now that I think about it, it may be the cartoon image of me sprawled on the beach with seaweed with a starfish lazily crawling across my head as a way of making light of my situation which might be responsible for being cheered up.

    Posted by Jonathan Dursi  on  03/13  at  11:24 PM

  25. I’m glad you said that, Jonathan, because I felt guilty about imagining you wearing one of those inflatable polka-dotted horsie inner tube flotation things.

    Posted by Chris Clarke  on  03/13  at  11:28 PM

  26. I despise that parenting moment when you go too far with an explanation and the kid gets angry, b/c you’ve given him more than he is ready or asking for.

    On the other hand, I think it’s kind of cool that they react to that with anger.  Good for them, you know?

    Posted by bitchphd  on  03/14  at  01:38 AM

  27. bitchphd:

    I was just thinking that myself. But in reference to my husband, as I don’t have a kid.

    Michael:

    These Jamie stories are wonderful. And, for whatever reason, this one worked to cheer me up.

    Posted by Roxanne  on  03/14  at  01:59 AM

  28. Gee, teaching must be really hard. You not only have to get them to see the point, you have to make sure they don’t pass right by what you wanted them to learn and start discovering stuff on their own. Or is it only parents who forlornly hope to manage that? But Maenad is right. The knowledge of the ever-renewing waves will stay with Jamie, and if it didn’t provide the comfort you’d hoped for at the time, I think it will be valuable to him in the long run. Enjoy your 2 days in the tube, dude.

    Posted by  on  03/14  at  09:22 AM

  29. I hope your (brief) excursion is good. Get an extra pack of peanuts on the plane.

    Posted by david ross mcirvine  on  03/14  at  11:10 AM

  30. I’m a semi-regular reader of this blog and when I haven’t visited for a while and then come back, I wonder why I would ever STOP reading it—especially when its replacement in time is with those political ones that, no matter how well-written, well-reasoned, and encouraging, nonetheless remind me what a bizarre and hellish society we’re living end. And make me want to throw something, or slap someone, or throw up a little. Reading yours, like today, often causes me to read with both tears at the corners of my eyes and a smile on my face (being hit with a wave and pulled by a rip tide at the same time, perhaps, since I’m pretty sure there can’t be wave and not-wave simultaneously?). Being one who long ago fled academia screaming and clutching only her ABD and her sanity, I certainly can’t tell YOU about writing, publishing, etc. But may I just add—nay, implore—you to please collect these eloquent, inspired, and inspiring essays and publish them, please? Do it for us children, who haven’t learned that lesson yet!

    By the way, this does remind me of the period when I was voraciously reading what was called “personal essays,” or “creative nonfiction,” or whatever the hell they decided to name it, and how your writing ranks right up there with the best of them, especially your “turn” at the end, as someone mentioned, that just makes us gasp, like that damn wave has come and knocked all the air out of us—but in a good way, of course. And who I’m referring to are the likes of Annie Dillard, Lewis Thomas, and I suddenly vividly remembered Barbara Kingsolver’s “High Tide in Tucson” and how it moved me in exactly the same way as “Jamie and the Waves of Sadness” (No, leave “of sadness” off; hell, keep your own “Sadness”; I can’t improve that.) Ooo, ooo, I just looked it up on Amazon (What did we EVER do without these Internets thingies? Oh, right, WALK to the library, or at least to the bookshelf, instead of sitting slumped, staring, for hours on end, in the cathode-ray-like illumination, at circles that you find in the treadmills of your mind. Or something.) Anyway, if you, too, want to remind yourself of the essay or read it for the first time, go to Amazon, High Tide in Tucson, Search inside this book, Excerpt, and it’s there—and as moving as I remembered it. So thanks, Michael, so very much. This was a wonderful way to not-to-work. I will be back, but sooner.

    Posted by  on  03/14  at  01:38 PM

  31. Shit! Never enough proofreading! Of course, it should’ve been: But may I just ask—nay, implore—you to please collect these eloquent, inspired, and inspiring essays and publish them, please?

    Posted by  on  03/14  at  01:44 PM

  32. Hey!  Are there any publishers out there reading this stuff?  You’ve heard the people—they want a collection!  And I’m only too happy to collect.  Seriously, I do have to follow up on Life As We Know It one of these days, don’t I.

    Thank you, Buffalo Gal, and thanks to Timothy, Sean, Maenad, Idelber, Karl, Mirabelle, Matt, Charles, Scott, Fiorentina, Jonathan, Chris C., Dr. B., Rox, Maud, and David.  It’s nice to know that I wasn’t entirely wasting my time Sunday night and Monday morning with this thing, feeling all mopey and sad.

    Posted by  on  03/14  at  03:08 PM

  33. By the way—and in reference to an earlier Jamie essay—my Freedy Johnston CDs arrived today.  I hope I don’t misplace them . . .

    Posted by  on  03/14  at  05:46 PM

  34. Fiorentina, I can help you out with the accents, if you don’t mind a hack.  What you do is you cut and paste the name at the top, and the accents come with.

    Regarding the post, um, I have been reading and thinking about Buddhism and this slotted in there somewhere.  I’ll let you know what I think in a year or so.

    Posted by  on  03/14  at  08:08 PM

  35. As a parent of grown boys, your story truly touched me. Thank you.

    Posted by  on  03/15  at  05:25 PM

  36. Like as the waves make toward the pebbled shore, that’s what it’s like - of course.

    Phrasemaker!

    Posted by Ophelia Benson  on  03/15  at  05:39 PM

  37. It’s not quite in keeping with the references to Buddhism, but the place of that sadness (of Jamie; of Charlie; of all of us, in our several states) can be called Heaven’s Coast---which memoir of loss I was reading one summer because it was the assigned “common text” for first-year students, and that summer happened to be the one after Charlie’s diagnosis of autism.

    Posted by Kristina Chew  on  03/15  at  10:17 PM

  38. Michael, this is so damn good I can hardly stand it. Join us again at our MeetUp (3/22), eh?

    Posted by ae  on  03/16  at  03:56 AM

  39. Absolutely stunning.  smile

    Posted by Carrie  on  03/17  at  03:32 PM

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    Posted by Jacob Bartrim  on  03/22  at  08:09 AM

  41. central is feature of faithful boy corner will table unconditionally: http://www.kingkongmovie.com/ <a href="http://www.lordoftherings.net/" title="white is feature of bad table"> , destroy win anticipate - that is all that cosmos is capable of

    Posted by Anthony Davis  on  03/26  at  01:55 PM

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