Banning All Labels
My Dad recently died and after two months of my usual grief regiment: bawl, bath, bed, I added in a new protocol: “label”.
Like, with a labelling machine.
The kind you plug in and type a word, and it spits out a perfectly cut, glossy rectangle, with a peel off back ready to be gingerly applied to any item. I moved methodically from the hats, mitts, and scarves to the spice rack, baking supplies, and then on to the cleaning and laundry products. Labelling, quickly grew into a full-on addiction. Bandaids, flavours of coffee, the chicken nuggets in our freezer.
I knew my close friends were monitoring the escalation. I could feel it.
The sappy songs I listened to while labelling, predictably induced full-on melt downs. I’d come undone on the floor leaning against a cupboard, wail until there was no more sound echoing through the house, sip some water to ease the pain of my dehydration headache, wipe the snot from my nose, and then resume.
I’d been on the floor a few times before and the space felt familiar. It felt entitled. All about me and my pain and my boo-hoo circumstances that existed outside my perceived control. For me it was a slippery slope that would move from indulgent to almost gluttoneous and because our culture holds the space (for a time period, anyway) for grief as an entitled emotion, I consciously chose to roll down that hill. When I ran out of the printer cartridge, (the first time), my best friend suggested that perhaps I consider not buying a second. “Oh hun,” she said in a soothing voice, “It’ll take a lot of energy to get out of your bathrobe and shower and get changed into clean clothes.”
….I’d have none of it. The immediacy of the high of feeling in control, when everything was clearly shot to hell out of control, was worth putting on clean underwear!
In that moment, peeing my pants in a public square, I realized that even grief is a choice. Not better than laughter and joy or delight, just “different than”. Neutral in value until compared and categorized and ultimately assigned a label.
By my fourth cartridge purchase, and after I labelled his kite surfing equipment in the garage, my husband promptly removed the labelling machine from our home.
And then something happened. —I started to laugh. At my pathetic grasping. At my inability to surrender. And I couldn’t stop.
To be clear on the intensity of this laughter, I laughed so hard on the Rialto Bridge in Italy, that even crossing my legs did not prevent the pee from running down in two even streams, leaving my black jeans a slightly darker shade on both inner seams. I fell to my knees, holding my stomach. My husband joined me, my laugh was infectious. Strangers walked by, ignoring the spectacle we had become.
In that moment, peeing my pants in a public square, I realized that even grief is a choice. Not better than laughter and joy or delight, just “different than”. Neutral in value until compared and categorized and ultimately assigned a label.
…Ah, the label maker again.
Lately, I’ve recognized that having had an intensely intimate experience with despair has gifted me the ability to embrace extreme delight. There is some irony in this. This swinging emotional pendulum and all that’s explored in between, gives us the frame of reference for understanding of what it means to be truly alive and present.
And I’m grateful. For all of it. The highs and lows. The tears and the laughter. But ultimately the control I have in how I perceive my reality. And how I plan to label it all.
Banning All Labels
My Dad recently died and after two months of my usual grief regiment: bawl, bath, bed, I added in a new protocol: “label”.
Like, with a labelling machine.
The kind you plug in and type a word, and it spits out a perfectly cut, glossy rectangle, with a peel off back ready to be gingerly applied to any item. I moved methodically from the hats, mitts, and scarves to the spice rack, baking supplies, and then on to the cleaning and laundry products. Labelling, quickly grew into a full-on addiction. Bandaids, flavours of coffee, the chicken nuggets in our freezer.
I knew my close friends were monitoring the escalation. I could feel it.
The sappy songs I listened to while labelling, predictably induced full-on melt downs. I’d come undone on the floor leaning against a cupboard, wail until there was no more sound echoing through the house, sip some water to ease the pain of my dehydration headache, wipe the snot from my nose, and then resume.
I’d been on the floor a few times before and the space felt familiar. It felt entitled. All about me and my pain and my boo-hoo circumstances that existed outside my perceived control. For me it was a slippery slope that would move from indulgent to almost gluttoneous and because our culture holds the space (for a time period, anyway) for grief as an entitled emotion, I consciously chose to roll down that hill. When I ran out of the printer cartridge, (the first time), my best friend suggested that perhaps I consider not buying a second. “Oh hun,” she said in a soothing voice, “It’ll take a lot of energy to get out of your bathrobe and shower and get changed into clean clothes.”
….I’d have none of it. The immediacy of the high of feeling in control, when everything was clearly shot to hell out of control, was worth putting on clean underwear!
In that moment, peeing my pants in a public square, I realized that even grief is a choice. Not better than laughter and joy or delight, just “different than”. Neutral in value until compared and categorized and ultimately assigned a label.
By my fourth cartridge purchase, and after I labelled his kite surfing equipment in the garage, my husband promptly removed the labelling machine from our home.
And then something happened. —I started to laugh. At my pathetic grasping. At my inability to surrender. And I couldn’t stop.
To be clear on the intensity of this laughter, I laughed so hard on the Rialto Bridge in Italy, that even crossing my legs did not prevent the pee from running down in two even streams, leaving my black jeans a slightly darker shade on both inner seams. I fell to my knees, holding my stomach. My husband joined me, my laugh was infectious. Strangers walked by, ignoring the spectacle we had become.
In that moment, peeing my pants in a public square, I realized that even grief is a choice. Not better than laughter and joy or delight, just “different than”. Neutral in value until compared and categorized and ultimately assigned a label.
…Ah, the label maker again.
Lately, I’ve recognized that having had an intensely intimate experience with despair has gifted me the ability to embrace extreme delight. There is some irony in this. This swinging emotional pendulum and all that’s explored in between, gives us the frame of reference for understanding of what it means to be truly alive and present.
And I’m grateful. For all of it. The highs and lows. The tears and the laughter. But ultimately the control I have in how I perceive my reality. And how I plan to label it all.