Writing it Forward

Article first published as Prolonged Grief Increases Young Widows' Health Risks on Technorati.


Thirteen years ago I read a letter to an editor urging young widows to go for annual physicals. The timing of the piece reminded me of when I first read about the Heimlich Maneuver in 1974, just days after my grandfather choked to death on a bite of meat.
My uncle had rushed to Grandpa’s aid, pounding on his back to dislodge the piece of meat – all to no avail. If he had known enough to wrap his arms just above Grandpa’s waist, and pull into his gut, the morsel would have popped out and my grandfather would have survived.
The letter in the newspaper that advocated regular physical exams for young widows jolted me once again, for my 49-year-old husband had died a few weeks earlier.
One third of the 800,000 people widowed every year are under age 45. And when the death is sudden, as with my young husband's, the effects on the surviving spouse can be particularly severe and long lasting. Unlike older widows, young widows face the greater part of their lives before them. This puts the younger woman who has lost her husband at greater risk for long-term emotional and physical effects of grief.

GRIEF WRECKS A PHYSICAL AS WELL AS EMOTIONAL TOLL

A year ago, the medical community officially declared a broken heart can actually trigger a heart attack. “Emotional stress, conceptionally, is the same thing for cardiovascular risk as physical stress,” says Daniel J.Brotman MD of John Hopkins Hospital. “But a lot of doctors blow that off, because they think emotional stress is a psychological problem, not a physical one.”
When I lost my husband, twelve years ago, my doctor recognized I was in for the long haul. He immediately began monitoring my inevitable symptoms of grief: depression, exhaustion, nervousness, loss of appetite, insomnia, weakness, and aching. New evidence in the 1990s had indicated that grief and its related stress affect young widows more seriously than women who lose their husbands later in life. - because of the longer period of time the younger bereaved would likely experience elevated blood pressure, unhealthful eating habits, and weakened immune systems.

Just after my husband's death the doctor found my blood pressure elevated and he was concerned about my ten-pound weight loss – an outcome friends actually complimented me on – since the short time my husband had died. My doctor also wasn’t surprised I cried during the appointment.
Like most people, I did not feel a rise in my blood pressure. My weight loss certainly didn’t bother me, and I expected I’d be sad for a very long time. Yet, if these symptoms of grief went untreated for an extended period of time – which could be four or five decades for a young widow – unnoticed and insidious damage could escalate. Ultimately it would reveal itself in a critical episode, like a heart attack or a late-stage cancer.
None of my early symptoms of grief called for drastic measures. Yet, my doctor scheduled me for regular blood pressure checks and recommended the children and I see a grief counselor. I followed doctor’s orders through the next annual physical. My weight and blood pressured stabilized. I still grieved, but my physical reactions to my grief were being monitored. The same went for the next year and the one after that.

EARLY DETECTION CAN BE A MATTER OF LIFE OR DEATH

Five years after my husband died I still grieved but I felt fine, physically. I expected to go to my annual exam and not have to see the doctor again for a year. Instead, I got a phone call the day after my appointment.
“There’s blood in your urine and your liver function is off,” he told me on the phone. “We’ve got to find out why.”
I soon learned my "feeling fine" had been deceptive. The next day a tumor the size of my fist appeared atop my right kidney on an ultrasound screen. There had been no pain, no bleeding perceptible to the eye (just microscopic blood cells in my urine sample on the day of my physical), and no palpable lump.


An MRI followed. Then a diagnosis: Late Stage Two kidney cancer. Since I had no risk factors for kidney cancer, my doctor said the high stress I had experienced through five years of grieving could have had a connection to my cancer diagnosis."Possible but not provable," was the way he put it.Yet, I was fortunate. Within weeks, major surgery removed the tumor and kidney - before the cancer had spread. My lymph nodes were clean.

REMAIN VIGILANT AGAINST THE EFFECTS OF PROLONGED GRIEF

Every year, at my annual physical, I still tell my doctor how thankful I am to have found the letter to an editor advocating regular physicals for widows – especially young widows.
“Early detection,” my doctor replies. “Prevention is the way to go.” He doesn’t stop there. “Any loss can have negative cardiac consequences or weaken resistance.” I understand what he is saying. Dealing with a death, a divorce, a loss of a job –all of these create the added stress that can weaken the body and its defense against disease.
Even as a widow I have been lucky in a number of ways. Thirteen years ago, a piece in the morning paper got me to see a doctor in the first place. Then that doctor treated me for silent precursors of heart disease. Five years later, a routine exam detected cancer in an early, curable stage.
I wonder what would have happened if I didn't start seeing a doctor regularly after my husband's death. I am grateful I came across that letter to an editor. I'd like to write it forward.

Another March Madness

Article first published as "" The Other March Madness  on Technorati.com

March is Small Press Month.


I could have just as well said March is Big Kahuna Month (it isn’t). Big as compared to what? The discerning reader will want to know. Does it celebrate wise men Kahunas (see dictionary.com) or ad men Kahunas (see imdb.com) ?


Does Small Press Month celebrate media or muscle?



The designation is a mini-media shout out for “press”, as in independent publishers, and “small” as in annual sales under $50 million - with fewer than ten titles published a year.


Let me put it this way: If the Big Publishing Houses were corporate banks, the small presses would be credit unions. More accessible. Friendlier. Geared towards a particular neighborhood.

A database on the Poets and Writers magazine website lists hundreds of small presses, alphabetically and by genre: poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. I found a small publisher for my memoir on a list from the Writer magazine. Both of these sources are reliable, which begs a distinction that must be made between small presses and vanity presses.



The small press (like larger university presses) accepts quality manuscripts – and rejects substandard ones. Small presses also distribute their books and pay royalties. Vanity presses are virtually printers. They accept all manuscripts and sell the manuscript-turned-book, in volume, back to the writer. End of contract.


Writing magazines regularly feature articles like “Bigger Isn’t Always Better,” by Jeff Reich. He says the less-is-more perspective allows a small press to focus “on quality not quantity.” Big Name Publishers like Big Name Clients. They often opt for celebrity over craft – and hire a ghost writer for the celebs who can’t write.


Small presses give folk like you and me a chance to tell our stories. Case in point: Terrence McCarthy, a regular guy, writes a compelling memoir, You Had To Be There, about his career jumps from reporter to ad writer to counselor on a psychiatric ward. The manuscript won’t make it through the likes of Random House or Penguin Books - because Terrence isn’t well known enough. An independent press like Signalman Publishers in Kissammee, Florida offers Terrence the chance to put his story “out there” even though Terrence is not trending on Yahoo. Not yet anyway.


John McClure, president of Signalman Publishing, says, “small publishers can and do release titles that offer the reader unique insight on a topic without the filter of commercial success blocking it.”


Yet, small presses can be profitable. Only after corporate publishers repeatedly rejected Paul Harding’s Tinkers, did the new, unheard of Bellvue Literary Press (named after the New York hospital) publish the novel. Then Tinkers picked up a 2010 Pulitizer Prize.


McClure recalls that My Utmost for His Highest- a popular book of devotions –was first published in 1936 by a small press in Ohio. Now it’s the utmost meditation seller on Amazon. That’s right – number one in its category! And its 1930s small press — Barbour Publishing — has grown along with the book’s increasing sales, releasing 150 new titles and 1000 stock titles a year these days.


“A small press is essentially the same as a large independent or university press, except that... well, it's small, “ says Brian Clements, founder of Firewheel Editions, a non-profit press in Newtown, CT. Clements copyedits Firewheel’s selections, designs them, and puts thought into his books’ marketability and distribution. Firewheel has seven editions of Sentence: A Journal of Prose Poetics to its credit as well as its latest venture - Kugelmass:A Journal of Literary Humor -which Clements produces together with editor David Holub. Prose poetry isn’t going to attract most Dan Brown, Stephen King, or Suzanne Collins fans. Kugelmass can’t be expected to compete with The Onion. Yet, when Firewheel Editions stays true to its prose poetry mission in Sentence, and, at the same time, takes Kugelmass’ funniness seriously, readers are offered greater choice.

That said, March is Small Press Month shouldn’t evoke the muscle of March Madness as in NCAA , but a quieter strength in the world of literature.









 

STAYING ALIVE: A LOVE STORY available in print and ebook

I am happy to announce the availabilty of my memoir. Click here to read Chapters one and two. The ebook is  available on  Amazon for Kindles  and at b&n.com for Nook readers.  The paperback can be order later this month..

Old Glories

Article first published by Laura as Old Glories on Technorati.com.

I woke up to a heavy thunderstorm this Memorial Day. The morning news reported a few parades throughout the state had already been cancelled; festivities rerouted to school gymnasiums instead. I figured there’d be no fanfare at the end of my street this holiday.



Distant drumbeats surprised me at ten, echoes as light as the ebbing rain. Since I wasn’t expecting a parade, I wasn’t dressed for a parade. The rat-a-tat-tats grew more distinct as I quickly changed into sneakers, jeans, and a floppy hat to combat a drop or two - which, by then, mostly fell from wet trees. The rain had just about stopped. Skies were getting brighter.



I could see a cluster of parade watchers at the end of my dead end (signed “no outlet” these days). I walked passed my neighbors’ small homes, houses built before the Spanish-American War. The group nodded silent greetings when I reached the corner. One took on the role of designated candy-catcher as the high school marching band blared its fight song before us.



Men and women in uniform passed by, vets in full dress and enlistees in camouflage. A Daisy Girl Scout with an expression as bright as her sky blue tunic came up to me, handed me a silly band in the shape of an unidentifiable animal. Then a Boy Scout in khakis veered from his formation to hand me a flag. A full 10X15 inch Old Glory.





“No thank you,” I said. “I don’t need one.” I already had a flag hanging from my side porch. Drilled the holder in myself, yesterday. Recently, I have felt greater pride in being an American.



But the boy in uniform didn’t know about my flag at home. He looked at me puzzled. Don’t need one? he must have been thinking.Before he could march out another stanza I accepted the banner. I waved it toward him. He looked pleased.


The handful of us at the corner walked home together,after the parade. “You missed half of it,” one said to me.



“No, I saw half of it!” I replied. His wife laughed.



“What am I going to do with this?” He half-heartedly waved the flag he had been handed.

“I’m bringing mine to the cemetery. My father was a veteran,” I said. He looked interested, so I continued. “World War II. My father-in-law too.” My neighbor paused. I was the widow on the street. He didn’t expect me to speak of an in-law.



“My Dad was a telegraph operator in Alaska. Even broke a few codes. And Gramps flew a PBY over Panama. The plane’s engraved on his tombstone“



“Then take this, ” He handed me his banner.

“No. You keep it.I have this," I replied,lifting my flag.

“Put one on your father-in-law’s grave too. Please.”

I took his flag and saluted.“I’d be happy too.”







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Oprah Goes Full Circle

Article first published as Oprah Goes Full Circle on Technorati.

Yesterday at 4 PM my Facebook post read:


Shhhhh. Oprah is saying goodbye.



I had plunked myself directly in front of my TV (unusual for late afternoon). Generally I’d watch in the kitchen as I’d start to prepare dinner.


I’ve never been an Oprah fanatic. Occasionally I’ve been a fan. Those occasions were more regular during her book club days as I watched her turn classics like Elie Wiesel’s Night and sleepers like Wally Lamb’s She’s Come Undone into immediate bestsellers. I use to like when at least half a show a month was devoted to a televised dinner party and discussion of the book.


That’s probably why I also skipped dinner prep last Monday and Tuesday to sit and watch her one-on-one with James Frey. The two-part interview brought closure to her more volatile interview with him five years earlier.


On that past show Oprah pretty much duped Frey into admitting he had grievously lied about his drug addiction and recovery in his memoir A Million Little Pieces, an Oprah book pick. He had taken the bit of stretch literary license grants memoirists to the proportions of an elastic band extended round the world. A few hours spent in jail had been turned into 87 days. That, of course, negated much of what happened during the alleged three month incarceration.Frey left the show feeling ambushed and degraded, snapped in the face by his overextended stretcher,


The Oprah and Frey redux, last week, had my full attention as I watched two cultural icons revisit the past and surprisingly make amends. Yes, he had misrepresented, but so had Oprah’s producers when they originally invited him in ‘06. He was expecting to participate in a panel on truth in nonfiction. Oprah maintains she was unaware of this. He got a public execution. Oprah was aware of that. So she called him afterward, concerned the humiliating experience might have led him back to his addiction. I didn't know that until the reunion show.


There were a number of acts of contrition on this broadcast during her final week on network TV. In the end it was all about forgiveness. An Oprah hallmark.


I admit to getting caught up in Oprah's farewell hoopla this week – star-studded accolades, heartfelt gratefulness, and dramatic reminders of Oprah’s philanthropy. But I think Oprah’s return to Frey last week showed me the full circle of her brand - the ultimate act of forgiving.


And so, when I posted Shhhhh, Oprah is saying goodbye, I wrote it with the same respect Reverend Sykes feels in To Kill a Mockingbird when he tells Scout to stand as Atticus crosses the empty courtroom floor . Like Atticus, our Oprah is passing.


Read more: http://technorati.com/entertainment/celebrity/article/oprah-goes-full-circle/page-2/#ixzz1NYfnsvXD
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 http://technorati.com/entertainment/celebrity/article/oprah-goes-full-circle/#ixzz1NYffTxXT

The Acclaimation and Aloneness of a Best-Selling Writer

I don’t feel completely comfortable calling Wally Lamb a chick-magnet. Yet, after attending his reading in Glastonbury earlier this year, I’d have to at least dub him the literary lodestone - to a flock of mature hens – myself included. The elder English-teacher type out-numbered all others the hour before doors opened at the Riverfront Community Center. When folks did start crossing into the big and bright reading room, set up to seat at least 300 attendees, the ladies still outnumbered the gentlemen, 20 to 1 I’d say, with three – maybe even four – generations of readers present. By the time the program began, , people were being turned away at the door.

I watched Wally stand by the entrance minutes before he was introduced. He blended with the ebb and flow of walk-ins. Earlier, the Rham English teacher in line next to me had referred to his looks as generic. That pretty much coincided with a story a colleague of mine recently shared. It seemed his sister, who had joined a health club in Eastern Connecticut a few months back, spoke regularly of pleasant conversations with a low-key gentleman at the facility. Weeks passed before she figured out this other member was Lamb – even though she knew his name was Wally – and she had already read all three of his novels.

In the minutes before he would address the packed room he chatted, probably as nonchalantly as he had at the health club. Then, after my hour wait outside the room and another hour wait inside the room, Wally was introduced. Wearing a charcoal jacket atop a like-colored, mock turtleneck sweater, Wally approached the podium, his generic appearance soon refashioned by his way with words.

Lamb has a tendency to smile even as he speaks. He grinned as he sized up the crowd. “Wow, you people come out for these things.” He grinned as he positioned the mike. “I always freak out on AV stuff.” And he grinned through his half-hour essay about growing up (mostly) Italian (on his mother’s side), working class (Dad was a superintendent at the local utility company), and hen-pecked (by his sisters and gal cousins). The local Norwich Free Academy graduate ventured on to UCONN and back to Norwich Free Academy (a public high school) to teach for 25 years – until Oprah rocked his world in 1997 with Book Club Invitation Number One (for She’s Come Undone) followed by Book Club Invitation Number Two a year later (for I Know This Much Is True), an unprecedented literary feat.

As acclaimed as his writing is, Lamb insists he is not the novelist by which to model process. He has a terrible time starting books. Claims years go by before a main character takes him, the mere recorder of the journey, through his or her story. And, he follows the lead with little or no insight about how his character will fare – until he pens the end. Lamb says he grew almost despondent trying to move The Hour I First Believed along until, while teaching at a writer’s workshop in Louisiana, he meandered into Saint Louis Cathedral, lit a candle, and prayed for help to “start the story.” In time, a line that began, “My mother was a convicted felon. . .” entered his mind, beckoning him through the high school English teacher’s life and Columbine times of his troubled narrator: Calum Quirk.

Lamb, who also read an excerpt from his latest novel, says placing his “fictional protagonist inside a nonfictional maze,” takes him down unknown corridors too. One of these could very well be the book-signing event he attended in Colorado during his 22-week book tour last year. A man approached his table asking, “Do you think Eric’s brother should read this book?” The question unnerved the author when he soon realized it was posed by the father of the real-life Columbine killer and suicide victim - Eric Harris,- who along with Dylan Klebold enacted the all-out assault on Columbine High – April 20,1999.Stunned, Lamb held out his hands to Mr. Harris. As they embraced tightly, Lamb replied, “I don’t have any answer for you.” Mr. Harris countered, “I don’t have any answer either.”Wally Lamb, the gifted writer who filled the Riverfront Glastonbury Community Center with hundreds of friends and fans that Sunday afternoon, managed to manifest not only the popularity and charisma of a best-selling novelist, but the loneliness and vulnerability of the writer as well.

Not Homer . . . not Shakespeare

What do you say after 30 years of high school teaching? This little speech attempted to make a beginning out of the end of my full-time teaching career. It was given the evening of 6/11/09 at the EFHS Retirement Dinner at the Storrotown Tavern in West Springfield, MA.

Trust me, it is far easier to stand here paying tribute to a retiree, as I have done a number of times in the past, than it is to be the object of professional attention and affection. I want to deeply thank my family - my daughter Emily, my son Conor , my future son-in-law Ryan , my twin brother Larry, and my dear friend Tom along with so many close friends who are here with me tonight. You shared my happiest moments: my marriage, the births of Emily and Conor, and helped me through my saddest. And help you did. How many can say as I can that Tod Couture has cleaned your pool, Rich Monteroosso has mowed your lawn, and Brian Mazzone has delivered papers and projects not just to your front door – but down the hallway to your bedroom when you were out of school with a broken ankle. I am one lucky and grateful lady.

But, for the sake of time and emotional perseverance, I’d prefer to mostly stay in the moment that we share right now. And, in that moment, I am struck by two faces. One is that of Carol Bruce, a Fermi retiree of a dozen or so years who was my geography and American History teacher when I was a student at Enfield High in the 1960s. Long before the expressed mission to teach writing across the curriculum Carol – a social studies teacher mind you – taught me how to write – a research paper on Nigeria freshman year and analytical essay after analytical essay after analytical essay in American History – junior year. The other face that strikes me is that of Erin Clark – one of Fermi’s youngest teachers who I had as a student at just about the time that Carol retired. I guess you could say that what I was to Carol Bruce, a student who went on to teach in the same school system, Erin is to me.

My colleagues here tonight know that Erin teaches in 316, the room above mine. I often hear her students moving their desks, for group work, for simulated battles, for review rounds of Jeopardy – and I think what energy, what vigor, what passion she and all the younger teachers at Fermi have. Well, in the Faculty Room over lunch last week, Erin looked me straight in the eye with the same piercing look she would give me when she sat front row center in our World Literature class well over ten years ago. This look, as I recall, was always followed by probing questions like: how was it possible that the Odyssey’s Penelope could stay so true to a husband who was gone for 20 years? Well, at lunch a week ago, Erin, the teacher, had that same inquisitive expression as Erin, the student, use to have. Recognizing the look, I was still unprepared for what followed.

This time, Erin’s question was, “Now that you’re about to retire, what words of wisdom (yes, she really said words of wisdom) do you have to impart (her verb, not mine) about teaching? As soon as she posed the rather weighty query I experienced a flashback to 1972 where I was ending the day in Room 200 and Tony Torre, the Assistant Superintendent, was at my door. He had just been appointed to that position, having served a year as Fermi High’s principal, and there he was at my classroom threshold asking, “Laura, now that you’ve taught for a year – what is your philosophy of education?” I remember looking at Assistant Superintendent Torre – in 1972 – and saying (and to this day I still don’t believe I said this), “Gee Mr. Torre. I’ve been so damn busy planning, teaching, and correcting, I haven’t had any time to think about my philosophy of education.”

As with many of you here tonight, life continued to be very busy through the ensuing thirty-plus years; but, getting back to Erin’s question, I really didn’t want to give her the same response I gave Tony in the 70s. So, I began to think about a fresher reply and I thought and I thought and I thought– until, after a few days mind you, two words came to me: consistent morality. That was it. The secret to being a successful teacher was a consistent morality - a commitment to regularly doing the right thing. And where had I gotten these two words after decades of planning, teaching, and correcting, yet within two weeks before I was about to retire? Not Homer, not Shakespeare. I got them from Colt McCoy, of all people, the University of Texas quarterback who spoke to the Teen Leadership classes here at Fermi earlier this month. Go figure! Colt talked less about football and more about how his grandfather would advise him to do the right thing wherever, whenever, offering him a Truth or standard that doesn’t change with some of the people – some of the time. Colt was all about integrity – on the football field and off.

Carol Bruce’s classroom had a consistent morality. Teaching social studies, coaching tennis, supervising practice teachers – she was always the real deal. I’ve sought that kind of fairness along the way – in myself and others. And, from what I see, Erin, along with many of the younger teachers at Fermi, are getting the knack of it as well. I wish them well as I leave the only high school system I’ve known since I was a teenager – with one last goal in mind. And that’s finally being able to give Assistant Superintendent Torre an answer to his question next week at graduation. Other than that, I’m looking forward to less correcting, more reading and writing, there’s a wedding to be planned, and finally – a recent addition to the list – following Colt’s last season at the University of Texas.