Why can’t I?

by Jillian @ http://blueshelled.com . November 24, 2009 . 4:33PM

My aunt passed in October of 2007. I wrote this in June of 2008. I’m still coping with her unexpected death and writing about it here is probably going to upset some people, but my hope is that it will help some people that are struggling with the death of their loved ones as well. If I can do that, it’s worth the fallout. I remember her most often around the holidays, where she is sorely, sorely missed.

June 2008

Sometimes I think I’ve accepted my aunt’s death. Sometimes I know I haven’t. One of the last and best memories I have of her was when she and my whole family (Leon, Adrian, Olivia and Mom) went to Gatlinburg for a week. Besides listening to her snip at my mom while she smoked cigarettes and talked about drinking coffee with Adrian, we also wandered around the town.

I love Gatlinburg for many, many reasons. Mainly, though, when I enter the Pigeon Forge/Gatlinburg area I am filled with a sense of well-being that I don’t usually experience elsewhere. The beauty and serenity of the mountains there fills the empty spots I try so hard to hide in my life.

I didn’t know that the week spent there would be one of the last times I would spend time with my aunt. Traveling makes me irritable, crabby, and hard to get along with. I hate change. I long for a stable routine. What this means is that going on a trip is generally going to make me unhappy and snippy at some point even though I could be enjoying myself immensely.

After a particularly hard day of dealing with one another, we had all settled in at a hotel near the aquarium. One of the features of this particular hotel was its offering of karaoke on the weekends and we were there on a weekend. Anyone that knows Leon and I knows that we like to sing. Neither of us is as good at it as we used to be, but it increases our mood and decreases our stress. We made our way into the smoky karaoke bar area and after being surprised by a co-worker (who had no idea I was going to be there that weekend and vice versa) we settled down to watch some truly marvelous and truly awful karaoke.

Selection was slim as I am no good with “old school” country music and being Gatlinburg, TN, the majority of the music was such. They did have “My Ding-a-ling,” which will crack up several members of my family that remember when Mikey, Jeremy, April and I discovered the song at a young age. I wasn’t going there. We’d just bought one of the Karaoke Revolution games and it had the song “Why Can’t I” by Liz Phair on it. I thought I was somewhat rehearsed in it and wouldn’t feel completely inept, so I signed up to sing it.

I’ve always had stage fright. Even when I was required to be on stage due to extra curricular activities, I barely held it together. I never got solos in choir because of this fear. It made me shaky. Actually, I probably was quite terrible and that contributed to the lack of solo time, but the shaky voice was right up there. I digress.

As I was singing in the smoky bar, I noticed my aunt wander in and sit next to Leon happily smoking a cigarette. What made me laugh was that later she said, “You were so good I had no idea it was YOU on the stage.” Well, ok.

The rest of the week was memorable and I have some amazingly funny pictures. Later, I remembered that Gatlinburg was special to Penny because she got married there. She loved it there.

Tonight, I was thinking about her. Every now and then I put her name in a search engine. The only thing that comes up is notice of her death or memorial. It reminds me that it really happened. I remember how she looked the last time I saw her–but it wasn’t her. Those that don’t believe in a soul have never seen a beloved, fiery-spirited aunt lose her spark. The soul IS real.

I think of her often at night, when the house is quiet and I’m alone with my thoughts. I googled her, yet again, and realized that I was having a physical response to this. I got tense and shaky, but didn’t know why. And then I realized that Why Can’t I was playing on the tv. It was completely random, but I have to wonder about these things. Since that night, I’ve associated this song with her…

My faith is probably not as strong as it used to be. I spend a lot of time wondering about God and Earth and why things exist the way they do. Most of my thoughts center on a place outside of Earth and where people exist when they are gone. My beliefs about death and the afterllfe are conflicted.

So, since I’m human, I put my faith in something that knows more than me and choose where she is based on my heart and not my head.

For me, my Aunt is and will always be in Gatlinburg. She was with me there when we ran in the middle of a thunderstorm up a hill for 3/4 of a mile to get the car with her cursing mom the whole way there while I tried not laugh for fear of passing out. She’s in the aquarium where we made comments about crabs doing illicit things. She’s in the smoky karaoke bar where I sing to her without her realizing it’s me. She’s terrified on the skylift but dealing with it by smoking. She’s resting by the stream that we watched our first day there. Yes. That’s where she is.

Why can’t I breathe whenever I think about you?

Lifegem jewelry: Because your loved ones can still give even when they’re dead

by Jillian @ http://blueshelled.com . June 1, 2009 . 12:13PM

Ok, despite my flippant title, I’m intrigued by the idea I’m about to present to you. Many of my friends and family are aware that I enjoy finding new and different gifts for the various gift-giving occasions. What this means is that I’m always finding websites and resources that I think are worthy of sharing with them. Because of this, I often become overly eager in my sharing and this results in them getting multiple emails about websites that they might not be as eager to peruse.

Recently, there was a fantastic discussion on my blog about what happens to cadavers when they are donated to science. Many ethical questions were explored and I’m still bouncing the final thoughts around in my mind. I enjoy well-presented debates a great deal and have had this one on my mind. Because of it, I was googling around (googling around sounds much naughtier than it is) and found the Lifegem website.

Initially, I was as repelled by the idea brought forth in this website as I would be by the thought of wearing 6 inch heels and running a marathon. My initial take on Lifegem is that it is a website that offers to take the carbon from the cremated ashes of your loved one and make it in to a sparkling diamond that you can then wear in jewelry. This allows you both closure and the ability to wear your loved one and keep them with you until you die and then, HEY! Maybe your next of kin will make you into a sparkler!

Look, I never said my empathy extended into what I consider hairbrained ideas.

And yet, the further I read into the website, the more this seems like a decent, feasible idea to me. When people are grieving, memories are so terribly important and if they can afford this, why should it bother me? As I continued to read, the key aspect that changed my opinion was that, in order to create the diamond, they don’t have to use ashes, rather they can use hair from your loved one. Heck, your loved one doesn’t even have to be dead! If you are a stalker and have your “loved one’s” hairbrush, as long as you have the equivilent of 8oz worth of hair (a typical men’s haircut worth), you’ve got enough to create a piece of jewelry.

Personally, the more I think about this, the more I think that it isn’t any different than getting a tattoo or a painting to memorialize a lost loved one. The ashes part creeped me out because the idea of someone possibly cremating someone they love against that person’s wishes just to create jewelry from their remains is a little abnormal for me, however, I think that is an extreme thought as opposed to the “norm” for this situation.

What do you think? Beautiful memory keeper or creepy sparkly no-no?

Use of human cadavers as crash test dummies?

by Jillian @ http://blueshelled.com . May 29, 2009 . 1:56PM

Back in the 1990s there was a song by a group called The Crash Test Dummies and the main lyrics were “mmm mmm mmm mm mmm mmm mmm,” which was sung in a monotone voice. I kind of feel that way after watching a live link video that discusses how human cadavers that were donated to science are used in many ways that the public is unaware. In this case, they are being used to develop safer vehicles, which I think is great, but the family is not notified that their body will be abused, which seems unethical to me, in many ways. Take a look at the video and we can talk more about this.

The controversy over the practice is that the bodies, once turned over to science, have no guarantees as to what type of “science” they will be used to test. Many people make the assumption that the body will go towards the furthering of medical students education, some kind of cancer/terminal illness research or something that the deem equally changing for all of humanity. The idea that their loved one could end up further broken due to testing car standards has people appalled and angry.

My opposition to this stems from all of those ideas as well as the idea of desecration of a person once they are gone. We have other means of testing these vehicles and we use them. If a person knows that their body is going to this purpose, I believe that is one idea that is fine. If they have no idea that they will be further used to this extent, it opens a whole other can of worms.

What are your thoughts? If this was your loved one and you had donated their body to science, would you be ok with the practice?