Our dad passed shortly before the pandemic of Covid-19 struck. What a blessing that was, as it would have been hell for him and for all of us to go through. The final couple of years, and worsening over the last months, he was increasingly vacant and absent, barely “there.” It was hard to tell if he was bored and disinterested, if he was hovering on the bridge to the next world, or if his tired old brain cells (those that were left) were not firing anymore. He was almost 93 when he died. When I arrived to visit, his second wife would bellow loudly in his ear “(whatever strange nickname she called him), Ruth is here!” His hearing aids were powered on, intact, and in place, but he usually did not even look up. It was as if I was not there. Sadly, to be perfectly honest, it was not that different from much of my life with him.
I had the good fortune to make my peace with him, so I enjoyed a stretch of a surprisingly happy father-daughter relationship before he began his protracted fade-out departure. Granted, I did all the healing work on my own without his participation, but that is a story for another day. He did participate in a truly loving relationship with me for a time, and I am infinitely grateful for that.
Our dad’s final years, however, were a quiet agony. Thankfully, my sisters and I were a good team. But having my presence or absence not register, questioning whether those long, vapid visits had any meaning at all, was not only interminably empty and boring for me, but a potent reminder of the years of feeling as if I did not matter or even exist in his eyes. They were a living reminder/stimulus of long years of painful and confusing neglect. Admittedly, I lived much of those last two years in various degrees of trauma activation. Being excessively busy and perennially sleep-deprived, the routine visits took a chunk out of every weekend. But for whatever reason I kept them going diligently until the end – not without confusion and unbearable fatigue.
Why? Was I afraid I might miss something if I did not take advantage of every possible moment with him? What might I possibly miss? I could rarely ask him questions about his life anymore. I found I would collect stories and topics and come with a “playlist” of things in mind to talk about, to entertain either him or myself. I honestly don’t know which. Due to his various cancers, he had been on a feeding tube for years, so my stories about cheesemaking challenges, my baking masterpieces, or food-related conversations, which are ordinarily pleasurable and easy for me, were off the table, so to speak. Our best bet on a good day was to sing. Interestingly, although he did not remember much of anything else, he did seemingly remember all the songs and their lyrics. Sometimes we filled the time that way, especially when I had the good fortune to visit at the same time as a sister, who brought his old guitar. She played it, but it did seem to awaken and cheer him.
Secretly, however, I remembered an old Cuban song I used to listen to and love: “La vida no vale nada…” life is not worth anything. And even though the song is about how life is not worth anything if others are suffering, I had to wonder, what keeps him going? What would make it worth continuing to live and breathe that vacuous existence? And when I dared to be really honest with myself, why doesn’t he just go?
When there is a long history of trauma, neglect, hard-earned healing, and profound ambivalence about its perpetrators and purveyors, their final years can be complicated at best. Some of us are too enraged and hurt still to be dutiful; some of us too dutiful to allow ourselves to feel enraged or hurt. If we are glaringly aware of both the parents’ own tragic and unconscionable trauma and misfortune and their own tragic and unconscionable lack of healing, it is even more complicated. Add to that whatever feelings we might have about what others (those mythical others) might think about how we navigate the loss of a parent. Some of us care. And many of the feelings are outside our awareness.
I remember when our mom died in 2000. I was so embarrassed when people expressed sympathetic condolences as I felt nothing but grateful relief – or so I thought. I was driving the day after she passed, however, and my car broke down on the freeway. Much to my own surprise, I fell apart on the phone with the Triple A operator who took my call for emergency road service, crying rather hysterically to her about how my mother had just died. It was as if I and not the car had broken down.
When there has been attachment trauma, especially neglect, when little is “concrete enough” to point to, the final years and days of the parent’s life can be racked with troubling ambivalence.
In his newly released memoir, Bono, who lost his mother as a small boy, recounts a legacy of rock stars who lost their mothers at a young age. John Lennon, Paul McCartney, John Lydon, and Bob Geldof are the ones he names, but there are many more, according to him. He refers to something parallel about father loss in the hip-hop world but does not name names. Interesting. He muses about some possible relationship between attachment trauma (not his language, of course!) and creativity.
After the death of his mother Iris, Bono grew up in a world of men – a much older brother and a stern, emotionless father. He had few memories of Iris at all, probably largely because the three of them never spoke of her, the space she had occupied simply closing up. At least, that is how Bono explains it. Neglect and abundant loss, however, are very often, if not usually, accompanied by a copious blankness of autobiography. In fact, one of the gifts of recovery is reclaiming or even constructing, for the first time, a personal narrative.
Interestingly, Bono did have one perfectly intact memory of Iris. His father was in an upstairs room, doing one of his many typical construction projects, working with a chainsaw or some sort of power saw, which apparently had slipped out of his hand. Loud screams echoed from upstairs, and when Bono and Iris ran up to see what had happened, his blood-spattered father was yelling in terror that he had castrated himself. Iris’ puzzling response was to burst into uncontrollable peals of laughter. She was no Lorena Bobbitt, and his father was not abusive. Bono was simply baffled. Iris must have been an odd bird. Indeed a curious bit of memory in a desert of idealization. (We never do learn what his dad’s injury turned out to be.)
To be visited by confusing, even contradictory impulses, and lots of trauma activation during the dying and death of a traumatic parent, be it incident trauma or neglect, is a natural and expectable response.
When there has been attachment trauma, especially neglect, when little is “concrete enough” to point to, the final years and days of the parent’s life can be racked with troubling ambivalence. One might, as I was, be horrified in shame for feeling such apparent and undeniable numbness around my mother’s passing. Over subsequent years of neurofeedback and other healing work, fragments of feeling come to me that surprise me. For whatever reason, I have her old sewing scissors on my desk. I don’t use them for sewing, but I keep them near. They remind me of her hands… I recall her terrible cooking almost fondly. Little things that she said will come to mind, and I will quote her, often reprimanding someone with a smile and shouting, “Put on a sweater, I’m cold!” or remembering the German swear words I learned from her momentary fits of temper. So, I don’t feel completely void of feeling anymore, and I do regret that I was not able to make my peace before she went. She went so quickly. It is really the only regret I have.
To be visited by confusing, even contradictory impulses, and lots of trauma activation during the dying and death of a traumatic parent, be it incident trauma or neglect, is a natural and expectable response – even the silent, perhaps shameful wish that they take their leave already. I urge all to be gentle and forgiving of oneself, for one’s own swirling inconsistencies or perhaps even incomprehensible thoughts, behaviors, and feelings. If I am to offer one, my best recommendation is to do what will make you feel best about yourself in the long run, so the survivor of trauma and/or neglect can live, and in effect, “rest” in peace.
Today’s song:
My book “Working with the Developmental Trauma of Childhood Neglect: Using Psychotherapy and Attachment Theory Techniques in Clinical Practice” was published on August 31st. It provides psychotherapists with a multidimensional view of childhood neglect and a practical roadmap for facilitating survivors’ healing.
When I was a waiter in a fairly high-end place, it was the only time I ever found any use for Valentine’s Day. Usually, there was an overpriced special menu, lots of champagne, and I made a ton of money. The restaurant was mobbed. Best of all, I had a good excuse to avoid the whole thing myself. Valentine’s Day always seemed to me to be a recipe for the single and lonely to feel more than the usual shame, grief, and despair about being alone and about the morass of relationship and couple-hood.
It still seems to me to be one of those commercial nightmares perfectly designed to benefit and bring joy to few, while leaving most to feel aberrant and horrible about themselves. I remember long ago – perhaps my last attempt to “celebrate” it with a boyfriend – having a huge fight at the table after he had sat alone for an hour in a crowded restaurant while I sat alone on a crowded freeway trying to get there. Oy vey. Relationships are hard enough, especially for those with complicated attachment histories like trauma and neglect, without a day that makes us all imagine it is supposed to be all easy, breezy hearts and roses.
Valentine’s Day always seemed to me to be a recipe for the single and lonely to feel more than the usual shame, grief, and despair about being alone and about the morass of relationship and couple-hood.
Some years ago, I heard anthropologist Helen Singer speak at a conference. A specialist in sexuality, she talked about how in the human brain the grief and pain of heartbreak looks identical to a brain crashing from a large hit of cocaine. The devastation is an undeniable physiological reality, alongside the obvious emotional shattering.
We all remember the first time our hearts were broken. I believe for me it was when I was 10, the first time I had ever had a best friend. She dumped me for another girl who had a canopy bed and a princess phone. I always felt that fourth grade was my best year ever, and it was all downhill ever since. Seriously, however, for mammals designed for attachment, rejection by a beloved other constitutes a massive injury.
We saw the same with our precious dog Angel. We adopted her from a shelter in 2010, along with her sister and littermate Button. After being together in the womb, they continued to be inseparable throughout their lives. When Button got sick and precipitously died in 2020, Angel was inconsolable. She simply did not know a world without her sister, friend and companion. Months later, we still have a very hard time leaving little Angel alone, as her agonizing wailing follows us out the door and into the street.
So, imagine the little vulnerable brain of a human infant, left alone too much, rejected, abandoned, neglected. It is the same crashing brain, but perhaps worse, as this child lacks any nascent resilience that might accumulate from experience. And, of course, has no other resources. Interestingly it similarly looks like the brain of a prisoner enduring the punishing agony of solitary confinement.
Science journalist Florence Williams recently published a book called “Heartbreak: A Personal and Scientific Journey.” She examines the literal reaction of the human heart to relationship loss, citing serious cases of heart attack and other heart diseases. Similar data appeared in “The Beat of Life: A Surgeon Reveals the Secrets of the Heart.” Heartbreak and relationship loss truly are no joke.
The first love, the first attachment, is of course, the mother. We experience a kind of oneness we will never have again. It is nature’s design to have warm, nourishing, enduring containment inside the mother’s body for a good long time, and we continue to need something like that for many years after birth. It is no wonder that the attachment aspect of psychotherapy is so critical and essential. It is not sufficient, but definitely necessary, and even with the most effective therapeutic modalities, a safe attachment and the possibility to process ruptured or missing vital attachments are requirements of regulation and healing.
That first attachment also becomes the template that defines the subsequent ones, particularly the important ones. My most unrelenting heartbreak ever was from an intense and dramatic young adult relationship that spanned ten years from my early 20’s to my early 30’s. It took me four years of breaking up and getting back together to finally leave. For two years afterwards, a day did not pass without wrenching tears of loss. It was five years before I stopped thinking about that man every single day.
Some years later, after learning much more about trauma and neglect, I realized that the depth of grief about that relationship loss was much deeper than I had realized. I was really processing something profound about my mother and my own earliest attachment.
I have since learned that when a client comes to me with unremitting grief about relationship loss, the mother relationship is an important place to look, for at least part of the work, and that work is the work of years I am afraid.
Even years later, with all that dogged processing about my mother seemingly well behind me, I still found that hearing George Floyd’s calls for his mother with his final breaths, for many reasons, brought uncontrollable tears.
In 1996 Eve Ensler rocked and awakened the world with her ground-breaking Vagina Monologues, a one-woman theatrical show exploring female sexuality in its myriad aspects: consensual and non-consensual sexual experience, body image, menstruation, sex work, and much more, internationally, across the lifespan, and through historical time.
It took the world by storm and has become an invaluable tool for sex education. Ensler herself became a vital historical icon in the worlds of feminism and sexual justice.
In 1998, Ensler proposed an alternative observance of February 14th: V-Day.
In her words: “V-Day is a global activist movement to end violence against all women, girls and the planet.” It continues to this day. What a brilliant idea to transform or repurpose an all too often retraumatizing holiday into a vehicle of justice, equality and health!
In conjunction with the publication of her most recent and perhaps my favorite of her books, The Apology, Ensler changed her name to V. Now I can wholeheartedly say “Happy V-Day” to all. Enjoy your February 14th however you spend it, and Thanks V!
Each time I write a blog, I always try to think of a song that I love that goes with what I’ve written. Today’s is I Will Survive by Gloria Gaynor.
My book “Working with the Developmental Trauma of Childhood Neglect: Using Psychotherapy and Attachment Theory Techniques in Clinical Practice” was published on August 31st. It provides psychotherapists with a multidimensional view of childhood neglect and a practical roadmap for facilitating survivors’ healing.
Instantly a tight pit seized up deep in my stomach, hearing the heavily accented 92-year-old voice on the radio. I did not realize it was International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1945. The voice belonged to Eva Schloss, the step-sister of Anne Frank, whose famous diary has captivated the world for decades since it was discovered.
Like most everyone, I have read the book several times over the years. But for the most part, I have kept my distance from Holocaust stories, figuring I “know enough.” I remember nightmares of “army men” stomping through the house, grabbing everything, their heavy black boots booming in my ears when I was two.
In third grade at Hebrew school, they showed us grainy black and white newsreels, of piles of bones and lines of emaciated skeleton-like people pushed stumbling into smoking showers; my father bellowing, “Bread and worms are what we had to eat! You just don’t know what it’s like to go to bed hungry!”
Our mother was mostly quiet. The story I most remember about her was of her best friend Gikka from one day to the next, turning on her, rejecting her upon joining the Hitler Youth. Our mom’s heart was broken. Although the stories were not my own, they lived in my body and inhabited my dreams as if they were. Only many decades later did I learn there is a term for this: “intergenerational transmission of trauma.”
Although I always retained a profound sense of justice and injustice, and compelled by human suffering, felt a keen desire to “do something” to help Jewish history and causes, Israel and Zionism, I stayed away from all of it. When I was older, I was compelled by Fascist dictatorships terrorizing, torturing and overtaking Latin American countries and the resistance movements that sprang up to fight them. I fixated on the hideous torture stories that were different, but not really. Of course, our dad did not like that or what he knew of it. But that was the way his trauma inhabited me.
Intergenerational transmission of trauma or “vicarious” trauma is a powerful force. It can live in the body in much the same way as one’s own lived experience. Parents’ trauma can also be a wellspring of neglect because, as we all know all too well, the nature of trauma is to “fixate” on the trauma; trauma is not “remembered, it is re-lived.” All these hackneyed truisms of trauma therapy that everyone is so tired of hearing.
But of course, a parent who is thus preoccupied will not be attentive to me and may even appear to forget all about me. It certainly made it easy for me to feel forgettable and like I did not matter. And also that my relatively placid life left me no reason to “feel sorry for myself.” The refrain of neglect: But nothing happened to me! I have no business feeling so bad! is probably also its greatest challenge.
I also believe, certainly in my case, that I suffered from “survivor guilt.” I had not earned the noble badge endowed by terrible persecution and victimization. I, therefore, lacked the virtue, entitlement, and value of one who had. What an irony that if one hasn’t been the butt of sufficient devaluation and worthlessness, one is unworthy. But I definitely swallowed that and spent decades trying to “make up for it.” In later years, I wondered if my father felt somehow similarly guilty or unworthy for not dying in those showers too.
Intergenerational transmission of trauma or “vicarious” trauma is a powerful force. It can live in the body in much the same way as one’s own lived experience.
It is only recently, in the last two years that I learned about a category of trauma that was new to me: “moral injury.” This is when a person is plagued by guilt, shame, remorse and agony about horrible acts that they themselves have committed, perhaps against their own will, or having had no choice. Like emergency health workers during the COVID 19 Pandemic, who had to make fatal decisions about who got the ventilator, or soldiers who were forced to commit atrocities in the line of military duty and are haunted by the memory.
Their trauma healing work is as deep and difficult as one who has suffered overt trauma to their own body, or maybe even more so. Because like the survivor of neglect, they can imagine, “Nothing happened to me!” We are now having to find protocols and methodologies for healing for them too.
The challenges of social justice and healing the world stand seamlessly alongside or within the larger umbrella category of trauma. We cannot keep up with the already seemingly endless task of assisting survivors of trauma and neglect if we simultaneously continue producing and reproducing the conditions and the environments that spawn endless cycles of “new” trauma or continue to bequeath our own to subsequent generations.
Healing our own trauma and neglect injuries is actually a way we contribute to the world, as is participating in the work of social justice, a way that we advance the work of trauma healing. And yes, what a lot of work we have to do.
Yet as Eva Schloss reflected on her long life, she still remembers daily with grief, her lost loved ones from now nearly eight decades ago. she rejoices in her own three grown children and many grandchildren and still enjoys dancing and singing with them. Let’s work hard to liberate all the literal and figurative, individual and collective Auschwitz’s of the world.
Each time I write a blog, I always try to think of a song that I love that goes with what I’ve written. Today’s is Imagine by John Lennon & The Plastic Ono Band (with the Flux Fiddlers).
My book “Working with the Developmental Trauma of Childhood Neglect: Using Psychotherapy and Attachment Theory Techniques in Clinical Practice” was published on August 31st. It provides psychotherapists with a multidimensional view of childhood neglect and a practical roadmap for facilitating survivors’ healing.
“Are more famous people dying these days, or am I just more aware of it?” I asked my husband the other day. I had just heard the news of the passing of Vietnamese Buddhist luminary Thich Nat Hanh. Although I am not a student of his, several very close friends are, and I have always admired the way he brought social justice and activism into spirituality, which means a lot to me.
Granted, he was 95, and his international spiritual community had been preparing for it for some time, but still, it was a tremendous loss. The day before, it was rock musician Meat Loaf, again, not a favorite of mine, but he was only 74. Well, rock n roll is a rough life. “No,” my husband replied. Although COVID has taken many lives, “these deaths are part of the natural order.” Perhaps I am indeed more attuned to people’s passing.
For those with a history of neglect, loss can be complex, even abstract, or mysterious. A profound sense of sadness or emptiness that seems to make no sense. There may be no obvious cause to point to for the profound sadness, which can then readily turn to shame, or the self -recrimination of “self-pity” or “self-indulgence.” Grief for what never was, however confusing, is very real. There may be profound sorrow and loss upon the death of a profoundly disappointing, neglectful or even cruel parent. The door is closing. There is no more hope.
Several of the deaths I learned of this week were of people who overcame great trauma and loss of their own before making significant contributions in the world. They became very visible before they took their leave.
For those with a history of neglect, loss can be complex, even abstract, or mysterious. A profound sense of sadness or emptiness that seems to make no sense.
I have always loved clothes. Admittedly it is not exactly politically correct. When I had the privilege of visiting Milan, one of the world’s great fashion centers, visiting the showrooms of the fanciest designers was like a fantastic museum show. I loved it. Although I pride myself in only buying clothes when they are marked down to “almost free” and wearing them for three and four decades, I am still somewhat embarrassed. Two years ago, I heard an interview on the radio with an icon of the fashion world I had never heard of, who had just published his memoir, The Chiffon Trenches: Andre Leon Talley.
He got my attention because he was the first African American man to break into the decidedly rich white world of fashion. Of course, I had to read the book. Like Arthur Ashe and Tiger Woods, he had the talent, the courage, the determination and the guts, not to mention the ability to endure discrimination, at least at first, to make a name and become visible, not only in a high-class white male but also female-dominated industry.
Talley was born in rural North Carolina and was skinny, black, poor and gay. He always loved beauty and has been prolifically quoted for lamenting a “beauty famine”, which he always did his utmost to remedy. Born in the Southern US in 1948, being gay was not easy or safe, and although the memoir does not detail much about his childhood, he was sexually abused as an adolescent, which scarred him for life. He later self-medicated liberally with food, and although he associated closely with Yves Saint Laurent, played tennis with Louis Vuitton and was the darling of Karl Lagerfeld, he never had a lover his entire life, or at least as of the 2020 memoir. He seemed to charm everyone. Close with Diana Vreeland, editor in chief of Vogue, he loved women, he loved elegant and ornate grandeur, and never ceased to love beauty.
When he was close to 40, Talley suffered the indignity and greatest horror imaginable when one is central on the fashion stage, he gained over 100 pounds, which, even on his large frame, made him enormous, and all the more larger than life. His close associates twice sent him to high end “fat farms” to lose weight which he was unable to maintain, invariably gaining it back and more. Clearly, it was related to his unprocessed trauma. Ultimately, he settled into largesse and created for himself a signature style of brightly colored caftans in the most exquisite and exclusive of luxurious fabrics and made grand sweeping entrances wherever he went. This continued until his recent death. And although he has been criticized for not doing enough to blaze a trail for a rising generation of African American aspirants to the editorial and design cliques of a highly lucrative industry, nonetheless by his willingness to be visible, brave and stand tall, and visibly endure the mantle of his trauma, he broke a barrier. He is a hero in my book. Au Revoir Andre and thank you.
The same day I heard about Andre, I heard another story from another corner of the world. The “Madonna” of Asia, Anita Mui, had died at 40. Born in Hong Kong very poor, by the age of four, living with her single mother and little sister, Anita found herself singing in the public plaza to earn money for food. Already at that age, people loved her. Again, through hard work and gritty tenacity, she rose to become the pop sensation of the East. Although I had never heard of her, I was struck by the outpouring of public respect and grief that seemed on a par with International spiritual and political leaders.
Many of my readers may have attended the recent Trauma Research Foundation Social Justice Summit, a powerful and timely meeting of many great minds, where the hugely relevant interface between trauma and social justice, essentially world trauma, was skillfully and colorfully presented.
One speaker named Alta Starr, a social justice and somatics practitioner, told a story about an experience she had with one of her students many years ago. He was a dark-skinned African American young man, about six feet five inches tall. Starr’s class was doing a somatic practice which involved stretching all the many muscles of the back and reaching one’s full height. While doing the practice, this healthy young man collapsed and fell to the floor in a dead faint. Of course, Starr was terribly worried as well as dismayed and puzzled as to what she herself may have done. The young man came to and, although confused as well, quickly recovered.
Returning to class the following day, he had been busily processing. His whole life experience had taught him that to be visible as tall and dark, and to appear threatening, would endanger him. In order to be safe, he had to shrink and hide, be small and invisible. Stretching into his full stature had been too terrifying, which is why in the practice, he had disappeared from consciousness.
Andre and Anita had the courage and the stamina to stay present, work hard, become visible, captivate the world and make more than one tremendous contribution before taking their leave.
Well, I do prefer to end, even these short blogs, on a positive note. Because I have an affection for all things Chilean, the story caught my attention about Brownie. Brownie is a Border Collie mutt puppy who languished in a Chilean animal shelter in 2016, longing for a home. According to shelter staff, he was difficult to place because he had some sort of congenital problem with his back legs that made him disabled and therefore less attractive. A young couple found him adorable and happily took Brownie home.
Six years later, Brownie became a centerpiece of the political campaign of his owner 35-year-old Gabriel Boric, the newly elected president of the Republic of Chile. Brownie has become a social media sensation and a national hero. Standing tall, risking going from invisible to visible, from disability, poverty, trauma and neglect, to presence, adding beauty, depth and joy to a hungry world – well, these are all good reminders. Thank you to Thich Nat Hanh, to Andre, and Anita. Thank you and goodbye for now.
And you Brownie, well hopefully we’ll be seeing you for a while.
Each time I write a blog, I always try to think of a song that I love that goes with what I’ve written. Today’s is Turn! Turn! Turn! by The Byrds.
My book “Working with the Developmental Trauma of Childhood Neglect: Using Psychotherapy and Attachment Theory Techniques in Clinical Practice” was published on August 31st. It provides psychotherapists with a multidimensional view of childhood neglect and a practical roadmap for facilitating survivors’ healing.
On August 25, as I tuned in for my carefully regulated quotient of National Public Radio morning news, and caught the tail end of the headlines, I heard something about remembering Charlie Watts. I thought “What? What happened to Charlie?” I barely heard all the horrors about Afghanistan and COVID, as I waited for the story. When I reached my office and still had not heard it, so I went to the newspaper to find that Charlie Watts had died at age 80. I was heartbroken.
I am fond of saying, perhaps only really half in jest, that Mick Jagger is the only man I have loved for over 55 years except my Dad. The angry intensity of the Rolling Stones was definitely a tool of regulation through my childhood, long before I had a clue what that means. I just knew that something about the rhythmic crashing, irreverent, often outrageous lyrics; violent blaring tones spoke to a split off part of me, and made me happy. It was perhaps a single access route to my disavowed but plentiful rage. I would play it loudly when I had the chance.
Mick Jagger was flamboyant and the clear centerpiece. Frozen and stiff in my own body, his fluid and high speed dancing, sometimes measured, jerky pointing, and boundless energy thrilled me. I read somewhere that he lost 10 pounds in every show. His lithe body and flowy androgenous, colorful, sometimes diabolical outfits spoke to the young seamstress in me. I loved the whole package, and still do, even now that he is 78.
Keith Richard has always been a wild man, and still makes me smile in a knowing way as well. His overt self-destructive hedonism, spoke to a part of me that was passionate, suicidal and futureless. It was as if each member of the band represented one of my dissociated parts. The whole package made me feel alive. When Keith’s mammoth autobiography came out a few years ago, his grandiosity, although unsurprising, was stunning. It did not make me love him less, or admire his musical genius less. It was rather almost comical. Learning of his quite impoverished and trauma ridden childhood was not surprising either. Rather affirming of my intuition about him, although I probably had never really thought it through.
And Charlie was always a steady quiet presence sitting back there, like a heartbeat. What an irony! The backbeat of loud, intense rock music, the rhythmic foundation that held it all together, having an air of quiet? How odd. Yet that was Charlie to me. Mick and Keith were well known for their dramatic love-hate drama. Marianne Faithfull, one of Mick’s most famous exes, was quoted as saying that Keith was Mick’s one and only real love. I don’t know if that is still true. There were plenty of headlines, going back to Brian Jones’ mysterious death; band members coming and going, Mick and Eric Clapton vying over women. Charlie stayed out of it all.
Well, there was one colorful exception, at least that I have come across, where Charlie lost his cool, and punched Mick in the face. The classic Stones’ song, The Spider and the Fly runs:
“Don’t want to be alone, but I love my girl at home,
I remember what she said,
‘My, my my, don’t tell lies,
Keep fidelity in your head…’
When you done your show go to bed.’ ”
That was Charlie’s style. He was not interested in the relentless solicitations of hot young groupies, (which may account, at least partly, for how he stayed married to his wife Shirley for over 50 years.) When late one touring night, Charlie was peacefully sleeping in his hotel room, a wildly intoxicated Mick called him on the phone, rousting him out of a peaceful sleep yelling “Where’s my drummer?!”
Charlie jumped out of bed, put on his signature three-piece designer suit and tie, marched to Mick’s room and punched him in the face, loudly admonishing “Don’t you ever call me your drummer again!” and stormed out
I don’t know anything about Charlie’s childhood. Born in the early 40’s meant bombing was a constant backdrop, well detailed in Keith’s book. Charlie came from humble means, there was certainly not enough money for a drum set. When he was given a banjo at age 14, it really did not interest him, so he cut off the neck, and made the banjo head into a snare, so he could emulate the brushing of the snare that he so admired. In his sparse and modest interviews, he talks little of himself, as if there is nothing to tell. He describes being a key member of perhaps the greatest rock and roll band in the world, as almost incidental, as if that somehow “happened to him.” It was easy for me all those devoted years of fandom, to not pay much notice to Charlie. He was a steady rhythm, like a backbeat of my life. And not terribly visible.
When I was in 9th grade English, and a top student in my class, we had a scheduled field trip to go to the theater. We were all wildly excited about the outing, and our teacher, Mr. Tanner, was the designated chauffeur who would pick us all up to take us to the show. Somehow, Mr. Taner forgot to pick me up. I was the one person who was left behind. I missed the show. I was devastated, not only about missing the play. I was mystified, “Am I that worthless as to be completely forgettable?”
I have since learned something about the experience of neglect: the doubt about one’s own very existence, or the right to exist, can envelop a person in a shrunken hiding place or cloud of shame and invisibility. I felt I must earn the right to occupy my space to stand on this earth. Inherently, I just didn’t deserve it. Might that be why a momentarily undefended Charlie was so incensed by being called by Mick, “My drummer?” It was too much like denying his existence as more than a possession of Mick’s?
As a therapist working with survivors of neglect, I learned I had to take special care to write myself reminders, jotting things down so as not to be blinded and re-injure clients who made themselves somehow so easy to not see. As my consultant reminded me, “there is a way that they unwittingly elicit it.” Not to blame the neglect survivor, but to help me understand my uncharacteristic oversights or slips of the mind. It is one of the many non-verbal ways that the child of neglect describes the inner experience that they may not even be aware of themselves.
I have no idea what Charlie’s story was. Just that he was a constant, reliable, pulsing presence; the soundtrack of my harder years. And I never gave him much thought. I am sure, as music often does, The Stones provided some measure of noisy regulation. “Everybody’s gonna need some kind of ventilator…” says one of their songs.” I am sure the music was something like that to me. Thanks, Charlie, for 50 years of keeping the beat. Bye, bye…
My course with Quantum Way is now available for registration!