elizabeth erin, the beezle

[meetthesonics]

Only just read this. Just horrible and I never know what to say in these situations. Always enjoy Kath's posts and input, which is neither here nor there.
Certainly my thoughts are with her and Reap and wish there were more I could say or do.

[The Write Profile]

Heartfelt condolences to Kath, and Reap. I really hope they get all the support they need. Horrible news. I am sorry to hear this.
M

Breathtakingly sad news.
kath has written so evocatively and with such fierce love for reap, chi chi, attila, and, of course, beezle -- they've all become a part of our world and members of our extended family. I can't bear the thought of what they must be going through.
Love to kath and kath's.

Yes, that too. Such a dreadful thing to happen.

[Quaco]

There is really nothing that can be said but we love you, kath.

[Geoff]

Condolences & deepest sympathies to kath & her family. So sorry.

[wilson]

I am so very sorry.

People you don't know are feeling very bad right now.

[sloopjohnc]

Putting my petty problems with BCB aside, this was terrible news to read today when Bryan told me vis-a-vis Facebook. Some of my most treasured moments on here have been discussing our kids via PM with Fred, Jane, Davey and Kath. I just got back from a family vacation at Disneyland with the kids and this kinda puts it in perspective on how much time with family needs to be valued because you never know what will happen tomorrow. I'm not comin' back to BCB anytime soon as far as I can tell, but writing back and forth to Kath about our kids, I knew for a fact how much she loved her son and daughter and how proud she was of them and how much she cared about them. When Kath posted Beezle's paintings last year, you could feel her love for her daughter oozing from the screen the same as when I posted Derek's monster pics. It's the reason why we put our kids stupid pictures and report cards on the fridge. It's a daily reminder to them and us why we love them. I'm sure BCB is the least of Kath's worries these days, but if there's ever a reason to come back on here and post something this is it. Dude, we're all hurting as if it was us. I don't know how you're going to make it through this, but we got your back.

[never/ever]

From Kath's Facebook-page:

i thank y'all for yer kind, loving condolences. from where i'm sittin, everyone has said just the right words, including those who said there are no right words. i know how hard it is~~i don't have the right words to say how much yer posts have meant to me. all things considered, i'm ok. really, i am. the reasons why i am will be made clear in my 4-part wordfest on the subject coming anon. til then, please do not worry. p.s. if anyone wants to repost elsewhere, i'd be obliged. no time now, but i'll get there. love to all.

[der nister]

From Kath's Facebook-page:

i thank y'all for yer kind, loving condolences. from where i'm sittin, everyone has said just the right words, including those who said there are no right words. i know how hard it is~~i don't have the right words to say how much yer posts have meant to me. all things considered, i'm ok. really, i am. the reasons why i am will be made clear in my 4-part wordfest on the subject coming anon. til then, please do not worry. p.s. if anyone wants to repost elsewhere, i'd be obliged. no time now, but i'll get there. love to all.

grace

[Belle Lettre]

Bless you, kath.

[Davey the Fat Boy]

Like everyone else, I'm stunned. Not sure why I didn't open this thread two days ago. I suppose I thought its title was a set-up for a joke of some kind. Now I wish it was.

I don't have anything unique to say here. I'll just join the chorus of people sending love to kath, reap and all of the people who make up their world. I'm pretty sure I've never taken the time to tell kath how often her posts here have hit home with me. There has never been any doubt that her words come from a pretty amazing woman. One that everyone here feels a connection to. I hate the thought of any pain coming to her.

Anyhow kath - we are all here for you and reap. I think you already know that. You've earned all of the love we can offer by giving so much of yourself to us every day for years. Don't be afraid to lean on us whenever it might be of comfort for you to do so.

[Loki]

Wow. Kath is a very strong girl. That's comforting.

[Diamond Dog]

Says more than I ever could, and a darned sight more eloquently too.

[Minnie the Minx]

I've started and deleted a dozen responses. I don't know why I am so surprised that I should feel such sorrow for a woman and a family I have never met, but a thought has popped into my head at various points in the week, that thought being that I should like to get on a plane, find her, hold her and stroke her hair.
I hope I get to do that one day.

[Jeff K]

It was good to see that response from kath. She's a tough lady.

[Matty Red Sox]

Stepping back into BCB to offer my condolences to you and your family Kath.

You have always been a decent and caring person to all here, and from what I've read and heard, you are the same in real life.

My wife and I lost our baby two and a half years ago, and we've gotten through it so far by being there for each other and accepting that while others may not know what to say - or might say the "wrong" thing, while trying to say the "right" thing - is a very healthy way to be. This will be hard, but your love for others and the grace in which you've handled this so far will help you to get to the next part of your life. Hopefully your strength will also allow you to be strong enough to help get the others you care about there as well, and hopefully they will continue to be able to be there for you. Loss is so painful, and it will not exactly heal, but you can let loss allow other people into your heart. I hope that you will find the best way to cope that you can - and that someday you will recognize the additional strength and compassion that your daughter has given you. At times you will embrace this loss, and you will be stronger for someone who will need you to be. And at times you will must embrace this loss to allow others who need to be stronger to be there for you.

[The Modernist]

Moving words Matty.

[Six String]

It was good to see that response from kath. She's a tough lady.

Yes, I really appreciate that post since I don't do FB.

[kath]

incredible kindness. incredible.

anyway, regarding our beloved beezle's death... so, so, sooo much i wanna say. we'll see how far i get...

(WARNING: this is yer cue to expect a novel, just in case you didn't catch the hint. since i gotta be me, i'm just gonna LET IT ALL OUT. and when i say LET IT ALL OUT, i do, in fact, mean LET IT ALL OUT. i am going to do so in four parts. seriously, IV parts. if you think you may have a problem with too much information or too high an intensity level, you may wanna flee the area, at least before part II. also, i'm gonna post everything on facebook and BCB, but BCBers, i wanted to add an extra message to y'all, so see postscript.)

here in part I, i was gonna start with the 'whys' of the suicide, but i've changed my mind. i'm gonna start with the speech i gave at the beezle's memorial service. you will be able to see from it how i really feel about it all. in part II, i'll get into those 'whys', a bunch of factors that are briefly mentioned in the general rundown of the opening paragraph from the speech below.

i had written this thing before the service. naturally, by the time of the service, i had completely forgotten to bring so much as a scrap of paper to the place. i knew exactly what i wanted to say, though, so believe it or not, it was pretty much a word-for-word version of what follows.

************

i am the madre. this is what elizabeth called me.

what happened to elizabeth over the last lil while... that avalanche of things that overwhelmed her... along with her innate need to keep her emotions contained, except through art... the post traumatic stress elements buried deep that had to come out... the chemistry, the timing... that overwhelming mix is one i truly believe would've come out eventually in some form at some time, in some kind of profound way. not that i expected it to be this profound.

but even as tragic as it ultimately was, that part of her was just one island in the ocean of her personality, blown out of proportion... the exception to the rule of the person elizabeth really was, and everyone here knows it. she didn't walk through life as a tormented, miserable soul, just waiting for an exit. she was the exact opposite. she relished life, she cultivated her relationships eagerly and she looked forward to her future. she looked forward to everyone's future. that's the elizabeth we all know and love and have forever. that's what i'm here about.

ya know, i had a feeling from the start she was gonna be an artist. it's just that way she looked at the world thru an artist's eyes.

***when she was still in diapers, one of her favorite activities was to take her brother's dinosaurs and fling em into the kittty litter pan. she loved gavin and especially loved messin with his toys, but i think the main appeal was the aesthetic of it all. dinosaurs, when flung into kitty litter, land at weird lil interesting angles. she was fascinated. and even though she was still small enough to hafta hold onto the edge of the toybox to stay standing, she'd do that art-look thing. (kath imitates a young beezle, leaning back, squinting eye, tilting head in absorbed gaze as mini-art-critic...)

***when she learned how to write her name, she had major issyews with the capital letter E. as the lead letter of her lead name, it's very important symbolically, and she knew it even then. apparently, the standard E was sadly lacking. those three horizontal lines? well, some days she thought 4 lines were needed. or 7. or 16. the number of lines was determined by her artistic mood for the day.

***the letter Y was equally suspicious, although her beef about it was a sound thing. she got it into her head that Ys were really Ls and should be pronounced as such. so she would say, lellow sun. or look at the lellow flower. or mellow lellow. this led to much fun at birthday parties, when she would sing happily, "happy birthdayyy to lou.... happy birthday to lou..." the people in the room looking around for lou were mightily confused. and i'll still never forget the day she ran up to her dad with a vexed look on her face and announced, "I HAVE LUCKY UNDERWEAR."

***after we moved to huntsville and her second father joined us, one of the highlights of any year was her birthday list. we would ask her to make the usual kidly list. she'd come up with the usual kidly list... except she would always include one item on the list that just wasn't quite like the others. so one year, we'd get a list and it'd be 'this movie A'.. 'this book B'... 'this game C'... and then we'd hit 'A CAN OF CORNED BEEF HASH'. a can of.. yeah. the next year: 'this game A', 'this movie B', 'this book C'... and then 'A PAIR OF PLAIN WHITE SOCKS'. what was so cool: sure, her lists may've seemed weird to us, but from her perspective, all of the items had the same instrinsic value. the can of hash was just as important and desirable as the the latest CD or book. she knew why. that's all that mattered.

but life gets complicated. things get messy. when she had that fall that was sposed to kill her, she was still basically a kid, a kid from a messy home front. add to that the chaotic onset of teen angst. both of my children registered such stressors in different ways. elizabeth? she was ever sweet-natured, of course, but she adopted an even more tightly-lipped no disclosure policy. she covered up a lot, kept it all in. we had no true communication. so after the fall, when everybody was sure she would die, the soul-shattering extra level of heartbreak for me was that i wouldn't get the chance to know her. i wouldn't get the chance to discover the wonderful person she was to become.

well, guess what? i got my chance. she not only survived but prevailed. i had the absolute joy of watching her grow up and really fly with her blazing talent, energy, drive. i got to see her develop as a person and move beyond everyone else around her, as she poured her sweetness and coolness over everyone around her.

{it's strange that at first, when parents split, the idea of a 'broken home' seems so diminished. but if the parents care enough and stay connected enough, as they build new relationships, the kids at the core end up getting more and more and more family. while elizabeth had one brother she worshipped and who worshipped her right back (kath gestures to gavin), she also had two mothers... the other mother is right there with the blonde hair (kath points to chi chi).., two fathers, the other one right there (kath points to reap)... a husband of her ma-chi that elizabeth thought of as a life-long friend (points to sam)... so many uncles, aunts, cousins and other beluvved close folk that elizabeth treasured (kath moves arm in direction of all), not just by default as relatives but as people, each for whatever cool individual characteristics he or she possessed... a circle of friends she valued so much, along with their art (kath points to huddled herd of shell-shocked students). i'm sure these friends don't realize it, but she'd rave to me about how every one of them had groovy, unique artistic talents. she'd get into it all with great detail and with just as much love.}

i got the chance to see her find not only her identity, but the powerful voice she used to express that identity. through art, through words. we all know the art, but the words? that's a me thing. here is where she related to me as a person~~not as a madre, but as a person. see, i had been the english freak. once she got to UNO, she'd ask me for feedback on her freshman writing. suddenly, in the blink of an eye, she was taking creative writing classes, literature classes. another blink, and she told me she was gonna minor in english. blink twice, and she told me it was a double major, in art and english.

it makes sense that she would enjoy any mode of artistic expression. but i think in her way she was trying to please me, to make me happy and to honor me. we'd spend countless hours upon hours, sometimes just in one single phone conversation, talking about THE BIG STUFF. literature, poetry, symbolism, irony, humor, style, ideas, philosophy. we'd both get alll charged up about it. it made me feel the way i used to feel in my early days in front of a class, back when i was filled with spit and vinegar and passion... when i loved teaching so much, i would get in a zone and forget time and space.

funny, how it took a seemingly trivial object for me to see what she was *really* doing with me. that object: a purple pen. i used to grade with purple pens instead of red. i never did like red ink. it reeks of search warrants, deals with the devil or ransom notes. this tickled her to no end. it became a refrain, an in-joke, between us. she'd add the words 'purple pen' to birthday cards or christmas presents. when she got papers back from teachers, no matter the teacher or the grade, she'd say in mock outrage, "red ink?? i just don't see what his non-purple-penned problem is!!" i figured, hey, she was an artist type, and the whole color symbolism would appeal. it's just one of those light lil bonding things between us.

then a few weeks ago on the phone, she made yet another purple pen joke. immediately after, she asked me out of the blue, "so, madre, when are ya gonna start teaching again?" (notice she didn't ask IF... she asked WHEN.) shows ya how senile i am. it wasn't until she asked me that question that it finally dawned on me what she had been doing all along: all this time i thought i had been encouraging her, but she had really been encouraging me. she had been patiently, lightly, lovingly leading me on and recharging my batteries... waiting for her clincher of a sell. in other words, she had been purple inking me the entire time. and when i finally pegged her on it, i got the heartiest of laughs i've ever heard come out of her face, the kind of rare elizabethan bust-a-gut laugh so deep and so loud that it used to shake her own scrawny butt across the room. clever, clever beezle. ahhhhh... thus the student becomes the teacher.

so yeah, during these last several years, i got my chance. we all did. and i think that's precisely what we should focus on, how blessed we've been to have had her in our lives. i know that i will feel grateful, inspired, moved and fanatically, rabidly, insanely proud... every minute of everyday for the rest of my life.

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p.s. BCBers: while i meant for my recent FB status commentary to appy here as well, of course~~i really can't thank ye enough for yer loving words and support~~i must add more about this board specifically and the people on it.

i have known for some time exactly how y'all are. scandalous, but true. as bryan says, it is just such a catastrophe that brings out the most in yas. on yer considering the beezie and all of my mine as extended family, i am not only moved; i wanna stress that i feel the same way about the people here, their loved ones, their children (two-legged or four-legged, nosed or snouted or beaked or non-in-lawed, etc.), their family. i read with the same heart about their joys and sorrows, large and small. it really doesn't make a damn dicqueless difference to me that i haven't met anybody here in the flesh.

i'm not sure why that is. i like to attach to other people, kinda like a sucker fish. all my life, i've enjoyed reading others' words in print and discovering just how much of their souls i can glean from the writing. also all my life, i've been addicted to actual people, roaming around with their actual asses in the actual world. i can't remember which type i fell in love with first, the folk behind the print or the folk in front of it. either way, when i came online and began knowing people through their words on a screen, it didn't seem weird to me at all. while some bastards are cynical about the diff tween folk online and off, i've always seen the distinction between the worlds as blurry at best. (after all, i *did* kinda run off with a certain online reaper to an isolated place for a few weeks, although i had never shared physical space in third dimensional, technicolor reality with him before.) sure, i've been fooled by a couple of psycho trolls online. i've been fooled by psycho trolls offline, too.

er... a point, perhaps. i have a nasty habit of feeling close to people even though they are worlds away and i've never met em in my life. but that's not just it. if it were, it would apply to anyone i've met online anywhere. to the BCB point: i have an even nastier habit of feeling very close to people, caring about them, loving on them, praying for them (especially if they're gotdamn fucquin atheists and likely to get bent over it), drinking to them, laughing/crying with em, when those people happen to be particularly exceptional humans in the ways that really count. in the past, i've praised the brains, the wit and the style of this board a zillion times, but the truth is, what matters the most in this life has zippo to do with any of that. when you strip all of it away, what's left is what should really define the ideal family, methinks: heart and character. so thanks again, for showing me what i already know, but doing it just when i need it the most. (and thanks to sloop and matty for coming back here just to offer me support and consolation. i think y'all should just stick around now. that's what i think.)

oh yeah... i wanted ye to know that i read this thread aloud to chi chi and reap. they appreciated it very, very much. my sister started sobbing. however, it was one of those good, mushy, 'moved' sobs. (reap and gavin just don't get that sob distinction, don't get that there are 50 kinds of cry. never have. but i'm bettin all the women here get it.)

p.p.s.. one more BCB thing (leave me alone... like i can help it once my word-switch has been flipped): minnie, i thought it was especially thoughtful and sensitive early on when you questioned whether it was fitting for ALB to post reap's original facebook announcement here. under usual cross-board-postal circumstances, a very legit concern. in my case, and there's no way you could've known this, it doesn't apply. i don't use FB the way most people do. i use it as another board... or rather, a kind of grand central nextdoorland of every board i've ever hit. none of my family members are 'friends' on FB. i *do* have offline types, friends from early yute, former colleagues and former students who found my ass regardless of my attempt at a bogus name, but the protocol is the same as it is on any board. i.e., it's fine if anything that comes out of my yap on FB is quoted here. i consider it all public info. but thanks for thinking of it, anyway.

so much for part the first. you *were* warned.

[Charlie O.]

kath, you hereby have my permission (as if you need anybody's permission) to flip that word-switch any ol' time.

As I would say of you yourself, your posts always made me wish I could meet Beezle eyeball-to-eyeball. I'm sorry that never happened. But it's like you say: we ARE all a funky kinda family. And I do (not did) think of Elizabeth as being (not just having been) a beloved part of it.

[Jeff K]

After reading that I don't know who was luckier. You having Beezle for a daughter or her having you for a mom. We'll call it a draw and leave it at that.

Thanks for sharing. You're amazing, kath.