Category: Family

It’s currently considered rude to use the term retarded when referring to people who are developmentally disabled, even though a few decades ago that was the only term used.  The shift in language is important, because there is great stigma attached to the word, and it inappropriately lumps together a host of developmental disabilities with a wide range of effects.  But there is a state the word conveys perfectly, which Adrienne uncovered in the months after Eric died. 

“Hey, we’re retarded,” Adrienne said one day when we were sitting on the porch, unable to read, unable to garden, unable to do anything besides sit there and stare and talk now and then.  According to the American Heritage Dictionary, retard means “1. A slowing down or hindering of progress.”  Bingo.  No progress other than breathing, a slow down in every function of our daily lives, like getting out of bed in the morning, cooking meals, doing dishes, making phone calls, getting back into bed at night.  We were good at grieving and spending time together and not much else

Unfortunately, the definition of retarded still means “affected with mental retardation,” and the slang definition for retard is “a disparaging term for a mentally retarded person.”  But retarded can also mean “relatively slow in mental, emotional or physical development.”  Take out the “physical” and “development” and there it is.  We were definitely relatively slow in our mental functioning and our emotional state was stuck in a permanent wail.  We were bogged down with grief, slogging through each day, and unable to process even basic bodily signals like hunger and the need to sleep.  Retarded.

What brings this up now?  Although my sister’s diagnosis of a recurrence of cancer is nothing like Eric’s, and she is already on a treatment that has a good chance of working, just hearing the news of cancer returned in the body of someone I love set off the grief retardation tremors. 

“I was retarded yesterday afternoon,” Adrienne told me, a couple days after we got the news.  “I just sat on the couch and stared into space.”

And I have been retarded too.  My reading dropped off, my concentration was shaky, and I felt this extra weight across my shoulders, making my already tight neck muscles like stretched strings.  It’s eased up, which is how I can now see that it happened.

Retarded.  I’m making a case to reframe the word in a way that isn’t disparaging to a diverse group of individuals, but rather affirming of a natural reaction to the tough side of life.

“We glove you,” a plaque above the high doorway on an abandoned building declares.  Downtown, almost every building is abandoned, with more empty storefronts than any place I’ve ever seen.  Gloversville was built on leather works, tanning, cutting, stitching, with gloves a central product, and that work has all gone overseas.  “‘Hell,’ people said,” says Richard, who has lived here all his life.  “‘We can send this work to South America where people will work for 17 cents an hour and we can dump all the toxic shit in the rivers.'”

Grandma Knowles lives in a high-rise behind downtown, full of elders like herself.  Her second story windows look out on an old brick building with “Zimmer’s Gloves” written in big faded letters across the side.   I walk around her apartment looking at all the family photos and she talks about her friends and her family and her sweet cat and how grateful she is for all she has, even though it’s been a hard life and she’s lost a child.  Laura, David’s late wife, was her daughter, and we’ve come to visit, to be with Grandma around the anniversary of Laura’s death.   We fill up the apartment, David and his children, Melia and Mackenzie, and Daisy, Mackenzie’s girlfriend, and me, meeting Grandma for the first time. 

David rented a mini-van so we could all ride together across New Hampshire, then Vermont, and into New York.  Rolling up and over mountains and hills, woods and pastures and short views and long vistas stretching out along the route, we are all assaulted by memories.   For David, Melia and Mackenzie, this was a familiar family trip.  For Daisy, we pass signs for the route to Peterborough, where her grandmother lived, Grandmother who died in June.  For me, the first third of the trip, to Brattleboro, is most of the route to Lisa’s house.  Lisa had been my best friend since I was 11 and we lost each other in the year after Eric died amid a confusing swirl of grief and inappropriate boundaries and an over reliance on the comfort of intoxication. 

We all carried our own pieces of emptiness, into this empty town, spilling out of the full mini-van at snack breaks, pee breaks, stretch our legs and stand up so it’s easier to hug breaks.  Grandma Knowles is full of love and kind words and sweet appreciation for the richness of her life.  We take her out to dinner, and the next morning to breakfast, Laura’s brother Richard joining us for both meals.  We pass the empty stores, most of them not even posted for rent.  Why bother. 

We drive up into the mountains in the rain to visit Laura’s grave.  I leave a rock on her gravestone and explain to Grandma it’s a Jewish custom.  “I like that,” she says.  And then when I hug her she pulls my face down next to hers and says into my ear, “Take care of David, because he needs taking care of you know.”

“I know,” I say.  “We all need taking care of.”