Grief is ubiquitous. Like REM sings, “Everybody hurts — sometime.” I lost the most precious person in my life, in all my lifetimes: my son, only child, and best friend. I’ve been navigating the grief process for nine and a half years at the writing of this blurb. I write about the improvisational nature of grief; it’s a day-by-day thing.
Some days we soar and some days we sink. I write about the ways we manage our grief from the sunbeams to dark nights of the soul. I’ve managed to create purpose from my pain. I went back to college and earned three degrees. I help raise our grandson. We have cats who entertain us for hours at a time. I spend time reading, writing, and visiting with people I love. Life is short; my son was only 32 when he died from alcoholism and heroin addiction.
Life is very short. In the interim between the time of our birth and the time of departure from this earthly trip, we must grab hold of all the amazing things life has to offer.
I miss my son more than there are words to express, but life goes on; it must. There’s still so much beauty, beauty we shared with our loved ones. Beauty they left behind for us to remember them. Their beauty shines through our lives…let’s do them proudly.
Puffy clouds that resemble soft cotton balls cover patches of the bluest desert sky on Interstate 10W on a crisp fall day — the closer we get to home in the high desert. The weather at home was nippy when we headed down the mountain. Palm Springs is notoriously hotter than our little town. There was no traffic on our way home and the conversation was good. The landscapes of the San Jacinto mountains and Mount Gorgonio are dry as we approach fire season in California; they are beautiful, nonetheless.
I’ve been getting up at 4 a.m. to take pictures of the sunrise; it’s amazing what an iPhone can do. Likewise, I try to be outside at dusk. Our sunrises and sunsets are spectacular. I love clouds and I’ll tell you why … no guessing here. My father was not a nice person for most of his life; he changed once he stopped drinking. He adored my son … and the adoration was returned by my son. My adoration would come posthumously, 21 years after my father’s death.
Even so, my father had moments of tenderness, and he really wanted us to learn from him … good stuff. His pedagogical methods were not conducive to the formation of emotionally healthy children. “Children learn what they live.”
Back to clouds … my father tried to give us wonder filled experiences – on a mechanic’s pay. He’d take us to Julian every so often and roll down the windows and say, “Look, kids, you can touch the clouds.” Hence, my absolute awe about clouds. He took us to Disneyland and the Zoo every year … a family of six … in the late 60s and early 70s. He did try – Daddy – but he was broken too.
What do you love in nature, and do you know why it speaks to you so much? I know why I love clouds, the scent of bleach, glitter, enchantment and sparkle; I think knowing why we think and do things helps us to navigate the world more effectively and more prosocially. What does prosocial mean anyway? Prosocial behavior is how we act toward one another – when we want the best for others and we wish them no ill will – as opposed to antisocial behavior … If you’ve never read THE PSYCHOPATH NEXT DOOR – definitely give it a whirl.
I have a friend who loves mushroom motifs. I’m the same way about strawberries – with a few mushrooms strategically positioned throughout the house. Why strawberries? Again, down memory lane – when I was a tiny girl, my father and I planted strawberries, and we watched and watered them until they yielded fruit. I didn’t make the cutoff to be a hippie, but I really wanted to. I wore torn jeans before they cost $100 a pair. I wore moccasins or went barefoot. My hair was long and stringy and I wore halter tops – well after the hippie scene dissolved — as most movements do.
My husband loves the desert. In fact, we moved to the desert shortly after he retired from a forty-year teaching career. We love everything about the desert. After the loss of my son, I needed to be somewhere unfamiliar, and so, the move has been very healing. Even as I type, the wind is howling and our windchimes are serenading us in short intervals. In Palm Springs the wind can get so fierce, you cannot see across the street or the car in front of you on the road. Every region has its own annoyances and sometimes, they are danger zones to watch for.
Every region also has its own vermin. In the city we had opossums and skunks. I grew up in a small town where the putrid aroma of freshly hit skunk was familiar to all the natives. When Louden Wainwright, III, wrote, “Dead Skunk” – my little town adopted it as a sort of satirical anthem. We were also known for our marijuana. No such songs exist for this gross domestic product that was specific to the region, to my knowledge.
Memories can be fun to traipse through … not always; I get it. But when it was fun and the memories make you smile, well, there’s nothing like cruising memory lane. I found grace for my father. He was just too damaged to be a good father, but he was an amazing grandfather to my son. I give him kudos, clouds on mountaintops and strawberries. Thanks, Daddy – I know you wanted to be a good father. I made it, nonetheless.
I had a director who pushed me with his impossible expectations, detachment and dismissal of my humanity. I get he has high standards, so do I. I just will never appreciate his methods. My father’s methods were much the same as my director; except my father’s tools he used to shape us upon that anvil were broken and damaged.
So, why do I love butterflies and have an affinity for the archetype of Jesus…my mother wrapped us in her prayers of many colors until she died in 2023. As I’ve said here many times about prayer, I’m on the fence. Anomalies are anomalies because they are rare. Some people call anomalies miracles, and they attribute them to a god or gods. The miracle of miracles that a god could have given me was to have my son kick his addictions and defeat his demons, but that didn’t happen.
I leaned hard on all the deities I knew about and I learned about more; I even learned how to say the rosary. Where was god? My mother never lost her faith. She never blamed god. She leaned on the god of her understanding and that god, a male, got her through the grief process over the loss of her only grandchild, my son. On mom’s death bed, I sang, “What a friend we have in Jesus,” to her. The song meant something to her; it was her mother’s favorite gospel song. Mom tried too, although she was also broken. She loved her children – just couldn’t maintain how she divvied it up. She ranked our abuses by my father according to her own measurements. We all got it … abuse by my father was an equal opportunity event. My mother did what is called triangulation. She pitted us against each other by playing favorites – on which day of the week varied for each of us.
But Mom tried. We didn’t have a lot of money, and Mom went to thrift stores and bought us clothes for school. We were dressed impeccably. She braided my and my sister’s hair every morning. She had a heavy hand on some days. Mom had a spitefulness … she had every right to be bitter; she married my dad. But she often took it out on us. I was the eldest daughter. My mother and I had similar traumas and so I mirrored for her things she had not, nor ever did deal with.
I love snow because it is a reminder of a fun day, one during which we had no stress. Our father was gone and the house was calmer when he wasn’t home, unless Mom was in one of her moods. The apple does not fall far from the tree.
Still, she made sure we always had nice holiday meals, Easter baskets and bonnets for the girls, and nice shirts and slacks for the boys. Mom ironed clothes for the neighbors and watched other people’s kids. She had a few jobs that she needed because our father would not allow her to work outside of the home he isolated her in, and neither would he allow her access to the purse strings. So, women … even abused women … think on our feet and find ways to survive – even in hell. Mom did too. The apple did not fall free from the tree in this regard either.
Mom taught me how to be resourceful, and she tried to teach me thriftiness, but that personality trait eludes me. Ladybugs, butterflies, dahlias, and geraniums hold me in enchantment. My mother loved them and imbued them with magical powers for my sister and me.
So, grace is a funny thing; see, it’s not the same as forgiveness. Grace is prosocial behavior. Anger, resentment and revenge are maladaptive; they stunt our growth and impede our ability to move forward with peace and emotional satisfaction. We stretch ourselves to reach the mark of perfection … knowing full well we will not achieve it in this life. If there is a heaven … I hope everything is perfect and that I get to share that perfection with my perfect son.
I’ve been reading a book called HELL: A JEWISH PERSPECTIVE. Mom and Dad told us about hell. Dad was scared to death that he might find himself there. Mom was terrified that one of her children might find himself/herself there. The book lists a few ancient philosophers and theologians, not one who could agree on hell. I wish my parents had lived long enough to deconstruct their life-limiting theology. Fear should not be the way to the holy … it just shouldn’t be.
If I choose to believe in a god, the god is formless like the clouds I touched in Julian when I was a child. If there is a god, It is sweet like a strawberry, magical like ladybugs and butterflies. If there is a god, suffering would end … like yesterday.
The clouds in the sky today moistened my eyes as I thought about a time when my father was as sweet as the strawberries we planted and my mother was a representation of the Virgin Mary in present time.
Sometimes.
I never know where I’m going to go when I sit down to write with no agenda. I weave in and out of life experiences, but the goal is to join in solidarity with those of you who can relate. I hope whatever it is that compels you to find awesomeness in everything that is known to you becomes a part of your daily life. Self-awareness is essential … the good, the bad, and the ugly. I will always need answers for my behavior; it hasn’t always been prosocial; it is now. As the Twelve Step programs say, “Take what you need and leave the rest.” My parents were awful and wonderful. I love them despite the hell they put my brothers and sister and me through. On a good day for two parents with undiagnosed and untreated mental illnesses, I sat under the orange tree reading a book and felt like maybe, just maybe, things would change. They wouldn’t change for decades. But they finally did and I was able to bridge the gap with each of my parents before they died.
The sun is setting on this hazy, fall night and I need to get out there and take pictures. The harvest moon is vanishing a little each day … and soon it will be a sliver, hidden behind those puffy white clouds, just a sliver.
This walk down memory lane has left me wistful for one more chance to have a loving and safe relationship with my father and a stable one with my mother. I’ve been weepy for the last couple of days. The holidays are on their way and will end another year … lickety split.
Butterflies and ladybugs won’t return ‘til spring. Clouds will become more plentiful. The sun will hide behind them when it has too much exposure.
Grief is systemic; it affects all five of our senses – and creates in the griever a need for a sixth sense, one in which the pain of loss can be carried. Sensory overload is anxiety-making. We’ve discussed here how we “dread” – to anticipate with great apprehension = anxiety. The anxiety caused by the anticipation of angelversaries, birthdays, holidays, and other milestone days becomes physical. Our hearts begin to race; our blood pressure rises. Our breath becomes more rapid. We sweat. And, sometimes, we go into full panic mode complete with hyperventilation. Not fun. I’ve been there. When my son was dying from addiction, I went to the hospital three times thinking I was having a heart attack; they were panic attacks.
What happens when you challenge an anxiety-driven person with a problem? We process them as crises (Kieser, 2025). I was such an anxious person for most of my adult life; therapy, a good treatment plan from my psychiatrist, trying to live a happy, healthy life – throw in some good ol’ spirituality, and knowledge have shifted my anxious fear into productive fear, the kind of fear whose energy can be redirected toward wholeness and life satisfaction – and creativity.
Do you believe it is possible to change behavior and to change our lives at any moment in time? I read that it takes between fifteen to 224 days for an intentional behavioral change to become automatic. Relapses? Those of us who have experience with an addicted loved one, or perhaps are in recovery ourselves, or even if you’ve ever been on a diet, or tried to stop smoking, etc., know all about relapses. Behavioral changes are prone to relapses too. Anxiety is a normal response to an abnormal situation. When anxiety becomes chronic, it is life limiting.
Over the past ten and a half years I’ve managed my grief blogs, I’ve shared with my readers books/resources I’ve found helpful. I believe I’ve featured a few books on this blog, by Daryl Potter, Harold Kushner, and today, I prefaced some of the phenomenon/a of anxiety because I want to share a book with you I recently read for a group of amazing women I get to share hope with — and as life would have it, the book has inspired me to pare away my own residual anxiety by taking responsibility for my feelings. I was once told by a counselor that a feeling is just a brain secretion; I don’t know why, but that blew my mind.
Kieser’s book What if: The Art of Crushing Anxiety, has had a similar effect on me. I’d just like to point out the brilliant title and the author’s fine writing skills, before I share my thoughts about the context of the book.
The book is written with the softest touch and a love for our world and for all people is the pulse that beats through Kieser’s words. I felt as if I was speaking to a friend who was lovingly giving me the cold, hard facts. Navigating my anxiety to a smoother landing than when I’m about to have a panic attack is not only possible, but doable.
What If? Is the book I could have used during my anxiety-driven days and nights.
The victory that Kieser has earned through his own struggle with anxiety is inspiring and it makes his advice to us credible. He gets it. His story is remarkable and will resonate with anyone who has spent a lifetime or a long time with an anxious heart and mind. Among the several things I’ve found enormously helpful in the book is the chronology of the chapter titles (says the control freak). Like a Zen master, he begins with physical responses to anxiety centering us in preparation for breath and healing. Perhaps of most significance is the ability to stop ourselves when in crisis mode to breathe and allow oxygen to our brains and steadiness to our breath to bring us back to the present moment, the event, not the anxiety over any single and every single thing you can imagine, the what ifs about which Kieser gently made me a bit uncomfortable.
I’ve been managing my anxiety well now for a few years, but I still have relapses during which I find myself in what Kieser refreshes our mind about, the fight, flight, and/or freeze responses to perceived threats. When my heart races — because sometimes — anxiety is ancient. I return to the breath. Kieser suggests that we can, in fact, interrupt the habitual process of turning a problem into a full-blown crisis with tiny moments of practice.
Are we ever too old to learn how to self-soothe beyond drugs, alcohol, and other self-destructive ways historically used — to very briefly calm our anxiety? Kieser is optimistic about growth at any point in time. We’re never too old to learn to breathe consciously toward a calm and rational mind that instinctively knows what to do.
I strongly recommend Kieser’s book, What if? We all have moments of anxiety; this book will help you exercise your own personal resources toward recovery from chronic anxiety, or even short term. I hold both the book and its author in high regard, and I think of this book as a victory story.
Ten years and eight months have passed since I lost my beautiful and tortured son, Rikki. He truly was beautiful and he truly was tortured. I don’t want to focus on the latter today. I choose to keep my eyes on the former. I have a writing mentor and friend who read my book recently, and beyond the mess it was in formatting (my self-criticism), I was grateful for his sage advice. He said he wanted to see the connective tissue, what happened in between the vignettes, who were the other players in the journey who helped or hindered me in my healing process.
Whoa, hold the phone!
When I wrote my first book, it was a purge, a love song to my son. A book of random thoughts in poetry and prose. By the time I wrote my second book, I had begun to heal and I was no longer emotionally raw, but my friend is correct, the story is incomplete, and as long as I live the grief lives too.
Let me begin by telling you that I had a lot of help along the way, from the day my son died – and well beyond, through people who are physically present in my life, family, friends, to people I have not met and may never meet online through support groups on Facebook I created. If you’re grieving, find a group that speaks to your specific needs. There are so many people who have healed enough to start online support groups, i.e., for parents who’ve lost children to fentanyl, heroin, addiction, suicide, estrangement, etc. There are many flavors of support groups, i.e., religious sites, secular sites, open sites, and closed sites. Grief to Gratitude is an open site, for example, and After the Storm is a closed one; the latter is specific to my own loss.
The members of After the Storm have been my lifeline; they have saved my sanity and helped me to heal as we do it together. We help each other to climb, claw, and finally, find our way out of the deepest part of grief so we can function in the world, crawling, standing, walking, running – and finally – soaring. You’ll see. I emphatically recommend therapy to help you through your worst part, the time when grief is acute and the emotional pain is so intense you think you’re going to die. I also recommend finding books on grief, specific to your needs, and just on grief in general.
I started with a book called Lament for a Son by Nicholas Wolterstorff , and then I read When Bad Things Happen to Good People, by the Rabbi Harold Kushner. Both books spearheaded my healing process. I cried for six months, loud, wailing moans, and then I started to educate myself about grief.
I learned – alone, because healing was my responsibility. My mom didn’t know how to help me – and she was grieving the loss of her only grandchild – I get it now. My family is just so broken, no one except my younger brother knew what to do. My younger brother watched out for me and listened, just listened. He didn’t offer any answers to my infinite whys; he just listened.
I had two friends who were able to be witnesses to my utter despair; my son was gone and I would never see him again. I’m a lone griever. I’ve handled my shit alone because my family could not handle emotional situations. I’m sixty-four and old habits die hard. At any rate, I think healing is a solo act. If we’re very fortunate, we have people in our lives who can handle our pain; not everyone can.
Because of confidentiality I can’t mention the names of the many, many people who helped me see my way through the grit of grief, even as they navigated their own. Everyone grieves; everyone is grieving. But my online angels have guided me as much as I’m now, as a veteran griever, able to guide them toward the Light of healing. Thank you, and you know who you are.
My husband has been my rock. He held me during my meltdowns. He left me alone when that’s what I needed. He listened, and like my younger brother, he offered no advice, just his big strong arms and his love. I’m ever so grateful for the people in my life – all of them. I’ve been blessed beyond measure in my later years with friends and family of choice of high caliber, brilliant minds, compassionate hearts, and emotional health.
Fill your life with the kind of people who enliven you, encourage you, and embolden you to live your best life – after the storms of life knock you down for a while. My first response to grief was withdrawal from the world – and later – by finishing up my bachelor’s degree and my master’s degree. I know I make that sound like it was easy, because it most certainly was not. Grief does, in fact, last a lifetime, and the absence, the longing, the missing, the mourning weave in and out of our days and nights.
But we navigate them.
Ten years and eight months ago, I lost the love of my life, my only child. I have regrets. I have guilt. I have forgiveness, and I have wholeness. I don’t know if it’s just Americans who hate to be inconvenienced with tasks – like grief, but we sure do. Grief is a task that must be attended to if you want to heal. I don’t know if healing ever is a completed task, because each day I wake up with the wound of knowing my son is gone – is another day I take a minute to tend to that wound. I no longer need days, weeks, months, or years to tend to my wounds – sometimes a good cry or getting out in nature is all the unguent I need to get back to the Present Moment.
I routinely wake up around 4 a.m., just to watch the sunrise – marvel at the giant, white, puffy clouds against the blue desert sky, to not hear any sound, to listen to the birds chattering as the sun is fully risen and the people in my town enjoy the coolness before the last remnants of summer leave us with fond memories of June weddings, the Fourth of July, and gatherings with friends and family. I look forward to the fall and cooler weather. The summer was hot – hello! We live in the desert … and it flew by so quickly. Time moves more quickly when you realize you don’t have that much left and every day we cheat death is a crapshoot. So … knowing this … I grieve in ways that are not self-destructive. I grieve when I have a moment to do so. I think we get to places where we buck up and soldier on – carrying our grief – always present, but no longer all consuming.
The moon refused to disappear into the sky this morning greedily taking away from the sunrise. I do not begrudge the moon refusing to submit; it lights our nights, along with the stars on a clear desert night – and it holds space for the sun, until it must wrestle for top position in the universe — and lose. I doubt there is anything that can eclipse the sun – besides the moon…and perhaps the loss of a loved one.
I’m aging. My husband is aging. We all are, but those of us who still have verve and vivacity, remain charged up for life and energized to keep finding purpose and creating beautiful and memorable moments in our own lives and in the lives of others.
My husband and I discuss the aging and dying processes, not to be morbid, but because we will leave others behind and we don’t want to leave them with a mess to clean up, my library, for example, is pretty extensive…books that I’ve collected over the years on different interests on my academic journey. My education has been epochal – every era. In my sixties, my mind is still able to be blown away by emerging science, literary classics I’ve been too caught up in science to take the time to read, music – ancient and new – and people, oh my god, I’m still able to be inspired by others’ life stories. I’m also able to have extraordinary experiences (formerly “religious” experiences).
My husband and I discuss profound topics. We are so different and yet our conversations are fissioning and producing further insight and the desire to know more about the other’s thoughts on a particular subject — that is never exhausted. Perhaps this fusion of minds is what “love” really is – admiration and respect. Perhaps.
One of the topics we’ve addressed recently, as he turns seventy-two this year and I just turned sixty-four, is what happens to us after we die. The jury is out for me, but not for my husband. I straddle the fence between hypotheses and things that hold up to scientific scrutiny, and yet, still “There Are More Things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, Than Are Dreamt of in Your Philosophy.” (Hamlet, Act I, Scene 5)
I begrudge the reality that it is impossible to “know everything.” I’ve spent the better part of my life in pursuit of knowledge, and I’m still racking up educational points in competition with myself only. I have a hunger for knowledge, and yet … there are things I simply cannot know in this, possibly singular, lifetime. I would like to know that I will see my son again in a perfect world, but … I have no certainty about this that I can find in a religion or in a philosophy.
Will my husband and I find each other on the “other” side? See, how incredulous does that sound? Pretty weak … except for those whose convictions about an afterlife are airtight. I wish I knew with absolute certainty. I listen to those who’ve had near-death experiences (NDEs) – and I’m too stubborn to entertain the possibility that their experiences are real.
I tell those closest to me when they are freaking out about something that may or may not happen, “Can we know the future?” No, we cannot. So, my husband and I are in agreement that it’s not possible to know what awaits us after death, if anyone awaits us, or do we blend into the universe whole at last – fading memories in the minds of those we leave behind?
We don’t have answers. I was with my son when he died, and again, with each of my parents. My son died twice and if he is somewhere in the cosmic ether, I hope all the pain he had in this life has been erased – if he is.
My parents each died peacefully. Mom just fell asleep, Daddy crossed his arms across his chest and said his parents were in the room and we each said our goodbyes, and the look of certainty on my father’s face told me that whatever happens, peace, just like in life, is the goal. Will Ben and I leave this ol’ world with a satisfied mind. I hope so. In the interim, we live life fully and never lose our purposes. We each have one, and even little children who live but a few moments, touch us and inspire us to grab hold of life … every single second of it.
Don’t worry about things that may or may not happen. Plan for every foreseeable event … financially, emotionally, spiritually, and physically. We may not know what’s on the other side of mortality – immortality? Maybe Daddy knew; the look on his face the night he died was peaceful and … resigned.
I love my husband and will be here through thick and through thin, through our blessed lives and when it is time to say goodbye, we’ll have no regrets because we loved each other, perhaps into eternity, perhaps. The love we leave behind for others hopefully will inspire others to live fully and love completely.
The Teacher, Solomon, said that we should “eat, drink, and be merry” – that is the fruit of our labor, for years of hard work, wherever we make our living … in many different places, and some, are arenas.
I’m not a mystic. I would love to buy into Van Morrison’s song and feel the holy spirit in the ocean mist as it moistens my hot skin. I don’t. I will admit, I feel something, physically with a relief from the heat, a pleasurable feeling, both exogenous and endogenous … something extraordinary, but it is not a mystical experience.
I’m not prone to “woo woo” – most of the time – except when I’m hurting because I miss my son, and then … rationality, holding something up to scientific scrutiny flies right out the window. “Help my unbelief” – there’s a part of me that, in desperation, reaches for a solution to my pain – and sometimes it is in the hope that I will, in fact, see my son again.
Like the proverbial conflicted archetype in stories across cultures, I am torn between what I see and what I wish to see. In my heart of hearts, I hope “this” is not all there is; and I wish there was a perfection that humanity is finally able to achieve after a lifetime of bipolar sweetness and struggle. Finally – total perfection.
I’ll see – or I won’t and I will just rest in eternal peace … nonexistence … pain-free. I think today, I feel like that’s a peaceful ending. After losing a child … the pain is perpetual. I mean, I manage it well, so I can live a full life, but it’s ever present.
I have so many people who I adore … and I want to be present for them. I want to love here, not in some hypothetical heaven, but here, where it matters how I affect others’ lives. I still can affect my husband’s life, and he mine. As long as we’re here together … for as long as chance allows us to cheat death … for just a while longer, life is good.
The condensation drips like diamonds onto my glass table, a thrift store find. I’m mesmerized by the beauty of drops of water, and I marvel at the ecosystem contained within each tiny drop – and I drink the tiny globes on my glass. As the sun rises in the sky from the East, it creates tiny prisms on the wall. My mother taught me to love rainbows from the story of Noah, a promise to the ancient Jews that their god would never send flooding again. Mom had a few floods, and whole mines of diamonds.
Of course, these words are an attempt to illustrate that even floods can’t rob you of your joie de vivre. I went to a concert last night. A patriotic rock and roll band played, and the music was good and people had a great time. One gentleman, an older chap, danced by himself through every song. A little girl with cowboy boots and a straw hat who also danced all night.
I wish I’d had her confidence before I became an adult; I would have developed it too, if my parents had known how to nurture a child through her development. They didn’t, so it took decades for me to get my shit together. I’m happier now than I’ve ever been. You may wonder how that is possible after losing my only child to heroin and alcohol addiction. Please understand; I miss my son in a way there are no words for.
But … I soldier on. My husband and I were in a car accident two years ago, and then he was injured by the fire department EMTs as they tried to restrain him so he wouldn’t injure himself further. He is now in chronic physical pain. He is handling it well; I don’t know if I would.
We each carry wounds in our bodies, and in our hearts and psyches. I still carry my wounds, or rather, my entire being is one gaping — but healing wound. I still have pain associated with every happy memory I have about my son. Life for anyone who has lost a child knows the memories are bittersweet. I smile. I laugh. I enjoy my life, and sometimes, I weep for the greatest loss of my life, the loss of my son and only child.
How does one go on after losing someone who holds a piece of her heart? Well, therapy, antianxiety meds, exercise, reading everything you can get your hands on about healing from the greatest loss of your life, and if you’re fortunate enough to have a life partner who gets you or at least is trying to get you, consider yourself very lucky.
David Kessler wrote a book, The Sixth Sense: Finding Meaning about grief and about losing his son and finding a way to get through the pain to the other side where hope and joy abound. I know it’s hard to believe, but there will be dancing again. Trust me. I found myself jamming to “Obladi Oblada” by the Beatles this morning, and then almost immediately after I had some sadness because Rikki and I used to dance together, and we even danced together shortly before his death.
We clapped and danced to “If you want to be happy for the rest of you llfe”. He loved that song and pulled it up on his phone and we danced and laughed until we couldn’t breathe anymore. I had him for thirty-two years. He was a gift, and I miss him terribly.
All the sadness and the bittersweetness are true, but it’s that giant helping of sweetness that we find in nature, in a baby’s cry, in the recovery of someone who struggles with addiction, and other extraordinary experiences. Even with a sadness that will accompany you for a lifetime, there is sweetness. Once my husband and I were near the coast of Pacific Hwy 1 and we stopped by the beach. Placed on top of a beautiful and giant piece of driftwood was a perfect strawberry right on top. Someone placed it there, maybe for a photo op, but at any rate, I got to experience something that was probably special to me only.
My father and I planted strawberries together when I was a little girl; it’s one of the few lovely memories I have of my father who was kind in fits and starts. He tried to be a good father too late, but he did try, and he was a wonderful father-figure to my son whose own biological father bailed on him when he was only eleven months old, with no emotional or child support.
Rikki was a diamond in my heart; he still is. He remains my North Star. Every good thing I do is inspired by the life and death of my son. I’ve certainly had other losses, both of my parents, a sister from whom I was estranged, friends, and other family members. Losing my son hurt more than all of those losses combined; it just does.
How have you managed your grief all these years? If you’re newly grieving, how are you handling your process? I know grief feels too deep to be a process, but it is a trip around your broken heart several revolutions until the wound is bound by love and healing.
I wish you each the time you need to begin to heal. I’m sorry for your losses. Losing a loved one just hurts, even if you’re expecting it after a long-term illness, like addiction or cancer. Perhaps dependent upon the severity of your loved one’s illness, sometimes death can be a relief. No one wants to see her loved ones suffer from emotional and/or physical pain, and sometimes grievers are dead before they actually die a physical death.
I don’t want that for myself. I don’t want it for my grandson. I don’t want it for anyone. Death is final and when someone is yanked from your life, it is a visceral experience, like when my son was pulled out of my body, forty-four years ago. Time flew as I raised him and watched him grow up. Time has flown by since he passed. I’ve had time to mourn and dance and to … heal.
The sun is shining in the desert and it’s going to be hot today. Rikki hated the heat, which brings a smile to my face as I remember how he’d cocoon himself in blankets and blast the AC until he fell asleep. He should have been born in Alaska. He would have loved it there.
The water drops have evaporated, the tiny ecosystem teeming with life is now floating upward until the next glass perspires on my glass table. The glass is now spotted with water stains, which I will wipe up later, but for now, I want to see traces of diamonds, reflections of my son.
I want you to see your own diamonds and let their brilliance light your way. Our loved ones were jewels in our lives; wherever they are, IF they still are – somewhere in the cosmos, perhaps they do want us to be happy. I’m a doubting Thomas. I WANT to believe, but I’ve seen no evidence, and yes, “Faith is the evidence of things hoped for, but not yet seen.” Seems I’ve read that somewhere. I’m not speaking in terms of faith in a supernatural deity, although sometimes one’s faith is hugely instrumental in a person’s healing.
Healing and restarting your life are possible; they are enviable when I think of all the parents and others who lost months, years of their lives because of grief and mourning…all necessary, but navigable toward joy, always intermittently. I hope you hear my voice, my healing voice telling you to hang in there, and look for diamonds in places that are sacred to you.
At the end of the day, you are your own soul’s physician; heal thyself.
The sky has reluctantly given me ten drops of joy – in this gray and orange sky – our colors mother and son. Is your Spirit a joyful witness of my life trajectory? Or would my occasional sadness bring your angel spirit down. I’d prefer to know you’re happy rather than have you have even one more second of sadness by seeing me on days when I’m overcome with missing you.
The humidity is stifling – but it feels like a mother’s arms cradling me – and constricting my breathing — too tight, and so I return to thoughts of you – with wings. The thought comforts me for a while, long enough to regain my bearings and merge back into the traffic of life … when it is bumper-to-bumper – and when it is smooth sailing – as it were.
The sun is peeking out behind our clouds, Son – and I allow myself the tears of joy evoked by the gift of having you in my life – accompanying me on your short one. Death is neither fair nor unfair. Eternal? I wish I knew. We speak of heaven, colloquially and in terms of faith in a Theos – I want to believe you are somewhere and so, I do.
If there is a god/God/esses, they would not allow a person to suffer life’s problems one second longer than she has to. Enter in my good and faithful servant. How can we be good when we were not created in environments which would grow an emotionally and spiritually healthy person?
God, how I miss our conversations. You were the best conversationalist ever. I remember at your Celebration of Life, so many people, people who knew you since you were just an infant, so many were there.
Tim M got up to speak and confirmed to everyone that you and I spent hours on the phone. I don’t know why I needed that confirmation, but it was important to me at the time. Those people who knew us, knew of our tempest and also of our smooth sailing when we laughed and laughed, spent hours sharing our home together – and the ferocity with which we loved one another – through hell and high water.
I put up hummingbird feeders around the house and now the yard is full of them – darting back and forth for a drink and chasing their comrades away. You know we were always about science and theories and evidence and so, after you died, I read everything I could get my hands on about the metaphysics of death. Metaphysics! I was desperate.
I have talked myself out of immortality so many times since your death, ten and a half years ago, that I demanded evidence. I read about near-death experiences, alternate realities through medically induced hallucinogenic trips, and other methods that will take you deep into your consciousness so you can conquer death?
I read in several books very soon after your death, that hummingbirds make appearances and they are the spirit of your loved one. With my hummingbird feeders I’ve increased the hummingbird population, right? So – my dear boy, we would deduce that the spirit-infused hummingbirds could not all be you. So, there it is – a doubting Thomas.
I suppose we would each pick a side and try to convince the other of nihilism or eternal bliss. You’d take the former and I’d choose the cheery latter position. I drove you nuts with my optimism, and I was saddened by your early cynicism. The gods from every religion and those of us who know, people in your life, people you loved really hurt you and disappointed you – including me. Some of us are sorry.
Do you remember, because, fortunately and unfortunately, I raised you during your formative years in a fundamentalist Bible thumping church, the story in Luke of the NT about the rich man in Hades who begs Abraham to release Lazarus so he can return from Hades and warn his brothers to follow the god of Abraham, so they won’t suffer the punishments of the fundamentalist doctrine of hell?
Foolishly, I hope there’s a heaven because my greatest dream is not just getting my doctorate, but above and beyond that earthly dream, is the dream/fantasy that I will see you again, that we’ll laugh in each other’s arms until we can’t breathe. I remember when we laid under the stars in our driveway one night to wait for the meteor shower that did not make an appearance. The sky was full of clouds – like the ones trying to survive in my desert – and so, we couldn’t see the stars. All I felt was love that night.
We pointed out different shapes we saw in the clouds – and like a blindfolded person trying to describe a shape with only words, it was pointless, but we laughed and all was well with the world.
If you’re still around in the ether somewhere – and can see what I’ve been doing since you died, I hope you’re proud of me. You were the kindest, most generous person in my life, and even though I truly am thriving, god, how I miss you. How’d you get so kind?
I don’t grab my phone to call you the second I hear or read something fascinating. I know in my entire being that you are not here anymore. Like the rich man, if I were a superstitious person, I would beg the god of my understanding to send you back to tell me you’re fine – because, in all truth, the tortures of hell are here, not always, of course, before someone thinks I’m nihilistic … not that it’s necessarily a bad worldview.
I may actually, like emotional DNA, have a smidge of nihilism, Boo. What of an afterlife? I know you wouldn’t find it difficult to believe that I’m thriving. I finally got my degrees. I wish you’d been here to see me graduate. Your son, big and beautiful, was there. I didn’t think I would ever go on without you. I wanted to die because everything hurt exponentially, every day emotions fissioning into critical mass.
I miss dancing with you, silly and with great joy. I dance with your son now and we laugh and laugh. One glad morning when my life is o’er, maybe I’ll get to dance with you again, maybe. I miss you, Son.
I don’t understand how reflections work. Narcissus stared into his own reflection and in his vanity, he fell in love with it. I’m looking out my window at 4:30 a.m.; it’s dark. I can see the reflection of this room in my office window. I can see a few of the pieces of art and my degrees in the reflection from the wall to my right, and if I look a little further into the reflection, to my left, I can see across the room, all the way to the other side, a piece on my wall. I don’t understand physics, except romantically.
When I look into my mirror, I see the flawed outside; and I always see the flaws first. Depending on the day and my mood, I may see only the flaws. On a good day, my makeup is perfect and I see only the perfection of my eyeliner, perfectly lined lips, and a woman who means business and can tackle it with confidence.
On a bad day, I will dress colorfully to boost my mood; sometimes it works. On good days, I pull off black with finesse…always with a brightly colored scarf and equally colorful jewelry. One of my group members for a group I facilitated made a necklace for me, brightly colored beads with a frog as a pendant; it is one of my prized possessions. I wear it with black to remind others that life can also be fun and beautiful.
When I see a person in brightly colored clothes, a ray of sunshine in a sometimes-gray world, I tell them they made me happy today. Maybe they’re like me and dressed in celebratory clothing because they are sad. We find ways to boost our moods, some healthy, some not so much.
“Laugh, clown, laugh.”
I get up every morning to check out the sky for sunrises and beautiful clouds against a desert landscape and to take pictures of our horizon, the blueness of our sky this morning, the precursor to the heavens, maybe where my son is now, or perhaps … once our journey here is complete, we’re done; I mean totally done.
What I see when I look in the mirror sometimes isn’t what I want to see. The mirror of my past is particularly difficult, but it is a huge piece of my puzzle. The task the God of my understanding has for me is to find each piece, no matter the pain; it is the pathway to heaven on earth.
Self-awareness helps me to see clearly as I search for my puzzle pieces instead of looking for others’ pieces. I had a friend tell me that her purpose/calling is to counsel people as a psychologist, and I’m here to tell you, she’s an excellent listener with a lot of insight and wisdom. I see myself in her puzzle; I am a piece of her puzzle and I’m grateful. She is a piece of my puzzle, too.
The clients in my support group are part of my puzzle and when I look at them and listen to their doubt and their wisdom that comes from decades of hard work – through hell and high water until our murky reflection shines through the sludge, I’m inspired to work hard so I can continue doing what I love to do.
As a griever, I could see only pain when I looked into the mirror. I had lines around my eyes that appeared older than my pain.
I’ve said it many times here, and to my friends, we heal in proportion to our mental health. The more shit we have underneath our greatest losses, the greater the work that will need to be done before we can begin to manage our healing process.
My current reflection is one in which I have a big ol’ shit eating grin on most days. Who doesn’t have an occasional slump? I’m grateful mine are few and far between, miracles of psychological healing and self-awareness. I urge you, if you can find low-cost mental healthcare, get in there right away. The sooner we begin to heal, the greater benefit we are to society. And, the more beautiful … our reflection.
Do you have a calling? Do you know what will make your life more purposeful? Let that be your journey, find your calling and live purposefully. Are you happy with your emotional reflection today? I tell my students that when life gets tough, we have to work harder to maintain equilibrium.
Breathwork, meditation, prayer, physical activity, and getting out in nature are just a few methods we can incorporate into our healing process. When the going gets tough, the contemplative souls get going. I’ve seen people I love lost in their unprocessed grief and/or their unresolved traumas, including enduring a significant loss.
My calling is to help others to see their reflections as their burgeoning self-worth begins to take shape for them in the mirrors of their souls. If we’re only about day-to-day survival, where are peace and joy?
My trajectory was to heal from all the places and the people who have hurt me and to find understanding … and where I’ve been able, to extend some grace from the humility of my own imperfection.
There was a time, not that long ago, when I couldn’t stand my reflection; my flaws were deep and wide back then. I’m certainly not alleging that my flaws are any less visible – to me, and to those closest to me. I’ve worked to decrease my flaws’ prominence. I’ve also worked hard to let go of my former self-image, the wounded one.
The sun is out and the reflection of my walls is no longer visible in my window – it’s kind of like that in life. Since I’ve taken the steps toward mental health and emotional sobriety, my walls have also been taken down and in their place have been the most tremendous healing, transformation, and even transcendence.
I have all the feels when I see my reflection now; I’m able to see the love of the God of my understanding in the depths of my unfettered soul. My soul is the filter through which I now see myself and others, and all is well with my soul, all is wellwith my soul.
I had to walk away; you see.
The memories of shame and
Survivor’s guilt no longer serve me.
I made it out
alive, so alive,
moreso than you have.
I’d be lying if I said I don’t
worry about you and hope
that you’re thriving
away from me.
You really can’t go back home,
and sometimes there really is
no good reason to return
to the battleground on which
you were born.
I get it, but as your
Good Book says, “Get behind me, Satan.”
Nothing good will become of us.
Some wounds never heal.
I wish you well. I hope you’re healing.
But yeah…it was absolutely the
best thing for me to walk away …
with wings.
The truism “absence makes the heart grow fonder” works well for those in grief. Over twenty years ago, my father died, and during that time, I’ve developed a greater understanding of who and why he was. I’ve even developed some grace, maybe not forgiveness, but definitely … understanding.
In the ten years since my beautiful son died, I no longer ruminate on all the days he was sick from addiction or the hell he put us through. I force images of him laughing when a painful memory arises. Am I postponing my grief process? No, I am not. I’m making the choice not to allow pain to override my ability to live a wonderful and meaningful life.
I miss my son – of course I do, but … life waits for no one, and we owe ourselves the best life we can give to ourselves…random chance and consequences notwithstanding. There are some things over which we have no control – and there are some we do.
Grief is expressed differently by everyone. Some people collapse under the weight of the constant pain, and some people walk between that space and the space where a person can launch with greater purpose and posttraumatic growth.
Some of us find ourselves in that cycle of repetition: collapse, middle ground, launching pad for several revolutions; I did.
My mother has been gone for nearly three years. We had a tempestuous relationship; I loved her fiercely. I’ve learned, in three years’ time, to give her grace. I did this while she was living so I have no regrets with my mother, and I try to remember the things about her that touched my life positively; it’s easier to love her that way.
My biological sister was gone exactly one year ago on May 18th. I have not felt the need to grieve. We were not close, and there were several estrangements throughout our adult lives. I do have some grace for her though.
I don’t idealize the dead … when they were alive, they may have been monsters. I’ve seen the phenomenon many times; a person raises the dead up on a pedestal as if their crimes against them had never occurred. Nope. I grieve the loss of what might have been a lovely father/daughter relationship, even as I acknowledge the abuse, and all the social reasons why abuse happens.
Grief requires that we not be afraid to flip that coin … to see what arises for us in our grief process – an exercise in chance. Triggers are unpredictable. Grief is never about a single event. I learned that when I was first grieving, the days and months following my son’s death, I had no control over things that came up during the day. I’d weep until I couldn’t breathe. A shift in the wind would have me in the fetal position … until I learned to repurpose my pain and transform it into personal growth, all the way to being able to help someone else.
I thought I’d grieve my hometown – but since my family is no longer there, there is no reason for me to go back. Maybe you can’t go back home – again. Maybe. I love our new hometown. Who knew the desert would be so healing? I wish everyone had the opportunity to leave places where no amount of idealization can make its opposite true.
Each time since my son died, the embarkment on the grief journey has been less intense. I mean, I had been angry with my father for thirty-nine years when he finally passed away from cirrhosis, so grief didn’t come ‘til nearly two decades later. My son…I will grieve his loss for the rest of my days, but even then…life has moved forward and I with it.
My mom’s death jolted me; she was my longest relationship. She gave me life. I did weep for my sweet momma … but not long and certainly not with the intensity like when I lost my son. There’s a sense of fairness when an older person dies, when a young person dies, very little makes sense – until it does. All crises will reach critical mass and then a decline in intensity and finally…balance (homeostasis).
My mother loved to awaken me at an ungodly hour to chat about every little ol’ thing, or about the latest heinous crime she just read about. We’d chat and laugh for hours; sometimes there were serious talks. I cried in my husband’s arms once and then — I returned to my life, deep in an internship.
I’m often asked, “How long should grief last?” It’s an innocent question. I don’t have the answer, other than to say that grief is a perpetual experience in varying degrees of intensity; it undulates in our consciousness. I know that I juggle grief, grit, and grace every single day. There is a sound I make when something hits me like a bag of rocks; it’s barely audible; but I hear it. Things can pierce your soul – even when you’ve had the most amazing day.
I think if grief causes us to be self-destructive, i.e., addiction, high-risk behavior, bitterness, or isolation, then we need to seek professional/pastoral assistance. But grief is painful and it’s unrealistic to expect that there is a timeframe to which one must adhere and finish it up with a nice box and pretty bow atop it. Life is messy, and it doesn’t suddenly organize itself into more digestible chunks when crises occur. Since life is messy, it stands to reason, grief is messy.
We heal in proportion to how hard we work to face our demons, i.e., old stuff from decades ago, from our childhoods, from the most recent heartbreak, from the loss of a child, spouse, parent, etc. Grief is much deeper than your most current loss – even though your current loss is crushing you, you’ll dig much more deeply as your grief process gets underway.
I’m not suggesting that there is a point a leading to point b, because the process can be hellish repetitively and in no particular order until we learn to tame the beast. I have grieved the loss of my son for ten and a half years. I will always have a void in my life where he should be. I’m still alive though … with “miles to go before I sleep.”
My memories of him and of us together were also beautiful and I choose to replace a tough memory with the good ones. Today is a summer day (early in the desert) –. My son hated hot weather, but he would have been amazed at how cold our swamp cooler gets the house. He’d have it on and cocoon himself on the couch and fall asleep under the roof of his momma’s home…but he’s not here, and all I have are memories, so…
Dripping colors swirl in the fire blending and stretching in the skilled and scarred hands of the glassblower — until she learns how to coordinate breath with white hot flickering flames. I can’t imagine the learning curve for a newbie. I’m fascinated by fire – not like a pyro fascination, but I see the beauty and the danger, the life and the death, the ability to feed ourselves, keep ourselves warm, and to create with it.
Balancing breath with fire…
So much requires balancing acts – and we often don’t even realize that we are balancing, sometimes on the thinnest tightrope; it is just what we do. We are heroic, perhaps not daily, but just being alive, navigating the world in a prosocial way is damn heroic in my book. My husband says I set a low bar for humanity. For the most part – every person is, in fact, doing the best she can with the resources she has had modeled for her and which she later adopts as her own.
Sometimes those resources are adaptive, and a person can use them in the world in ways that help her navigate it prosocially. When we behave maladaptively, life may have moments of comic relief, but mostly, living with an alcoholic, let’s say, someone active in her addiction – even with brief moments of relief, chaos is always only a brain secretion away.
I’ve lived in small towns my entire life, and if I found myself in a bigger city, I found small communities and settled in to make friends and a life for me and for my son. Small towns are amazing places to grow up. There’s a song I love by a musician named Michael Tomlinson. In his song, “All is Clear”, he sings goodbye to his hometown. He remembers the landscape, the sunsets, the rain where — he began.
If we’re very fortunate, we get to leave our hometown – even if it’s just for a year or two. Small towns can be stifling. I think small towns are amazing places to retire. I haven’t been to my hometown for three years, since my mom died. There’s no reason for me to be there. I raised my son there. I worked there. I had shitty neighbors there. Sometimes you don’t ~want~ to go home.
Home is where the heart is, and I mean this too; it’s not just a cliché.
I have a dear friend who I can sit and talk with for hours, on the phone, in person, you name it. We have discussed our very similar backgrounds, and I said to her that I have worked my entire life to build a life in which I am safe, loved, respected, and celebrated – and a peaceful home. I know “success” is relative, and in America, the more wealth one amasses, the more power and prestige one has. It’s the law of the land … ever since the genocide of millions of native Americans, swindled and murdered out of their birthright.
Sickening.
And, per usual, I digress. I currently live in a small town, a town which I absolutely adore; it’s smaller than the town where I grew up and because it’s so small the prevalence of addiction and homelessness is very visible. I cruised Los Angeles during my internship, and my director drove us around through Hollywood and other places I’d not been to, even as a California native. I was shocked and saddened by the number of homeless people who lined the streets – in front of dressed up picture windows as their background. My director drives in it every day and so no longer sees the downtrodden. I was horrified and disheartened.
My little hometown is much like the one in which I currently live. There are old timers who built the town, their children, my generation, my son’s generation, my grandson’s generation, and on and on. Then newbies move in and want to change everything without consideration for the natives – again. I hear about the Los Angelinos moving into the desert with their faux suede and ten-thousand dollar cowboy boots in a one million dollar concept house trashing up the landscape. Gentrification occurs very quickly when the newbies don’t really care about the places they move to or the natives they upset.
I was at the DMV, always a lesson in human behavior, and there was a gentleman, and I use this term only as a nicety, who was wearing a threadbare shirt, unbuttoned, with a hairy beer gut and sagging shorts shouting a conversation on his cellphone for God and all the world to hear. Sadly, it was not an interesting conversation. He promised to pick up a six-pack on the way home from the DMV (I’m not so sure he hadn’t stopped at the liquor store on the way to the DMV).
My first reaction to him was disgust, but then I remembered a mustard yellow threadbare shirt my father wore to town, beer belly hanging out and having few inhibitions, if any, when he spoke in public. He could settle down for eight hours a day … but once his uniform came off, so did any shred of decency or decorum. My father was a hardworking man. Yes, he was an asshole, but only because he’d been broken before he broke me. He gave me a strong work ethic, and he modeled for me many behaviors and a worldview which I’ve had to excise from my schema.
Glass can be reused; it can be remelted and reshaped into beautiful things. Our lives can be reshaped – as often as we need them to be. I love kaleidoscopes … and like my mom’s holy butterflies, I’m in awe of the infinitely many beautiful configurations there are.
Eight-billion and counting. We are variegated … colors of the rainbow and full of life…even the slug at the DMV, and even my father, a slug in his own right. The last time I was “home,” the drunks in threadbare shirts, who were there when I was a kid, have mostly passed on, but their kids, my generation, are aging, quickly, and some of the apples didn’t fall far from alcoholic trees, and I’ve lost a few classmates to addiction, to cancer, to high risk behavior.
I’m of the mind that a person can change at any point in her life; I did. I was a late bloomer and I resisted the total reconstruction of my worldview, and of the ability to care for and love others, the least among us, the slugs and the successes, in whatever way success appeals to you.
There was an England Dan and John Ford Coley song in the late 70s called, “Love is the Answer.” I thought it was cheesy back in the day, but as I’ve traveled my life trajectory, the one I create and the one created for me by random chance, I’ve learned that love is truly the answer. If little children can be loved from the get go, they will have the ability to love others and imagine the world under the common virtue and enculturated value of love.
I’m not so Pollyanna that I expect the mobilization of love throughout my country in my lifetime. We’re too big of a mess right now. I hope for the swirling glass to be multicolored and blended in such a way that each individual color is expressed boldly.
I don’t know where we get the idea we are not one species of different colors, cultures, and creeds. We are so wonderfully and beautifully made, and we are creative in how we survive our lives. If we’re very lucky, we learn to thrive in our lives, pacing ourselves against the heat of the fire, with careful breaths and exhalations.
Sometimes leaving the people, places, and things that have consistently hurt us is our first step toward freedom. One cannot love, truly love, without the need for utilitarianist motivation, unless one is free from maladaptive coping skills. I’m certainly not saying it’s easy to walk away from hurtful things, or maybe it is, once you’re sick of the constant fallout from pain.
I have several glass blown pieces, and I marvel at the skill and courage it takes to create a piece of great beauty, and I compare it to the ways we fashion our own lives, in the heat of purification, in the heat of re-creation, and in the heat of an all-encompassing love that transforms us into people who can transcend the impurities of this social reality. Love is better than competition, in my humble opinion.
Love is better than competition.
Love is cooperation, collaboration, and connection. I don’t know about you, but connection is so important that when we don’t have it with others, we realize there is something missing in our lives.
Find a metaphor that heals you in its ability to perfectly describe your life circumstances. Words are so important. Naming your dilemma is personal growth. Take time away from the heat of the fire and find a nice cool place to replenish yourself, and then, get out there and share your ability to see deeply into another’s soul because you have the love to offer, through the breath and through the fire.
“Light of the world, shine on me,
Love is the answer.
Shine on us all, set us free
Love is the answer.”
England Dan and John Ford Coley, “Love is the Answer”.
