Multi-tasking

By Sherrie Ann Cassel

Christmas, the Yuletide, Black Fridays at Walmart, or whatever you celebrate this time of year, thank heavens it’s over for another year. I made it through as did all who were grieving the loss of a loved one, a very recent loss, or the loss of a child from seven years ago that still has a parent’s heart tender around this time of year. We got through it; we always do. We’re tougher than we think we are. In my worst nightmares, I could not have imagined I would lose my only child. In my most rational moments, in those moments when I stopped to catch my breath after torrents of tears, I couldn’t see even the tiniest speck of hope for a new day – a day in which I would not ache to the marrow of my soul. I was mad with grief. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t sleep. I ached viscerally; the pain was a total revolution of pain and, later, victory. I was completely enveloped in the hopelessness of loss. I’m a seven-year veteran of the grief process, and while I wear the badge of honor for a parent wounded in the war on addiction, a parent who has lost a piece of herself, and through being a witness to the savage way addiction rips away a person’s ability to fight back, to save herself, I have days when I fail and give in to the overwhelm.

Each of us has incurred losses of seismic proportions; we’re human and so, tragedies occur just as moments of joy occur, and with those tragedies, come opportunities for transformation and transcendence – after a few rounds with acute grief. I wanted desperately for someone to say the abracadabra that would heal me and take my pain away. One person did offer me hope and I rejected it at the time. I wasn’t ready to let go of my pain yet. I needed it to grieve the loss of the most important person in my lifetime, my beautiful and tortured son.

We each have moments of self-blame and regret for what we said or didn’t say, for when we were there for him or her, or when we neglected the relationship because life got too busy. Self-blame and regret rob us of the present moment, and as cliched as it is, tomorrow is never a certainty. I say live it up each day. Absolutely we must feel the loss before we can move forward. I have always intellectualized life’s surprises, including tragedies, but when I lost my son, all bets were off for how I would get through it, or if I would get through it. I did get through it, and I continue to heal a little bit each day.

I’m on winter break from seminary and so, I’m reading books that I don’t get to read during the semester. I’m listening to music and taking much needed naps. Seminary is exhausting, spiritually fulfilling, but a lot of work. Working during the grief process, when you’re ready, or if you’re forced to go back to work because of finances, can be helpful by giving you the opportunity to focus on something other than grief. I mean it, and there is no other way to say it, but I was a fucking mess. My heart hurts for the woman who was so broken after her son died, the world was only darkness. I want to reach back in time and assure her she was always going to be okay.

It’s beyond difficult to comfort someone who has lost a loved one. One must go through the painful adjustment period as one redefines one’s life after a loss of great magnitude. I know the saying, “Pain is a given; suffering is optional.” I call bullshit. Suffering is part of the human condition; a time of suffering is necessary in grief, but that time must not be for a lifetime.

We are far more resilient than we give ourselves credit for. We’ve had our hearts broken once or twice. We’ve loved and lost. We’ve said goodbye to someone with whom we had a relationship of sacred magnitude.

Call me crazy, no, seriously, I would have if I had not come to know loss at the most intimate level, but I talk to my son often. I kiss his picture. I get misty-eyed sometimes when I remember something good, bad, or indifferent. We had a full life together. I would have loved a few more years with him, but as they say, when it’s your time to go, it’s your time to go. Perhaps I will see my son in another plane, or I will have to satisfy my longing for my son, by keeping his memory alive by the way I live my life.  As you who follow me know I cut my teeth on the sacred texts of the Hebrew and Christian Bibles. There is a verse that I have only recently found dynamic and hopeful as I develop my theology, a fusion of science and a G_d. The verse says, “He answered, ‘I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.’”

I live in the Joshua Tree National Park area, one of the most beautiful geological landscapes in the world. When my husband and I go out to the park, there is unbelievable silence, the kind that accompanies the warmth of the sun on my face. An occasional hawk will fly over, and I can actually hear the flapping of its wings. Marvelous.

I lost my faith for a very long time. My faith today, after an arduous grief experience, is more mature. I actually feel whole for the first time in my entire life. Seminary has a lot to do with the spiritual transformation, a return to the G_d of my understanding. I hear those rocks crying out the sound of G_d’s glory, or however you define your experience of the Divine. I’ve heard many experiences of those who have had a transcendent rebirth into the whole of humanity and emerged with the desire to be a healer.

I know some of you have no Theos but find transcendence through the wonder you have for life, all of it, and the history of our planet. We each find things that will heal us, and then when we’re ready, we can get out there and help others to heal too. I know it’s tough to not feel those grief pangs, especially during the commercial holidays or religious traditions; it can be dizzying until we’re able to normalize the overwhelm. Normalization is within our control. We just must remind ourselves that there is a time and a place for everything. A Christmas party full of joyful people is not the place to lose it. I’ve learned to acclimate to whatever environment I happen to be in.

I’ve also learned to say no when I’m not up to chilling with joyful people. I know how much I can handle. I think grief brings us face-to-face with our truest self, the self that is incapable of pretenses during the acute phase of grief.  I didn’t leave the house for months after my son died; it was just too painful to drive by or go into places where he and I spent a lot of time. I cried in the parking lot of a grocery store for 20 minutes because I went into the store and someone asked me how my son was and I ran out of the store, leaving my cart, and I was in full-blown panic. Seven years ago, I was fully immersed in the suffering part of grief. Life has changed for me, for my family, for my son’s son, and for his friends. Life has gone on without my son. The world has continued to spin, and for the time being, I wake up every morning with the realization that I lost a son, and then I wash my face, brush my teeth, and prepare for the day, a day my son was denied. I want to spend the day wisely, living, and loving.

Our grandson will be here tomorrow for a week. I’m looking forward to spending time with him. I have one month to spend with my husband reconnecting after a tough semester. I look forward to getting out to the National Park and going for long drives with my husband, soaking up the wonders of our world. I will stop for a few moments at a time to feel the ache from not being able to share the beauty of the world with my son. I wonder if he feels the same way, not being able to share his piece of nirvana with me. I wonder for a moment and then I hear the flapping of the hawk’s wings, and I’m back in the present moment, in the desert, with the sun’s warmth of my face, and I say, “I love you, Son.”

I heal a little at a time. Like the Erikson developmental model of a person from birth to death, I’m in the generative phase, on most days, after three and a half years of hardcore grieving, and a total of seven years as a grieving parent. On January 22^nd, it will be seven years since my son transitioned. I hope to celebrate his life on that day, and not his death. I can’t say for sure if I’ll be successful, but my intention is to remember how beautiful he was, not the last moments of his life. I spent three and a half years in painful rumination; life has not waited for me to heal enough to get back out there. Babies were born, people got married, divorced, some died, friendships ended, ad infinitum, and I was in mourning trying to get back to solid land where the pathways toward healing or painful stagnation were waiting for me.

Significant time passed before I chose the former. I’m here … to hear the rocks cry out the names of my G_d, and to allow that immense love to be shared with others. Everyone. Find your purpose, regardless of your age or your circumstances. We each have something to give. I tell my younger friends who say they’re too old to go back to college, “Hello. Your friend here is 60. You have time to have three or four careers. Do it. I know you can.”

I know you can heal from your pain. There is a debate among those who grieve, one over which I straddle the fence: can one heal entirely from the loss of a loved one? I don’t know if we do or if we don’t . I feel healed in many ways, but in other ways and at certain times, the rush of pain comes with a vengeance. I breathe through it, and I find an alternative way to be in the moment. In tears sometimes, I’ll scrub the bathroom sink, or some such task that helps me to refocus on being here, now.

Thank you for reading. Sometimes, well, often I write to purge the pain. But right now, I’ve got socks to reconcile and put away; yeah, that’s what I’ll do.