The song, “Icicle” by Tori Amos begins with the sound of the chaotic beginning of a melting icicle, until the pattern of order begins to emerge through the notes on Tori’s piano. Order is always underneath chaos. I read once that behind every insane person is a sane person watching the chaos of her life, unable to change the outcome of each day in which she continues to spiral out of control, beyond the reach of that sane person.
In the early months and, even years, following the death of a loved one with whom we had an intense and intimate relationship, there is a period of chaos. I spun out of control when Rikki died. I was the chaos and dissonance of the notes in Tori’s icicle; it’s taken me eight years to develop a song in my perpetually-healing heart.
I want to share with you this morning how the music from the icicle of my heart began to thaw in tinkles and peals dancing around each other, until the basso profundo of thundering chaos transitioned to a lovely consonance of balance, of harmony.
I had a slumber party with some of my girlfriends over the weekend. One of them, A., said that “Life is lived on a spectrum.” I am grateful for her operationalizing for me another dimension of grief. Life is lived on a spectrum, so is grief. One day it is summer and the next it is fall. One short season of spring where death and life come together, and one season says goodbye while the other rushes in to say hello.
Grief has been the chisel that has shaped me more than any other experience in my life thus far. Losing my son was the event that hurled me into grief. I felt like I was drowning in grief. There were days I cried until I couldn’t breathe. I slept to avoid the utter pain. The melting drops of whatever frozen hardness I had around my heart, mind, soul, dripped frenetically for a few years.
I’ve always enjoyed pendulums. I love how beholden they are to gravity. Pull one away from its center, and watch it sway chaotically, and then return to balance, harmonious with the gravitational pull. Grief pulls you away from your center, whatever that means to you. Grief rearranges your perception about everything. From confusion to clarity is a wild ride as you swing to and fro and your soul within you fights for you to return to it.
I met a shaman who spoke of “soul retrieval” –. I admit; I’m a skeptic, but as I write this morning, and I think about the gradations of grief, I’m in touch with my soul after some time of alienation from it. I have some life stressors I’m working through, but where I am on the spectrum now is smack dab in the middle. Grief is in the center with me where all things harmonize into a unified field, where I sit with my lump of clay creating from the center, something beautiful.
Eight months ago, my mother died. I’ve been spinning out of control for just about a minute. I haven’t had time to grieve because of an internship and because of life on its own spectrum. I should be looking at retirement, chronologically, and there are days when I’m tired of the busyness, but I know I will never be satisfied retiring into my geranium garden. I’ll need intellectual stimulation and the sense that I’m contributing until … I’m no longer finding purpose for my life.
I took a moment to feel the losses of my mom and my son today. I closed my eyes and just felt the loss and I rocked back and forth and held my hands to my tender heart. Grief is processed on a spectrum. Eight years have passed since I lost my beautiful Rikki. I languished in the darkest night of my soul until it became an impediment to my life. My pendulum swung chaotically – while the whole person longing to be born watched, powerless to steady it; it takes time to normalize pain.
I simply did not have the internal resources to tame the wild beast that grief was in the early days following Rikki’s death. I was exhausted down to the marrow of my bones; this is not hyperbole. Those of you who have lost someone very close to you know how tired grief makes you. There were days when taking a shower was more than I could manage. Order had been annihilated in my life. I couldn’t think; grief fog is real.
When my mom died, it made sense; she was eighty-one. She lived a long life and when she began to feel purposeless, she died. When Rikki died at thirty-two, it was not the natural order of things. I don’t mean this self-sacrificially, but I should have gone before him. Right? I truly did wander aimlessly in my world, my very small world, when Rikki died. I had no purpose other than to mourn my days and nights away. My pendulum was swinging frantically as I tried to find my North Star in the most dense fog.
I’m thinking of a color spectrum, and the varying shades as they transform into the next color in the frequency. My pain feels like the faintest pink, like a pretty blossom that lasts for a day to remind me that life is short, and as I navigate the different spectra in my life, I sit dead center held together by gravity, the bonding agent of the universe, as it expands and contracts, never the same, just like we are never the same from day to day.
I’m grateful for Tori’s musical interpretation of a melting icicle. I’m grateful for Christiaan Huygens for the beauty of the pendulum. I’m grateful for A. for bringing me to the awareness the reality that not only is life lived on a spectrum, but so too is grief.
A tinge of pink to remind me the loss is always there, the tinkle of a frenetically melting icicle, and a pendulum that compels me toward the center of wholeness are my healers today.
May your healers be present today and may you continue to heal.
So, I’m adjusting to the developing wattle, the gray hair, the once enviable endowment – now heads south – toward ~retirement~. In short, I’m adjusting to the aging process and its effects on my body. Despite the creams and incantations in desperation to create that fountain of youth, we still age and that is reality. In a culture saturated in aesthetics, and – drowning in its discontentment, we dislike the ways our bodies change throughout the years, despite our best efforts to slow the process.
I’ve been more aware of life’s passing, and at a dizzying pace, since my mother died. My son’s death has certainly been life-altering, and he was young, still had his entire life ahead of him; death in youth makes no sense.
My mother’s life and death made sense; she was eighty-one. Maybe she could have lived to be one hundred, but that was not her trajectory. Her last few years were fraught with doctors’ appointments, pain, and fear. My heart misses her more than I can express – and I know she’s no longer suffering. She died like she lived, bravely and elegantly.
Mom was always a looker although she never truly knew it; historical trauma robbed her of a healthy level of self-esteem. I totally get it. Mom had breast cancer that required an immediate mastectomy. The surgeon was able to remove all the cancer. We celebrated as a family. She died three months later. Her body was racked with pain and illness. The surgery was more than her tiny, frail body could withstand.
My beautiful mother is gone from this world.
As my brain is wont to do, I was thinking this morning, ouch. Sometimes we are fortunate to have our parents be emotionally healthy examples to us through the lifespan. My parents were not ideal parents, but I was lucky to have them for as long as they lived. My father lived to be seventy, young, relative to the ripe old age I am now. 😉
Mom was eighty-one, had seen a lot, been through a lot. Mom got up every morning despite her aching body and showered and made herself look beautiful – even if she was going to be alone for the day. Before she died, because none of us was expecting it after the celebration of her being cancer-free, Mom optimistically asked me to get her some cream that removed wrinkles around the neck and other crepey parts. She was concerned about presentation. Funnily, I am too. I wish I were less so, especially as I age. I look like my mom; I have through every decade – since birth, and as my need for moisturizers that eradicate wrinkles (Right.) becomes imminent, I’d like to thank Jane Seymour, for showing us how to age beautifully – good genes, not ointments promising youth…for just a bit longer, please. I’d like to believe you for just a single exhalation.
Jane Fonda is an inspiration – in ways far more profound than the admiration of her presentation of self – cosmetic modifications and all. I’m not yet shriveled, but I anticipate the time this will be a reality for me – it’s just right outside my peripheral vision. I had a model to teach me how to grow old – gracefully – refusing every step of the way to “…go gentle into that good night.” (Dylan Thomas). All the days leading up to Mom’s death have now become treasures – charged with brilliance from the love I will always have for her.
Love is a superpower.
Mom didn’t wear much make up, maybe a little bit of pink lipstick and face powder. Her skin was lovely until her final transcendent moment. Isn’t it funny Mom and I would be concerned about the same thing: presentation? She was beautiful without enhancements. Maybe we all think our mothers are beautiful, maybe even those whose mothers were not ideal, challenged with mental illness, or those for whom domestic violence was a learned behavior that is difficult to rise above without the willingness to get help, to break the cycle, to have relationships vacated when you really get that they have been toxic for many years, decades, a lifetime… There comes a time when presentation on a stage of wounded actors is no longer a compulsion, because the performance of a lifetime is waiting for you: a truly actualized self, whole, self-aware, in touch with the beauty of nature, yours, theirs, and mine. “Put away your swords,” said the sage thirty-three-year-old, as he emphatically called for the Christians to be civilized in a world gone mad, not unlike our current world.
Nature
The sacred universal properties present to us through nature. We live in the California desert, near Joshua Tree National Park. My husband and I don’t go out to the Park as often as we could. To be honest, with a second wind at sixty-one, I don’t get out into nature even though it would be an act of self-care, at which I am painfully aware I don’t always succeed. Regardless of educational background, although education really helps with self-awareness, which, in my opinion, is a pinnacle achievement in the human species, knowledge really is power — personal power.
Wrinkles and all.
“The things that pass for [beauty] I don’t understand.” (Steely Dan)
What passes for beauty is heavily made up (guilty as charged) or sliced until there is no trace of an authentic and natural beauty –. I appreciate the effort and I even ~get~ the desperation to retain our beauty into our eighties and beyond, should we be so fortunate to see those years.
My husband said he was an anachronism before he made the decision to retire from the public school system. He taught high school theatre arts just four years short of forty years. “He [was] a well-respected man about town.” (the Kinks) He grew up, too young for Vietnam, but old enough to have been a part of the anti-war consciousness of the time. He continues to have a spirit of rebellion when he sees injustice. Rather than see wisdom, many of the members of our culture see wrinkles and white hair, and our ideas are no longer respected.
See, we can present as youthful until doing so begins to look ridiculous. I am such an aged sage, tattooed, who will one day need to decipher the images for the visitors in the nursing home.
Crepey skin be damned.
Best-case scenario, we grow old with the ability to retain memories, both short- and long-term. Best-case scenario, we have good health until it is our time to merge into the infinite, a heaven, or the sweet obliviousness of non-existence.
A petty question I have about the afterlife: will I need to wear makeup or will beauty in each soul finally be recognized – without enhancements and without the desperation of presentation. Okay, now I’m just writing absurdly! I work hard at presentation. I am less inclined to get dolled up to go to the grocery store, but at a strategically ungodly hour. This, for me, is progress. My son was an adult before he ever saw me go out without makeup. He even asked me one time, “My God, Mom, are you going out like that?” Still cracks me up.
I didn’t get to see him get gray hair – or wrinkles. Neither fair nor unfair, it just is. People are born and there is much celebration. People die and there is much sorrow. Some of us can act our way through the grief until we’re authentically ourselves, forever changed, but a self that has navigated the devastating tsunami of loss and come through it strong from swimming against the current of a grief that can become all-consuming if we don’t get the appropriate and necessary help, a life raft in the storm.
And besides, the fewer painful days, the fewer furrows in our aging brows. I have aged physically since my son died. I have crow’s feet from crying rivers, and – on some days, they are smoothed out by laughter. I have frown lines from years of exhalations at the gym. I learned a secret about breathing years after my gym mania that would have saved me from those lines. Oh well. No harm, no foul.
There are more commonalities between us than we acknowledge. One of those commonalities is that whether we have beaucoup bucks or are at or below the poverty line, we all get old – if we’re lucky.
I’ll take the wrinkles that my son was denied and that my mother resisted with all her might. I think we have a few paradigm shifts in our lifetime. “When I was a child I spake as a child…” 1 Cor. 13:11. I did, too. I spoke from an incredibly young person’s irrational idealism, or a thirty-year-old’s cynicism, or a burgeoning warrioress in my forties, and so on as the decades fly by…and the sorrowful or joyful lines around my eyes deepen.
I’ve been ~blessed~ to have lived to this age, wrinkles and all, heartaches — and all. As I’ve let go of the temporarily necessary deep mourning from the loss of my son, my heart is being made new, smooth, abundant with sacred wisdom from my journey, and sweet memories of those who both furrowed my brow and those who gave me all these chameleon-like crow’s feet. I’ll take them. I earned them – through the tempest.
I met a woman in a Twelve-Step meeting who was in her nineties. She was an amazing storyteller. Her hair was snowy white. If you saw her dressed to the nines, you might think she was ~cute~. She was beautiful and when she shared her stories with the group, her face became bright and youthful. I saw her youthful vitality. I don’t know what is so difficult for us to understand, namely, that the aged are repositories of cultural, institutional, and relational wisdom — in fact, they are true sages who can impart wisdom to those of us who will take an intermission long enough to travel through time with an elder. I know if I knew ~then~ what I know now, life would be much different today, maybe even a little Marty McFly after returning from the future different. I am now a budding sage, but alas, what successive generation listens to its antecedents?
People are amazing. We’re creative in our quest for survival. When we can – we thrive. We throw things out of our rafts when they become dangerously cumbersome. The aged should not be among them. My husband was relegated to the shelves where anachronisms go to early retirements and their rewards for decades of service, are invisible.
My hair is now graying exponentially, and I no longer have the energy to keep up the maintenance of the appearance of youth. I’ve decided to just roll with it, wrinkles, and all. Mom would push me to dye my hair and never leave the house in sweats and with no makeup on. My son used to tell me that when I went out without my bullet-proof armor of makeup, in his hyper-dramatic manner, “My God, Mom, you look like you’ve completely given up on life.”
I must admit, I started wearing my ~conservative~ pajamas to town before doing so became trendy.
I now qualify for senior benefits at many stores and restaurants. My mom loved the benefits of her senior discounts, but resisted the wrinkles that accompanied them. We are funny. I’m adjusting to all the physical changes rushing in because of the aging process; but, when I consider all the places, relationships, failed or successful, when I consider the thirty-two years and the sixty-one years I got to have my son and my mother, when I consider how awesome my husband is, and when I consider the music, literature, visual arts, soundtrack of my life, truly, I can only be grateful.
I moisturize. I drink gallons of water. I moisturize. I moisturize. I moisturize. I hold no illusions that, with any luck at longevity, my tattoos will always resemble the images my artist designed for me, and my teeth will be bought and paid for at an exorbitant price, and like Solomon, his cynicism at his extrapolated psychological and developmental age is not unique. We will all get to a place where we can make the choice to celebrate all the days, we ~get~ to have – and certainly, there are alternatives to celebrating life. I hope you each will choose otherwise.
One day you’re smoking in the girls’ room and “feeling groovy” – bitchen, rad, cool, sweet, ∞, and then, as if to rush us to the other side, time takes us on a “magic carpet ride” to the eventual summation of our lives. I wish I knew what to expect. I wish I could know with absolute certainty, but as all thought experiments do, they require a modicum of skepticism.
The earth is soaking up the rain, appropriate for today. In California, there has been a drought for many years. I’m not too embarrassed to say; I haven’t followed the information concerning the drought. I don’t know if we’re out of the drought yet, but the rain is like God crying with me on this day, the angelversary of my son’s death. I’m trying to not think about all the moments leading up to his death on January 22, 2016, at 5:55 p.m. He would love the repetition of five and he would create some beautiful meaning from it. He was good that way. Funny. Vivacious. Effusive most of the time. He was, in fact, a chip off the old block.
I have a candle lit, a beautiful, sparkly candle that a friend made. I light a candle every year. I just want to remember my son out loud – even if no one else knows why I do it. Even if I don’t understand it. My husband, at my request, is playing DARK SIDE OF THE MOON by Pink Floyd, and I’ve decided that my grief, in its acuteness today, must seek expression. I’m bleeding myself. I’m purging. I’m apprehensive about what the day’s emotional load will yield, or…will I just hold my breath through it. Who knows?
I’ve left tasks for me to do, busy paperwork, a Zoom conference. I’ve carved out this time to mourn. I got up at 4:30 a.m., lit the candles, turned on the light above our Buddha, turned off the rest of the lights, and I sat in the ambient light behind the Buddha, and I cried. Like during a walking meditation, trying to clear my mind, the thoughts, the hard memories keep creeping in, and I shake my head, and they flee for a few moments, long enough for me to catch my breath. Sometimes I double over in pain, and I let the feeling pass, and I stand up straight, shake it off, take a deep breath, and start again.
I know it’s irrational to think that I wouldn’t have a difficult time today. Every year for eight years I’ve tried to feel joyful for the day my son was freed from addiction and the pain he felt that led him to use substances to numb it. I wish he were here for Momma to make it all better. I’d do it differently; I’d do it better. I’m trying to not think about when he was so sick that every breath was labored. He was so beautiful. He was so brilliant. He was kind. He was generous. He was long-suffering with people who hurt him.
I’m not going to force on myself my own personal blend of Pollyannism today; I’m going to cry intermittently, and I’m going to laugh bittersweetly about the good memories. There’s cognitive dissonance on angelversaries. I want to smile, and I do, through tears from longing for my son to sit with me and talk with me and hug me with his great big arms. I’m jealous of those who, with all their hearts, believe in psychic conversations with their sons and daughters through a medium. I’m jealous of those who believe heaven is a real place and it awaits their return to the Garden of Eden, so to speak. I believe on days when I’m not hurting.
Is Rikki in a heaven? Will he send me a sign? Does his energy flow through the universe in a bliss of non-existence? Where did he go? Yeah, I always give myself part of the day to mourn, and then I go into our bedroom, turn off the lights, cover my head, and in the protective fetal position, I sleep. My husband wakes me up at 6:30, after the TOD has passed, and I get back on the Soul Train.
Rikki loved smoking cigars and his favorite every day cigar was a wood tipped cherry flavored one. I bought some for those who were living with us, and I asked family members to light their own at 5:55 p.m. and they sent me pictures of themselves with their cigars. I was so touched. I know they did it for my grieving heart that first year, and I will always love and appreciate them for it. I don’t plan things like that anymore. We, in my family, each grieve differently for my son. His son loved him and grieves him. His grandmother also grieved him. I grieve him. I light a candle and put something he made on the shelf where the candle is…a type of altar in memory of my son.
I want to be a good example to all who grieve. I want to midwife their victory stories as they push and do the work for that victory. We can heal. I used to think we could heal completely, and I dicker back and forth about it. I know I’m enjoying life, complete with its stressors and challenges, and I do have some of those. I’d be disingenuous if I said I didn’t have any; however, even with the greatest loss of my life, life is amazing. Some of you know about my strenuous and checkered climb up the academic ladder; it’s taken me all my adult life so far to get here. I could not be more grateful or prouder of myself. I did it through the addiction years with my son, and I continue even after his death.
I’m going to give myself the credit for the hard work, and I’m also going to thank the GOMU for placing in humans the will to survive and the will to thrive. Even though we tame our hedonia to a socially acceptable level, we desire to enjoy our lives. We work and … we play. I’ve worked the grief process until I thought I had no tears left to cry (tear ducts can always produce more).
My purpose here is to revive a sense of joy because it’s summonable. The possibilities for creation from a place of pain are endless. The opportunity to share what has healed or is healing you with those who are hurting is that which we must grab hold of. I’m trying. I feel like Spock from the original Star Trek (one-hundred years ago), the episode where he got a virus that made his humanity take over. His Vulcan side fought to keep his humanity restrained. I feel a little like Spock did. My heart is hurting. My head is sifting through different emotions, as my heart, the place where we hurt and experience joy, does somersaults and plummets down the rabbit hole of grief. I take the fluctuations as a sign I’m still alive, and since I am, I want to live it to the hilt.
I’ll get through the day just as I have for the past eight years. My husband is DJing for me. So far, we’ve listened to The Grateful Dead, Traffic, Pink Floyd and now we’re listening to the Allman Brothers. A nice mix that makes sense, music my son wouldn’t like. That fact helps more than you know. One year we took a drive out to Joshua Tree National Park, and it was so silent I could hear the flapping of a raven’s wings overhead. There was not a cloud in the sky. I enjoyed the beauty despite the ache in my soul. This is the day. This is the day. This is the day my son died.
There are two memories I have of the day Rikki died. The first one was when we were cruising around a small suburb of San Diego; I was taking him to a doctor’s appointment. I had originally intended to go visit my mother, and Rikki said, “I’m so sorry I ruined your day, Momma.” I said, “No way, Boo; there is no one in the entire world I’d rather be with than you.” Truth. When we finally got him into the ER and he had a bed, he was cold, and I asked the nurse for a warm blanket for him. When she brought it to him, I tucked it around him like I did when he was sick or ready for bed. He said, “Oh Momma, I don’t know what I did to deserve this, but it feels so good.” Those were the last words he ever spoke to me.
I’m so grateful the last thing I ever did for him made him happy. I take comfort in that.
I made sure I had something to do today. I’ve got paperwork for work; I’ve got a Zoom Conference at 7 p.m. I’ve got to get ready for my two traffic days and try to get enough sleep. As my heart prepared for today, the sheer will to not give into a twenty-four-hour slump has been monumental; it’s also exhausting.
There’s a drizzly haze outside, but I’m snugly in the house, warm, surrounded by things I love, pictures of my beloved on the walls, shelves, and desks. He is everywhere, in spirit, as a brain secretion, in a memory, he is forever seared into my soul. I miss him. Like a body memory from an assault, the angelversary hits hard when there is a trigger: a scent, a song, a symbol. He loved those giant dill pickles and every time we went to the beach, he just had to have one. Maybe I should have bought one for the day — to remember my son. Maybe.
Sorry, this was so personal today. It’s a tough day…but there’s hope for healing…always.
Rikki and I listened to this song the week before he died while we were sitting in my car. We heard the Jimmy Cliff version, but Rikki liked the Nash version.
Tomorrow will be the eight-year anniversary of Rikki’s death. I feel it coming – like a train that can’t be stopped; it’s coming. I wanted to write today because I’m not sure my heart and brain will be capable of expression tomorrow, other than in “…groans too deep for words.” (Romans 8:26, NRSV) I’m feeling the anxiety in my chest now, and it won’t pass until tomorrow after 5:55 p.m. My heart is healing, but my body remembers the shock of seeing my son dead on the emergency room bed, his deathbed. I refuse to allow myself morosity, even though the time of day is significant, and I have, for the past seven years and 364 days, refused to look at the clock. I’m not sure where I stand on the spirit life of those who have passed. If anything, I hope for heaven for everyone. However, in my doubt, “help my unbelief” – about spiritual matters, my brain reminds me, “You cannot possibly begin to know all there is under heaven and earth.” True. Who knew that the benefits of prayer/meditation would one day be measurable via fMRI and PET scans? And the advances keep leaping into our present. I’m certainly grateful.
“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” Hamlet, Wm. Shakespeare
I take the risk of presenting my own version of woo woo, when I relay two dreams and one “vision” I had about and of my son. I have sprinkled some of his ashes in various sacred spaces throughout our California deserts. At a resort in the San Diego desert, I sprinkled ashes, lit incense, and said a rosary one morning, before the park awakened, before I snapped back into the world of busyness and routine. I was weeping by the end of the rosary, and then I just started talking to the GOMU and to my son. I wish I could tell you the vision was real, but even so, just as plain as the nose on my face, I saw my son crouching down, gazing across the space between us. He looked healthy. He looked happy. Perhaps, it is a grieving mother’s wishful thinking, or…perhaps there is a spirit world that needs alignment with this one so death is a victory and fear and sadness are not part of our transition from this world to the next, whatever that means to you and to me.
One of the two dreams I’ve had since Rikki died was powerful, and until I processed it with my therapist, it was disturbing. I won’t share it here, but I’m not a sleeping dreamer; I’m a dreamer while I’m awake, in a place where I can build my dreams from scratch, with grit, and with grace. I’ve read on different grief sites about parents who’ve had amazing conversations with their child through dreams and psychics. I’m a skeptic, but again, I don’t know everything. The “vision” helped me to really feel in my essence that Rikki is okay, at peace, and whole. What more could a parent hope for? A parent wishes for the absolute best for her child, even posthumously. Is he warm? Does he have enough to eat? Is heaven worthy of my son?
Still, though – the day my son died was the worst day of my life. I’d like to think Rikki’s spirit is free, and so – I do. Tomorrow, the angelversary is always tough. I’ll work through it, and I’ll work through it tomorrow. In the interim, I take the next indicated step forward and I will do the best I can. I have loved ones and a terrific support system through a few grief sites I frequent, and one I started. My husband is a rock for me. I’ll get through it, just like I always have.
I want to choose to ruminate on the happy times, but the day he died creeps in and my heart aches deep in its core. I’ve booked myself solid tomorrow … I hope it works. I miss Rikki so much that it takes my breath away sometimes, and I wonder how I managed to stay alive throughout the most intense part of my grief, in those early days when all I wanted to do was die. How could I live in a world where my son was no longer in it? How? How in God’s name could I go on?
Grief is hard work. Moving toward the light of healing is hard too; it takes grit and grace also. So, we dance despite our losses, even though the pain is still there. The longing for our loved one is still there. The absence is still there. I’m giving myself grace if I don’t celebrate my son’s life tomorrow, but instead ruminate on my son’s last breath. Either way, there will be tears, and I accept and give myself permission to feel how I need to feel to get through the day.
I always hope that my son’s last breath here was the key to an eternity of bliss and a place where everyone is whole. I envision this for myself too, one big commune of happy and whole people…a place where I will meet my son in the infinite, a fusion of spirits, one beautiful collective consciousness – expressed according to our personalities, a painting, a poem, a song…ad infinitum. I hope.
I have a couple of paintings Rikki did in rehab. One is mostly varying shades of oranges with a big black blotch painted in the middle, and another one is of a black heart surrounded by the favorite colors of those he loved. One does not need a degree in psychology to see his emotional state. My sense is that his paintings are far more wholesome now.
Whatever you believe or disbelieve, if you have an angelversary today, or coming up, take care of yourself. Weep. Ruminate on both the good and the bad memories. Give yourself grace. Create something beautiful from your pain. Heal.
Rikki Kolb – August 6th, 1983 – January 22nd, 2016
January 22, 2016 @ 5:55 p.m. I walked away from my son’s body for the last time. I had been so full of hope for him. I had finally gotten him to the hospital, and I held on to an irrational hope that my very sick and addicted only child would pull through. Those of us who have experienced tremendous tragedies are thrown into a desperation that enlivens the imagination toward impossible fantasies.
“Oh, Lazarus, come forth.”
I prayed this prayer, along with the preliminary commentary, “Please, oh, please God, I believe, help my unbelief. Rikki, come forth.” As a result, I believe in the effects of and the responses to random chance by the human species. We get to live for however long we get to live and then we veer off to our next great adventure, whether it’s a heaven like the one foretold in your sacred texts, or it’s reuniting with loved ones. I so want to see my son again. I believe; help my unbelief.
I don’t want to raise theological issues. As Dolores O’Riordan sang, “We’re free to decide”, what will feed and nurture us spiritually and emotionally. I do, however, want to emphasize here that while we are free to decide, it matters from which well-spring or drought-ridden lake we draw from. I’ve drawn from both bodies of water. I’m still learning how to swim in my own deep waters.
Before Rikki died, I appealed to every supranatural entity I knew, to spare my son. “Just give him a victory story, please, God.” I learned to pray the rosary. I did centering prayer. I laid prostrate on the floor. I genuflected before the God of my understanding until my knees hurt. None of those things made one iota of difference; I ultimately had to surrender my son to his Higher Power.
Rikki coded twice in the hospital, despite my unrealistic hope. The second time he coded, I had to make the decision to have him intubated, or to let him go. The doctor said he had no brain activity, and so, as sick as it still makes me today, I let his body, soul, and mind find perfection; it helps to think of death in this manner. I’m hopeful to the very end – even when the possibility of a ~happy ending~ is as remote as winning the lottery, or – bringing your child back from the dead.
“Oh, the games people play.” ~Joe South~
I’ve learned that rumination is not always helpful; I guess it depends on what one ruminates about. As the twenty-second approaches, I’m feeling some anxiety, mostly about how I’ll feel on the day, what I’ll do. My response to the angelversary is always a crapshoot. Will I weep in a dark room all day and night, which has been a response from time to time in the eight years Rikki has been gone? Will I try to be grateful for the life we had together? Will I beat myself for not being able to save him? Will I crash and burn or rise like the Phoenix? I wish I could tell you.
I know what I tend to do as the angelversary approaches; I ruminate on our last hours, weeks together. I was aghast, concerned and terrified about the bad shape he was in. But … I held on to hope. “God, I believe. I believe.” “Desperate times call for desperate measures” (Hippocrates), verdad?
I imagine watching your child die the painful death of addiction, must be like watching your child die to cancer.
Addiction is a disease, too.
My son’s privacy, even posthumously, is sacred to me. We went through so much throughout our thirty-two years together. The addiction years were hell, and I mean that. The metaphorical fiery flames of hell that terrified me so much as a youngster, are apt analogies for the insanity and chaos that addiction wreaks on the family system. When my son was dying and after he died there really was ~weeping and gnashing of teeth~ — I gashed myself for three years with guilt and self-blame for my son’s death. Yes, folks, to me, that was hell. I nearly hyperventilate when I think about the woman who was so broken from the loss of her child; it was the toughest thing I’ve ever gone through. As a matter of fact, I cannot think of anything more grueling than losing a child, no matter the age of the child, or gestational status. Losing a child is inconceivable, until it happens to you or someone you know; to a parent who has lost a child(ren), her grief is inconsolable.
As those of us who know grief from an intimate perspective, we learn to navigate the grief while we reach for the stars and reclaim our lives; it’s entirely possible. I’m aching today. I can feel it. I’m sure you can too. I’m revving up for next Monday. Will it be rough, or will I be able to celebrate his life and push the sad thoughts away, i.e., seeing him so sick, walking away from his body, holding so much pain in my body, mind, and soul, I couldn’t live a life that had room for joy? Will I be a hot mess?
I remember once I had a presentation to do as an undergrad; it was an important presentation for a final grade. I’m not a great test-taker anyhow, and even though I knew my material inside and out, I was a nervous wreck. I talked to my shrink about it and she suggested an anti-anxiety med to get through it. I got through the presentation, and I even did very well – the rub is, I don’t remember much of any of it. I didn’t take them for years until Rikki got sick and then again, when he died. Time would show I no longer needed them.
I want to feel my son’s absence. I want it to scream in Rikki’s voice so loudly that I can’t ignore it. I also want to feel the sunshine on my face, the mist of the ocean as it bejewels my hair with dew, ad infinitum, and I want to enjoy all the awesomeness that exists in this universe. I also want to enjoy those things even though there is a sorrow that veins every single thing in my life – because I can’t share them with Rikki. All things have become bittersweet. Rikki was my only child. My beautiful son. My reason for living. I knew only how to be a mother – the good, the bad, and the ugly – the relationship I was privileged to have with my son, save those last addiction years, were a blessing, a gift, and are so close to my heart it ached and bled when my son was yanked from this world.
He is gone, and as ee cummings says, “I carry you in [the metaphor of] my heart.” I’ve used the detonation of my soul analogy many times since Rikki died. I think of the aftermath of the greatest loss of my life, and how I writhed in pain during those first few months and years of grief. As for carrying my son in my heart, I think of Rikki and I as Fukushima daisies. We’ve been through the detonation, and yet we survive spiritually, inseparable, mother and son, flesh and blood – a holy union in which neither of us will know exile, only a mutual love, a love from this present time, and a love for all eternity in the afterlife, in whatever that means to you.
I will miss my son on January 22nd more so than usual, and I will bury my head under my blankets or jacket as 5:55 p.m. approaches. Clocks will be anathema for me, and my husband will have to rouse me from my emotional funk once the hour has passed. I appreciate the teamwork.
My current purpose in life is to help others find within themselves the courage and the drive to create a life that is fulfilling, a life that matters to them. Finding purpose doesn’t soften the blow from losing a child; it also doesn’t take the pain away. Nothing will. But the intensity lessens and the grief that controlled us early on no longer will. I’m grateful for the peace, harmony, and healing that I’ve been able to enjoy – even after losing my only child; there will never be another.
I think sometimes people make the mistake of thinking they have only one purpose in life. I was a daughter, a sibling, a kid with a broken heart, a broken wife to a broken husband, a broken mother, a divorcee, a wife to an amazing husband, and in each of these stages, my purpose is in the shape of the need at the time. However, with all that good stuff, finding a purpose, and all, “I’ve been to paradise, but I’ve never been to me.” (Ron Miller and Kenneth Hirsch)
I’m in a kind of paradise where a tsunami is expected. The floodgates haven’t burst open in a very long time.
I can’t make any promises. I’ll probably cry a river.
Our children grow up to be the sum of their primary caretakers’ responses to times of imbalance and to times of homeostasis. Children live what they learn. Epigenetics assumes we are not only the sum of our parents’ behavioral and genetic inheritance, but we also must add our ancestors’ genetic and behavioral contributions to the equation. It’s a hypothesis, but one day, despite all the controversy, perhaps the vicarious trauma that is transmitted to successive and broken generations, may have genetic resolution in the future. I’m hopeful that mindfulness and being in the present moment will catch on and become a trend like a California burrito, complete with its American counterpart, the embedded French fry.
My husband and I were about to lose our home in San Diego, and the loss was imminent. The stress level was at critical mass, and it was truly a hopeless situation, in which we did ultimately lose our home of fifteen years. I was learning about mindfulness in my undergrad psych program, and even though I thought it was woo woo, I was willing to give it a chance.
I learned about mindfulness before I learned about dysregulation and how trauma can, in lay person’s language, throw us off balance, biopsychosocially, and add to that, spiritually. What does that mean for us as a species? Start with the child. In ideal conditions, a child will be loved and nurtured, and have adaptive and prosocial behavior modeled for her. For the child who grows up in trauma, under the iron fist of domestic violence, regulating oneself toward calm breathing and inner peace, even when nothing external has changed is a goal that may be more difficult for the child who has experienced violence in her life.
There’s a meme floating around on Facebook about how teaching a child to be mindful and to breathe in times of dysregulation, or stress, calms the child and brings her back to the present moment where logical solutions are plentiful. Imagine if we each, in particular those who’ve experienced a great deal of trauma, or perhaps had a parent who modeled chronic stress and worry, had a well-honed sense of self-soothing by the time we reached adulthood. Perhaps there’d be less heart disease, obesity from stress eating, diabetes from obesity, soul sickness and mental illness if we learned how to calm ourselves using only breathwork and mindfulness. Perhaps.
I’ve read several magazines about the loneliness in America. One article from The Atlantic said this generation is the loneliest generation in history. We’re connected to our devices. We zoom important meetings, interviews; and, we Facetime our loved ones. Sometimes, though, we just need a hug. Where is the love in cyberspace? Despite the occasional hell I was raised in, my mother was present to feed, clothe, and to love us as best she could with her limited emotional resources, but. . .she was present.
As a form of self-soothing, I go within and commune with my breath and with my spirit; in my theology, we are spirit, flesh, blood, and cerebral. I did not learn this practice as a child. I spent most of my life in survival mode with a mentality of scarcity of emotions, guarded, and hypervigilant. So many children do. I was such a child. My son was such a child. Children live what they learn. If you’re in an environment that is not a nurturing one for your child, or for yourself, and you can escape right now, do it for your kids, and for yourself.
Whitney Houston sang, “. . .our children are our future.” This is scarily true. If we don’t raise up children to self-regulate in emotionally healthy ways, our society will not change for a better balanced, more prosocial one. I love the story in the Christian Bible (NT) about the pearl of great price. Our children are our pearls of great price. Teach them well. Love them through each developmental milestone. Teach them to love themselves. Teach them that there are appropriate and character-building choices that can be made in any situation.
Teach them to breathe through crises so those choices are easily accessible from a cleared mind. Parents and grandparents alike, including teachers, and emotionally sound clergy can bring a child from the darkness of hopelessness to a life bright and full of potential.
The new year is also a finale to whatever we leave behind of the year preceding it. I said goodbye to my mother, a relationship that spanned sixty-one years, my longest relationship to date, and what will prove to be the longest relationship in my life. I’m wrapping up the last two chapters of my life. I, far more than ever before, hear of the deaths of classmates, kids who grew up with my son, my son. I said goodbye to one of my son’s childhood friends. I said goodbye to a dream of never having to do office work again, but life circumstances require me to make a few extra bucks to add to our modest budget while I’m still in seminary.
There were far more things I said hello to last year. I finally achieved a secondary degree and am finishing my master’s degree. I finally can see clients and facilitate support groups. Our grandson is remarkably close to us, and we had him over the holiday season. He’s growing like a weed; in three years, which will fly by, he will be an adult.
Life, directed by random chance, is a bag of mixed nuts. I’ve loved deeply and I’ve lost the greatest love of my life, my son. In a week and a few days, eight years will have passed since my son died. The early years were pure agony. I ached so much I could not see a future for myself where pain was not my primary experience. Since those early years of complicated grief, the waves of angst have calmed, and seldom reach high tide anymore.
Don’t let anyone tell you that time heals all wounds; no, it does not. I think of a glass blower getting his glass to dangerously hot temperatures, and how, as the glass begins to cool and solidify, a thing of true beauty begins to emerge, fragile, like a tender heart after a loss, but beautiful from the polish of painful experiences we must navigate to get to a place where they are imbued with meaning and a hint of the healing that awaits us as we work and weep through the process.
People ask me how I got through the loss of my son. I survey the past eight years, and truly, the years before that as I grieved my son’s once beautiful mind and healthy body. I can’t believe how quickly the time has flown. Eight years, soon it will be ten, and then. . .how did I get through it?
There were quite a few weeks and months of numbing to get through the day. I never said goodbye to my son. I kissed him on the forehead and told him he was the greatest thing that ever happened to me, and then I walked away from his shell. He was no longer in his body. That holy thing that animates us into humanity left his body and merged into the infinite, in whatever way you understand that to play out.
I’m pragmatic and not prone to flights of fancy, so I knew, even as I clutched my chest as each trigger passed before me, that I would find a way to come back to life, a person changed in every possible way, a person more in touch with reality because tragedy necessitated a keen self-awareness that opened my heart and my head to the possibility of healing, myself and others.
I used to think we could heal completely, but as a lifelong griever, I know there are still tender spots that range from one, not horrible, to ten, soul-crushing. I tend to be in the middle these days. I had a trigger when I was dancing with our fourteen-year-old grandson. We were dancing and I was remembering a time when I dreamed about dancing with him like I used to dance with his father. I felt the bittersweet longing deep in my chest, and I pulled myself together so our grandson could maintain his joy. Oh, the things we do for love.
I haven’t made a resolution in years. I didn’t make any for 2024 either. The consensus among grievers is that a loss of great magnitude, tends to help one prune away the things that are no longer necessary for social survival. Since I lost my son, again, my only child, I have let go of a great many things that used to stress me out if they didn’t get done, or if I was going to be late, or if I couldn’t be present for a loved one who was hurting. Life goes on, and I don’t say this insensitively; but life does go on.
An emotionally seismic event leaves us breathless in the present moment; there is no place to run from emotional pain. Certainly, one can numb it with substances that could turn out to be lethal, like they were for my son.
Empathy is another gift from grief; I know the depths my heart can sink to after the loss, and because I do, I feel others’ pain more acutely. I said hello to better self-care because I work in a field where tragedy and trauma are the norm.
I’d give anything to have my son back, but see, that’s an unreality, and if I’m to say goodbye to anything, relinquishing an old coping mechanism is another rung up the ladder to self-actualization. I’m not suggesting that the healing process is an easy one. I’m also not saying that all coping mechanisms are necessarily damaging; they are not all damaging. But when they are, the resistance to say goodbye to something that no longer works is what will keep us from moving forward.
Pruning is an apt metaphor. I have never been so fortunate to have the green thumb my younger brother does. He would strip his roses down to their stems in the wintertime, and then come spring and summer time, the buds would blossom into giant roses of varying colors. What am I pruning away in an effort to grow beyond my pain, my grief, my self-imposed limitations?
I like the Buddhist idea of non-attachment. I see that by holding on to my son’s short life, by allowing my pain to remain acute, by ruminating on his death, rather than his life, I was not letting go of the things that hurt me, perhaps in a masochistic way, like some religions encourage their practitioners in shame, guilt, and self-loathing, I still occasionally relapse into old conditioning. I don’t want to ache anymore. I want to live my life as a legacy to our grandson, in honor of his father, in honor of my son.
I don’t need to say goodbye to my son; he is in my blood, my heart, and in the deepest parts of my soul. I need to say goodbye to the pain. If there is an adaptive reason for holding on to pain, I’d like to know what it is. I know human nature as a member of the human species. I know human nature from the theoretical perspectives of my education. I’ve had a lot of parents tell me they’re afraid the memories of their children will fade over the years. I have not had such an experience. If anything, the memories no longer tear me apart, but they still arise from time to time, always bittersweetly, but no longer assaultive.
If I’m to say goodbye to anything or anyone, it is to things and to people who have been historically hurtful and assaultive. Sometimes letting go, saying goodbye — is beneficial and helps us to grow into emotionally healthy people who do not allow others, including family members, to hurt us.
C’est la vie.
I don’t think I’ll ever truly shake the grief that I carry. I shouldn’t want to. If I were able to let go, would my memories of my son fade? Is grief a way to stay connected to our deceased? I wonder with our inability to comprehend infinity, are we also incapable of grasping non-existence? Is there life after death? Will I see my son again? Or should I get off the Gospel train and just live my life to the hilt and say goodbye to things for which there is no evidence? Should I eat, drink, and be merry? Can I do so without the guilt from moving on?
We live each day as it comes. Some days are springtime, with everything in full bloom, after a long, harsh winter. Some days are just long days of that harsh winter. When there is cognitive dissonance, i.e., your conscience is not in sync with your actions, something needs to give, a goodbye, a hello, or a settling to lesser life experiences.
Goodbyes may not be forever. Sometimes we just need a break from something that is not right in our lives. I said goodbye to two family members this year; it was time. I said goodbye to my mother; it was time. We know when we’re not living up to our own expectations, and sometimes that lack of attention to our wildest dreams hurts so much that the only thing we can do is burst out of the cage in which we have become imprisoned, by choice or by chance.
I say goodbye to another year my son has been gone. I say hello to another year he will be gone. I open my heart to good things ahead.
In a couple days, we will say goodbye to 2023 and usher in 2024. Sometimes I marvel at how quickly the time has flown. My son would have turned forty this year. Yeah. Being a mother was a trip (squared) from the first sonogram (way old technology) through all the love and turbulence, all the way until he breathed his last breath. We lived fully. We celebrated with gatherings of friends, family of choice, and two members of mine and Rikki’s immediate family so many times our house was called the “party house”. We laughed. We raged at the world and each other, and we laughed. I believe there were more happy times than sad, although we did occasionally have to brave a hurricane. The last ten years of his life were poisoned by addiction. Those years were so hard, I nearly checked myself into a mental health facility for some rest and assistance in knowing ~how~ to love someone who was killing himself without dying myself. There were beautiful days and there were dark ones. There was a sad pattern in the recovery process for Rikki. Success and relapse, success and relapse were his challenges – every day, all day, and all night.
We used to laugh until we couldn’t breathe, even when he was an infant, whenever we would play peekaboo, he’d laugh so hard it would make the rest of us laugh too. Lots of laughter. Lots of tears. Lots of memories. And lots of pain followed by deep, deep grief.
Every new year that is ushered in means it’s been another year since I’ve seen my son alive; and the last year of his life, was so difficult because I knew he was dying and that I was going to lose him. I’d like to let go of the ache and the intermittent angst, but I’ve accepted them as dissonant notes in the ever-evolving symphony of my life. One day, probably on the last day of my life, the angels will play my magnum opus and I’ll merge from this life to the next, into infinity in search of my son.
Lately, I’ve been struggling with my spiritual walk. I want to integrate my spirituality with the biological, the psychological, and the social, what now has become another cumbersome word: biopsychosocial, and add to that the spiritual component. But who gets to define spiritual? How do we each define it for our own purposes without clashing with others? I grew up in an old school, mostly New Testament, church, what today goes by ~evangelical~. I went through a few metamorphoses spiritually too. From an unquestioning disciple of Jesus Christ, to atheist, to agnostic, and now a theist.
~Help my unbelief.~
This phase is not a crisis of faith, but rather, a part of spiritual development. I read – a ridiculous number of books each month. I’ve been in therapy intermittently, as the need arises to realign myself, for nearly 35 years. I’ve worked on myself. I’m composing my personal theology after being duped by a religious system that is hurtful and traumatizing. The time I spent in mourning, I was learning every step of the way. What I learned I can apply to my current and future life – what I can see of them from today.
My husband tells me I’m the most self-aware person he knows. I learned to not be afraid of self-examination. If you keep banging your head against a wall made of things that no longer work for you in your life, you learn to let go of those things so you can get to the other side where dysfunction is no longer the theme to which you live your life. The alternate is. . .no growth.
I haven’t made a resolution in years, like Lent, I always failed at giving up chocolate and sunflower seeds. I’ve been on a news fast for some time, maybe close to a year. Well, I broke my fast and regret it up to this very moment. I’ve decided to go back to my fast.
As I ring in the new year, I want to let go of the things which I can, hold on to those which are emotionally healthy, and continue to nurture healthy biopsychosocial + spiritual practices in my life. I will always feel the ache when I think about my son; that pain I cannot shake on blue days. I lean into the grief, and I find my bearings and I get back on the road to my developing life.
Life is beautiful. On occasion, life can be catastrophic or emotionally draining, or very dark as we internalize our pain, and hold it like a toddler holds his breath, and then we sculpt that fossilized pain with all those tools we no longer need into a perfect likeness of misery.
But as we each are the creator of our earthly lives, we don’t have to. In our dynamism, it’s a brave new world out there. Breathe the fresh air. Inhale the new year and exhale the old one, and may your 2024 be a smashing success.
Every beautiful thing reminds me of my son. Listening to Minnie Ripperton sing “Loving You” this morning was nearly more than I could manage at that precise moment. I wasn’t expecting the emotional overwhelm. The very first note of “Loving You” had me bowled over in physical pain, all the way to my soul.
I’ve been alone all morning while my husband and our grandson sleep. I love the time alone; it’s time I use to be with myself – to think – to pray — to dream. In twenty-seven days, Rikki will have been gone for eight years. As the days flash by until the twenty-second of January, I will live my life, full force, while grieving here until my own last breath.
Time is a respecter of no one; we’re each allotted the time we’re allotted, and once we’re no longer at the mercy of abusive parents, under the influence of dysfunctional role models, or sent out into the world having been loved well and our journey here ends, we will each merge into the Infinite, become one with the Divine, achieve nirvana, go to Heaven, ad infinitum.
My son would be forty now; just saying that awakens the deep ache that, on most days, I’m able to tame and command to my needs. My life is truly blessed. I have my husband and our grandson under one roof.
But you see, my heart will always be missing a piece. Life, even in its blessedness, is still a bit deficient. His absence will always be present. In joy, I want him here. In heartache, I want him here. On good days. On bad days. Every day.
As the new year approaches, I let go of the memories of painful experiences. I work to calm the brain secretions of bad memories and to self-regulate so I can concentrate on memories that make me feel good…always bittersweet. So, how does one let go of the memory of painful experiences? Quite simply: therapy. I’m of the opinion that one needs an anchor. I choose the God of my understanding; you may choose someone/thing else.
There is a journey, per Abraham Maslow, toward what he called self-actualization. After Rikki died, I fought, fumbling all the way, to regain my bearings. Grief knocks the wind out of us, and then it kicks us in the ribs — until we fight back. Grief is not an animate object, of course; however, it is an emotion, like rage, which must be apprehended/tamed, and some emotions take a monumental effort to calm, probably most especially, anger. Right?
I didn’t want to grow accustomed to pain; I wanted something that would take me out of it and help me to transcend the pain. I had no idea what that meant at the time; it’s taken me nearly all eight years Rikki has been gone to understand the message borne of pain. I’m still learning, and I don’t delude myself into thinking I will not ache for a lifetime when I think about my son, my beautiful son.
I’m swimming in brain secretions this morning. Phil Collins is singing “In the Air Tonight” – Rikki loved the song. I’m aching in my chest right at this moment. I come here to walk through my own grief as I address yours. You have no idea how much your comments and messages mean to me. In your own grief, many of you have reached out to comfort me on those days when I come to write my pain despite your own. Thank you.
The other blog I maintain is the single most healing thing I’ve done in the eight years since my son died. Talking with, crying with, and just being with other parents who’ve incurred the same loss as I have, have helped to seal the heart wound that will be healing for a lifetime. I’ve witnessed and been absolutely inspired by the parents and grandparents who frequent the site. I’ve seen unbelievable growth since the site’s inception. The possibility to heal is available to each of us; it takes painstaking inner work, but it is possible to have an amazing life despite the loss of your loved one, but … we will always feel the ache when a memory, sweet or turbulent, crosses our minds.
How did I do it? How did I get this far … and why am I here today? Two steps forward … and today … two steps back.
The day will be good, and I’ll continue to feel blessed, and I will acknowledge the memories and then, like this year, I will let them go. I don’t know which song or scent, or situation will bring them rushing back, but I’ll take care of myself as the tide rises and falls … and I’ll ride out the waves until gravity pulls the ocean into balance and the waves cease.
Yes, that’s what I’ll do.
May your 2024 come charging in with comfort and joy.
Grief to Gratitude 