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.
“Tonight I would be thankful, Lord, for any dream at all.” Mission in the Rain, Bob Hunter and Jerry Garcia
There are symbols which are easily recognizable for what they represent. A yellow submarine. Einstein’s crazy coif, and Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead, even though Bobby, Phil, Donna, Keith, Mickey, Bill, Pig Pen, Brent, Vince, and Bruce Hornsby were not chopped liver. I wasn’t born a Deadhead, nor was I socialized at a young age to be a Deadhead; I sort of married into the moniker. My husband is a true Deadhead. He has seen them forty-four times and his music collection is about twenty-five percent all Dead, although his musical tastes cross many intersections. I bring up Jerry Garcia only insofar as his genius, his struggle with whatever it was that made heroin his drug of choice, a choice he made all the way to his grave, and just because my son’s death was nearly identical to Jerry’s. My son chose similarly his drug of choice, and this makes me think about how much emotional and/or physical pain one would have to be in to reach for the thing which would ultimately destroy him or her, especially when there was so much to live for.
They were both non-compliant diabetics. They both had congestive heart failure, which can make withdrawals from heroin fatal. I can talk about it now. As the road through grief has taken me to places where gems of self-awareness and the potential for self-actualization lie in the wildflowers, using all their might to shine, to be noticed. I have stopped occasionally to pick up a diamond or two. Grief has shaped me into a more fully developed human being, more prosocial, more compassionate, because my capacity to extend empathy has increased by one-hundred percent.
Now when I hear stories about those who struggle with addiction, I want to know what drives a person to use — to his or her destruction. Not everyone who uses dies from addiction; but many do. I read some stats today in preparation for writing this piece that claims fifty-thousand people die in the U.S. each year from opioid use: that’s an entire midsize city/town. Even more alarming is a fact from those same statistics: ten-million people each year misuse opioids, Opioid Crisis Statistics [2023]: Prescription Opiod Abuse (drugabusestatistics.org).
What hurts so intolerably one must numb it to survive a life? I understand, now, why my son chose to self-destruct, and so now I get it about others too. I can look at the ways people grieve because I’m a veteran griever now. Maybe we all are. Everybody hurts sometimes…R.E.M. We each grieve a loss or many losses in our lifetimes. How deep the grief must be for those who quash it by sacrificing reality complete with its ups and downs — for a slow or quick road to death.
Does that make sense to you?
Now that I’ve been navigating through the sometimes-hurricanic waves of grief, wading barefooted through rocky shores, or sailing smoothly on those amazing days when peace guides me to a welcoming shore of hope and optimism and amazing possibilities, I find myself on this shore more often than not, and certainly, more often than my early days and months of grief.
My son was grieving when he died. He’d been through some life-altering and seismic experiences shortly before he self-destructed. I wonder what hurt Jerry. I know what hurt my son, and I wonder if Jerry’s childhood was similar to my son’s in the same way their deaths are. Were their important relationships hurtful and toxic in the last days of their lives? What happens to make someone expedite his or her demise? I read in a Sagan book, The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, where the author alleged one day in the future, we would see ourselves as a cruel species by not allowing people who are in emotional pain to use whatever method of relief he or she can find, including misusing both legal and illegal substances to subdue their pain. I’m sorry my son, and quite possibly Jerry, were hurting so badly they reached for a magical potion that morphed into a murderous poison.
One pill makes you larger and one pill makes you small. . .Jefferson Airplane
When my son was in rehab, a few different times, I met several of his housemates who later became friends, three of whom have passed from fentanyl. They were not children who were trying it unknowingly for the first time. These friends were adults who knew the score. What might have they been grieving? Maryanna Eckberg wrote a book called Victims of Cruelty in which she discusses trauma on the biopsychosocial dimensions of the human species and shares what heroin feels like as told to her by participants in her research: the safety of a mother’s love. My son said it felt like pure love.
The world is not safe for all children. Jerry’s father drowned when Jerry was only five years old. Missing a parent, even a bad one can be a traumatizing event. He was pushed into grief when he was only a small child, barely out of toddlerhood. Grief is traumatic on the body, mind, and consciousness. Is it deep grief that shatters a person so that he or she needs to run back to the womb? Yes, Nicodemus, one can be born a second time. Does heroin take away the pain from doing life in the same way with the same cast of memories that have hurt you time and time again?
Jerry created the music of a generation. My son created a child he adored, but that love ultimately could not save him, just as Jerry’s music did not save him. Their pain was too great to bear. If insanity is wishing for a different outcome than the one we keep creating– for a childhood, a lost parent, a toxic divorce, any number of situations for which a perfect resolution will never be possible, then perhaps my son and Jerry, were grieving those lost relationships from the distant and recent past – until that grief killed them because they didn’t know how to ask for help — until it was too late.
I’ve read time and time again, and even said it myself in early grief, “I just want to die.” The pain was too great to bear and I numbed with food, and gained fifty pounds, pushed myself into all sorts of avoidable health issues, because my pain was so great after Rikki died — I was barely functioning. I don’t kid myself that my health issues were serious and could possibly lead to early death. My eating habits didn’t really numb the pain, and at some point the types of food I was eating were unhealthful and eating itself became high-risk behavior for me.
So, grief can drive someone to hurt him or herself. Some with food, bad relationships, unprotected sex, and some with heroin. I wish I could have saved my son. I grieve his death every day; some days are unbearable, and some days are amazing; such is life.
My husband, my resident Deadhead said that Jerry had just admitted himself into rehab and his loyal fanbase was elated; finally, Jerry would be made well. He died in rehab. My son had been so sick and even though he had epiphany after epiphany that he could very well die because of his congestive heart failure, despite the edema and hemorrhaging in his legs, despite the loss of respect from his family, and even though if he died, his son would be fatherless, the demon addiction defeated him; it defeated all of us. I understand Jerry died alone in his room. He experienced his fame, but even that didn’t soothe the thing in Jerry’s heart that needed pure love, perhaps from a father.
My son died in the hospital emergency room with his devoted mother by his side. His aunt was there too, and later my family, such as we are, were all together saying our goodbyes to my son. He had showered. He was with people who loved him. His medical team was caring and supportive. He was warm. He also had heroin on him – on his deathbed…on his deathbed.
Grievers look for situations, people, art that speak to our social and spiritual locations. I have several grief blogs I frequent, including the two I manage. I find the ones that speak to my specific grief, and I also appreciate those sites that speak to those who have incurred losses different from my own. I have many teachers.
I’ve learned to love the Dead. My husband has turned me into a Deadhead. He is not so much interested in the biographical tidbits of Jerry’s life, as much as he is into the brilliance of the band’s music that continues to create musical movements throughout the generations. I want to know it all. I want to know why Jerry and Rikki couldn’t find that single thing that would awaken them to their will to rise above the things that hurt them, and grab hold of a long life, a life in which they might have made peace with their past. Jerry was only fifty-three years old; my son was only thirty-two.
In my experience, grief should be a journey of a reasonable duration. I know this now. If grief hurts you all the way to pathological behavior, e.g., addiction, then reach out for emotionally sound and healthy methods toward healing, i.e., therapy, from clergy, support groups. Don’t lapse into self-destruction because pain is the only thing you’re feeling; we have a wide range of emotions. Tap into them – through prayer, meditation, journaling, or exercise.
Maybe some people don’t hurt themselves when they’re in pain. I wish my son would have been one of them. I know Jerry’s kids wish he had been one too. Maybe my theoretical perspective(s) don’t always provide me with comforting answers. Would it matter if I could pinpoint the exact point at which my son was driven to self-destruct? Would it change anything? Would it bring my son back? No. The answers needed are answers that Rikki and Jerry needed. Maybe life wouldn’t have hurt so badly for them if they had the answers to all their whys … a mother or a father’s love, or a warm brain space to call home.
Maybe that’s all we really need when we grieve, a place where we can rest with the reality of our losses in such a way that expression of that grief is normalized, a place where saying, “I’m hurt. Help me.” does not make us needy pariahs, but humans embracing the whole human experience, where death truly has no sting. How can we process our pain and hence, demonstrate to others how to process theirs in emotionally sound ways?
I asked my husband this question, and he gave me the analogy of the starfish, and so I concur, I must work toward the healing of one Rikki and one Jerry at a time.
My mom, my sweet and complicated momma, has been gone for three months now; I’ve lived a lifetime in those months. I’ve begun an internship. I’ve learned new and harried traffic patterns and navigated them. I’ve managed to be in a beautiful relationship with a man for whom adoration is mutual. I’ve made new connections and I’m learning to allow my own vulnerabilities to surface in emotionally sound ways, calm, peaceful, self-regulating. I can handle stress; I can. There are any number of ways to self-soothe, ways that are emotionally sound, ways that demonstrate self-love.
In a few short weeks, my son will be gone eight years; it scarcely seems possible. The holidays are among us, and this year will end with a bang. I’ve been blessed with some amazing things in 2023, despite watching my mother die from breast cancer, hopeful about the life-saving mastectomy, and then having to say goodbye to her – all of this in a matter of a few short months. I say this, not insensitively, but I say this: life does go on.
Logistically, time may have stopped for me for the first three years after Rikki died, but it didn’t stop for anyone else. The earth continued to spin, the sun rose, and the sun set. Our grandson was growing up before our eyes. We were aging. I was in so much pain, posttraumatic growth was not possible during this time. I could barely manage a shower.
But…
Life does go on.
In the eight years since my son died, through early, complicated, and manageable grief, I’ve grown as an individual, as a person with potential to fully self-actualize in a single lifetime. I work exhaustively to achieve self-awareness, and to use the wisdom from self-examination to share with others who may be emotionally or spiritually wounded through the loss of a loved one or a belief system. The nice thing about knowing what you believe is that you don’t have to proselytize or champ at the bit to change someone’s mind. If I’m capable of figuring out life on my own, and of finding and applying what works for me in my own life, then it would be arrogant for me to presume that my way of thinking is the best or the only way; it may be for me; it may not be for you. We are not the Borg.
…as iron sharpens iron…1
My healing has taken time, all of the eight years my son has been gone, and all the rest of my life will be healing and woundedness, healing and woundedness…such is life. We ache and we rejoice. Losing a loved one, especially one with whom you were very close, is a colossal event. I truly believe I didn’t start healing until I started a blog, After the Storm, for parents who’ve lost child/ren to addiction. I’m so fortunate with amazing and supportive friends; I absolutely am. However, having the words said to you that you cannot bring yourself to utter by a person who understands completely is of monumental import. I heard the ache and the angst that I felt but was not yet ready to verbalize. The members of the group were my angels, heroes, and heroines. They were and are my teachers in this grief experience. The group has been meeting for about seven years and the growth and wisdom I witness there are so very healing to my heart, especially on those days when I’m really hyper-aware of my grief.
To whom do you reach out?
I don’t know how people find my blogs or Facebook pages. I don’t advertise. I don’t need a huge following. I want to be of service to those who are grieving, and in some respects, every person in the world is grieving, or will grieve at some point in his/her/their life.
…a time to weep and a time to laugh…2
We are a little over five-hundred at After the Storm, and we are each at a different level in our grief experience, from those whose child has been gone for only one week, to those of us who have been with the site since its inception, and then there are those who are truly veterans of the grief process, whose children have been gone for decades. Each person is cherished and his and her insight is so valuable to our healing.
I shunned experience when I first started on this horrible/wonderful journey. My heart hurt and no one could ever understand. I was alone in the universe, and I was one giant raw nerve with nothing that could anesthetize the pain. I’m sure many of you can relate. I did a research paper a few years ago about the ability to heal emotionally after the loss of a child and I wanted to see if a population that has a faith-tradition, not necessarily a god, but a spiritual anchor would heal more rapidly than a population that does not. My research bore out that this particular population in a rural Midwest area, where most residents were religious and/or they identified as spiritual, did, in fact, heal more quickly and sustained their healing for longer periods of time than they who claimed no religious/spiritual anchor.
I didn’t have an anchor when my son died. I had no spiritual hope to hold on to – nothing to hold on to. I can speak only for myself, but I had long ago lost my faith in the misrepresented god, and lost my way to a God of love, compassion, understanding, and relatability. When Rikki died, I had only my sparse tool kit with tools I hadn’t yet acquainted myself with. I also had years of Catholic and Southern Baptist guilt and shame. I had old tapes from my broken parents who broke me time and time again when I was a child. I had a loss felt all the way deep into my soul, and I had nothing to catch me as I spiraled down into the black hole of grief.
I’m not saying only those with a spiritual anchor, and who’s to say what is spiritual, can navigate the grief process more easily. Research has not made that entirely clear – yet. But I can now compare my two locations, one spiritual, and one with no spiritual inclinations. I choose the former. What will take you out of your deepest grief and bring you back to the Present Moment where you may grow from the trauma of your loss?
Can you take the pain from your loss and reframe it into something of benefit to you and to our world, especially those closest to you? Our grandson was six years old when his father died. He’s fourteen now. I have expressed, in tears and with joy, my love for his father, my son, in earnest and honestly in front of our grandson. I want him to know it’s okay to feel, and that once the feeling has decreased in intensity,
Life does go on.
I’m grateful for emotions, sadness, anger, joy, disappointment, and any combination of them. Each emotion is a teacher, and if we ride out the storm with them, and pay attention to what is being taught, each emotion provides us with an opportunity to learn and to grow into our most fully actualized selves. I approach the dichotomy of grief with kid gloves. To find the wonder in the grief process has been painstaking work. I sat idle, wasting away, in an emotional shroud, aching deep within me. There was no place I could turn to get away from the pain. My husband and I moved to the desert, away from all the things I shared with my son. The solitude of the desertscapes, the sunrises, the sunsets, the millions of years of geological history, new people, places, and things began to fill my life, and despite the ever-present awareness of Rikki’s absence, my heart began to thaw, and I began to heal. I hope it doesn’t take you as long as it took me to heal.
Reach out to someone, a support group, a friend, a site that addresses your specific grief. We cannot heal alone. The ideas, healing rituals/methods, stories, sharing of our deepest feelings about losing our loved ones are available in a collective, i.e., therapy support groups, or individual therapy are full of amazing insight, wisdom, and connection. I felt lost with my friends who fortunately had never experienced the loss of a child. Once I started reaching out to those with a common loss, I started to heal.
Holidays are rough, harried, chaotic under the best of circumstances. Keep close to those from whom love emanates. Steer clear of family drama and dysfunction, if at all possible. Take care of yourselves, through this season. May you find peace, tranquility, or a rockin’ and festive time, however you spend your wintertime.
As I begin to slow down for another high desert winter, I’m grateful for so many things. I miss my Rikki more than I can begin to adequately express. I always will. I miss my mom this holiday season. Our grandson and then our granddaughter will be here soon, and their mother, with whom I have grown in great leaps and bounds, and we will celebrate life and remember our Rikki. He would want that.
Life is all about taking our losses and refashioning them into something spectacular and useful, something that helps and does not hurt our world, one person at a time. I have navigated the grief journey for eight long years now. I spent my dark nights of the soul holed up in a house with four walls, and no hope of relief. I knew I couldn’t live that way forever, and so I started making changes in my life, one tiny step at a time. Five years ago, we moved here, and I was still pretty raw, but as time has passed, I have done the work it takes to heal, and I have learned about healing from many of you.
As we say goodbye to 2023, and the lessons we’ve learned, through joy or through sorrow, may we find comfort and embrace joy this season.
How many of you have to rev up for social gatherings since your loved one died? I need a couple of days to prepare my soul for another holiday without my son, and now, without my mother. Grief touches every inch of our lives, of our past, present, and future. I tried socializing too soon after Rikki died; it was a huge mistake. I’ve learned to not lose it in public, but in the early days, I was terrified I’d have a meltdown at the first inkling of the “question” — if I had any children. I wouldn’t even go “home” to my hometown because I couldn’t say out loud the words, “Rikki died in January”, to friends or acquaintances who hadn’t heard yet of my son’s death. I was always one second away from losing it. Everything hurt; it hurt to breathe.
As this year ends in a flurry of celebrations, there is a sense of dread amidst the glory and the glitter of the holiday season. This is the eighth year my son will be gone from my holiday table. I pray for dreams of holidays past, but I rarely dream about my son. To the extent visitations can be quantified through the scientific method, I may have had two through dreams and one, I know it sounds crazy, visitation through a vision when I was fully awake. I’m not sure if it is just the desperate imaginings of a grieving mother who longs irrationally for a connection to her child, or if, in fact, there is some spiritual longing that is temporarily fulfilled in our dreams.
I know I miss my son all the time, and I mean ALL the time, and there are times when my heart hurts so badly I withdraw from the world so I can talk myself into staying in the game, to live – out loud, to offer people who are hurting hope, to remember why I’m here, and to heal. Death takes a lot out of those who are left to grieve. Time to recharge is essential. How much time; it takes as long as it takes. I’ve met people whose lives stopped when their loved one died. I thought in my early days of grief that I would never stop aching, a throbbing, ever-present pain, deep in my soul, forever.
There is pain, but it no longer throbs; it is ever-present, but it no longer aches. The best way I can describe it is as tolerable. I’ve heard arguments from the world of addiction that there is no such thing as a functional alcoholic. An alcoholic is an alcoholic…one way or another, addiction takes one down. I’m a griever, will be one until I breathe my last. I won’t solve the addiction argument through speculation, but I do know I’m a functional griever. I miss my son every second of the day, and – I function in life. I have a job I love. I’m in school, which I love. I have friends I love. I have chosen family who bless my life. I have the perfect husband – for me, two peas in a pod, my compadre, my sidekick, my best friend, my lover, if there is such a thing as a soulmate, well, I’ve found mine.
Inasmuch as there is life after the death of a child, a spouse, a friend, a beloved pet, there is still pain we must navigate, and hopefully, it will be time from which transformation will emerge for you. Take it from me, in two short months, eight years will have passed since my Rikki died. Unbelievable. My purpose for this site was to help guide others toward a life of joy after the loss of someone close to you. For me, my loss was my only child. I sometimes have worked through my own sh*& on Grief to Gratitude, and for that, I apologize. If it helped you, thank you. If it turned you away for a day, a month, forever, I apologize, and I hope you find what you need somewhere else.
The buildup from the holidays will reach critical mass in December, a few days before Christmas, when our grandson will be here with us. As it is, I’m loving the vibe, age-old marketing and consumer rituals, Santa, Jesus, the whole shebang. I thought I’d never enjoy holidays again, and I didn’t for a few years. I really couldn’t lapse into a depression because we have our grandson every Christmas and he needs to have beautiful holidays and not one with a grandmother who’s incapacitated by grief. I get teary eyed, or I look pensively out the window, and everyone knows where I am and with whom, and they all go about their business, and give me my space.
I have a Christmas ornament with my son’s face on it which I proudly, and with strong emotions, hang on the tree each year. He’s here. He’s welcome. He’s loved, and — he is not forgotten.
Holidays are sparkly and special, but they are not so for everyone. This is a sad time of year for many; it used to be for me too. I miss my son so damn much it would probably kill me if I allowed myself to feel the loss full force. I thought I’d die in the early days – from the pain. I also wanted to die – from the pain.
But I didn’t. I’m still here. And if you’re reading this, you’re still here too, reaching out for relief, for understanding, for kinship, for relatability. I want to offer those things through my life, and through my blog(s). You see, darkness lasts through the night, but in the morning, the sun rises, and the plants awaken, and life begins to bustle, and people are on the move, living, working, loving, laughing, crying, pushing, shoving, and just trying to make it in a rough and tumble world, and in between – to catch a moment of respite.
As the holidays approach, without restraint, regardless of our emotional readiness, I wish you peace and comfort in your hearts. Memories may be all we have left of our loved one; may that be enough to sustain you through the season.
The sky is gray and it’s getting cold in the high desert, yes, even in a dry Southern California it gets cold. I had to learn how to dress in colder climates. My brother says that a sweater is merely a suggestion in San Diego. Alas, I miss my home county, not so much my hometown. Now that my mother is gone, it’s a different town. I felt the same after my son died. I raised him in my hometown. Again, the town has become detached from me and vacant, like a stare into the Nietzschean abyss. Too many skeletons.
It’s easy to push things out of our minds and go about our business while allowing only a little time to grieve, to process, and to heal. As a veteran griever, nearly eight years, which is incomprehensible, I’m able to take time to stop and remember my boy and tap into a longing that were I to allow it on the daily, would be intolerable – so, I take my time with the time I have. Those who go into the helping professions are often the worst at taking care of themselves. I know self-care is not my strong suit.
I should probably go for a massage more often, hit the gym more than a couple time a week, walk more, eat greens and colorful food, and meditate; I would meditate through prayer to a Theos, God, if you will. My husband and I love language, science, and music. He also loves history. I haven’t had a history professor yet who has kept me awake during many a class session. How do I relax? How do I nurture myself through some tough life experiences that cause me to dysregulate, stress out, if you will. I listen to inspiring or danceable music. I read. I have amazing conversations with my husband who is way on the other side of the spectrum theologically.
I’m in awe of people who can nurture themselves, and it’s not even necessarily something you have to buy. You know, spiritual gadgetry, i.e., mala or rosary beads or any number of talismans. I have spent countless dollars on spiritual gadgetry. I have six rosaries. I have twenty different versions of the Hebrew and Christian Bibles. Commentaries, books – which made it nerve racking to move two times in five years. We downsized our books after the move. Oh, we still have a bundle, but it’s going to be more manageable when we move again. Fortunately, they went to good homes: a mental health facility in my hometown. My friend, a nurse, said the clients loved the books. The difficulty I had letting go of each one of my books caused me grief, but I got through it, and I feel less stressed about when we move again in a couple of years.
Oh yes, self-care. How do you all manage self-care, those in the helping professions, especially those in jobs with a lot of human contact? Even more so, imagine you’re an introvert in an extroverted world. How much of your limited emotional resources would you use up during a forty-hour work week? How much recovery time would you need to return to homeostasis? What kind of emotional or tangible resources would you need to bring you, me back to a balance which would enable us to reenter the macrocosm and get back to the business of helping others, leaving the world a better place than we found it, and spreading goodwill to all people. In an “I’d like to teach the world to sing” way, I firmly believe it takes every single person’s absolute best to make the world a place where children aren’t being bombed, and people aren’t fighting over religion and territory, or any number of heinous actions of which humans are capable.
I don’t mean to sound negative, because Pollyanna runs deep through my blood stream and into the chambers of my heart, however, so too does a smattering of cynicism. In life, I find achieving balance a lofty idea, but one that is difficult to maintain for lengthy periods of time. I love the geological term punctuated equilibrium. In the most rudimentary and unscientific way, tens of thousands, millions of years will pass by, and then BAM! a catastrophic event that causes dinosaurs to go extinct, fire to fall from the sky — from an angry god or … a volcano. Then, again, tens of thousands of years will go by with relative geological tranquility, millions of years, and BAM! another catastrophe, punctuated equilibrium. Balance and then a few BAMS.
I find this concept analogous to my life, and perhaps you may see yourself in the analogy. Some of us begin our lives in rough places, and the drama and the trauma seem to follow us until we stand up and take control of our minds and tell ourselves good things about ourselves. I am worthy. I am enough. I am deserving of rest and relaxation. Ahhh, you knew eventually I’d get back to it.
In one of my iterations of career choices, I wanted to be a cultural anthropologist. I also wanted to follow in Florence Nightengale’s footsteps and, Clara Barton? Oh, my sweet LORD, I wanted to be a nurse and help care for the warriors on our battlefields. In a way, I am doing that very thing. My heart has always been toward being a healer. I thought a nurse, but I do not have the stomach for, well, you know. I wanted to be an English professor, but then I saw the stacks of papers the professors in the department would leave with and say, “Well, here’s my weekend” – and thought, no, best not to tie yourself down every weekend. Sociology, anthropology, and finally, psychology, or so I thought.
I love psychology. I love all the different modalities and I love how, combined, they each have something remarkable to add to our collective knowledge. I knew, however, deep in my soul there was something else, something grander, something so filled with love and grace that it would be transcendent for me – and then, for others, too. I wanted to help those who feel soulless to get acquainted with their soul(s). Some people don’t believe we have a soul. Some people believe we are spiritual beings imprisoned by the human body. There are any number of ways to believe about a numinous thing that animates us all, individually, and separately. If we’re not able to calm our brain during crises, or stressful moments, or if our lives are presenting us with one crisis after another, it’s difficult to be in touch with the ~soul~ part of our consciousness.
I’ve said only today out loud that my work is stabilizing for a life with a few challenges right now. I’m home for two weeks and this gives me some time to decompress from two days of harried traffic to a job I absolutely love, and then of course, the COVID years continue to bleed into our current day experiences. I was in our home with a life and raising a grandson for about six months. My world existed of my husband, my cats, our grandson, and myself – for three years. My social skills atrophied. I did almost an entire program virtually through two prominent universities. I didn’t step into a classroom, my preferred method of learning, for three years!
I need time from even two days of human contact outside my comfort zone to recover, recharge, and rediscover a workable equilibrium. I used to be out in the world every day, busy, bustling, and frantic, so to go from a bee to a sloth and then revving up to be back out in the world, although changed forever, still hoppin’ on most days. We learn and unlearn and relearn for our entire lives. I was trained to be delightful – laugh, clown, laugh, in the face of a family so rife with dysfunction they have books written about us, and maybe yours too.
As the hands of time tick away and one day changes into the next, there is so much to experience. Some people will have more hard times than others, but “in every life a little rain must fall.” None of us is exempt from challenges and crises; they provide a measurement of our growth or regression. Life can be assaultive at times too. This is why self-care is so important. I urge others to carve out some time to breathe, to veg, to decompress from whatever keeps you busy and away from your favorite places, favorite people, and favorite things.
After having COVID for two weeks, I have risen from the sick bed to deep gratitude for feeling well again. I listened to my body, and although I consider a nap to be a non-productive decadence, I took them as my body urged me to rest. I engaged in self-care during COVID, and I hope now I will take my own advice and rest after a physical, emotional, or spiritual crisis. My track record has not been great in this area of my life.
My husband and I have a busy schedule for the next two weeks, and I will do my best to take some time to breathe in between moments of living life to the hilt with friends and family and recuperating. Life moves quickly, and we get caught up in our maelstroms sometimes and we can’t see a way to exit, but good days are ahead. I don’t know how soon they will get to you, to me, but they’re on the horizon, and we’ll travel along for a while, and then BAM.
Today I will listen to songs that inspire and enlighten me. I’ll read something amazing, maybe some Flannery O’Connor, and I will nap if my body tells me to. I wish you each the discipline to take care of yourselves in the most loving and nurturing way you can.
The longer I live with grief as my constant companion, the more I learn about how much grief touches all our lives, in one way, one shape, or one form or another. I’ve been grieving a lost childhood, the loss of a child, losses of friends, and distant family, celebrity deaths. I was bereft when Prince died. Most recently I lost my mother only two short months ago, and that was an earth shaker. And the loss of my son, my only child, flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone, the largest part of my heart, has been and will continue to vein through everything I will ever be and do again.
I advise those of you who are grieving acutely right now, if you’re emotionally able to pick up a copy of WHEN BAD THINGS HAPPEN TO GOOD PEOPLE by the Rabbi Harold Kushner, do so; it helped me very much. I read this book only a month or so after Rikki died. Rabbi Kushner’s words gave me hope that death and other major losses while tragic, touch each of us without rhyme or reason. There is no punishment even though there are consequences for our actions, some actions have hurt us, and some – have hurt other people. Ain’t none of us perfect, no, not one.
Beyond the blame we all assign to ourselves when we’re hurting, there remains the murmuring of our desire to heal. Death is final in this world. Who knows beyond that? I have my hopes and my dreams of seeing my son again, but it’s hard to say, and NDEs are fascinating brain reactions to a lack of oxygen for an abnormal length of time. There’s a movie out about what happens after death with many interviewees who’ve had NDEs. I’ve read two books about NDEs. I was in severe and acute grief at the time, and so the book really helped me to cope through the initial physical, mental, and spiritual separation from my son as he passed into the infinite, wherever and whatever that means to you.
There are so many ways humans find to cope with and navigate through tragedies in our lives, ways that bring us to the shores of peace and healing. I read – every book that promised understanding of why people suffered. I asked the theodicy question before I even knew what it was: if God is omnipotent, why is there suffering in the world? The answer’s there if we’re brave enough to tackle the question.
I’ve suffered in my sixty-one years, a little more than others, and not nearly as badly as some. Losing someone is among the most difficult losses a person can endure. If the relationship was close, intimate, and always present, the loss creates a deficit in our lives which will be felt for our lifetimes, not always as intensely as in the first few months and years, but the deficit will always be there. When you hold a space in your heart for a person, when that person is gone, the love remains and in our loved one’s absence, we feel the pangs of grief, deep within us.
Rikki will be gone eight years in two months; it scarcely seems possible. In the eight years he’s been physically gone, I have developed a post-humous relationship with him. What does that mean exactly? Hmmmm. Let me see if I can explain it. In the beginning of my grief experience, there was so much angst and incomprehensible pain, I was out of my mind with grief. I knew what it was like to lose a friend, a parent, a contemporary; I did not know what it was like to lose a child. I can’t rightly say that losing a child is the worst and most painful experience a person can go through because I don’t know this for sure. I know losing my son was the worst and most personally leveling experience I’ve ever had.
In the early days of grief, every time I thought about my son, which was every second of the day, I would curl up in the fetal position and just sob until I couldn’t breathe, or I would cry myself to sleep. The depth of despair I was sinking into was truly a dark place, hopeless, even. My son was dead, and he was not coming back. My life, which he had accompanied for 32 years, was devoid of my son’s presence. The prospect was seismic in effect. I couldn’t see beyond my grief.
How do you survive the loss of a child? How do you move on when your heart has been pummeled by death? I think, for a bit, you don’t. I stagnated for about three and a half years before I woke up to a world I didn’t recognize. I had lost my way to a productive and purposeful life. Have any of you ever felt this way, the way of the griever, hopeless, despairing that things can ever be good again, without your cherished loved one?
I met a young woman whose mother had lost a son, and she encouraged me to hang in there, because the incredible transformation her mother went through was nothing short of a miracle. How is that possible? I was too broken when I heard the young woman talk about her mom’s loss and victory stories, and so, three and a half years would go by before I saw myself in that story. Transformation is possible; it’s necessary.
My relationship with my son did not end because he died; my relationship extends far out into my own future. I remember once I was at a Kaiser Medical Facility in Otay Mesa, California, and there was a woman having a full-on conversation with a potted plant. I averted my attention away to give her some privacy. I speak to my son all the time. Is that crazy? I share things with him. I feel his presence; it is forever etched in my psyche and my soul. I have a relationship with my Rikki still. I find I can laugh out loud now when I think of something funny he said, or something I know he would find funny now, and how we might be the only two people in the whole universe who would find it so. Bittersweet.
Not a moment goes by that we are not aware of our lost loved ones; we just learn to navigate the world and our relationships with them differently. I have a friend who is a medium and she turned me on to a process called the Akashic Records. I was desperate for relief after Rikki died. I ached deep in my soul – every single day. When Rikki was alive and very ill, I learned to say the rosary; I found it very comforting. I lit incense. I lay prostrate on the floor begging for my son’s life to be saved. Yeah, I tried everything to save him. After he died, I looked for ways to stay connected to him. The Akashic Records were my first and only search for a mystical healing, mystical as in: there are no words with which to define an experience, numinous, but beyond explanation.
Basically, you sit in a comfortable chair with your feet on the floor and you think of the person from whom you’d like some words of wisdom and/or comfort. I think the more complicated the relationship with our loved one was, the more we need to maintain a connection because there remains a lot that is unresolved. You say the name of your loved one and you say: I’m sorry. Forgive me. I love you. The amount of time we spend living with unresolved issues between family members and friends, political parties and countries, when it would be just as easy to own our responsibility, ask for reasonable forgiveness, and show the world we love it and all it contains, would be time well spent.
I did this with Rikki’s memory/spirit. I called his name, and I said these things until I felt heard and released from self-blame and guilt and felt enveloped by my son’s warmth, understanding, forgiveness, and love. I think the more you know another person, the better able you are to anticipate his or her answers. My son and I were very close, enmeshed, really. We had choppy waters, full on tsunamis, and seasons of tranquility. We had a lot of laughter. He once told me that I was his favorite conversationalist, and he – was mine. If you know someone who loved you wholeheartedly in life, he or she loves you wholeheartedly in death too. I hear my son telling me, “Mom, you’re doing great. I’m proud of you.” I feel him beaming with pride as I fulfill my dreams and grab hold of life – in my sixties.
I have his picture hanging in my car along with a Dia de los Muertos skeleton hanging next to it from the rear-view mirror. I talk to him when I’m driving. I talk to him before I close my eyes to sleep. I talk to him and I talk to the GOMU, and I feel love, pure and complete, emanating from my holy specters. My relationship with my son continues, as does his matter, in different form, but still in existence. I find comfort in knowing my son is still present in the universe. I find comfort in knowing our spirits will commingle one day when I’m set free from this body. Now I understand my young friend’s mother’s transformation.
Rabbi Kushner’s book, the ritual of saying the rosary, lighting incense, the Akashic Records, having a candle lit all day and night, speaking my son’s name, praying to the GOMU to help me to not hurt so chronically, ad infinitum, were all ways in which I was able to find healing for my shattered heart and my aching soul. I had always been told from well-intentioned pastors at the pulpit that, “Physician, heal thyself,” was Jesus anticipating the mockery of his opposers. I’ve been mocked, ridiculed, writhed in deep emotional pain, loved and lost, lost a piece of my soul, less than some, more than others. Physician, heal thyself. Sometimes we truly are our own worst critics. I cannot think of a single good adaptive reason for self-blame. Please, if there is a rational explanation for why we take so long to let go of what ails us after the death of a loved one, or the loss of something very valuable and important to us, please share it with me.
I still hold on to self-blame for too long; residue from the religious trauma of a Southern Baptist and Roman Catholic upbringing. My journey with my son, from his conception to his death, has been the most amazing saga, hell and high water. When I think about the totality of our 32 years together, I’m aware of the lessons that I will never be able to dismiss, and how each lesson now fuels my relationships with those who are presently in my life. My son talks to me and urges me onward to be of service to our world, to his world. He still remembers it. I feel infusions of cosmic hope, cosmic because it is so large it seems infinite; is it?
There has been nothing more powerful in my transformational experience than the internal dialogue I have with myself. Physician, heal thyself. I’m grateful for the friends, therapists, healers, and my husband with whom I’ve been able to ask hard questions. We all wish they might have had answers for me, but the answers I needed had to come from me and with Rikki, a new and healed relationship, as a source of pure love, I was able to give voice to my heart’s narrative. When you’re in touch with your heart, the whole world fills it with compassion and concern.
I’m being idealistic. We don’t all come from places where healthy nurturing and successful attachment took place, so before we can get to the root of our deep grief, there may be layers of dysfunction from other impactful relationships that need to be sorted through so we can effectively move into healing from the most acute grief. Grief tends to build on itself – so does dysfunction. We heal in proportion to how emotionally healthy we are at the time of the loss, at least this has been my experience. My life is different today. I miss my son beyond measure; however, as e.e. said, “I carry [him] in my heart.” My son will never be separate from me; our souls have always been together, and they always will be together.
He is physically absent, but spiritually eternal; it is with his spirit I continue a relationship.
Making meaning is what humans do to imbue their lives with purpose, tranquility through and after crises, and how we make sense of what happens around us every minute of every day. I don’t dream often, but I’ve had dreams in which a person’s face is very detailed, and yet, I have no memory of ever meeting the person. I speculate I must have seen the person somewhere in the world and my brain tucked her image away in some recess of my brain. What would Jung say? Who might this person in my dream represent? What part of my internal family system might this person need to integrate fully?
These are all interesting questions to me.
I believe grief is something about which meaning must be made so we can integrate the credits along with the debits, to use an accounting analogy. I know how nearly impossible it is to find transformative meaning while in the clutches of grief. But it is not entirely impossible. Many books have been written about the healing stones that have come out of the grief process.
In January, eight years will have passed since my beautiful son died. I’ve had eight years to adjust, but today my heart feels a little tender. My husband and I both have COVID-19. We’ve been sneezing, coughing, and sleeping a lot! But we’re on the mend. I’m grateful to the virologists, the WHO, the CDC, and the countless person hours it took to get a vaccine and treatments in time before we lost one million more!
I don’t sit still well. I mean, I don’t sit still well. I’m a person constantly in action, either in my head, or immersing myself in some activity, and losing myself so … I don’t have to immerse myself in my grief. I’ve managed to find ways to navigate the world despite the worst pain I have ever experienced or will ever experience in this lifetime.
I have raced through life as far back as I can remember. Today the pace at which I lived my childhood would have been pathologized as ADD or ADHD. Who’s to say? Since I’ve had COVID with my husband trailing close behind, I’ve had nothing but time on my hands. I scarcely had the energy to shower, but my brain never shuts down.
I’ve had time to sit and think, to sit and feel. I don’t care for it much. My heart was tenderized through the early grief period. I had no idea how much a heart can feel when a significant loss occurs. I spend a lot of time with my nose in books and a lot of time in my head too. I really am a researcher at heart. Learning is both a debit and a credit, so to speak. I have a friend who told me I spend too much time with my face in a book. She thinks I don’t do enough living in real time in the real world.
This is not true. I read so I can have the best knowledge to navigate the world without hurting anyone. Grief has also taught me this lesson. I think about all the people I hurt when I said, “You have no idea what it’s like for me.” I’m sorry if I hurt you when I was piecing my heart back together again. I get it now; you were at a loss for words. Words cannot always accomplish instant healing, at best, a temporary salve, at worst, an unintentional insensitive remark. We all do our best.
See, I’m still recovering from COVID, and it wiped out both my husband and me. I have no emotional reserve to write off the blues. So, I’m going to sit this day out, again, rest my body, allow my mind free reign, and give my heart the freedom to feel. I’ll probably cry, tears prompted by music that makes me think deeply about my Rikki.
I’ll sleep in between songs and recuperate from this virus. I’ll turn to strangers, now friends for words of comfort and wisdom. I’ll count my blessings for the words, right or wrong, but words that have the power to give voice to our broken hearts. And then I’ll return to a life of structured schedules, human contact, traffic, and I’ll be ready.
I can sit for only so long, and I’m ready to get back out there to be of service. We need a few days from time to time to merge with the cosmic passion play to make meaning of what we see and experience from day to day, how it affects us and transforms us into our better angels. If we won’t make the time for contemplation, our bodies will give us a good time-out for a season, even cold, flu, and COVID season.*
This time has taught me about improving my approach, or rather, taking an approach to self-care; it is not my strong suit. If your emotional landscape is compromised, this is a great time for hot herbal teas, bubble baths, a good cry, a night out with a good friend, or any manner of ways we can love ourselves back to center. I’m still learning about self-care too.
The virus is leaving our home now, and there is music being played again in the Land of the Well. I’m grateful for the time I had to spend introspectively, and grateful for the short duration of the contemporary plague. Blessings all around.
If you’ve not read The Coming Plague by Laurie Garrett, I highly recommend it. I read it thirty years ago and if I believed in divination, I’d call it prophetic.
As the 8th year angelversary for Rikki approaches, I become more contemplative about life, before and after Rikki’s death. I think about the hopeless and tortured child who used substances until they killed him. I know why my son chose the path he did; he suffered a lot in his life. My heart will always have a crack in it, and yes, that’s where the light breaks through, but light also exposes the things we choose to not see, including sadness about and for our lost loved one. Our children who’ve died from hopelessness.
Early in my grief journey, there was a deep discussion about whether addiction and the deaths of our children were suicide, and about half the parents at my grief site said, “No.” And the other half said, “Yes.” I disagree with those who say it is a suicide, a long, slow suicide. My son was hopeless about the pain he was in. He used drugs and alcohol to subdue his pain; he never wanted to die; it was an outcome of years of substance use.
I wish I could have given Rikki hope from my wellspring of hope; I’ve always been an optimistic person, maybe too idealistic at times. I just knew with all my heart that Rikki would make it; he was so smart, funny, and full of life, even in the last words he ever said to me as I wrapped him up in a hot blanket in the hospital, “Momma, I don’t know what I did to deserve this, but it feels so good.” I finally find comfort in those words for that soul shattering day.
I never lost hope for my son…even as he took his final breath, I held on for a resurrection like Lazarus. “Come on, God,” I said. “Please, you brought Lazarus back from the dead. Please, please God, bring him back.” In grief we sometimes think in unrealities. In my head I know Rikki would not rise up from his shroud of death, but I so wanted to believe he would. Eight years later, I see the woman who was in utter grief with a shattered heart that oozed out sorrow in every aspect of my life.
I had to let go of my hope for my son; he died, and I will not see him again in this life. Perhaps I will see him in the moon, in the sunrise… I’ll hear his voice in the howling wind. I’ll never let go of his memory, even though I’ve had to let go of him. Does that make sense? I wanted to do as Hemingway did and end my life. The pain was greater than I could handle – at the time. I get it Joe. The pain is so overwhelming that sometimes, in order to get through the days and nights, I’ve had to shut down just to be able to put one foot in front of the other.
The pain will never be gone completely, but the intensity does decrease over the months and years. I thought my life was over when Rikki died. The adjustment to him not being physically present was more than I could handle at the time, so I stagnated, and writhed in my sorrow for so long I forgot how to live in the world. I died when Rikki died, perhaps not a physical death, but a spiritual one. I don’t mean I abandoned the God of my understanding; I felt abandoned. I felt cheated. I felt wounded deep in my consciousness by “God”.
I lost my way. My ever-present optimism vanished for nearly three years. I ached in a way that my entire presence howled sadness into every aspect of my life. I turned my back on my friends, friends who so wanted to be there for me, but I couldn’t stand anyone touching me or reaching out to me; I couldn’t love from my damaged and broken self. Loving one more person, or anyone, really, was just more than I could emotionally and spiritually handle. I was trying to hold on to life, even though I was hopeless I would ever get better.
Am I better?
I know my hope has returned, a hope for me and for Rikki’s son and my husband, and all the people who the GOMU has entrusted to me to care for their hearts, to lead them through the grief process, and help them safely to the shore of the living, where hope still floats, and where my son reigns supreme in my memories.
I’m hopeful for my future, however much longer I get to have one; I mean, I am 61, and life has flown by in a blink of an eye, and my schedule makes my days go by quickly, so, life is meant to be lived, and as long as there is breath in us, there is hope.
Please remember this. You’re in pain now, and the pain does subside to a more manageable emotion to navigate, but there will always be a twinge of pain when we have sad memories, and even when we have happy memories, because our children are not here to share with them how much an event they participated in has touched our lives.
My husband said to me when I told him I missed having my mom to call when something good or sad happened in my life, and that I’m still adjusting to not being able to talk with her. He said, “Tell her now.” He’s absolutely right. I’ve been talking to Rikki his entire life, and now I talk to him in death. I’d like to believe he hears me and answers me through music, books, poetry, literature, the weather, when I pray to the GOMU, ad infinitum.
Hold tight to the hope you will begin to heal in whatever that means to you. I know healing is possible. I didn’t have any hope for my life improving after Rikki died. I was just a bundle of pain, wounded throughout. Everything is bittersweet now. I think about how Rikki made me laugh harder than anyone, and how now, it’s been years since I laughed as hard. I’m still healing, maybe differently than I was in the beginning of my grief process, but I’m healing, and in some areas, because of the hope I had to go back and get my master’s degree, I’m thriving – and I miss my boy, my beautiful and amazing boy.
Hang in there…work the process…get professional help…lean on a loving friend who is capable of sitting in the dark with you. Another quote from the tortured Hemingway, “The sun also rises.”
Thank you, Lynne E. for being my muse this morning.
The Hospice nurse said a dying person’s hearing is the last sense that remains once a person is unconscious, so … I spoke to her. I told her I loved her and that it was okay for her to go. I also made a promise I’m not going to keep; I told her that I would do my best to keep our disintegrating family together. We make promises to assuage the final fears of our loved ones. I kept the promise to my father when he died. I promised him I would take care of Mom, and I did too. I was her go-to girl. We talked several times a day. Enmeshment is not emotionally healthy, but even with it, there are latent benefits.
Mom squeezed my hand when I told her that I would do everything I could to unite our family. I told a white lie to a dying woman, and wherever she is now, I know she knows I meant well. I’m off the hook.
Yes, I believe there is sacredness in the transitioning of a person from life to death and whatever exists beyond death, but that sacredness exists outside the realm of what can be expressed in words. The night my father died, there was such a peace to his transition. He fell asleep and awoke in paradise. He said his parents were in the hospital room the night he died; they came for him, wholly and finally in a place where they could love my father in the way he always deserved to be loved.
Mom fought with everything she had until the very last conscious moment she said, “Mija, I’ve suffered so much.” She had too, not just through all the illnesses she endured over the last six years, in and out of the hospital, and on death’s door a number of times, but she had suffered for many years as a child and as a wife from domestic violence. I knew she was telling me she was done. She died a few days later. She was tired; it was time.
I think because of the finality of death, there is a tendency to imbue the moments directly following the death with a holiness, a numinous quality that in quantifiable terms is simply not there, at least it’s not measurable . As Mom lay dying, I could hear the Hospice nurse’s voice explaining to me the logistics of death, the physical dying process, and the reminder that Mom could still hear us, and that first her extremities would get cold, then her breathing shallower, until finally, Mom would be dead.
In that holy moment between life and death I made a promise. Is that promise holy? No, it’s not. My paternal grandmother made a promise that if my father came home from the Korean War she would climb the stairs to a mountain in Texas where the Virgen Guadalupe welcomed those who had been blessed by her. My grandmother never made it to the top of those stairs, and neither did my father, who had promised her would fulfill that homage to a cherished saint. I thought about taking on the commitment myself after my father died, but then I thought, “Not my promise to keep”.
I made an unrealistic promise to Mom the night she died. I wanted her to leave in peace knowing that the loves of her life would be okay. She seemed particularly concerned that I take care of my younger brother by asking me to take care of him. He and I have always taken care of each other, through hell or highwater, and a shit ton of domestic violence.
Do you think it crass that I lied to my mother on her death bed?
Mom loved her children more than she loved herself – true story. She sacrificed for us. She rejoiced with us. She grieved with us. Mom was also a chronic worrier; I’m talkin’ she made herself physically ill from fear and worry. I didn’t want her to die worried. She didn’t. I kept my promise to my father; I took care of Mom until her very last breath, even perjuring myself to give her peace of mind as she left us for a place where she is now whole, no fear, no worry, no pain, and no more suffering.
We make promises to those who are dying, and sometimes we make them after our loved one has died. I’m a pragmatic person. I think logistically about everything. How can this work? What makes this work? How can we make this work better? These are the things I think about. I was grateful our Hospice nurse explained the dying process of a human being; it helped. I did my best to warm her hands as her body began to shut down; it was an irrational gesture, and to be honest, may have been more for me than for Mom. She was unconscious.
We bring what we need to the death scene of a loved one, and the more knowledgeable about the physical death we are, sometimes brings comfort to family members. Mom suffered physical pain until she could take no more, and then she soared into heaven and finally got to meet her mother who died when Mom was very young. We talked about heaven; Mom and I did. I told her that she would finally get to see her mom and dad and that they’d welcome her with open arms, and my son Rikki would be there to show her around. I wasn’t lying that time.
I don’t know how heaven will play out for me. I hope it’s a nice place and I hope to see my son and catch up with what’s been happening up there. I promised my son after he died that I would take care of his son, and I have. My place in people’s lives is where they want me and where I feel safe and loved, and I reciprocate by being a loving and safe place for them. I do not need to promise to do anything. Louie is my grandson, the light of my life, and he is a kid, who needs the guidance a grandmother who adores him can give to him; it was a given that I would always be a presence in our grandson’s life. A promise was not needed.
In the Christian Bible, James advises us, “Let your no be no and your yes be yes.” I like the idea of KISS, keep it short and simple too. Academics do their best to eschew verbosity, but … when your vocabulary rocks, sometimes it just happens. Since I lied to Mom, I have returned to my logical and rational self. Mom is gone. I have my younger brother who works to maintain a relationship with me, but I am beholden to none of my siblings. I cannot promise to work on their behalf too. A promise was not needed; a lie was.
I have no regrets with Mom; I was always there when she needed me, and we had a close and sometimes contentious relationship. I don’t feel bad about telling a lie that helped Mom to die in peace. We do what we can to help our loved one’s transition be a nice ride out of here. Some people are in agony when they die. Mom died gracefully and looked so elegant as she took her final breath. I knew she was gone when I watched the oxygen meter descend to zero.
I knew she was at peace and I walked away from the longest relationship of my life. I’m grateful I knew what to say that night to comfort her as she prepared to leave; she was ready, so was I. Even though she’d pulled through many times before, I knew this time was different. She said to me the night she was taken to the emergency room that she was so glad I was there and about how scared she was. I promised her while she was alive that I was going to be with her until the end. I kept that promise.
Mom said her mother never knew who her father was, and it was a sadistically well-kept secret by Mom’s grandmother and her aunts. On my maternal grandmother’s death bed, so the legend goes, she asked my great-grandmother to tell her who her father was, and my great-grandmother turned her head away and walked out of the room. My grandmother had no peace in this life. I wanted Mom to have the peace that surpasses all understanding on her way out … and so, I lied.
Life isn’t always black and white, nor is death. There are good deaths and there are bad deaths. I have a friend who served as a chaplain for Hospice, and I asked her how it was when someone embittered died, and she said that their deaths were horrible.
Mom’s greatest desire was that we would have a family reunion before she died; that never happened. I couldn’t promise her that in life, and I can’t promise her that in death. My heart misses her so much. My brain gets it, all of it, but there is an adjustment period. Grief is a process that must be navigated and grown through. I feel the loss, but I also feel the joy Mom must be experiencing in a heaven of her desires with family and friends who have gone before her.
The family is having Mom’s Celebration of Life in November, a few days after what would have been her eighty-second birthday.
Grief to Gratitude 