I wonder sometimes if the fetal position is just a human created nautilus, curling inward to where infinity meets our deepest longing. I think it is in this space where I found the God of my understanding. I lean on that G_d when I’m in a dark night of the soul, or when I’m celebrating another milestone, met a goal, or when I’m on the brink of another transformation. I’m on the event horizon of transcendence, or what Maslow called self-actualization — again. The first time I experienced this was in an anthropology class; a religious experience was new to me. I’d been spiritually dead for some time. My son was in a couple classes with me at a community college we attended in the nineties. We got in trouble in those classes from time to time because he made me laugh in class. Good times.
I’ve been figuratively in the fetal position intermittently — as I continue navigating the grief process; it’s truly a bitch on some days. I close myself off and I stay inward even as I engage with the world in a functional way. I worked this week. I enjoyed time with my husband and my cats. I tried to learn a new job and then quit because it was not life affirming, and I’m too old to be miserable for even one minute. I set myself free in a few ways this week, and I missed my son terribly; the loss and the longing really hurt this week.
I tend to intellectualize away my heart’s expressions. I mean, this isn’t a routine coping mechanism, and it’s certainly not ideal, but it is how I navigate an overwhelm. My human nautilus, the fetal position, a protective position, for an ache so intense that inward is the only space where I feel held, perhaps by the God of my understanding, or … the universe, or where I engage in a dialogue with myself and emerge with a victory story.
I have always been drawn to nautili. They are beautiful and mysterious. What is my attraction to them? Perhaps they are visual representations of neurons in my brain. I don’t know. I love fractals and the Fibonacci sequence, too. The spiraling inward and outward comforts me — like my mother’s heartbeat.
In the days following Rikki’s death, I was a wreck, needless to say. My face was puffy for weeks on end, until I was able to normalize my excruciating inner pain. Just as I don’t know what draws me to nautili, it’s taken me eight years and five months to understand my reaction to every Bread song I heard in the months following my son’s death.
He was not even aware of Bread’s music; it was from the late 60s, early 70s. In fact, it was the kind of music for which he made fun of me – often. I love my 70s tunes; idyllic years. I did have a few.
Every single time, the first note of a Bread song would play, it would have me in the fetal position sobbing from the deepest part of my soul. I think it’s because whenever I see, hear, touch, something beautiful, or taste, or get a whiff of my favorite scent and flavor: strawberries, or I experience something tremendously beautiful, I find myself curled up in my self-healing nautilus – yowling because I can no longer share those moments with my son.
But — I am proud of the woman who climbed out of that pit of despair and fought, clawed, and bloodied her knees, to remain among the living, where hope and possibility are within reach.
I’ve come to the realization that my reactions came about because there is such beauty in a Bread song, or a visual experience, or the taste and scent of a strawberry, or a hug, or petting my cats, or hearing a song of great beauty and meaning for me. I feel deeply when I experience those things. I felt deeply with my son. He and I were together for thirty-two years. We lived together for nineteen years, and then again, a couple of times during his struggle with addiction. We knew each other, single mom and a son, my only child.
We shared beauty wherever we saw it, and I taught my boy to find the valuable lessons while in the emotional fetal position (or the actual one). When we miss our loved one the most, is when the curious reactions occur. During the early days of grief, I felt everything – and there were days when I thought it best to feel nothing. In the beginning of the grief process, we are as raw as we can get, road rash to the heart, deep, hemorrhaging cardiac wounds – and the soul keeps us afloat until such a time as the sun begins to shine on our days again; if you’re willing to do the work, the sun will shine again. Trust me on this.
The journey requires the courage to feel deeply, to fall, to rise, to feel deeply, to fall, to rise – again and again – for the remainder of your life. Life experience brought me to a place this week where I wish he had been here to help me go through the decision-making process. We were close as two bugs in a rug. He didn’t just share my physical DNA; he shared the stuff of my soul. We were fused for life.
Now that he’s gone, he comes back to me through a Bread song, a beautiful sunset, a cream puff, a riveting piece of literature, and in the nautilus I create where I summon my own healing power in that space where there are infinite resources to carry me through anything – even the loss of my only child.
The nautilus goes both ways, deep in the interior of our souls, and – it spirals outward into the universe as it expands and contracts transforming us every day – toward greater self-awareness. Self-awareness is a victory. I found it the first time in a cultural anthropology class over thirty years ago, and then I lost it for a very long time – until I entered seminary – where I found the GOMU – in both a spiritual and an intellectual way.
“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”
― Anais Nin
Epiphanies, revelations, enlightenment, the pronouncement of a hypothesis that makes it all the way to become a respected theory, or a mind blown experience are the products of self-healing. I miss my son more than there are words in the English language in which to express my longing; the GOMU knows I do. All of you know I do. But life had to go on for me. The nautilus is a beautiful symbol for me; it shows that one can go inward or outward for the ride of a lifetime, back and forth, in cycles that make sense. I got tired of being in pain all the time. I had to accept that my son is gone – regardless of how depressed I got for a spell – and I did get depressed – for so long, I missed a lot of monumental moments I wish I’d been there for – and relationships I let dissolve or become distant.
I began to blossom in my third year of the grief process. I believe now I had complicated grief. I just stopped growing and I stayed in my pain for longer than was healthy – for me. Like Ms. Nin’s quote above, when I said, “I can still love life – even without my son” – I began to heal – exponentially. I rediscovered the beauty in the world and on the faces of each and every person. My nautilus is expanding.
And – sometimes it contracts. Sometimes I feel social and sometimes I retreat. The same can be said about the grief experience. There will be times when inward is the only safe space I can find, because nothing external is providing relief. I curl up intellectually. I tap into the spirit part of me, the part where my soul resides, the part of me that knows well, Physician, heal thyself. And …
I heal myself.
Sometimes I have long dialogues, sometimes monologues with the GOMU – in my tightly wound bud. I’m grateful for the safe places internally and externally where I find solace. My husband provides great support or distance if that’s what I need on a day where I curl inward.
I’d like to think that I’ll find my son again inwardly and outwardly – heaven – or acceptance that renders me closer to wholeness with each emotional, intellectual, and spiritual experience. Where does your hope lie? Is it animal, vegetable, or mineral? Is it available to you in your darkest days and nights? Does it get you charged and ready to reenter the land of the living?
I hope you each find your safe spaces – internally – where I fan the flame that will elucidate the beauty in my world — and not just the seedy underbelly of current life in America.
There is a brilliant ruby (for me) – red, reflecting the lifeblood that courses through my veins – enlivening me and welcoming me to a brave new heart. The journey cannot be characterized as a joy ride, to be sure; but it certainly has been a ride … my topo map is punctuated by tragedy and growth.
I’m going to share something some, and sometimes I, consider to be woo woo, i.e., metaphysical and therefore, not grounded in “reality.” I love science, and there was a time I revered science and I thought of it as my Holy Grail filled with the answers to every question I would ever have; that was only thirty some odd years ago. Seems like time flies when you’re living your life, come what may, dreams fulfilled or disasters and deaths. Life is amazing and heartbreaking.
I was with both my parents when they died. My dad had very shallow breath and I couldn’t stay with him until his last rattled breath, but we got to say goodbye. My mom died as elegantly as she tried to live; she fell asleep and stopped breathing. I held her hand until she died. I walked away from her body, just like I walked away from my son’s body – not knowing what happens after we die – and I desperately needed to know — for several years after my son died.
This is the freaky part, the what the heck mingled with whoa – who can explain this?! – I’m not so sure it’s about conceptualizing an afterlife, a banquet with Jesus, a conversation with Allah or the Buddha, or any number of expressions of, for lack of a better word, G_d, but it’s about answering the question for yourself, “What do I consider holy, or divine, or sacred?” I’m sure we all remember the Joan Osborn song, “One of Us.” Radio stations (what’s that?) played it until it was a quick dial change (also, what’s that?). I still love the song, and her “St. Teresa” – is a masterpiece. Whose face do we see when we encounter a broken person, do we see ourselves, but for grace? Do you see the face of your entity of culture or do you see your most beloved dead person. I see my son, and I see Jesus who is the symbol I grew up with and whose image has transformed every time I do.
I don’t know if there is a heaven. I don’t know if I’ll ever see my son again. I hope if there is a place, our deceased loved ones are whole and happy, no cares, no sicknesses, no more heartache, and just eternally at peace. I used to weep because like a mother, after he died, I’d ask absurd questions, like “Rikki, do you have enough food?” “Are you warm?”, “Do you miss me?” I have not received any confirmations one way or the other.
If one can suspend reason (WTF?) … not abandon reason, let’s just say there is a “spirit” that can exist between two people or a group of people, and the more intimate the relationship, the stronger the spiritual connection, or shared energy, or mirroring neurons, or…I had such a connection to my son. Our spirits and our biology swirled and created a relationship, come hell or highwater, that was as unique as a fingerprint, a spiritual fingerprint, dancing pneuma blowing through desert pines, invisible, but mighty.
On days when I’m in a good spot, I allow Rikki’s spirit to flow through me and I try to recall a memory that would make him smile or laugh and then I find myself smiling and laughing; it’s a delicate balance. I try. Navigating grief is a conscious effort – if one wants to heal. I wish I could explain it. Describing my spiritual experiences with grief is a little like trying to describe G_d to someone, as you look at me bewilderedly. I wonder if two minds can converge and achieve a cosmic affinity – or perfectly mirrored neurons – oneness, with rhythmic ephemera dancing all around us and through us. I wonder if my spirit – and Rikki’s dance together sometimes. Am I desperate to believe the connection between two souls never dies? Once touched two people can never be untouched, whether the experience was transcendent or droll.
I felt my dear, sweet momma’s spirit leave her body and I cried for a second and then I remembered I hadn’t eaten all day, and practical matters took precedence. I think I was able to more quickly put one foot in front of the other because I have lost a child, and I know with absolute certainty that healing is around the corner and up the hill, but unlike Sisyphus – there is an achievable peak upon which you can wave your victory flag. I feel Rikki’s essence in every victory I have. I feel his presence – quickly followed by his absence. There will never again be a moment that is not bittersweet. Thoughts of him make me smile, the happy ones, ~and~ they sometimes make me cry because it seems like a minute he’s been gone – and other times it feels like it’s been forever. Deep grief constantly pulls you in different directions. I’ve been stretched beyond recognition as I’ve used grief to redefine me through the fire. I won’t allow my son’s death to be in vain. He lived. He lived. He lived, and then – he died, but he did a lot of living in that time. I taught him how to celebrate life and he did too – until the addiction took over his beautiful mind.
I feel his spirit when I’m celebrating life, despite my losses. Once, shortly after he died, I took some of his ashes to sprinkle on a giant desert boulder and I lit some incense and said a rosary. No, I’m not Catholic (anymore), but I do still love the feel of the beads in my hand, the chanted prayers, and the active part I play in my own prayers as I advance on the string of beads. I don’t need to do peyote or any hallucinogens to have a mystical experience, no judgment. However, I had a mystical experience the day my husband and I were out in the desert. My son smoked cigars, wine-favored, wood-tipped, and as I cried through my rosary, needing a sign from the G_d of my understanding, across the chasm between us, life, death, belief, unbelief, I had a whiff of my son’s cigar and I saw him crouched down and writing something in the sand, reminiscent of the story about Jesus purposely not answering a question but rather silently writing something in the sand. Preachers for millennia have conjectured on the meaning of this passage of the Christian scripture. There have been many interpretations.
If there is an afterlife, it is impenetrable by the drama of our species. I explain it all away by saying the cigar scent was an olfactory memory, or the image of my son squatting down and writing something in the sand was the desperate imaginings of a grief-stricken parent. I so want to believe that after our time here is up, there is a place that makes all earthly experiences pale in comparison. Until then, I’ll take the wind blowing through the trees, an unexpected our song playing on SiriusXM, a moment alone with the majesty of my Creator/ix G_d, — but then with my son’s spirit – real or imagined – I’m never really alone, even if a memory is just a brain secretion.
I’ve had a couple of dreams about him – and I generally don’t remember my dreams. The dreams have been powerful and very life-affirming. Is that his spirit flowing through my being – distributing fairy dust to my skepticism? Or is it as the Temptations sang, “[…] just my ‘magination”? I don’t mind being of double mind, or triple, or quadruple, ad infinitum. As I grow, I pare away, or life does, things that hurt or hinder me and I sculpt what’s left into a masterful work, Henley’s poem rings true, I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul.
I have memories of my son and I dancing together, from birth to death. Those memories bring both smiles and sadness. Forever a perfectly choreographed dance, sometimes with with allegria and sometimes, danced to a dirge. I reach to the sky in worship of what may lie ahead and where the G_d of wholeness and completion holds my son tucked safely away from the wounds he incurred while he was here – until such a time as I can join him.
She said it. She said the words I’d done my best to not hear by isolating myself this weekend. The effect was immediate. She was innocent of all charges. She was the checker at the grocery store: “Thanks, and Happy Mother’s Day!” Ooomp, a knife right in the heart. The pain is no longer acute, but it can be triggered, and I never know from one day to the next how I’m going to feel when I see a deli pickle, or catch a scent of Axe soap, or hear a song that he loved, only now, I listen to the words with my whole being, wanting to stay close to him, as close as his heartbeat under my own, to feel his hug, or to hear his laughter.
Today is the dread that it is Mother’s Day weekend, and so I’ve been so busy that I forgot until I saw all the flower stands on the side of the road. I confess I missed all the commercials this year because I’ve had no time to watch television, and for that I’m grateful. The commercials leading up to the day used to have me weeping in the fetal position. I think I would still well up; I’m not sure. With some things I’m avoidant, like grief when I … don’t have time … or I am low on emotional resources. Today is such a day.
I love going to the Women’s Brunch at a small church in my little desert town. The women have fully embraced me, and I just love them so much. I had to bail on it today because everything is Mother’s Day themed this weekend; that’s a little tough.
I love the Pauline saying about having a thorn in his side. I’ve heard the theme preached a hundred different ways in my sixty-one years. None has been wholly satisfying, and maybe the dissatisfaction is a thorn among the bed in my own side. Mother’s Day is a thorn in my side now. When I say that Rikki is a thought in my head and a feeling in my heart every single second of the day, I mean it; it’s background noise – as I function in the world – very much in spite of my lingering sadness. Sometimes I allow it to distort my ability to function at my optimum.
My son’s been gone eight years and five months now. The first Mother’s Day without him was brutal. I had no idea how much it would hurt; it came five months after he died. I don’t know if one can, but I was not prepared, and so I cried in the dark all day and all night long. I’m grateful for time and grace, without which I would not have been able to begin to heal from the most traumatic and tragic loss of my life.
Mother’s Day is not a happy day for every mom. I wouldn’t say I’m not happy, because I really am – with a few bumps in the road. The day is just a reminder of how tender my heart is over losing my son, my sweetest gift, and my greatest tragedy. So, I’ll stay put and do busy work I hate, and take occasional breaks to hold space for another aspect of grief; grief and I are never apart. We’re constant companions.
And this is not to say that I’m chronically in the dumps; I’m not, but a soft breeze can send me off wailing, and I have to work very hard to not stay there. Mother’s Day is such a soft breeze. This is also the first Mother’s Day without my own mother; many ghosts from a complicated relationship.
My mother was an orphan who was raised by her abusive grandmother and aunts. Mom told me a story about her own hellish Mother’s Day when she was a little girl. Mom said all the kids got red carnations, except for her; she got a white one. She ran home excited to tell her grandmother about the carnation and she asked why she received a white one, and her broken, dysfunctional and cruel grandmother said, “It’s because your whorish mother died. They feel sorry for you so they have to give you a flower.” She was not my favorite relative.
I heard this story for years; it broke my heart in two every time I heard it. I’m bittersweetly happy for those of you who are surrounded by your children this weekend. I am wistful for past Mother’s Days – when I was surrounded by the great big love of my great big boy. Despite our tempestuous relationship, we were both so proud of and inspired by each other. He was the greatest person in my life.
Rikki left me a grandson who is growing in great leaps and bounds. He’s going to be fifteen in August, on a birthday he shares with his father. I’ve watched him grow up. My relationship with our grandson is different than the one I had with my son; I’m emotionally healthy now. I have found my purpose at this point in my life. I’m happy now and I have greater resources so I can be in relationships that I choose to be in – with likeminded people who are working on themselves toward being whole and interested in making the world a better place.
I can’t let my son’s death be just a sad tragedy. Losing him will forever be the heartbreak of my life, a shot through the heart that also pierces the soul; however, and I know that’s a shocking however – I had to move forward, or I could stop living like many people do, and not just those who are in grief either. I went to a funeral for an old friend the other day. I hadn’t seen many of the people there for decades, and as a mother who has also lost a son, I wanted to offer my condolences and offer my solidarity with the grieving mother who has hated me for decades, but I love her children, as I loved the one who has transitioned to the God of his understanding.
Life insists on being lived and we must insist on growing toward the holy of holies: self-awareness, self-actualization, even in the storms. I’m taking care of myself this weekend. I’m going to read and listen to music and remember … on August 6th, 1983 … and all that followed, the good and the heartbreaking.
Mother’s Day will be an introspective day … and I will cry as I remember what is was like to be a mother to a living son – and I’ll try to summon up gratitude for being the mother of an angel. I will most appreciatively use a metaphor that brings me comfort.
For all you moms out there who are celebrating Mother’s Day, brava! You deserve to be celebrated. For all we moms who are going to be reminded that our child is not here to celebrate with us, I celebrate you; I celebrate me in a somber way, in a way that says, “We are still mothers.”
Sometimes I believe this with all my heart, but then I wish for a card in the mail, a phone call, a hug, to hear his voice, and my heart remembers all the stolen flowers in Tupperware glasses and messy little handprints in plaster, or the macadamia nut necklace he made for me, and then the tears well up…and it’s a crap shoot how I will manage throughout the day.
I may sleep in tomorrow. Yeah, sleep sometimes is a short-term solution for a lifelong problem: grief. I’ve grown through the grief, but I don’t think I’ll ever grow past it. My heart is healing, but there will forever be a deep fissure, tender to the touch, with magma churning right underneath the surface, ready to erupt at the first note of a song, or a memory of the sweetest day with your love.
Grief is systemic…even into an innocuous day of celebrating the persons who brought us life in more ways than gestationally. Good, bad, or indifferent, Mother’s Day is a big deal. I still feel it; I guess I always will.
May your Mother’s Day make you feel honored, and to us momma’s for whom this day is difficult terrain, may you have everything you need to get through the day.
I have two yellow coffee mugs that Rikki and I used to drink from when we lived together, when he was an adolescent and into his teen years, we’d get up really early in the a.m. and chat and start the morning together. I have those mugs in our hutch of sacred things. I also have a purple goblet. I thought about getting rid of it because it’s the goblet he drank from during the time before he got addicted to alcohol and heroin. Those were idyllic days – when we could achieve them.
Yesterday, I kissed his picture, and the angst from Rikki’s death, and his absence in this world really surprised me – after eight years. I don’t have those pangs as often as I used to, during the times when EVERYTHING hurt. I even cried for a bit. I was alone – and I didn’t tell my husband I needed a moment to mourn Rikki’s loss. I’m okay with having been alone, sometimes I just need a moment to tell Rikki how much I miss him and to tell him my love for him is unending – and that I’m sorry I didn’t understand about addiction and so I said things that would shake him up, unkindly, angrily, frustratedly, and terrified.
I take those moments when I’m HALT (hungry, angry, lonely or tired). I generally self-regulate, or calm myself down through grounding exercises and breathing deeply and exhaling fully. It really does help.
I’m running here and running there and trying to keep my shit together, even as the deep grief rears its ugly head from time to time. I try to turn the sadness into happy moments I had with Rikki. Coffee in our fancy yellow mugs and his beautiful glass blown purple goblet. I used to have two, one for him, and one for me, but as life would have it, it got broken years ago.
So many happy memories turn bittersweet almost as quickly as we remember them. I miss my beautiful boy. He truly was the light of my life. The world is not as funny without him. No one could make me laugh as hard. No one made me love as fiercely. I’m past asking, “Why?”. That no longer matters to me. I know why, and I live with it every day. I don’t beat myself up for not being perfect; none of us is. I know I did the best I could and I will never regret all the kindnesses I extended when all the shit went down during the addiction years; they were hell. I tried. I tried. I tried. Like the meme says, “If love had been enough, you’d still be here.”
For those of you who wonder if your child knew how much you loved them, perfectly or imperfectly, your child knew, and if you believe in an afterlife, they still know. My son told me once that I needed to stop beating myself up for the mistakes I made during his lifetime. He told me shortly before he died, “Momma, I love you. Move on. I forgive you.”
I will always hold this memory in my heart when I’m beating myself up for not being the best mom ever, even though my son said I was. I have a card I saved for my birthday. It has Rosie the Riveter on it and the most beautiful sentiments about how much my son admired me and how much I inspired him. I take it out and read it every once in a while. I wanted to watch a few videos I have of Rikki, but the grief was too acute and I needed to just chill, cry, and breathe.
He was a war hero. He served in the Korean War, a war for which there was no rhyme nor reason, and for a confused Marine who was already experiencing posttraumatic stress disorder from an abusive childhood, this war seemed better than the one he fought at home – daily. I get it. I know he spent a few seasons in hell himself. My father was an exhaustingly hard worker. He’d routinely work two or three jobs to put food on the table. I see now the sacrifices (all of which he told us about often) he made for our family. He was broken before he became a father, to two sets of children from different wives. He abandoned his first family and had no relationship with his kids from either set. He stayed for my family — and routinely beat us.
I’ve had the benefit of therapy and inner work to have moved past my father’s abuses and I’ve determined that none of us is perfect — I have a mirror too. There are some things which are unforgiveable, in my opinion, but for me and for my father, I’ve found that understanding has been more healing for me than forgiveness. I understand why my father was such an abusive asshole. I get that too. I was reading, Roethke’s “My Papa’s Waltz” – which I highly recommend; it is an astonishing poem, and as I was reading it, I was reminded of the chaotic and confusing relationship I had with my father. Was there ever tenderness? Not until he was an old man.
During my developmental years when attachment was vital, we did not have a successful one. In his old age, when he became a grandfather to my son, an incredible transformation took place in this old guy, and he became human. Too little, too late for his kids, but not too late to pour his penance into his grandson; it was a beautiful and bittersweet thing to behold. He knew he fucked up with his kids, so as much as he tried to bridge the gap with us, there were times the gap was impassable. There are some things that are unforgiveable.
I don’t ruminate on the abuses I’ve incurred at the hands of my father anymore. He’s dead, and I no longer have to pretend to my oblivious family members that he was even a decent father; he wasn’t. Was he a good grandfather to my son? The best. My son adored him and the feeling was mutual. I asked my dad one time if he could do his life over again would he have chosen to have children. His answer did not surprise me. He said no. I was in my thirties, and I had some significant therapy under my belt, and I’d researched the dysfunctions in my family and was healing in great leaps and bounds. Therapy and education lead to self-awareness and then we get to choose what we do with the benefits, find purpose and live your calling; it’s possible, please believe me. Wherever and whatever you’ve come from are not our final destinations. We have opportunities all the time to dissect and dissolve the shit we’ve endured in our life.
My father was as broken as he made me for many years. None of that excuses his behaviors and brutality toward his families. But –
I finally am able to understand that it was not I who was unlovable, who deserved angry words, slaps, and fists. I can relinquish the feeling that I was at fault for the abuses. I didn’t deserve them, not even when I really blew it as a kid. No one does.
However, to see the relationship between my son and his grandfather was remarkably healing for me. I got to see my father be tender for the first time in my life, in my early twenties. He changed over the years, but not before his terrifying tyranny in my family. Despite the abuses, the terror, the neglect, I love my father – and I hate him too. Grief is very complicated with an abuser, especially one who reformed after therapy, or AA, or a come to Jesus moment, whatever it takes. My father surrendered his self-destructive relationship with alcohol – and the transformation was miraculous. I still had anger to work through before I could begin to see his sincerity. He knew he didn’t have a leg to stand on with his kids – and sometimes he had such a sense of entitlement to his kids’ love, like it was a filial duty to love – even when that love was not warranted.
Generational abuse/trauma is more common than our society chooses to address. My good friend and I were discussing the state of our world, and we decided the whole world is dysregulated from trauma, big T or little one. I’m of the opinion that trauma is relative and what might seem like a little t might be a giant one for the survivor of abuse/trauma. All things being relative, I suppose. My friend and I also said, “When we stop hurting our children, our world will change for the better.” We won’t get the kind of leadership that emerges out of pits of generational abuse – that shit trickles down too. Pardon my graphic illustration here, but I’m ready to tell the truth about what I see, hear, and experience with full confidence, not meanly or vindictively. Life is too short to seek revenge for things that happened in the past. I don’t mean this dismissively, but – get into therapy, educate yourselves about trauma, PTSD, and posttraumatic growth, and heal yourselves.
My father died surrounded by his victims – all who had achieved a level of grace toward him as he lay dying. How do you grieve your abuser, a parent who you both loved and wished death upon so the abuses would stop. I won’t pretend my father was a lovable man. He wasn’t. When he got old and unable to take care of himself, I stepped up and did my filial duty toward him. I suppose there were moments in our life together when he allowed himself to see his family’s humanity and he behaved appropriately. We never knew from one drunk to the next, but he didn’t have to be drunk to be abusive. He was a rageful man, and I learned that trait well. You must have an idea by now how important therapy and education are to me, and their messages have become my respective gospel. Preach it, Sista!
I went into the field to heal myself. I’m now at a place in my life where the past is shelved in a very deep recess of my brain, and I get to choose when it emerges and for what purposes. Was my father a good person in any way? No, not until his grandson was born. How does one reconcile love and hate that fluctuates through one’s life? My journey to do so began forty years ago when my son arrived into our dysregulated world and dysregulated family. I had conflicted emotions about being in relationship with my father. There were days I wanted to bail and say, “I’m done.”, and walk away forever. He was so good with my son, whose own father had bailed on him, I wanted my son to have a male role model who adored him, and he found that in my father. They adored each other – and there were days when I hated my father so much, I agonized over letting him be around my son out of sheer revenge, because he loved my son so much, and I knew it would hurt my father.
I let it ride and they had a magical and loving relationship. I’m glad I was able to see what was best for my son and not what would have been best for me. When my father died, my son took it very hard. He was sixteen. He called my father Dad because his own father was like my father in that he could abandon his children without ever batting an eye. History repeats itself. My mom chose a loser and so did I. I didn’t think my father could ever change, but he did. My ex-husband has not.
The saying, “Being angry with someone is like drinking one’s own poison” – or something to that effect is true. I carried that anger with me for far longer than was beneficial. I have victims of my rage left in its wake. I have relationships that never got off the ground because I was a bundle of rage and revenge – along with a self-image that had been born in abuse, shame, and terror.
I remember once my father and I planted strawberries under mine and my sister’s bedroom window, and we watched them grow and produce fruit. I was enthralled with the daily development and when the scent of the strawberries wafted in through my window, I felt at peace, and I loved my father for bringing something beautiful to my life.
He really didn’t do it all that often.
But as we pick and choose the memories that bring us joy instead of added sorrow, rage, shame, or self-loathing, we have the opportunity to exchange some ugliness for some joy, peace, understanding, and maybe even a little grace.
My father was a war hero; his greatest war was the one he waged against himself.
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.
Grief to Gratitude 