Grief to Gratitude

By Sherrie Cassel

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.

I believe; help my unbelief.

By Sherrie Cassel

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.

I’m fine now.

By Sherrie Cassel

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.

https://titles.cognella.com/reconceptualizing-grief-9798823312714#

By Sherrie Cassel

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.

By Sherrie Cassel

Fukushima Mutated Daisies

January 22, 2016 @ 5:55 p.m. I walked away from my son’s body for the last time. I had been so full of hope for him. I had finally gotten him to the hospital, and I held on to an irrational hope that my very sick and addicted only child would pull through. Those of us who have experienced tremendous tragedies are thrown into a desperation that enlivens the imagination toward impossible fantasies.

“Oh, Lazarus, come forth.”

I prayed this prayer, along with the preliminary commentary, “Please, oh, please God, I believe, help my unbelief. Rikki, come forth.” As a result, I believe in the effects of and the responses to random chance by the human species. We get to live for however long we get to live and then we veer off to our next great adventure, whether it’s a heaven like the one foretold in your sacred texts, or it’s reuniting with loved ones. I so want to see my son again. I believe; help my unbelief.

I don’t want to raise theological issues. As Dolores O’Riordan sang, “We’re free to decide”, what will feed and nurture us spiritually and emotionally.  I do, however, want to emphasize here that while we are free to decide, it matters from which well-spring or drought-ridden lake we draw from. I’ve drawn from both bodies of water. I’m still learning how to swim in my own deep waters.

Before Rikki died, I appealed to every supranatural entity I knew, to spare my son. “Just give him a victory story, please, God.” I learned to pray the rosary. I did centering prayer. I laid prostrate on the floor. I genuflected before the God of my understanding until my knees hurt. None of those things made one iota of difference; I ultimately had to surrender my son to his Higher Power.

Rikki coded twice in the hospital, despite my unrealistic hope. The second time he coded, I had to make the decision to have him intubated, or to let him go. The doctor said he had no brain activity, and so, as sick as it still makes me today, I let his body, soul, and mind find perfection; it helps to think of death in this manner. I’m hopeful to the very end – even when the possibility of a ~happy ending~ is as remote as winning the lottery, or – bringing your child back from the dead.

“Oh, the games people play.” ~Joe South~

I’ve learned that rumination is not always helpful; I guess it depends on what one ruminates about. As the twenty-second approaches, I’m feeling some anxiety, mostly about how I’ll feel on the day, what I’ll do. My response to the angelversary is always a crapshoot. Will I weep in a dark room all day and night, which has been a response from time to time in the eight years Rikki has been gone? Will I try to be grateful for the life we had together? Will I beat myself for not being able to save him? Will I crash and burn or rise like the Phoenix? I wish I could tell you.

I know what I tend to do as the angelversary approaches; I ruminate on our last hours, weeks together. I was aghast, concerned and terrified about the bad shape he was in. But … I held on to hope. “God, I believe. I believe.” “Desperate times call for desperate measures” (Hippocrates), verdad?

I imagine watching your child die the painful death of addiction, must be like watching your child die to cancer.

Addiction is a disease, too.

My son’s privacy, even posthumously, is sacred to me. We went through so much throughout our thirty-two years together. The addiction years were hell, and I mean that. The metaphorical fiery flames of hell that terrified me so much as a youngster, are apt analogies for the insanity and chaos that addiction wreaks on the family system. When my son was dying and after he died there really was ~weeping and gnashing of teeth~ — I gashed myself for three years with guilt and self-blame for my son’s death. Yes, folks, to me, that was hell. I nearly hyperventilate when I think about the woman who was so broken from the loss of her child; it was the toughest thing I’ve ever gone through. As a matter of fact, I cannot think of anything more grueling than losing a child, no matter the age of the child, or gestational status. Losing a child is inconceivable, until it happens to you or someone you know; to a parent who has lost a child(ren), her grief is inconsolable.

As those of us who know grief from an intimate perspective, we learn to navigate the grief while we reach for the stars and reclaim our lives; it’s entirely possible. I’m aching today. I can feel it. I’m sure you can too. I’m revving up for next Monday. Will it be rough, or will I be able to celebrate his life and push the sad thoughts away, i.e., seeing him so sick, walking away from his body, holding so much pain in my body, mind, and soul, I couldn’t live a life that had room for joy? Will I be a hot mess?

I remember once I had a presentation to do as an undergrad; it was an important presentation for a final grade. I’m not a great test-taker anyhow, and even though I knew my material inside and out, I was a nervous wreck. I talked to my shrink about it and she suggested an anti-anxiety med to get through it. I got through the presentation, and I even did very well – the rub is, I don’t remember much of any of it. I didn’t take them for years until Rikki got sick and then again, when he died. Time would show I no longer needed them.

I want to feel my son’s absence. I want it to scream in Rikki’s voice so loudly that I can’t ignore it. I also want to feel the sunshine on my face, the mist of the ocean as it bejewels my hair with dew, ad infinitum, and I want to enjoy all the awesomeness that exists in this universe. I also want to enjoy those things even though there is a sorrow that veins every single thing in my life – because I can’t share them with Rikki. All things have become bittersweet. Rikki was my only child. My beautiful son. My reason for living. I knew only how to be a mother – the good, the bad, and the ugly – the relationship I was privileged to have with my son, save those last addiction years, were a blessing, a gift, and are so close to my heart it ached and bled when my son was yanked from this world.

He is gone, and as ee cummings says, “I carry you in [the metaphor of] my heart.” I’ve used the detonation of my soul analogy many times since Rikki died. I think of the aftermath of the greatest loss of my life, and how I writhed in pain during those first few months and years of grief. As for carrying my son in my heart, I think of Rikki and I as Fukushima daisies. We’ve been through the detonation, and yet we survive spiritually, inseparable, mother and son, flesh and blood – a holy union in which neither of us will know exile, only a mutual love, a love from this present time, and a love for all eternity in the afterlife, in whatever that means to you.

I will miss my son on January 22^nd more so than usual, and I will bury my head under my blankets or jacket as 5:55 p.m. approaches. Clocks will be anathema for me, and my husband will have to rouse me from my emotional funk once the hour has passed. I appreciate the teamwork.

My current purpose in life is to help others find within themselves the courage and the drive to create a life that is fulfilling, a life that matters to them. Finding purpose doesn’t soften the blow from losing a child; it also doesn’t take the pain away. Nothing will. But the intensity lessens and the grief that controlled us early on no longer will. I’m grateful for the peace, harmony, and healing that I’ve been able to enjoy – even after losing my only child; there will never be another.

I think sometimes people make the mistake of thinking they have only one purpose in life. I was a daughter, a sibling, a kid with a broken heart, a broken wife to a broken husband, a broken mother, a divorcee, a wife to an amazing husband, and in each of these stages, my purpose is in the shape of the need at the time. However, with all that good stuff, finding a purpose, and all, “I’ve been to paradise, but I’ve never been to me.” (Ron Miller and Kenneth Hirsch)

I’m in a kind of paradise where a tsunami is expected. The floodgates haven’t burst open in a very long time.

I can’t make any promises. I’ll probably cry a river.