Grief to Gratitude

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.

By Sherrie Ann Cassel

Our children grow up to be the sum of their primary caretakers’ responses to times of imbalance and to times of homeostasis. Children live what they learn. Epigenetics assumes we are not only the sum of our parents’ behavioral and genetic inheritance, but we also must add our ancestors’ genetic and behavioral contributions to the equation. It’s a hypothesis, but one day, despite all the controversy, perhaps the vicarious trauma that is transmitted to successive and broken generations, may have genetic resolution in the future. I’m hopeful that mindfulness and being in the present moment will catch on and become a trend like a California burrito, complete with its American counterpart, the embedded French fry.

My husband and I were about to lose our home in San Diego, and the loss was imminent. The stress level was at critical mass, and it was truly a hopeless situation, in which we did ultimately lose our home of fifteen years. I was learning about mindfulness in my undergrad psych program, and even though I thought it was woo woo, I was willing to give it a chance.

I learned about mindfulness before I learned about dysregulation and how trauma can, in lay person’s language, throw us off balance, biopsychosocially, and add to that, spiritually. What does that mean for us as a species? Start with the child. In ideal conditions, a child will be loved and nurtured, and have adaptive and prosocial behavior modeled for her. For the child who grows up in trauma, under the iron fist of domestic violence, regulating oneself toward calm breathing and inner peace, even when nothing external has changed is a goal that may be more difficult for the child who has experienced violence in her life.

There’s a meme floating around on Facebook about how teaching a child to be mindful and to breathe in times of dysregulation, or stress, calms the child and brings her back to the present moment where logical solutions are plentiful. Imagine if we each, in particular those who’ve experienced a great deal of trauma, or perhaps had a parent who modeled chronic stress and worry, had a well-honed sense of self-soothing by the time we reached adulthood. Perhaps there’d be less heart disease, obesity from stress eating, diabetes from obesity, soul sickness and mental illness if we learned how to calm ourselves using only breathwork and mindfulness. Perhaps.

I’ve read several magazines about the loneliness in America. One article from The Atlantic said this generation is the loneliest generation in history. We’re connected to our devices. We zoom important meetings, interviews; and, we Facetime our loved ones. Sometimes, though, we just need a hug. Where is the love in cyberspace? Despite the occasional hell I was raised in, my mother was present to feed, clothe, and to love us as best she could with her limited emotional resources, but. . .she was present.

As a form of self-soothing, I go within and commune with my breath and with my spirit; in my theology, we are spirit, flesh, blood, and cerebral. I did not learn this practice as a child. I spent most of my life in survival mode with a mentality of scarcity of emotions, guarded, and hypervigilant. So many children do. I was such a child. My son was such a child. Children live what they learn. If you’re in an environment that is not a nurturing one for your child, or for yourself, and you can escape right now, do it for your kids, and for yourself.

Whitney Houston sang, “. . .our children are our future.” This is scarily true. If we don’t raise up children to self-regulate in emotionally healthy ways, our society will not change for a better balanced, more prosocial one. I love the story in the Christian Bible (NT) about the pearl of great price. Our children are our pearls of great price. Teach them well. Love them through each developmental milestone. Teach them to love themselves. Teach them that there are appropriate and character-building choices that can be made in any situation.

Teach them to breathe through crises so those choices are easily accessible from a cleared mind. Parents and grandparents alike, including teachers, and emotionally sound clergy can bring a child from the darkness of hopelessness to a life bright and full of potential.

By Sherrie Cassel

The new year is also a finale to whatever we leave behind of the year preceding it. I said goodbye to my mother, a relationship that spanned sixty-one years, my longest relationship to date, and what will prove to be the longest relationship in my life. I’m wrapping up the last two chapters of my life. I, far more than ever before, hear of the deaths of classmates, kids who grew up with my son, my son. I said goodbye to one of my son’s childhood friends. I said goodbye to a dream of never having to do office work again, but life circumstances require me to make a few extra bucks to add to our modest budget while I’m still in seminary.

There were far more things I said hello to last year. I finally achieved a secondary degree and am finishing my master’s degree. I finally can see clients and facilitate support groups. Our grandson is remarkably close to us, and we had him over the holiday season. He’s growing like a weed; in three years, which will fly by, he will be an adult.

Life, directed by random chance, is a bag of mixed nuts. I’ve loved deeply and I’ve lost the greatest love of my life, my son. In a week and a few days, eight years will have passed since my son died. The early years were pure agony. I ached so much I could not see a future for myself where pain was not my primary experience. Since those early years of complicated grief, the waves of angst have calmed, and seldom reach high tide anymore.

Don’t let anyone tell you that time heals all wounds; no, it does not. I think of a glass blower getting his glass to dangerously hot temperatures, and how, as the glass begins to cool and solidify, a thing of true beauty begins to emerge, fragile, like a tender heart after a loss, but beautiful from the polish of painful experiences we must navigate to get to a place where they are imbued with meaning and a hint of the healing that awaits us as we work and weep through the process.

People ask me how I got through the loss of my son. I survey the past eight years, and truly, the years before that as I grieved my son’s once beautiful mind and healthy body. I can’t believe how quickly the time has flown. Eight years, soon it will be ten, and then. . .how did I get through it?

There were quite a few weeks and months of numbing to get through the day. I never said goodbye to my son. I kissed him on the forehead and told him he was the greatest thing that ever happened to me, and then I walked away from his shell. He was no longer in his body. That holy thing that animates us into humanity left his body and merged into the infinite, in whatever way you understand that to play out.

I’m pragmatic and not prone to flights of fancy, so I knew, even as I clutched my chest as each trigger passed before me, that I would find a way to come back to life, a person changed in every possible way, a person more in touch with reality because tragedy necessitated a keen self-awareness that opened my heart and my head to the possibility of healing, myself and others.

I used to think we could heal completely, but as a lifelong griever, I know there are still tender spots that range from one, not horrible, to ten, soul-crushing. I tend to be in the middle these days. I had a trigger when I was dancing with our fourteen-year-old grandson. We were dancing and I was remembering a time when I dreamed about dancing with him like I used to dance with his father. I felt the bittersweet longing deep in my chest, and I pulled myself together so our grandson could maintain his joy. Oh, the things we do for love.

I haven’t made a resolution in years. I didn’t make any for 2024 either. The consensus among grievers is that a loss of great magnitude, tends to help one prune away the things that are no longer necessary for social survival. Since I lost my son, again, my only child, I have let go of a great many things that used to stress me out if they didn’t get done, or if I was going to be late, or if I couldn’t be present for a loved one who was hurting. Life goes on, and I don’t say this insensitively; but life does go on.

An emotionally seismic event leaves us breathless in the present moment; there is no place to run from emotional pain. Certainly, one can numb it with substances that could turn out to be lethal, like they were for my son.

Empathy is another gift from grief; I know the depths my heart can sink to after the loss, and because I do, I feel others’ pain more acutely. I said hello to better self-care because I work in a field where tragedy and trauma are the norm.

I’d give anything to have my son back, but see, that’s an unreality, and if I’m to say goodbye to anything, relinquishing an old coping mechanism is another rung up the ladder to self-actualization. I’m not suggesting that the healing process is an easy one. I’m also not saying that all coping mechanisms are necessarily damaging; they are not all damaging. But when they are, the resistance to say goodbye to something that no longer works is what will keep us from moving forward.

Pruning is an apt metaphor. I have never been so fortunate to have the green thumb my younger brother does. He would strip his roses down to their stems in the wintertime, and then come spring and summer time, the buds would blossom into giant roses of varying colors. What am I pruning away in an effort to grow beyond my pain, my grief, my self-imposed limitations?

I like the Buddhist idea of non-attachment. I see that by holding on to my son’s short life, by allowing my pain to remain acute, by ruminating on his death, rather than his life, I was not letting go of the things that hurt me, perhaps in a masochistic way, like some religions encourage their practitioners in shame, guilt, and self-loathing, I still occasionally relapse into old conditioning. I don’t want to ache anymore. I want to live my life as a legacy to our grandson, in honor of his father, in honor of my son.

I don’t need to say goodbye to my son; he is in my blood, my heart, and in the deepest parts of my soul. I need to say goodbye to the pain. If there is an adaptive reason for holding on to pain, I’d like to know what it is. I know human nature as a member of the human species. I know human nature from the theoretical perspectives of my education. I’ve had a lot of parents tell me they’re afraid the memories of their children will fade over the years. I have not had such an experience. If anything, the memories no longer tear me apart, but they still arise from time to time, always bittersweetly, but no longer assaultive.

If I’m to say goodbye to anything or anyone, it is to things and to people who have been historically hurtful and assaultive. Sometimes letting go, saying goodbye — is beneficial and helps us to grow into emotionally healthy people who do not allow others, including family members, to hurt us.

C’est la vie.

I don’t think I’ll ever truly shake the grief that I carry. I shouldn’t want to. If I were able to let go, would my memories of my son fade? Is grief a way to stay connected to our deceased? I wonder with our inability to comprehend infinity, are we also incapable of grasping non-existence? Is there life after death? Will I see my son again? Or should I get off the Gospel train and just live my life to the hilt and say goodbye to things for which there is no evidence? Should I eat, drink, and be merry? Can I do so without the guilt from moving on?

We live each day as it comes. Some days are springtime, with everything in full bloom, after a long, harsh winter. Some days are just long days of that harsh winter. When there is cognitive dissonance, i.e., your conscience is not in sync with your actions, something needs to give, a goodbye, a hello, or a settling to lesser life experiences.

Goodbyes may not be forever. Sometimes we just need a break from something that is not right in our lives. I said goodbye to two family members this year; it was time. I said goodbye to my mother; it was time. We know when we’re not living up to our own expectations, and sometimes that lack of attention to our wildest dreams hurts so much that the only thing we can do is burst out of the cage in which we have become imprisoned, by choice or by chance.

I say goodbye to another year my son has been gone. I say hello to another year he will be gone. I open my heart to good things ahead.

Happy New Year!

~Sherrie Cassel~

By Sherrie Cassel

Every beautiful thing reminds me of my son. Listening to Minnie Ripperton sing “Loving You” this morning was nearly more than I could manage at that precise moment. I wasn’t expecting the emotional overwhelm. The very first note of “Loving You” had me bowled over in physical pain, all the way to my soul.

I’ve been alone all morning while my husband and our grandson sleep. I love the time alone; it’s time I use to be with myself – to think – to pray — to dream. In twenty-seven days, Rikki will have been gone for eight years. As the days flash by until the twenty-second of January, I will live my life, full force, while grieving here until my own last breath.

Time is a respecter of no one; we’re each allotted the time we’re allotted, and once we’re no longer at the mercy of abusive parents, under the influence of dysfunctional role models, or sent out into the world having been loved well and our journey here ends, we will each merge into the Infinite, become one with the Divine, achieve nirvana, go to Heaven, ad infinitum.

My son would be forty now; just saying that awakens the deep ache that, on most days, I’m able to tame and command to my needs. My life is truly blessed. I have my husband and our grandson under one roof.

But you see, my heart will always be missing a piece. Life, even in its blessedness, is still a bit deficient. His absence will always be present. In joy, I want him here. In heartache, I want him here. On good days. On bad days. Every day.

As the new year approaches, I let go of the memories of painful experiences. I work to calm the brain secretions of bad memories and to self-regulate so I can concentrate on memories that make me feel good…always bittersweet. So, how does one let go of the memory of painful experiences? Quite simply: therapy. I’m of the opinion that one needs an anchor. I choose the God of my understanding; you may choose someone/thing else.

There is a journey, per Abraham Maslow, toward what he called self-actualization. After Rikki died, I fought, fumbling all the way, to regain my bearings. Grief knocks the wind out of us, and then it kicks us in the ribs — until we fight back. Grief is not an animate object, of course; however, it is an emotion, like rage, which must be apprehended/tamed, and some emotions take a monumental effort to calm, probably most especially, anger. Right?

I didn’t want to grow accustomed to pain; I wanted something that would take me out of it and help me to transcend the pain. I had no idea what that meant at the time; it’s taken me nearly all eight years Rikki has been gone to understand the message borne of pain. I’m still learning, and I don’t delude myself into thinking I will not ache for a lifetime when I think about my son, my beautiful son.

I’m swimming in brain secretions this morning. Phil Collins is singing “In the Air Tonight” – Rikki loved the song. I’m aching in my chest right at this moment. I come here to walk through my own grief as I address yours. You have no idea how much your comments and messages mean to me. In your own grief, many of you have reached out to comfort me on those days when I come to write my pain despite your own. Thank you.

The other blog I maintain is the single most healing thing I’ve done in the eight years since my son died. Talking with, crying with, and just being with other parents who’ve incurred the same loss as I have, have helped to seal the heart wound that will be healing for a lifetime. I’ve witnessed and been absolutely inspired by the parents and grandparents who frequent the site. I’ve seen unbelievable growth since the site’s inception. The possibility to heal is available to each of us; it takes painstaking inner work, but it is possible to have an amazing life despite the loss of your loved one, but … we will always feel the ache when a memory, sweet or turbulent, crosses our minds.

How did I do it? How did I get this far … and why am I here today? Two steps forward … and today … two steps back.

The day will be good, and I’ll continue to feel blessed, and I will acknowledge the memories and then, like this year, I will let them go. I don’t know which song or scent, or situation will bring them rushing back, but I’ll take care of myself as the tide rises and falls … and I’ll ride out the waves until gravity pulls the ocean into balance and the waves cease.

Yes, that’s what I’ll do.

May your 2024 come charging in with comfort and joy.

~Sherrie~

By Sherrie Cassel

“Tonight I would be thankful, Lord, for any dream at all.” Mission in the Rain, Bob Hunter and Jerry Garcia

There are symbols which are easily recognizable for what they represent.  A yellow submarine. Einstein’s crazy coif, and Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead, even though Bobby, Phil, Donna, Keith, Mickey, Bill, Pig Pen, Brent, Vince, and Bruce Hornsby were not chopped liver. I wasn’t born a Deadhead, nor was I socialized at a young age to be a Deadhead; I sort of married into the moniker. My husband is a true Deadhead. He has seen them forty-four times and his music collection is about twenty-five percent all Dead, although his musical tastes cross many intersections. I bring up Jerry Garcia only insofar as his genius, his struggle with whatever it was that made heroin his drug of choice, a choice he made all the way to his grave, and just because my son’s death was nearly identical to Jerry’s. My son chose similarly his drug of choice, and this makes me think about how much emotional and/or physical pain one would have to be in to reach for the thing which would ultimately destroy him or her, especially when there was so much to live for.

They were both non-compliant diabetics. They both had congestive heart failure, which can make withdrawals from heroin fatal. I can talk about it now. As the road through grief has taken me to places where gems of self-awareness and the potential for self-actualization lie in the wildflowers, using all their might to shine, to be noticed. I have stopped occasionally to pick up a diamond or two. Grief has shaped me into a more fully developed human being, more prosocial, more compassionate, because my capacity to extend empathy has increased by one-hundred percent.

Now when I hear stories about those who struggle with addiction, I want to know what drives a person to use — to his or her destruction. Not everyone who uses dies from addiction; but many do. I read some stats today in preparation for writing this piece that claims fifty-thousand people die in the U.S. each year from opioid use: that’s an entire midsize city/town. Even more alarming is a fact from those same statistics: ten-million people each year misuse opioids, Opioid Crisis Statistics [2023]: Prescription Opiod Abuse (drugabusestatistics.org).

What hurts so intolerably one must numb it to survive a life? I understand, now, why my son chose to self-destruct, and so now I get it about others too. I can look at the ways people grieve because I’m a veteran griever now. Maybe we all are. Everybody hurts sometimes…R.E.M. We each grieve a loss or many losses in our lifetimes. How deep the grief must be for those who quash it by sacrificing reality complete with its ups and downs — for a slow or quick road to death.

Does that make sense to you?

Now that I’ve been navigating through the sometimes-hurricanic waves of grief, wading barefooted through rocky shores, or sailing smoothly on those amazing days when peace guides me to a welcoming shore of hope and optimism and amazing possibilities, I find myself on this shore more often than not, and certainly, more often than my early days and months of grief.

My son was grieving when he died. He’d been through some life-altering and seismic experiences shortly before he self-destructed. I wonder what hurt Jerry. I know what hurt my son, and I wonder if Jerry’s childhood was similar to my son’s in the same way their deaths are. Were their important relationships hurtful and toxic in the last days of their lives? What happens to make someone expedite his or her demise? I read in a Sagan book, The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, where the author alleged one day in the future, we would see ourselves as a cruel species by not allowing people who are in emotional pain to use whatever method of relief he or she can find, including misusing both legal and illegal substances to subdue their pain. I’m sorry my son, and quite possibly Jerry, were hurting so badly they reached for a magical potion that morphed into a murderous poison.

One pill makes you larger and one pill makes you small. . .Jefferson Airplane

When my son was in rehab, a few different times, I met several of his housemates who later became friends, three of whom have passed from fentanyl. They were not children who were trying it unknowingly for the first time. These friends were adults who knew the score. What might have they been grieving? Maryanna Eckberg wrote a book called Victims of Cruelty in which she discusses trauma on the biopsychosocial dimensions of the human species and shares what heroin feels like as told to her by participants in her research: the safety of a mother’s love. My son said it felt like pure love.

The world is not safe for all children. Jerry’s father drowned when Jerry was only five years old. Missing a parent, even a bad one can be a traumatizing event. He was pushed into grief when he was only a small child, barely out of toddlerhood. Grief is traumatic on the body, mind, and consciousness. Is it deep grief that shatters a person so that he or she needs to run back to the womb? Yes, Nicodemus, one can be born a second time. Does heroin take away the pain from doing life in the same way with the same cast of memories that have hurt you time and time again?

Jerry created the music of a generation. My son created a child he adored, but that love ultimately could not save him, just as Jerry’s music did not save him. Their pain was too great to bear.  If insanity is wishing for a different outcome than the one we keep creating– for a childhood, a lost parent, a toxic divorce, any number of situations for which a perfect resolution will never be possible, then perhaps my son and Jerry, were grieving those lost relationships from the distant and recent past – until that grief killed them because they didn’t know how to ask for help — until it was too late.

I’ve read time and time again, and even said it myself in early grief, “I just want to die.” The pain was too great to bear and I numbed with food, and gained fifty pounds, pushed myself into all sorts of avoidable health issues, because my pain was so great after Rikki died — I was barely functioning. I don’t kid myself that my health issues were serious and could possibly lead to early death. My eating habits didn’t really numb the pain, and at some point the types of food I was eating were unhealthful and eating itself became high-risk behavior for me.

So, grief can drive someone to hurt him or herself. Some with food, bad relationships, unprotected sex, and some with heroin. I wish I could have saved my son. I grieve his death every day; some days are unbearable, and some days are amazing; such is life.

My husband, my resident Deadhead said that Jerry had just admitted himself into rehab and his loyal fanbase was elated; finally, Jerry would be made well. He died in rehab. My son had been so sick and even though he had epiphany after epiphany that he could very well die because of his congestive heart failure, despite the edema and hemorrhaging in his legs, despite the loss of respect from his family, and even though if he died, his son would be fatherless, the demon addiction defeated him; it defeated all of us. I understand Jerry died alone in his room. He experienced his fame, but even that didn’t soothe the thing in Jerry’s heart that needed pure love, perhaps from a father.

My son died in the hospital emergency room with his devoted mother by his side. His aunt was there too, and later my family, such as we are, were all together saying our goodbyes to my son. He had showered. He was with people who loved him. His medical team was caring and supportive. He was warm. He also had heroin on him – on his deathbed…on his deathbed.

Grievers look for situations, people, art that speak to our social and spiritual locations. I have several grief blogs I frequent, including the two I manage. I find the ones that speak to my specific grief, and I also appreciate those sites that speak to those who have incurred losses different from my own. I have many teachers.

I’ve learned to love the Dead. My husband has turned me into a Deadhead. He is not so much interested in the biographical tidbits of Jerry’s life, as much as he is into the brilliance of the band’s music that continues to create musical movements throughout the generations. I want to know it all. I want to know why Jerry and Rikki couldn’t find that single thing that would awaken them to their will to rise above the things that hurt them, and grab hold of a long life, a life in which they might have made peace with their past. Jerry was only fifty-three years old; my son was only thirty-two.

In my experience, grief should be a journey of a reasonable duration. I know this now. If grief hurts you all the way to pathological behavior, e.g., addiction, then reach out for emotionally sound and healthy methods toward healing, i.e., therapy, from clergy, support groups. Don’t lapse into self-destruction because pain is the only thing you’re feeling; we have a wide range of emotions. Tap into them – through prayer, meditation, journaling, or exercise.

Maybe some people don’t hurt themselves when they’re in pain. I wish my son would have been one of them. I know Jerry’s kids wish he had been one too. Maybe my theoretical perspective(s) don’t always provide me with comforting answers. Would it matter if I could pinpoint the exact point at which my son was driven to self-destruct? Would it change anything? Would it bring my son back? No. The answers needed are answers that Rikki and Jerry needed. Maybe life wouldn’t have hurt so badly for them if they had the answers to all their whys … a mother or a father’s love, or a warm brain space to call home.

Maybe that’s all we really need when we grieve, a place where we can rest with the reality of our losses in such a way that expression of that grief is normalized, a place where saying, “I’m hurt. Help me.” does not make us needy pariahs, but humans embracing the whole human experience, where death truly has no sting. How can we process our pain and hence, demonstrate to others how to process theirs in emotionally sound ways?

I asked my husband this question, and he gave me the analogy of the starfish, and so I concur, I must work toward the healing of one Rikki and one Jerry at a time.

By Sherrie Cassel

My mom, my sweet and complicated momma, has been gone for three months now; I’ve lived a lifetime in those months. I’ve begun an internship. I’ve learned new and harried traffic patterns and navigated them. I’ve managed to be in a beautiful relationship with a man for whom adoration is mutual. I’ve made new connections and I’m learning to allow my own vulnerabilities to surface in emotionally sound ways, calm, peaceful, self-regulating. I can handle stress; I can. There are any number of ways to self-soothe, ways that are emotionally sound, ways that demonstrate self-love.

In a few short weeks, my son will be gone eight years; it scarcely seems possible. The holidays are among us, and this year will end with a bang. I’ve been blessed with some amazing things in 2023, despite watching my mother die from breast cancer, hopeful about the life-saving mastectomy, and then having to say goodbye to her – all of this in a matter of a few short months. I say this, not insensitively, but I say this: life does go on.

Logistically, time may have stopped for me for the first three years after Rikki died, but it didn’t stop for anyone else. The earth continued to spin, the sun rose, and the sun set. Our grandson was growing up before our eyes. We were aging. I was in so much pain, posttraumatic growth was not possible during this time. I could barely manage a shower.

But…

               Life does go on.

In the eight years since my son died, through early, complicated, and manageable grief, I’ve grown as an individual, as a person with potential to fully self-actualize in a single lifetime. I work exhaustively to achieve self-awareness, and to use the wisdom from self-examination to share with others who may be emotionally or spiritually wounded through the loss of a loved one or a belief system. The nice thing about knowing what you believe is that you don’t have to proselytize or champ at the bit to change someone’s mind. If I’m capable of figuring out life on my own, and of finding and applying what works for me in my own life, then it would be arrogant for me to presume that my way of thinking is the best or the only way; it may be for me; it may not be for you. We are not the Borg.

               …as iron sharpens iron…¹

My healing has taken time, all of the eight years my son has been gone, and all the rest of my life will be healing and woundedness, healing and woundedness…such is life. We ache and we rejoice. Losing a loved one, especially one with whom you were very close, is a colossal event. I truly believe I didn’t start healing until I started a blog, After the Storm, for parents who’ve lost child/ren to addiction. I’m so fortunate with amazing and supportive friends; I absolutely am. However, having the words said to you that you cannot bring yourself to utter by a person who understands completely is of monumental import. I heard the ache and the angst that I felt but was not yet ready to verbalize. The members of the group were my angels, heroes, and heroines. They were and are my teachers in this grief experience. The group has been meeting for about seven years and the growth and wisdom I witness there are so very healing to my heart, especially on those days when I’m really hyper-aware of my grief.

To whom do you reach out?

I don’t know how people find my blogs or Facebook pages. I don’t advertise. I don’t need a huge following. I want to be of service to those who are grieving, and in some respects, every person in the world is grieving, or will grieve at some point in his/her/their life.

               …a time to weep and a time to laugh…²

We are a little over five-hundred at After the Storm, and we are each at a different level in our grief experience, from those whose child has been gone for only one week, to those of us who have been with the site since its inception, and then there are those who are truly veterans of the grief process, whose children have been gone for decades. Each person is cherished and his and her insight is so valuable to our healing.

I shunned experience when I first started on this horrible/wonderful journey. My heart hurt and no one could ever understand. I was alone in the universe, and I was one giant raw nerve with nothing that could anesthetize the pain. I’m sure many of you can relate. I did a research paper a few years ago about the ability to heal emotionally after the loss of a child and I wanted to see if a population that has a faith-tradition, not necessarily a god, but a spiritual anchor would heal more rapidly than a population that does not. My research bore out that this particular population in a rural Midwest area, where most residents were religious and/or they identified as spiritual, did, in fact, heal more quickly and sustained their healing for longer periods of time than they who claimed no religious/spiritual anchor.

I didn’t have an anchor when my son died. I had no spiritual hope to hold on to – nothing to hold on to. I can speak only for myself, but I had long ago lost my faith in the misrepresented god, and lost my way to a God of love, compassion, understanding, and relatability. When Rikki died, I had only my sparse tool kit with tools I hadn’t yet acquainted myself with. I also had years of Catholic and Southern Baptist guilt and shame. I had old tapes from my broken parents who broke me time and time again when I was a child. I had a loss felt all the way deep into my soul, and I had nothing to catch me as I spiraled down into the black hole of grief.

I’m not saying only those with a spiritual anchor, and who’s to say what is spiritual, can navigate the grief process more easily. Research has not made that entirely clear – yet. But I can now compare my two locations, one spiritual, and one with no spiritual inclinations. I choose the former. What will take you out of your deepest grief and bring you back to the Present Moment where you may grow from the trauma of your loss?

Can you take the pain from your loss and reframe it into something of benefit to you and to our world, especially those closest to you? Our grandson was six years old when his father died. He’s fourteen now. I have expressed, in tears and with joy, my love for his father, my son, in earnest and honestly in front of our grandson. I want him to know it’s okay to feel, and that once the feeling has decreased in intensity,

               Life does go on.

I’m grateful for emotions, sadness, anger, joy, disappointment, and any combination of them. Each emotion is a teacher, and if we ride out the storm with them, and pay attention to what is being taught, each emotion provides us with an opportunity to learn and to grow into our most fully actualized selves. I approach the dichotomy of grief with kid gloves. To find the wonder in the grief process has been painstaking work. I sat idle, wasting away, in an emotional shroud, aching deep within me. There was no place I could turn to get away from the pain. My husband and I moved to the desert, away from all the things I shared with my son. The solitude of the desertscapes, the sunrises, the sunsets, the millions of years of geological history, new people, places, and things began to fill my life, and despite the ever-present awareness of Rikki’s absence, my heart began to thaw, and I began to heal. I hope it doesn’t take you as long as it took me to heal.

Reach out to someone, a support group, a friend, a site that addresses your specific grief. We cannot heal alone. The ideas, healing rituals/methods, stories, sharing of our deepest feelings about losing our loved ones are available in a collective, i.e., therapy support groups, or individual therapy are full of amazing insight, wisdom, and connection. I felt lost with my friends who fortunately had never experienced the loss of a child. Once I started reaching out to those with a common loss, I started to heal.

Holidays are rough, harried, chaotic under the best of circumstances. Keep close to those from whom love emanates. Steer clear of family drama and dysfunction, if at all possible. Take care of yourselves, through this season. May you find peace, tranquility, or a rockin’ and festive time, however you spend your wintertime.

As I begin to slow down for another high desert winter, I’m grateful for so many things. I miss my Rikki more than I can begin to adequately express. I always will. I miss my mom this holiday season. Our grandson and then our granddaughter will be here soon, and their mother, with whom I have grown in great leaps and bounds, and we will celebrate life and remember our Rikki. He would want that.

Life is all about taking our losses and refashioning them into something spectacular and useful, something that helps and does not hurt our world, one person at a time. I have navigated the grief journey for eight long years now. I spent my dark nights of the soul holed up in a house with four walls, and no hope of relief. I knew I couldn’t live that way forever, and so I started making changes in my life, one tiny step at a time. Five years ago, we moved here, and I was still pretty raw, but as time has passed, I have done the work it takes to heal, and I have learned about healing from many of you.

As we say goodbye to 2023, and the lessons we’ve learned, through joy or through sorrow, may we find comfort and embrace joy this season.

1 Proverbs 27: 17 (Hebrew Bible)

2 Ecclesiastes 3:4 (Hebrew Bible)

By Sherrie Cassel

How many of you have to rev up for social gatherings since your loved one died? I need a couple of days to prepare my soul for another holiday without my son, and now, without my mother. Grief touches every inch of our lives, of our past, present, and future. I tried socializing too soon after Rikki died; it was a huge mistake. I’ve learned to not lose it in public, but in the early days, I was terrified I’d have a meltdown at the first inkling of the “question” —  if I had any children. I wouldn’t even go “home” to my hometown because I couldn’t say out loud the words, “Rikki died in January”, to friends or acquaintances who hadn’t heard yet of my son’s death. I was always one second away from losing it. Everything hurt; it hurt to breathe.

As this year ends in a flurry of celebrations, there is a sense of dread amidst the glory and the glitter of the holiday season. This is the eighth year my son will be gone from my holiday table. I pray for dreams of holidays past, but I rarely dream about my son. To the extent visitations can be quantified through the scientific method, I may have had two through dreams and one, I know it sounds crazy, visitation through a vision when I was fully awake. I’m not sure if it is just the desperate imaginings of a grieving mother who longs irrationally for a connection to her child, or if, in fact, there is some spiritual longing that is temporarily fulfilled in our dreams.

I know I miss my son all the time, and I mean ALL the time, and there are times when my heart hurts so badly I withdraw from the world so I can talk myself into staying in the game, to live – out loud, to offer people who are hurting hope, to remember why I’m here, and to heal. Death takes a lot out of those who are left to grieve. Time to recharge is essential. How much time; it takes as long as it takes. I’ve met people whose lives stopped when their loved one died. I thought in my early days of grief that I would never stop aching, a throbbing, ever-present pain, deep in my soul, forever.

There is pain, but it no longer throbs; it is ever-present, but it no longer aches. The best way I can describe it is as tolerable. I’ve heard arguments from the world of addiction that there is no such thing as a functional alcoholic. An alcoholic is an alcoholic…one way or another, addiction takes one down. I’m a griever, will be one until I breathe my last. I won’t solve the addiction argument through speculation, but I do know I’m a functional griever. I miss my son every second of the day, and – I function in life. I have a job I love. I’m in school, which I love. I have friends I love. I have chosen family who bless my life. I have the perfect husband – for me, two peas in a pod, my compadre, my sidekick, my best friend, my lover, if there is such a thing as a soulmate, well, I’ve found mine.

Inasmuch as there is life after the death of a child, a spouse, a friend, a beloved pet, there is still pain we must navigate, and hopefully, it will be time from which transformation will emerge for you. Take it from me, in two short months, eight years will have passed since my Rikki died. Unbelievable. My purpose for this site was to help guide others toward a life of joy after the loss of someone close to you. For me, my loss was my only child. I sometimes have worked through my own sh*& on Grief to Gratitude, and for that, I apologize. If it helped you, thank you. If it turned you away for a day, a month, forever, I apologize, and I hope you find what you need somewhere else.

The buildup from the holidays will reach critical mass in December, a few days before Christmas, when our grandson will be here with us. As it is, I’m loving the vibe, age-old marketing and consumer rituals, Santa, Jesus, the whole shebang. I thought I’d never enjoy holidays again, and I didn’t for a few years. I really couldn’t lapse into a depression because we have our grandson every Christmas and he needs to have beautiful holidays and not one with a grandmother who’s incapacitated by grief. I get teary eyed, or I look pensively out the window, and everyone knows where I am and with whom, and they all go about their business, and give me my space.

I have a Christmas ornament with my son’s face on it which I proudly, and with strong emotions, hang on the tree each year. He’s here. He’s welcome. He’s loved, and — he is not forgotten.

Holidays are sparkly and special, but they are not so for everyone. This is a sad time of year for many; it used to be for me too. I miss my son so damn much it would probably kill me if I allowed myself to feel the loss full force. I thought I’d die in the early days – from the pain. I also wanted to die – from the pain.

But I didn’t. I’m still here. And if you’re reading this, you’re still here too, reaching out for relief, for understanding, for kinship, for relatability. I want to offer those things through my life, and through my blog(s). You see, darkness lasts through the night, but in the morning, the sun rises, and the plants awaken, and life begins to bustle, and people are on the move, living, working, loving, laughing, crying, pushing, shoving, and just trying to make it in a rough and tumble world, and in between – to catch a moment of respite.

As the holidays approach, without restraint, regardless of our emotional readiness, I wish you peace and comfort in your hearts. Memories may be all we have left of our loved one; may that be enough to sustain you through the season.

Blessings.

By Sherrie Cassel

The sky is gray and it’s getting cold in the high desert, yes, even in a dry Southern California it gets cold. I had to learn how to dress in colder climates. My brother says that a sweater is merely a suggestion in San Diego. Alas, I miss my home county, not so much my hometown. Now that my mother is gone, it’s a different town. I felt the same after my son died. I raised him in my hometown. Again, the town has become detached from me and vacant, like a stare into the Nietzschean abyss. Too many skeletons.

It’s easy to push things out of our minds and go about our business while allowing only a little time to grieve, to process, and to heal. As a veteran griever, nearly eight years, which is incomprehensible, I’m able to take time to stop and remember my boy and tap into a longing that were I to allow it on the daily, would be intolerable – so, I take my time with the time I have. Those who go into the helping professions are often the worst at taking care of themselves. I know self-care is not my strong suit.

I should probably go for a massage more often, hit the gym more than a couple time a week, walk more, eat greens and colorful food, and meditate; I would meditate through prayer to a Theos, God, if you will. My husband and I love language, science, and music. He also loves history. I haven’t had a history professor yet who has kept me awake during many a class session. How do I relax? How do I nurture myself through some tough life experiences that cause me to dysregulate, stress out, if you will. I listen to inspiring or danceable music. I read. I have amazing conversations with my husband who is way on the other side of the spectrum theologically.

I’m in awe of people who can nurture themselves, and it’s not even necessarily something you have to buy. You know, spiritual gadgetry, i.e., mala or rosary beads or any number of talismans. I have spent countless dollars on spiritual gadgetry. I have six rosaries. I have twenty different versions of the Hebrew and Christian Bibles. Commentaries, books – which made it nerve racking to move two times in five years. We downsized our books after the move. Oh, we still have a bundle, but it’s going to be more manageable when we move again. Fortunately, they went to good homes: a mental health facility in my hometown. My friend, a nurse, said the clients loved the books. The difficulty I had letting go of each one of my books caused me grief, but I got through it, and I feel less stressed about when we move again in a couple of years.

Oh yes, self-care. How do you all manage self-care, those in the helping professions, especially those in jobs with a lot of human contact? Even more so, imagine you’re an introvert in an extroverted world. How much of your limited emotional resources would you use up during a forty-hour work week? How much recovery time would you need to return to homeostasis? What kind of emotional or tangible resources would you need to bring you, me back to a balance which would enable us to reenter the macrocosm and get back to the business of helping others, leaving the world a better place than we found it, and spreading goodwill to all people. In an “I’d like to teach the world to sing” way, I firmly believe it takes every single person’s absolute best to make the world a place where children aren’t being bombed, and people aren’t fighting over religion and territory, or any number of heinous actions of which humans are capable.

I don’t mean to sound negative, because Pollyanna runs deep through my blood stream and into the chambers of my heart, however, so too does a smattering of cynicism. In life, I find achieving balance a lofty idea, but one that is difficult to maintain for lengthy periods of time. I love the geological term punctuated equilibrium. In the most rudimentary and unscientific way, tens of thousands, millions of years will pass by, and then BAM! a catastrophic event that causes dinosaurs to go extinct, fire to fall from the sky — from an angry god or … a volcano. Then, again, tens of thousands of years will go by with relative geological tranquility, millions of years, and BAM! another catastrophe, punctuated equilibrium. Balance and then a few BAMS.

I find this concept analogous to my life, and perhaps you may see yourself in the analogy. Some of us begin our lives in rough places, and the drama and the trauma seem to follow us until we stand up and take control of our minds and tell ourselves good things about ourselves. I am worthy. I am enough. I am deserving of rest and relaxation. Ahhh, you knew eventually I’d get back to it.

In one of my iterations of career choices, I wanted to be a cultural anthropologist. I also wanted to follow in Florence Nightengale’s footsteps and, Clara Barton? Oh, my sweet LORD, I wanted to be a nurse and help care for the warriors on our battlefields. In a way, I am doing that very thing. My heart has always been toward being a healer. I thought a nurse, but I do not have the stomach for, well, you know. I wanted to be an English professor, but then I saw the stacks of papers the professors in the department would leave with and say, “Well, here’s my weekend” – and thought, no, best not to tie yourself down every weekend. Sociology, anthropology, and finally, psychology, or so I thought.

I love psychology. I love all the different modalities and I love how, combined, they each have something remarkable to add to our collective knowledge. I knew, however, deep in my soul there was something else, something grander, something so filled with love and grace that it would be transcendent for me – and then, for others, too. I wanted to help those who feel soulless to get acquainted with their soul(s). Some people don’t believe we have a soul. Some people believe we are spiritual beings imprisoned by the human body. There are any number of ways to believe about a numinous thing that animates us all, individually, and separately. If we’re not able to calm our brain during crises, or stressful moments, or if our lives are presenting us with one crisis after another, it’s difficult to be in touch with the ~soul~ part of our consciousness.

I’ve said only today out loud that my work is stabilizing for a life with a few challenges right now. I’m home for two weeks and this gives me some time to decompress from two days of harried traffic to a job I absolutely love, and then of course, the COVID years continue to bleed into our current day experiences. I was in our home with a life and raising a grandson for about six months. My world existed of my husband, my cats, our grandson, and myself – for three years. My social skills atrophied. I did almost an entire program virtually through two prominent universities. I didn’t step into a classroom, my preferred method of learning, for three years!

I need time from even two days of human contact outside my comfort zone to recover, recharge, and rediscover a workable equilibrium. I used to be out in the world every day, busy, bustling, and frantic, so to go from a bee to a sloth and then revving up to be back out in the world, although changed forever, still hoppin’ on most days. We learn and unlearn and relearn for our entire lives. I was trained to be delightful – laugh, clown, laugh, in the face of a family so rife with dysfunction they have books written about us, and maybe yours too.

As the hands of time tick away and one day changes into the next, there is so much to experience. Some people will have more hard times than others, but “in every life a little rain must fall.” None of us is exempt from challenges and crises; they provide a measurement of our growth or regression. Life can be assaultive at times too. This is why self-care is so important. I urge others to carve out some time to breathe, to veg, to decompress from whatever keeps you busy and away from your favorite places, favorite people, and favorite things.

After having COVID for two weeks, I have risen from the sick bed to deep gratitude for feeling well again. I listened to my body, and although I consider a nap to be a non-productive decadence, I took them as my body urged me to rest. I engaged in self-care during COVID, and I hope now I will take my own advice and rest after a physical, emotional, or spiritual crisis. My track record has not been great in this area of my life.

My husband and I have a busy schedule for the next two weeks, and I will do my best to take some time to breathe in between moments of living life to the hilt with friends and family and recuperating. Life moves quickly, and we get caught up in our maelstroms sometimes and we can’t see a way to exit, but good days are ahead. I don’t know how soon they will get to you, to me, but they’re on the horizon, and we’ll travel along for a while, and then BAM.

Today I will listen to songs that inspire and enlighten me. I’ll read something amazing, maybe some Flannery O’Connor, and I will nap if my body tells me to. I wish you each the discipline to take care of yourselves in the most loving and nurturing way you can.