Grief to Gratitude

By Sherrie Ann Cassel

What is it about death that transforms reality into an idealization of a person who has passed; it’s almost like we send them off to heaven with our transcendent image of their sainthood. That is how it happens. As Rikki’s momma, I have collected every wound I ever caused him, and sadly, I collect all the wounds that anyone else had ever caused for him. I let them go, a little at a time. No one is perfect, certainly not I. My beautiful and tortured son was not perfect. He was perfect for me, and had he had his druthers, he could have chosen far better than I to be his primary caretaker/parent. I’ve been a wreck for much of my life. I’m grateful to be on this side of 5150 now.

I cannot expound upon the urgency of counseling enough, especially before you enter a long-term relationship where progeny is a consideration. Nip the family dysfunction in the bud. Refuse to buy into the family mythology – the one that suggests everything is fine, when clearly it has never been.

I’ve watched my mother elevate my father — in death — to the status of a great man. In life he was a dreadful father and husband. No one is perfect, and some of us are so far from mid-center of perfection, that life is always upstream … with a steep incline … and in our dysfunction, we drag those whom we love, especially those we love, upstream with us.

I’ve learned the very necessary lesson of self-forgiveness. As Maya Angelou said, “When you know better, you do better.” Ain’t that the truth? Sometimes, if you’re very lucky, you get to make amends to someone who is still living, if you’ve behaved horridly or hurt him or her. But how do you make amends to someone who has died?

Can you?

I’m seven and a half years into the grieving process for my beautiful son, Rikki. During those seven and a half years, I frequently suffered from mad insomnia. I had ample time to rehash, replay, and repent the way I hurt my son. Regret and guilt are natural outgrowths of grief. Did I love him enough? Did I say it enough? Did I show him that he was loved? Did he know how fucked up I was? Then — after we self-flagellate we learn to let go.

When you know better, you do better.

I believe, some days, in a heaven, maybe out of desperation to see my son again, to hold him, to kiss him on the forehead, to tell him how much I miss him, and to hear all about his utter joy over the past seven and a half years. Is heaven a placebo? I’ll find out one day, I suppose. But letting go of guilt, self-blame, and shame over past behavior is so utterly necessary that without doing so will guarantee that we enjoy life very limitedly. The world is our oyster, and inside, is the pearl of great price. We earn it, hard.

If you’ve hurt someone and the relationship is worth it to you, make amends. Sometimes we aren’t forgiven, and that really hurts, but live with a clear conscience. When you do that, the world opens up for you, and your heart fills with love for all living things, and joy is attainable. First, you must let go of the guilt and release the regret. Stand up straight and own your shit, but then move past it and claim a life of amazing possibilities for joy, happiness, emotional soundness, and unending love for yourself.

Forgive yourself. Life passes by so quickly; Rikki was only thirty-two. I remember once I told him that his problem was that he was too kind to people who hurt him, and he said, “Momma, if the worst thing people can say about me when I die is that I was too kind, then I’ve lived a good life.” A good, short life. Maybe after someone dies, we let them off the hook for any infractions, small or monumental. I forgave my father for his many assaults on our family. I still haven’t forgiven my ex-husband, Rikki’s biological father. There are a few people, including myself, whose dysfunction hurt my boy, and I’ve forgiven all of them with few exceptions. The ex has a lot for which to answer. But that is no longer here nor there. There is no need to be in any kind of relationship with him. Some things are just unforgivable. You’ll know when it happens to you, or if you’ve ever made a blunder from which there is no return. It happens. We’re not perfect, and those of us who were raised in chaos and horror, are really not perfect. Even in self-awareness, our road is uphill, until we reach the pinnacle that Maslow called self-actualization.

I look at people through the lens of understanding now. Had we been loved well and nurtured lovingly with concern for our well-being, and not to make our parents look good, we would have, in turn, loved better, and been kinder to those we love…instead of avenging our wounds at the expense of others. Bessel van der Kolk, world-prominent traumatologist said, “Traumatized people traumatize people.” One of my professors borrowed the sentence and made it more accessible to the masses when she changed the word traumatize to hurt, e.g., Hurt people hurt people.

My son and I ran the gamut of dysfunction. We had a lot to say to each other before he died. Family dysfunction is common in the United States. I grew up in it. My son grew up in it. My parents grew up in it. Historical trauma can be carried into successive generations, to the fourth generation; seems I read that somewhere. My son and I also had plenty of time to say “goodbye” and…”I’m sorry.”

A friend of mine turned me on to the Akashic Records. I don’t know its history or culture of origin, but I do know that it’s like an ancient empty chair experience. I’m sorry. Please forgive me. I love you. Those are the sentences to be said as you listen for the voice of your loved one to speak to you from their place of peace. I found it to be very healing. I think the better you know someone, the better able you are to anticipate with accuracy what your loved one would say to you. I got Rikki loud and clear. He was my son, after all. We thought like each other. We hurt like each other. We loved each other, fiercely.

Have I idealized my son? No. Again, he was my son, replete with dysfunction and brokenness. I was fortunate that I had the opportunity to make amends before he died, and he with me. He was not — as I am not — perfect, but he was, as I am, fearfully and wonderfully made.

Sometimes we learn to love ourselves later in life; sadly, some people never learn to love themselves at all. Don’t be one of those people. Find something to love, something to pour that love into — art, philanthropy, people, and of course, yourself. Those things are only possible when we are unencumbered by guilt, regret, rage, sadness, and a victim mentality. Rikki loved so many things and people. He was beautiful and broken, but toward the end of his life, he knew the healing power of forgiveness. He didn’t hold grudges. He always reached for understanding before jumping to judgment. He taught me about those things, and if I can be a bit histrionic, his life changed mine. His death is shaping me still.

Grief is lifelong.

If you’re in my circle, and you hurt my son, he would try to understand what happened to you to make you strike out at him and others rather than cast you aside. He’d give you chance after chance after chance, until it was necessary to put up a wall for self-protection. I strive for the same understanding, and I extend my momma’s heart in love when I tell you, “All is understood, so all is forgiven.” Rikki and I are grateful for the great times and the happy memories. So, don’t fret. Let it go and set yourself free to be better than you were when you hurt him or hurt someone else.

Make amends with your loved ones, even those who are no longer present with us. Light a candle. Do a ritual at the beach, or some place sacred to the two of you. Talk to them. Weep and then forgive yourself. My son loved to see people happy. Every picture I have of him is him smiling or laughing. He wasn’t perfect. I remember one time he said, “Momma, you know what my pet peeve is?” And, I retorted, “One among your infinitely many?” We laughed for twenty minutes!

See, I could have wept for seven and a half years for the ways I fucked up with my son, and I did weep for quite some time, but life kept beckoning me to grab hold, to stay with the living, to be grateful for the time and the lessons with my son, to be present for his son, to be present for myself, to forgive myself. If I can’t be present for myself, then I can’t be present for anyone else, and I have people in my life who adore me and who I love with all my broken heart.

Please find a way to move forward and to claim a life of amazing possibilities to do amazing things in this life. Dedicate those things to the ones you love. Honor your loved one with the life you wish you could have had with him or with her.

Life has changed for me – forever. I’m not the same person who raised my son. Before he died, we were out walking our pit, Lily, and I told Rikki, “Boo, I’m not the hardass who raised you.” His response, a chip off the ol’ block was, “I know Momma. You’ve changed.”

If you must shoulder regret, carry it only as far as it helps you to build emotional muscle and then drop the weight and move through the rest of your life with your newfound strength, free from regret and/or guilt. Life’s a few short trips around the sun. The past no longer needs to be prologue; the past contains lessons for how to improve ourselves. Own them. Inculcate them. Allow them to change you, and in turn, you’ll be able to help change the dynamics in your family and in your other relationships, especially those which are hurtful and over-the-top dysfunctional. Sometimes, for self-preservation, it becomes necessary to walk away from a person because the cost to your self-esteem, emotional safety, and your heart is too much to ask of anyone.

But for the love you once held for those you’ve hurt the most — here, say it with me.

“I’m sorry.”

“Forgive me.”

“I love you.”

by Sherrie Cassel

The temperature in the high desert is only 84 degrees F. It’s perfect, no humidity, sunny, bright, and just beautiful; it matches my mood. See, I’ve had a long stretch of good days. I can’t remember the last time I cried. Oh certainly, I miss my sweet boy every second of the day, but…I no longer mourn every day, which is to say I don’t sob every day, or sit with a vacant stare for hours on end. I’m able to function with high levels of social skills again, perhaps with an enhanced amount of compassion.  Losing an only child, I’ve been to the rock bottom of hell; I know a thing or two about pain that is transformational and transcendental. Yes, the weather reflects my current mood.

I know grief is a lifetime sentence; it comes in small waves and sometimes it comes in tsunamis. Either way, losing someone you love to the permanence of death, is a seismic event in one’s life. I can be going about my business when something will catch my attention and my focus is on something my amazing son said or did, or how he made me and everyone else laugh, or how he laughed. Something will catch my attention and I feel a physical pang in the organ of my heart, and in the metaphor for the seat of love, and a tender spot that can be broken. I still get catches in my breath when I have a trigger, e.g., a reminder of a person, place, thing, or memory that elicits a reaction. I swear a heart pang feels physical. I’ve three times gone to the emergency room thinking I was having a heart attack, but fortunately, it was just a panic attack.

People don’t think that panic and grief go hand in hand; but they do. I remember at an Al Anon meeting, my sponsor told me that I wasn’t afraid that my son would die, but that I was afraid of how I’d feel once he passed away. Triggers work the same way, at least they do for me. Something catches your attention, and it elicits a reaction, a heart pang, for example, a catch in your breath, the welling up of tears in your eyes. The reactions can be expressed in any number of ways. On an angelversary or a birthday, the panic begins a few days before the day. I’m generally okay until I see the date, and I never know how I’m going to feel on special days, so I try to not plan anything on them. In seven years, I’ve had some commemoration for my son. One year, we all smoked a couple puffs from his favorite flavored cigar, right at 5:55 p.m., the time he died. I found that to be very comforting. I haven’t done anything since. For me, I find it best to be alone with memories of my son, and my husband to lean on should I lose it and need an ear and a hug. I light a candle and keep it burning all day and all night. I refuse to look at the clock until I’m reasonably certain 5:55 p.m. has passed – and I made it through – another year.

People tell me I’m strong; some people have even told me I’m the strongest person they know. Well, losing a child doesn’t compare to, say, a holocaust survivor, but then comparisons of pain are really not quite fair, are they? Each of us carries our own burdens, by accident or by self-infliction. I’ve had a fair number of both. So, strong? Resilient? Flourishing in the face of a world that is neither fair nor unfair, but subject to the law of random chance, a comet hitting earth or another planet and decimating it. Man is scarcely able to comprehend his own extinction. I get it too as a grieving mother; how do you manage to continue on with your life when you’ve lost someone who meant the entire world to you? The extinction of someone you’ve had the most intimate of relationships, for me, it was my son, who I carried for nine months, who shared my DNA, both actually and figuratively.

If neuropathology defines the disease of our neural pathways, including those in the brain, then what entity defines the damage done to our consciousness. Grief is a natural byproduct of the human condition as we deal with death on a daily basis, but at some point, grief can become pathological, if not attended to through spiritual guidance and/or psychological and psychiatric help. I’ve been sharing my son’s story for seven years. I’ve peripherally discussed what it’s been like to lose a child, to grieve a child, to work through, blood, sweat, and tears, to heal, to transform, and to transcend grief, and learn to flourish in spite of the pain that I’m aware of each time I think about my son not being here for me to be a part of his life, and to have him be a part of mine – never again. Some days I actually do believe in heaven. Some days everything hurts, and everything is a trigger.

The DSM-V (the bible for the helping professions in the social and behavioral sciences) states that grief that lasts longer than two weeks is major depressive disorder (…). Those who study grief and have significant academic creds behind their names, have also stated that after a few more weeks, months, years, is what is referred to as complicated grief. I thought I was tough. I’ve had to be a hard ass most of my life; well, I don’t anymore, thanks to my adoring husband. The appearance of strength can be an illusion. I don’t think I’d call resilience strength though either.

The ability to transcend the things that hurt us is a gift; it allows us to flourish – sometimes after flailing for a time, but self-awareness and language are the pinnacle achievements of humanity, in my opinion. Without language, I would not have been able to create a grief narrative, to make sense of my pain, to find out who I am despite the chaos or trauma I’ve experienced in my life, to become self-aware. When you know who you are, healing takes place more rapidly, in my experience. I have access to several grief sites, including one I manage. I’ve been running my blogs for nearly seven years. In some of the blogs, there are people I’ve seen soar off to do amazing things with their lives; one woman leads a grief group in her community now. Some of us have gone back to college and gotten degrees. Some have found tremendous purpose in their lives, in spite of their losses. Sadly, in seven years, and no one can really say how long one should grieve, but there should come a time when the pain becomes less intense, more tolerable, excluding the occasional trigger reaction(s). There should be a resumption of life, often far more life-enhancing than before the loss.

I admit, I bled out every chance I had to tell my son’s story. I was a desperate woman on a mission to shout out to the world that those who struggle with addiction are people too, with hearts, souls, consciousness, feelings, ideas, and not bad people; it was important to me to be my son’s post-mortem PR. He was my prince, damn it! I purged about my pain until I was tired of hearing about it. I’m fortunate I have friends and family who, if they were tired of hearing about my loss, never let on and listened, and brought me food, and loved me through it. I hope you all have people in your life who are truly present for you when you need them to be.

I cannot emphasize this enough, but only because it was something I failed to do, you must reach out and ask for help, from clergy or another type of healer. I sat on the couch for three-and-a-half years staring into space accomplishing nothing. In my defense, I did reach out to psychologists, but found of the four I went to after Rikki died, none of them had training in grief; it matters. Those in early grief may not be able to function in a wholesome life in the beginning. The pain may be too great to bear without some assistance: monitored medication, meditation, narrative therapy, ad infinitum. Some of us are better equipped to bounce back than others, even those who have experienced a great deal of chaos and trauma.

People tend to see only grief when they become aware of the fact that someone has lost a loved one whose loss is like losing a limb. They see a huge, flashing neon light that says GRIEF with several exclamation points. I’m not strong; I’m emotionally sound. I’m not strong; I’ve worked hard to reclaim a life whose urgent plea is that it is to be lived, fully, in the face of some of our greatest losses.

Just as I was the desperate mother telling her son’s story posthumously, I’m now desperate to tell another one, the story in which the saddest protagonist awakens to herself and finds her kin-dom within, that place where we are all one and whole, wherever that place may be…glimpses here of a future after death? I don’t play roulette with the God of my understanding (GOMU). I guess I’ll know for certain at one second after the white light carries me off into its eternal warmth, or it will that be that, and the hellish things of this world will finally be over. Who knows? What I do know is that those of us in grief are not one dimensional. Like the person who struggles with addiction, we have multi-faceted, multi-dimensional personalities too. We are not only our grief, and when it’s time to make your warrior cry that says you can see beyond your grief, do it loudly. People who are in the early stages of grief need to hear your narrative. People who have yet to find tolerable levels of grief pain, need to hear your story and about how you’re coping.

Grief is a journey; it’s not one we chose to be on, but if you’re on it, you’re on it, and you know how crazy the roads can be, windy and dark, blinding in the sunset, and blinding when it rises, loud like metal rock in a Guantanamo cell, and sometimes quiet, barely audible. Navigating grief doesn’t make me strong; it is just another illustration of how helpful and necessary therapy is. Again and again and again, I say that healing takes place in proportion to one’s emotional health. I had to stop asking, “Why me?” and start asking, “What now?” What now gave me the opportunity to find purpose in my life, and I found that being of service to humanity is where I will best use my gifts. Being able to navigate grief successfully, reframing your narrative from the “Why me?” narrative to the “Now what? What can I do to make a difference?” is an obvious way to measure a person’s emotional health and healing.

Grief is ever-present, and it brings into focus the bittersweetness of life, every little ol’ thing in life. For the autumn trees to turn into acres of flaming leaves, the leaves must separate from their life force, and die. A baby is born; an old man dies. Each having value in this life, bringing joy and one day, sadness. I loved my son actively for thirty-two years, and I love him still, just differently, still prominently, just differently.

The wind is blowing, and the temperature has come down; it’s sunny and just a stunning day, in all ways that make for a good day. The birds were chirping this morning, and the squirrels were eating the food we leave out for the rabbits. I saw a couple of road runners running up our dirt road. I had coffee with a friend. We laughed and talked about the future. Who knew one day I’d be looking ahead – without my son, without my precious, precious boy? I save my meltdowns like I used to save my sick days. I get around to taking one or two after too many days of being strong.

My son and I were perusing the aisles at the grocery store we used to frequent, and we were talking about his soon-to-be (at the time ex-wife). I said to Rikki, “You know what your problem is? You’re too kind.” He responded, “Momma, if the worst thing that someone has to say about me when I’m dead is that I was too kind, I’ll take that.”

I wish I could say what my legacy will be; my son’s was kindness. I’m not ready to cash it in just yet. I still have so much to do. And driven, yes, I’d like for that to be said about me too.

From Ben Cassel

Here’s the Sherrie story: The rules don’t always apply.

The rule that says that your formal education ends when one’s hair is still influenced by melanin? That doesn’t apply.

The rule that says you have to figure out what you want to be when you grow up and THEN grow up? That doesn’t apply.

The rule that one’s relationship with a higher power must be traditional and dictated by others based on their own experiences and interpretations of the world? THAT one REALLY doesn’t apply.

There are lots of others that don’t apply, either.

One rule does, though: She is a model of Bobby Kennedy’s “Some people see things as they are and say ‘Why?’ I dream things that never were and say ‘Why not?’”

Today, during a break in her pursuit of a graduate degree, she turns 61. She learns more stuff all the time – but her innate intelligence and the wisdom born of pain and triumph are enough for a wall full of degrees and gowns and hoods and cowls.

I am an atheist, but not an observant one: I read the Bible for the metaphors and characters that are the foundations of our civilization. Besides, I was an English major, and we have to come to terms with the Bible, Shakespeare, and – if one is an American — Walt Whitman. Among my favorite stories in the Bible is that of the Widow’s Mite.

Jesus watched as the rich hypocrites came in to the temple and — with flourishes and lots of noise — gave to the temple large sums of money. This was their surplus, the EXTRA money that they had from manipulating and victimizing the poor and needy. And one of those victimized people, an aging widow, made her offering of two mites – an amount worth the same as the least valuable Roman coin.

Her sacrifice was greater. I picture her moving slowly toward the place of the offerings, trying to be unobtrusive as she offers her pittance. But Jesus honored her gift far more than those of the hypocrites who trumpeted their gifts, which represented very little sacrifice at all.

Many years ago, I gave Sherrie a pendant with a widow’s mite. I wanted to show her that I recognized her spirit of giving, of sacrifice. Indeed, they are the foundation of who she is.

Happy birthday, my love.

By Sherrie Ann Cassel

“For everything there is a season and a time for every purpose under heaven” Ecclesiastes 3:1. Every generation has its utopian visions of potential panaceas for what have been the most consequential blights on its seasons. What would Dr. Spock say to the new generation of those who consciously parent today. Would Skinner still believe it’s enough to model good corporate behavior, a handshake and a formal address to the young man or the young woman who will go out into the world and know how to treat someone corporately, but still miss the mark relationally?

I want to talk about how trendy and marketable grief has become. With hundreds of thousands of books about grief, one scarcely knows where to begin to reach out for relief. In some ways, it is comforting to have a plethora of resources, and in some, when your brain is in grief fog, too many options can be overwhelming. Grief certificate programs abound, and the pendulum is now swinging in the direction of compassion, vulnerability, and an emotionally sound expression of love for everyone; as REM says, “Everybody hurts sometimes.” In my undergraduate psych program, we talked a lot about being “trauma-informed” – and approaching our care receivers with the kind of care that assumes they’ve been through some shit, and most of us have; some have experiences with the capital S and some with the lower-case s. Indeed, everybody hurts sometimes.

There’s a Nouwen book called THE WOUNDED HEALER, which really speaks to me. To use a combat metaphor of a wounded soldier (I grew up in the shadow of the Vietnam war – war metaphors were wildly popular in the formation of my worldview). With the application of trauma-informed practices in the lives of others for whom I will provide spiritual care, I’m now free to apply the trauma-informed approach to my own inner-work, my spiritual battle toward wholeness, in a world of busyness and inauthenticity.  A country sends its military personnel to basic training, to learn the strategies of war, if need be. Along the way, they may incur emotional and sometimes physical injury. Sometimes those injuries strengthen them to be the best possible Soldier, Marine, Sailor, Airman they can be. Sometimes those in military training don’t make it, and so they leave with complex PTSD, or they die in our inane wars, even in 2023.

Pat Benatar has a song called, “Love is a battlefield.” I don’t think love should be, but I know life often is. For all of us wounded healers, it behooves us to continue our healing journeys through qualified self-help channels. I no longer writhe in my challenging childhood; it happened, and I survived, and I was fortunate to have therapy for many years as I waded through the detritus of my childhood and pulled out the gems that could be found. I never grieved my childhood, consciously. I acted out from the brokenness, but I hadn’t really worked out the “issues” in narrative form. In one of my classes this semester, I read a line in a text that said, “All trauma is preverbal.” I didn’t have the words to create a narrative for my challenging childhood, but I do now. I also have the words that heal me from the dysfunction in which I was raised.

I don’t think it’s enough for me to heal, although I am forever indebted to the educational provisions in the United States, and forever indebted to the psychological and psychiatric communities for their constant research into how to teach us to self-soothe in healthy ways, and how to resurrect ourselves from the entombment of a wretched or problematic childhood, or relationship. Many have heard about posttraumatic stress disorder. We all carry it within us to some degree. Perhaps, and this is just my hypothesis, grief is a response to PTSD, the kind for which we have no words, the kind that is deeply embedded in the part of our brain that longs for voice. When I was in the social work program, we learned about posttraumatic growth. If we can flail in life, then we can also flourish. But how do we get there? Grief is a disorder du jour, but it’s nothing new. Each generation, and each organism demonstrates grieving/mourning rituals, and this is a quantifiable fact. I can’t speak to the “emotional” climate that animates the grief cycle, but some cry, some become stoic, some retreat, some bury, some cremate, some flail and some flourish as they prepare for new life, allegorically and in actuality. Transcendence stories abound because we are a tenacious species, even, and maybe especially those who come from backgrounds of bloodied, slivered glass; we grow in proportion to our greatest tragedies.

When my son died, I was an absolute wreck. I ached systemically. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t breathe on occasion from convulsive sobs. I couldn’t find comfort. We each have a grief trajectory, and our own ability to heal ourselves is in direct proportion to our emotional wellness. Have we processed previous grief experiences sufficiently? Are there layers of unhealed parts that need to be voiced before we can truly grieve the current all-consuming grief? I recognize, now after seven years of research into my own grief, that I was experiencing complicated grief, not unlike complicated PTSD. When we’ve incurred many traumas, we need to find a qualified psychological or spiritual care provider to guide us to the other side of our trauma/pain, to disentangle us from those things that keep us tethered to a painful past and that prevent us from forming relationships with safe others.

I’ve spent the better half of my life in and out of therapy. I asked my professor how in the world do you take someone who’s a mess like I was and untangle them, and he said, “You take them where they are” (Lee, 2023). I don’t want to rain on anyone’s parade or deter revenue into going into the pockets of those who have written books on grief that have been wildly successful. I’ve read many of them. But grief is not a mystery; it’s an inevitability, just as assuredly as are life and death. Grief hurts a great deal, and then sometimes, great pearls of wisdom can be pried from the clutches of deep, inconsolable grief, and when we are able to normalize that grief, we can be a healed healer and show others the hope that lurks around every corner of the healing path.

For me, grief has been both a blessing and a curse. I have never been more self-aware than I am now — since my son’s death. I worked on the process because my tripartite soul longed for homeostasis, normalcy, mundanity, healing. I was tired of being in pain. The acceptance that my son was not coming back to this life with me was an adjustment period that shook my universe. I begged. I bargained. I dabbled in unreality. My son was gone, but I’m still here. What do you do with that?

You make a choice: to flail or to flourish.

There are few times in life when self-preservation is not seen as selfishness: grief provides us with an opportunity to do some deep healing work. Before I could see past the grief, I had to ask myself why I felt the need to blame myself for Rikki’s death, for all the things that ever hurt him. Somehow, I needed to grovel toward the gods of punishment before I could move on. Perhaps the darkest part of grief serves some adaptive purpose. “For everything there is a season and a time for every purpose under heaven.” When a loss occurs, for a chunk of time, there will be a time of mourning rituals, tears, wakes, burning of belongings, etc. I read that ants bury their dead in a graveyard, and then, they get back to the work for which they were created. What were you created for? How can your healed healer make the world a better place?

Oh, we’ll grieve, loudly, silently, sometimes barely perceptively, but we will grieve in our lifetime. I like reasons, explanations, some understanding of correlations and causality, and maybe it’s just those with consciousness that grieve to the depths that we do. If you haven’t found your medium yet to voice your grief narrative, start doing some research into where your grief tapes are coming from. My voices told me that I was singularly responsible for the death of my son. Upon painstaking research into my past, my embedded theologies, and the building blocks of my constructed worldview, I’ve let myself off the hook. I first had to self-flagellate before I began to see that I wasn’t being punished or paying my just desserts for the broken mother I was to my beautiful boy. Shit happens, pardon the street language, but it does.

The Good News I share today is that life goes on, we ache, and we rejoice. If you’re still stuck in grief after years, unable to move forward, you’re probably dealing with complicated grief. I strongly urge you to get into therapy, read about grief, read about healing from grief, and find something to pour all the love you have for your lost one into something generative, something purposeful. Why are you here?

Grief has gone viral, but it’s still a topic we’re afraid to touch, perhaps, especially in first world countries whose focus is on the capitalistic sunny side of the street. No time for sadness. No time for grief. And yet, processing grief is so important. How can you truly be free if you’re carrying around the dead weight of a person, place, or thing who or that needs to be released so you can help others rediscover their mojo, or perhaps discover it for the first time. We’re all a little broken, but we’re all equally healable.

What happens after we die? Where do we go? Is there life after death? Why do people die? Why did my son die? The questions that emit from the death experience are plentiful, and the answers to those questions are exercises in our uniqueness to work through the guts and the gore of grief on our way toward grace. Grief is a manageable task; it just takes time. When we realize we are not at the mercy of our emotions, we can control the intensity of our emotions, and we can move forward in our lives.

I was at the mercy of my complicated grief for three-and-a-half years. I was completely immobile. I sat and cried three-and-a-half years away. At the 3.5 mark, after reading extensively about grief, I began the most expansive journey of self-exploration. I’ll never regret the time I was in despair; how do you lose a child and remain stoic? I couldn’t. I stagnated. I gained fifty pounds. I had no social contact with friends and scarcely family. In retrospect, I was well prepared for the pandemic after three-and-a-half years of social isolation. But the point is, I awakened one morning and took stock of my life. I was only 55 when I woke up from the loss of my son. I went back to school to get my bachelor’s degree and then I went way back and got my associate degree, and now I’m one class away from my master’s degree and applying to the Ph.D. program. I also lost the weight I had gained to protect myself from the full impact of the pain from losing Rikki.

I woke up and since the day I realized that I mete out the grief when I have time, or when something triggers the grief, things have gotten better. Grief and mourning are two different phenomena, in my opinion. Grief is the state of mind and mourning is the action that stems from a terrific loss. If you’re in grief, this is a good time to research the many books that have been written about grief. Journal, paint, sing, write your own book. My son died from complications of substance use disorder. I have a blog that is specifically for parents who have lost a child to addiction, context matters. Find a group that speaks to your specific loss. My grief group on Facebook, After the Storm has saved me on many occasions. I’m a veteran griever at the seven-year mark, but I still have my days and nights when the loss howls through my soul and I miss my son beyond all comprehension, but I turn to my group, or my husband, or I go inward and self-soothe, in emotionally healthy ways, until I’m okay again to come out and rejoin the living.

After you’ve healed from the broken healer, share your healed healer with others. The world will get better when we collectively grieve the “sins” of the fathers and mothers, at the global and at the familial level, from genocide to domestic violence.

If you’re deep in grief now, just know that at some point you will be able to control the time, the place, and the intensity, but first you must just go through the tough times. I don’t know if ant consciousness allows for emotionality about the grief process, but I do see the value of their death rituals, burying their dead in a place allotted for the dead, and then heading back into the fold to fulfill their life’s purpose.

I hope this makes sense. I’m an avid reader of social and behavioral sciences and of theology. Since I’m out of school for the summer, I’ve been reading like a maniac, but there comes a time when you must put down the book and formulate your own ideas. Ideas aren’t meant to be put under a bushel, so to speak, but to be shared in your families, communities, and countries.

Your grief story is important. When you’re ready, please tell it; it matters. I had a woman who sought me out after reading a poem I wrote about my son’s addiction years. She said she just had to know me because I was telling her story. Others have told mine. We’re all in this together.

Namaste.

By Sherrie Ann Cassel

Here I am smack dab in a moment of clarity. Don’t worry; it won’t last. They never do. Thirty years ago, I was listening to the Counting Crows, AUGUST AND EVERYTHING AFTER. Adam’s reckless voice and unbridled passion were all the rage, an echo of neo-masculinity whose response would be Alanis Morrisette’s warrior cry. I was in close relationship with St. Jude, over a lost cause I was “dating”, but life had no real complications, save poverty and low self-esteem. Things have certainly changed since that devolution.

It seems I’ve always been in school. It’s not just the goal of seeing the letters Ph.D., after my name, or hearing someone call me Dr. Cassel, it’s about the journey. It’s about how much better my life is today because of education, the education I’m privileged to be getting in community colleges and universities, in seminary, and through the education I get through life experience, if I’m paying attention. How best do I do that? I don’t allow myself to get stuck in the past and I work hard to live mostly in the present moment, because tomorrow will take care of itself, and truly, there is nothing that can be done about the past moments, especially those moments that have defined us. We are the sum of our parts, see Richard Schwartz, the founder of Internal Family Systems; a fascinating modality.

I’m listening to AUGUST AND EVERYTHING AFTER right now during my “me” time. The world is much different than it was only thirty years ago. The world has changed. My country has changed. I’ve changed. You’ve changed. The laws of nature, the laws of physics operate without too much conscious interference by man. There are some things I’m glad to know we don’t yet have answers about. I get bored very easily; I need a mystery. I’m also a lover of science, so when my mysteries are explained away through logic and empirical data, I revise and adapt. I do not consider this as defeat. I consider it merely a shifting of a personal paradigm, an expansion of my worldview. There were times when I was threatened by having my positions challenged, living in a dualistic world that separated its constituents into the rights and the wrongs, into winners and into losers.

There’s a whole world of gray in need of exploration; necessity is indeed the mother of all invention. Brainstorming from all the memes that come flying out at you from the opaque uncertainty of developing thoughts yields a lifetime of possibilities. So much [does] depend on a red wheelbarrow, William Carlos Williams. Was your wheelbarrow constructed of the sturdiest and finest wood, pure metals, buffed to a shimmery candy apple red. Was it loved into existence, or was it put together on the anvil of a broken builder’s distortions of love? How do you know? Oh, you know. I was in a class one evening and I made the comment that there are people walking around in life who live unconsciously. A colleague said, “If a person were walking around unconsciously, I’d get her to the hospital immediately.” Some people take things literally. I meant that there are many people who walk through their lives without any sense of self-awareness. They have no idea why they behave the way they do. They know at some level that things are not working, but they don’t know how to give themselves what they want, a tranquil life, enough to pay the bills, to enjoy one’s life, a partner who is willing to go the distance through all of life’s storms and sunny skies, or the intention to live an unpartnered life, one that is satisfying and filled with wonder.

I’m learning to get my head out of the sky from time to time so I can manage life from a practical and not merely a theoretical perspective. I have a summer off before I apply to the Ph.D. program, an actual summer … a whole summer off to heal, to read for fun, to write, and to do the water aerobics class this summer, and to care for my 81-year-old mother who will be recovering from breast cancer surgery. The summer will fly by and I hope to intentionally have some good times with my friends and family.

We did an assignment in my Trauma & Grace class this spring semester where we had a chart that was supposed to reflect how well we did at self-care throughout the semester. The class was intense, superb, but intense. Needless to say, this spiritual care provider in training, did a piss poor job at self-care this semester, and as a result, I got sick three times with the flu! But I did a lot of intentional living. I spent some of my time wisely, and some, well, I lived fully in the moments of some bad choices, but my body is not as young or as resilient as it once was when I used to drink all night, the town “barfly” – and then got up and did an aerobics class at six a.m.! That was me?! Yep, once upon a motivated self time. Where did she go? She wakes up from her hibernation in the spring and stays alert and intentional until mid-November, then like Persephone, she retreats to the netherworld where she can think uninterrupted, and she reads, researches, and writes.

I no longer languish over my challenging childhood like I once did. I know what I remember and I know what I know and have worked through most of it. I’ve taken the chaos stew of my pre-verbal and scarcely verbal childhood and created a victory narrative. I waited a long time for “normal”. I didn’t know what it looked like and so I had no idea how to create it for myself or for my son. I kept choosing cowards or clowns, and it wasn’t until many years in therapy and meeting my current husband, that I began to know what a healthy love for another person is. My husband is inordinately patient; he taught high school for nearly forty years! He loves me wholesomely and he is the smartest man I know. I love having a person with top notch conversational skills sit across from me at the breakfast table every day. I love having friends who are deep and soulful, alive with rapid production of units of information, from recipes to the biopsychosocialspiritual explanations for human behavior from the most magnificent to the most base.

I love that I can talk with my husband about anything. My son was also a tremendous conversationalist. We talked for hours, often into the wee hours of the morning, then we’d wash our faces, brush our teeth, and head out to breakfast in some Mexican café that served menudo and micheladas and we’d listen to the Mexican vocal artist on the television and catching a phrase here or there, congratulate ourselves on holding on to a piece of our heritage. Una mas, por favor, as we raised our emptying glasses. Always a celebration, for every little ol’ thing.

Oh yes, “normal” – what is normal? Without getting a rise out of anyone, I can speak only for myself. Normal to me is a life in which there is no intentional pain; normal yields life enhancing activities, for the individual and for her consequent relationships. Normal thought processes provide the resources to choose symbiotically for itself from others who are in a good head and heart space to offer from her abundance of emotional resources rather than from her scarcity. Trust me, I was the latter for a very long time, until I got the help I needed. Therapy: I cannot emphasize it enough. Find a way to love and nurture yourselves. I see so many people give themselves crappy lives because they have no real ability to choose good life travelers to accompany them for a short while, or a long while, and so they keep choosing partners who have no surplus of healthy emotional resources to share with them. History repeats itself until one day, it doesn’t. I pray those I love who aren’t there yet get there quickly, more quickly than I did. Life is short. One day you’re having a baby … and the next day you’re burying him. Not to be morbid, but I’ll be sixty-one in a couple of weeks. I’ve had quite a run, from barely conscious to self-aware, from an anemia of emotional resources to a cornucopia of abundance. Getting from a mentality of scarcity to one of satisfaction and even transcendence has been a long journey, and I am loving all the lessons I can apply in my life, and in my relationships. Some lessons I’m loving a little less than others, but each lesson is helping me to grow toward the best and most wholesome version of myself.

I like the word “wholesome” – as opposed to “high-risk behavior.” High risk behavior can be anything from smoking to genocide; there’s those shades of gray again. There are so many ways to express our lives through our behavior. I have people tell me I have a great life. I have a partner who is truly my best friend and someone with whom I am passionately in love. We could always use more money, but we are doing fine in the areas of our lives that really matter to us, so we accept with gratitude the things we have, a roof over our heads, food, a comfortable bed to sleep in, minds that are hungry for knowledge. We are both student and teacher to one another, always in flux, because we are constantly learning about ourselves and our world. Love that doesn’t hurt? who knew?

Having the mindset that an attitude of gratitude keeps the blues away can help on some days. Shake the cobwebs of that deepening emotional funk and find a ray of sunshine in your storm; it’s there. Sometimes it’s the tiny spark that remains after a particularly trying time, resting in between rounds, to rev up and charge you enough to accomplish something magnificent or something necessary. Life can be exhausting sometimes. I was a single, working, mother whose socioeconomic status left me strapped for time and strapped for money. I survived pay check to pay check, and still did a fair amount of living, engaged in all sorts of high risk behavior, because I didn’t know that I was worthy of love. I chose one broken person after another, men who couldn’t love me, women who were manipulative but upfront about their dysfunction. There were no surprises. I fully intended on being screwed through life and before I began to live an intentional life, I fulfilled my own self-prophecy. No disappointments, just infinitely many confirmations that my world was, in fact, a shitty place.

I’m grateful for the person who kept me safe (sometimes) pre-self-awareness. I think it makes a huge difference in the quality of one’s life if she understands and knows herself. I live in a small desert community near Joshua Tree, California. My husband and I moved from San Diego, a hustling little suburb, near the Mexico border. The traffic was bad. The impersonalization and social distancing started well before the pandemic, and my husband and I thought we’d try small community for a change when my husband retired. I will most likely never retire. I love research and I love writing. One of my professors told me that he thinks I’m a gifted writer who should write a book. How does one narrow down a topic among the infinitely many? Food for thought.

There’s no point to this post, only to purge, to put it out there and hope it lands somewhere with someone who needs to know there’s hope. How much are you willing to invest in your life? I’m loving life and I miss my son. The longing is for a lifetime. Grief is a brain secretion that hurts into the depths of my consciousness, the one that embraces me into the fold, past, present, and future, and the one that connects me to you. May you have peace today, and if peace is not possible, may you have a rockin’ support system. Look on the bright side. Things will only get better. Things could always be worse. Get on your bikes and ride! There are a million platitudes circulating our noosphere; some are helpful, some need to be reinterpreted in a way that reaches a large number of people who are hungry for social and personal change.

I’ll leave you with this, we are at the mercy of random chance, a lightning strike away from the end of a life, yours or someone you adore. What are you willing to leave unfinished? A dream? A relationship? An oeuvre? Get those emotional and neural pathways unstuck. Get therapy. Get well.

Get well.

I love the contrast of transcendence and survival in this photograph, and how precarious is our hold on fleeting moments. Can there be peace in scarcity? Yes, I think there can be, also, peace even when prosperity is but a dream. I’m going to try to find the photographer and properly credit him or her for the use of this powerful photograph.

By Sherrie Cassel

Dedicated to Kyungsig Samuel Lee, Ph.D.

Last year this time I was planning my sixtieth birthday party, a milestone, for sure. The group of friends from all over the state who went was perfect. The right amount of verve and vitality. I had people buying me shots of Patron all night and I had a ball. In one month, I’ll be sixty-one. Time flies. In August, my beautiful son would have been forty years old; he’s been gone seven years and four months, and it scarcely seems reasonable that the years have flown so devastatingly quickly, but they have. I’m almost finished with my master’s degree in spiritually integrated psychotherapy. I have one class remaining and an internship, and then I’ll apply to the PhD program. So, I haven’t taken the traditional route. I’ve had a few detours along the way, single parenting, working, cancer, life. There were times when I didn’t believe in myself and so I would take time off, sometimes years, and then I’d come to my senses and realize that I deserve to fulfill my dreams just as well as anyone else. I’m plugging along, and I’ve never felt more fulfilled in academia than I do now. I’ve found my niche.

A few years ago, enamored of the God of my understanding (the GOMU), I had seriously entertained the possibility of going into ministry, you know, pastoring a flock, but I’ve spent most of my life in churches, and have seen the enormous responsibility that leading a flock carries, and I quickly said, “No, thank you.” I have great respect for competent and compassionate clergy. I’ve been fortunate to know a few, but somehow, church politics becomes the god to whom they must answer, and everything from bake sales to what brand of toilet paper to order becomes a requisition appealing to the powers that be, and perhaps, all organizations fall prey to bureaucratic red tape, committees, and vetoes, and I’m being a bit Pollyanna in my assumption that wherever I land I will not have to answer to the same corporate gods.

I’ve been reading a book called PROPHETIC LAMENT by Soong-Chan Rah; it may not be your cup of tea, but it is really speaking to my heart. Rah discusses the triumphalist worldview of the Western Christian church. I think of it as an offshoot of the prosperity gospel. Everybody can win; everybody must win, and winning is the best expression of true faith, even though in reality not everyone does. One of my professors this spring gave a lecture on “What if Easter doesn’t come for some people?” I had to think about it. I’ve fallen into the triumphalist mindset. I lost my son, the greatest loss of my life, and I worked tooth and nail to come through the experience with a victory story. If you’d seen me three and a half years after my son’s death and compared that person with who I am today, you’d see the growth. It was hard earned, and there were days when I really didn’t think I’d make it. I prayed for death to come, and I’m not using hyperbole here; I really wanted to fall asleep and never wake up again. I was in a tremendous amount of psychic and spiritual pain. How do you lose a child and rebuild a life without him?

I did just that. I won’t throw out the baby with the bathwater by saying a triumphalist worldview is singularly a bad way to see the world, because finding one’s way out of grief and rejoining the living is a victory; it denotes a resurrection of self, from hopeless to hopeful, from death to life. There is a reason why the stories of rebirth, transformation, and transcendence so speak to the human condition, a condition in which we are frequently disillusioned by life experiences, e.g., the death of a child, a divorce, the loss of one’s home, job, a cherished loved one. I can’t say that my way of healing is the right way; it was the right way for me. Easter came for me after the death of my son; it took three and a half years of complicated grief before the stone was rolled away from the place where I had entombed myself while I waited to not hurt anymore.

What does it mean for Easter to not come for someone? I’ve learned that Easter is not a one-time event. Christians celebrate the resurrection every year, which leads me to believe that Easter comes to each of us as many times as we can summon our rebirth … through the muck and through the mire of life experiences.

Rah talks about how lament is part of the healing process, of individuals, families, communities, and countries. We’ve forgotten how to be still with our grief with a worldview that pumps up winning as the goal of every life challenge, especially those which prove most devastating to us. How do you win after the loss of a child? Do you? I lamented for three and a half years after my son died. I sobbed until I couldn’t breathe. I sat and stared into space. I begged God to take me and put me out of my misery. I raised my fist in anger to an image of God that I learned to release back into the realm of myths that no longer serve me, and that served only to make me less compassionate with others.

Easter has come for me a few times in my life, and other times, as I waited for my son to be healed from addiction, Easter has never come. I love the Book of Job in the Hebrew Bible. We each have times in our lives when we are covered in blisters from life’s assaults. We experience lows that no one can help us sort through. We bemoan our existence, and we pray to the Gods of our understanding, or we lie in our sackcloth and ashes waiting for relief, but that relief does not happen right away, and sometimes, it never does. How do we hold up during those times? How do we hold up others when Easter is far from them? Job’s friends initially had the right idea when they sat in silence for seven days and nights with poor Job. Sometimes silence and commiseration are the kindest things we can offer to someone who is struggling.

I’m a people person. I’m a cheerleader for the downtrodden, the underdog, the Jobs of the world. But what if there is no hope this side of heaven for someone? What if the news is bad? Really bad? How do you hold space for someone for whom the only Easter that will ever come will not come until he or she is released from this physical life? How would I want to be held in the worst-case scenario? There are times in my life when I have been hopeless. When my son was dying from addiction, I lost hope despite the many times I cried out to the God of my disillusionment, begging and bargaining for my son’s life to be spared. I was bereft. I had people tell me I was being catastrophist and to pray harder. I had people tell me that my faith was faltering. I had people tell me that my son was not going to die. How can someone offer that kind of advice? I don’t hold their good intentions against them. I know they were trying to love me through it, to offer me hope despite the reality that they saw with their own eyes, a deathly ill young man who was getting worse and worse, a young man for whom Easter would never come in this lifetime.

We each will suffer through something catastrophic in our lives at some point; no one is exempt from tragedy. As I have worked through my entombment in grief, before and after my son died, I remember the days and nights spent in agony, the nights I told myself that I was going to lose him. The days I could barely function as I watched him stumble through his dark night of the soul, irretrievably lost. I had to learn to sit with him in his darkness, in between bouts of Herculean effort to save him. I wish I could say I helped him find his way to Easter, but I’m only human. I was a mother desperate to save her son using the only tools I had. I lamented in his presence. I showed him how to grieve before I lost him. If I had been effective, would he still be alive to have a victory story? Would Easter have come for him? It’s impossible to say. To speculate about this is an exercise in masochism. I wanted to believe there would come a day when I’m completely healed, but I sometimes delude myself with triumphalist thinking, divide and conquer. I am woman; hear me roar! Sometimes I revert to the incomplete magician/god of my indoctrination, and I’m left unfulfilled and disappointed in the figment of my primitive imagination. There are many things I have not lamented: my childhood, for example. I’ve lamented my son’s death, and while the worst part of the grief process has passed, I know there are times when the loss still takes my breath away, and I march defeated into the tomb, praying for Easter to come again, waiting for transformation from a dirge to a jubilant hymn. If I can just hold on until morning.

Easter will come in fits and starts, or maybe it won’t. I see the current state of our world, hateful politics, disregard for one another at the level of the soul, poverty, war, child abuse, deep seated rage, racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, domestic violence, sexual abuses, ad nauseam, and I see people who suffer because hegemonies have their priorities skewed. Absolute power does, in fact, corrupt – absolutely. I love my mother’s faith; it is uncomplicated by infinitely many questions. Her faith is simple and unproblematic. I ride the coattails of her faith as I flounder in my own extremely complicated and conflicted faith – in the GOMU.

Has Easter come for you, a resurrection story? a triumph? a victory? Have you found transcendence through your struggles, and if you have, can you share your experience, strength, and hope with those for whom Easter has yet to come, with those for whom Easter will never come? I’ve had to learn to “tone” down my exuberance. Not everyone loves a morning person, especially those whose eyes have become accustomed to the dark. My professor gave me sage advice about sitting in the dark with someone. We love hero stories in my country (the United States). What if the truth is that heroes do not always come sweeping in to save the day? What if heroes just sit in the shittiness of injustice with a piece of bread and a jug of water to help someone sustain his or her strength while they muddle through?

See, we will each at some point find ourselves navigating an experience where there is no hope of a quick sunrise. The Rabbi Harold Kushner’s book WHEN BAD THINGS HAPPEN TO GOOD PEOPLE, was the first book I read after my son died. I wanted answers, even if I found myself accountable for my son’s death, even if the answers hurt me. I wanted someone to blame, even if that person was myself. What I found in the Rabbi’s book was the answer I needed: my son’s illness, while there were many reasons he found himself addicted to alcohol and other drugs, it’s the luck of the draw that some will find their way out of addiction’s death clutch, and some will die. Random chance healed me and helped me let go of the horrific self-blame so that Easter could come for me once again.

Having given birth to a child, in pain and in agony, the journey is not easy the first time, and the many times we will have occasion to rebirth ourselves will not be easy; and to be honest, the rebirthing process is often traumatic. I love the story of Jacob and how he wrestled with God. He wrestled with all his might for a blessing. I have done the same in my own life, many times, and like Jacob, I have limped into Easter battle fatigued, but freer with every rebirth. Some believe in the Karmic wheel and the acquisition of nirvana. I believe we are born again many times while we’re here. I’ve metamorphosed a few times in my life thus far, and I imagine I’ll metamorphose a few more times before my journey here is completed, and then I will merge with the Infinite, the GOMU, and Easter will come a final time for me. At least that’s what I’m hoping for.

** Bernardo Strozzi, The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa, 17th century

By Sherrie Ann Cassel

(sic)

It’s been a minute since I’ve been able to write. Seminary kept me hopping. I took three classes; two I really loved, and one was a necessary class, but not one I enjoyed all that much. One class was about the theological perspectives on substance use disorder; it was a very enriching class. The other class was about trauma and grace; it was my favorite class. I know, I know, trauma and grace? Sounds like a barrel of laughs, right? I learned so much in the class about myself and about forgiveness. I read, wrote, practiced my interviewing skills, and was asked a lot of myself. I have found peace in seminary, in the intellectual, personal, and academic channels of consciousness. I still grieve the loss of my son; the most significant loss of my life; the loss hurts to the core of my soul.

Sometimes we grieve potential losses, losses we can see coming down the pike. We each have losses that cause grief before we’ve actually lost a person, a place, something that is meaningful to us. My mom was just diagnosed with stage 2 breast cancer: she’s 81. I thought because my son was such a tremendous loss, the worst loss I could have ever imagined, that I was immune to the hardcore grief that comes with the loss of a loved one. I’m tough now, right? I can handle anything. Right. I know we will lose our parents at some point. Losing a parent is the natural order of things, not losing a child, but even so, the thought of losing my mother, the woman who gave me life, who loved me, even if imperfectly, is causing great anxiety in my psyche, in my heart.

In my heart of hearts, I know I can handle anything; I’ve managed to rebuild my life, a life without my precious and beautiful son, and so, life has gone on, despite my kicking and screaming, numbing, and then normalizing my emotional pain. I had time to say goodbye to my son; he was very ill before he died. I knew, like only a parent can, that I was going to lose him, and I began the grief process early, well before he died. Some things are inevitable, even though we fight tooth and nail in our delusions and convince ourselves that we can stop bad things from happening. Sometimes we can’t. I’m hoping and praying to the G_d of my understanding for my mom’s well-being, at least until she’s 100-years-old. I don’t imagine I’ll ever be ready to lose her. I wasn’t ready to lose my son; I’m still in shock about losing him. I have days when I’m really doing well, and then when things get rough in my current life, I long for my son, the warmth of my baby boy, to hold on to him like Linus’ blanket, to feel life as it should be, not as it is. He should be here with me. Mom should never die. I should have tranquility all the time.

 Delusional, right?

There is nothing that can be said or done by anyone else to assuage our anxiety, maybe medication, maybe meditation, but truly, only we can calm our internal storms. I’m breathing through the potential loss. I taunt myself with who will go first, my mother or myself. I think I’d rather go first than deal with another great loss. But to think this way is a type of masochism. Why do we hurt ourselves when the pain of life is overwhelming? I believe it is because we jump to hurt before there is reason to prepare ourselves.

I’ve been numb before; I’ve volitionally numbed out so I could get through the day. However, the pain was always there, waiting for me to acknowledge it and work through it. Some days it’s easier than others, but I hang on and navigate the turbulence because I’m this side of Eternity, and while I’m here, life insists on being lived, not in misery, but in its fullest expression, equal parts joy, and the inevitability of occasional sadness. After my son died, I spent money on cremation jewelry, rings, necklaces, you name it. In retrospect I see the anguish I was in trying to hold on to any little piece of my son. Beyond the trinkets and keepsakes there remains the love I will always hold for my precious son; I no longer need those things to keep my son’s memory alive; it is ever-present. My current ambivalence toward the deaths of those I cherish is, perhaps, the way I protect my heart, but can you really ever protect yourself from the pain of great losses? I used to think so. I thought because I had lost the person I love most in the universe; I could handle any subsequent losses. The truth be told, I can, but not without a fair amount of angst and an ocean of tears.

My son’s death looms over every single thing in my life. I’ve learned to shore up the grief until I’m in a safe place, a good emotional space, when and where I can have a meltdown. Do you schedule your meltdowns? I’ve learned to control what was so uncontrollable in the early days after my son’s death: my meltdowns. I know some of you might think this is impossible, especially those of you whose losses are very recent. In the beginning it is impossible. When the tears come, they come and there is scant little you can do about them. I cried inconsolably for three and a half years, and when I wasn’t sobbing, I was numb. As the years have passed, seven years and four months, I recognize the signs of complicated grief, my own and that of others. I tried to get help; however, the therapists I saw were not adept at working with those who have had a significant loss, grief issues, for example. I know they’re out there and perhaps the best place to find a qualified person is through those who are in the chaplaincy; they work with grievers all the time, in hospitals, during disasters and catastrophic events. Losing a child is a catastrophic event. Your loss may not have been the loss of a child, but your loss is every bit as devastating.

There was a point at which I knew I’d be okay, maybe not as okay as when my little family of two was whole, but I’d find another way to be whole. My psychiatrist told me she wanted me to stay with the living…rather than buying cremation jewelry and desperately trying to hold on to my son through material things. Buddhists advocate for non-attachment. Would the loss of my son have hurt less if I would have let go of him sooner? I just don’t know. The one thing I do know is that the three-and-a-half years I spent in overwhelming grief was a rite of passage for me. How does one say goodbye to one’s child? How does one let go of a piece of your heart? I don’t think one can. We learn to accept the loss and then we spend the rest of our lives adjusting to it. I wanted to call my son and talk to him about some juicy gossip I got about a family member we never liked. I knew he’d get a kick out of my reaction as he expressed his own reaction…but then I remembered, as if I ever really forget, that he is not a phone call away anymore. That realization always smarts … a lot.

So, what do we do when a potential loss is looming in the distance? I’ve found the best solution is to live in each present moment I’m given, even those that are fraught with sadness, grief, and emotional pain. Those moments last for a breath and then other emotions come flooding in, joy, wonder, and absolute love for loved ones, nature, our pets, knowledge and so much more this side of heaven. I know it’s difficult to believe this when you’re deep in the throes of early grief; I get it. I was there too. Emotions can’t be stored up for too long before they demand to be expressed. The best-case scenario is one in which we don’t hurt ourselves through substances, reclusion, self-blame, or hurtful rumination. We will hurt, not just for a singular loss, but for the many losses we will incur in our lifetime. We are human and in the human condition there is pain, but there is also pleasure.

Don’t “be positive” – be real. Hold yourself in high regard. You are worthy of joy – in spite, yes, in spite of your greatest loss. My mom’s cancer has reignited my fear of losing someone I love with all my heart; her diagnosis has initiated the flight response. Only I can return my emotional state to homeostasis. I must do so if my life is to continue to have meaning and if I’m going to fulfill my purpose in life, even as I boldly march into my golden years. I’m not ready to abandon hope for myself even though hope for my son has ridden off into Eternity. I will miss him for my lifetime. I hold on to hope for my mother, and I lightly prepare myself for when she is no longer with me knowing it will hurt and I will grieve … again…and again…and again…until my time to merge with the Infinite comes.

Hang in there, my heart says to yours. You’ll be okay in time. Take it from someone who knows; you’ll be okay.

By Sherrie Ann Cassel

I’m originally from San Diego, sand, beaches, sun, and pretty nice weather pretty much all year-round. My husband and I are now living in the high desert, Joshua Tree area; it’s frickin’ snowing here and even though I know other states have crazy snow, I’m not a fan. My son hated being hot, and with his sense of wonder and love of big thick blankets, he would love this weather. See, one never knows what will be an emotional trigger; it could be a song, or the snow. All I know for sure today is that the snow is cold, and I miss my son.

In his 32 years, he never got to experience the snow. So many experiences he missed out on because he died so young. This August 6^th, he would have been 40. I’m 60 and I will have a son in heaven who will be 40. What a trip – and a half.

I want to share my son’s sense of wonder in this post. This silent snowfall speaks so loudly to my heart today. I’m listening to songs he loved and I’m working hard to not weep because I am so lost today without him. I do really well most days. I finished my Associates, my Bachelor’s, working on my M.A. in Spiritually Integrated Psychotherapy, and on to my Ph.D. I’ve proceeded with my life and found purpose for the remainder of my life, the life that was supposed to end before my son’s.

Do you ever wake up and think, “My loved one is dead. How in all of God’s green earth could this be my reality now?” In the early days of grief, I wondered if I was still a mother when my only child had passed. After seven years of grief, I know I’m a mom and I always will be. My son and I shared DNA, both biological and psychological. I look in the mirror when I have no make up on and I see his face. I always get a momentary pang in my chest when I do. I still kiss his pictures whenever I see them – even after seven years. Where are you in the grief process?

Learning about grief from an academic perspective has been very enlightening and life changing. In grief, there are many gradations. I didn’t think about how three and a half years was indicative of complicated grief, but in retrospect, I see that I was a hot mess during those years. As those of you who follow my work know, there was a permanent indentation on my couch from where I sat staring into space or weeping for those three and a half years.

My son hated when I cried. When he was a baby, he used to laugh when I pretended to cry. He hated seeing me sad in his later years, just like I hated seeing him sad. He suffered so much the four years before he died. My heart is still tender when I think about how he suffered. I am often confused by the finitude of death, or are we immortal … what happened to the energy that animated my son? His laughter? His tears? His brilliant mind? His ability to love even those who hurt him. He was a giant bundle of love and the most incredible compassion. Yes, where did that energy go? Did it go into a new born baby or a plant? I know the night he died, I felt his Presence leave his body, and I felt it pass through me in an explosion of sadness and loss. I tried to hold on to it. I wasn’t ready to lose him. If I’d had a choice, I would gladly have offered up my life in exchange for my son having a long life, a life in which there would be only good relationships with people who were well-adjusted enough to not hurt him, but we don’t get to choose when our loved one passes, even if we’re left, like I was, with the decision to “let go”, and remove life support.

Yeah, pretty things make me think about my son. I’m so grateful for this phase of the eternal grief process. I used to ruminate on all the sadness in my son’s life. Maybe it served some adaptive purpose. I’m not a crier. I never have been. Perhaps ruminations help lubricate the eyes so one can purge the pain. I didn’t know it was possible to cry so much. I had no idea one could be in profound pain and still live to tell about it. I died a hundred times since my son died, until I worked through the process, and could stand up in the face of grief and grab hold of life in a new world, a world without my beloved son.

In hindsight, I thought I needed to say “goodbye” to my son; I didn’t. I don’t. My son is in the ether of my soul and still very present in my life, in the metaphor of my heart, my consciousness. He will never leave my consciousness, the part of me that is eternal. I hope against hope that one day, upon my own death, our energies will mingle and become one again. He was my only child, and I was a single mom because his loser biological POS abandoned my son when he was only eleven months old. So, it was just my son and I – the good, the bad, and the dysfunctional. We lived fully together. We cried together. We fought. We shared a wonder for the world and all that it contains…even freezing snow (from the vantage point of my picture window, from the warmth of our little love shack). He would have just loved it.

I’ve been able to normalize my pain throughout the years since he’s been gone, but I still have triggers. I’ve been bitching about the snow all day (can you imagine if I lived in Buffalo?) , but what I really want to do is share it with my son. How do we do that when our loved one has died? I suppose by keeping him or her alive in our minds is how best to keep them alive. My son is always on my mind. There is never a second that goes by when I don’t realize that my son, the love of my life, and best friend is not here with me, not physically present. I miss his hugs. He was a giant of a man, my little boy, and he gave the best hugs.

So, on this snowy day, I’m missing my boy, and I’m grateful for seminary and all the homework I have to keep me busy, to occupy my mind when my heart will not be stilled.

I’m looking forward to the spring again. California poppies are a sight to behold off the I-15. My son loved them too. I will enjoy them for him.