Grief to Gratitude

By Sherrie Cassel

In the blockbuster movie, TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY (T2), there is a scene in which the nuclear bomb is unleashed and the flames rush through time-space at a dizzyingly destructive pace. In another scene there is Sarah on a playground holding on to a chain link fence and only a disintegrating skeleton reveals the human form. I felt the flames of confusion unto the deepest angst burn through my country yesterday. I don’t want to play my feminist card, mostly because I don’t feel empowered after yesterday’s SCOTUS decision. I don’t want to discuss it, really. I have stated my position, and it is deeply personal and private, which I believe some things should be. I voice my opinion when I feel as if I’m being listened to. I am silent in “polite” company and/or those with rigid thinking. There is a cause for everyone to pour herself into. SCOTUS’ decision doesn’t affect me, really. Producing biological progeny is no longer a possibility for me. I am not gay, lesbian, or transgender – considering Clarence Thomas’ comments yesterday.

We each have a responsibility to be a benefit to our world through the media of our talents. While I’m confounded, confused, and conflicted by yesterday’s decision, it is not the cause about which I am most passionate. I pray for relief from the rabid polarization this decision will only intensify. In my way, to my God, I pray for peace and progress, but mostly, I appeal to those with influence to remember how complexly simple our species is. That’s it. Speak slowly to us, maybe this time we’ll get it. One person at a time.

I want to encourage each of you, especially those of you who struggle with self-esteem issues and those of you who are still healing from grief for whatever reason to find something that speaks to your soul, something you can share with the world that will make the world a better place, through visual, literary, or the performing arts, etc. I know sometimes life’s challenges can seem agonizingly long, and I will always call bullshit on the statement, “all things happen for a reason”. I don’t believe that for a second; however, when terrible tragedies occur, the grief process is a given, and through navigating the stages of grief and the many revolutions it takes, there will be lessons we can use to be a benefit to others.

Grief has softened the edges of my former defensive self. Tragedy has opened my eyes to the brevity of life. My son was only 32. I’m 60 now. Time has flown by as quickly as the flames in T2. I’ve been in school in some way, shape, or form since I was 24. Every year was a challenge, every semester uncertain. I was a single mother, receiving no child support from the biological father. I never knew if I would have to quit school because … life, including the cancer of poverty, and actual cancer. I knew I had purpose, but I hadn’t felt safe enough to allow myself the vulnerability to try and to fail in several permutations and in a handful of media, until finally, through all my life experiences, like beach glass, my purpose began to shine through all the years of abrasion.

Everyone has a gift. Everyone has purpose. Find your passion and pour yourself into it. I live in the desert with my husband and cat. The desert is a climate of extremes for this San Diego lady. My first winter at 14 degrees F. was a rude awakening. I wore flip flops in my first snow and almost broke my neck. I had to start over, away from anything I shared with my son, until the love and loss weren’t so overwhelming. Does that make sense? When love is big – so too is the pain when the relationship has a permanent ending.

When social challenges emerge, the poets, the minstrels, the visual artists come out of the woodwork and speak to our time in history. I grew up in the shadow of the Vietnam War, and the protests through art were nothing short of amazing. Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Peter, Paul & Mary, Richie Havens were just a handful of great musicians who would not be silenced, not even by the “establishment”. They used their talents to be the mouthpiece for millions of Americans. If you’re a lyricist, create songs. If you’re a writer, write. If you’re a singer, sing, ad infinitum. There really is something for everyone. If we were taught from the beginning of life that we have purpose, I think we’d work hard to find that purpose in the gifts we’ve been given earlier in life instead of discovering it later in life when time is fleeting, and we have only a few years left in which to use our talents. Nike had an ad campaign whose tagline was, “Just do it.” There’s never a better time than the present. Better late than never.

We’ve all known people who despite their talents, gifts, incredible minds never get their dreams off the ground, and so just as assuredly as we all will, so too have their dreams died. Being filled with regret is a tragedy. In spite of everything, life truly is wonderful, a gift, a transformational event for which I am co-creator– from my theological perspective. In the six and a half years since I lost my son, my beautiful son, I’ve read about grief and grief recovery until I just can’t anymore. I’m grateful for the resources I found when I was in so much pain research was the only thing that lessened the intensity of that pain as I adjusted to the greatest loss of my life. In the many resources I researched, it was a majority opinion that losing a child was the worst pain ever. I even had my forensic psych professor tell me this when we talked about my loss. I admit, it has been intense. There were days I had no idea how I would make it through another day in deep grief. I know what it’s like to lose a parent. I know what it’s like to lose someone who was as close as a brother. I know what it’s like to lose friends. I’ve lost a dozen or so pets along the way. All of those losses hurt and proportionate to the intimacy of the relationship was the intensity of the mourning phase, including its duration. I lost my son, my only child, and the grief process was lengthy and intense. Maybe our hedonistic nature pulled me away from pain and set my feet toward the pleasure of joy. I just knew my grief would not be the end of me. I knew I had purpose. In retrospect, although I was not nurtured as a child to believe in myself, there is something in each of us that wants to flourish and share our gifts with the world. I believe it’s innate.

We are an adaptable species. I don’t know why some people develop resilience while others succumb to the impersonal wounds of random chance. I came from a hardcore challenging family of origin, and even though my theology has changed, I have been shaped by my mother’s hope in her savior and by the mysticism of the Catholic Church, although I’ve also been broken by them a few times in my life too. Hope: my mother gave me hope that things would one day be better. And they were too, right when I turned 18. Our personal hells are not meant to be eternal. Mine felt like it while I was enduring it, but relatively speaking, it’s been 42 years since I was being misshapen on the anvil of my father’s love. I’ve been free for 42 years, but a lesser amount of time, really, while I was fumbling toward a victory story, failure after failure, but with enough successes to keep me fighting.

I’ve traded in my gloves for a voice these days. If I can do nothing more than speak out and speak up for those who haven’t heard their own voices yet, then that is what I must do. Write to the issues. Write to our pain. Write to our liberation.

Whatever life has asked of me I have responded to. As my son would say, “I lost a son, yo’.” He was so funny. I did, though; I lost him and I went under for a long time. I have a CD by Belleruth Naparstek for those challenged by PTSD. In one of the visualizations, she takes you through a wasteland in which there are burned up cars, still smoldering, things that are barely recognizable from your former life, and then she has you look under pieces of burnt boxes and other detritus, to see if there are any rubies in the rubble. There were. There are.

Find your rubies after tragedy, after childhood traumas, after devastating social issues, after your world comes crashing down around you once, twice, a third time… I’ll be taking a class in seminary this fall on the Spiritual and Theological Dimensions of Suffering. I’m very excited. I’m a questioner, one who is never satisfied with the answers I find, and so research is never-ending for me. It’s more a curse than a blessing. Chronic dissatisfaction with available knowledge can be exhausting. My search for knowledge has only become more intense since my son died, like a coping mechanism; it keeps me from going under.

But … full circle … I’m watching my country go up in flames. I’m Sarah Connor holding on to the chain link fence screaming futilely into the vaporizing flames. That was someone’s nightmare. I want to be too busy creating the dream, and so, I keep learning and questioning what I’m learning, and allowing myself to be socially aware, beyond my world of grief. We are not one-dimensional. I am not solely the grief which I have worked six-and-a-half years to tame. I want my life to be a gift to a hurting world. My grief has gifted me with pearls of wisdom, the gift of self-examination, and the gift of transformation.

This post has no real import or urgency, other than to distance myself from the events over the last 24 hours. My mission is not to harm, but to heal. I come from a long line of curanderas (healers) … what’s your gift?

By Sherrie Cassel

I begin a new decade; the last one was the most difficult of my life. As those of you who follow this blog know, I lost my son and only child six and a half years ago. Those years were spent groveling before a god I wasn’t sure I believed in anymore. Those years were spent in the fetal position in excruciating pain. Those years were spent either numb or in the deepest grief. Those years were spent in a darkened room sleeping my days and nights away. They were some rough years. The second year was more difficult than the first. I believe I was still in shock the first year, intervals of sobbing uncontrollably or forcing myself to be numb so I could get through the day. By the third year I was exhausted from the grieving process; I wanted relief. I wanted a “normal” life, one in which grief was not my focal point. Every day before that epiphany had been spent trying not to go under, some days barely treading water, some days I wanted to drown; but then one day, I was ready to swim back to shore where the living were scurrying around, busy, living “normal” lives, lives in which grief did not reign supreme, living lives yearning to be vibrant, energetic, mostly pain-free, and purposeful.

I’ve achieved this, on most days. I still have days during which I’m overcome by the magnitude of my loss and of the gaping, still inconceivable hole, where my son should be. I’m no longer at the event horizon though. I dove into the black hole of grief, and to my great surprise and delight, there is another side, and it’s spectacular. Perhaps a death analogy is apropos here, because I was reborn through the grief process. I will never be the person I was before my son’s illness and death. I had to refashion myself in light of the greatest loss of my life. My brain helped me rationalize my loss and then my brain helped me to soften the loss so I could allow the metaphor of my heart to beat life into me again.

In the first two years I needed to purge – as often as the overwhelm occurred. I also read everything I could get my hands on about grief and healing. I tried therapy but found the ones to whom I was referred had only one semester of grief training. At the time, I didn’t know about licensed clinical social workers (LCSWs), nor did I know what chaplains do. Both work with grieving people all the time. This is one of the reasons I have chosen to enter the chaplaincy (at 60!).

Not everyone can sit in the dark with someone. Those of us who have worked the grief process and come through to the other side bruised, battered, but victorious are in the best position to be present for someone in her or his darkness. We learn. We heal. We know – for a time. We share what we know. We grow. We thrive. Healing is a process; it’s an act of self-love. Healing is within your grasp. Reach for it as soon as you can find the inner strength.

There is no universal formula for getting through grief. Grief is as unique as one’s fingerprint. Sometimes we relate more to one person’s experience than we do to another. Find what works for you. Listen to a voice that touches you, that speaks to you, and that ultimately heals you. If you believe in God or have a Higher Power, lean on it, speak to it, allow it to comfort and then to transform you.

I’ve been working the grief process for six and a half years, and if I’m being honest, I began the grief process while my son was still struggling in this life, dying before my eyes, and the pain intensified exponentially after he died. Those of us who may have been in a relationship that was challenging may have some guilt and some regret. Make your amends – even posthumously and let guilt and regret go. Oh sure, when you’re Hungry, Angry, Lonely or Tired (HALT), you may reach for them again; I have, and sometimes I still do, but then I gather my bearings and return to a balance of manageable grief and marveling at the wonders of life.

I think about those three and a half years when I was underwater, comfortable by that time of being submerged, not hearing any sound at all, stubbornly, but adaptively holding my breath, refusing to surface. Living was so difficult back then I just refused to do it. I ached in a way that led me to emotional paralysis. After my husband went back to work, I was alone to scream, to yowl, to double over out of breath from sobbing so forcefully. In retrospect, I was glad to have had that time. I’m not a public griever. I prefer to have meltdowns in the company of my husband, but mostly … alone. Doing so is my M.O.; it just works for me. Find what works for you. I have a friend who doesn’t like using the noun journey after grief because it’s not a journey she says. I respect that. I call it the grief experience, and I know that even those of us who share a common grief, experience grief differently.

None of us has a choice in the matter about when or whom we lose. I’ve learned to cling tightly enough to enjoy and repurpose my life, but never again so tightly that the God of my heart has to pry it from my bleeding fingers. I’m not a Buddhist, but I’ve learned its practice of non-attachment. The year my son died my family lost several others within a matter of months: a brother, a friend, my husband’s mother, a former student to suicide, and a close friend of the family. Some days are diamonds; some days are stone. Sometimes the hard times won’t leave me alone (Dick Feller) – and sometimes it’s a year or so more. We just never know. Even though I saw it coming, one cannot prepare oneself for the death of a child.

I could barely make it through the day in the early years of grief. I was exhausted from weeping, aching, weeping, and aching. I knew there was something more to life even after a life-altering tragedy. I knew because other veteran grievers who found their way to the other side of the black hole where transcendence lay, and they shared their process with me. I was angry at first when someone told me I’d get to a place where the intensity would lessen. I didn’t believe him. I couldn’t believe him. As long as the pain was intense, I was still connected to my son; but I got to a point where I knew I couldn’t carry it anymore and still have a productive and purposeful life.

 Are you there yet?

If you are and maintaining and thriving in your life, congratulations. If you’re not, keep working your process. Read everything you can get your hands on about grief. Write. Sing. Dance. Keep on weeping until your brain says, “It’s time to move forward.” Life really is wonderful despite our losses and despite the pain that will vein everything in it for the rest of our days and nights.

I didn’t cry at my birthday party, even though I missed my son on a milestone day. His dear childhood friend was there. Seeing him without my son was mind blowing. I didn’t cry. I celebrated a new decade. I crawled on my knees begging for relief until I could stand and walk toward a life that is healing and now I’m reaching for the sun.

Grief is a tangled mess, and again, one will heal in proportion to the wounds he or she has healed from already. Self-examination is among the greatest gifts that come from deep grief. If one needs a latent benefit, self-examination is one. The ability to heal yourself through self-examination is truly a gift from the Divine.

I stopped making resolutions for each new year ushered in; I seldom achieved my goal anyhow. But I will say this: I’m going to do my absolute best to make my 60s a good decade, and if and when catastrophe next strikes, I know at some point I will handle it, accept it, adapt to it, and then move on, in a time comparable to the loss.

P.S. I miss you, Rikki, oh so much.

By Sherrie Cassel

I’ve worked hard to get to the other side of the gargantuan mountain of grief to a place of victory and then to a return to a life in which grief is no longer the guiding force. Grief no longer compels me to spill my guts about the loss of my son at every turn. Not everything in life is a pathway to deep grief and, long-term and chronic pain; joy is also a destination.

I read something this morning and it gave me pause for thought. Each of us has the right to feel as if our pain is the worst experience ever. We know this perspective comes from a place of grief. We don’t always think clearly when we’re grieving. Our pain is substantial when we’re in grief, and no one’s should be taken lightly, not even by each other.

But the post I saw today alluded to an experience from a person who has suffered a very recent loss and could not place herself in a position in which she could very well likely assist another person through her pain. I get it. At first, I thought, “Well, why can’t this person move past the pain long enough to help another hurting person?” But then I remembered, I’m six and a half years into the grief process. I put myself in this person’s shoes and remembered how EVERYTHING was a trigger. The first note of a Bread song had me sobbing uncontrollably one morning, and my son didn’t even like Bread. My son wasn’t even born when Bread was a thing.

No rhyme. No reason. You might be having a wonderful day with friends, and a scent, a sight, a sentiment swells inside of you and you’re reduced to a weeping mess. If your friends are good at grief, they will handle your overwhelm of emotion. If they’re not good at sitting in the dark with you, you’ll learn this very quickly, and you’ll know not to lose it with them. Pick people who are safe, well-adjusted, and who achieve calmness even as you shatter all over again in front of them.

The healing process takes time, maybe even for the duration of one’s life. We’re all healing from something; some things are ancient; some are more recent.  Again, our healing is a process that runs the gamut several times over in our lifetime. I think of it as a labyrinth, beautifully landscaped shrubbery, 20 feet high throughout. On one end is the darkest part of grief, e.g., you’re all in, and you will be, for a time, if you don’t shut down. On the other end, is the entrance and the exit; it is one and the same. Beginning with that first step into the labyrinth, the pathway becomes darker and darker and soon, you’re feeling around in the dark. You get pricked by a thorn, and you learn to stay in the middle of the pathway. Some find their way out before grief becomes self-destructive. Everyone’s timetable is different, and again, dependent upon where you are in your healing from other things, is how efficiently you’ll be able to find the entrance into life and the light won’t hurt your eyes anymore.

You know you’re in deep grief when you haven’t been outside for months and the first time you step outside, you’re temporarily blinded by the sunlight. Yeah, it happens. Everyone grieves differently; however, I’m amazed by the growth I see through some of the dialogue on social media with people who started this grief experience around the same time I did. Most people by now have some idea of what posttraumatic stress disorder or PTSD is, but not everyone is aware of posttraumatic growth or PTG. I’ve seen it time and time again in people who have endured horrifying experiences. Somehow, there is the spirit of the phoenix or the one who breathed life into every culture’s origin story. The resiliency of some people is off the chart. Having said that, for some, resiliency has come from a place of emotional health through working with a clinician. Some have found indomitable inner-strength and created lives that are joyful and stable.

I would argue, grief is traumatic. I read in the DSM-V that there are certain criteria for trauma, and grief is listed under Adjustment Disorder Related to Bereavement. When you’re in the labyrinth of grief, you don’t much care for clinical definitions. However, it still makes me angry when I see how grief has been reduced in the DSM-V. Grief creates a constant cycle of adjustment and the knowledge that every experience from the day our loved one died ‘til the day we each head off to that great big piece of perfection in the sky, we will feel our loved one’s absence. Perhaps that is why my eyes well up when I hear a silly Bread son, the first note, because I find this particular song to be beautiful, and beautiful moments together with my son have passed. I’ve accepted that my son died; the reality hits me every morning, afternoon and night. There is never a moment when I am unaware my son is gone. I’ve learned to navigate the overwhelm and reschedule meltdowns when they are inconvenient.

There will come a time when pain can be shelved and brought out for a mourning ritual, but we don’t have to carry it. There will come a time, hopefully in a shorter amount than my moment came, when pain becomes so heavy you have to decide if it’s something you want to carry for the rest of your days. I came to a place in my life when I knew I didn’t want to shoulder it any longer, and little by little I put it down.

I’ve been fortunate to have a most supportive network. I founded a grief site for parents who’ve lost a child or children to addiction. I founded this blog. I have a writer’s page and I share my insight, such as it is, about how it is possible to heal from grief. I suppose we will always be a little broken, but I was broken before my son died, and grief has given me the opportunity for the most profound self-examination, and like Leonard Cohen says in Anthem, it is the through the cracks that the light gets in either through the Light of the Divine that guides you, or through the keen acumen you have into your own brain. What collides with your grief intensifying it?

As usual, I have waxed tangential. What I really want to leave us with, myself included, is this: If you have been fortunate enough with a supportive, loving, and capable network of people throughout your process, as soon as you are able, give back. You’ll be in the best position to sit in someone else’s darkness with him or her. There will come a time when you find a voice that isn’t just wounded, but clear and wise, and compassion will be your guide because you know where they are even as you transcend your own chronic emotional pain.

Certainly, there was a time I thought my pain overrode anyone else’s because I had lost my only child, but then I began to see the pain people live with every day; it weighs them down, so they stay buried under the ashes of despair. This is what I see now, a world in need of radical compassion. Through the grief and healing processes we can share a bit of our lived experience with someone who is hurting. Grief is the effect of the greatest loss of my life; it veins everything sensory in my life, but it no longer is the only grief in the world. I can sit in the darkness with someone now.

The prospect of “being there” for someone when you’re still healing is pretty darn scary. However, practice will help you. You can bring your life experience to someone else’s pain without purging your own pain. By the time you’re at this stage, you’ll have normalized your need to purge, and so you’ll have the discipline to wait until it’s “your turn” to share with a safe, calm, well-adjusted person. Presence is vital when we want to be there for someone else’s crisis. Presence means you’re all in. I believe this takes time; it took me three and a half years, two Master’s programs until I found the one that feeds my soul, and an ocean of tears.

There’s something about awakening to the perception you’re drowning in your own tears that gives you the insight that, truly, this too shall pass. Just try to walk ahead of your pain once in a while. There’s clarity and there’s even charity ahead, and the more you go there, the more you’ll want to be there.

By Sherrie Ann Cassel

The world is a wonderful-horrible place, or more specifically, in life, there is beauty and there is indescribable pain, and sometimes human nature turns on itself, and becomes self-destructive. This week in response to the massacre in Uvalde, TX, there have been a variety of responses, always polarizing. What else is new? There has begun the slinging of political agendas in the most vitriolic and caustic memes and in the halls of Congress. While the discussions are necessary, discussion is not what is occurring. A politics expressed through poor coping skills at the societal level is more than what I’m willing to spend my time on these days. Life’s too short. Besides, overindulgence in politics makes me an asshole and I really want to love people and to try to be the example of my God’s unconditional love.

So, now that the politics is out of the way, I want to offer this space to recognize the primary issue at hand from my point of view, and that issue is the one of grief. The parents of these children, the spouses of the two slain adults, their pain is unimaginable to those who have not lost a child/ren right now; I remember. Certainly, those of a rational mind and a compassionate and empathetic social conscience share in the heartbreak of the grieving parents and family members.

The knowledge that your child has died is a monumental sucker punch to the gut; it will knock the wind out of you for a very long time, sometimes months, sometimes years, but there will always be a touch of grief for the remainder of your own life. Like Midas and his touch of gold, grief has the potential to create beauty through the pain, or it has the potential to create further pain in oneself and in the lives it touches.

After the initial detonation destabilizes everything you’ve ever known to be true about life, there’s a time of such severe emotional pain that it feels physical, followed by a period of numbness, and then the rest of your life adjusting to a life in which a person you adored has been erased from the intricate pencil sketch of your life and the absence is deep. There is not a hole in me or in my heart, but there is a hole in every single thing in life, in every experience, in every song, in the silence, and in the madding crowd. That’s how it is with grief, and especially when a child is lost. Rikki was my only child. He died a horrible death. There is stigma surrounding his death. The way he died has been politicized. But see, when you’re grieving, especially in the early days and nights of grief, politics is so far off your radar you don’t even know it exists.

You will find purpose along the life sentence of grief. But first you’ll go through the shitty part, the part that is grueling and visceral. In many ways, it’s like giving birth with no epidural for however long it takes to push out a new life. My grief labor took me three and a half years; it’s now been six and a half years since my amazing son died. The grief was intense; it is far less so now.

I so wanted someone to say a word or turn me on to a song or a book, anything that would take me out of my constant pain. I know now, there are no words. There is no song – for a very long time. I can tell you this, you will heal in proportion to how much you have healed from other wounds in your life. I thought I had healed sufficiently from childhood trauma, but like Regan’s demons, I still had a few left in need of exorcism, which came about through the rigors of working with a therapist, who helped me remember that I am not a victim, not of people, not of emotions, and not of grief.

My son died and that is the tragedy of my life; however, after three and a half years of mourning deeply, it was time to move forward, repurpose my life, and shoot for new dreams shaped by my new companion and potter: grief.

I know what it is like to lose a child, to a violent death too, and my entire essence exuded grief. I became grief. Everything I touched got a bit of my aural sadness. I don’t wear it like a shroud anymore. When the sadness arises, if it’s an opportune time, I allow the flood; if it’s not an opportune time, I hold on until I can get to a good and safe place. I used to have to pull over off the freeway right after Rikki died because I’d start sobbing in the car. Safety is important when grieving. Share only with people who are emotionally empathetic and who can handle sitting in the dark with you. Not everyone can. I feel the tense, quick hug of someone who I know can’t handle my pain. I see the eyes averted to an image in the ether.

People mean well, and they really do, unless they’re really dysfunctional, and they’re out in our circles too; they are not safe to share with, and you’ll be vulnerable for many, many days, months, years and people who are not emotionally sound should be avoided, even if they’re family, and maybe even especially if they’re family. I haven’t shared the deepest ache with anyone in my family except my younger brother and my husband. Not everyone can handle it because they haven’t dealt with their own shit yet. You can’t deal with anyone else’s until you’ve had a lengthy time of self-examination and learned that how you’ve navigated in your life has either worked or been monumentally self-destructive.

For example, does your V stand for victim or victor? It will matter in your healing process. In times of crisis, there is a tendency to return to old coping mechanisms, i.e., avoidance, denial, rage. When you are self-aware, you will recognize what is actually going on, and you adjust to the reality you now know, the one where you are loved and the one in which you love yourself.

For me, before I read a boatload of books on grief, founded a grief site, sought psychological help for my grief, and rediscovered my love for God, I was an emotional wreck. I ached in every single fiber of my body and even my soul was bruised. Those of you who are grieving and caught deeply in its clutches know what I’m talking about. I recommend getting into therapy even when things are great, but I recommend it especially when you’re grieving. Trust me, counselors aren’t always good at working with grieving people, at least none of the ones I saw during the time after my son died were. Fortunately, I had years of therapy under my belt, and was able to pull from the resources I learned throughout my life on my way from victim to victor.

I wish I could say it flies by, but it doesn’t. Healing takes as long as it takes. Here’s another polarizing debate: does one ever heal? If you knew how much my life has changed, and how much joy and purpose I have found, you would say, “It’s possible to heal.” But…I have my moments where it hurts so badly that I gasp and remember that Rikki is not here anymore, and I wonder if I’m healed. At other moments, I am elated about the things I’m learning in seminary, and I extend my expertise in grief to others who are just beginning the journey, and those who are having rough days. I feel as if my life matters even though the one person I loved most in the world is not here with me anymore.

My heart grieves for the parents in Uvalde. We all have something or someone we grieve. The concentration of grief in Uvalde right now is overwhelming. I know there are trauma experts and mental health facilitators and clergy flocking to the area right now. My concern is for the hearts of those who lost a loved one, but because of my own experience, my heart is with the parents of the slain children.

They have a rough and rocky terrain to traverse for some duration now. The bad news is, mourning, sobbing, doubling over in pain, curling up in the fetal position, are each unavoidable, such is grief. Then there will come a day when they’ll wake up with the beautiful sun in their eyes, the sun they will not see for maybe even a few years, and then they will begin to heal. Time and the desire to heal will bring them, us, me to a life of joy and of purpose. I miss my son every second of the day, and even though each experience from the day of his death forward, cannot be accompanied by his great big personality, I have to be responsible for the kind of life I have now.

By Sherrie Ann Cassel

What is the hair of the dog for a grief hangover? Yesterday was Mother’s Day in the United States. For those of us who are mothers or mother figures, we were celebrated yesterday. Mothers whose children have died, especially those who have lost their only child, wonder where we fit in on Mother’s Day. I haven’t been to church on Mother’s Day since my son died. I had all the good intentions of going. I bought a pretty new dress for the occasion and the shoes arrived in time for the service and I was high on life after reconnecting with an ancient friend, no, I mean, the years between us have been substantial. My heart was ready to go and be celebrated alongside the other smiling mothers. I was so ready. I wanted to celebrate my inclusion in the sisterhood of mothers.

I’m, as they say, a tough cookie. I may not be the hard ass I used to be, but there’s a little of her still left, and even with her keeping me safe from the intensity of the emotions from grief, I have my breaking point. I’m not prone to anxiety or panic attacks; there are many expressions of mental illness, and we are becoming more trauma informed as a society and less stigmatizing of mental illness.  So, the day leading up to Mother’s Day and Mother’s Day itself, I began to feel the resistance in the form of panic about going to church on Mother’s Day. It happens every year. Maybe it always will, but the thing I do now is honor whatever is going on in my head that is causing pain to my heart. Emotional pain can feel very physical. I know what I can handle, and I honor my limitations, and I encourage each of you to do the same thing. There’s no reason to spiral all the way back to where we started in the grief process every time we relapse into deep grief.

I sparkle because when someone loves life, they just do. I see many glittery people out there who have suffered tremendous losses, unimaginable losses, such as losing a child, among other things that cause suffering in our world. They are the ones I choose to emulate. They mourn when they need to and they celebrate when they can, and in the interim, they live their lives in between coffee and sliding into bed, they live their lives as purposefully as they can.

I felt the loss pretty deeply yesterday, and if you did too, how did you manage to get through it? I’m a nauseatingly positive and cheerful person. I’ve been told I glow. See, I love life. I miss my son unto the ends of the earth, but grief has yielded both blessing and pain to the viscera and softened me in ways that were not a good fit at first. Grief has offered me an opportunity to see the darkness so completely that light is all I crave. Does that make sense?

Even so, I grieved hard this Mother’s Day. I listened to his favorite songs, and I wept. I wrote about him and my absolute adoration for him. I wept throughout the day and then I’d be cool for a while, and then I’d cry all over again. I didn’t make it to church; it just would have been too painful, and so I stayed home in my pajamas and as our grandson says, I listened to my son’s jams, and some made me happy, and some made me sad, and some made me both at the same time. I know you can’t measure a particle and its wave at the same time, but there’s a fusion of sadness and joy from having your loved one in your life and then the daily realization that he or she is gone.

I mean, I don’t have sour grapes for mothers with living children. I ‘m happy for them. I hope they were celebrated well yesterday. I stayed home and let my husband love me through it. I heard a pastor barely make mention of Mother’s Day. I was just remembering all the things my son made for me on Mother’s Day when he was a little boy.  Sorry if I’m rambling. My first semester in seminary just ended last week, and now I have to find something to keep me distracted from the pain that accompanies me every day and felt powerfully on special days. I do best when I’m on the fast-track.

Random chance has leveled us, has rocked us, has left us with the only thing we can do, rebuild ourselves in a world without our loved one. That’s a tall order. Grief requires that we adjust and readjust every single day through every experience. I will never have a moment when my son is not at the forefront of my brain. I don’t know if that is an adaptation as a mammal momma to ensure the survival of our species, and if in humans it extends beyond the life of your child, but love is a strong motivation to fight for your child, and to never let it be a thought that you could lose one. Perhaps I keep that love alive through my grief, but just as anything in life, we must moderate and normalize those inevitable gifts/wounds. As much as I glow from love of life, my light also flickers and dims dependent upon where I happen to fall in the H.A.L.T. model.

I don’t want to be maudlin, but days of great cultural significance, e.g., Mother’s Day, Christmas, etc., do leave me breathless because of how hard I must work to be present in the joy and carry the sadness at a comfortable level so I can get through the day without being able to give my son a celebratory hug. He celebrated life too. Seems wrong for me to not try to keep up our family tradition.

I have a pretty dress to wear to have a date night with my husband, or a night out with the girls. I’ll get a different dress for next year…and maybe I’ll be able to make it to church where I’d rather be a footnote than a main theme – just for the day. That’s just me, but I can’t stop a cultural institution just to soothe my pain. I celebrate with my fellow sisters who were gifted with the opportunity to carry a child in their womb. I celebrate those mothers who chose to save the life of a child in the adoptive and foster care systems. The joy of motherhood is, to me, a miracle.

In spite of everything…I wouldn’t have wanted to miss the dance for anything. Giving birth is a painful and beautiful experience and an apt comparison, a perfect analogy for life. “Oh, tidings of [when we need] comfort and [when we are blessed with] joy.”

By Sherrie Ann Cassel

One of the greatest books I read during the tumultuous addiction years with my son was by Daphne Rose Kingma, 10 Things to do When Your World is Falling Apart. I thought the book was great while my son was alive, even though he was dreadfully ill from years of alcoholism and heroin use, and he was in tremendous emotional pain. All those things made this momma’s life a complete wreck, trying to save both my son and me. Daphne’s advice was logical, practical, and because it made so much sense, I began to see more clearly how much control, albeit not a lot for some time, I really did have over my reactions and emotions. I read the book after my son died, in my deepest grief, and Daphne’s advice still rang true. I just needed to clear my mind of despair over the loss of my son. I needed to be forward thinking. I needed to find a way to normalize my pain. I needed to breathe. I needed to sit with the chaos of my crisis and feel every emotion that came up for me. I needed to travel the path of my fractured life until I saw that I had the tools to pave a smoother road. I had the power to recreate myself because I will never be the same, as a consequence of having my son in my life, and of having him leave my life. I know you all know what I mean.

Six years and 5 months post- the death of my brilliant and beautiful son, I have found a kind of energizing fulfillment in my life. I don’t know how much more emphatically I can state this, but life does not end for us after our loved ones have passed. Our lives end for us when we pass. In the interim between the heartbreak and the healing there is work to do, to make you and our world better.

I’m not saying there will be a time when your heart no longer aches for your loved one; that is unrealistic; it is irrational. Sometimes 24 hours can seem unmercifully long; other times, 24 hours just isn’t enough time to get to everything. How does that happen? I love the 12-Steppers H.A.L.T. acronym and what each letter stands for: hungry, angry, lonely, tired. These conditions, hunger, anger, loneliness, and being tired (emotionally or physically exhausted) are conditions under which we should not be making important decisions beyond what to make for dinner to satisfy at least one of the conditions that will make it possible to make a good decision, like eating, getting some sleep, calling a friend, finding a healthy way to work through our anger, and … make good decisions about how we can and must work through the grief process so that we can recreate a person who can still live a wonderful, fulfilling, and purposeful life.

For those who have been following this blog since its inception, you all know I have been brutally honest about the effects of grief on my headspace and in my heart space. For those who may have just happened upon my page, welcome. I have people tell me how strong I am, and maybe that’s true, but I can still recall the woman who ached to the point that personal hygiene was just too exhausting. My husband took over all the household chores and business-y tasks. There were days when I simply would not get out of bed. I closed all the curtains and forced myself to sleep the slumber of self-numbing. I ached to the depths of my soul. I was an absolute hot mess. Losing someone you love shakes you to your very core. The rest of our lives we will spend adjusting to the loss in every life experience where our loved one is no longer able to share in them. If not stronger, I am certainly wiser and far less fearful. The worst thing imaginable has happened in my life, what do I have to fear now? I’m more accepting that death is a part of life. I have accepted the fact that my son is gone from this world, and I’ve had to adjust to how I will be in relationship with his Spirit. I’ve had to let go of the hurtful past we shared. I’ve had to mine the good memories and all the ways he was amazing. And I’ve worked alongside the Creator to heal myself.

I’m not alone on this awful/wonderful journey. I’ve watched other parents and others who grieve other losses stretch and grow and change and soar into amazing lives in the faces of their tremendous losses. I’m doing so. I’m married to the man of my dreams; he’s my best friend, and had it not been for him and for my younger brother, I don’t know how I would have gotten through those first three years. I tried two master’s programs before I found my niche, my calling, the salve that would take me the rest of the way toward being fully healed from the greatest loss of my life.

Being healed doesn’t mean you don’t still ache, sob, or remember that your loved one is not coming back to you in this lifetime. Being healed means you add the emotions that are born through the experience, even, and maybe especially, through the dark nights of the Soul, put them in your emotional resource tool box to take out when we need a good cry day, or when we need to be present for someone else and our life experience might be a salve for them, providing even a moment of relief from grief, or at the very least, some understanding because you know; you know.

Last thing I’d like to speak about today is this: find purpose for your life. Find something that satisfies your Soul. I survived, worked my ass off, and loved every single second of my first year of seminary. The knowledge satisfies a spiritual need that I’ve had for 59 years. The work this first year has been substantial and extremely challenging. I’ve met some people with whom I connect spiritually. I don’t have to pretend that I’m not in love with the God of my understanding with fear of offending or pissing off someone. I am being fulfilled in all sorts of ways. I’m stretching, growing, and changing. I don’t call myself strong, at least not any stronger than anyone else, but I have found that some are more resilient than others; some heal more quickly. I was not one of them. It took me a while to grow beyond my pain. It took me a while to learn to navigate my grief in a way that allowed me to love myself through it. If that makes sense.

I highly recommend Daphne Rose Kingma’s book, 10 Things to do When Your World is Falling Apart. If you’re in a good space, read it so that when that inevitable day hits you like a ton of bricks, you’ll have resources to get you through it. If you’re currently in crisis, and you can, take a minute and read a page a day. There are so many wonderful resources. Read everything you can get your hands on about the grief process, about stretching and growing and transcending your pain. See, we’re not meant to live in perpetual pain. In this life we will suffer, and we will know pain. Feel it. Emotions are the gift of being alive. Don’t be afraid to live your life. Don’t be afraid to recreate yourself. I don’t know if it hurts a pupa to transform itself utterly; but I know that becoming the butterfly in my own life has been a journey of trauma, abuse, great loss, deep despair, and amazing moments of beauty where I see the God of my understanding in every living organism. Who knew that I wouldn’t ache for the rest of my life after losing the person who will always be the most important and influential person in my life? Six years and five months have passed in what seems like an eternity and on good days, it seems like it flew by in the blink of an eye. How does that happen? Take care of yourselves during this time of supreme mourning. If you’re soaring, good for you. You worked hard for it.

By Sherrie Cassel

In the grief walk, I have seen others and I have seen it in myself, the sheer gumption to heal, in spite of all the shit that has happened in our lives, both sad and joyful, both emotionally healthy and some still struggling from trauma, we are strong spirited; we had no other choice. We’re each coming from some place. I’ve watched and been inspired by the people with whom I have traveled over the past six years and nearly 4 months. My heroes were reborn through the most painful loss imaginable, the loss of a child, for some, their only child. I don’t want to compare battle wounds; I just want to say, grief hurts deep inside our souls — even if you don’t believe in the soul – there is something deep inside us where the pain is felt so viscerally there are no words in any language to adequately describe it; it just hurts.

But even in the deepest, darkest pit of despair, just when we think we won’t ever feel good again, not even joyful, just good,  as in not bad, a nice breeze will refresh you on a blistering desert afternoon, and you’ll let go for just a minute, but it’s long enough to catch your breath, and sometimes that’s all you need to turn a dismal day of rumination into spring or into hope for a day when the pain is more than just tolerable, but a day in which the pain is not your focus for the next 24 hours. The time in between meltdowns will begin to increase, and the bad days will be fewer. Trust me on this.

Pain has accompanied me for many years, before and after my precious son died. But along with the pain there has been incredible wisdom and there has been compassion born of pain; it’s been transformative. I had to make the decision to move forward with my life, with a new dimension to myself, the dimension where grief is not in control of my emotions. I worked the new dimension like a muscle; it’s strengthening through the years. The journey is not one an individual can anticipate or prepare for, even if your loved one was terminal, and death was imminent. You just don’t know how you’re going to react or respond to the death when the finality of the loss hits you.

I remember saying in the early days of grief that I would never let my son go; I would never accept his death. I remember the hopelessness and despair of the early grief years. I remember how hard EVERYTHING was. If there is a way to become agoraphobic in your spirit, I found it. I was in so much pain that, like a rabbit caught in a coyote’s jaw, I went numb so I could survive the pain. I was numb, inactive, and had a flat affect for the first two years, a true stone face.

Doing grief is arduous work. I’ve watched my peers who have also lost children go through the early process of navigating gut-wrenching pain while maintaining a marriage, a family, a job, school, moving, ad infinitum. I’ve also watched them grow into some of the most inspiring people I’ve ever known. I’ve learned so much from them and my healing can be largely attributed to the wisdom of the group members I speak with everyday on various grief sites.

Healing is possible – but as I’ve said here many, many times before, you must go through the grit before you can get to the grace. No amount of avoidance will give you a free pass to escape the grief process. I know; I tried. Normalcy, with adjustments, will return in time. Some of us keep so busy that we rarely tap into our hardcore grief anymore. I know there are times when I get a whiff of Rikki’s favorite meal and I feel an ache so deep inside me it feels infinite, but then I refocus my thoughts on something else; I pray. I go for a walk. I calm myself through the pain and I feel it – intently – and then I let it go and move toward a task that takes me out of grief and puts me back in the present moment…the only moment we really have.

The recipe for a good life my first therapist gave me after my son died was:

1. Have something to do.
2. Have something/someone to love
3. Have something to look forward to

Of course, there are many more ingredients to a good and/or happy life. I strongly recommend therapy, even if you’re not in grief. Some of my dearest and most inspiring friends are therapists. I almost went that route, but after the loss of my son, and after the absolute transcendence over pain, I want to work with people in grief – as a chaplain. I wanted to dig deeper than the psyche. I want to help people to heal their souls. When you find something that heals you, you want to share it with the world. I know my son didn’t die so I could have a transformative experience; my son died, and I’m left with the detritus from an implosion to transform into a life of purpose and a life of beauty. You can too.

I know I will see my son one day. I’m certain of that on most days, but of course, the mom who has a gaping hole where my son should be allows doubt to creep in and I’m tossed about by too many theologies and superstitions. My son is not here, and I finally accept this. So, what do you do with the rest of your life after your loved one has died? Finding purpose for the rest of our lives is not only doable, it’s essential. We’re not meant to be in perpetual pain; we have got to find a way or ways to go on and live full, productive, and purposeful lives. Whatever happened to us, whatever losses we’ve had in our lives, we still must go on, and best-case scenario, our lives become beacons of hope to others.

I won’t bring religion onto this page other than to say, in the recent past, my heart has changed, and if you get the “call” – you follow. Being a chaplain to those in grief is my purpose, and as difficult and challenging as it is to be back in school when you’re 59 years and 9 months old, I am following the call. You can do this; you really can. Read everything you can get your hands on from credible sources, common experiences, hope, spiritual books. Immerse yourself in language, beautiful, healing language. You will heal yourself by changing your narrative to one of hope and one in which you find yourself as your own healer.

Life is never fair; I don’t think it’s supposed to be. I don’t think humans are equipped for smooth sailing for long periods of time. Somehow, we always find a way to complicate our lives. I like using the geology term punctuated equilibrium, i.e., we go long periods of time with life as status quo, and then BAM, life happens and we’re in a tailspin with no end in sight, and there goes our equilibrium, until we achieve status quo again, and the cycle repeats until we are freed from these bodies. Who needs a hardcore challenge every day? Not I (not anymore). I also don’t think we’re equipped to live constantly in stress. Homeostasis/balance is where we want to be as often as we can get there, and it’s doable. Life comes to us in fits and starts and in those permutations of all our lived experiences; we stretch and reach for those moments of balance, and again, it’s cyclical and some days really suck, but we’ve got this. We’ll make it. We will.

By Sherrie Cassel

From February 8, 2016

There were three of us there tonight — three women who have something terrible in common. We all lost sons — when they were very young. Angelica lost Oscar when he was only 7. Irene lost Louie when he was 13. And, I lost my 32 year old son two weeks, three days, and three hours ago. It’s not a club. It’s a terrible thing to have in common. We all raised our boys together. All three boys got to be seven together. Two of them got to be 13 together, and one of them got to be 32.

It’s a strange phenomenon — . Everyone has been so kind to me. Everyone struggles to find the right words to say, but everyone’s heart is pure, kind, and full of love for me, and I am just as tongue tied as they are in my attempt to express my gratitude to all of you.

I spent the afternoon with Irene and Angelica — and it was like I could rest there, lean in to them, find my grounding. We went to Louie’s grave and said hello and then sat on a bench and talked and cried. Irene and I hadn’t seen each other for 18 years. Angelica and I hadn’t spent time together for many years. We shared mole and a beer together. I felt affirmed in my grief, in my desire to carry on in spite of the overwhelming pain that comes in waves.

Socorro — had not experienced the same loss, but she was the sunshine at the center of our experience tonight. She is always delightful and very happy. She made us laugh, as did her husband, Jose; Angelica’s husband, Lionel; and, Irene’s husband, Big John. There’s something magical that happens in a Mexican kitchen, the aroma of chiles being roasted, eyes watering from the heat of the chile. The cumin, the chocolate, the laughter, the love.

We shared hugs and tears, and in a language that I have hugely neglected, we told stories about love, about loss, about cross-cultural events in our world.

Tomorrow we are meeting to drink tequila and continue our stories before John and Irene head back to Tejas. They drove all the way out to be here for my Rikki’s Celebration of Life. I am humbled by the kindness shown by all of you, and by people from whom I have been distanced for too many years.

I ache, but I still have purpose and I must go on to honor my son by doing great things with my life, in my lifetime…how ever long that might be. I am climbing out of that despair and trying to reach the top of the mountain where the Light is.

Irene, Angelica, and I — have aged, our hearts are at different stages of grief. I can look to them for total comfort and total understanding. I cannot begin to adequately express the affinity that I felt with them. Stages of grief: the maiden, the mother, and the crone. I take my lead from them. I do not know how to grieve. I’ve never lost a son before. They are my teachers, and if they can smile again, so too will I be able.

By Sherrie Ann Cassel

Tomorrow is the six-year anniversary of my son’s death. I choose to mourn today. I’ve been listening to music and sharing my heart on my Facebook page, and I woke my husband (sick with COVID – fully vaccinated) and told him that my heart hurts today. Through the tears I’m revving up to get through tomorrow. Hopefully, I’ll be all cried out by tomorrow and I’ll be able to celebrate his life – and not focus on the chaos, frenzy, anger, love, and fear that accompany the life of an addict. I will go to Joshua Tree National Park, climb up on a boulder, and reach up to the sky and try to touch him the way he touched me. But today, I will allow the tears to be gentle reminders of my tremendous loss.

In the earlier years of grief, I would ruminate on all the moments leading up to the last kiss I was ever able to place on his forehead, and I would either buck up and not feel anything on the angelversary, or I would sob until I couldn’t breathe. One year I bought cigars for my family, and we all took a couple of puffs in his honor; he loved his cigars, and then I went to bed while it was still light outside, and I cried myself to sleep.

Angelversaries are simply hard. I’m an optimist. I’m Pollyanna in too many ways, and in ways that sometimes drive my realist husband to the brink of madness (litote). But pain can reach deep inside even the most nauseatingly and chronically chipper person. I know. Glitter and sparkle, awe and wonder, laughter and joy, love from others, love for others, self-love, aren’t those the goals of humanity? But for suffering, life might just be perfect even in its imperfections. Life experiences can change our gait from a frenetic one to a waltz in the blink of an eye. Who knows on what day those dances will take place? When we are aware of our emotions we know they are navigable. I feel the heartstrings being plucked with increasing intensity, and then I breathe. Grief is a curious experience; it hurts, like a motherfucker (I’m sorry, but no other word will do). I remember when I was deep in hand-wringing mourning, my eyes were puffy until I was no longer recognizable as Sherrie, the perpetual Pollyanna. I didn’t know it was possible to hurt that badly and still live and breathe. I hyperventilated many times. I went to the hospital thinking I was having a heart attack on two angelversaries. The few days leading up to the angelversary can bring on panic attacks as the day and time approach. My son died at 5:55 p.m. on Friday, January 22^nd. I will cover my clocks and I will stay off the computer and my phone tomorrow as this time approaches.

What will I do? I wish I could tell you that I will proceed with my plans, but I feel the thickening of the air and I’m feeling more serious than I like. My gait is slowing, and I may be running out of steam, the steam fueled by optimism; it’s waning. Angelversaries are like that.

Rikki loved tacos, turkey tacos. They were always a celebratory meal, when we had our many parties with our amazing friends over the years. I raised Rikki to celebrate life. I raised him to have wonder and to be in awe over this amazing world, which he did until the moment he died. I kissed him and covered him with a warm blanket, and he said, “I don’t know what I did to deserve this; it feels so good.” And then he closed his eyes and he died. He loved life. We loved it together, in spite of some really tough years.

Freud wrote copious notes, books, over his lifetime. Upon his own languishing life, he wrote his observations about what was going on in his mind as he lay dying. I’m doing the same thing. I may not be dying in a mortal way yet, but I am dying today in a human way. It’s the metamorphosis I go through every year since my son’s death. I will writhe in my heart today, the anniversary of the day before he died; there was so much to be thankful for that day. There was so much hope.

I’ve learned to be hopeful in life, more realistic, but hopeful. I’ve learned that hope is manufactured in a heart with the desire to heal from all wounds, past and present. Life is just so remarkably short, in the blink of an eye, on a day none of us knows, random chance is no respecter of persons. My goal and my recommendation are to live your life to its absolute fullest, every day. I’m going to take this day to mourn, but tomorrow…I hope…my steam will be replenished with the optimism of a brand-new day.

If you have a current or upcoming angelversary, I recommend drafting up an itinerary. I have one for tomorrow. I wrote it out yesterday, and I’m going to do my level best to check off every item on it. See, no matter how much pain we carry, the world doesn’t wait for us to be through with our painful experiences. Mourning is absolutely essential in the grieving process, however; it will lessen, and you will heal.

Healing is not an impossible task. Trust me on this.

Rikki loved the soundtrack to Guardians of the Galaxy. I’m listening to it now through tears and smiles; it’s so hopeful.

By Sherrie Ann Cassel

“Life is just a lesson

Time is a perception

Love will cure depression

This is my confession

You are my obsession

You are my obsession

You are my obsession[…]

“You are My Obsession” ~Trevor Something~ (sic)

What can be worse than the occasional time of retrospection? Rumination. After my son died, I collected every mistake I ever made with him and ruminated about what a horrible person I was to not be a perfect person in his life. Even insignificant things like making him nuke his own Hot Pockets when he was ten…or something as damaging as things said in the heat of a dysfunctional moment when addiction is the center of your world and there is no escape, save for death or recovery. I thought about things I should have said, those damnable “should haves.” I thought about crimes of commission and crimes of omission. Not actual crimes, but metaphorical ones, true fuck ups, whatever the causation or … reason. I hemorrhaged over my sins until I had no strength left .

I felt every tear my son ever shed, and I ached in my heart for any of the pain I ever caused him, and I took on his pain from everyone who had ever hurt him. I took on the weight of his world as well as my darkened world, and I was a total wreck for the first three and a half years of the grieving process. I’d do well, and then like a person addicted to a substance, I’d relapse into deep and complicated grief, and I wouldn’t be able to function for a few days, a week, a month…

I’ve read a countless number of books on grief. I’ve grieved for six years next week. If I have any expertise in life about anything, it is about grieving the loss of a child. One of the things I can say about the curse of rumination, is that the act extends your deep, visceral pain, far longer than it needs to. Certainly, we made mistakes with our loved ones, but in my heart of hearts, I know how much my son loved me and I him, and our love for each other was always hopeful that the other one was happy.

I see this in retrospect. If you had a turbulent relationship with your loved one, the deep mourning period can last longer than is necessary. Crying, withdrawing, and even raging, are all a part of the grief journey, and it is a journey. You will change and grow and transcend your pain. I think sometimes when I go to that place of rumination it’s a way for me to prove to myself that I haven’t forgotten the loss, even though I’ve moved on with my life. If I can just hold on to a piece of my son, even if it’s a painful piece, I haven’t really moved on. How could I? How could I ever move on? But I am doing just that; I’m moving on. Whenever I find myself ruminating on something painful about the disease and the death, I allow myself to feel it, deeply. I may even shed a tear or clutch my chest for a moment, but then the moment passes, and I find a more beautiful thought to replace the dark thought, and I resume my life.

Choosing to move forward with our lives is not forgetting about our loved ones. Neither do we have to hold on to the painful pieces of their lives to hold on to them. Even the most painful of experiences can yield bright, orange poppies, or deep red roses, or sunbursts of enlightenment in our consciousness. I know a thing or two about pain and loss. My greatest treasure was my son. He’s gone now and I’m left with a world full of wonder and the compulsion to find my purpose or purposes. How many lifetimes do we live during our years here?

If being in chronic pain is the only way to hold on to my son’s memory, then as Etta said long ago, “I’d rather be blind” to those memories. My son was an amazing person in brains and communication skills. He was funny. Oh my God, how he made me laugh. He was kind, loving, and loyal to a fault. These are the things I want to ruminate on. The good stuff. In the beginning of my grief journey, the pain kept my relationship with my son alive, but at every turn I was aching deep in my soul. To be honest, the good memories, in the beginning, weighed me down too. Everything was bittersweet; everything is still bittersweet. The difference now is I acknowledge the bitterness and then I reach like a child on the monkey bars testing my reach — for the swing that will take me to freedom.

Ruminating about any regrettable words, neglect of the relationship from time to time, or any thought that lengthens your mourning period, is counterproductive. Regret is inevitable. Long-term rumination about our imperfections accomplishes nothing but guilt, and guilt is a killer, emotionally, physically, and spiritually.

We must look for different analogies, those that elicit warmth, comfort, and healing. I could choose to reconstruct over and over again in my mind the addiction years with my son, the physical sickness, the emotional hellfire during the maelstrom of his disease, and I did for a while, during the “Why?” phase of my grief process. Asking the unanswerable is a characteristic of holding on to pain through rumination.

There are some things from which to move away, we must loosen our grip on the idea that letting go is forgetting about our loved one or forgetting the monumental hole they left in our lives; it’s not. Loosening our grip on the painful memories, including the day we said goodbye, is the first sign you are healing. Healing is the goal after a loss. Letting go is the beginning of liberation from the things that hurt us.

I had a friend who is also a therapist ask me during the eye of my son’s storm why I ruminated on the possibility that I was going to lose him, and I didn’t have an answer. I was just one more terrified parent of an addicted child. Six years later I have an answer for my friend, F.K., I don’t need to ruminate. We grieve throughout our lives for different losses, some are grieved for a brief time, some only momentarily, and sometimes, we grieve for so long we lose our way to joyful living.

There are so many wonderful texts out there from different cultures and different religions, and I have my own personal favorites, in new wineskins. This verse in the Judeo-Christian Bible comforts me when I’m about to go down that dark tunnel of rumination.

Philippians 4:8

Modern English Version

Finally, brothers[and sisters], whatever things are true, whatever things are honest, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue, and if there is any praise, [ruminate] on these things.

And so, I do.

Next Saturday will be six years my Rikki has been gone. I went through hell and back until I was able to normalize my pain and return to emotional homeostasis over those past six years. Learning to live in the world without my son in a way that makes my heart soar when I think of him took work. Forcing a flower out of a failure is the best we can do when faced with our imperfections. Maya Angelou reminds us that “When we know better, we do better.” Yeah, do that. Live your life forward. Deal with your pain so you can let it go and it will no longer command you.

Cut yourself some slack. None of us is born with all the knowledge that will make life easily navigable or the secret that will assure that relationships will always be rosy, or how to manage when someone we love more than life itself dies and we are left with the knowledge we will never see them again. We fumble every step of the way and depending on where you come in on life’s inevitable dirge, you stay in the decrescendo or you reach the pinnacle note, a crescendo you can ride all the way to the other side of pain.

Whatsoever…and so it goes.