Grief to Gratitude

By Sherrie Ann Cassel

The day has ended, and the night is cradling me like a new mother with her first born. I think about my own first born, my only child, and how I cradled him as I rocked back and forth in my rocking chair, singing softly, “Goodnight my Someone”, from the Music Man. I sang the song to him up through his fifth birthday. I stopped only because he would become overcome with emotion when I sang it to him. He was such a beautiful boy, my beautiful boy.

Tonight is Mother’s Day Eve, and I have done my level best to keep focused on the living. I’m fortunate to still have my mother – and celebrating with her is a gift to both of us. Mother’s Day still leaves me raw and exposed. I ask for no cards, no flowers, no dinners, just a quick, “How are you?” is enough; anything else would be too much, like a knife to the heart.

This year is a bit different. I am feeling like celebrating the son who made me a mother, flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone, deeply and forever embedded in my heart. I am a mother. I have a child; he has transitioned from this life to the next. I believe with all my being he is in heaven. I believe we all get there eventually – and I believe we’ll be reunited one day. I need to believe this. I cannot fathom a future without him. This may not make sense to those who have not lost a child – and you may ask, “What do you mean you can’t fathom a future without him? Haven’t you been living without him?” Well, yes, but there is hope in an eternity with my son that brings with it sanity and comfort. If I thought I’d never see him again, I’d slump into a depression unto my own death – even as I live.

My son’s been gone now four years and five months. I have raced through Mother’s Day weekend for the past four years. I used to hate driving by all the street corners with people selling flowers for last minute shoppers, sons trying to remember what their mother’s favorite color is.  “Is it roses or rununculus? Orange or red? What’s her favorite perfume? Oh shit, what time is it?”

To be honest, my son and I never really made a big deal about the day. Oh sure, when he was a little tyke, he’d make little gifts for me in school. Once he made a necklace made completely out of giant macadamia nuts. I was heading to an appointment, and there’s this adorable little boy with the biggest brown eyes chasing me out the door with the necklace saying, “Mommy, you forgot your necklace!” I put it on and proudly wore it to my appointment where others said, “Do you know you’re wearing macadamia nuts around your neck?” Years later I would tell my son that story and he’d say, “No shit”, and he’d laugh and laugh. Speaking of nuts, Mother’s Day for the grieving mother certainly is a bag of mixed ones.

I don’t need anyone treading lightly with me on Mother’s Day. I just want to be recognized as a mother – always and forever. I carried my son in my body for nine months. I was a single mother and so my son slept with me until he was six. I raised him by myself; he is mine. We had victories and defeats, but we always had each other’s back. We loved each other fiercely. I love him still. I’m a mother. I’m a mom. I am Rikki’s momma. He called me momma on the last day of his life. I have cards and notes and text messages and emails in which he called me momma. I consider the moniker a term of endearment, a sweet boy’s expression of love, and a medal of honor. I was blessed to be his momma; indeed, I am still.

Mother’s Day isn’t just about sweet and well-intentioned trinkets, handprints in cement, or even macadamia nut necklaces. Mother’s Day is about women all over the world celebrating our children and the blessing they were and continue to be to us. My heart aches because I can’t hear him say, “Happy Mother’s Day, Momma”, but I can hear it in that part of me that always knew when he needed something, and I feel it in my heart.

No, I don’t get a big bear hug from him on our special day, but I have the sweetest memories of all the hugs he gave me while he was alive and well, happy and whole, however briefly he touched my life. Memories are all I have along with things that were important to him, art he collected, art he created, pieces of paper with his handwriting or doodles on them – voice messages – his little stuffed dog he named, Squishy, and a love that is boundless and eternal. I celebrate him this Mother’s Day.

Gratitude in the deepest part of my soul is what I give to the memory of my son and in so doing, I find snippets of joy In the knowledge that he was mine for a short time, and then I gave him back to the God of my understanding, for safekeeping until we can be together again.

Mother’s Day can be painful when your children are living — and when your children have died.  However, you navigate the day is okay. Right this minute I am feeling strong and hopeful for a day of celebration, for my own mother, and for the mother I am too.

I will always be Rikki’s momma – and not even death can change that.

My heart is with all you mommas on Mother’s Day. May you be blessed with more joyful memories than you thought possible.

Blessings

On June 25^th in 2009 we lost the actress Farrah Fawcett to cancer. The world scarcely had time to begin dealing with her death when Michael Jackson died later on the same day. Farrah’s death was overshadowed by the controversial music king’s death. Death makes you focus on what’s truly important in life. Sometimes — even deep grief gets overshadowed by world and other life events, much like the news about Farrah’s death was quickly forgotten because of Michael’s death.

COVID-19, with all of its many preventative measures, has kept my grief a bit subdued as I try to keep up with the changing routines. The added responsibilities and activities of having our 10-year-old grandson living with us have made my ability to actively grieve virtually impossible. Certainly, our grief is lifelong, but there are times when there must be a buffer between it and what is happening around us, e.g. events and issues that demand our attention.

Yesterday I had such an event. Our bodies have ways of making us aware that changes need to be made in our lives. I haven’t felt stressed, but apparently my brain sent out a warning signal. I thought I was having a heart attack yesterday, but it turns out it was stress. Grief can stress your body and mind, especially unexpressed grief. I sat in the hospital emergency room for several hours thinking about how I’ve neglected to take care of myself. My health had taken a back seat to grief, grief that can be overwhelming and unpredictable.

I’m okay with grief being shelved from time to time, so I can take time to live a life of purpose while I try to stay in joy as often as I can; however, one can busy herself to exhaustion and poor health rather than allow the time we are sitting it out to practice good grief hygiene, including taking care of ourselves.

We live in one of the most beautiful areas in the San Bernardino high-desert where ancient geological records abound. There is beauty all around us – and if you have an artist’s eye, there is beauty even in places where others don’t see it. My son was such an artist who saw beauty everywhere. I miss him so much I sometimes forget the lessons he left behind for me, and I forget to emulate the characteristics about him that I most loved. I know I must carry on those wonderful attributes that made him so special to me and to others, to not do so does not honor his brief life.

I awakened early this morning and opened all the windows and doors in our home. I sat and had my coffee in the silence. I thought about my son. I considered how I’m not ready to leave just yet; I have so much to contribute to our world. We all do. I allowed my grief to overshadow making time to take care of myself. I think it happens more often than not for grievers. We busy ourselves so we don’t have to think about our ever-present pain – although it never truly leaves us. We just learn to make it more manageable.

I believe we can grieve efficiently in a way that honors our loved ones and that honors ourselves. Grievers forget about themselves and oftentimes need to be reminded in small — or monumental ways — to take care of ourselves. What’s important is, certainly the phenomena borne of grief, but also our emotional and physical health – and if you’re a spiritual person, absolutely we must nurture this side of ourselves too.

There is a verse in the Hebrew scriptures that encourages us to “Be still and know that [He] is God.” Psalm 46:10 – and however you define God or whatever kind of relationship you have with the Divine, we must find a way to sit with it and breathe through our challenging times, including grief – and maybe even especially grief.

Grief can make us feel like we are being flayed; it can be brutal and systemic. There were times in early grief when I felt like one big ball of exposed nerve endings – all the way to my Soul. I allowed myself to feel it and sometimes I tried to ignore it, but ignoring it is not always the best practice, and it certainly is not always beneficial to our emotional, physical or spiritual health. I haven’t had a professional massage since Rikki died. I haven’t been to the ocean – a very healing place for me – since Rikki died. I haven’t meditated since Rikki died. If this is your M.O., might I suggest that before your own hospital ER visit you find ways to be kind to yourself. I will make it a priority now to devote a significant part of my day to meditate on what brings me peace and I will pray to the God of my understanding for discipline to do this every day – because making time for ourselves is more important than our need for despair. One can grieve without despairing. I must remember this too.

We have rosebushes that are in full bloom and just beautiful. As trite as it may sound, I need to stop the busyness that keeps me from fully participating in life and I must sit in gratitude to the God of my understanding and admire their beauty and absorb their fragrance. I can grieve without abandoning self-care. I must make sure that grief does not overshadow all the things that are awesome in my life.

What are you doing to take care of yourselves? How do you chill? If you have things that work for you, please share them with others, and with me. We are teachers to others as well as students of others. We have contributions we can make – once we’ve sat in gratitude and lapped up the peace that “surpasses all understanding.” Philippians 4:7

Breathing through moments that put stress on our bodies is underrated; it’s important to find the time during those challenging moments; and it’s important to breathe our way to a comfortable homeostasis. We must find balance – even during the most intense moments of grief. I’m learning. I thought I was doing well, but apparently, I haven’t been and it took a trip to ER to open my eyes to see that stifling my grief by keeping myself so busy I was forgetting to breathe through those moments of intensity is not in the best interest of my health. I’m awake now.

Grief brings with it powerful emotions, some can wipe us out, but as I tell our grandson when he is angry, that we can blame everything and everyone else for our anger, or we can take responsibility for it and choose to find another way to work through it. We must find ways to grieve and take care of ourselves, to relax and heal in the silence that we must create, especially for moments of healing our broken hearts and our troubled minds — and as it turns out, our tired bodies.

When life events overshadow our grief, it’s okay; it really is. We have the responsibility to nurture ourselves through our intermittent and spontaneous pain. To not do so is harmful to our bodies, minds and Souls, and if we don’t take care of ourselves, who will? If we allow ourselves to run until we collapse, we won’t be able to grieve efficiently. Certainly, cry when you need to, talk about your loss to safe people who can handle your grief, but also, and most importantly take some time for yourself to catch your breath and then take those slow, deep breaths that heal your bodies and calm your Souls.

Grief is dynamic, but it is we who choose its intensity and duration.

Here’s to good health and taking time away from that intensity and allowing ourselves the wonder of life to take precedence from time to time.

Blessings.

By Sherrie Ann Cassel

I used to fancy myself a poet. I found out, however, that it is not my gift. There was a gentleman, and I use that moniker loosely, I knew virtually some time ago who told me my prose was better than my poetry. He was a schmuck to be sure, but as I’ve worked at my craft for many years, it appears he was right. I am far too literal and driven to precision to be a poet, although every so often I have constructed a winner, but by and large, it is my prose which most speaks to people. I had hoped to be published in The New Yorker as a pinnacle achievement, win a Pushcart Award, and find my way into the poetry illuminati, but that has not been the case. I have been published far more for my prose than I ever was for my poetry.

My point, which I eventually get to, is that there are dreams we have, pipe dreams, perhaps, which we must let go. I’m watching the world be plagued by a fatal virus. I wonder, even for myself, if I will make it out alive. One never knows. Linda Ronstadt said of her Parkinson’s diagnosis, “Something’s gonna getch ya.” And Stephen King in his Green Mile said, “We all owe a debt to death.” Positive thinking, right?

The world has changed in a matter of weeks. Never in my wildest dreams could I have constructed such a scenario for my world. COVID-19 is a term even my 10-year-old has added to his lexicon. My husband just had a scare and fortunately tested negative for the deadly virus. My heart is saddened over the deaths and current diagnoses as people fight for their lives toward recovery.

My mother is nearing 80 and she has a rare respiratory infection whose treatment regimen is high dosages of antibiotics for one year. I haven’t seen her in two months. I haven’t hugged her in two months. I can’t visit her because my husband has had a cold – and because if I touch something that someone infected with COVID-19 has touched, I could transmit it to my dear, sweet mother. I love her too much to take the risk – even for a hug.

The human touch is so important for our emotional well-being, but it now poses a threat to our very existence, individually and collectively. I’m fortunate that I have my husband and our grandson to keep each other company. My mother is all alone as are many of our elderly and others. The internet is helpful, but it is no substitute for human contact, physical human contact.

When I was a child, my brothers, sister, myself and other neighborhood kids would play the game Keep Away, where one person would be shunned by the others, a real self-esteem crushing activity. In retrospect and in light of current events, I now see the game had the latent benefit of teaching one how to be alone in the universe, or at least in the neighborhood. I still take it personally when someone doesn’t allow me to play in “any reindeer games;” I’m a very social animal. But I digress. Keeping our distance from others is a gift to them and a survival skill for us.

Going to the grocery store has been an interesting event. I saw a couple fully garbed in protective gear actually running through the grocery store trying to keep to the six-foot social distancing rule. I smiled and tried to say hello, but I could tell by their terrified eyes that pleasantries were unwelcome. Alternately, there are people who have no protective gear and smile and exchange salutations while still maintaining the recommended distance from one another. I’m torn as an extrovert who is now having to go undercover so as not to scare people – and yes, probably to protect my own health – and the loved ones in my home.

People can be incredibly kind in crises. I’ve had people offer to pick up groceries for me when they go to the market. I’ve offered to let people go ahead of me in line when they have fewer items than I do or if they look like they’re struggling. I offered a woman in the parking lot of Vons a few rolls of toilet paper because she was in search of the golden ticket Cottonelle. I’ve even read about health care workers coming out of retirement to assist the medical community with patient care during this global pandemic. I try to keep my sense of humor during challenging situations, but there is nothing funny, save maybe the toilet paper shortage, which illustrates to me the return to basic needs during crises.

When will it end? How will it end? The answers to those questions are anyone’s guess. As a currently wounded Pollyanna, I work hard to remain positive and hopeful that the world will not end in fire, ice, or viral obliteration, but I can’t be certain. Grisly video and photographs of refrigerated trucks as makeshift morgues have yanked me into a realism I have not been this keenly aware of since I lost my beautiful son to addiction. This pandemic is as real as my grief; it is as real as our eventual deaths.

I live in a very small town in the Joshua Tree region. We have had two active cases of COVID-19, and only God knows with how many people these two were in contact. When my son was dying, I had a therapist, and I use that term loosely as well, who told me I was catastrophizing my son’s illness. I question whether or not I’m catastrophizing the ultimate outcome of the COVID-19 saga. I hope for the best and prepare myself, my heart, my mind, and my physical body for the worst. With six degrees of separation, who will I be forced to say goodbye to? Does that sound fatalistic? I think it does and so I am going to have to face the loss of my optimism and/or perhaps my very life.

Pardon my common vernacular, but this is some serious shit. I pray and I do so for those who are on the frontline of this pandemic. I pray for those whose immune systems are under attack by this virus. I pray for those I adore, and that like the people of Israel during Passover, my loved ones will not be touched. I pray for our epidemiologist and virologists from the WHO, the NIH and the CDC who are tirelessly working toward a treatment regimen and a vaccine to save those most vulnerable first – and the rest of us as supplies are being replenished.

This is a scary time for our world, whether one is optimistic, pessimistic or nihilistic. In 1994, Laurie Garrett wrote The Coming Plague in which she discussed different plagues our world has endured and from which it has recovered, e.g. hanta and Ebola. Dr. Anthony Fauci has an honest response he has shared with the human race about the bleak possibility that things will worsen before they get better. Is it pessimism or a knowledgeable epidemiologist’s realistic prognosis?

I suppose the answer to the question is in the eye of the beholder. I’ve never been one to live my life in fear. I’ve always held out for hope, even when things looked hopeless. Optimism has not always served me well – and I’ve been knocked on my ass more than a few times by reality; this is one of those times, I presume.

Robert Frost wrote “Fire and Ice” with only two options for our demise; the world was smaller then. We used to fear a nuclear end to all life on earth. War has devastated our world time and time again. Viruses have wiped out peoples. And hatred and ignorance have done their damage to the human race too. How will this end?

I wish I could shake my optimism as I wait for the other shoe to drop, but I can’t – and I won’t. Faith is an entity that requires the fanning of its flame, and I still have plenty of kindling to keep it going.

These are difficult times, not just for my country, America, but the entire world. Stay-at-home orders, shortages of hospital beds, ventilators, face masks, not to forget our doctors and other healthcare workers putting their lives on the line even as they are unimaginably exhausted. If there was ever a time to come together as a people, it is now.

This post is off-topic, sort of, but as a blogger with a social conscience, I feel it necessary to comment on the events of the day. I haven’t been to the grocery store in days. I took a drive through our tiny Joshua Tree area yesterday and our little town was pretty much a ghost town. I am praying, sending good juju, holding people up to the Highest Good, and trying to stay calm in all this madness.

After about three days of mandatory stay-at-home orders, I was already going a bit stir crazy, and I whined about the boredom and about not being among others, but I have calmed my ass down in light of the incidents of transmission of COVID-19 and the thousands of deaths from it.

I heard an epidemiologist intimate that to stay home is an act of heroism. Imagine that. We can be heroes in others lives by staying put in our homes and following the social distance rules. I’m fortunate because I have shelves and shelves of books. I have my husband and our grandson with me. I have board games, video games, and our grandson is being homeschooled by my husband who is a retired teacher. There is plenty to do because laundry still needs to be done, housework doesn’t stop because the world has come to a standstill.

If you’re an artist and your medium is available to you without having to go out and buy it, paint, sing, write, express your fear and frustration, your hope, your dreams, your love of our precious earth and its constituents. We can still help from our homes.

My hat’s off and I extend the sincerest gratitude to our health care workers and those still going to work each day. I pray for their safety and well-being. I seriously have never seen anything like this in my 57 years, well, not since 9/11.

In the New Testament of the Judeo-Christian Bible, Jesus said that we must love God with all our heart, mind and strength, and that we must love others as we love ourselves. Life is precious. We are each precious. If we ignore the Golden Rule, we will be far worse off than we are now.

I grieve for the day before the shit hit the fan with COVID-19. The Surgeon General said this week is going to be “really bad.” My hope is not dashed; I still believe in our epidemiologists with WHO, the NIH, and the CDC. I believe in our virologists who are working tirelessly to find a cure, a treatment, a vaccination. You know they are working quadruple time.

My husband and I watched the news last night and the coverage was from all over the world. There are makeshift hospitals being constructed to get ahead of the crisis before us. There has been no mention to my knowledge of morgue capacity, but in several states across our country, the death toll from heroin/fentanyl overdoses was creating shortages of space in the morgues; lack of space is certainly not out of the realm of possibilities.

I don’t know what your faith tradition is but hold everyone and yourself up to the Highest Good. I will pray to my God and try to be as heroic as the rest of the world that is staying put –. Pray for the orphans and the widow(ers), the homeless, the hungry, the shut-ins, the lonely, the poor, those who must work, and always, always our healthcare workers.

Solutions do “take a village” – and the cure/vaccine/eradication of COVID-19 is/are going to take the cooperation of all of us. Please be safe out there. Be mindful of others besides yourself. Read. Hug your family members often. Pay attention to what’s happening all around us and keep the faith.

We’ve been through worse. My husband was just reading the types of health crises we’ve had throughout history, and the number of deaths wrought by the different diseases (yes, because he and our grandson are weird and wanted to know). We’ve been through worse and survived. I’m hopeful. I still believe in a God who loves us and wants the best for us.

Hang in there.

Peace.

By Sherrie Ann Cassel

I never really know how I’m going to feel on any given day; triggers can still slay me.  I work hard to stay in the present moment and navigate my process consciously. I mean, I’m a sentient being. Sentient means we are self-aware and able to feel things. When I’m in a period of dizzying swirling grief – emotions flood my person and I become overwhelmed with feelings and my brain gets ignored. We’re able to stay in the overwhelm until we can’t take it anymore and then we catch our breath and remember we have logic, resolve, and the desire to be happy – even though they may be buried underneath the totality of your grief.

I forget sometimes too. I’ve learned in the last four years and one month that I must keep the constant ache tolerable. I know experts tell us we need to sit with our darkness, but how long is too long? I would say if your eyes get too adjusted to the dark and you’re blinded by even a pinprick of light, it’s time to step out of the darkness. I was in a dark place for a very long time after my son died. I ached so badly from the unfulfilled longing to have my son back that I wasn’t sure I’d ever escape the pain.

I’ve made friends with the darkness of my grief process and I sit with it for a while because it’s necessary to be awake in it so as not to shut down in it. I was afraid of the darkness in my life, but we have dark emotions for a reason. I think, for me, I need a break from the busyness that takes place in the light from time to time. The dark place can be a cool space to recover from the work it takes to go on after a significant loss. I can go there now at will and I don’t have to be at the mercy of my darkness. I control the depth, the intensity, and the frequency of my darkness.

Trust me when I say we all have moments of darkness – and I’ve learned it’s nothing to be afraid of.  Where do I go when I’m there? I go to a place of peace and acceptance, peace as respite from the sadness, and acceptance because there is nothing else I can do if I want to move toward wholeness; and I so desperately want to be whole.

When I was a teen-ager, I loved Poe and Alice Cooper – a nice blend of death and darkness, for sure. Freud said we each have a death instinct, from which comes aggression toward others or toward self. We are all working toward our own deaths, however it plays out. Never did I think I would be so comfortable with my own death instinct, but losing my beautiful son has given me a comfort about where I will be once I transition from life to death. My faith tradition and my deepest hope is that I will be in a heaven with my son. How could I be anything but comforted with a hope as deep and as wide?

I know your heart is aching for you to come to this page and read about grief, especially when there are so many other things you could be reading. I hope my thoughts about my own process are helpful to others. I want to normalize my grief so I can heal and for the purpose of being an example to others whose hearts are broken by the deaths of their loved ones.

I honestly thought the intensity would just follow me for the rest of my life. I wanted so desperately to feel better. The opposite of feeling better is feeling really bad with no hope of escape. For those of you who are further along in your process, it’s important for you to share what gives you hope, what keeps you going, and what heals you – in fits and starts. The fast track to healing is by helping someone else. I started After the Storm as a way to talk to others who had lost a child to addiction, a very specific kind of death, and because I was not getting any better and because I had no one I could talk with about the events leading to his death, which were heartbreaking and hopeless. I had tried therapy, but I was finding the therapists were not well-versed in grief. I decided it was time to reach out to others whose losses were the same, and I hope I have helped the members as much as they have helped me. I was losing myself in the pain of early grief, and I was desperate to find something to comfort me that didn’t require numbing out chemically or emotionally. I just wanted to feel better. I just wanted to come out of the darkness I wore like a full-bodied shroud, announcing to everyone that I was in grief. My shroud kept people away from me, and maybe, in retrospect, I just needed to be alone with my grief until I could face others without a puffy face and smeared makeup. Some of us either don’t know how to or don’t want to breakdown in front of others. I’m the former. I don’t recommend it.

We’re social animals. We thrive in the company of likeminded people. I’m an introvert who’s learned to come out of my shell from time to time and mingle with others. I recharge in the silence and yes, even in the darkness when I choose to go there. I can’t stress this enough – if your darkness is too dark and you’re finding it difficult to emerge into the light, get professional or clerical help. Spirituality or freeing yourself for greater and more rapid self-actualization has proven to me to be my greatest springboard from which to catapult myself, headfirst, into healing light.

I guess our emotions are bipolar – at least mine are – but with a merciful middle ground where I can find balance and return to homeostasis. Accept mercy when you can find the strength. I know it’s difficult in the early days of grief to drag your poor tired mind and body to seek comfort. I’ve learned that my friends inasmuch as they wanted to be there for me, simply could not. They helped with practical things and I am forever grateful for them. The truth is, however, there are some places we must travel on our own.

I’m healing as I know many of you are because you reach out to learn about grief, about healing, and about finding wholeness. Trust me, that’s progress, even through the emotional exhaustion. I think we forget that we are working our process sometimes because it hurts so bad to be without our loved ones. But, progress is being made, either it’s eked out or flooded through our hearts and distilled through our brains until it is clear enough to proceed to the next level of healing.

I’m not an opera person. It never really spoke to me. I was a Bad Company, Led Zeppelin and Violent Femmes kind of gal. But one day when the pain had me down for a few days in the early days of my process, a friend sent me a YouTube video of Renee Fleming singing “You’ll Never Walk Alone” for a September 11^th concert for the families of those who were killed. Her performance was riveting and came at the perfect time for my heart. Her emotions rode the coattails of her notes hanging on for dear life during a devastating loss for Americans, and truly for the whole world that was watching.

I encourage you to listen to it when you can. I know because of this site and because of After the Storm I am not alone except when I choose to be. No harm, no foul — if that’s where you are right now. But when you can…reach out for people who understand your loss. If there is no one, start a group or a blog or a Facebook page and surround yourself with those who are walking a similar path as you.

And as Ms. Fleming says, “Don’t be afraid of the dark.” Healing takes place there too.

By Sherrie Ann Cassel

• 

I’ve been staring at his handwriting for an hour now. He had a book of lists, you know, to do lists.

I found some of his journals in storage, and I pore through them every so often. I take my finger and trace the shape of his letters, caress the loops, linger tenderly on his punctuation, and stare deeply into the intent of his doodles.

My precious boy.

If I were a medium I would say that his Spirit was in the room, that he was trying to communicate with me from the “other side.”

I would try to comfort the grieving Momma through the mercies of little white lies…

And maybe that’s what I’m doing for myself right now, comforting my grieving heart with little white lies.

But I cannot shake my sense of him in this book of lists, this book in which he made plans for the day, for the week…

I’m a realist generally, with an overarching need to believe, but I won’t seek out proof. It’s enough to “feel” his Presence…in that part of me that can suspend my disbelief, and transcend a world that believes only in things that can be measured.

As you all know, when you lose a child, your entire worldview is shattered. Nothing makes sense anymore, and you wonder if it ever will again.

There is a benefit to being lost though; there are then infinitely many paths to being found. It will be 28 months next Tuesday for me and my boy. And the road is wide open before me. Reluctantly I go.

As I hugged his journal to my chest, I thought of the Akashic Records, and I let Rikki be my guide to possibilities, and he said, “Momma, what kind of relationship do YOU want to have with me now, one of pain, or one of peace?”

I will sleep on this tonight with his journal under my pillow. Perhaps he’ll come to me in a dream, or whisper “I love you” while I sleep.

Previously published in GRIEF DIGEST, 2017.

By Sherrie Ann Cassel

So, what do you do when you’re really happy? Things are going well. The sun is shining. Spring is almost here, and you made it through another angelversary, and even though you’ve lost someone you really love, your days are looking brighter, and your nights are calm. Sometimes we feel guilty because we’re able to move forward. Sometimes we think we are not being loyal to our loved one’s memory because we’re able to go on and make new memories. I find myself having moments of pure joy now. My son has been gone for four years and one month. I remember the early days after my son died. I cried for days and days and months and months – and then I started reading everything I could get my hands on about grief. I knew if I was going to heal, I had to learn how to normalize my pain; I knew that would take some work.

Normalize pain? Well, it’s an absolute given that one must swim in the ocean of tears after the death of a loved one. There’s really no healthy way of getting around it. I cried a blue streak every day for a long time. One day I woke up, after months of research into grief, after doing my capstone project on grief for my university, after working my process for four years, and all the years leading up to my first true day of joy.

We have a grandson, my son’s son. He brings me great joy. He made me laugh at my son’s Celebration of Life. The ability to laugh on that day, in and of itself, should have been the first indication that healing and living in the moment were possible. One day your heart is broken, you feel lost, you’re in tears every day. You’re in intense emotional pain that truly does feel physical, and then you awaken to all the life that is happening around you. You begin to reconnect with relationships with people you may have neglected during your acute mourning phase. And you dust off your public self and put her back out there – among the living.

I know people who have never truly healed from the loss of their loved one. Some go into such deep grief they become bitter. Some never heal because they never find the rhythm of their grief process. Clichés become so because there is generally some truth to them, e.g. the only way out of the pain is through it. As trite as that may sound when you’re in agony, it’s true, at least it has been for me. I groveled before the God of my understanding begging for relief from the visceral pain over losing my son. I did it for as long as I needed. Grief is one of those emotions that must be expressed. Some do it through art, e.g. writing, painting, singing, dancing, or the spoken word.

I get messages from people who share their pain with me, and of the people who share with me, it is a small fraction of those who go into complicated grief and who need professional help, which I always encourage. For the most part, people want to heal, and dependent upon what kind of baggage we’re loaded down with, the process can be navigable or very difficult to navigate, and the latter is particularly painful. Some people, however, have developed some sound resilience.

My mother loves butterflies, roses, and Jesus. My theology, as a matter of course, has changed – a great deal, but I have always ridden on the coattails of my mother’s unshakable faith. Even though her life has been very difficult, she has maintained her relationship with Jesus. He got her through the painful moments in her life. She is incredibly resilient even though she’s been beaten down for most of her life. Resiliency is a gift, and if you didn’t have it modeled for you as a child, it’s still available to everyone –with a tremendous amount of hard work — after an initial moment of clarity.

I don’t know when acceptance arose from the pit of grief I was peering into every day, but one day it did. I had that moment of clarity and I said to myself, “This can’t be the rest of my life.” There aren’t adequate words in my native tongue to describe the depths to which I miss my son. He is still in my every thought and in my actions, and in how I now live my life purposefully. How do you find joy again? You find it in small steps in the beginning, and as you work your process with professional, shamanic, spiritual help, or with your own sheer determination to be whole again. I once took an anthropology class with the greatest professor alive, Dr. D, who shared with us this fact: “It is the duty of every living organism to survive.” I’d like to do better than survive; I’d like to thrive.

I encourage you all to learn to shine through your loss. This light doesn’t happen overnight; it’s a process to find your way back to the living, but it’s possible; finding your way back to emotions that make us feel good is necessary in order to live full lives. My faith tradition encourages me with the hope I will see my son again. I will wrap my arms around him and tell him how much I love him – for all eternity. Knowing this gives me great comfort – and it gives me the sense that joy here will unfurl into the joy to come when my son and I can laugh together again.

Everyone must find her way to what will bring comfort. How do you find your way to joy? You work for it – and when it presents itself, you allow yourself full immersion in it. You find ways to be grateful each day. My son was the most amazing human being. He was beautiful. Oh my God, he was so funny! We laughed ‘til our sides hurt. I remember the things that were joyful about him – and I try to take that joy with me everywhere I go.

Just think about how blessed, lucky, and loved by the God of your understanding you are to have been given such a gift of your loved one, and how they are a part of you forever. I find joy in sweet memories of my son. I could choose to ruminate on the tough years during his illness or our rough beginning as mother and son, but I want to smile, and so I make the choice to imagine his smiling face and his hardy laugh.

Think of things that bring you joy – and hold on to them if you can. Life is uncertain. We never know when we are going to lose someone or our own lives. In the interim between life and death, there’s a lot of joy out there – and it’s yours for the taking.

by Sherrie Ann Cassel

After losing someone with whom you were very close, grief becomes your constant companion. You eat, breathe, and sleep with it. You’re always just a hair’s breadth away from the guttural feeling that can be awakened by a song, a scent, almost anything, and you never know when the grief will awaken, sometimes even after months of emotional balance. Sometimes it knocks the wind out of you and then it knocks you on your ass – and sometimes the sudden overwhelm of emotions stemming from your grief can lay you out for some duration.

We each find ways to get through those times. Some seek an external source for easing them through the rough patches, those times when grief seems to suck the life out of you and leaves you exhausted from the wrestling you must do to navigate the flood of emotions and still function in your everyday life.

Of course, in the early days of grief following your loss, you may have time to deeply examine your pathway to healing; the goal is to heal from your loss. I know there is some debate as to whether one can heal completely from a devastating loss. I’m of the opinion that one can. I have my days when numbing is my modus operandi. Numbing is not always a bad thing. Perhaps calling the process a postponement of the overwhelm until a more opportune time to meltdown, would be a less pejorative term for waiting it out, i.e. the weekend, after work, or in your car while you are safely parked.

My family lost five people in eight months. My son in January, my husband’s mother in March, my husband’s former student a few days after that to a self-inflicted gunshot wound, a dear friend a month after that, and my brother in August. Some years are just shitty – and that year was about the shittiest I’ve ever had, and I hope to never have another year like it. Life is uncertain on the best days, however so I’m muddling through and I’m still standing — and I am being realistic about losing loved ones; it happens.

I had the luxury (sort of) of being unemployed during the times of those losses, so I was fortunate to have the time to pour myself into the grieving process. My husband had five days of bereavement for both our son and his mother. Five days?! Are you kidding me? Sometimes we have good benefits that allow for bereavement time and I suppose that five days is better than no days at all. My husband had PTO for bereavement; not everyone is so lucky.

After he returned to work, I was left alone to really lose it and cry for hours on end. I screamed. I wailed. I wept until it was difficult to catch my breath. I did this for a few months before acceptance came eking into my life. My husband said that what seemed to me like an entire year of heavy-duty grieving was not actually one year. He said that my expression of despair was actually about six months. An outside perspective is good to have.

I began reading about grief about six months after our son died. I spent money we didn’t really have to buy books about grief and how to heal from the visceral pain. I was hoping the pain could be normalized and I would be able to shake it sooner rather than later. My husband knows me; and he said he felt relieved when he saw me doing research into grief – in between those times when I just allowed myself the deep groans of grief, unabashedly. The fact that I wanted to know about how to heal from grief was a good sign for him. He was hopeful I would begin to heal.

The books helped me. The research helped me. Getting back out into the world of the living helped me. See, grief work is not easy, but it is necessary. I thought time was all I needed to get to acceptance, and it is true, time is a major factor in distancing yourself from the devastating loss in order that the work toward acceptance is possible.

I know Kṻbler-Ross’ model is linearly ordered, although most grievers come to the conclusion that there is no particular order in the grief process.  Acceptance is a vein that runs through even the worst losses, i.e. losing a loved one to death. I came to a place in my process where acceptance was more liberating than holding out for the answers to the tortuous whys. My son died and he wasn’t coming back. The finality of death is a blow to your worldview, to your theology, and to the totality of your sense of safety in the world.

All emotions during the acute phase of grief are intense and all-consuming. I encourage you to read everything you can get your hands on about grief and the healing process. I’m not saying doing so will  make you feel better – immediately, because it won’t. We need time to immerse ourselves into the full impact of our loss. Feel. Scream. Cry. Purge – and then exhale with the determination that you will come through the process, stronger, wiser, more empathetic, and able to reach out to help others, because you are on the pathway to healing.

Who knows what the right amount of time is to muddle through the acute phase of grief? I can speak only for myself, and three and a half years passed before I began to feel truly alive. Everyone has his or her own timetable. Each of us has a varying amount of emotional resources, a network of supportive people, health insurance to get emergency grief therapy, and family of origin issues that may make it more difficult to navigate the grief process.

I will periodically post books that have helped me. There are some books written by both private citizens and grief experts that are hugely helpful. I must caution you, however, there is a danger of what I would call grief saturation which can happen when we are so focused on grief that we neglect our personal care. I have done this very thing. I read and read and read some more about grief and loss, to the exclusion of reaching toward hope. What happened to my hope? I couldn’t see past the collective despair of all who were hurting like I was – and so, I took a little longer than some people to get to a place where I wasn’t at the mercy of uncontrolled emotions.

Gaining control of your emotions is not to say that one should dismiss them as they arise; it just means that you are aware of how you can take breaks from the pain, catch your breath, and then get back in the business of life.

We’ll have tough days, for sure, from time to time, but grief does not have to be the only emotion, or the primary emotion for all the days of our lives. Emotions, and grief is no exception, are all temporary states. Our grandson made me laugh at my son’s celebration of life. This was an early indication that healing was possible.

I’ve discussed a few things in this post. Grief is inevitable. Grief is a process that must be fully examined and fully experienced. Grief hurts. Healing from the pain of grief is possible and is, although in the acute phase, you will find it difficult to believe. I’ve discussed the strategy of scheduling opportune times when you may fully grieve. I’ve encouraged you to research grief and the many other strategies that are available to help you grieve and still function in your daily life.

I remember a childhood term elbow grease – or the saying, nothing good comes easily – or the comment for those things that are monumentally difficult, no pain, no gain. As much as I hate platitudes, sometimes they are spot on.

My hope for you today is that you will be open to the possibility of healing and be realistic about all the work it entails. I was desperately searching for a way out of the pain. I wanted to bypass the trip along the conveniently linear path of Kṻbler-Ross’ model. But – as our diagram illustrates, grief is not neat; it is not linear.

Grief is spastic until we get a handle on it and can normalize it to something manageable. Feel the pain. See what it has to teach you. The journey blows in a hundred different ways, but in the midst of a spell of utter sadness, you can also exhale, and take charge of your process; and you can heal.

By Sherrie Ann Cassel

Punxsutawney Phil is my hero, and I’ll tell you why.  He mercifully did not see his shadow self on this palindromic Ground Hog Day, and so, we can look forward to an early spring. I trust the animal kingdom, as long as I am not prey.

I’m thawing out, as it were. I’m from Southern California where a sweater is merely a suggestion during a San Diego winter. Acclimating to my first high desert winter was not easy for me. San Diego is just about as perfect as one can get. Let the sun shine.

One day of a foggy, gray sky is essential for artists, two days if you resisted its beckoning the first. Seasonal affective disorder (SAD), however, is a documented phenomenon which does nothing to assist with deep grief. I grieve; I probably will ‘til I am no longer living in this body.  I just no longer mourn, you know, like when you’re at the mercy of a deep longing that consumes you.

Grief doesn’t come in a nice little package wrapped prettily with a perfectly tied bow. I’ve read an astounding number of books on grief. I’ve read academic articles on grief. I’ve explored other cultures’ grief rituals. There really is no perfect way to do grief. The infinitely many and diverse descriptions of grief all merge at a singular point: the point where it just fucking hurts.

I’m not a medical expert so I can’t tell you the physiological reasons why your body hurts when you’ve lost someone. I can tell you I ached as physically as I did psychically.  I know hormonal fluctuations coupled with triggering life events can fan the fires of anguish. As a matter of fact, in the Twelve Step program(s) there is an acronym that is an effective tool in a Stepper’s kit: HALT. The letters stand for hungry, angry, lonely, and tired. Any of these emotional and physical states can cause a person in recovery to relapse. I watched it with my son over the course of 10 years.

I try to apply the same acronym when I’m faced with an important decision, or when I’m in conflict with another person, and now, tragically, I must remind myself of this helpful tool when I am hungry, angry, lonely or tired —  and when grief becomes overwhelming. For me, and I speak for only myself, if I’m not vigilant about my grief process or if I don’t pay attention to my emotional landscape, I can easily get swept away into a funk of some duration. Grief was unrelenting the first year; it has become less so as the years have passed.

When I could finally catch my breath after a solid six months of meltdowns, I did, and I don’t mean this is the right way or the right length of time for anyone else, but I did wake up one day and say, “Okay. What now?” I had a revelation, one that suggested I could be healed. I’m a book nerd. I read everything I can get my hands on, and in no trending genre. I read what answers my questions about life and the universe. I was desperate for answers about my broken heart and how I could begin to heal.

I began to do research on parents who’d lost a child or children to addiction. I spoke with parents across the globe and we helped each other through some of the worst days of our lives. My research in the beginning was very specific and could not be applied to grief-at-large. Once I began to read about the different configurations of relationships one can lose to death, the frozen sea inside of [me] began to melt.

I encourage those of you who are early in your grief process to take advantage of those moments of clarity and read everything you can about grief, complicated grief, healing, and finding peace. I’ve found the best resources come from books and fellow grievers.

January was a rough month for me. I did my best to keep my chin up and bravely face the angelversary of my son’s death. I managed. I muddled. I metamorphosed. You see, we can take devastating losses and let them teach us something about ourselves. I’ve learned I’m monumentally stronger than I ever thought I could be. I’ve learned that through my devastation’ I can reach out to others and share with them how I’ve managed to get through the darkness of death’s effects and make my way to the sunrise of a new day.

Sounds simple, right? Well, for those of you who’ve been working your processes for many years, you know it’s not a simple formula that gets you from point a to point b. The journey of a thousand miles is in between those two points. I believe the first step of liberation from the anguish of grief is the most important step you’ll ever take to realign yourself with the living.

I wore dark or drab colors for the first year after my son died. I’m not sure why. I just didn’t feel very much like donning bright colors, and just so you know, my favorite color is orange. I just couldn’t rev up to wearing bright colors. I didn’t feel bright. I’m sure Freud and Jung would argue libidinal or archetypal shaping of my consciousness, but – colors just seemed disingenuous after losing my son.

Four years later…and four years of hard labor…my wardrobe color scheme has changed. I have blue hair. I have colorful frames for every day of the week, vestiges of my love for early Elton. I withdraw from the world when I am not handling my grief well – and drab is the color of the days leading up to my emotional funks. Some of us do our best grieving alone. I reach out when I know it’s what is best for me – even if my voice shakes. But for the most part, I want to be alone to do my grieving, to sob uncontrollably without someone trying to fix things.

I had an out-of-body experience for three and a half years, but in May of 2019 I woke up and I saw the bright colors of springtime. I moved to the desert and I’m able to stand in awe of our sunsets and the grandeur of the landscape. I have clumsily reentered life and reached out to make friends in our new home. Grief is a natural outgrowth of losing someone. There will be darkness for some time and there’s really no escaping it. Keep your lamp lit and see what’s in there and what it has to teach you. I’m still learning. I’m still growing. My transformation is ongoing and then one glad morning…the transformation of transformations.

The past week the sun has risen to the occasion and rescued me from SAD. I felt the warmth on my face as I spent time outside with friends. I felt the sun enliven me and give me hope that spring is near. I love the springtime. I love the signs of  renewal. Renewal for a griever is a stupendous accomplishment.

When I read about Punxsutawney Phil’s momentous prediction I put on my jeans, pink t-shirt,  pink glasses, and pink Doc Martens–  and this blue-haired, tatted 57-year-old woman went to church hopeful for my future, where I was greeted by an older gentleman who shook my hand and said, “You just exude happiness” – and this time I wasn’t acting.