Grief to Gratitude

By Sherrie Ann Cassel

I used to be chipper, nauseatingly positive, and I used to exude joy – even after a very difficult childhood. I am resilient. I have also just resigned myself to having lost my son, my precious only child, the love of my life. There are wrinkles around my eyes, and I look battle fatigued. Loving someone who struggles, hardcore, unto death, with addiction is a constant battle. You fight with the circumstance and you fight with your loved one. I can hear the anger and frustration in my voice as I remember the desperation with which I fought for my son. When begging, pleading and tears didn’t work, I resorted to desperate anger. I wanted to shake him and scream at him to WAKE UP because he would die if he didn’t. He’s been gone almost four years now. The time has passed too quickly. I think about when he was little and I used to kiss his forehead and leave my lipstick on it. I did it a few times when he was an adult and it always elicited an, “Oh Momma, I’m not seven anymore!”

The things you remember when you’ve lost a child are random, painful sometimes and other times they make you chuckle. In the beginning of the grief cycle, the emotional shifts are bipolar with no respite in between. How does one go on after such a significant loss? Significant doesn’t adequately describe the devastation in your life.

I remember weeping and truly wailing after my son died. I’d double over in physical pain and just sob until I couldn’t breathe. I had no idea one could be in such tremendous pain and survive it, but I have.

Healing is tireless work, and it is work. For anyone who has lost a loved one to death by any mechanism, her world is rocked to its core and rebuilding afterward is a tremendous undertaking. I believe that losing a child, limb of your limb, heart of your heart – is quite possibly the worst emotional pain a person can endure.

We carried our children in our bodies for nine months. If a child is fortunate to have been born to a loving father, much time is invested in raising well-adjusted children. Adoptive parents make the monumental choice to love a child who needs a stable and loving home and they reconfigure the entire trajectories of their lives. We love our children with every fiber of our being, and beyond that, we would give our lives to save them from harm.

When the physical dependence on a substance, alcohol, heroin, fentanyl (by choice or by accident), or meth takes over your child’s life, love truly does hurt. There’s love and there’s terror. For those reading this, you know intimately what those two emotions feel like  —  simultaneously.

On my son’s good days, I would rejoice and lap it up. He tried to get well. He went to rehab a few times. He started seeing a therapist. He tried to not use heroin. He tried to not drink. He went to 12-step meetings a few times. The one thing that people who don’t have a clue about addiction don’t understand is an addict doesn’t want to be an addict. Would you? Their bodies become slaves to the effects of the drugs/alcohol and they feel as if they will die without them. Withdrawals from drugs and alcohol can be pretty gnarly, frightening, and even physically painful.

People who have never loved an addict don’t understand how much goes into our grief process: utter despair, regret about the emotional tempests that were engaged in daily, and that’s when they were in touch with you, as so many isolate themselves out of a crippling senses of shame. They may frustrate you to the ends of your frayed nerves because your only desire, your only wish, your only dream, and your desperate prayers to the God of your understanding are for them to heal from the emotional wounds that made them use in the first place, and that they be healed, in all ways possible, from the cruel disease of addiction.

When you’ve exhausted all resources and you begin to see the physical effects of their drugs of choice, unless all the stars align for them, they will die in their disease, but not before the drug has apprehended their brains.

I know. I watched my son kill himself for ten years. He spiraled himself into congestive heart failure and cirrhosis. I watched his health decline to the point I said to myself, “Sweet Jesus, you’re going to make me bury my son.” My faith tradition is as decimated as is everything else in my life. The landmine I’d hoped to miss, I’d hoped my son would miss blew our understanding of what was right in the world clear out of the water and hurled us into a maelstrom. The apples do not fall far from the tree. One of my many regrets is that I was not a good mom. Certainly, I had my moments when I excelled, but I was as broken as my son by events in our developmental years, years that made the difference between self-love and self-loathing.

I believe the gateways to addiction, the things that cause our children to make the initial choice to use are emotional, physical, and socialized. I would argue that there is a spiritual component too, although some would disagree.

There is some great research being done into possible causation for addiction, some genetic, and then some, epigenetic, i.e. the transmission of secondary trauma, the probability someone will have addictive tendencies because of levels of cortisol in the body, a stress hormone that may cause a person to self-soothe using substances rather than having the developed skill of being able to do that with breathing, self-expression, and perhaps a spiritual component that helps him or her have the restraint to say no to self-destruction. Healthy coping skills are modeled, and when they are not, be prepared to welcome another generation of adults who are broken.

First, let me say, I am not an expert in the field of psychology, and certainly not with only a Bachelor of Science degree, but what I do have is first-hand knowledge of a life with historical trauma. I have a childhood rife with addiction and abuse. I can speak to my lived experience, and now, I can speak to the effects of the trauma my son endured in childhood and in his most significant relationships, trauma that he felt could only be comforted by numbing with drugs and alcohol.

How do you grieve not just the loss of your precious child, and not feel the relief too when the battle is over? I miss my son more than there are words with which to express my utter despair of having lost him, and it has taken me nearly four years to admit that even with my tremendous loss, the battle has also ended, my son is now at peace, and I am working toward healing myself, my entire self.

I’m not sure what I believe religiously or spiritually, but I have a sense my son is very much alive in a heaven-like place, a place where I will see him again, and even more, I believe I still feel him, and whether or not that is likened to an eternal love for him, I feel his presence in my daily life. I still talk to him. I kiss his picture. I am very much in touch with his spirit.

Fortunately, my son and I were able to work through a plethora of issues before he died. We cried together. I answered his questions honestly. I apologized for my part in his poor self-image. He forgave me. I forgave him, although he never needed to apologize.  He is the child I created. His biological father was a non-entity in his life, and now he is one in mine. A child needs two well-adjusted parents to thrive in his or her life; without that it’s a problematic childhood which bleeds into a problematic adult life.

I’m not saying all people with addictive tendencies came from challenging homes, because surprisingly some come through their tempestuous childhoods with not even an inkling of the desire/need to use. What I am saying is some are not so fortunate.

Grief is complicated and multi-faceted. The ability to work through it, and again, it is work, is incremental, randomly cyclical, and sometimes the most diminutive step forward is extraordinarily difficult, like jumping from one cliff to the next with no one on the other side to pull you up over the edge where you hang precariously. Grief is a solitary journey. Therapists, clergy, friends, and family have no effect on what you must go through in order to heal.

There are no words of comfort. If you’re fortunate enough to have a strong faith tradition, you may find some comfort there, but if you’re like me, a flailing spiritual being tossed about by the slightest shift of wind, the process takes longer, and you are out in the tempest on a flimsy raft with zero visibility crying out for relief from the most intense pain of your life.

For those who love someone who struggles violently with addiction, the process is conflictual, grief and relief. How can you feel relief? There is guilt associated with the exhalation after several years of chaos, but at some point, and in some way, your logic overrides your pain and you can see the culmination of a long battle with your child, for your child, and for your very own survival, and there is relief.

There are success stories from people who have lost a child(ren). I am one. I will never be the same person I was before my son died, and in some ways this a very good thing, but in other ways, the certainty of balance in my life has been shaken off its fulcrum.

I’m still picking up pieces of myself from the rubble of the implosion.

By Sherrie Ann Cassel

My hair is blue. I am 57 years old, and my hair is blue. I also got a new tattoo. I got drunk with some friends a few months ago at a party. I hadn’t been to a party since Rikki died, a little over two months shy of the four-year anniversary. I can’t remember the last time I laughed a loud and raucous guffaw. My wings for scouting are weak from having no place to land.

There’s a part of me I hold back from the world. I think that’s true for all who grieve. After we’ve bled all over those who love us enough to stop the hemorrhage of early grief, we must set them free. If you’ve been fortunate enough to have someone with whom you could do this, you are blessed.

I mentioned a woman I know who lost a son, and who, sadly, allowed bitterness to be the stage in which she froze. I am not bitter. I still keep a healthy distance, however, between the griever and the one who so desperately needs to be back in the world again, with full participation.

Life waits for no one. The future rolls out before us in every passing second, and those seconds are precious. I sometimes forget this. I assign myself to places where I know I don’t belong, places that will, if I don’t get out, pull me into a life of resigned dissatisfaction. I have done this since Rikki died. I’m desperate to find a place where grief is not the center of my universe.

I have not found such a place yet.

I know fellow grievers feel this dislocation at some level dependent upon where they are in their grieving process. The world has changed as we knew it before the loss of our loved one(s). I haven’t found a place where I can snuggle into and feel safe and protected from any more pain. Death is a certainty now. If those closest to our hearts can die then the world is no longer a place where we escape from visceral pain. Maybe we get to a place where we can rebuild, but even after all this time, I’m still fumbling toward wholeness.

As a mother who lost her only child, I wrestle with being whole and never getting there – no matter how hard I try. How have I gotten this far? I’ve always been double-minded. My brain is a range of rolling hills with spastic ideas darting here and there; sometimes they are impossible to gather into cohesion. Since I lost Rikki I am consistently inconsistent. I straddle the fence on everything. I’m searching for a place my Soul can rest.

The day after Rikki died, I convulsively sobbed, for sure, but then I kicked into gear and made the phone calls to schedule a venue and a minister for his Celebration of Life. I wanted everything to be perfect, something he would have loved, and it was. My point is, I have been booking through life since January 22^nd, 2016 @ 5:55 p.m. in an attempt to outrun grief.

Until recently, in the silence of the home I share with my husband, I had never allowed myself to feel the full impact of my loss, not the emotional breakdowns, not the face down in the pillow screaming, and not the crying out to God, but the kind of impact that comes from an exhalation of a breath you’ve been holding for too long.

Grief makes it difficult to think with a clear head. I still have grief fog from time to time. I want to run away from and out of grief into the sun where I can see with perfect clarity, even if that clarity brings with it the knowledge that he is never coming back. Clarity also brings with it the risk of abandonment of faith and of lapses into despair. But I suppose it doesn’t have to.

Grief shakes us up spiritually. I’m searching for something to permanently take away the pain. I am unreasonable with hope sometimes. I expect more from it then it is capable of being for me. My faith has been rattled and no matter how hard I try or how many places I’ve tried to find an anchor, I am shaken to the marrow of my Soul. I’ve read and spoken to many fellow grievers who have either abandoned their faith traditions completely or are chasing rainbows as if the pot of gold were freedom from the constant awareness your loved one is gone.

Grief sometimes takes you to dark places where your vision is impaired and the perceived distortions you can make out serve only to replace one type of pain for another. The imaginings that come with what ifs can be worse than actual life events.

My husband and I have been out to Joshua Tree Park several times in the last few days, the national park, not the town. The park’s beauty never ceases to evoke a sense of awe. The spectacular geological record that spans the life of our planet, 4.54 billion years, is breathtaking. Grief can sometimes numb our ability to be awestruck. The double-edged sword is an apt metaphor. I see it now as plainly as I can see my son’s face when I look at his son.

Every single experience is bittersweet onward from the day you lost your precious loved one. I see the ocean and I feel its mist on my face and I ache because I can no longer share this with my son. I am listening to Pachelbel’s Canon and I have tears rolling down my cheeks because we so appreciated its beauty.

The first note of a favorite song can bring me to tears now because every beautiful thing makes me think of my son – every single thing.

There is no where I can run to eradicate grief from my heart, my Soul, my mind; it is the largest part of my psychological schema now. Grief runs through my veins. There is an umbilicus that runs from my heart to my son’s healthy heart in Heaven now. I can still feel his heartbeat. I can hear him calling me Momma. I can feel his bear hug. I swear sometimes I smell his wine, wood-tipped cigarillo, and his laughter, oh my God, his laughter. I wonder if I’ll ever laugh that way again.

The best I can say is, I’ll try.

I have switched to brighter colors, oranges, reds, and a head full of electric blue hair. I suppose black is no longer my color. Rikki and I wore black – a lot when he and I were much younger. Toward the end of his life, he wore bright colors, as if to say, “I’ve got this, Momma; I’m going to lick this.” Every beautiful thing reminds me of him, like bright colors that say to me Remember his beauty. I find I must go where there is beauty, where my heart can be fulfilled, where there is no conflict between heart and mind when I think about my son, to do otherwise is to forget his life by focusing only on his death.

I must admit, I am a bit confused these days about my place in the universe. I won’t stay here, but it is where I am now; it just is. Into the Mystic…that’s where he is. I know he’d laugh at my hair and hug me and say, “Momma, why you wanna be so weird?” So, you’ll never forget me, my Love, so you’ll never forget me.

By Sherrie Ann Cassel

I’m still digging parts of myself out from underneath the rubble of my former life, the life before Rikki’s death. Some days are better than others, and I’ve had a semi-nice run for a few days; however, like all of you, there’s a heaviness I know and have accepted, will cling to me like a brand new layer of skin; it’s still getting used to the elements life presents us with in the depths of grief: coal, metamorphic rock, semi-precious stones, and diamonds. I had to dig until my fingers bled to get out of the lower strata that protected me from some emotional lows I never dreamt were possible to feel and still be alive, but breathing comfortably was impossible under their weight. Staying emotionally alive when someone you adore dies is a major feat in and of itself. I commend everyone who still finds snippets of joy and even gratitude for the awesome parts of their life despite their losses.

Believe me, it doesn’t happen overnight, but if you do the work it takes to create a purposeful life, you will find joy again, now forever balanced with the reality that you have lost a person who was as important as a necessary limb. Your world used to be certain with not even a thought your world could come crashing down around you; certainty is gone now.

I get it.

Once upon a time I was the most frenetic, intellectually hyperactive, spastic person, racing through life at breakneck speed. I was in school, working full-time, and raising a son alone. Sometimes we don’t have time to tend to our loved ones growing gardens. I’ve learned it’s important to make time for those closest to me. I could beat myself up for my numerous imperfections, but I choose to not be a lifelong victim of my circumstances.

Grief hurts; you get to a place where it’s tolerable, but still ever-present – even on one of your best days. There is a hole in the fabric of your universe, where your loved one used to be. I get that too, even as I continue ascending from a place of pervasive grief to gather my jewels among the dynamited bricks of my demolitioned life.

I spent the weekend in my hometown, the town where I raised my son. There used to be a longing to be home after I moved to San Diego. My hometown is lovely; it has changed quite a bit since my childhood, but is still as beautiful as I remember it.  Life offered me and my family good times and tough times, but there was a sense of belonging, in my little town, like the whorls on fingertips, a part of whom you’ve been your entire life, a sense of perfect identity.

The town elicits a different feeling for me now. Every place I see reminds me of my life with my son, and the longing for the town has been replaced by a longing for my son. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but … there is now a consuming pain associated with the home I loved so much.

I dread running into people who don’t know my son is gone and having to answer their, “How is Rikki?”, and I have to tell them he has died. Nearly four years later this is still really difficult for me. I avoid going to the stores in the area when I visit my mom, so I won’t have that experience. So far, it has worked.

We each develop coping skills to minimize our despair in our public images. I had a friend tell me I was so calm despite my loss. Numbness is sometimes mistaken for calm. There is a difference though. Kafka once said, “A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.” I feel the same about whatever it takes to melt the emotions we get stuck in; it’s important for us to get to a point where there are intermittent calm waters – even as our lives spin with the earth.

The intensity of the three years following my son’s death has lessened, replaced by acceptance and realistic resignation. Bargaining would be self-defeating at this point, as I emerge from the detritus of my former life. One of the items I have surrendered from the day before my son died is certainty. Another item in my grief treasure box which I am grateful for is a lamp which elucidates the fact that I had not honored others’ mortality. I have surrendered the unrealistic notion that I have time to truly nurture relationships, lots of time; I don’t. One minute you have an amazing conversation with a loved one … and then you get the phone call about his passing. We don’t have a lot of time, and so even in my terrible loss, I have people with whom I am in relationship who are also mortal. I must remember this, especially on days when I really must raise my hand to temporarily put the kibosh on grief so I can be present in the world and in my relationships.

The first three years I was consumed by grief.

I lost some truly lovely connections, budding friendships, neglected family issues that needed attention, and I distanced myself from cherished friends. Once the frozen sea inside us has begun to melt into cleansing tears rolling down our faces, we see the dusty relationships we have neglected.

I don’t believe our neglect is a type of self-absorption – but even if it were, I would not think badly of this coping mechanism; for the griever – emotional survival is the struggle of a lifetime. Time doesn’t heal all wounds, but it does distance us from the full impact of the loss – after a time. Distance can also be a good thing.

For those in early grief, there is no comfort in my saying, it will get better; but it must get better. We’ve each incurred emotionally catastrophic losses. I get it. I’ve been navigating life with my knapsack of shards which sometimes poke through, stabbing me in areas now forever tender. My back has been strengthened by the grief process and from carrying that knapsack, and I no longer bleed every day; my heart is now allowing light to enter it again. Four years is a long time to travel with such a heavy load and with that rubble under which you are temporarily buried; it takes time to get to where you need to be: back in your life rebuilding with those semi-precious stones until your pinnacle achievement has been acquired — until our lives have purpose and meaning again.

We each have our own timeframes during which we find our voices coaxing us back into the world of the living. We reach a place where tenderness is no longer a gift we give only to ourselves, but to others too, because we finally can. We learn to be tender with ourselves during the grief process; we must. After the most difficult self-examination you will ever participate in, there must be a reentry into your life commandeered by a completely altered version of our former selves. You’ll be clumsy, sure. I still am. I am a mother who has lost her child. I identified as a mother for 32 years; but I have finally reached a point where mothering others doesn’t pierce my heart anymore. I used to feel like if I can’t mother my son, I will never allow myself the gift of feeling like a mother again.

Where is the beautiful boy who made me a mother, who gifted me with his life, and with whom I was whole? He’s not here anymore, but there are others who need a soft touch because they are hurting. I can do that now. Please know I am nnot backing myself into a regressive corner, the mother only corner, but I am able to nurture others again, and for me, that’s progress.

I don’t know what full circle means. Grief, I think, does not have an end point. I do believe grief is cyclical, maybe in a circle for some, but for me it’s more vertically linear, punctuated by periods when I allow myself a holy ascension to a place of purpose and the ability to make meaning which will be a benefit to our world.

For me, the ability to be a benefit to others will be the apex of my life achievements.

All grievers can reach this culminating event in our lives. We just must hang in there and work our hearts with ferocity until they beat again for life, for a life worth living.

Edited 11/6/19 @ 11 a.m. PST

By Sherrie Ann Cassel

Apropos of nothing — winds blow in the Joshua Tree area – no rhyme, no reason, no Santa Anas, just gusts of varying strengths, soft and gentle – and then forceful and fierce. Today the windchimes sound like an incessant phone ringing, like a teenage prank call, a ring and no one speaks when it is answered. Sometimes they chime in peals like laughter from a mischievous child. Once I was lying in the grass at Palomar College, in San Marcos, California, and Tubular Bells began to chime from its great big clock tower and the air sizzled with an electric chill. Don’t try to make sense of that image; it was nonsensical but sensory all the same, just like grief.

Grief comes for many reasons, chief among them is the loss of a loved one. I know this because grief is in the air I breathe each day. Grief is in my first morning thought as I rub the sleep from my swollen eyes. Grief comes in the electric chill that fuels my frenetic existence, a leaf being blown about in a windstorm and then – wafting toward rest.

I am 57 years old. My son would be nearing 40 if he had not died. I aged rather quickly in the first two years after his death. My eyes were puffy on most days. I stared into space and saw and heard nothing. I scarcely remember the two years following my son’s death. The third year I started living again. I finally finished my bachelor’s degree after a seven-year hiatus during my son’s illness. I struggled as I ventured back out into the world again – without my son. I inched out and then ran back to safety a few times, before I plunged in, full immersion and the world welcomed me, and I now find myself dancing to the beat of my own conga — rhythmically erratic.

A life – with a gaping hole — I am on the event horizon and my son, my beautiful son is deep into an eternity I wish for but cannot fathom.

I’m watching young people I’ve known for years age, which serves only to make me feel old. I am in an Evaluation and Applied Research program whose purpose is to turn young and ambitious researchers into consultants in the corporate world. I will not be recruited in the current job market, but I am learning valuable research skills, and the remainder of my life I will get paid for theorizing, experimenting, writing, and hopefully being of some benefit to society.

Grief is what I know – and I know it – intimately – and with a ferocity that leaves me breathless sometimes. Life does go on – even when my heart is in slivers that tease at my veins. Life goes on and I sometimes hang precariously over that event horizon daring myself to dive in. I’m curious. I’m hopeful. I miss my son.

My son’s friends have been married for years now, with new babies; some are divorced, some are in college, some have new careers. They are alive. My son is not. I’m getting older. In three years, I will be 60. I’m alive. I’m here. I’m living. I’m repurposing my life, the life I thought I’d have with a son who would one day turn 40. Would he have had a mid-life crisis? Would he have come to me for comfort? Would I have mothered him as if he had a boo boo on his knee, kissed it, and sent him smiling on his way. There is no way of knowing, but in a less cruel reality, I would celebrate a new decade with him, and having successfully navigated the decade myself, with bumps along the way, I would give him sage advice over a beer.

I would tell him about using moisturizer for those pesky wrinkles that begin to form around the eyes in your 40s. My eyes would not be puffy, and the lines that form would be from laughing with my son or smiling when my thoughts were about him – thoughts of him being funny with his friends and his son. I would have a warm heart as he brought a woman worthy of him to meet me. Wedding bells. More children. And I would age with more joy than not.

I wasn’t sure I’d make it after my son died. I am being brutally honest when I say I longed for death. Being alive hurt too much. I still get those clutches in my chest. I find myself reaching for the wall to steady myself as a pang equal to a contraction nearly knocks me over. I somehow project to the world that I am strong. I’m not. I’ve learned that strength is like the Joshua Tree winds – cyclically painful with periods of the most amazing stasis.

I’m allowing the winds to blow me in the direction of places where I had given up on ever going. I have a clear direction – until, of course, the next time life screams, “Timber!” and I find myself clawing my way out from underneath a giant redwood that scrapes but doesn’t destroy me.

I will be 58, oh my God, almost 60 next summer, and I have lived, loved, and lost with an intensity that would blow your mind. I continue to grow in all the ways that matter to me. I work hard at everything I do. I don’t throw in the towel when the going gets tough and life puts me in the center of the ring with a fighter in whose league I am not. I keep plugging along. I keep trucking. I keep moving.

Life is much shorter than I ever had considered before my son died at 32. I have this incredible gift of today, and maybe, tomorrow; I have time in which to pour my passion. I take the angst and the pain from my greatest loss and I am the proverbial clay out of which I mold, glaze, and am fired by life events, through the calm and through the raging fires.

I thought I’d never make it out of this brutal grief with anything other than a wrinkled shell of a person and premature gray hair — the whole damn head. I thought I’d waste away, to be taken away by the winds of unpredictability – having accomplished nothing but sadness mixed with regret.

But I haven’t.

He’s the first thought of every morning – and the last thing I think about before I go to bed. I gave birth to him. He was and is indelibly a part of me. Our blood, our very life’s essence, flows through us … all the way to our spirits – commingling, dancing in that place where there is no separation.

But I feel like I must always qualify my ability to go on by stating how there is a ration of impossibility in the reality of living apart from my grief. Moving on is a misconception. One does not move away from, apart from, nor is he or she distant from a loved one or the pain associated with their loss. They are always with us, in every thought, and we should not have to qualify our ability to take the next indicated step, the one that will lead us toward healing. Healing takes time, of course; but it is more than probable. If you can take the lead in your grief cycle, you become the one in control rather than grief leading you. I encourage you each on those golden days when you can smile and make plans – to bottle those experiences so you can pour them out on those days when your heart breaks all over again. We do have tools at our disposal, tools that are forged on the anvil of our grief.

The four-year mark is approaching very quickly. The holidays are always tough – and in the new year, I will muddle through the memory of the last time I saw my son. I will cry. I will take a puff of his favorite cigar. I will talk to him, remember him, miss him – and then – I will go to bed early when I’ve had all I can take of being fully aware of my loss. I have accepted the cycle as routine as Monday morning traffic and Sunday afternoon naps. I don’t fight the inevitability of deep feelings anymore. I sleep when that is what the occasion calls for. I just don’t sleep as long.

The sun beams down on me no matter what I feel on any given day, and I move forward.

Last night when I returned home with my husband, the Santa Ana winds were kicking up in our desert home. The colorful lights I put on our fence welcomed us. As I got out of the car, my first thought was not, “How could I have had a nice time – without you in the world?” My first thought was, “Look at all those leaves that need raking up.”

Attending to necessary tasks was more than I could handle in the first two years after my son died. Every movement hurt. Every breath was labored. Every moment was a teardrop away from a lost morning, afternoon, or evening — weighed down by grief. I am not being dramatic when I say I was a wreck. I am normally so well put together, from my hair to my makeup, but in those early days after my son died, I didn’t bother. I couldn’t bother. I just couldn’t drum up the will to put one foot in front of the other. I sat staring into the air space where he could be no longer; as a matter of fact, there is a permanent indentation on our couch that conforms to the contours of a body formerly paralyzed by grief. Grief is not an abstraction; it is physical and it expresses itself materially. Sometimes it is merciful and lets us catch our breath.

I have a friend who told me one day over an ice cream sundae, “You’re so calm.”  She meant I wasn’t a wreck the way she thought I should be after such a loss. How could I expect her to recognize the decimation of my soul when I didn’t even know what it looked like. I can see myself doubled over in pain in my office chair – and I have come to know intimately the sound of my deepest pain – in guttural gasps.

I remember those days and not letting go of the awareness of my early days’ meltdowns help me to be patient with those who are having a really difficult time seeing the light in the tunnel, like a firefly looking for a place to illuminate, tiny specks of light —  even in our darkness.

I didn’t know what grief looked like before I found myself nosediving to its bull’s eye with no parachute. Death is a crash landing and once you hit the ground and shatter, it will take some time to pick up all the pieces and put them back together again in some semblance of a whole person. I encourage everyone who has recently found himself or herself in grief to be patient with yourself. Grief is not a competitive sport. We each limp at our own pace until our Achilles’ heel strengthens and we can stand up strong in the face of our loss.

I encourage you, if you are having a difficult time seeing a clearing in the brush, and you’re lost for what seems an eternity, please see a professional, clergy, or find a Compassionate Friends support group, of which there are many chapters, in-person or virtual, although the former, I believe, is more beneficial. Keep in mind your pain may terrify some and so they won’t be able to love you through it, even though they may love you very much. Remember to cut them slack because…there are no words, not a single one. Don’t hold them responsible for your healing; they can’t help you more than you can help yourself.

If you have a day in which you walk in the sunshine, be the light in someone else’s life, someone who may be struggling to move even a millimeter toward that place where healing begins. See, we are a minority in our microcosms of family, friends, churches, and workplaces. Grief scares the hell out of people. I remember the impotence I felt when my son’s best friend died when they were only 13. I couldn’t impress upon my son the hope that he would get to a place where he would be able to enjoy life again. I couldn’t help his best friend’s mother as she wept in my arms.

People die every day. Hundreds of millions of people grieve every day. We grievers miss them without the ability to adequately describe our longing. We miss them to the core of our inexpressibility. We miss them as the hopelessness of acceptance takes our breath away and leaves us panting in their ashes.

We just miss them; we just do.

Grief is normal when something or someone is lost. Grief is a spastic wave pattern that overtakes us in frenetic intervals. This weekend the water was still and I was able to sit back and watch the world turn; sometimes I turned with it – and I didn’t feel like I was going to die like in the early days when I longed for death to take me where my son was.

This weekend I dressed up like a gypsy and laughed with good friends. I tried to see inside their hearts and feel their own grief over lost loved ones, living or those who have passed on. I saw the changing of the seasons and the leaves that now need to be raked. I will see buds of new life in a few short months. I will weep in January and the tears will water the seeds of life in me – and I will nurture that tiny spark of light in me until it becomes a roaring flame.

I am listening to New Age piano this morning…on what used to be our special day. Saturday morning coffee and talking until midday, oh, about every little ol’ thing. The day was timeless, and we were immortal, no need to rush through life. We had forever to catch up with ourselves, except – that turned out to not be true.

I see your beautiful head full of dark brown hair, red at your birth, and then shaven as you began to find yourself and separate from me like you separated from my body in 1983. I got to love you, imperfectly, for 32 years, and I lived in those years more wholly than I will ever live again. I think.

You were the center of my Universe – and there was you and there was me – and there was no one else when we were together. Just you and me, kid.

The house is clean, which it seldom was when we lived together, rushing to bus stops and jobs, jackets and shoes strewn about the house. I don’t know how I am able to keep warm or put one foot in front of the other now that you’re gone. There are moments when a cold chill runs up my spine with the awareness of your absence in my presence. I shake it off and move forward, limping and heart-maimed.

There is a giant black hole in the center of my world now – a space you occupied for your entire short life. You were the reason I carried on – despite my perpetual darkness. I held on for you. Just for you. Life was so much brighter with you in it.

I awaken now to beautiful mornings and there is always a decrease in the potential for joy. You subtracted from me equals bitter sweetness … for perpetuity. There are amazing things I still want to share with you: the giant ancient boulders in Joshua Tree Park which you would have been amazed by. Your sense of wonder matched mine and we would share our amazement with each other…about every little ol’ thing. There it is, always you and me – and no one else in the room.

Our significant others learned to accept that when we were together – there was completion…two peas in a pod, hands in glove, pieces of puzzles that fit perfectly together, only our puzzle never was completed, the piece right at the center is missing, and I don’t think I’ll ever find it. There is now just me…without you.

I wish. I wish. I wish you were here. David Lanz is playing now, a song from when you were a little boy and you lay sleeping soundly in my bed, still frightened of the dark, your snufulupugus held tightly in your tiny hands – the house silent but for the notes of the piano wrapping its arms around us, protecting us from the elements.

Going on without you has been no easy feat. There were minutes and hours and days and weeks and months and years when tears were endless, and my heart hurt in a way for which there are no words to adequately describe.

I knew you were at peace, no longer suffering. You were whole and happy away from a tortured life, but I still worried if you were warm, eating well, loved like you were loved here…with me…with him…with us. Everyone misses you so much. I selfishly think my pain is the most devastating, but others miss you too. Your son misses you something fierce. I worry about him being without the one person in the entire world who loved him most. I see us walking through life with an empty space beside us where you should be.

Not a second goes by where the thought of you is not prominent. I ache even through joyful moments. I want to share what I thought was impossible after you left…joy and laughter – but they are only a shadow of themselves since you died.

I walk through life painfully aware that you are not here. You’re not. You’re just not. No matter how I strain to summon you…there is silence and there is incomprehensible distance from my star to yours. And, oh, how I miss you.

Love you,

Momma

By Sherrie Ann Cassel

How many of you schedule your meltdowns? I do. Rikki’s been gone for nearly four years. I have grieved efficiently, and I continue to work my process – for the remainder of my life. I have proceeded, taken the next indicated step, found some momentum toward normalcy, certainly not the normal I accomplished before my son’s death, but the normal that comes from functioning in my life with a loss so profound, after all this time, it still flays me.

The flesh of my heart heals a little bit and I’m on my way to life. After a time, I, and I’m certain, many of you who grieve out there, no matter how fast or how often you run – it’s never quite far enough away from the pain. I busy myself with grad school (and it’s a challenge). I busy myself with being there for others. I busy myself with every conceivable thing to keep me distanced from the pain; it’s chronic, more chronic than I could have imagined.

Death to a Pollyanna. I had always been so sunny and so positive. Now, even though I don’t wear black as often as I used to, I am still shrouded in darkness and beset by grief.

I say often about the loss of a loved one: it rocks your world. The rocking of one’s world is not the only thing that happens; it’s more than an earthquake in your Soul. Everything you’ve ever believed about life – about your life – is shattered – and the puzzle of glass shards will always have a sliver missing. Sometimes you feel like a distortion of yourself. Who are we now?

I wake up every morning … and before my feet hit the ground, I know in the surface part of my brain and in the depths of my heart that he won’t be here. I shake it off so I can function in these 24 hours without my son. The world doesn’t stop because we are grieving.

Being in grief is lonely. No one can really help you through it. Grief is something you cannot fly tandem; it is a solo flight all the way. The strong emotions that come with it are overwhelming at times, and try as you might, you cannot articulate with any chance of being understood by someone who does not share your experience (yet), the viscera of your pain. The pain is deep in your pre-verbal heart. The pangs come from the center of your being and radiate into every aspect of your life.

How do you function under those circumstances? How do you get up every morning? How do you manage to work, to manage relationships? How do you not fall apart every single day you face the world without your loved one? I wish I could tell you how I do it on most days. The work has taken nearly four years to get me to a place where sustained joy, no matter the duration, is within reach.But…sometimes I must crash. The collision of my pain and my purpose is always around the corner precariously waiting for me. Some days, I allow myself to careen with it. The wreckage is me — but it’s only temporary, as temporary as I want or need it to be. I am a control freak by nature. I run through life by choice. I stop to smell the roses – by choice. I heal – by choice.

Yeah, I schedule my pain days, just like I schedule a leg day at the gym. I wrestle with my pain until I am too exhausted to fight it anymore, and I admit defeat – and rest in the whole damn experience, flushed and sweating. I don’t have the time or the need to do this every day – anymore. I have dreams. I have goals. I have purpose – even when I am in pain. What do you do when you allow some distance between you and your pain? What do you do on those days when all of you is required outside of your head?

I reach out to others and try to make an encouraging contribution to someone’s life; it’s what keeps me going. It’s what gives me hope.

By Sherrie Ann Cassel

Parents know by the sound of their baby’s cry when it’s time to feed him. You know his every whim – without words. I guess the ability to understand that kind of non-verbal communication and the ability to detect even infinitesimal changes in electrical frequencies and in our babies’ cries is innate. Some modeling does occur for each generation, but our bodies respond to changes in patterns naturally.

For example, we can go years without so much as a speed bump – and then, it seems it all hits at once – and it takes you a while to charge, and sometimes wade, through the muck and the mire to the other side of a personal hell. But we can do it.

I’ve always been driven, but since the death of my son, I’ve learned to slow down, almost to the pace of a tortoise on quaaludes, and so time passes painstaking and slow, and sometimes life can seem very long, especially when you’re hurting. I used to race through life without taking time to just be. I’m sure many of you can relate to the life-altering effects from death. I used to laugh – A LOT – now I am in my head most of the time. I was a Type A personality (who remembers that categorization from — back in the 80s?)?

For people who are driven, I think, the processes of grief can be challenges they present to themselves. The processes butt against our need for control — and grief is unpredictable at best.  I’m driven, always have been. I have always striven for precision in everything. I’m a get to the point and do it quickly, please kinda gal. Thinking like that doesn’t always bode well when you’re grieving. You can’t package grief up in a prettily wrapped box and hand it to God and say, “Okay here. I’m done now.”

But some of us are true neat freaks in the hypothetical sense, so we grab onto order when we can in a desperate attempt to funnel our frenetic selves into the appearance of cohesion, e.g. we look okay – often even when we are not.

Death is a shock to the entire being and, although I didn’t realize it in the beginning, treading that river of feigned normalcy with a 500 lb. weight on your shoulders, is necessary, and it is making you stronger. I know I am different in ways, some of which need careful and immediate attention. In other ways, I’m transforming into a person who truly knows there is life after loss.

I wanted grief to be tidy and efficient. I wanted to jump back on that racetrack and come in first as often as I could. But I couldn’t get my legs to move. The world went on without me and when I was ready to come back, I had to rewrite the woman I was, but using more gentle adjectives, and verbs that were kinder to my mind, body and soul.

Many times, I do have to remind myself it’s okay to stop to weep for my broken heart; it is.

I know I write in the first person, but I can tell you only my experience, and I hope it helps some of you. I also want to encourage you to allow your pain to feed a passion that will help you find purpose in your lives again.

Tomorrow is the 22^nd; the month will not matter until January, but the number is significant to me. The 22^nd was the day my son died; 5:55 p.m. was the time. My mind has been distracted with homework for grad school – literally only homework or running small errands and trying to get some sleep. I am tired, but—I am driven, so I will keep my eye on the prize and stay in the race, and for me, there’s just no good time to fall apart – anymore. Please don’t think I’ve achieved victory over grief; I haven’t.

I have meltdowns, but I schedule them in between classes, so to speak. This practice works for me.  I don’t need to schedule the meltdowns often, but I do schedule them, because I believe it’s healthy for me.

I wasn’t stoic in the early days, nearly four years ago. I was, for all intents and purposes, a wreck, a shell, a sobbing mess on the floor. To not disclose that little tidbit would be dishonest, and trust does not happen through dishonesty.

Our heart, the metaphorical one, is a spiritual muscle, one that needs to be worked, and we must never have a passive relationship with it. Grief is the same way. Grief is the clay you hold in your hands to shape into something amazing. I hope you do.

My son needed me tonight. No, I’m not crazy. But I heard his hungry cry just as assuredly as if it was mother and son time all those years ago. My heart told me tomorrow is another month I’ve not seen my beautiful boy. My heart told me it was time to sit with my son’s memory and hold something that belonged to him, hold it close to my heart. I could almost hear his heart beating.

I haven’t scheduled a session in a very long time – and to be frank, I don’t have time to do so any time soon, but I acknowledge the sucker punch and I rise to meet the day anyhow.

I’ve always had a high threshold for pain.

By Sherrie Cassel

Some days I feel an overarching sadness; it shrouds me and I just can’t shake it. I have gotten to the point where I just ride it out. I’m making friends with those things over which I have no control. We don’t get what we want all the time; and after the death of our loved one, our time becomes what Umberto Eco has termed a hyperreality. During this time dealing well or not dealing well with the death of our loved one is a task of supreme magnitude.

My coping mechanisms are funny-odd. I hope as you begin to heal, you’ll begin to see the things that are getting you through right now, whatever they may be. If there is ever a chance to start over as a result of self-examination, it happens after the mind-blowing  loss of someone you deeply love.

You know the way you felt and all the metaphors you used to express your pain — from the first days to even now and ever-after – in hopes someone would or will get it — I mean really get it. I know I speak in terms of losing my son as the primary and ultimate experience of loss — for me. There has been and there will never be a greater pain for me … and the gash runs deep.

The thing is, I have lived my grief for many years now. But I have been remiss in the throes of unrelenting parental grief in acknowledging others’ pain – please accept my apology. People have other relationships – and their pain is no less intense than mine.

There was a woman who told me something I was finally emotionally ready to hear. After she told me a story, my sensitivity to others and to their pain was resurrected. “You see, you’re not the only one who has been through a terrible loss,” she said. She is correct. I was always an empathic person, by socialization, not a genetic trait. But after the loss of my son, I lost that empathy, or at the very least, I buried it to review at a later time.

I’m sure many of you can relate. There was a temporary bitterness that made me blind to others’ pain. I am so fortunate I have friends and even my dysfunctional family who loved me through it, who listened, who held me as I wept, who prayed for me, and who helped in some of the most lovingly practical ways.

I threw away all the sympathy cards – no regrets. I don’t want to memorialize the day he died. I want to celebrate the way he lived – before he got sick. How many of you are still waiting to feel better? I want you to know, regardless of the relationship that was lost to you — pain is pain and after a terrible loss, your pain is all-consuming — but navigable.

I don’t know what it’s like to lose a spouse – but as much as I love mine, I know there’d be another round of unmerciful grief. I know there will be; and that makes our time together evermore precious. I am fortunate to have never lost a sibling or anyone with whom I was close before I lost my son. But death touches our lives eventually, and it rocks your world.

I know people who have lost limbs, ideals, and life-long paradigms – all of which thrust them into the grief process. I am not an expert on grief from the clinical perspective. I know only that grief is something I share with every person on this globe. We all grieve – perhaps grief is the binding stuff of true community – in that one place where we all speak one language. Perhaps.

All I know for sure is the path to healing is very long – and if I may use the jargon of addiction medicine, there are relapses, when we tap back into our pain, sometimes even months or years after the day we realized we were actually going to be okay. The relapse just happens, and if there are triggers, sometimes we have no idea what they are.

I have a deep longing at certain times of the day. I can lapse and relapse into sobs when I hear the first three notes of a song I love. I, with great intensity, miss the silly times when we couldn’t breathe from laughing so heartily, when we talked about serious world events and when I plumbed the depth of his beautifully complicated mind.  I just miss him and there are times when the bandage is ripped clean off and the gash is still there, deep and aching. Do they ever heal completely? I wish I could tell you they do. I think I’m healing, but then I have days like the past week when I stare deeply into the wound and it aches as if I just incurred it.

I know you all have words with which you can define and encapsulate your pain. Share them. Sometimes we isolate ourselves because it’s too much to participate fully in life. Old dusty coping mechanisms that don’t always assist us in the healing process are sometimes fully reinvigorated, and we become silent, or bitter, or we are so unrelentingly sad nothing will comfort us, or maybe sometimes — we just go away.

I’ve directed many configurations of grief on life’s stage using the infinitely many coping mechanisms one can employ. Sometimes we just need to rest in them for a bit, not unlike a diver acclimating to the depths of the ocean. When pain is all-encompassing and reason cannot invoke the person who has gotten you through, it seems as if there is no end – and in that state of mind, empathy is nearly impossible — for yourself, and so, for others too.

And as we put ourselves in the line of fire, regret can begin to consume us; but you see, regret is only placebo; it tricks us into thinking that we’ll never survive the pain. The truth of the matter is, regret is a distraction from a healthy healing process. I know. When I need to allow the dam to burst, I feel better after the flood. Regrets serve no purpose – even though relinquishing them is much more difficult than you can possibly imagine.

Regrets keep you focused on your loss.

One step forward…two steps back…

Talk incessantly about how you feel during this time of grief to anyone with whom you feel safe, with anyone who can truly handle your pain; it’s a fact, not everyone will be able to see you morph into a hot mess.  I went in to hug a friend after my son died, and when I did he tensed up. I stepped back and I knew pretty quickly he was not one with whom I could fall apart. You’ll know when this happens to you. I don’t believe he was insensitive; he just doesn’t handle strong emotion – under any circumstance. For some, that’s just the way they are. I appreciate him for other things –. His heart is pure and pragmatic.

We are healing, maybe not as quickly as we think we should or as we wish we could, but we are healing, even when we think we’re not. Each day we live with our loss, and its accompanying pain is a day we are successively navigating the grief process. Every day we are champions at life.

If you’re in the early days after your loss, just sob and then catch your breath until you can comfortably exhale. Trust me, I sobbed so loudly and of some duration for months; the neighbors must have thought I was mad – in the Poesque sense. Losing someone hurts and that is an understatement.

I saw a meme the other day by Joyce Carol Oates that said something to the effect of in order to write, you must not be afraid to write about taboos. Death is a difficult topic to broach when no one has died; it is much more so when your loved one has.

My heart grieves with you.