Grief to Gratitude

By Sherrie Ann Cassel

For me, I scream the loudest in my silent moments. For example, I just spent the weekend in Mexico with my younger brother. I had a lot of down time while there. Other than a neighborhood of barking dogs, including my nephew, there were no distractions. I had the opportunity to feel in a way I don’t always allow myself while at home.

I thought about my son’s sweet demeanor. He was always so kind to strangers and those in need. Once we were grocery shopping, and a wife and her wounded warrior husband were in the dairy aisle. He was in a wheelchair and she, being frustrated and tired, I’m sure, refused to take the cream off the shelf for him. She kept saying, “You can do it yourself.” He pleaded with her to help him and she would not.

My son was so saddened by this that he walked over and took the cream off the shelf for this proud warrior and handed it to him and then walked away. His heart was always with those who were hurt by the people in their lives and hurt by our world.

He had been hurt plenty in his lifetime, including by me, and I certainly, as do all of us who have lost a loved one, have guilt over words said in anger and desperation. When you love someone who is addicted to drugs there are a lot of desperate moments. But…there are loving, tender, funny, and beautiful moments too, as a matter of course.

I have certainly, as Oprah Winfrey says, cried the “ugly cry” before. My face can get pretty puckered and red from sobbing, and even though Rikki will have been gone four years in January, I still have moments of the most visceral pain. I miss him so much – as they say – it hurts.

Over the weekend, I went to bed early, and I wept silently for my loss. I must believe, or else I’d never heal, that my boy is in a heaven beyond my comprehension. What comforts you in your moments of supreme grief?

Modeling is so important, and we all have someone in our lives for whom we are an example. I grieved, in the beginning, solely for myself. I spent time in each stage of the grief cycle, in no particular order, and I was often all over the map. One day I’d be performing optimally in my life, and two days later, I’d be a weeping mess on the floor.

Our grandson lives in northern California and so was not here to see my process from the beginning, but each time he visits us we share a little more of our process together. I cry, sometimes the ugly cry in front of him. I want him to know it’s okay for him to lose it from time to time – and I also want him to know pain lessens in intensity and in frequency. When we love someone and we lose them, IT HURTS, beyond description, and tears are our way of releasing some of the viscerality of our extreme anguish. But anguish is not a place for us to stay.

I spent the first two years lying prostrate on the floor begging God to take away my pain, just as I prayed in the same fashion, for my son to be saved from death, and at the end of the day, I believe he has been. I have decided, in light of my son’s death, that life is too short and too beautiful to not grab hold of all the joy I can muster as I whittle away at my own life, creating, laughing, loving, and living to the best of my ability. I model for my grandson how to grieve in a healthy manner – and I model for him how to live life in celebration of all God has gifted us with.

People do watch us – some with trepidation – fearful of the probability they will, at some point, also lose someone who is closest to them. How do you it? I’m often asked this question. How have you managed to smile again after such a tremendous loss?

The loss is for a lifetime. The pain subsides but still comes up with various triggers. I did not lose my son so I could teach others how to properly grieve, but since I’m here, I may as well. I want others to know, even in their darkest hours, there is more than a pinprick of light to lead us out of what can turn into chronic and complicated grief – if we don’t daily work through the many and vacillating feelings that arise for us.

I tried to never tap into the despair while my son was dying. I held on to hope ‘til his very last breath. I still have brief moments of despair, not hopelessness, but despair, certainly. But I can use the despair I feel from time to time as a catalyst for positive changes in my life.

I want to live in such a way others can ride my coattails to their own happy endings – in spite of those moments of despair. Time is fleeting and when we’re in that place where our pain comes hemorrhaging from our eyes, I pray we find the strength to use it as a springboard to heal and to help others to find their own way to healing too.

I have a grief site with some amazing parents who have lost children, and from this group I have seen healthy grief modeled. I have seen parents, in their own deepest grief, reach out to other parents with words of love, concern and encouragement.

In my private moments I may weep bucketsful, but I am grateful for the opportunity to love others through their times of grief.

We are not, as Donne said, “an island unto [itself]” — .  Every single thing each of us does touches, informs, or inspires others. Taking our experiences and using them for the benefit of others is not out of the realm of possibilities for us. Take your time getting to that place where you are a thriving example to others for how to navigate the grief process.

When the sadness, anger, bitterness, and incessant asking of the question, Why me?, begin to subside, and we find ourselves on the other side of those feelings, it is a perfect opportunity to say, My child, spouse, friend, etc., died, and here is how I get through it…

By Sherrie Ann Cassel

I have some of my son’s clothing. Many of his shirts still smell like he did, Axe body wash, Tide, and wine scented cigars. Those scents are conscious and deliberate, unlike when he smelled like Johnson’s baby lotion, Apple juice and pureed carrots.

That comparison stings.

I don’t want to make this page about addiction, but I do want to share insight about grief through different perspectives and, hence, touch on social issues.

For example. In the 2016 Journal of Addiction Medicine, is an estimate of deaths due to opioid addiction at 10,574 per year. This figure does not include those who died slow, tortured deaths.

There has been judgment about my son’s death by people who didn’t know him before he got caught in the neurological web of addiction. Please know, those who are tortured by addiction have minds, hearts, souls, and — feelings.

They are no less worthy of the grief we feel when they pass — as is anyone else.

The medical model of addiction is still a hotly debated topic in our society. Is addiction a choice? At some point does an addict lose his ability to choose? I’m not talking about the behavior borne of substance use. I’m talking about the inability to choose after excessive use of a substance; is using still a choice when the brain and the body believe they will die in withdrawals without it?

Do we judge other types of mental illness as harshly and yet as dismissively as addiction? No, the phenomenon of victim blaming rears its cruel head — especially in deaths that are not considered “natural.”

“He had horrible eating habits.” “Well, he did smoke.” “One less junkie.” Some hurt people hurt people. Some hurt people hurt themselves.

Addiction is a disease that can lead to self-destruction. Addiction is also a disease that does hurt others. People die every day trying to reclaim their lives, trying to save their lives.

Anyone who tells you addicts didn’t “try hard enough” to kick their drug use– is quite frankly — full of shit.

I watched my son suffer. I watched him writhe in pain wishing he could kick his addiction. I watched him lose his mind during a psychotic break when I thought I was going to lose him to drug induced psychosis. I thought he’d have to live in this world and never enjoy it again.

He pulled through that time — and the next day when his mind cleared, he called me and said, “Momma, did any of those things happen?” I said, “No, baby, they didn’t.

His delusions were quite extensive that night. I was bereft as I drove him to the motel for the night.

He chose to go to detox the next day, and then to a 30 day live-in drug rehabilitation facility, where he made some wonderful friends. Some would make it out alive, and some, like my son, didn’t make it.

He was like I am in the way that it didn’t matter where he was, he tried to make the best of it. He’d find something beautiful in everything. Being broken himself, he gravitated to other beautifully broken people. He’d encourage them to hang in there and he’d tell them they would make it.

He was such a positive presence in so many lives, but he had a lot of secrets.

As a matter of fact, I never knew the extent of his self-loathing. He must have been in so much pain. I wish I had been more compassionate instead of frustrated. I wish I would have empowered him rather than hurt him through my own powerlessness.

My son went to detox three times and to rehab twice. I was overjoyed each time he went in. He’d make tremendous progress. He’d work the steps and try, oh my God, how he tried to stay sober. I see that now.

He loved life. He had dreams.

He made this picture during one of his classes offered in rehab. He made fun of the types of things the addiction specialists would plan for them. But, secretly, he loved them.

This picture/collage is so beautiful. He chose colors very deliberately. Gray was his favorite color (now it’s his son’s). Orange is my favorite color. Red is the favorite color of the woman he never stopped loving–in spite of everything. Green for renewal. And black — for the way he felt about himself all the way to the core of his being by way of a broken heart.

When he showed his artwork to me I cried and told him how beautiful it was, each piece. He laughed and said, “Oh Mom, it’s so stupid that they think having us make pretty stuff is going to save us.”

I framed his collage today. It’s hanging in my office above my desk where I can look at it every day. I feel his pain. I feel his presence.

He was my favorite cynic. I had hoped his penchant for cynicism would help him to see how futile drug use was. I had hoped he would see the pointlessness of drugs and “just quit”. I was a fool.

Despite some members of our society’s cruel judgment about who is deserving of deep, sloppy grief and transformation, I love my boy. I miss him. I have photos, videos, text messages, voice mails. I have paintings and collages. I have journals and scraps of paper with his handwriting. I have memories. I just don’t have him, and I grieve my supreme loss as deeply as anyone else.

Today my son would have been 36.

Yucca Valley sunset, July 30, 2019, Sherrie Ann Cassel

Why “Be Positive” Isn’t the Best Advice When You’re Down

Click on link above.

I have always been the kind of person who strove to be positive; sometimes I even make myself sick. We are socialized to be the kind of people who have survived our personality construction, e.g. a mom with an unfulfilled dream to have been a cheerleader producing a daughter with an introverted personality but who then seeks approval from her mother by fulfilling her dream for her. Or in my case, coming from an abusive and dysfunctional family, and striving to find even an infinitesimal sliver of a hopeful horizon, an escape route, if you will. Fantasy is sometimes better than reality.

Positivity is a blessing and a curse. In my case, and in the cases of many others, smiles get you approval from those you admire; emotional meltdowns do not. I learned how to do the former effortlessly. The latter I’ve learned only since the death of my son.

Tapping into intense emotions has been a hard lesson to learn. I’ve bucked up most of my life. There’s no need to anymore.

By Sherrie Ann Cassel

When someone disappoints us, it can hurt. If someone continually disappoints us, the pain can become a deep wound that festers for the rest of our days — if intervention is not sought. I was speaking with a member of my family this morning, and in less than one paragraph, I heard the echoes of dysfunction in each stinging paragraph. My childhood is grievable. I suffered a lot.  I don’t need to rehash the events or the types of abuse I endured, but I will say this: it’s as bad as you can imagine.

I learned to live with chronic disappointment. My parents were broken and so they broke me too. I’ve had a long road to emotional wellness, through bouts of self-destructiveness, bullying by adaptation, relapses into old self-destructive behaviors, and gratefully, many, many victories. Wholeness is that pot at the end of the rainbow.  Grief from death of a loved one to grief from having a well-nurtured and self-protecting illusion exposed to you is painful, but wholeness is attainable – even when you come from hell.

I’m not blaming my parents for my life post-childhood (anymore), but I do hold them accountable for traumatic events that happened when I was in their care as a child. Both of my parents were extraordinarily broken from domestic violence and generations of addiction. I have no doubt, had they had more loving and emotionally sound parenting, they would have been able to offer it to me and to my siblings. I am definitely not letting anyone off the hook but trying to understand and come to terms with the fact that no one is born into perfection. We all have flaws, some glaring and some hidden deep inside coping mechanisms we’ve developed through the pain, most of which don’t work outside of our families of origin.

People who are broken can be utterly self-absorbed and exhibit behavior that expresses there is no one else  in the world who has suffered as much as they have, and they often live in a defensive position until they receive the help they need, through professional help, e.g. psychologists/psychiatrists, or a trusted member of the clergy. I’ve sought counsel from both places.

Truth be told, I’ve been in a dynamic grief process from the beginning of my life. Every day as a child was a disappointment. I felt like Haley Joel Osmond’s character in AI, I was always close to the edge, and being plucked out of this world by self or by accident seemed like the only escape. I grieved all the idyllic days that I imagined everyone else was having, and to be fair, some were having those sweet days I envied. If I work really hard, I can find a few fun days with my family, albeit they were few and far between.  Hypervigilance was a coping mechanism I learned very early in my life – and so waiting for the other shoe to drop was pretty standard operating procedure for me.

Tom Robbins said, “It’s never too late to have a happy childhood.” And that is true. It takes work. If you didn’t learn to play when you were a child, it is difficult to play as an adult. My husband tells me that I am far too serious, even more so since my son died. I play easily with my grandson who is 10, and we act silly together. He gets me doing improv and making up stories on the spot and we laugh like lunatics over something we think is funny.

I think it’s necessary to revisit a challenging childhood and to dissect and analyze the events, the good, the bad, and the ugly, that shaped you as a person – even when it hurts. I’ve spoken to people who view the prospect of receiving therapy as terrifying, so they haven’t begun to work on their issues, and the dysfunction persists. I have family and friends who say they don’t need therapy and have managed to function in the world, but in the realm of survival. Thriving in life is the goal.

Healthy and emotionally and spiritually sound clergy can be of tremendous help in assisting you with navigating the road to surrendering dysfunction and coping mechanisms that have served to keep you from growing and thriving as a person made in the image of a loving God. In my own experience, when you don’t have healthy love doled on you during your childhood, it’s often difficult to dole it on others, and it’s near-impossible to dole it on yourself.

I grieve all the days I hated myself because I didn’t feel worthy of God’s love, my siblings love, my friends’ love, my husband’s love, and I didn’t feel as if I fit in anywhere in this great big beautiful world filled with magnificent people, all those people to whom I felt inferior. You never know what is going on in someone else’s home, and regardless of how large or small you believe their challenges are, every person is fighting to stay afloat in her own tempest.

Do you grieve your lost childhood? Were you fortunate enough to have a happy one? If the former, tapping into your grief is healthy; if the latter, bless you. You are in the best position to help others find their way out of their darkness.

I’ve read a handful of accounts about people from traditional tribes of native peoples who have chosen one of its tribal members to send out to the civilized world to go to school, immerse themselves in the dominant culture and then go back to their tribes as lawyers, teachers, doctors, etc., and serve their community with their new knowledge. Those of us who are a bit further in the healing process can be messengers of hope to a hurting world once we find wholeness through hard work and through the grace of a loving and healing God.

As we grieve and grow, we are in excellent positions to serve those who are still in the boat screaming for help as the storm tosses them about in the darkness. All of us have stories to tell. Some are pretty; some are not, but with each mulling over we do of the building blocks that constructed us, there is the opportunity to be choiceful about where we will go in life. The choices we make will determine our purpose in life.

Grief is a healthy mechanism; it is not a place to stay, however.

Grief is painful. Childhood can be painful. The past can be one that is not a place we wish to visit. As we grow toward who God created us to be, we find we must throw baggage off our boat that no longer serves us or others. I can’t wash your feet if my back is aching from years of allowing it to be a beast of burden to every stripe that cut me to the bone. I need to be able to surrender my dysfunction and trade it in for something more useful.

I do grieve my childhood. I wish things had been different. I wish I had stories that didn’t need embellishment to portray to others that I am normal because my childhood was not that bad. But I don’t. The best I have done for myself and for those with whom I am in relationship is reach out for professional help from therapists, psychiatrists, and from clergy.

When you’re a child surviving your parents’ demons, you may not have any place to turn, just as they did not have any place to turn. Maybe you haven’t learned how to grieve your lost childhood. I’m of the mind that one can change the course of her life at any age, even well into the post-childhood phase of our lives. We are blessed in the United States to have a plethora of resources that can guide us in the direction of wholeness and emotional wellness.

If you’re in a good place after years of dysfunction from the cradle to adulthood, share what you know with others who may still be in their own hells of domestic violence, emotional and physical abuse, and addiction. Be brave enough to be vulnerable. There are people who’ve never shared an emotional response to their experience because they don’t have the words. Be their voice until they can hear their own urging them onward toward wholeness.

You’ll find that in doing so, you will also heal yourself.

By Sherrie Cassel

Navigating the grief process takes work. There will be revolving cycles in the grief process, and grievers will have an initial time of visceral pain — and it’s hell while you’re in it. The first year is for nursing your broken heart and fumbling through, what was for me, the first stage toward healing. For example, I cried every day for a solid year. I’m talking about loud wails that must have had the neighbors curious about what was happening in our home. The pain was physical. The pain was spiritual. The pain was at the level of the soul; there were deep wounds bleeding out the person I was before my son died. Everyone is different and navigates her process in the best way she can given the resources available to her.

I must admit, although my son has been gone 3 years and 7 months and a lot has changed, I still remember vividly my first year after he died; I was in no condition to begin my grief work. I vacillated between numbness and heart wrenching and convulsive sobs. I was inconsolable. I bargained with God that if he would just raise my son from the dead like Lazarus, I would be a better person.

Obviously, that first year is a trip through unreality.

I could start from the beginning, but I choose not to. This much I will say, when your child dies from addiction and/or other diseases, your grief process begins well before his death. I, as have many of you, witnessed your once vibrant, brilliant, and soulful loved one wither away. Death is the end of a life — a person — a relationship, and best case scenario, we grievers make it through the grief process victoriously and with a sense of purpose.

Some grievers have physical pain that nothing will help, and some have spiritual pain that may send them off to spend the rest of their natural lives in intense and, sometimes complicated, grief. The viscerality of our angst will lessen in severity — and our minds will begin to clear. And some grievers will even go on to have full lives.

One day you’re busy, let’s say, tending to your sunflowers, and not thinking about the grief that has permeated every single thing in your life, and the next, you’re a weeping mess. I have learned to shelve my angst and schedule a day for losing it. Trust me, it took grueling work to get to that point. Certainly, there are triggers that make it tough to get through some days. But I must function in my new world – and the world I share with everyone else. How do you do that when your soul is screaming? You can’t.

I was in an impenetrable fog that first year. I have never liked the term zombie when referring to someone who maybe isn’t all there because that’s where I was that first year. I couldn’t pay attention to even small talk because I was lost in the numbness of early grief. The second anniversary of my son’s death hurt more than I thought it would, but I was coming out of my grief fog a bit and reacquainting myself with reality. I was able to reason with myself and talk myself off the ledge.

I know people who have quickly ascended out of the pit of despair, and I know some who take years, and there are even some who never find peace. I believe in stages; they are natural, e.g. caterpillar, chrysalis, butterfly. I think in terms of the warrioress whose own tripart path was one she traveled first as victim, then survivor, then thriver. I like that analogy. My heart is broken, scarred, but still beating. I remember wishing my heart wouldn’t beat after my son’s death, but it did, and with each heartbeat, that first year, it brought a pain with it I thought I would actually die from, but I didn’t, and I haven’t. I’m still here.

I don’t know what stage I’m in now. This is a first and an only for me. My son was my only child. I do know there is a time when you are learning how to walk in the sun again, how to talk to others who are not in grief, and how to accept a world much different than the one you and your loved one shared. During this time a glimmer of hope begins to take spark and it’s scary and it makes you feel guilty, like you don’t deserve and certainly should not enjoy yourself, so you leave the party, so to speak. Enjoying oneself takes practice, an indomitable spirit, and tenacity. There comes a time when survival is not enough.

Dusting yourself off and picking yourself up by the bootstraps are gross over-simplifications of what we grievers must do to get to a place where it is not angst that rules our lives; but rather a drive to truly live again – and allow ourselves the gift of knowing our loved ones, from eternity, have given us his or her blessing. How does one move from mourning to dancing? Everyone’s process is different, and there are some accounts that speak volumes to me in my own transformation.

For example, there’s an account in the Bible which has drastically changed for me. The account is far more personal now.

This account is about King David, in 2 Samuel 12: 15 through 23, who lost a son. I remember my childhood pastor preaching on this particular account many times throughout my 24 years in this church. I thought about it in terms of punishment, judgment, and disobedience toward God. And that is how it is preached most of the time. Since I lost my son, however, my eyes and my heart are focused on David and Bathsheba as grieving parents. David was inconsolable and grieved the impending death of his son. He prayed. He lay prostrate on the floor. He didn’t eat. He didn’t sleep. He wept and pleaded with God to not take his son.

We’re not told about what Bathsheba is doing during this time, but it’s probably a safe bet that she was also grieving, praying, fasting, weeping. We’re just not told this in the account. One verse tells how David went to Bathsheba to comfort her. We, who grieve a loved one, need strong support during the first year, strong and consistent support. David obviously was that for Bathsheba. I’ve been blessed with a husband who has been my primary support. He asks me what I need from him – space to grieve privately, or a space where we come together for supportive embraces and words choked out through tearful gasps. Some are not so fortunate; if you don’t have anyone with whom you feel safe, and believe me, this is true for many people, I encourage you to find a grief support group, online or one in which you are physically present in a grief community, a clergy member, or a therapist. Talking with others about a common death experience, e.g. a parent who has lost a child to addiction or a group that speaks specifically to your loss, is helpful beyond measure.

Healing is possible. Grief is navigable. Rediscovering joy is inevitable if you do the grief work to climb out of that abyss where darkness has changed your perspective from one with a drive to live a full life to one of bitterness, hopelessness, and chronic pain that can and does sometimes morph into physical pain.

I don’t think I could have done as David did. After a long night of begging God to heal his son, he dies anyhow. What David did next was get up, wash his face, applied lotions, much like I do with makeup and hair — which I couldn’t do the first year. David takes some food after fasting all day and all night. His servants were befuddled by his 180˚ and ask him about this turnaround. He plainly says that while his son was alive maybe God would have mercy on him and save him, but now that his son has died, it’s back to life. This behavior is truly one exhibited by a strong person. I’m not saying that there are others who are not strong because their experience is different from David’s. Anyone who is currently in early grief and those who have been struggling with returning to life for an extended period are strong. You have no idea just how strong you are.

What I am saying, is that through grief work, however long it takes you, there will come a time when you can rise up, wash your face, take a little food, and rejoin the living. My heart sees this account much different than when I first learned about it. I can now relate to the grief from the loss of a child, the powerlessness of a king and father to save his son, a mother who lost a child, and I believe they were probably unable to accept comfort that first year. I understand their experience much more intimately now that I have experienced it myself.

Maya Angelou wrote the poem, “I’ll Rise” and this is, indeed, how it happened for me. I was finally able to shower without emotional exhaustion, to apply my makeup and put on bright colors, to attend social functions, to be more present in my relationships and, to enjoy my finite earthly life.

Life can be short or long. And it takes practice to be whole, but it’s possible.

There’s a statement that is attributed to one of my favorite poets, Emily Dickinson. The statement was made, allegedly, while she was on her deathbed. She said this, “The fog is rising.”

And, indeed, it is.

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By Sherrie Ann Cassel

I am learning the different weather patterns in our desert town. San Diego was pretty consistently, well, perfect. I’m rediscovering myself and renewing my faith and hope in this beautiful area. My husband and I love to see the way the mountains look at different times of day. I love the pinkish sky that rises with the sun in the northeast. I love the silhouette the evening makes of our mountains. I am at a place in my life, and in my grief, where I am able to find gratitude for all the things, people, and this beautiful place that bless my life. Who knew?

I’m not saying this is a place where I am every day, but I am finding myself being grateful more often than I ever dreamed I would. Today is 3 ½ years and one month since my son died. My body feels his absence, like when he vacated my body and breathed his first, like when it was time to breastfeed him in his infancy, like when I said goodbye to him in those final moments I was able to touch his body.

Anniversaries of that awful day are hard to deny; they push up from the deepest soil where our pain resides – and like weeds choke out our growth and our peace of mind. I have been knocked down after years of achievement from grueling work, only to have the wind knocked out of me, or been brought to my knees in visceral pain. It happens.

I can speak in terms of great leaps and bounds in my healing, and that does happen, but to be honest, finding gratitude is a monumental feat in the life of a person in grief. We are to be commended. There are no adequate words to definitively describe the infinitely many cycles of grief we have endured and will endure until we close our own eyes in death, but there should be recognition for our grief work.

Grievers use powerful language to describe their greatest loss. Soul-crushing, heart-wrenching, heart-shattering, life altering, and various other configurations of pain. I’m a writer and there are times when I cannot speak my pain.

In Romans 8:26, the apostle Paul speaks to the inability to pray because we are in such a state that the words won’t come: And in the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit intercedes for us with groanings too deep for word.

Today an unexpected rain graced our desert. Today was an anniversary, just as every 22^nd of the month is, just as it is at every strike of the clock at 5:55 p.m. Today I took my grandson to the public pool, cheered him on, went home and watched my husband work meditatively in his Cowboy Zen garden, and I am contemplative, missing my son and being grateful for my life today. How is that possible?

I believe dirt-under-the-fingernails hard work is necessary for every good thing in life, like hope and a drive toward wholeness. I know I’ve said I’d never be whole again after losing my son, but I am whole; I’ve just rearranged the baggage I choose to hold on to. The heaviest and most back breaking piece of luggage is now at the top. I’ll carry it until I am home.

Triggers are funny things. I saw lightning and I heard the thunder and I remembered a time when my son walked to the store, and a clap of thunder so loud scared him half to death. He said he crouched down in the duck and cover pose and screamed, “I love you, Mom.”

Love never dies. My love and his love and our love – is in my DNA. I can look in the mirror and see his face. I don’t need the rain to make me think about my son; I just do so – with each labored breath.

Photographer: http://www.jeffmitchumgalleries.com/represented_artist_portfolio/all_jeff_mitchum_images/escape/3757/#add-to-wishlist

By Sherrie Ann Cassel

This page is about grief. I have lost a son, flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone, my heart and my soul, my only child, and I will navigate the grief process for the rest of my life. But certainly, there are other losses too, e.g. losing a parent, a sibling, a spouse, a job, a limb, a relationship, etc., and they also carry with them significant levels of pain and grief. We are not alone in our periods of grief…on any given day.

I was speaking with a friend yesterday and we were chatting about nothing in particular; about every little thing under the sun — from religion to world politics, self-image and all manner of topics, with no real purpose in mind.

We eventually got to epochs of our lives. I think we agreed that “Youth

is wasted on the young” (Shaw, George Bernard). I am approaching my 60s and he is moving toward that magic age of Medicare. Each phase of our lives redefines us and, best-case scenario, changes us into the people God has created us to be. We walk a bit, shaped by our families of origin and other social phenomena; we stumble and, with skinned knees and skinned hearts, we get up and walk a bit further, sometimes we even skip, and so on until the day we are called home.

In between birth and death, there are plenty of opportunities for grief. My friend has recently retired and is in the process of discovering who he is in a world that is not as cloistered as the classroom in which he taught for 36 years. This question still rattles me, and in my humble opinion, it should rattle us because it equates the value of a human to a task: “What do you do?” I know the question is innocuous and impersonal details about our lives are safe topics for discussion. We’ve all heard the discussion regarding the platitudes with which we speak when asked, “How are you?” It is seldom asked with the intent to really hear how a person is doing, and we are seldom in the practice of answering truthfully, as we have been socialized to keep to happy topics in the public forum — and be honest; we are not always happy.

I like the saying, “Be kind to everyone you meet, because they may be fighting a battle you know nothing about.” Humorously enough, the saying has been attributed to everyone from Aristotle to Ziggy (for those of you who are old enough to know who Ziggy – not Marley – is). The sentiment is a good one. The sentiment is a compassionate one. The sentiment is a truthful one.

My friend is currently experiencing an identity crisis. And in my unfocused musing I ask: are identity crises really just periods of grief? Change is not a rarity in our lives. We may go through long periods of immutability – unto boredom and sometimes apathy, because we are a dynamic species meant to move in service to one another and meant to create. Our lives are punctuated by joy and sorrow – smooth sailing and catastrophes. Each event shapes us and provides us with greater insight into the human condition – and into ourselves.

I like the symbol of the reptile that sheds its outer layer of skin as its body grows and changes. I also like the account of the apostle Paul on his road to Damascus (Acts 9:18), and how, something “like scales fell from his eyes” – providing him with clarity about his true purpose in life. Regrets, perhaps the “thorn in his side” – which one can never truly surrender, may have plagued him during his quiet time, as he grieved and regretted the behavior of his former self. Grief accompanies changes in our lives.

We shed our skins with every experiential punctuation. We shed the character traits that worked for us in early epochs, but no longer serve us now. We take the lessons we’ve learned along the way and, if we’re cognizant of our modus operandi, we look for opportunities for further growth in our next stage of life.

I grieve earlier versions of myself. Many of them kept me safe or gave me courage to navigate a turbulent life. But there comes a time when you no longer need to have those parts of you accompany you on the rest of your life journey. Letting go is a delicate balance between fear and courage, clutching tightly and surrendering, grief and renewal. Letting go also provides us with the gift of hindsight — and perfect acuity.

Each stage of our lives is fraught with emotional and spiritual knickknacks that we trade back and forth from past to present as the need for their use arises. I grieve the ones I never meant to lose along the way. I hold, lightly, to those things that give me warm fuzzies or have taught me lessons and helped me change the course of my life toward greater quality and emotional and spiritual soundness. Sometimes lessons escape us, and so, for me, God, must do the remedial class, several times before I get it. Sometimes I learn it straightaway – generally, from those unexpected catastrophes that rock my world; and there are some things that have taken me a lifetime to learn.

I think about my friend redefining himself, and he will need courage, the ability to relinquish things that no longer work, or that maybe never did. He’s going to need hope. He’s going to need drive. He’s going to need the ability to allow himself to let go and then he’s going to learn how to grieve all the roles he’s played in each stage of his life that he must now let go. And he is going to need to learn to welcome new roles.

He’s going to need an Anchor.

I am also in a period of redefinition. I am seeing a new world without my son — with ancient eyes exuding wisdom that comes from supreme pain — every parent’s nightmare. I am learning to endure that thorn in my my [own] side that plagues me: grief and pain from losing my son. Grief will travel with me for the rest of my days, but I have grieved a great many things in my life. I’m actually quite seasoned at it. I am handling it, just as every single person throughout the ages has. As time takes me through each phase of my life, I grow, when I was a child[…] (1 Corinthians 13:11). Sometimes I feel, irrationally, alone in my pain and in my grief, but I know that’s not true. Everybody hurts – sometime (REM).

Epochs, changes, and grieving the things we must leave behind – and carrying those things we must never relinquish are normal stages of human development.  Unfortunately, not one of us is exempt from moments of painful ruminations about our pasts, mistakes we’ve made, people we’ve hurt, and sometimes how we’ve hurt ourselves. We live. We die. And in the period in between is a lifelong procession of losses and wins.

My friend is in a period of stasis, one in which there are a plethora of insights, both those that feel good and those that hurt. Grief, for a self shaped by a zeitgeist that chisels us in only one dimension, is necessary for him and for us to move forward from one stage of our lives to another.

We’ve all been in his place, either figuratively or actually, and chances are pretty good, we will be there again. Learning who we are at any stage of the game is a monumental feat. Some never live a self-examined life — for various reasons. I sometimes envy them.

Some never get to the place where Paul was as he walked his path toward his greatest clarity. I wonder if it hurts the lizard to shed its skin. It leaves behind a shell of what it used to be. It is blessed with no sentience, and therefore, no grief.

We are not. There are times when we lose sight of our purpose here – which is to serve one another — because we allow grief and regret to deter us from reaching for the stars — at any age. Our lives on this earth are finite. What might we leave behind for our successors? We each have gifts that are illuminated by the fire that burns in each of us. Sometimes that fire is just a tiny spark waiting to be a flame.

We are never so old nor should we allow our grief and moments of apathy to convince us that we do not have contributions to make. I hope my friend gets that. I hope you do too.