Grief to Gratitude

For my American counterparts — this day is symbolic of so many things, some we patriotically take pride in, and some, we don’t discuss on festive days, in order that we may have them. I just wanted to offer the fact that every thing is a double-edged sword whether or not you are grieving…and holidays bring with them both smiles and smarts. I am doing my best to remind myself that I have gotten through every single day since my son’s death — and I will get through today too.

Memory: I raised my son in the Fallbrook Church of God. We were a mixed group of Americans, Guatamalans, El Salvadorans, Mexicans, and the major religion in most of those countries being Catholic with robust families, there was no shortage of rugrats running around. Every year Rikki and I were charged with the task of holding our beach spot while everyone else went to worship service. Just me and my little boy — watching our world prepare for a time of family fun — our individual families — and the family of God.

Rikki, my son, would play out in the water from sunrise to sunset. His lips would be blue and he and his best friend, Louie, would argue with us about how they should be able to play in the water for five more minutes.

Memories can bring joy and they can bring wistfulness. I am excited about spending the Fourth with my son’s son who is one month shy of his 10th birthday. I am also apprehensive that the pain may resurface during a public event. I see my son’s face in my grandson’s face. I hear his laughter. I see the light of wonderment on his face just as I saw it on my son’s face — even moments before he died.

It would be so easy to crawl into bed tonight in my darkened bedroom and shut out the world — . Who wants to celebrate as a family when your family is only a fraction of what it used to be? Grandma, Grandpa, Grandson — no Daddy to carry him on his shoulders like he used to on the Fourth when we walked to the corner of the street from a home we shared, and enjoyed the fireworks together. My son was so strong and our Louie so little. He felt like the Hulk on his daddy’s shoulders, and he would scream, “Look, Grandma, I can touch the fireworks.”

Two generations of single parents. He was much better at it than I was. I watched as he orbited around his son — the most important star in his galaxy. How is it possible that you can miss your child beyond words — and then also be overwrought with grief for the relationship his son will not get to have with him?

Grief is pervasive…there is nothing that is not tinged by it. I want to remember the merriment in my son’s eyes when he and his best friend were together as toddlers — into their teens. I want to — but it hurts. I am revving up to be around festive folks — and I’ll get there too…but I have been in a funk all day.

Rikki was part native-American Indian and he was well-versed in the atrocities upon which our country was built. He grew up with the heart of an activist — but he started with the sense of wonder about our world. He grew up to be a cynic, but he started as a starry-eyed boy who believed that nothing was impossible for humankind.

We had 31 Fourths of July together. How can such an innocuous holiday stab at a healing heart and make it tender all over again? He would change into his dry clothes just before dark, as everyone was settling in for the firework display. He’d walk toward the edge of the shore, just before the water could touch his feet, and he’d gaze toward the horizon. He was a little guy, but I knew he was wondering what was on the other side of his ocean. I knew he was happy at that moment. I knew he didn’t want the day to ever end. I knew he wished Louie lived with us so they could be brothers all the time. I knew he knew I was there and that his world was complete.

We were in the company of people who knew him from the beginning of his life, people who adored him, and people who knew everything about me and yet….brought me and my little boy into the fold.

Holidays don’t destroy me anymore — but I still don’t find them to be easy…and were it not for the grandson being here…I’d be content to stay home and rearrange my bookshelves. I haven’t found my own liberation yet, the liberation that tells me it’s okay to move forward and laugh on a day that used to be “our” day. I’m far too serious since Rikki died.

“Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose…” and he was my only child…of what now shall I be afraid?

Happy Freedom Day.

• 

The time here in Joshua Tree is 2:30 a.m. I woke up because I dreamed about my son. I don’t dream all that often. But dreams don’t hurt as much as being awake can. Rikki was/is the most important person in my life; I gave birth to him, and he knew me better than anyone.

When someone you love more than life itself dies – grief comes from the dissolution of a sacred relationship that never needed an explanation for its existence. He was my son, my best friend, my comrade and my confidante and I was his. I was a single mother for his entire childhood. Sometimes the boundaries got blurred, and we were like brother and sister. I was a young mom, and he was a remarkable son. Our relationship was one of rewards and regrets.

When a relationship is that close, the loss is monumental; the void is sobering.

I’m trying to fill that void with activities but trying to do so with people is still very difficult for me. I was always a social person, even though I also thrive in solitude. Since Rikki’s death, however, being around new people is exhausting. Or maybe, being around truly happy people is too much for me on some days. My happiness is weighted now. I’m still terrified of the question, “Do you have any children?” I do. I mean, I did. I mean, yes…’til the day I meet him again. He’s dead. He’s gone. He’s …

Moving to a new town in the midst of the grief process was necessary for my healing. But talking to people who know nothing about my great loss can be difficult too. There are days when I want to scream his name from the rooftops, and there are days when getting up in the morning is a feat of magnificent will. The delicate balance between grief and functioning well on any given day is tenuous. I know; I walk that tightrope every day.

No matter how busy you keep yourself…the pain from loss is now your life companion. Sure, you can find joy — but it’s a heavy joy, and your “incredible lightness of being” has faded into a distant memory, like a fifty–year-old Polaroid.

Sometimes it’s helpful to put yourself in places where people who also loved your loved one are. Seeing your loved one’s reflection in someone whose face softens or contorts at his or her memory is like seeing a friendly face in a group of strangers. Go there as often as you need to — or as often as you can.

In the movie, Phenomenon, on the anniversary of John Travolta’s character’s death, his friends had a get-together, a harvest party, and the movie ended with his loved ones celebrating his life. I tried to do that with my son. The timing was all wrong though. My son’s been gone three and a half years; it’s still too soon to feel truly celebratory about the day he joined his loved ones and his Maker. I know I should. My child entering that peaceful and loving light will bring me peace one day; it just doesn’t yet. Comforting thoughts are fleeting. They provide both moments of respite and reminders of your terrible loss.

A memory: my son loved smoking wine-flavored, wood-tipped cigarillos, as well as a fine cigar, finances permitting. I have his old clothes that still smell very much like his cigars and the laundry soap he loved…the scent is fading, and it hurts to have that experience taken from me too.

Time can be like a bulldozer compacting your memories and pushing them into a warehouse, dark and dank. I must climb through years of mental and emotional archives to find my way to those remembrances that have settled enough to no longer be mortally wounding, to sort through them, to consider which ones are worth trudging through the muck of memory back to where I live now – in a world without my son.

Putting one foot in front of the other, finding gratitude on the other side of grief, bucking up and moving on are platitudes that get us through on most days. Telling ourselves there is hope for us to still have meaningful lives, to be transformed, and to heal is not only helpful, it’s necessary. When a grieving person says, “I can do this.”, she is being proactive in her healing process. I’m not saying it’s easy. There are days when I succeed spectacularly – and there are other days when I fall to the floor a weeping mess.

I have listened to the loving words of people who have no clue what it is to lose a child, and they mean well – and I love them for trying, but no words truly comfort, except the ones you tell yourself as you begin rebuilding your life; those words that promote courage — you must say to yourself.

I know I use extreme examples for what the death of a loved one feels like: detonation, decimation, destruction, soul crushing, and to be honest, all of these words adequately describe my loss, and maybe yours too. To say the least, losing someone you adore with all of your being is life-altering.

I want to take the memories of my son, the good ones, the ones that make me smile and share them with those who also loved him, and I also want to hear stories about my son from those who knew and loved him. Do I want closure? No. There will never be closure. Do I want acceptance? No, the best I can do is resignation. He is gone. He is not in this world anymore. I am a childless mother.

I began this post with a dream about my son. Dreams, memories, and the fading scent of his cigars are all I have left of my Love, my Life, my Child. I am rebuilding in fits and starts. Life is life, or as the saying goes, “It is what it is.”

The Rabbi Harold Kushner in his book When Bad Things Happen to Good People – provided a reasoned commentary on the facts of life, facts that made me aware that I was never exempt from loss or pain. He had a son he loved and cherished who suffered from progeria, the disorder that causes rapid aging in children . His son died after 14 years of suffering physically, emotionally, and socially. Rabbi Kushner concluded that his son’s death served no purpose. No one was to blame. He wasn’t a bad person who was being punished through the loss of his son. He didn’t lose his son through rotten luck or because God needed another angel. He lost his son. His son lived, touched his life, and then he died.

As we sift through the rubble of our lost dreams of a future with our loved ones and memories that both hurt and lift us up, may we find the peace to gather the shiny and colorful stones that have been buffed to a sheen that only intense moments can bring. I want my life to shine like Glass Beach — I want to smooth the jagged edges that still draw blood from time to time. I want to heal.

May your hearts be comforted as you find the absolutely acceptable and healthy resignation – without qualifiers – we loved and we lost and we’d no doubt do it again – just to have them here now. I know I would.

By Sherrie Ann Cassel

As someone who has been navigating the grief process for three and a half years, this quote has left a lasting impression on me for a very specific reason: friends are essential for a quality life – so as we  risk letting go of our insecurities when we lose friends , it is important we reach out to make new ones.*

We’ve all had friends come and go in our lives. As a matter of fact, one can have lived several lifetimes in the years equal to your age, each epoch casting many configurations of people on your stage – all of them positioned rightly.

We’ve been blessed and not-so blessed over the years with friends. We’ve often been a blessing and, then – sometimes we are not so much a blessing. We have loved and lost and loved and lost again and again and again. We have certainly “unfriended” people in our actual lives for various reasons. And when friends move on from our lives, it doesn’t always feel so good, even if the reason to leave was what was best for them and for you too, even less dramatic, when you lose a friend because she moved to the other side of the world – even if it’s  just from California to North Carolina.

When you lose a friend there is a tear in the fabric of the universe, which is to say, there is a time of grief – and a time of readjustment. There is a time for tending to our wounds and then — there comes a time of acceptance. And finally – we begin to rebuild our posse.

For everything there is a time, and a purpose under heaven. Eccles. 3:1

In the past 15 years, I’ve said goodbye to my son, who died, and friends who were both fair-weathered and fantastic – sometimes all in one person. I’ve watched as friends have walked out of my life – never to look back. When you lose a friend, the entire world changes; making new friends takes courage, the same kind of courage it takes to admit your sorrow over relationships that have ended and the same kind of courage it takes to face your grief over the loss of your friend(s) and begin the journey toward healing. Life is all about having the courage to live it to its fullest. Living a full life means having a few close friends in the huddle – high-fiving you in your victories, picking you up off the floor when you don’t have the strength to do it for yourself, or coaching you upward when you’re about to do something really stupid.

Grief is a part of life … not necessarily because someone has died, but because relationships die too, and when they do, they leave a big gaping hole in the sense the world used to make. I lost a friend I had to let go of a year or so ago. I couldn’t help her and after losing my son to addiction, I didn’t have the strength to even try. She died a few months ago.

I don’t know why I didn’t grieve the loss of our friendship, but I do grieve the loss of her presence in the world. I have tried to not think about her, but tonight as I’m typing this entry, I feel the loss. I never grieved for her while she was losing at life. But I now see the tragedy of the loss of a beautiful soul. I also see the value of the grief process I didn’t allow myself when I said, “I can’t do this with you.” We must take care of ourselves, even if it means walking away from someone you love because his load triples itself every other day — and he has risen to the level of a “Yes, but” person with no understanding that he may be part of his problem. And sometimes it’s necessary to walk away – perhaps licking your wounds, or at the very least, saddened by his departure.

But — you still grieve the loss.

• Thank you, my beautiful friends from YVEVF Church for welcoming me into your circle.

By Sherrie Ann Cassel

Weekends pass so quickly; it can sometimes feel like you never left the office. Time marches on and it waits for no one. Not even guilt can deter it. Even after Little Boy’s decimation of your former self, your brain still yields new neurons that beg for the continuation of life, a life that appeals to our natural hedonistic tendencies. Does a sunset make you feel good? Does a concert bring you joy? Does falling in love make you feel giddy?

Joy is possible — even after you lose a loved one.

Mourning is a timeless ritual in many cultures which helps begin a pathway to healing. For example, funeral pyres, entombment, burials at sea, and internment are age-old ceremonies that help us say goodbye. Celebrations of life are now common in the grief process. Death rituals make things real. They provide the opportunity to fully address the shocking impermanence of life.

Grief is how we deal with the absence of someone’s presence, and it is painful in every possible way something can be. There are days when we are beset with grief , when even focusing on our breath is a monumental feat. But courageously — we soldier on. We learn about ourselves through the grief process. We ask ourselves very tough questions. We judge ourselves harshly. Guilt is born out of grief and I can’t see a single reason why guilt should be so prominently placed in the life of a griever. Holding on to guilt has served me no purpose as I crawl, march, or sprint through the process.

I’ve made grief my pet project — and I see and have a lot of guilt since my son died. But I am healing in great leaps and bounds, in between days when melancholy falls on me like a shroud. If the truth be told, losing a child has both leveled me and strengthened me. I will always miss my son, and as any grieving parent would say, Not a moment goes by when my child is not on my mind.

I shouldn’t have to qualify or apologize for my ability to move forward — forward to— not away from. I know I sometimes find myself feeling guilt for having the survivalist’s compulsion to move on. Emotionally I chant mea culpa very well — a consequence of the lifetime of guilt I inculcated from the teachings of two prominent sources in my life.

Holding on to guilt and shame is a consequence of our need to judge one another, either for religious reasons, or for survival purposes as we navigate our complex social world on our way to a rich and meaningful life.

Guilt is temporary and illusory. For example, are we really the only ones who have done thus and such? Are we really the worst people who ever lived? These are doubtful propositions, yet we beat ourselves up quite often for all we couldn’t do or shouldn’t have done, all of the things we should or should not have said, but – we ran out of time.

Perhaps guilt is our common denominator, that one thing in which we are equal (unless one is a sociopath). We are our worst critics is a cliché because it happens so often it is now a normal expectation in American consciousness, followed closely by guilt.

Once I planted a sunflower when I was a little girl. I placed it in the shade underneath my bedroom window, so I could watch it grow; sadly, it didn’t survive my gardening prowess. My father told me some plants need to be in full sun for them to grow. I planted my next sunflower in the sun where it and several successive generations thrived. I beamed with pride.

Guilt prevents the sun from awakening our full potential. Grief hurts, no doubt, but I think we hold on to guilt sometimes because letting go of it completely breaks the chain connecting us to our loved one. Letting go of guilt, to me, has meant what it means every September 11th, I should “never forget,” as if not ruminating somehow erases your memory of your loved one. It doesn’t.

Guilt deters rather than promotes healing. Kubler-Ross’ model of the 5 Stages of Grief (b), has been our model for how to navigate grief. Originally, Kubler-Ross’ model didn’t impress upon us the hope that we could release guilt and begin healing our hearts and minds. She led us to acceptance, but no steps for what happens next.This model is one of the longest-standing theories we have on grief navigation. We have decades of new data to add to the scientific literature.

Guilt makes us not like ourselves; it distorts reality. Guilt keeps our self-images poor and anemic. There is nothing we could have done to save our loved one. There is nothing we can do now that they are gone. Each one of us gives our relationships the best that we have, and sometimes a chapter closes — and we are free to write the next one. I don’t mean to trivialize our greatest losses, but guilt serves no purpose in renewal.

Humanity is capable of amazing things, art, love, scientific discoveries, but we still haven’t found a way to stop our self-destruction, or let go of emotions that only cripple us as we come face-to-face with the greatest decision of our lives: to fully live, however briefly, or to die, even as we live.

Don’t think I’ve got guilt licked. I don’t. I have to remind myself of this every day when I feel the need to self-destruct and flagellate my soul. Letting go of guilt is a process. I wish I could have saved my son, but I couldn’t. My faith tradition compels me to believe he is alive in a heaven beyond my comprehension, and because I believe this, I can face the rest of my life, in peace.

Everyone keeps telling me love never dies, and guilt has no place in love. We make mistakes and sometimes we are remorseful, but guilt destroys people, and it certainly won’t bring us to wholeness. I encourage you to find a group, a therapist, an activity that feeds your soul, and pour your passion into rebuilding yourself. Start by clearing away the broken bricks that have crushed your self-image for too long, maybe even chiefly among them: guilt.

Honoring our love for someone we’ve lost should bring smiles, sometimes mixed with tears; it should solder the slivers of our hearts together again. Honoring our loved one means we make a pact with our logical selves to gradually let go of the guilt that inhibits our growth. I am healing from the loss of my son. As I build a healthy relationship with my memories of him, I mentally let go of all the sadness and hurt for as long as I can manage that merciful balance.

And when I hold guilt against my chest like a security blanket, I must instead force acceptance of my process and encourage myself toward perfect clarity to see my brokenness, to be my own good Samaritan, to tend to my wounds and to heal myself.

(a) Kubler-Ross, 5 Stages of Grief

By Sherrie Cassel

The past month was a difficult one. No reason, other than the fact that I lost the most significant person in my life: my son and only child. Three and one-half years have passed, and, holistically, I am doing well, which is to say, the visceral breakdowns are fewer and farther between. When I feel an overwhelm coming on, I choose to be alone, and allow the tears to fall as they are intended to do.

Tears help clear out debris; they promote growth, spiritual and physical.

Spring has arrived and everything is in full bloom. My roses are abundant and beautiful and aromatic. I have finished the coursework for my B.S. in psychology, and I am making plans for my next academic journey. Yes, I am moving on. I didn’t think I ever could and I thought I never should. Missing my son and not letting go was how I thought grief was supposed to be navigated. Hold tight to the memories. Hold tight to his Spirit. Hold tight so the world knows you are in grief, just as assuredly as if you were wearing a shroud.

I think about perpetual grief, the kind of grief that buries you alive. I don’t want to live in such a way that bodily functions and basic hygiene are all that’s left of me. Early in my grief process, I wept and wailed and slept and couldn’t eat, and then I developed terrible insomnia, and those sleepless nights were spent trying to not ruminate on the worst day of my life.

You, no doubt, understand, those of you who grieve in the present tense.

I have said the sentence more than enough times, “I loved my son more than life itself.” “He was….” beautiful, generous, forgiving, loving, ad infinitum. I shudder when I come face to face with his physical absence. “I loved?” “He was…?” No, death did not take my love away; it did not suddenly and eternally quash all of the lovely things about him.

Saying, “I love him” — does not mean denial. Saying “I love him” — denotes the infinitude of parenthood. My faith tradition, compels me to believe he is alive in a place of complete and utter bliss. I sleep better now. I hope.

Hope was gone the minute my son became so ill there was no reason to hold on any longer. Hope was gone when I became so angry with the God of my understanding, I could not conceive of forever; it was an impossibility. Hope was gone when my son took his last breath. But hope, like leafless and lifeless winter trees, springs buds.

When I speak about my son, I speak in the present perfect tense, the present tense extending into the future. Sometimes people look at me strangely when I say, “Rikki is amazing!”, “Rikki is beautiful!”, “Rikki is alive in a heaven I cannot fathom.” They look a little less confused when I say, “I love my son”, not I lovED him, because I love him even in his absence, even though I can’t see him or touch him or laugh with him or talk endlessly with him.

I talk to him still. He can’t hear me, of course. In heaven, I believe, there is no sadness, no pretension, no anger, and no sickness. I know that if he saw me on some of the days when my eyelids are heavy and my make-up is smeared across my face, he would be sad, and he suffered enough sadness while he was here; there is nothing more that I want for my son than to have absolute peace and joy — even if I cannot be with him — just yet. He is whole now, and that’s all I ever want for him — wholeness, peace, and joy.

The rest of my life is mine to choose its trajectory. I want to live in the present, and I want to muster all the courage I can to live in between the past and the present tenses.

Grief can consume me if I allow it to, or it can guide me to an earth-shaking transformation. I choose the latter and daily work at releasing the former. After you lose someone you love mightily, life becomes starkly short, too short to choose to stay in sadness longer than is absolutely necessary.

Today I am wearing yellow, and — I love my son.

By Sherrie Ann Cassel

After some time, when someone you love dies, you find that you’re able to function, sometimes even optimally. You get out of bed, and are rarin’ to go. You have the energy to go for a walk, go to the gym, be around people, and move forward. Of course, the pain never leaves you, not even for a moment. It’s always just one heartbeat away.

Those “terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day[s]”, however, do still rear their ugly heads, and a really beautiful day when you are smiling and moving forward can quickly turn into a tear-fest and even what is referred to as “grief paralysis.”

Have you ever had a day when even getting out of bed was nearly impossible? I have had plenty in the three years my son has been gone. The first year after he died I cried every day for a solid year…and then some days, I was just numb. I was like the Walking Dead, zombied out. I had a distant look in my eyes. I had what the mental health professionals call a “flat affect” — expressionless, basically, just “not there.”

I don’t think “numbness” means, necessarily that you don’t feel anything; I think it’s how we handle the pain when it becomes overwhelming; we shut down and bury the pain deep inside of us so that it becomes a sting rather than a decimation of our Souls.

I was a lump last Monday. I wailed all day. I didn’t leave the house. I couldn’t concentrate on tasks that absolutely needed to be done. I wanted so desperately to talk to my son, to say I love you to him and have him say it back to me. Sometimes unreality seems so much better than actual reality. Yeah, sometimes it does.

When my head finally reaches my heart to remind me Rikki is not going to “come forth”, that there is definitively no chance of that happening, I feel my heart crack open just a little more.

I’d like to think that underneath the slivers is a brand new heart. one that can move the mountain of grief I carry. Maybe there is, and maybe each sliver needs to be peeled back to expose that new heart. The Judeo-Christian Bible has this to say about such an experience, and I’m certain there are other Sacred Texts that make a similar claim:

²⁶ A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. (Ezekiel 36:26 NRSV)

I believe that the God of my Understanding (the GOMU) — will guide me to my part of the work that needs to be done to cauterize the slivers, and smooth the fissures, so that my heart is one with the Divine.

I will have very bad days from time to time, and it’s my responsibility to uncurl myself from the fetal position and stand up so I can heal in the Presence of the God of my Understanding. Surrendering to emotional pain is not a fulfilling life.

You may have other words for the Divine. I call Him God, and God is Love and God wants to turn “my mourning into dancing”, and I want that too. I know it’s fine to weep and to wail when we are in abject pain when we lose someone to death, and there will be days we can scarcely participate in life; I know. I had such a day last Monday. But I know those days are meant to be temporary and that I have to cry out to my God and to my friends and family for support.

Sometimes it’s difficult to reach out to others. I learned to cry alone because of my family of origin. We were tough as nails. We were no sissies. We were children of a Marine — and my father said, “Marines don’t cry; they soldier on.”

Soldiering on doesn’t mean no fear, no sadness, no tears; it means we put one foot in front of the other on those days when it’s difficult to keep it together — and we move forward, sometimes one inch at a time.

My faith tradition may not work for everyone. You may have something that works perfectly for you, and it is my prayer that we each find something that strengthens us, that helps us look upward to the heavens where our loved ones are. I don’t know what your beliefs are…and to me, it doesn’t matter. We each find our way eventually.

I remember the night my Rikki died, I was standing outside the hospital catching my breath in the cold January air, and my sister-in-law came out and asked me, “What do you need us to do?” I said, “I don’t know. I’ve never lost a son before.”

We’re right on point when we say we weren’t aware how much of our lives since our children’s deaths grief would take up, and that there is no end-point. We will grieve until our own last breath. I have always been a nauseating optimist. I always look for the silver lining, the diamond in the rough, the hope “after the storm”. I’m still an optimist, but far more realistic now. My son’s death took my head out of the clouds and planted me firmly in reality. People are born and people die. Death is the most painful part of being human, IMO.

My professor emailed me the other day and said, “Losing a child is the worst kind of pain ever.” I don’t know why he said it. But he’s right. I have more good days than bad, but it’s not because I’m stronger than anyone else, or more highly evolved (please), or even delusional. I have good days because I force myself to live right here, right in the present moment. I have no other moment I can live in. It’s cliched, but the adage is true, “We’re not promised a tomorrow; we have only today.”

Isn’t that the truth?

I ache pretty much every day. I miss my son. I get a catch in my throat from time to time during the day. Every single thing reminds me of Rikki, and everything reminds me he’s not here anymore. I force myself to get up, do the hair, the makeup, go out, and face the day.

I think the one thing I fear most is when someone asks me if I have any children. My eyes used to fill up with tears as I said, “My only child died two years ago?” I don’t get the same intensity that I used to, you know the kind when you’re doubled over in pain, crying ‘til your face is puffy, and your nose is red, and you can hardly breathe from the energy it took to cry that hard?

Those kinds of cries are fewer and farther between the moments of living a full life. Sometimes I flounder and fall back into the grief and it’s like the night he died all over again. I have to fight to not let those memories of the most horrible day of my life consume me.

I was a single mother – it was just Rikki and me for 32 years … even though we were both married and on our own. We were very, very close, and my worst fear, and I did have it, because I had never loved anyone so much, was that my son would die. I had a horrible dream one time and woke up just choking from sobbing. Rikki ran in the bedroom and hugged me and said, “Mom, it’s okay; it was just a dream.”

I wish it had been just a dream, but it wasn’t.

Grief is like a nail in the heart, a Tyson punch in the gut, a blow to the brain, and a crushing of the Soul. I don’t know any other way to put it. There are only metaphors to express grief…metaphors and tears and fetal positions and darkened rooms, and withdrawal from those who love us and want the best for us.

Trust me, I engage in all those coping mechanisms.

Time is a blessing and a curse. Time takes me further from the day of my Rikki’s passing, and farther away from the last time we laughed together, and it sends the memories hurtling toward a piecemeal remembrance. I can see my son’s face. I can hear his laugh. But even the scent from his clothes I held on to is fading with time. I’m so blessed I have so many of the things that were important to him, pictures, videos, phone messages, text messages, and pictures he painted, even some he painted when he was in rehab. Those things are all I have left of my son. My grandson,Louie, my precious son’s son, is certainly a piece of my son, but he’s not my son, and I have to let him be his own little man. He is as unique as a snowflake, just as we all are, just as my Rikki was.

There will never be another Rikki. He was here. He blessed my life. He made me worry. He showed me what love is. He loved me fiercely. He was his own man…tortured and beautiful. I still feel all the emotions that I did the night I lost him, but I can breathe through them now. Sometimes I make this sound when the pain comes like a knife in my stomach. I even hold my stomach and stop whatever I’m doing for just a moment, until I can breathe again.

I know you all know what I mean. You may use different metaphors and express your supreme grief in other ways. Some people paint beautiful pictures. Some use their grief to help others. Some people crochet and give scarves and beanies to the homeless. Some feed the poor, etc. I write in between the tears and the death pangs – every bit as real as the birth pangs I had with the one person who was closest to me.

How do we do it? How do we get up and put one foot in front of the other, go to work, conduct a marriage/relationship, and for the love of God, how do we smile and play again? All extremely difficult tasks to accomplish in grief. Right? But somehow, we are making it, one tiny or one giant step at a time depending on where you are in your process.

I remember when Rikki died, I was buying books about heroin and alcohol deaths, wanting to be with his friends, buying cremation jewelry like I had money to burn, and other things that took me away from my life, the one I have had to learn to live — without Rikki. My psychiatrist told me that she wanted me to stay with the living. I was wounded when she said that. I wanted to be close to Rikki, even if it meant reliving the day he died, and replaying it over and over again in my head. I didn’t understand that I could still express my love for him even after he died, through play and through moving on with my life.

We are not the same people we were prior to the day our child died. We have changed. We will never be the people we were. We now have an incredible opportunity to rebuild ourselves. That idea means something different to different people. How do we do that? How do we rebuild ourselves? We do it as we are able. Some days we champion for ourselves – in small or giant victories. Some days, and I think this is the greatest victory, for me, we champion for others and reach out a loving hand to help someone. We sit in grief with someone else.

Maybe I couldn’t do that before my Rikki died. I was all about me and all about him. I was focused on that academic carrot and striving for upward mobility, but in the final analysis, in my 56 years, my perspective on life has changed. I know what’s important and what I can live without now.

Time didn’t heal any wound that I’ve had, but it does put some distance in between the awful day my son died, and where I am now.

And now is where I need to be.

Time really doesn’t heal all wounds. Wounds heal in fits and starts and sometimes the nerve endings spark in a painful fusion — and sometimes those wounds split wide open — again, dependent upon where we are on our grief journey.

Disuse of a body part causes it to atrophy; it causes the part to weaken. In my utter grief I have not forced myself to return to the gym with the same gusto as I have in the past. There are muscles I haven’t used in the three years I’ve been grieving the loss of my son. Certainly, there are consequences for being sedentary, for sitting around weeping and wailing, and for allowing myself to get lost in my heartache.

Have you been there? Are you there now? I designed a Facebook page eight months after my son died in 2016. Along with over 300 members, we are healing from our losses. Designing the page and being a part of this camaraderie of these amazing parents has fueled a passion in my heart to work harder toward healing so I can help others toward their own.

Passion – it is one of the most valuable gifts we have as human beings.  What fuels your Soul toward elation, even in the face of supreme grief? We must find something that temporarily takes us away from our mourning, so we can move forward. Perhaps we lost a child who was our entire world, for whom do we live now?

I’ve tried to justify my willful immobility with excuses about my pain being too overwhelming to move forward. Those of us who have been grieving for some time now know moving forward does not mean moving away from our loved one. There will always be times of grief as we live our lives without our cherished loved one.

However, if we want to heal, and I believe most people do want to heal, we will search out those things that light fires in us, e.g. pouring ourselves into the arts or helping others who share grief for the same reasons we do, e.g. having lost someone from a terminal disease, an accident, suicide or addiction. The best type of support is peer support, in my opinion. Followers know I lost my precious son to the disease of addiction. My greatest support has been from other parents who have had similar experiences.

Others who share in your specific grief can steer you in the direction of what can prove to be the most healing for you. For example, I write to heal. I purge my heart and doing so, I’m told, helps others whose medium may not be language. Some create works of art that stem from their pain, but that reveals their courage to soldier on, reveals their inner-strength and their hope in ways that no spoken or written language can.

Some people I know have poured their time into reaching out to others who share in the same type of grief as they have. I truly believe helping others is the fast-track to healing ourselves.

I believe we can wither away and die while we live — in our grief. I also believe we can soar from the initial destruction of our loss and rebuild our lives. I have a meditation CD for people who are challenged with PTSD. One of the meditations takes the listener to a place that has been utterly destroyed, like a bomb had decimated it. Belleruth Naparsteck asks the listener to take a visual survey of the destruction, and then she has her pick out things from the rubble that she wishes to keep. Everything has the potential to be purposeful.

What can we do with our rubble? Can it be a building block for a richer life, for our new self, the one who has risen above the pain? Can we polish a piece that has been neglected to an exquisite glimmer, one we can share with the world? I know we can.

An acquaintance I went to school with died last weekend. I suspect it was from a broken heart. She never recovered from the loss of someone she loved with all her heart. She didn’t find the one thing that she loved so much it could have healed her heart, fueled her Soul – and catapulted her healing process.

Passion – where does yours come from? Can you channel it into something meaningful and purposeful? Can you use it to help others, to make the world a better place, to heal yourself? I urge you to pour yourself into something that feeds your essence and helps you to heal. Find that gem among the destruction and polish it proudly and share it with others who are not as far along in their grief as you are.

Vincent Van Gogh suggests that in pouring himself into his art, he lost his mind, and by all accounts, we know he did. I’m not willing to go so far as to lose my mind, but I am willing to redirect my pain toward something beautiful, something I can use to help others heal. I can take my passion and use it for good, and hence, lessen the intensity of my pain, long enough to lose myself in love and concern for my fellow sojourners.

I’m talking a big story, right? What am I doing to assuage my grief? I’m immersing myself in research about grief, about faith traditions, and about how people heal from tremendous losses in their lives. I find the work to be meaningful; it’s also work I can share with others who may be struggling and unable to move forward because of their broken hearts. The research also helps me to heal.

We have the power to heal ourselves. We do. We have the insight – it’s there, in the rubble.

Peace.

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