Lazarus and Reality

By Sherrie Cassel

I’m in MX for a week and some change visiting my younger brother and his senior dog. He won’t let me lift a finger, so it truly is a vacation of being pampered. It’s nice. I don’t interview for the doctoral program until next month, so I’m reading everything I can get my hands on about grief, religious trauma, and depth psychology; they matter. The book, Stories from the Edge: A Theology of Grief, is among the best books I’ve read on dying, suffering, and death and how all of them can lead to a wholly present life that, unto our very end, holds so much beauty. If we’re very fortunate (blessed) we have had a supportive network of loved ones who have traveled as closely as they could our grief march. I’ve been alone a lot on this vacation. My brother works seven days a week, and I’m here on my own, to read, to write, to pray in the way I do, to meditate, to think about my son. My brother, my son’s uncle loved me through my loss, also his as best he could. – I don’t see family a lot, mostly because of the toxicity and the brokenness that has become a choice for some of my family members. I choose Life. There were times I seriously didn’t think I was going to make it after Rikki died. There were days I didn’t want to make it.

Garrett was a chaplain in many hospitals where he dealt with the dying, the desperate, and those who were grappling with impending loss. I think he may know some shit about what we navigate every single day since the loss of our loved one; it helps to have experts who work with grievers every day and night – into those dark nights of the Soul. Being a chaplain, whether a theist or a non-theist can be a heart wrenching calling. I believe healing is a calling, and Garrett – along with all his own shit, extends grace, mercy, compassion, and love to those who are transitioning, and to those who love them.

I’m American by birth, and I know only my American culture’s grief rituals – ferociously linear and unsatisfying. You start from the pit of grief – and you ascend to wholeness – without interruption. Right. Garrett discussed how Americans, especially American Christians denounce suffering as a lack of faith; it’s not. Each of us will grieve loss after loss – no one escapes heartache. But broken hearts are not the end of the story. We talk about the circle of life, or revolutions that circle back time and time again, or round and round in the circle game (Joni Mitchell)…sometimes old wives’ tales comfort us because they’ve been through generational interpretations depending on the era.

“Into each life a little rain must fall…” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

And in the words of the brilliant and beautiful Michael Stipe, “Everybody hurts sometime.”

Why do we think we should never suffer in my religion of origin (now defunct)? In the words of the great Lynn Anderson, “I beg your pardon; I never promised you a rose garden.” And the hits just keep on coming. Damn it! We are not, not one of us, exempt from tragedy or suffering. I lost my son. I can’t imagine a pain greater, and others suffer great losses too. How do we manage after a catastrophic loss? How do we move forward – out of the pain – and into purposeful living? How do  we answer the always beckoning call to live in the Present Moment – despite our grief – for those who are living in healthy bodies, to those whose bodies are breaking down, all the way to communal grief.

I had a lot of help along the way toward wholeness and healing. I prayed for healing for my son. I begged the God of my very limited understanding to heal my son, and then I asked God to raise my son from the dead. I had a rough childhood, an understatement, for sure, but since I did I thought I had done all the suffering that would be required of me in this lifetime. Boy, was I wrong. You see, we have no control over death; when it hits it hits. If we’re very fortunate, we’ve been given the emotional resources to love others well, and if that is true, death, while still grievous, will carry with it few if any regrets. If we don’t have the emotional resources to love well – grief, IMO, is much more of a steep climb up that mountain of shit we are left to sort through after the death of our loved one.

I guess my son’s death has taught me, among the millions of things it has, that life is not going to wait for me to “get over” the loss of my son. I never will. I have been able to listen for the call to be an interfaith pastoral care counselor, a spiritual healer, if you will. Whether by grace or by accident, my life has changed to one of service to those who are hurting, those who know they’re hurting, and those who know only they are unhappy. Did I lose my son despite the fact that in my desperation I lay prostrate on the floor begging the God of my limited understanding at the time to heal my son completely, to bring him back to me whole and well? No. Prayer is not passive; it requires our participation whether we find God through hugging a tree or holding space for someone else who is hurting.

The healing force we find for ourselves does not have to be in the shape of a deity; in fact, in Marya Hornbacher’s book A Non-Believer’s Higher Power, she shares her own non-theistic journey through her healing path from addiction. She wrote so beautifully about a time on the shore of the beach when she was just sort of gazing at it’s beauty, and she had what used to be called a religious experience. We now refer to them as extraordinary experiences – and we can each have them whenever we can rev them up for ourselves.

I thought my life had ended when Rikki died, and again, there were so many days in the early part of my grief march when I wanted my life to end; the emotional pain and profound grief I felt was sometimes more than I could handle. Did I reach out for God after my son died? No, I did not. I was angry. I was bereft. I felt abandoned by the god of my youth. Thinking back to that anchorless woman who was wandering around with blind rage at G_d – I wish I’d had been able to just sit and heal – instead of being so wounded I couldn’t even rev up joy for all the gifts I’ve been given.

I didn’t lose my son because I sinned, or because I didn’t believe, or pray hard enough; I lost my son because we all die, and there is never a good time for it, even when we know it’s coming. I encourage you to listen to the wind and see what it brings you – perhaps a calling to turn your pain into purpose, to help those who are anchorless. Be God’s hands and feet with your wisdom born of pain. I’m not sure where Americans get the ideas about quick, but ultimately unsatisfactory answers as a successful grief journey, but I find it to be hurtful and not conducive to genuine healing.

Garrett gave me a different perspective about a famous story of suffering in the Christian New Testament when he shares about Mary, Martha, Lazarus, and the teacher Jesus’ reaction to this tragedy of the loss of his friend, and Mary and Martha’s supreme grief, and even some anger toward their messiah because he didn’t get there in time, and Jesus wept. Whether Jesus is a teacher you can learn from, or you prefer Buddha or Allah, ad infinitum, the parable is a good one as we contemplate the grief we each must endure as people we love die before us; it just hurts; it just fucking does.

Garrett said that Lazarus’ death, and the condition of his body, were a foreshadowing of his own death by the cruel method of execution at the time. “Because I could not stop for Death; he kindly stopped for me. The carriage held but just ourselves, and immortality.” (Emily Dickinson) Whether we believe there is a place beyond this one, a place with no suffering and constant joy, or we believe this is all we get, suffering is part of grief – it is part of the process.

I’m a firm believer in, “Physician, heal thyself.” My beliefs are not important here, my religion/faith are not important to this discussion, and I incorporate Garrett’s very expansive theology into this post because it so spoke to me; it doesn’t have to speak to you. In fact, you may have something that works for you so well, you’ve been able to launch into your life of service to those who need the wisdom only you can share with them because of your grief experience. I hope so. The world needs more healers, and fewer “mean” people. When my son died, I was out in Joshua Tree National Park near where we live, and I was watching the hawks gliding on the wind. There was no sound. There were no people except my husband and me. The sun was kind that day out in the desert, and I was trying to take a picture of the ancient boulders out there. There was a giant ring around the sun that was blinding me from the direction I was trying to take the picture. The kind and blinding son, the hawks playing on the wind, my husband off on his own so I could have that moment, that extraordinary moment when life presented itself to me again, but different that time. I’d had three and a half years to march to the dirge for my son. I woke up in that moment – because it was here and because it was now. I hadn’t been there for three and a half years.

I’ve spent the last ten years healing and helping. I have a mission in life. I didn’t ask for it. I’d give it all back if the Jesus of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus would raise my son up from the dead, but I didn’t spend four years in seminary studying theology to fall prey to fairy tales. The people I’ve been so fortunate to work with have inspired me to keep marching – even when the terrain is muddy, rocky, torturous.

I wish I could tell you that it’s true, if we pray hard enough and have enough faith, all will be well. Well, my son died despite all my begging, pleading, weeping and wailing I did before the god of my limited understanding at the time. I no longer barter with the God of my understanding. My relationship with a theos is very broad; it incorporates the world now.

It incorporates you.

Whatever Gets You through the Night

By Sherrie Cassel

Joshua Tree, California

I’m making corrections for the revision of my book. It’s a mess, reflective of where my head and heart were at the first writing – lots of typos, blank pages, alignment issues, over-exposure. I just wanted it out there in the world. Initially and in retrospect, I needed to purge my pain publicly. I wanted the whole world to know how much pain I was in. I was compelled to write my grief as I sorted through the rubble in my world after Rikki died.

As I read through some of the earliest entries, I wept for the woman who was aching and healing at the same time. Do I still ache? Yeah, from time to time I still ache. There’s a hollowness that I used to think was a perpetual ache, but as I continue on the road to wholeness, I accept that it’s the void from the physical absence of my son. Does that make sense? He was a part of my life every single day for thirty-two years; that’s a long time to love someone, to see someone, to hear someone’s voice, laugh, to hug someone. You know what I mean?

The rest of my life I’ll constantly be adjusting and shifting, and maybe, even relinquishing the deep pain that comes from significant losses. After nine years, nearly ten, the guttural wails and convulsive sobs no longer happen. There will be an ache for which there can be no comfort from anything external. I don’t want to be like King Nebuchadnezzar and shout from the rooftops, “Look at all I’ve done, single-handedly,” never mind the slaves who built the damn temple. I had help along the way. I have friends, family of choice, my grief brothers and sisters, and I had professionals who worked with me as I navigated the early years of grief.

I’m fortunate to have a health plan that pays for behavioral healthcare, and I am not the slightest bit embarrassed to admit I use it. Can you imagine how people might operate more prosocially if they knew why they and those who may have hurt them behave the way they do. Every single thing in our individual universe shapes our personalities. In an undergraduate psych class I took, our professor said by the time we are seven years old our personalities are pretty much embedded in our psyches. I’m not sure if I agree with that supposition completely, and maybe it’s even been proven, but I do agree that there are parts of our brain which continue transforming to greater emotional, physical, and spiritual maturity the more self-aware we become. But I also believe with all my heart and head, and based on the current literature, that we’re learning so much more about nature than we knew back when I was an undergraduate, only a handful of years ago. The consensus opinion used to be that once our brain cells are gone, they’re gone, and we don’t produce new ones. Well, now we know that’s not true; synapses can be formed throughout our lives. Keep busy. Keep your mind challenged. Dance or do some other form of exercise and have people in your life with whom you may have riveting conversations.

As I’ve navigated my own rocky and mountainous grief terrain, I’ve learned a few things along the way, many which I’ve shared here. I want to share what has worked for me, what has occurred in my emotional landscape, about the personal development, transformation, and transcendence I’ve found along the way. I’m in a terrific space today. My husband is blasting Fats Domino at the volume of a metal head when the folks are gone. I’ve reached some milestones. I’ve watched many of my parents at my grief sites blossom through the most devastating loss of their lives. We support each other and as new parents and grandparents come in, those who have been grieving for some time give sage advice to them. See, you must find a single thread that keeps you attached to the living, one that keeps you grounded in this world and all of its present moments. Ten years later I can say I’ve achieved that, or rather, I can achieve it, in fits and starts. One can’t be high on life 24/7 – jubilation is tremendous, because it is not common in our workaday lives, but we still have to function in the world that plays it straight and helps the world run, like ants in a structured maze: birth, development, launching, learning, building one’s worldview, career, family, and death. Our tunnels are our cultures, I believe, and as cultural diversity goes, my mourning rituals are an amalgamation of many.

My dear friend and I are going to share a ritual at the beach in the very near future. I know I’ve mentioned it here. I didn’t attend my mother’s funeral because I’m unwilling to support the family mythology and participate in its toxicity, so I’d like to remember my mother in my ritual. I’d also like to publicly apologize to my son – on the beach … on the part of the beach where we spent a lot of time. I was fortunate to make amends to my son before he died, and he loved me all the way to mutual understanding. He apologized to me for causing my hands to shake. I strongly encourage those of you who may not have had the opportunity to say everything that needed to be said, you still can. Rituals don’t have to be religious rituals.

I have a beautiful friend who prays to the God of her understanding beautifully. She opens her prayer addressing this God with, “Oh God of many names”. I was extraordinarily moved the first time I heard her pray. You see, when someone you love dies, so too does a part of you. I’m not a holy roller, but I so love the metaphors in the Hebrew and Christian Bibles, and I believe the stories are useful as cautionary and inspirational tales, so, with all that defense for my love of a Christian relic, I call on an Ascended Master, the Seat of my Soul, my Consciousness and the God within me, “Lazarus (you who have been dead for three days, all the way to decomposition – while those who love you weep and wail), come forth” (resurrected and whole – having grown in your own compost).

I always ask what has helped someone get through the early days, months, years of grief, and some say, “God” (of many names); some went all the way to India and found healing unto transcendence and are now sharing their spiritual awakening with others. I strongly encourage you to hit up your local public library and read every single thing you can get your hands on about your specific loss, i.e., mine would be information about addiction and attachment issues. The specifics of your loss may have been caused by SIDS, overdose, disease (including addiction and other mental disorders), or accidental. Finding peers who understand your loss is vital to our healing.

Compassionate Friends has many types of grief groups, including those whose members incurred the loss of their loved one to overdose/addiction, and groups for grief at large. Facebook is an incredible resource to track down a plethora of grief sites – for every type of loss. I know many of us lost absolute control over our ability to keep our shit together immediately after our loved one died. I’m not overly emotional in person, which is to say, I don’t weep in front of others; there are many reasons for this, but to discuss them will not be beneficial to this discussion.

I admit, I was initially disappointed so many of the people with whom I was closest had no comforting words; hugs were an annoyance. I refused to break in front of anyone. I finally did though – with my husband, the most loving and safest person I know. He held me while I wept inconsolably. My younger brother held me the night my son died, and I had never cried so hard in my life. I needed to be with someone who also loved Rikki, just as you will need people who share in your loss – family, friends, strangers at meetings, the God of your understanding, the texts that bring you peace and comfort, and whatever soothes your soul and calms your heart so you can function during the day, optimally. That’s the goal – after the deluge has decreased to a light mist in the air, present and peaceful. I picture my favorite flower, the California poppy, bright hues of orange that border our ugly freeways, but I picture the poppies through the mist, with dewdrops, in holy silence. Beautiful. Extraordinary.

I lost my “faith” after my son died. The tenuous grasp I had on my always wavering faith was severed. Some people are fortunate to have a faith tradition that has helped them through the roughest period of grief. Some people garden. Some people talk to the Gods of their understanding. And there are just so many ways to help yourself to heal, and I maintain that it is we who have the words that will heal us – perhaps inspired by a text you consider to be holy, a piece of art you find beautiful, or a song that resonates with you.

I read the parables from other faith traditions too. I’m trying to become more familiar with my own subculture as a Latina-American, about our struggles and our victories, about our legends and mythologies. I’ve always been driven to learn. I’ve been in school all my adult life, and a latent benefit of being told you’re stupid your entire childhood, is that you work hard to either prove people right or to prove them wrong. I chose the former for decades; I don’t anymore. I’ve been driven since I first learned to read. After my son died, it was largely academic knowledge that I found to be most healing, academic knowledge and the stories of others who had been on their grief trajectory longer than five minutes ago, which is what it felt like every time I thought about my son, which was chronically.

I seriously thought early in my process there would never be a time when I would stop aching unto emotional and social paralyses. And I actively mourned for three and a half years. During those years, I read everything I could about grief. I’d read a book, wail, and then read another one, and I did this for those three and a half years. Once I began to understand the psychodynamics of grief, I still felt rudderless. I had no anchor. I didn’t lose it because I don’t believe I ever had one. I do have a “God”-shaped space in my consciousness and I desperately needed something that would be representative of love, safety, compassion, mercy, and grace – and so, I went to seminary, a four-year program of intense deconstruction of my faith of origin – and building my own theology and forming a relationship with the God I need. I’ve had to dig deep to figure out what I needed for healing after my son died. I needed camaraderie. I needed understanding. I needed the advice of others. I needed to be able to share my story, first, the story of the parent who lost her only child, second, of the parent who struggled to not lose her mind to grief, and last, the heroine emerges transcendent in resplendent beauty – whole.

Deep grief, loud guttural wails, and mea culpas will happen at some point in our lives, either through a finalized divorce or permanent breakup, or you lose someone because he/she died. Tragedy is in the eye in the beholder, and tragedies happen every day, sometimes, like many, like Job, a whole string of bad luck in one fell swoop. In 2016, I lost my son, and then we lost four more family members within months of one another. Ten years later, I’m grateful to have made it through those losses. I take what I’ve learned, and I want to share it with my readers, and people who find this page by accident.

Again, I’m in a very good space, and yes, it took me nearly a decade to get to this place. I’m grateful for my life, and I wouldn’t have been able to say that ten years ago. We grow through our grief. I’ve become far more compassionate in the past ten years. I’ve always been introspective (to a fault), but now I don’t just internalize my introspection; I bring it out to play, to invent, and to help others. I’m extraordinarily well-read about grief, healing, and I’ve read many victory stories by people who went through incredible transformations after losing the loves of their lives.

My son was mine. I can’t share this sunset with my son, except symbolically. I’ll bring a memory of his face to my awareness, and I’ll hold that memory like I used to hold his hand, only … I can’t walk him home yet, because my home is here. I read in a book by Carl Sagan, the first of his books I read, called Dragons of Eden (1977) in which he suggests finding an author who resonates with you and then read every single thing that author ever wrote. Now, of course in our busy lives who has time, right? Well, just read until your thoughts start to congregate into coherent solutions to behavior that is maladaptive, i.e., behavior that hurts us and that hurts others. If we’re not aware of what is happening inside of us biopsychosocially and spiritually (whatever that means to you), growth can still happen, but it takes longer to reach milestones, not THE milestone of healing, because my hope is that you and I will have many peaks among the inevitable valleys of despair and the times when we can achieve tranquility for however long it lasts.

I don’t know what drives you, but I hope something does. I’m driven academically and my drive is fueled by my childhood experiences, grief, and the love for my son who would be so proud of his mother’s accomplishments. Find something you can pour yourself into, something that puts you in the zone, and let it lift you out of your deep pain for longer and longer moments at a time. I’ve learned so much in ten years’ time. Would I give it all back to have my son back? Only in a fantasy and I live in the real world. At the end of the very long days, we carry our grief with us (24/7); it is we, finally, who must take responsibility for the intensity and duration of our grief. I allowed myself all the time I needed for meditating on feelings too deep for words.

I learned there’s no escaping grief in this life. Our grandson lost his father when he was only six years old, so even children must learn to cope through devastating losses. I don’t know what in the world made me so arrogant to think that horror would sidestep me after all the horror I experienced in my childhood home. Yep, the god of my limited understanding at the time, would spare me because that god had been absent for all of my life, and he owed me a life of perpetual joy and cotton candy clouds. Right.

My inner Lazarus has been resurrected through knowledge, nature, sacred texts, talking about my pain, and my Lazarus has come forth with a ferocity. I hope your Lazarus, Buddha, Shiva, Consciousness, all find new life through the toughest thing a person can experience: the permanent loss of a significant relationship.

Namastѐ

Druthers

By Sherrie Cassel

I hear it; it tinkles like ice

in your glass, like broken

glass. The sound of

shattering people is

the earworm that

makes me wish I were

deaf.

********

Ah, but then … who will

hold the sound of our

dissonant collaboration, and

for how long?

********

Some stories

don’t need to be told.

Some stories never need

to be told.

********

Would I take the shaking

hands, and the broken

soul only to hear the tinkling

again?

********

I watched you wither away

like a dried up leaf, increasing our

fire danger to high in our Santa Ana

winds.

********

I’m remembering one Thanksgiving.

Laughter serenaded our festivities.

There were other times it didn’t.

********

Sometimes, yeah, sometimes,

We skated together, gracefully,

and sometimes,

I drove you away.

********

Brain cells and booze,

and … now …

I’m lost without you, but no,

If you are at peace, then as much as

I miss you, I will rest in the knowledge

that you are no longer in pain.

********

Mommas and Poppas find peace

eventually. I have.

********

Whether you are or you are not.

If there is to be any closure,

if there can be…I will do my best to

stay at the party…even if you are not

here.

********

My very life blood.

My reason for living.

********

I will. I will hang in there, and as

the seasons change from the

sizzling heat of a summer in

the desert to the sweet chill of

winter, I will wish you were here.

********

I’ll wait for the spring, holding my

breath because another year will

have passed and soon, yes, very soon,

ten years will have passed. Ten.

********

You ached in your soul, and so,

ten years later, I’m starting to

understand why you wanted to

leave, why you needed to leave.

********

No! It should not have been you.

You are a prince, my Aztec and Native

Warrior.

********

I’m going to picture you on your best day

here, and be grateful that I can still remember

your face, your voice, your laughter,

and fuck the tinkling ice.

You were so much more than that.

Song Choice

By Sherrie Cassel

There is a bird, brightly colored; it always has a lilt in her chirp, which I interpret from my hedonistic brain as a sense of joy. The lacrimose mountain tanager’s name means sorrowful or tearful, despite her happy tune. The theory of how she got her name, it is suggested, may be because of the teardrop shaped yellow spot directly under her eyes. Regardless, I saw an analogy immediately and I wanted to ponder it with my fellow grievers.

I will carry grief with me until others hold space for me in their memories. I get that. I haven’t had a meltdown in a few years. I’ve had moments when my eyes have welled up, but for the most part, despite my sorrow about losing my son and with my face now forever stained by the deluge of tears, I cried for about four years of complicated grief. I know I was in complicated grief because I was watching others rebuild their lives, and I just sat around numbing myself with whatever did the trick; nothing did.

As we reach the next year, it will be here soon, my son will be gone ten years. I remember the day he died like it happened five minutes ago, and yet, if I stay in that space, I’ll stop experiencing all life has to offer me, surely, those things which are joyful, and sometimes, those things which bring a great deal of pain.

Among the exponential number of thoughts my spastic brain spits out is the desire to feel my best. So much like in Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, I guess we bloom where we are planted. Viktor Frankl in Man’s Search for Meaning, a holocaust survivor who contributed so much to the idea of post-traumatic growth who spoke of the joy that comes after mourning. How does one survive an experience that takes her down? Cancer? The death of a child? A breakup? Imprisonment?

There will be difficult times in our lives, but there will also be days when it is your favorite season, and joy is unavoidable – even in grief. I don’t know how long, or short one’s grief experience should last; I just know how long mine did and while it was and is essential to mourn our losses, prolonged and complicated grief can move into self-destructive behavior very quickly. I strongly encourage professional help – and, read everything you can about grief, about loss, about the specifics of your particular loss, i.e., for me, addiction and the loss of a child.

Art has the potential to heal us. The first time I heard Concerto for oboe, strings and continuo in D minor (mvt. II, Adagio –  Alessandro Marcelo), I was revving up for a night with Jimmy Buffet and fellow parrot heads. I remember it distinctly. I was lying on my bed gazing out my bedroom window on a patchy October afternoon. The clouds looked like giant popcorn, and I wept over the beauty of this magnificent piece.

After Rikki died, no place felt like home, not until we moved to the high desert where the geology is a staggering 1.7 billion years old. My tear stains become a little less visible, the more I process my pain. The ache in my heart remains, as a rest – and then – I sing, or I dance, or I write, and — I heal. My son’s death will never leave my brain, and certainly not the part of me that will always hold space for him, spiritual and intellectual space. My heart has been pieced together with the thread of every person, place, or thing, and each moment I’m alive, either singing or lamenting, is a gift my son and your loved one didn’t get to have.

I remember right after Rikki lost his life to addiction, I wished every day to not awaken so I could go to wherever he was, even though I’m less sure now if I believe in a mythological place where streets are paved in gold (a precious metal I have never liked), or a return to the Garden of Eden, or Aztlan, or self-actualization, or transcendence.  I just remember it hurt to breathe. I’ve traveled nine years with the monkey of grief on my back, and I alternate between dropping it and moving on, or continuing to move forward encumbered by grief that only keeps getting heavier with every single rumination of how things should have been, or through holding on to guilt or regret.

I didn’t die; I went to seminary.

There’s a song by Paul Simon, “Slip, Slidin’ Away,” that reminds me of our paradoxical lacrimose mountain tanager. Behind the ecclesiastical lyrics is a finger snapping tune. My husband and I speak about this song often. All of life is bittersweet; there’s no escape from tragedy happening in our lives at some point. Once I realized I was in self-destructive grief, I so desperately wanted to sing and to dance and to twirl in the moonlight under our desert sky. I had forgotten how to live beyond one strained breath at a time. I needed a jump start to feel alive again.

When I said my brain was hedonistic, I mean, not that I’m overzealous about pleasure, but I think we all want to feel our best on every level. I remember in a science class thirty years ago, I read about how living organisms return to homeostasis (balance) after a stress-producing event. I would put the death of a loved one in that category. It took me four years to return to homeostasis (Cannon) after my world was turned on its head when Rikki died.

In nearly ten years’ time the song, the one that accompanies my life can be heard again. I’ve had several months of being in a good space. The holidays will be upon us soon, and while I just love the holiday season, from Labor Day to New Year’s Eve, there is some sadness that keeps me grounded. I think I hold on to my grief out of respect for my son. I don’t, and of course I could not ever forget him. I wonder if he thinks I’ve forgotten him because I made the conscious choice to sing again. I wonder if he thinks. I wonder if he is.

My husband and I were in a life-altering car accident thirteen months ago, and my neck and back pain have not been the same. He fared worse. We are fortunate to be alive, and as near-death experiences go, I’ll take the lessons and keep moving forward with my life because I get to.

I used to laugh raucously with our grandson; he was the only one who could have me in stitches after his father died. I don’t laugh quite as long or as loudly as I used to. I tend to be calmer than I had ever been in my past. I love more fiercely. I’m able to hold space for someone who is sitting in the dark – because others held space for me when I was in my own dark night of the soul.

I think death is probably final. We live, love, lose, blow it and have victories. After Rikki died, I asked all the existential questions, but to be honest, I am no longer asking them. I know why my son died. I even know how. My question has always been, “Will I see him again?” Who knows, right? I envy those of you who were able to sing right away because you have conviction in an anchor; I didn’t.

My grief process has not been ideal, and I’ve fumbled and fallen flat on my face several times, but I keep going, learning, growing, singing, and grabbing all the joy I can in this one short, remarkable life.

The lacrimose mountain tanager sings with a sweet melody, and with visible tears tattooed upon her cheeks; so do I. I am not a Bible literalist, but I do so love the metaphors and the symbols, which have always infused my work. Saul of Tarsus, who later because Paul, a Jew among Jews, spoke of having a thorn in his side. I’m a freaking pin cushion! One of my thorns is the grief that is embedded in the skin of my soul. I carry that grief all the time. I dance with it. I laugh with it. I love with it; it is always present.

I got tired of feeling morose and dark all the time. I have always loved bright colors; orange is my favorite color. I have always loved spring and summer as my preferred seasons. September and October are amazing in the high desert. The sunrises and sunsets rise and set beautifully in our sky. I miss my son during those incredible natural phenomena, and so I bring him into each present moment. Nothing about my life is the same as it was before my son died, not even my favorite season. I think death shoots us out into the universe with the tools we were given, no map and expects us to find our way back to life through other solar systems until we’re back on solid ground. Death makes you crazy, and then it beckons you to heal.

I grew weary of my own teardrops. I grew weary of being sad all the time. I grew weary of hearing the kids playing tag underneath the streetlamps without me – and I grew weary of thinking my life had ended. Grief really does make perfect sense; it just hurts, and in my hedonistic country, it just lasts too damn long. Return to the positivity asap.  In retrospect, four years was too long. I cried with no singing in my heart. I heard Maria Callas sing The Magic Flute this morning. I’m not usually a fan of opera, but the sheer crystalline clarity of her voice made me want to weep because I got to hear it, and bittersweetly because I cannot share it with my son any longer.

Ah, but therein lies the rub; the truth is that just like Puff the Magic Dragon, if I sing really loudly and dance strenuously, maybe my son’s spirit will accompany me for a spell while I collect myself from a deluge. Who knows? Today is all I have, and so, like our lovely little bird here, I will continue to sing.

How do you mend a broken heart?

By Sherrie Cassel

Sometimes I make bonehead mistakes, not drastically bonehead (anymore, that is), but take for instance last night around 8:30 p.m. I pulled into Starbucks for a brown sugar, oat milk, shaken espresso. I actually knew I’d crash from the sugar then be up all night; it’s 4:30 a.m. I got up at 2:30. So, I’m writing a post.

I can scarcely believe that ten years ago I lost my son and only child. Ten Years. Unfuckingbelievable. I miss him beyond description. Some days I do really well, and others I just go with the new flow of my life, driven by heartache, and fueled by grief. I’ve learned it’s okay to use my grief toward a purpose, first toward my own healing, and then – helping others find their own pathway to healing. I always say it, and I’ll say it again, the fast-track to healing is through helping someone else.

I ached so much in the beginning I begged the God of my understanding to send me an angel, a human angel who would say the magic words that would just make me stop hurting. Well, I’ve learned in ten years time (in January 2026) that there are no magic words. I started this blog and another very specific blog for parents who’ve lost a child(ren) to addiction, specifically, heroin, fentanyl, and alcohol – all with the potential to kill someone. I read and read and continue to read everything I can find on grief, attachment issues with regard to addiction, from psych, medical, and social issue journals, ad infinitum. I just try so hard to fill that void with knowledge, and it’s true, knowledge has brought me right up to an understanding of the God of my understanding.

I wasn’t able to find that God until my heart was split in two; there is a scar now where the two halves of my heart have grown back together. There will always be a scar. To be honest, I want that scar, just like I want the stretch marks that came from the miracle of my son’s birth, just like stretch marks on my Soul. See, our Souls, whether you believe in the presence of a Soul in your own worldview, also stretch and grow as life continues to shape us into healed people – people with a purpose.

I have been in college in one way or another, either as a student or as an employee, for decades. I mean decades. I never had a clear purpose. I was busy being a single mom with a dead-beat ass as a biological father. A real bonehead mistake there. I also never had a clear direction. I thought I wanted to be a CNA, then a nurse, then an administrative assistant, then an English teacher, then an anthropology professor…see, what I mean?

After the death of my son, whose name is Rikki, I mourned for nearly four years before I started to awaken to the very real possibility that the intensity of the pain I was in was relentless; it would never end. Self-awareness is a major factor in healing. Once I became aware that I was the only one who could do the work it would take to lift myself out of this chronic pain, the first book I read was, When Bad Things Happen to Good People, by the Rabbi Harold Kushner who lost his fourteen year old son to progeria.

There are times when I shoulder the entire responsibility for my son’s death. There are regrets. There is a constant longing for what can never be. The ache never goes away; the Soul remains tender, but that’s okay; it’s a good thing. I’d been numb for a very long time after my son died. Because of C-PTSD, there were still parts of my Soul that were numb, as a protective coping mechanism. I get it now. I believe in the Soul. I’m not sure if it’s eternal, but I do know there’s a part of us that goes so deep, like a black hole, we don’t know what’s at the end; I think we don’t know what’s there until it’s our time to return to dust.

I’m very careful about politics and religion on my other site, because I love all our members, regardless of how their worldview is structured. We share a common bond. We share the greatest loss a parent can endure. However, on Grief to Gratitude, I’m able to share about my own worldview openly, politics (although the current absurdity is enough to have me bury my head in the sand for the next two years). Religion is something I’ve deconstructed since seminary, which I was driven to complete, no matter how long, how difficult, or how traumatizing the internship was.

See, I found the Soul urging me to continue striving for the dream, whatever that might be, at any age, even in my 60s. I listened to the call and so, I realized in helping others, I was healing right along with them. I took my pain and I reframed it; I repurposed it. I turned it into the drive to complete two very difficult tasks. One was to live my life again – to its fullest; and two, I found my mojo to pour myself into seminary. There were days I was too exhausted to react to a trigger.

Did I find the God of my understanding? Yes, it took seminary to help me understand where my God stood in the many ways there are to understand the extraordinariness of the Sacred, whatever that means to you. I was raised into both Roman Catholicism, and as a Southern Baptist. I dickered back and forth between God or no God to why, God, why did you take my son, to there is no God, to God, I’m aching here. When will the pain stop? Are you listening? Are you real? Can you “hear” me? See, after a while, after seminary and two extracurricular classes on Models of God and Alternate Ultimate Realities, and Science and Religion from a Process Perspective; both classes blew me clear out of the water.

My Ph.D. (I’ve been invited to interview at my first choice of programs) will focus on psychology, religion and consciousness. I’m looking forward to it. See, for four years life held no joy, no hope, no thought of the future. I was living one minute at a time, and my heartbeat was arrhythmic and I could hear it beating with my Soul, trying to resuscitate it. The hunger for knowledge and the hard work it takes to heal can be of great comfort. I had a therapist years ago who gave me his “recipe” for happiness:

  1. Have something to do;
  2. Have something to love; and
  3. Have something to look forward to

We have to be proactive in our healing process. There are no magic words. I bought something called grief spray about three months after my son died. The homeopath was very kind when I poured out my broken heart to him in the health food store. But grief spray. Obviously, it didn’t work. I wished that grief was a demon, and my Catholic roots would have someone who loved me call for an exorcism to rid myself of it. I always say that when in intense grief, unrealities are not out of the question. Grief spray! Not only did it taste like shit, it also was a desperate attempt to stop the pain. I know I’ve read about others saying the pain is a given, but suffering is optional. I call bullshit. Suffering is necessary to grieve; suffering does not feel good, but it’s temporary – if we work hard to process it and if we feel that pain which causes us temporary suffering, if we find something to solder those two halves of our broken heart together again, not without scars, and not with total healing, but with the tender spot of perpetual healing, no longer suffering, but navigating the grief process equipped with knowledge for how to change the trajectory of your path.

I had nothing to look forward to after Rikki died. How do you go on when the only real job you’ve ever had was being a parent? Do you reach out to religion? To non-religious, but spiritual traditions? To nature? Whatever it takes, life goes by quickly. Before you know they’re singing When I’m Sixty-Four and you’re planning your next home – with no stairs as you contemplate, and hopefully, look forward to your old age. Fill that void that can never truly be completely filled, with knowledge about your specific loss. Find a community of fellow comrades who share in your loss with their own. Find a spiritual practice. Write. Paint. Weep onto a canvas. Sing into the void. Physician, heal thyself.

I walked away from my religion(s) when I went to seminary. I found the greatest love and healing through academics, grief, and spiritual work. What does that mean? It means when the world and the grief get too heavy, I can tap into the God of my understanding in nature, through books, through podcasts, through music or through a conversation with a safe other. So can you tap into the Sacred in your own life.

I’m not saying you won’t have triggers that compel you to sob on occasion, but a healing ritual is not a passive activity; it’s very proactive. My Soul sister and I are going to do a healing ritual at the beach next week. I love the ocean. Rikki loved the ocean. We have our special pier we have walked on for thirty-two years. I no longer feel that deep, frantic feeling of an impending overwhelm when I do something Rik and I did together since he was a baby. I get a tug at my heart and then Soul sweeps in to rescue me so I can function fully in my day. I can share about my son without losing it now.

I hope that if you’re new in your grief that this long post reaches you and gives you something to do, something to love, and something to look forward to. I don’t know if it’s THE recipe, but it sure has helped me.

G_d, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

I know the difference now for how to live a life where joy is welcome and how to stay in the phase of suffering for longer than is necessary. We ache in our hearts, but allow your Soul, the Sacred, Source, G_d, to guide you to that joyful life; it’s possible.

Not yet …

By Sherrie Cassel

Age is just a number. Right?


Right.


I want “When I’m Sixty-Four”
sung at my next birthday party.
I want it sung loudly by the
Beatles from Sgt. Pepper’s,
and accompanied by my friends.
Yes, I want to celebrate the Crone,
the aging, the wisdom that comes
from the gift of many decades —
decades of metamorphoses,
transformation, and transcendence.
I want to shrivel from decreasing
collagen in my face, like the earth
in Death Valley, at once brutal and
beautiful.
I want to listen to and read my heroes
in their later years, as they reach
this milestone of touch and go,
the crapshoot years.
In the meantime, I will live hardily,
with gusto.
One day my number will be up,
and this old shell of a body will
disintegrate back into the earth.
I’d like to nourish a tree, maybe
a coral tree.
Yeah, but first, I want to get old,
wrinkle-riven, and be serenaded
out of here, When I’m, “One-hundred
bottles of beer on the wall, one-hundred …”
too bad we can’t start over again
when we get to One, but …
that’s when we launch.

Hungover

By Sherrie Cassel

I feel like I’ve been in a car accident and the next day being black and blue, but … still alive on a brand new day – granted, without my son, but a brand new day regardless of the part of me that is irrational wishing for my son to be resurrected, even nearly ten years later. I was not a parent who got to have the miracle of a child who survived his drug/alcohol years. The only victory in Rikki’s story is that he is no longer suffering, and he suffered a great deal. He lost his beautiful mind before he passed, and that kills me. His last words to me, though, will forever be a comfort to me. As I covered him with the heated blanket before the medical staff had me step out so they could attend to him, he said, “Oh Momma, I don’t know what I did to deserve this, but it feels so good.” The last thing I ever did for him was tuck him in. I did the same thing the night he died. Gratefully, I don’t have very many images of the night Rikki died. I think that’s my brain’s way of protecting me from chronic ruminations. I truly am grateful my memories of that night are scarce.

Yesterday, it was a quiet day. I had solicited the opportunity to get together with anyone available so I could keep occupied on Rikki’s birthday, and I had several people who offered to keep me busy, but it didn’t work out with any of them, so Ben spent the day waiting for a meltdown, but that never happened. I got busy and the time, 3:15 p.m., of his birth passed before I noticed the time. I looked at the clock and it was 3:30 p.m., and I said, “Happy birthday, Boo. I miss you. I love you” and then I went about my night. I took several naps when the emotions began to reach critical mass, and so one of my coping mechanisms yesterday was distancing myself from the emotions so I could function when I felt an overwhelm coming on. To be honest, I don’t know why I chose to stay home and keep my mind busy, because my heart was on overload.

The GOMU gave me the opportunity and the emotional fortitude to mete out my sadness in tolerable amounts and still find the time to laugh and watch the baseball game with my husband, who kindly kept asking me if I was okay. We were both waiting for the deluge; it never came. I guess, maybe because the day of his birth was anxiously anticipated, and the day of his birth was a celebration. His life was a celebration in my soul. His death has been life altering. I am not the same person who existed prior to Rikki’s death. I’ve grown and changed, and I continue to do so on this wild ride; grief is just that, a series of seemingly nonsensical forks in the road. Which one to take? See, the point here is that forks in the road offer us choices, which put us in control of our reaction to our triggers, you know, those things that bring the loss of our loved one’s right smack into our faces, which typically leads to a meltdown.

Yesterday was an atypical birthday. For eight years, I’ve kept myself so busy on his birthday that I could only collapse from the exhaustion of holding in unexpressed emotions all day. When I got up in the morning, I had a message from a dear friend, who very lovingly reminded me she remembered my son’s birthday. Throughout the day, I received messages from my wonderful friends; it helps.

Our beautiful grandson had a wonderful birthday. His mother really outdid herself. I’m very proud of her and so grateful that she’ll always be in my life. She texted me yesterday to remember Rikki and to thank him for our Louie. By evening time, I just wanted to go to bed; the tears never came, but sleep did.

So, that’s how my son’s 42nd birthday was remembered. Numbing, longing, sleeping, hot dogs, baseball, apple pie and Chevrolet. And … it was successful. The day passed as it always does. I remembered fondly the birth of my sweet, red-haired baby boy. That’s not bad to remember; it’s also not bad to fall apart completely. We get up again and another new day full of promise is in our hands. There is not a singular fork, and no singular road. I know we improvise grief as each moment transpires, triggers are always just seconds away — all the time.

Once I was in the drive-thru at Starbucks, and I was aching — just because I missed my son especially hard that day, and on a Bird of Paradise flower was a hummingbird sitting just about one foot away from where I was stopped. He didn’t seem to be afraid. He tilted his head and looked at me and I said, “Hi Rikki. Thank you.”

Now, I don’t know if that was a sign from the other side. I’m not sure there can be communication between the living and the dead; some people are absolutely certain. I’ve never had that kind of faith. I took the hummingbird on my son’s favorite flower as a sign early in my grief experience because I desperately needed to feel a physical connection to my son; there’s that irrational thinking again. I knew he was gone but the ache was physical and I needed a pretty moment between myself and something my son would have found absolutely magical, and I was able to pull myself together for the day. Grief recovery, like those who struggle with addiction, is a lifelong process.

I’ve learned over the past nearly ten years that I will take those godwinks when I get them. I don’t have answers to the mysteries of the universe, but I do know that it is we who must heal ourselves. No one can talk us through impending meltdowns, and to be honest, if they happen, they happen. We have not failed if we lose it, stay buried deep in our blankets for the day, dance, sing, remember. Rumination about a beautiful moment is okay too. See, however you handle your tough days is okay, as long as you’re not hurting yourself. Grief is powerful enough to take someone through a time of madness. Most of the time we come out of it and learn to reframe and restructure our lives so we can live in a much different world than the one we lived in when our kids were still alive. Our entire existence changes when someone we love dies.

The next day after navigating a loved one’s birthday or angelversary, is a lot like a hangover; I’m exhausted today. There was absolutely no reason to repress my feelings, but I did. His angelversary is far more challenging than his birthday.

No one who hasn’t “been there” can judge the rightness or wrongness of how we handle our grief process on significant days. How I managed yesterday was a success. I’m here again on a brand-new day. I will always miss my son, and as I promise my fellow grievers, especially those who are newly grieving, the intensity of our feelings does decrease over the years. Nine years and eight months ago I was an absolute wreck. I was so lost, I could barely manage basic functions. Since Rikki’s death, I’ve poured myself into academia, getting degrees so I can help someone else who is in pain to navigate safely to the other side where healing takes place, and where we can finally rest in the reality that we have choices, even when we are experiencing heartbreak.

I want to encourage those of you who have birthdays, angelversaries, or other significant days coming up, they’re bittersweet; they just are. Weep, eat, sleep, write, or do whatever emotionally sound activity you can engage in. The day will hurt you and it will make you smile, and then, it will make you cry – in no particular order.

I survived another birthday; this year with nothing to do, I used the non-destructive coping skills I have developed over the years through education and therapy to help me navigate a bittersweet day.

And you know what? My process was okay. And so is yours.

Happy Birthday, My angel

By Mom

Happy heavenly birthday, Rikki. Happy earthly birthday, my precious sixteen year old grandson, Louie. Yes, son and father have the same birthday. It’s a day that is bittersweet. I will feel the labor pangs at 3:15 p.m. just as I did the afternoon he was born. I’ll relive his entire life, from birth to death, in a day, and it will hurt, and it will make me smile. Our children’s birthdays bring both joy and pain, whether you gave birth to the child, or had the nurse hand you your new baby you’ve welcomed into your life and love.
I don’t know how the day will proceed. This is the first time our grandson hasn’t been with us, and so, I’ll have the time and space to cry. I usually put on a brave face until I can’t take it anymore and then I go into our bedroom and cry myself to sleep. He had so much promise.
I generally keep busy on his birthday and his angelversary. Last year I was driving home from a busy day of seeing clients; the drive home was two hours. I listened to music and when I got home I fell apart in my husband’s arms. Nine years and eight months I still have a tough time on special occasions. Thanksgiving is a really tough time for us. Thanksgiving was Rikki’s favorite holiday. He started making the turkey when he was only twelve years old and he beamed when everyone fussed about how good it was. We always had good times during the holidays … except when he was using.
But today, as much as it hurts, I will celebrate until the day is over. We each know how our kids’ birthdays go. Rikki would be 42 today. 42 years ago, I was writhing in labor pain, and my son was coming into the world. He was a beautiful baby, a good baby. Yep, bittersweet.
I’m going to edit, revise, add to my book I had published and written only nine months after his death. It’s a mess and reflective of my life at the time. I will do that today, laundry, eat, read to distraction, and weep in the evening. Nighttime seems to bring out my grief; I guess there are no more distractions after the day is done.
I don’t want this post to be morose because 42 years ago there was a celebration, and I have Louie’s birthday to celebrate and my son’s birth to remember. I will get through it just like I have for the past nine years. It’s unbelievable that I would have a son in his forties.
So, please know that as your significant days arrive, you will get through them, and it’s okay to have a total meltdown or to celebrate. There’s no right or wrong way to do grief – unless it becomes self-destructive.
I’ll keep busy and listen to music that won’t make me cry. I’ll participate in life as much as I can – and then…I will collapse under the weight of a day of performance. I have smiled for the past nine birthdays, but only because Louie was with us. I had to celebrate regardless of the pain I also felt because Rikki was not with us. Louie is with his mom this year, and so, again I will have the space to weep. Maybe I will. Maybe I won’t.
At any rate, today my son, Rikki Joseph Kolb was born, and it was a momentous occasion. I choose to remember that today.

Happy birthday our precious grandson, Louie. You’ve made our life infinitely better.

Dancing to the Dirge

By Sherrie Cassel

I don’t do viewings at funerals. I prefer to remember my loved ones as they were on our last happiest day together. Besides, the three times I’ve viewed a loved one during an open coffin celebration of life, the person looked nothing like herself. No, it’s difficult enough to lose a person in the first place. A service where the farewell and grief process can begin to take hold is necessary, and until then, it’s all about holding our breath and our emotions in check to get through the initial preparations. I was on the phone the next day after Rikki died with the florist making funeral arrangements despite the fact that my heart had been shattered. I kicked into gear to handle everything, down to writing the eulogy to be presented by my husband. I was momma lion making certain my son’s last party was going to truly honor the amazing person he was. I had my son cremated and placed in a beautiful urn with a seascape that represented a happy time for me and Rikki. I wanted to scatter them in our favorite part of our favorite beach, but I’m still holding on to them. Maybe his son will want them some day. If not, I want our ashes to be scattered together over our favorite beach spot. Grief is expressed differently by each of us.

I recently had a serious health scare, one which had me facing my mortality. My M.O. had me immediately launch into assigning tasks to my husband about how things were going to play out, from the way I would die, to the way my life would be celebrated after I died, from the music, guest attire (costumes), and down to the very last hors d’oeuvre. I want a party worthy of the life I’ve lived, the culmination of a healed life, instead of a funeral procession, I want a victory march.

By a stroke of good luck, and medical incompetence, my prognosis of one year to live was found to be a misdiagnosis, and after months of determination mixed with despair, I may breathe a sigh of relief. I’m too grateful to be angry, and I’ll just leave this experience behind me and move forward with the always tenuous time I have left.

My dear friend, member of our family of choice, and colleague to my husband, Eric Esperon, passed away and we celebrated his life on Tuesday evening. The venue was jam-packed with people and there was standing room only. I understand he requested he be buried in his Jedi robe with his light saber. He was fifty-one and one month. He was a force of love and light, and he is sorely missed.

Celebrations of life, funerals, and the dirges or lilted harmonies that accompany them are by nature bittersweet. I had told myself this was a celebration, even though I was enormously grief-stricken. My husband taught high school for nearly forty years. The last nearly twenty of his active teaching years, he taught theatre arts, and we met during that time. I watched his kids grow and change, graduate and start lives of their own, many now have children and graduate degrees. As sad as I was to say farewell to Eric, the people his celebration brought together are a true testament to his joie de vivre. We hugged and cried and laughed and cried and caught up with one another and cried. We promised to keep in touch with one another, with mostly good intentions to do so. Ah, but life gets away from us, “…until we’re covered up with flowers in the back of a black limousine.” (Joe South)

Intense emotions force promises we don’t mean to keep; but just like a gift, it’s the thought that counts, right?

Celebrations of life and misdiagnoses give us pause for thought. I know I’ve had some time for introspection and reevaluation about my own life since the misdiagnosis. The death of my son didn’t toughen me up for the deaths of others, but it did give me greater insight into what needs to be done when someone I love does die. I lost four and a half years to complicated grief when my son died. I’ve heard it said many times, and I’m far too humble to make the claim that losing a child is the pinnacle loss a person can endure; it has been for me.

When I lost Rikki, I also lost my faith in Divinity. My life became sterile with resolute doubt; I know that sounds oxymoronic, but trust me, it’s not. I don’t know if I’ve ever not believed entirely in an understanding of the Divine, neither male nor female, a Spirit, a Source from which all is animated, but when Rikki was dying from addiction, I had no energy for existential musings. Where was God in all that madness?

When Eric died, I asked the same thing. Eric was seriously the most amazing person. He was a great big ol’ kid who was adored by his students and all who knew him. I’ve been rushing toward a change in perspective about the afterlife to assuage my emotional pain; I do this after every significant loss. I wish I knew for sure if any of the legends/myths hold true, but after every death, I hope for an extension of life for the person who has so touched my life and enhanced it by her presence, by his presence, by Eric’s presence.

Eric and I had a phone conversation before he died, and I was backed against the existential wall when he told me he was afraid of dying. I asked him what he believed about the afterlife, and we chatted a bit about his fear. I asked him if he wanted to know what I thought about it, and I expressed my hippie description of what I believe happens after we’re no longer in our bodies. At the end of our lives, it is we who will bring the peace to our death scene. If we’re very lucky, we have time to hash it out for ourselves before we take flight to our next karmic cycle, or before we are absorbed into the great infinite expanse of our universe, or whatever I decide to bring me peace in the final hour. I don’t like to sound woo woo, so I’ll spare you my Jungian perspective of heaven. I don’t believe in hell, regardless of the crime. In my understanding of the Divine – but for earthly life and human conditioning, good conditioning and bad conditioning, we would all be angels in this life and so, in the next one too.

Do I believe this all the time? No, only when I’m in intense emotional pain, which even after nine and a half years, I still have relapses into deep grief, and I must work hard to pull myself back up into the Present Moment. Celebrations are facilitators in the grief process. After the initial shock of knowing someone is with absolute finality dead, the rest is adjusting your worldview in which your loved one is no longer part. Right after Rikki died, as his mother, I KNEW definitively and with sobering reality that my son was gone. There was no turning back the hands of time. There were no longer any fantasies that Rikki would be made well. He was every bit as terminal with addiction as Eric was terminal with cancer. I knew the last time I saw Eric would be the last time, but just like with my son, I held out irrationally for some anomaly, or miracle, or … misdiagnosis. Sometimes our prayers, regardless of how strenuously we pray, remain unanswered in the affirmative. My son died. My mother died. Eric died. I will die, and one day each of you will lose someone and you will also die. Like Eric, it is important that you live it up to the very end. My son loved two things in life, a party and his son, with absolute dedication and devotion to both.

I had a friend, Jeff, who always told us he wanted an open coffin with Groucho Marx glasses on his face. How we celebrate the lives and deaths of our loved ones truly is an important part of the grief process. Eric’s family did a lovely job, standing room only, people kept pouring in, and everyone said the nicest, and truest things about Eric.

I hope his family can find some comfort in the outpouring of love and the attendance at the Celebration of Life. I know I am comforted by the number of people who attended and spoke at Rikki’s. How does one wrap up someone’s life, the semicolon morphed into a period, the end of a sentence, a life sentence? I don’t know about you, but in my theology, the GOMU gets how hard it is to be here, despite the times that we’re rockin’ and rollin’ in life and it’s all smooth sailing. Life can be really hard. We love and we lose … many times throughout our lives.

Losing someone is one of the most harrowing and difficult experiences we can endure. Most of us can regain our bearing and move forward, eventually. I have seen people come to madness, some temporary, and some still very active in it, after the loss of a loved one.

I guess what I really wanted to say is that Eric’s death has really thrown me into an existential tizzy, but every loss I’ve ever incurred has. I was apprehensive about the celebration of his life. The last time I saw him he was very sick, but still present. He joked and was sharp despite his exhaustion from chemotherapy. He was here and now he’s gone. I’ll work through the existential stuff just like I have with every death, my son’s being the most profound loss. I’ll figure it out. I’ll find a soft place to land where tears water the fields where my loved ones lie…where I can commune with the Unnamed and the Spirits of those I love, a place where I can begin to heal.

I’m so grateful to all the people who attended Eric’s celebration of life. If Eric wanted a party, a true celebration of his life, his family and friends achieved that for him, and for each of us who can now begin the hardest part of the grief process, the adjustment, normalizing our pain, understanding that each of those are processes, part and parcel of the grief experience. It’s okay to cry. It’s okay to laugh in remembrance of your loved one with others. It’s okay to not view the body. Every culture has its death rituals. I understand at my great grandmother’s funeral people were taking pictures next to the open coffin. Okay, not my thing, but some people need that finality. I understand professional wailers attend some cultures’ funerals. Some are profoundly sad, and some are celebratory. Eric’s was the latter. He lived an exemplary life, touched generations of kids’ lives as their teacher, and just the joy he spread throughout his fifty one years, are just a few things that made his celebration of life so lovely.

Thank you for all the hugs and laughter to all who attended Eric’s celebration and who brought comfort to the family, such a lovely family of kind and accomplished people. The family honored Eric’s wishes … down to the last hors d’oeuvre.

Sometimes I believe that a deceased person’s spirit hangs around until after the funeral. I’d like to believe that Eric was there watching and enjoying how much he was loved at his final earthly gathering. I’d like to believe that … yeah.

For what it’s worth, this post is me working things out about our friend Eric. Everything about his death and his celebration of life is bittersweet. I didn’t go up to view Eric, even though he had planned for that too. He was, in fact, buried in his Jedi robe with his light saber. He died the way he lived, bravely and with the most amazing wit.

I’m jumbled with grief today, so I’ll end this ramble. Thank you, Eric for all you’ve given to your students, us, and to our grandson who adored you – ever since he was three years old (he’s sixteen now).

Rest in marvelous peace and may all your Marvel dreams come true.

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