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.

Book Revision

I wrote the original version of this book nine months after my son died. The book was reflective of the mess I was at the time. Nine years and eight months later I’ve revised and fine tuned both the book and my life.

Ta da! It is now live. Please spread the word.

https://a.co/d/4TpN3O8

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.

Rationalizing until the Cows Come Home

By Sherrie Cassel

Dedicated to the Esperon Family

The world would be silent, but “American Pie” is playing on my phone and I’m grateful for the noise. I’m listening as Don McLean sings about the spirit of my generation. I think about how Lennon read a book on Marx and how when someone is in a position of power, she can change the course of history for good or for evil – through the imposition or compulsory laws spreading her philosophies: You must believe this way, because it is the only way.

And kingdoms since time immemorial have been force fed someone else’s dogma, and it spreads, and it conquers and divides. But here I go again, rationalizing away my current deep grief for the loss of a dear and wonderful friend, Eric Esperon, a remarkable man and career teacher who touched generations of lives. My heart is broken, but Don McLean and Paul Simon are comforting my tender heart.

Isn’t that how we first begin to grieve, we distance ourselves from the full impact through rationalizations? Isn’t thinking less painful than feeling? I’ve always found it to be so. I have shed some tears, but I’m still in shock that Eric has, like my son, parents, your loved ones, been plucked out of the universe and I will not see him again in this life. I cannot laugh with him, be touched by his kindness, admire the relationships he had with his students and friends, or buy him a Shirley Temple. He had just turned fifty-one.

Once you’re heart can handle the full impact of the loss, you’ll catch yourself clutching your chest overwhelmed by emotion – hold tight. If you’re in a safe space with people who can handle your pain, or even if you’re alone, give in to it. Feel it. Immerse yourself in it. Sob. Please don’t attempt to get behind the wheel of your car if you’re in an emotional overload. Sit it out. Call someone to come get you. Breathe. Pray. Those first overwhelms are absolutely terrifying. Acute grief is a physical response, I would argue. I felt/feel it deep in my chest, where my heart is. I can touch where the ache is. I feel it now.

Eric was a dear friend of our family, as a matter of fact, we consider Eric family. He’s always been there when we needed him; he was always there for everyone. His students are bereft and the entire community is too. He was well-loved because he was so loving. One loss has the potential to resurrect old wounds from your previous losses of loved ones. I carry grief – chronically, since I lost my son. I’ve learned to move forward and continue to live a life of quality, without my son in the universe; it’s a different one without him.

One day, the world will adjust without me, and as I begin a new grief process for a dear friend, I’m mindful of how Eric would want us to live, just as he did, with joy, gusto, tremendous play and compassion for all living things. I will take some time to cry with all who loved him at the celebration of life. Rationalization: the funeral/celebration of life is an opportunity to grieve communally with others who loved your loved one. There is no greater way to heal than communally. Accept the hugs. Weep openly. Speak the truth of your emotion. Share with those who also want to share their heartbreak. We will need each other in the coming days as we help Eric’s family set his Spirit free.

Community is so important in grief. Certainly, there are times when you must just lock yourself in a room with pillows to punch or scream into, or just to curl up in the fetal position and sob – just you and your loved one’s memory. Grief will touch everyone in her lifetime; it’s good to know that your feelings are valid, important, and temporary. Intensity in the beginning is because our minds have just been totally fucked with. Boom! One minute you’re living, loving, and laughing with someone, and the next, you get the call. I’m still reeling over Eric’s death, and we all knew he was very sick and that it was terminal. Still … are any of us ever truly prepared to lose someone, even when death is imminent?

From experience I have to say no, we are not prepared. My son was dying in front of my eyes because he was sick from his heart, addiction, and the kind of brokenness that took him from us, but when he died, and I really did know he was going to die, I was lost for four and a half years while I bucked away from acceptance that he was gone. Fighting the inevitable tidal wave of grief is futile, and it is exhausting. I had residual grief from other losses I had not worked through. This is an important rationalization: if we don’t work through shit, it keeps presenting itself. There is something I would call complex grief, which I would say complex grief occurs when unresolved grief is compounded with current grief. One is at critical mass when one first discovers she has lost a loved one.

I’m still  numb about Eric, but because I’ve worked for nine and a half years to get to the other side of chronic emotional pain from losing my son, I can talk myself through the tears, share my grief, my loss, my broken heart with others who need the same release because they loved him too.

The jury is still out for me about what happens after we die. But if there is a heaven, I know it’s filthy with people we all love, and even those we didn’t. Today I have to console myself with music, words, because it’s not time for the dam to burst yet. I need rationalization to help me land safely into a field of sunflowers where I might weep for my friend.

Eric, as a friend, and as a human being, was as dependable as the sunrise.

I’m not quite ready to watch his sunset yet. Eric was a ghosthunter, and I think he will stick around ‘til after the celebration of life just to watch us all together, like he always did; he always brought people together. Yes, I will rationalize until I can’t hold the tears back any longer.

Rationalizations are so much better than runny noses.

I miss you, my friend.

Busking Joy

By Sherrie Cassel

There’s too much racket – here. The swamp cooler whirs. The cats meow their grand entrance on the scene, and the goddamned crows caw, interrupting my reverie.

It’s just too damn loud this morning,

In my head.

Sometimes I need the noise; it drowns out the screams of a grieving mother, not unlike the monkey my son carried on his own broken back; it’s chronic. He was tired. I’m tired. I’m always tired, and yet, the benefits of bipolar disorder, for me, are manias. I can go until I collapse into bed, sleep four hours, and get up and do it all over again. Manias are what fuel the success of my healing process.

I’ve been missing Rikki in the worst way, and I mean that, in the worst way. I miss him all the time, for sure, but there are times when I’m idle and so many memories come flooding into my spastic brain, so that I need to fill it with loud music and a meaningless beat to save me from a meltdown. I know I need meltdowns from time to time, and I allow for them, just like I allow for meals and bathroom breaks. I really don’t mean that flippantly; meltdowns, after a while, can fit neatly into chaotic life and work schedules.

In between meltdowns…I’ll take the noise.

This morning, I thought I’d cry for a while, but despite the sadness I carry with me all the time, I’m unable to cry. I’m not frustrated; tears can be anticlimactic, too. There’s an acceptance to noise when I finally have the time to actively mourn the loss of my son. There’s an acceptance that Rikki is not physically present, and on this noisy morning, I’m going to let it be okay.

I don’t feel stuck. I’m moving forward with the Ph.D. program. I’m in a stable and happy marriage. I have amazing friends and a family of choice. I have a great deal to keep me busy, and while it’s been a marvelous two months off, it’s time to hop back on the academic fast-track again. If I’m idle for too long, it is the silence that breaks me.

I walk in my life every day with Rikki beside me in some way, shape, or form. I used to think it was just the desperation of a grieving parent that made me think Rikki was all around me, but after nine and a half years of his physical absence, I’ve discovered that his Spirit, his Essence, the part of us that is forever mingled, umbilicus and soul, are ever-present. I wish I could explain it, but as Horatio found out, there are more marvelous things in this universe which we will never be able to explain, and yet, we “feel” them deep in our core, so deep in our core that it feels physical.

This morning, I wanted to commune with that Spirit that connects me forever to my son, and the cats wanted to be fed. The crows were squawking good morning before I’d had my coffee. I generally listen to music at four a.m. before anyone else is up, the cats, my husband, the crows. A neighbor has chickens that sound off at one a.m., two a.m., three a.m. –. They are confused about what time they are to rise and shine. I get it.

I speak to my son every day, not in a way that would make someone question my sanity, but in a way that keeps me connected to him. I believe if you knew someone really well in his lifetime, that you can anticipate what he would say to you about a situation you might find yourself in. I can hear Rikki saying, “Mom, um, not one of your better choices.” I had a friend who turned me on to the Akashic Records. I sat in a chair and called upon the Spirit of my son, and I had a conversation with him, and I was able to make amends to him, posthumously.

I’m feeling some resistance to tapping into the truest and deepest grief available to me today. The sun is shining. I’m feeling great. The irritation about the noise has dissipated, and I’m looking forward to a day of joy and gratitude with my husband. Rikki will accompany me in the music I’ll listen to as the music of consensus reality settles into background music…the leitmotif of busyness. I’ll take it.

My nocturnal felines have returned to slumber, satiated and spoiled. The crows have begun their scavenging. My husband is still sleeping, and in the silence is percolating the ingredients for a good day. My meltdown will have to wait for another day, another trigger, another reason to be expressed.

I love the carnival at night…the lights, the music, the distraction from reality. My reality is that I lost a child. I needed reality this morning – and I got the carnies beckoning me toward the carousel. A nice ride of homeostasis. Today is shaping into a nice day, pleasant temperature, with low emotional intensity.

Music is an emotional emetic. If I need to weep, I know what I need to do, what I need to listen to, and so, I steer clear of certain songs when I’m not willing to go there emotionally. Again, we get to a point in the grief process when we can schedule meltdowns. Triggers will always present themselves, and we never know when or what, but after a few years, we can even manage triggers.

I know, for example, to keep this light, my son loved those giant deli pickles. I haven’t eaten one since before he died. I see them and I want to weep because they brought him such joy. I can now walk past them in the deli without the experience creating a visceral reaction, but I still feel a strong tug.

Today is not the day to weep; my thoughts affect my olfactory memory, and it’s summertime, and I long to be at the beach, smelling the salt air and Coppertone, and remembering all the years my son and I walked on the pier and how he always had to buy a giant pickle, and how much joy those walks brought to us. See, I’m feeling the tug even as I type this.

I’m alone in silence now. I have things to do today. I think I’ll put on some music, happy music, dance music, and remember a time when Rikki and I danced in our kitchen together, and I’ll choose to smile instead of cry.

Yeah, that’s what I’ll do.

Naked

By Sherrie Cassel

I like days when the mask is not required.
No Joker’s smile.
No laugh, clown, laugh –
despite the depth of the pain
I carry

daily.

I feel it through the liquor and through
the laughter, and when I’m not required
to be on display, the wounded warrior,
the purple hearted mother…is surviving
the war,

barely.

My smile is not necessary today.
It’s not. I work hard to not brood,
to not ruminate, to busy myself with
silly tasks of no importance,

fidgeting.

He is bothering me while I try to write
these thoughts, reeling me back
to this present moment, the one
where you are here only theoretically,

ephemerally.

There is a benefit to this moment
in which I am stuck in time. You,
by whatever phenomena, reach me
still, in each present moment I stay
in remembrance of you, of

us.

Today, tears are allowed to flow freely.
There is no danger of smear, evidence that
there has been a meltdown, a loss of function,
even if only briefly. I’m not really alone. My safety
net is in the next room, my

sentinel.

The wind is blowing through the trees
and it is fire season. Last night there were
fireworks downtown, and I nearly walked down the
street to participate in

life.

I chose to sleep through

the festivities.

I didn’t have to dress up.

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