Grief to Gratitude

By Sherrie Cassel

One of my professors has told me on a few occasions that I have an overdeveloped sense to be liked. Interesting, because early in my life I was a “come closer, go away” kind of person. I prefer community to distance these days. I have a mostly positive outlook on life – despite my tremendous loss, just like many of you do, positivity in the face of pain and ever-present grief. Perhaps my sunshine comes from my “overdeveloped sense to be liked.” Or … could it just be because I’ve worked my ass off to stay the lifetime course of rolling that Sisyphean boulder of grief up that mountain  – like someone who struggles with addiction, we will have days when we soar and days when we sink – for the lifespan. I have more days in flight now – and I never roll with the boulder all the way down that mountain like in the early days of grief.

This page is supposed to be an aid to healing and about sharing that even after the tempests of death claim the loved ones of our hearts and souls, there will be calm waters intermittently, a place where we can do whatever needs to be done to begin to rebuild our lives to sail for a spell with the spirit of our loved one as we commune with their memory. We must. We have people with whom we were in relationship before the illness and the ultimate death, or the accident, or the suicide, or the overdose of a loved one. The good ones will be able to sit with you in the dark. The good ones don’t expect you to “get over it” in their time.

I didn’t anticipate I would ever lose my only child. I thought we had more time. I’m grateful for the thirty-two years we had together, and I’m grateful that I was able to make amends, and we worked through a lot before he died. I find great comfort in that fact. I want to share good news all the time, but the truth is: I still have meltdowns, and I want each of my readers to know that meltdowns are nothing for which to be ashamed. I don’t have them as frequently as I once did, but holidays, angelversaries, birthdays, even my own milestones bring with them anxiety about the feelings those days bring up for me.

I am fortunate to have a lot of blog followers who have helped me stand on days when I just didn’t have it in me to take one step forward. I hope I have offered them and you a modicum of comfort from my own grief trek – from the bloodied knees as I prayed for him to get better to the moment I began to heal – and now that my healing process has brought me to peace and led me to move forward with my life, I am. My life will never be the same … we must adjust to lives without our loved ones. I had four years of separation anxiety – and unlike a fur parent returning to his pup, I will not have that glad reunion with my son – on this side of Whatever.

If you ask me how I’ve managed to find some peace through the tsunami of tumbling emotions like stones being abrased to smoothness and beauty, I would say, with the wisdom of a seasoned boxer, I took the punches as they came and with each round in the grief arena, I came back stronger – and the fight in me came back – and I desperately wanted to live – again – until I remembered that the world is also beautiful despite the darkness of things like cancer, addiction, death.

Fighting with grief until you take it down and make it surrender to you puts bulk in your emotional muscles. I still cry from time to time. My eyes well up from tears, or I feel that steely rapier in my chest; it hurts; it will always hurt. I have no secrets to making it stop hurting; it never will. I’ve just learned to manage the deep, deep pain better. I schedule appointments with grief and pain when I have time and space to allow for full vulnerability. I’m driven … even at sixty-two. I want to push myself all the way to the doctorate; it’s a grueling task, but after surviving the loss of my son, I know I can do anything I set my mind to. I mean, it’s too late for me to compete in corporate settings that recruit from a younger, market-driven population, but I can work toward my academic dream, as I grow intellectually and spiritually – and make a difference along the way.

The true search for spirituality or a sense of the Divine or Sacred didn’t happen for me until I lost my Rikki. I asked the common question: Why, why, why? until I found the answer to why. I had many shoulders to stand upon. Along the way some of my spiritual guides at After the Storm made me think, pissed me off, comforted me, and gave me hope. I knew that barring an extraordinary spiritual experience, the hope of being with my son again was, in fact, hopeless. I had to accept that my son was gone, and I had to accept the reasons why. This is not an easy task.

When I created After the Storm, it had been only eight months after Rikki had died. I needed the camaraderie and understanding of others who had common losses: parents who had lost children to addiction, specifically heroin and fentanyl. I started Grief to Gratitude a few years ago – after I rediscovered joy and enchantment for life. There were times when I thought I’d be miserable for the rest of my life. Everything was so heavy I was exhausted all the time. I couldn’t find the will to continue with my academic career. I dropped out of my bachelor’s degree program and didn’t go back for six years! My life stopped. My dreams perished with my son’s last breath.

Jerry Garcia sang,

“Ten years ago, I walked this street;

My dreams were riding tall;

Tonight, I would be thankful Lord

For any dream at all.”

I remember feeling this way. I remember saying I would never accept my son’s death and, I remember saying I would never let my son go. The pain that comes from the death of a loved one is deep and feels physical – like your heart being ripped out of your chest cavity – and it feels like that for a very long time as we work the grief process. There is light at the end of the tunnel, that dark and desperate tunnel we’ve found ourselves in.

I have accepted my son’s death. I have accepted the answers to the whys. Have I let him go? Acceptance and answers have been things I’ve wrestled with since he died, and even in the throes of his addiction, I get it. I understand it; knowing those things has been the most difficult thing I’ve done since I lost him. I think about him all the time, but I still function in the world, just like all of you who have helped me take one more step when I thought I couldn’t.

I think about all the mad potential my son had. He was brilliant and the most amazing conversationalist. He was beautiful and he was tortured; I get that too.

I don’t want to be the bearer of angst revisited. I want to offer you hope in a hopeless situation. Whatever you believe in about an afterlife, the fact remains, we will not see our loved ones again in this lifetime; this is a brutal reality. If there was anything more challenging than accepting the finality of death, I can’t think of it. Because we love them so much, our love is proof that they existed, that they are missed, and that we will never let them go in some respects.

My son’s paintings, even the angsty ones, hang on my office walls. His pictures are placed lovingly throughout our home. I have an ashtray on my desk he made with his own little hands when he was a child. I have his son. I have his DNA. We are separated by time space. We are separated by materiality and immateriality, but I feel Rikki’s presence every time I think about him, and with every beautiful thing I experience.

When he died, I would lose it every time a Bread song was played on my SiriusXM. I mean I would sob until I couldn’t breathe. I still don’t understand it. My son loved Korn, Limp Bizkit, and Nirvana. Bread was well before his time; it’s seventies music. He was born in 1983. So why the visceral reaction? I’ve been working on this for nine years. If anyone who knows me and a bit about psych, or who is an empath, shoot me a message if you come up with some ideas about why Bread slays me, even now, nine-years-later.

Do people really expect us to “get over” our losses? The sites have many members who’ve said their family members and friends are insensitive to their time frames toward healing. I’ve not been so unfortunate. My loved ones have tried in their best way to be here for me. They gave it the ol’ college try. No one has told me to get over it, but their eyes have averted their gaze to their feet because my emotions can be too much for someone who has never experienced the loss of someone with whom they were so close that their absence will be felt for a lifetime. It’s okay.

For those whose expectation is that someone can just get back on that horse of normality quickly is, I’m sorry, ignorant, and that’s okay too. Death scares people. Emotions scare the hell out of them. But, the responsibility to make ourselves heard is ours. This grief process is individual and unique, as unique as the whorls of our fingerprints. We have to speak to our pain; no one else can. We need to write it. Sing it. Paint it. Dance it. Shout it – in whatever way we can be heard, we must be heard, over and over and over again, until the sting becomes tolerable, and we can navigate our lives with it as a constant toleration.

Don’t be afraid to have fun in your life again. Don’t be afraid of overwhelming emotions. Don’t freak out when the ruminations are intense; that intensity will subside. It comes in waves. What I found most frightening as I moved through the early days of grief was that I would never have a moment of peace again. I’ve since come to find a peace that is truly indescribable. I’ve picked up my dreams again – and so can you. Dive into the process. Cry to the songs that touch you deeply. Live in the Present Moments of your Soul connection with your loved one who has passed. Cry. Cry. Cry. Scream on occasion. I haven’t done either of those things for some time. The anniversary of my Rikki’s death is in a couple of weeks, so, we’ll see.

Send me good juju.

By Sherrie Cassel

The lights twinkled on the Xmas tree, a secular tree, but not a secular evening, as she lit the seventh Hannukah candle and chanted her prayer. Incense smoke wafted to the rhythm of the universal energy, and we enjoyed the spiritual nature of our celebration, Hannukah, Christmas, Xmas, or just another day of blessѐd peace. Xmases, historically, in my family were fraught with drama, alcoholic, domestic violence, and cruel interactions with one another. We always received gifts, with the reminder that we didn’t deserve any of them. So, creating my own version of Xmas was in order. I love the holiday. I love the lights and sparkle. I love the idea of family getting together, even if it’s not with my family of origin. We were never really a family.

This Xmas we had our family which we constructed from among the best people in the world, only one related to me by blood, our precious grandson, Louie. We have been bookin’ since November when we had my husband’s seventieth birthday, Thanksgiving, Xmas, New Year’s Eve, and now for returning to some semblance of homeostasis – balance. I return to work/internship next Tuesday and the beginning of my last semester in seminary. I will graduate with an M.A. in May. Life keeps plugging along, smooth waters, tempests, and tsunamis.

My son will be gone nine years on the twenty-second of January at 5:55 P.M. My light always dims a little on the angelversary. So much has happened since I said goodbye to my son. The death of a loved one changes every single thing about us. The world changes and the rest of our lives is an adjustment to living daily without the presence of our loved one; it’s a harsh reality, but – it is a reality. There is a truism about death and taxes being certainties in our lifespans. The former has tentacles that reach deep into our nervous systems and psychological constructs; the latter hurts us, but there will be recovery time.

I’m not sure one ever recovers from the death of a loved one. We learn to carry the loss – some with grace, some with perpetual angst. I’ve seen both – and many shades of gray on the grief intensity spectrum. We hurt. We heal, or – we don’t.  At some point healing does become a choice – emotional healing. I can’t speak in terms of physical healing, anomalies notwithstanding, but perhaps there are even some instances when we can be responsible for our physical healing too.

The holiday season brought a lot of guilt for me. I had such a nice time with my new family – and even though I miss my son more than I could ever adequately express, we had a nice time with absolutely no drama. No one left angry or hurt. Louie, our precious grandson, had a lovely time with his new uncle and aunt. Louie’s family spent some time with us, and we had a lovely time with them too.

Our Priestess Sunshine saged our home and we chanted our intentions for the new year, as she lit the final Hannukah candle. The house is full of different versions of the Hebrew and Christian Bibles and other sacred texts from other faith traditions. I have removed the crosses from my house save one culturally Mexican one. I have kitsch from different cultures on my counters and shelves.

There is a method to my madness. I seek what comforts my grieving heart. I seek what causes my spirit to soar, and – I seek what brings me to a place as a compassionate servant to humanity – especially to those who know grief intimately.

“[Lord], make me an instrument…”

Grief can reshape us into better versions of ourselves. Of course, no one asks for opportunities to grow through painful experiences, but they happen, nonetheless. I lost  my beautiful son nine years ago and I’ve spent the last nine years trying to find new meaning in my life, since my motherhood died with my son; he was my only child.

I love geological history, although I don’t profess to know anything about it, except what I romanticize. I think of water rushing through massive rock formations creating canyons and valleys, smoothing fissures and protrusions into glassy cave walls and suncatchers. Even in the deepest, darkest valley, the sun insists on pushing through – even through infinitesimal cracks in dark nights of the Soul.

When Rikki died my world was dark. I felt a little like what a Nosferatu must feel like when sunlight hits it; it stung my eyes, physically, and my heart could not be touched, even kindly; it hurt too much. I look over the past nine years and I’m astounded by the growth that was spearheaded through my son’s death, and, of his tortured last few years. I’d give it all back to have my son back, but we know that is unrealistic thinking, irrational at best. Who knows if there is a heaven? I hope, but I’m not certain. There I’ve said it.

I was terrified to speak my doubt into existence; somehow words made it real – and hell was real to a spiritually immature Soul; our Souls grows with each life experience, from the mundane to the extraordinary and many experiences in between. Death and grief have shaped my understanding of what is holy and what can be pared away from my worldview, from my heart, released from my consciousness.

No doubt the death of a loved one, in its finality, creates a hole in the cosmic fabric of the Universe. I no longer need to wonder about what lies beyond the black hole of death; it is the deepest grief, one from which you cannot escape. I held on for my one amazing life with bloodied fingers and ravaged fingernails as I clung to the event horizon, tugging and pulling on whatever solid I could find of the stuff of life: earth and gravel and grass, the cool grass that refreshes you after you’ve been hanging on for years trying to find a place to lie still, a place where you can catch your breath, a place where you can heal.

I almost fell down the rabbit hole for life. Four years of deep, guttural pain and emotional paralysis took me about a fourth of the way down that black hole of grief. Perhaps there is a better metaphor. If I get one life – I’m not going to spend it in chronic emotional pain. I now fight for life, mine and for the reenchantment of others’ lives. What’s your purpose? Did you lose it after you lost your loved one? Can you find it again? Has the death of your loved one changed you so much that your old purpose no longer serves you? Or your fellow human?

This is a new year and we always get a little sappy as one year closes out — in the black or in the red, and a new year opens up with three-hundred and sixty-five days of opportunities; I know I do. But this holiday season, I ended the year in the black, emotionally. I experienced joy and peace, peace is my goal for my home, and I achieved it; my family achieved it. Rikki. Rikki. Rikki. He is always present. He came from my body. We are eternally linked. My love for him is as indescribable as trying to describe God; it is infinite.

So, why the guilt?

Funny/not funny you should ask.

I miss my son. You miss your loved one. Our lives are moving further and further away from the day we lost them. We’ve grown through the pain. We’ve changed. Perhaps we’ve transformed, maybe even transcended what we once believed about life, death, the possibility of life after death, perhaps even what we thought we knew about God. Death clinks and clangs as it forges us into a pliability that stretches our consciousness and shapes us through our lifespan – however long you think that is. Perhaps death and its shadow side grief dance us into the Mystery of Mysteries of God. Perhaps.

I graduate from my master’s program in May. I cannot begin to express the thrill with which I end my time in seminary; it’s been a long, strange trip, and a grueling one. I’m grateful for the experience(s), and I’m happy for its termination. I’m applying to a few doctoral programs. In the nine years my son has been gone, four years were spent in intense and brutal grief. Was that too long? Maybe. In retrospect, I see the time I could have used for academic and personal growth could have been achieved much sooner had I not been in abject grief. I’ll be sixty-three this year and the clock ticks away. I have some decisions to make about the future I have left in this life – and — the one beyond will wait for me to get there; it can’t start without me. Right?

I want to draw a diagram that illustrates how far I’ve traveled since Rikki died. I want to, but it hurts too much. If I started at the beginning of my life and hit all the milestones, my life really started when I became a mother, and my life ended when I lost him. I’m not shooting for hyperbole here. The life I had before my son died ended. In the best-case scenario, we grow after significant losses. Life really moves so very quickly. I’ve been bemoaning the aging process lately, and then I remember, my son never got old enough to have gray hair, or pain from old athletic injuries, or the chance for his heart to heal from the person who broke him.

My life was filled up with my son for thirty-two years; it’s filled up with him still. I carried him into my holiday and we were at peace. His son said it was an awesome Xmas. He was the center of attention because he is the center of my world, just as his father was before him. See, we can make new lives for ourselves, because the truth is, the one we had with our loved one has run out of time. I don’t aim to explain the deeper concepts that come with death and grief. The questions that come from deep emotional and spiritual experiences are not mine to impose on others. I’m thrilled to read and listen to others’ spiritual worldviews. I learn from all of them, as I continue to add to and subtract from my own.

I don’t have all the answers. No one does. Am I an expert on grief? I’m an expert on my grief. I hope my journey touches you. I hope the posts where my joy exudes through the lifetime loss inspire you to know you will rise again.

Xmas was all new this year. Presence – not presents. Time spent with loved ones making memories. Carrying memories from Xmases past. Making new traditions. Learning from old ones. Keeping what works and throwing out what has not or perhaps never served us well. We slept through the festivities of the new year and rested well after a drama-free season.

Still…there will always be something missing: my son. So as the star heralded the birth of a king, it heralded memories of my own boy king, now an angel. He was here in his own way, deeply embedded in the DNA of his mother and his son, in our hearts, and in our Souls.

If you’re still clutching a piece of earth trying to climb back into a life worth living, tug as hard as you can; it’s so worth it.

Happy New Year.