Category: Grief and Healing

If Only…

The beach was almost deserted on this spectacular Saturday morning. The tide more out than in – no lapping waves. Only an occasional gull broke the quiet. I joined a yoga class on the sand, stretching, inhaling the beauty of the spot, savoring the gentle breezes, the coolness of the morning air, the sun’s warmth – life. Focused on breathing, the poses, then resting on my back, sand running through my fingers, I relaxed into a dreamy joy.  And then, I remembered AW’s death. She will never feel a beach breeze again. Every moment since hearing this news on Monday, there’s been a hovering dark cloud on the sunniest of days.

But she was not my daughter.  For me, the pain will ease, the sad fog will lift within weeks, becoming a terrible memory. Not so for her family. How long will it take for them to feel any kind of sustained joy again? My heart breaks for them.

Protecting our children is any healthy parent’s strongest impulse, in some ways, our very reason for being. The cliches: ‘we’re only as happy as our unhappiest child’, ‘they cut, we bleed’ — are all true. The thought of losing a child a worst nightmare. I am afraid to even imagine the pain.

A blogger who writes movingly about depression (here) noted about Robin Williams, “He died at the age of 63 after a lifetime of depression… his age was testament to his tenacity.” This beautiful line comforted me the other day, even 10 years later, thinking my husband made it to 48 with all his anguish – that was something. And, it guts me to think of AW only 25 years for her.

We no longer can be delighted by her goofy, infectious laugh.  Did she not know how we loved her and basked in the warmth of her kindness, her disarmingly clear and beautiful gaze? When we worked together, my impulse was to protect her. Sometimes I found myself warding off the men who might mistake her universal kindness as interest. She seemed so vulnerable.

Suicide strikes a chord for any of us who have experienced loss in this terrible way – like a gong – triggering memories, feelings. But the reverberating toll of this has cut me close, this sweet girl’s death. We were not much more than work friends — but of course all of us felt more so because AW did not do superficial. Even knowing better, I engaged in magical thinking — that I might have been able to do something. If only. Just the week before, I’d almost sent her a text – wanting to introduce her to my friend’s daughter — going so far as pulling up our last texts from more than a year ago – to continue a conversation, make contact again. And then, did not. In my mind she was well settled into a life she’d worked so hard to create for herself. Succeeding. I didn’t know.

Robin William’s death, like other beloved celebrities before him, brings suicide out of the shadows, if only for awhile, and this spotlight is welcome. The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention runs walks around the country – Out of the Darkness Walks where the community can come together to comfort each other and raise money for the cause. While we will never end suicide but we must try to save lives – even one. How I wish that it could have been AW’s.

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Still in Recovery

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Remember winter? My Hydrangea do – and remind me constantly of what a long, bitter one we endured. A few years ago I decided Hydrangea, would be my fool-proof shrub — blues and pink blossoms lasting well into autumn, stunning even as they fade to a papery brown. They are tough, even after shriveling a bit from thirst, reviving beautifully after watering. Every year my bushes produce bowl-sized blooms that are the center piece of the flower bouquets I cut for the mantelpiece – lasting long past when the Gladiolas and Black-eyed Susan are spent. Not this year. Look!

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Not a bloom in sight. No, I didn’t cut them back — I learned the hard way that flowers grow from old wood and am careful not to prune until well into Spring. Just like my sparse showing of Peonies, the Hydrangea blooms are a casualty of last Winter’s heavy snow and frigid temperatures. So much for fool-proof. There is no such thing, is there? We are all destined to be fooled, to sometimes be fools. This is life. My garden, currently neglected, always feels chock-full of metaphors.

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I mourn there are no Hydrangea blues to brighten the overgrown mess… I mean, otherwise lush bounty, of this year’s garden. There are times in life when there is nothing to do but let time pass and hope for better. I’ve done that before – by days, weeks, months, years. Things will improve. So far in my life, I have never lost that hope. And I’ve pushed myself to go beyond enduring, to always find something to sustain, nurture, perhaps inspire me, within the darkness of disappointment, heartbreak and loss.

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Of course at the height of any pain, I just want to get through it, for it to stop. Sometimes numb is all we can hope for. I marvel at this defense system us humans have – the way shock and pain can make everything slow down, launching a sense of not being entirely there, that nothing is real. This was my state of being after my husband’s death when I needed to carry on and take care of my daughter. I turned inward and slowed, moving through the world with a simultaneous heightened sensitivity yet detachment. Slowly, oh so slowly through more than one change of seasons, I allowed myself to actually feel my loss and grief — to feel anything. And now, I no longer take much of anything for granted.

I take the dearth of Hydrangea flowers in stride. After all, my beloved shrubs are alive – they are in a recovery mode I recognize. Next year, perhaps they will bloom. Meanwhile, remembering winter makes me better savor this remarkable summer.

Out of the Box (and a Plug for Subscribing to The New York Times)

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I love the New York Times. Saturday and Sunday delivery suits both my financial and my time budget. Reading just two days of paper absorbs hours of my weekend and sometimes I don’t even finish it. I make my way through every section except Auto and Sports. During the week I can read it digitally although I usually just glance at the headlines. Do you have a subscription? Subscribing to a newspaper helps keep it going and I feel strongly about the print version of this newspaper. I’d hate to see it disappear. The writers are fantastic, the journalism and photography and breadth of coverage is the best around. During my years of living overseas, The New York Times was one of the things I missed most. Now, with digital publishing, I could live in Japan again and still have at least digital access to my favorite newspaper.

My plug for one of the last bastions of fine journalism – is inspired by this article on today’s front page. Where else are you going to read about a new funeral option: get yourself set up in a life-like pose in the setting of your choice. Mourners can then pay their last respects in the way they remember you — at least the way you want them to remember you.

Even before reading this crazy headline (one I’m sure The New York Post envied) “Rite of the Sitting Dead: Funeral Poses Mimic Life”, I thought something was a tad off about the woman in sunglasses sitting with cigarette in one hand, a glass in the other and a Busch beer by her side. Turns out — she’s dead! This picture was taken at her wake. Weird, right? This and the other images in the article (you have to look!) got me thinking about the question of ‘what do you want on your gravestone?’ to the ‘nth’ degree. How can you not start imagining what you’d like the last visual of you to be?

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I don’t mean to be blithe about death but as someone with a few terrible last visuals of loved ones, I appreciate this somewhat macabre idea of creating a desirable last image of someone. Why not? Bizarre but with a touch of whimsy — even humor. And even if you’d never (and I’d never) consider actually doing such a thing, the exercise of coming up with a scene that best captures who you are, fascinates me.

What vignette would you choose as your swan-song? Writing at your desk perhaps? Eating a fine meal? Gardening? Reading? (that might be mine) Fishing? Watching football in front of the TV? The possibilities are apparently endless. And why not take it a step further and include in your diorama, previously (I hope!) deceased pets who you’ve had the foresight to taxidermy? Why not? In case you’re interested in that service, here’s another NYT’s article on that subject and a photo from the same article.

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According to an intern funeral director quoted in today’s article, these kind of services don’t need to cost much more than a regular funeral. And in case you don’t know how much a funeral runs these days, here’s another NYT’s article from 2011 on that very subject.

Like I said, I really love The New York Times — so maybe I should be buried with it after being posed at my wake reading it in front of the fireplace or outside on my wicker chaise, depending upon the season. Hey, It’s never too early to start planning our grand exit into eternity – and why not be well informed and entertained to boot?

Forgiving Flaws on Mother’s Day

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Mother’s Day. I’m not a fan of these Hallmark Holidays. (well, I admit to liking Valentine’s Day.) I agree with  this piece by Annie Lamott. Becoming a mother was the best thing I ever did – but as Annie says, it’s not for everyone and not everyone is good at it. And those of us with either dead mothers or fraught relationships must grapple with our grief and complex emotions amidst this jolly day of bon-bons and brunches.

The distance I felt with my mother was made more comfortable by actual distance – so for much of my adult life I lived either across or out of the country – far from her. It was only after I moved back to the United States with my 1 year old daughter that I felt a shift, the possibility for real connection. A year later, she died.

I believe my mother did the best she could.  She once told a friend that were she do do it all over again she would not have had kids. For a time, I thought that a terrible thing to say but I realize now this was not because she didn’t love her kids.  Rather, she thought she would have preferred pursuing other things that, having 4 children with barely a year between them and teaching high school, precluded. She was smart as a whip and passionate about social injustice and would have been a great lefty- lawyer or maybe a politician. Who knows. She was launched almost obliviously into motherhood the way many Irish Catholic women in the fifties were.  It was all she could do to keep herself and the rest of us afloat. So we floated.

Desmond Tutu and his daughter Mpho Tutu have written a book about Forgiveness and are promoting it with a lovely online, month long “Forgiveness Challenge”. I signed up because I love Bishop Tutu and because I want to stay forgiveness-fit. I believe and history has shown us, that this is the only way to thrive after injury. Each day there are short readings, sometimes with a video or audio, a poem or interviews on forgiveness. One of the first forgiveness-excercises in the Challenge is to decided who you want to forgive.  My mother is on my list just as I suspect I would be on my daughter’s. We are not perfect, us mothers.

Today, I forgive my mother for never telling me how incredible being a mother can be. Did she not think so? For me, every stage of nurturing and loving my kid through life has been precious. From the moment I saw my daughter, then held her, I was a goner.  I’d been in love before, but nothing compared to the space this infant created in my heart.

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I watch my daughter as she ventures into adulthood and remember my own first steps – really more of a leap to claim (save?) my life. My daughter is now concocting dreams, considering the possibilities for her future. I remember myself in my 20s as completely narcissistic, thinking only about what I wanted to do next, what would bring me satisfaction, or better, joy. What a luxury! My mother was too busy juggling diapers and bottles. On the other hand, as I neared 30, I started to get a little sick of myself – this perpetual focus on my needs, my desires. I began to get an inkling of the appeal of being needed. A brush with mortality clinched my determination to be a mother and to this day, I consider it a revelation. It is where I found joy.

My mother did not come to motherhood out of longing as I did. I think even becoming a grandmother surprised her. But I bet she would have been good at it – and had we the chance, we would have shared our joy and perhaps, discovered each other.

The Grace of Ten Years

The calendars of our lives become checkered over time, marked by anniversaries of wonderful joys or terrible sorrows. A certain day, once just another measure of 24-hours is ever-after associated with the thing that happened. May 1st is such a day for me. It was ten years ago on a cloudless, strangely bright morning, that I found my husband dead. This year, May 1st was shrouded in fog and I was glad for one less trigger.

Grieving after suicide is complex. Rarely do people kill themselves completely out of the blue. Addiction and depression lived with us in our little house for years. After his death, mixed in with my shock, anger and anguish was also profound relief. “It’s over.” I said to myself even as I doubled-over in sobs as the policeman confirmed what I knew – that he was gone.

My daughter and I were recently discussing the awkwardness of telling people what happened, how we feel we must reassure them after they say, “Oh, I’m so sorry” with dismay, maybe a little horror. Sorry to have upset them we answer, “No, it’s okay, really!” And of course, that’s a weird thing to say – it’s not okay and it was terrible, and it’s still sad. But we remember how frightened we were as addiction swallowed him. Our day-to-day lives were so unstable and his behavior so erratic, that we could not help but feel released from a terrible insanity. We have made our peace and now, we remember mostly the good. Ten years of healthy love and a peaceful home have given us that grace.

The anger gripping me for years has been replaced by forgiveness and a desire to understand what damaged him. His military experience – about which he was uncharacteristically mum? Surely almost 20 years of cocaine use destroyed much of his brain, but I am certain he was self-medicating – for what? Every mental health professional he encountered failed him – and us. Even as the years pass, I want to understand what destroyed this good man.

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As I look at photos, I remember the early days when I first met him in that crazy war zone. There he is standing amidst the ruins in Bosnia, making children laugh. Wasn’t he handsome?  His personality filled the room, always the center of attention, he made sure of that with well-told (if rude) jokes and crazy antics. What amends was he making, what demons were kept at bay as he helped to save rather than to kill people in a terrible war? Being in this role in the center of constant crisis worked like a fix for him for awhile. He thrived on what traumatized me, seizing every opportunity to save someone – and in doing so, for those years, he saved himself. He was at his best there.

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I am glad for the grace of ten years – to feel a simple sadness, for the chance to remember him so, on a date I can never forget.

Making Space for Light

2014-04-12 13.30.43Yesterday we chopped a tree down. There were 5 Maple trees all growing out of one small spot – so we took this one out to give the rest a better chance to thrive. Plus, our vegetable garden will get more sun. And we’ll have firewood for next season. And R will build a charming little reading nook nestled into the other trunks.  Okay, it’s this that really sold me on taking it down – imagining this sweet place to read.

Still, it took some time for me to agree, to let go, to get ready to – well… grieve a little. I’ve lived in this house for 17 years so of course there are memories attached to everything.

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I held a rope taut ready to guide the wood away from the hedge and road as R cut a wedge of trunk first on one side, then the other. With a huge crack, the tree fell to the lawn as if it was shot. Prone, it appeared more massive, a daunting crush of wood.  We spent most of the day cutting branches and logs, turning our tree into pieces. “We need to have a ritual bonfire.” I said. We cannot simply trash these twigs, bundle them off to the town brush dump. We’ll burn them in our fire-pit, perhaps with neighbors or just the two of us will raise a glass and stare into the flames recalling years of shade, the different voices of wind and rain channeled through foliage and fractals. These branches were visible from our bedroom window – a best seat to watch squirrels scramble between limbs, Woodpeckers banging, Chickadees tweeting. We need to herald this wood off with a blessing.

2014-04-12 13.30.50Now a weird emptiness lingers in that space. Perhaps it’s like Phantom Leaf Effect – when a part of a leaf is cut off, it is still visible using a special photo technique that captures energy. Amputees experience this too, feeling sensation and even pain long after losing their limb. So the energy remains, some essence invisible to the naked eye. I’m anxious for the remaining trees to leaf, perhaps easing this sense of nakedness in our garden. How can I not be mourning a little, the absence of this tree. Or to think about death?

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I cannot avoid it, especially in Spring even as everything around us promises new life. For me, the sweet scents, the vivid morning light, remind me of a terrible morning on May 1st. This year is the 10th anniversary of my husband’s suicide. Enough time has passed that I mostly remember the man I loved, my daughter’s father, rather than the often frightening shell he’d become at the end. The mourning of possibility never goes away when someone dies too young – like a phantom limb, sometimes, inexplicably calling to us.  Grief brings such darkness in the early days of loss, yet I’ve heard from others and experienced myself, there comes a light like we’ve never seen before, made all the brighter by the shadows.

Cleaning up this downed tree on an impossibly brilliant Spring day, I honor darkness and make space for light.

Denial at the Dentist

“Anything been bothering you?” my dentist asks every 6 months. I am a diligent brusher and flosser and the good result is that I have been cavity-free for years. Since the dentist usually has her hands in my mouth when she asks the question, I simply answer in a guttural negative.

The fact is I’m lying. One of my lower molars on the left side of my mouth is sensitive and sometimes aches. I chew mostly on my right side and often worry my ancient filling with my tongue. This has been the case for years. And years ago, she pointed out that this tooth had a slight crack and I’d probably eventually need a crown. Money was tight then, so when she told me the probable cost I balked.

This news, along with once enduring an excruciating “scaling” procedure, has made me ultra-vigilant when it comes to my mouth. I am also determined not to be like my mother whose teeth were a mess because of her lack of  mouth-maintenance. She claimed she had a phobia of the dentist. I vow to not ever let my mouth get the way hers was in the last years of her life. Besides, research indicates a link between gum disease and heart disease.

And yet, there I go, lying to the dentist. And it’s no longer because of money. I feel dismay at a big bill from the car mechanic but I still fix the car. This is my body we’re talking about. But I also have dentist-fear. I hate the image of what I vaguely understand they do to your tooth: grinding it down to a nub and attaching the fake bit on, right? Ugh. No, I lie about my discomfort because I’m chicken and it doesn’t hurt quite enough.

But recently, I’ve decided I better act now. One day, it might be the money again. Bless Barnes & Noble, I currently have great coverage – including dental. A good chunk (oh, my poor tooth!) of the cost would be covered. And so I am prepping myself to bite the bullet (!) at my next visit and answer the call of my molar.

Acknowledging my dental-denial has reminded me of how I behaved for years; my avoidance of dealing with the painful truth. I convinced myself things weren’t really that bad and surely they’d get better. If distress was not perpetual – day-in and day-out – I ignored it. I am an easy mark and could be distracted by sweet talk and what proved to be only hollow promises. Anything to avoid conflict and anything rather than give up on the illusion of the happy family.  This used to be me. It’s not uncommon – mostly women do it – dismiss our pain insisting we’re okay, really we are. Excuses, rationalizing reasons for other’s bad behavior. Anything to avoid giving up on the one we love. Chewing on the other side to avoid confronting and dealing with the pain of taking the steps to end it.

But I’ve learned over the years, that even after the most terrible pain can come incredible serenity and bliss.

And at the dentist office, I’ll just ask for lots of Novocaine.

Who do you lie to?

The Light of Venus on a February Dawn

There is a bright glow in the dawn sky on this cold morning. At first I think it is the light of a plane passing and I imagine the sleeping passengers heading home to loved ones or departing on adventures. I watch, waiting for the plane’s glow to disappear across the sky but instead the light remains, slowly rising away from the horizon as the earth turns towards the sun and fading only as the morning light moves in. Venus.

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The planet Venus, named for the goddess of love, after the Sun and the Moon, is the brightest planet in the sky. Only slightly smaller than Earth, and with densities and chemical compositions similar to ours, Venus’ surface is so windy and hot, speculation is that any water once there, all boiled away. Venus is sometimes called the morning star. That’s what I thought, this early morning when I realized I wasn’t looking at a plane. Maybe it’s a Nova – one of those stars that burn so hot they explode. Like people sometimes do.

It’s Philip Seymour Hoffman’s kids I can’t stop thinking about. The older two are about the same age Molly was when her father died. A tough memory from that nightmare blur of a morning, when I told her that her father, who she’d been watching a movie with before she fell asleep, was dead. How? She wanted to know. Rather than tell her that he’d put a noose around his neck, I said: drugs. She knew about his drug problem – we’d been living with that struggle for years and she’d known for at least this last one. Tough stuff for an 8 year old. That morning it seemed liked ‘drugs’ inferred an element of accident rather than stating the truth of his intention to die.

Besides, I wasn’t lying. His addiction did destroy him. It took me years to finally step away, to stop trying to find a way to fix him. Eventually, to even let go of hope. That was the hardest. I rode that roller coaster of hope and disappointment until it was one too many times. Yet even in deciding to finish the marriage, I harbored a touch of magical thinking that in doing so, I was giving him the ‘bottom’ – the wake up call he needed to finally get clean. I still deluded myself I might possess that kind of power. I still hoped.

So I look at those kids and I think of mine. And, I think of their mother, his partner, and remember myself. I remember the dark months, weeks and days leading up to my husband’s end. I lived for so many years with lies, sometimes even knowing I was making a choice to believe them, as if that might make them true. Did she do that? What ultimatums did she give him? Did she feel relieved when he moved out of their home, feeling that bitter relief of not having the risk of drugs in the house, of being better able to protect their children from being with him when he was high?  Of, while heartbroken, relieved not to have to wonder why he wasn’t coming to bed yet? Or worry why he was still in the bathroom? The not-knowing. Ever.

After all, if this can happen after 23 years of sobriety. Once there, even if for a glimpse, how can we ever trust our addict is clean? Our addict. We all have at least one addict that is ‘ours’ because we love them. They can never really be ours.

And we wonder why? Why our love, why the love of our children provides no cure? As much as I learn about addiction and accept that it’s a disease, there will always be that tormenting truth that nothing I ever did was enough. So yes, as the death of yet another celebrity throws a spotlight on addiction, I welcome the attention being paid to this complicated issue, although there are no answers here, we have to keep asking the questions. The heartbreak continues, with only a terrible comfort in the knowledge we are not alone. The loss of this great actor and good man saddens me too, but it’s those kids and their mother that I think of as I watch the morning star of love fade away at the break of another day.

The Not-So-Small Club: Children Left Behind by Suicide

I drove Molly back to college on Friday. We laughed much of the drive, happy to be on this road trip on a fine, bright day, enjoying the landscape and each other’s company with a soundtrack acceptable to both of us (Amy Winehouse Pandora station). Occasionally I turned the music down to better hear Molly’s stories about friends and random school anecdotes including this one that put a lump in my throat.

A buddy recently asked her advice – cautiously – with the caveat that Molly needn’t answer if she didn’t feel comfortable. Oh, no, Molly thought, what weirdness will this be about? The friend wanted to know what she could do for a friend whose father had just died. She said, “I just feel so awful!” Molly, relieved not to hear anything weird, and not in the slightest bit uncomfortable, gave her friend great advice.

“Remember that this isn’t about YOU. It doesn’t matter that you feel awful or that you’re sorry. It made me mad when people told me they were sorry. Why were they sorry? It wasn’t their fault – why should they say they are sorry? What was I supposed to say to that? There is nothing you can say that will make it better for someone. Just let them know you are there. That’s it. Just don’t make it about you. And don’t tell them about when your hamster died!”

Molly’s understanding of grief impresses me – although it will always make me sad she acquired it so young. She gets it that grief is a place unto itself. There is no rescue possible – not at first. I credit her understanding and the roadmap to peace, largely to The Den for Grieving Kids where she realized that there were plenty of other kids her age who’d lost their parents, some, also by suicide. She learned early that she wasn’t alone and how it is possible to talk – or sometimes not – about loss. (More about The Den in this post.)

Today’s New York Times Magazine has is this fine piece by a woman whose mother committed suicide. The author was just 2.  Unfortunately, she lacked Molly’s support system and instead lived unnecessarily with her sad secret until now. Imagining the child she was breaks my heart. Here from Jessica Lamb-Shapiro’s lovely essay: “...I’ve told this story a few times since then. Sometimes I like to entertain the grandiose notion that I’m doing something noble by telling it, teaching the world’s silent orphans an important lesson about openness and connecting with others. But the real reason I tell the story is that I still need to hear it.”

Yes, we must let the light in on secrets. We need to tell and hear each other’s stories because there is comfort in knowing we are not alone.

Time Makes Room for Joy

This year marks a decade since my husband killed himself. My daughter was a month shy of 9. At the time Molly was convinced that all of her friends’ lives were perfect. Why did this happen to her. I agreed it wasn’t fair. But, I explained, no one’s life is ever perfect, certainly not forever. Her friends too, would experience sadness and loss. In her world she may be the first – but would not be the last. Extremely empathetic even as a toddler, Molly soon absorbed this and was a happy kid, offering comfort to her friends in their tough times.

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These days, our shared memories of N usually make us laugh. For years he held off the black ocean of darkness that destroyed him in the end, by being outrageously funny. A genuinely warm and generous man, for a time he effectively channeled his craziness into endearing antics and even acts of heroism. For Molly and I, those good memories of him are now stronger than the frightening, bitter ones.

Our perception of our story has changed over this decade. Time makes room for joy. 

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