Ash Wednesday: Beginning the Walk of Lent

 Daily Trivia: Ash Wednesday

·         Ash Wednesday, despite being one of the most attended holy days of the year by Catholics around the world, is not an official Holy Day of Obligation. The ashes used to mark the cross on a person’s forehead are traditionally made by burning last year’s Palm Sunday palms.

 The Journey of Lent

I've been looking over all the wonderful resources online for Lenten retreats. Some of them are truly fabulous!  I know I can't compete with them, but what I do want to share these next 40 days is my own Lenten journey. I Had originally planned to focus on griefwalking, then I thought about healing, but last night, as I reflected on Pope Benedict's resignation, I decided I would simply talk about my own way, in the hopes that maybe it would resonate with someone else.

Anxiety and Grief

What has dominated my life for the past year or more has been at times almost crippling panic and anxiety. It started about the time that I knew my mother was dying. Since it was a long process for her--including nearly nine months on hospice--I was on edge for a long time as well. I never went to sleep without thinking that perhaps tonight would be the night I would get the call. Then when the call did come, I was plunged into the darkest sea of fear and anxiety I had ever experienced. A fear that has had its storms as well as a few moments of relative calm, but a treacherous and troubling sea nonetheless.

At times I thought I was losing my grip on reality, my sanity. Although I faced several difficult issues, including a major theft (which is still winding its way through the courts), financial, health, and relationship issues, I wasn't being pursued by tigers, even though the flight or fight mechanism was stuck in the on position. Then, last night, I was directed to an article written by a grief counselor that said anxiety should be one of the stages of grief. She wrote:

 In fact, anxiety is the most common symptom of grief that I see in my practice. But I also know that it’s often one of the most overlooked aspects of bereavement...

I must have read that statement a half-dozen times before it sank it. My almost paralyzing anxiety was normal! Just knowing that didn't eradicate the anxiety--even as I type this morning, my hands are shaking and my pulse is racing--and I didn't even have any caffeine!

Into the Desert

What does this have to do with Lent?  This year,  I'm not giving up anything per se. At least not i the traditional sense. What I am going to do is look at the relationship between anxiety, grief, healing, and faith.  So to begin, I offer you this prayer from St. Francis de Sales, the patron saint of Catholic writers:

Do not look forward to the changes and chances of this life with fear. Rather, look to them with full confidence that, as they arise, God to whom you belong will in his love enable you to profit by them. He has guided you thus far in life. Do you but hold fast to His dear hand, and He will lead you safely through all trials. Whenever you cannot stand, He will carry you lovingly in his arms.
Do not look forward to what may happen tomorrow. The same Eternal Father who takes care of you today will take care of you tomorrow, and every day of your life. Either He will shield you from suffering or He will give you unfailing strength to bear it.
Be at peace then, and put aside all useless thoughts, all vain dreads and all anxious imaginations.

---

Meditations for Lent

I've been toying with the thought for some time, but now felt the prompting of the Spirit and have decided to commit. (Yikes, commitment.  Yikes.)

I will be devoting the blog to meditations, ideas, thoughts, suggestions and whatever else seems appropriate during Lent.  The goal is to have an entry every day, so that you and I can journey together during this holy season.  Sundays may still just be dedicated to gratitude and prayer scorecard, but we'll see.

I think the overarching theme will be on healing--healing of griefs, healing of relationships, emotional healing, and, to some extent, physical healing. I want to explore what I've learned about healing and what I'm still learning.

Lent is a time for prayer, renewal and hope.  God knows I need all of those these year, so I hope you will join me on this journey.

Blessings on the journey.

Anniversary Anxiety

I've been dreaming about my mother every night for the past week.  

It's surprising because I had only dreamed about her once in the past year of griefwalking and now I've met her, at various ages and in various locales, each night as I sleep. But then, perhaps it isn't surprising because the one year anniversary of her death is approaching and my grief counselor tells me that it is common, virtually normal, to be disturbed in a variety of ways at this juncture.

Knowing that helps, just like knowing you have enough gas in your car to make it safely to the next gas station or that there is enough clean underwear so that you don't have to do laundry right this second.  But, on the other hand, it doesn't stop the dreams, as my subconscious pulls up a melange of memory and unresolved issues, throws in a handful of thoughts of my own mortality and stirs it all with a soupcon of fear and anxiety to create a potage of renewed grief--Tear Soup.

It's tough.  In its own way, it's almost as tough as the original griefwalk. In fact, in some odd fashion, it is even harder because it is so much more viseral than I had imagined.  I had gone through the other anniversaries--my birthday, her birthday, the holidays--with waves of renewed grieving, but not this  mind-wrenching, soul-knotting, intellect-fogging, hope-draining kind of emotional paralysis that I've been experiencing for the past several days.

It doesn't help that, despite the fact I know that grief simply takes as long as it takes, I feel like I should be over this, or at least more over it than I am. I had been taking care of my mother for nearly 14 years and I certainly knew that, at age 92, the end was coming.

Maybe that's part of it. After being her caregiver for so may years, after putting life and career on a kind of hold for that long, I never truly expected it to end.  I think I assumed it would go on as it had until my own death.

Mother thought so, too. She often said that didn't want to die before me and she didn't want me to die before her. I would tell her that the only way that could be arranged would be if we would die at the same time. She would smile sort of sweetly at that, but never made a response.  Deep down, I think that's what she secretly hoped would happen.

But it didn't.

However, her oft-expressed desire must have sunk deep into my subconscious because I dreamed last night that she was waiting for me as I came out of a doctor's office.  "We have to go," she said, as she headed out the door, indicating that I was to follow her.  I did, to a point, then stopped, in a dark, cold and half-frozen field.  Looking down I realized I was barefoot. "I can't go," I told her.  "I don't have the right shoes."

It's a few more days until the actual date of her death. Perhaps by then I will have found the right shoes to make the rest of my life, not a slog into the winter night, but a dance by starlight. I pray so.

Six Months of a Death Remembered

It was six months ago, to the date and the day of the week exactly, that my mother died.

It has been a hard day, not because I am still wrapped in acute grief, because I'm not.  But because the body remembers what the mind seeks to forget and I have been weary and foggy all day.  My mind refuses to concentrate on details, like turning on blinkers and fastening seatbelts. Like recognizing that I might just be hungry.  Like remembering to turn off a light.

I have been griefwalking all day.

But six months have passed and, as I said earlier, I feel like I'm on the brink of something; a something I know not what. Perhaps today will be the turning point and I will begin to see what lies ahead.
Until then....

De Profundis

Psalm 130

Out of the depths I cry to You, O Lord; Lord, hear my voice.
Let Your ears be attentive to my voice in supplication.
If You, O Lord, mark iniquities, Lord, who can stand?
But with You is forgiveness, that You may be revered.
I trust in the Lord; my soul trusts in His word.
My soul waits for the Lord more than sentinels wait for the dawn.
More than sentinels wait for the dawn, let Israel wait for the Lord,
For with the Lord is kindness and with Him is plenteous redemption;
And He will redeem Israel from all their iniquities.

Sunday Gratitude

Sundays, as I've said before, are hard days.  I used to spend at least part of each Sunday with my mother (in addition to many other days, but always Sundays). About this time of day, late afternoon, I would be with her, bringing her her favorite ice cream or, when she was able, taking her out to get a dish of plain vanilla.  And so when the slant of light takes a certain turn, I feel a twist in my soul and a wave of what is no longer acute sorrow, but a gripping of my chest and a clenching of my heart, sweeps over me.

It's a gorgeous day here, finally.  With a bright blue sky and a slight breeze. I'm working on an article about a favorite saint--Hildegard of Bingen--and I've talked to friends. Despite some frustrations that loom for next week, things are okay for now.

And yet...and still...all of a sudden, the wave rises and I feel that melange of loss, anxiety, and emptiness that is so much a part of my griefwalking. It is as if the sun suddenly dims and I wonder, will this ever end? Will I ever feel "normal" again? And what is "normal" now anyway?

It is precisely because Sundays are hard days that I chose them to post my gratitudes. By making myself see what is good and blessed, to seek out five things that remind me God has not forgotten me, I get through the hardest part of the hardest day of the week.

So this week I am grateful for:

1. Giving away some things I didn't use to someone who will use and appreciate them.

2. Sunshine and warm enough weather to wear a sleeveless top. (Everyone who has been sweltering in the heat, trust me, it's been frigid here in Oregon and this is something to be grateful for.)

3. Work.  When a free-lancer has work, it's always cause for gratitude.

4. Conversation with a good friend who reminded me that some of the decisions I made in the past and now sorely regret, I made with honest intent and with all the information I had available at the time.

5. A weed in a pot that has such lovely flowers I'm pretending that it is a flower and letting it stay.

Finally, one more thing to be grateful for.  Now and then I get those forwarded e-mails that tell you to send to 10 people because God has a blessing blah blah.  I got one today and, for whatever reason, the idea that God might just have a blessing waiting for me was a message that I needed to hear. God does sometimes speak in mysterious ways and I'll just take that e-mail as a message.

Good Days and Bad Daze

I've read a lot of books about grieving these past few month and one thing they all say is that grief is not a straight line. You don't march steadfastly forward, making good progress each day until one day you reach the promised land of restored equilibrium.

No, grieving is more like dancing on the deck of a small boat in a rainstorm. Sometimes you are upright and feeling the sprinkles on your face; other times it's all you can do to keep your footing. Sometimes you are sure the storm is nearly over; other times all you can see is the looming darkness.

The other odd thing about grieving for me is that I don't always identify it as such. Certainly sometimes I can struck by the waves of sheer pain of missing my mother, but other times, I don't actually realize that what I'm feeling is probably grief. I think I'm feeling anxious, or tired, or depressed, or nervous, or worried, or lazy, or foggy, or distracted, or hungry, or lonely.  And yes, I am feeling all of those things, but when I stop to consider it, 9 times out of 10, the underlying emotion is grief, wearing a distracting hat.

Another thing that goes along with the many hats of grief is that I'm feeling impatient with myself.  I want to be done with this, have it be over, be back to some sense of "normal" again.  But dancing on the deck of a boat isn't predictable, even if I want it to be.

Griefwalking on Father's Day

My father has been gone 17 years and for many years, Father's Day didn't have any particular sting anymore.  But this year, with mother gone as well, it was a difficult day.  Sundays are always hard for me, since I spent them with her, but this Sunday, this Father's Day, was a bit of a wrench.

I tried to keep busy...cleaning, planting a pot of lavender seeds that my son and her girlfriend gave me at Christmas.  (The seeds said they were good until 2015, so I wasn't in a rush.)  Scrubbing places on the carpet where the cats had barfed. (Have I mentioned these are THE LAST CATS I'm owning?  When they are gone, it's libre feline for me!)  Picking up things that were out of place.  Trying to fix a leaky fountain.  Calling my aunt.  Writing a blog.  Downloading a book on Kindle. Stuff.

For a few minutes I could push away the feelings and get absorbed in the activity of, oh, say, deep cleaning a spot on the carpet or mopping up the spill after I dumped the fountain.

But it was still a hard day.

I think it was the memories, mostly.  Memories of my father. Memories of the father of my son.  Memories of memories of memories.  When my feelings are raw and ragged, like they are today, the memories, even the pleasant ones, come with glass-shard edges that leave little cuts that seem painless at the time, but the tiny bubble of red sorrow eventually rises. 

But tomorrow will be another day.

Second Death and New Beginnings

As I face Memorial Day, the first without my parents, I'm surprised at just how flattened I feel. Trying to write, to be creative, to find new life, to do new things seems like impossible tasks. When I came across this quote today, it spoke directly to me:

"Our suffering becomes exacerbated when we allow one loss to lead to another... it causes the gradual destruction of the soul, the death of our spirit.  The tragedy of the 'second death' can be a worse tragedy than the first.  The first kind of death happens to us, the second kind of death happens in us."--Jerry Sittser

And so I am going to let the drenching rain of an Oregon spring close out the day while I go think and pray about second deaths...and the hope of a new beginnings.

 

Being Patient with Grief

From the chapter on Grief in my upcoming book, Facing Adversity with Grace.

The poet Dylan Thomas wrote, “After the first death, there is no other.” [1] Some have interpreted that line to be a poetic way of saying “we only die once,” but like all good poetry, it is subject to a variety of interpretations. For me, it has always meant that once you truly experience the profound suffering that comes from losing someone you love, you’ll never experience grief the same way again. But that “first death” isn’t necessarily the first time you experience death; rather it’s the first time you experience it in a way that wrenches your heart and soul.

As I write this, I am mourning the loss of my mother, who died at age 92 after a lengthy period of decline. While my heart aches, hers was not my “first death.” I experienced that some years ago when, of all things, a beloved cat died. It was then that I was utterly struck by the pain and loss that death brings and the soul-wrenching loss of grief.  Of course, the grief from the loss of a pet, no matter how beloved, differs from that of the loss of a human, as it rightly should. But the one thing that I learned from that “first death” was how I process the stages of grief made famous by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance).

The fact is that we all process grief in our own unique ways.  Some are stoic, keeping a steely countenance and dealing with the emotions internally.  Others are wild-haired and vocal in their suffering, keening and wailing both literally and figuratively.  The comfort that comes after once having experienced real grief is that from then on you know your own reaction, the way you will cope and process it.  And, in addition, you know that you will get through it.  Along with recognizing the stages of pain, you can begin to see the stages of healing as well.

For me, I know that I pass through the stages of denial, bargaining and anger relatively quickly, but become ensnared by depression and deep sadness before I finally come to acceptance.  For me, some time after a grievous loss, even the most sunny of days is tinged with grey clouds in my soul.  But I know, too, that when I first begin to sense a quickening of hope and a calm, no matter how momentary, that the healing is beginning. It may take a long time, especially when the loss is as profound as that of my mother, but having lived through grief before, I also know that healing will come, in its own time and own way.

I just have to be patient with it...and with me.

---

[1] http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/3357.html

Weary and Worn on the Griefwalk

Today is a wet, grey, soggy, overcast, dank, dark day in Oregon.  The lilacs and wisteria are blooming, which helps things a bit, but having the sky be steel grey without a horizon doesn't.  Nor does the fact it is May and I have had to bring in more pellets for the wood stove so that my fingers don't freeze on the keyboard.  Everything in the house, even with the heat on, smells sort of damp...probably because it is.

The weather reflects my feelings.

I'm weary and I'm worn.  I'd go to bed, but I'm not really sleepy.  Just tired.

Tired of telling people that I'm just fine and getting better every day.  While, on some level, it's true; I am fine and I am getting better, people tend to expect more fine and more better than I am.

Tired of feeling like life is a series of endless grey days without a horizon.

Tired of seeing so many things that need to be done and not having the energy or inclination to do them.

Tired of being tired.

I think it's just part of the Griefwalk.

It's Sunday and time for me to consider the areas in my life where I am grateful.

1.  I've mentioned this before, but for continued restoration in a relationship where I didn't think any restoration could ever be possible.

2. Wisteria blooms.

e,

3. Chocolate chip cookies.

4. Sunshine

 

5. And finally, something that I don't know how to illustrate...I am grateful that I've survived another week, despite fear and worry and panic and grief and sadness.  One more day.  One more week.